"Why are you investigating a bank robbery?"
It was now a few days before Christmas, and Amy was shocked to see holiday decorations going up on the Weaver house. She approached a boy of about 20 who was stringing the lights. "Does Mr. Weaver still live here?" she asked hesitantly.
Amy's tone was a little testy. On the promise of an important case, she'd followed her father to Perkinsville, a town in the middle of nowhere. This was their second day here, cold and dreary.
"A guard died in that robbery," Harry explained for the fifth time. "That makes it homicide. The bank was in the city. That makes it mine." The bank's video had caught three men and a woman, all wearing masks. But the M.O. resembled the work of Sebastian Bern, a Perkinsville resident and convicted felon.
Harry and Amy had spent yesterday interviewing Werner, his friends and associates, and putting the suspect under surveillance. This morning, they followed him to a diner and watched as he and three others - two men and a woman - sat huddled in a booth. "You think those are his gang?" Amy whispered from their own booth.
"Looks like we're making them nervous," Harry said with a grin. At 10:30, the foursome paid the bill and left. All four got into their own cars and drove off.
"Can we have our own breakfast now?" Amy begged.
"Sure," Harry said, looking out the window at a local police cruiser. "We'll let the sheriff follow Mr. Bern for a while."
Father and daughter emerged from the diner at 11 a.m., just as a strong, steady wind rolled into town. "It's supposed to be like this all day," Amy whined.
They returned to the motel to check messages and make a few calls. They were still there a little past noon when Sheriff Fred Westin banged on their door.
"Bern's been killed," he stammered.
Harry's first reaction was to say, "It's not my jurisdiction," but his curiosity got the better of him. And besides, the cases might just be connected. "Let's go!"
On the short drive to Bern's property, Westin explained. "Bern drove straight to his cabin. Legally, I couldn't go onto his property, so I parked by the bottom of the drive. You can't see the house from there, but it's the only road and you can see who comes and goes. A few minutes after I parked there, Curtis paid him a call. Curtis drove off a short while later, a few minutes before 11.
"Next came Lola, the woman from breakfast. She drove in at 11:20 and left about 15 minutes later. Brad, the other breakfast friend, showed up at 11:45.
"Ten minutes later, Brad came back down that drive like a bat out of hell. That made me suspicious, so I pulled him over. His jittery behavior gave me enough probable cause to go up the drive myself. We found Bern out back behind his house, clubbed to death with a tree branch."
"Did you search this last guy's car?"
"No, sir. I didn't have a warrant. But I took him into custody."
"After you drop us off, I want you to get all three of them and bring them to the crime scene." They turned up Sebastian Bern's drive and within seconds, his cabin came into view. "Looks like our questions made someone pretty nervous, nervous enough to kill."
