16.
“Field Trip”Walking the streets of Ames was always a pleasure for Hannibal. He had taken some classes here when this was barely able to call itself a campus and now it was getting to be a college of some account. He went directly from the Rambler (that old Nash was on its last legs, but he like the little burgundy bug so much he just couldn’t make himself sell it.) into the main building to ask where some of the people were he needed to talk to.
Luckily for him the community outreach was pretty good, and, since they helped farmers all the time, the other parts of the programs were likewise available.
He got to the chemistry department quickly enough, but they could tell him very little about the letter that they didn’t already know. The printing seemed to match comic books of the period, except for the words “this year.” These were from a newsprint origin, and one of the professors was able to point in the right direction. It was from “Grit.” Girt was a publication that lived on enlisting young people to sell subscriptions in return for “amazing rewards.” It was something like those greeting card companies that gave you “space suits” and “bat kites” for selling the right amount of cards.
So, someone involved with the killings had a subscription to “Grit?” But, he reminded himself, that was only true if the letter was real and not a prank.
He then took the letter to Dr. Bateman in the psychology department. He wanted the man to look at the letter with the writer in mind.
“Pretty average purple prose style,” He stated on a third reading, “Except for one thing that sticks out.”
He took a far too dramatic pause, for Pappy’s way of thinking, before finishing the thought.
“He changes the first person identity.”
“Doctor, I am not a stupid man, but I don’t follow you,” Hannibal told
him.
“He starts by narrating in the first person, ‘I am the night.” But just before the end he says ‘We are the soldiers.’ Now if he had said ‘We are the soldier,’ that might just have been a mistake. But he used both plurals. That calls into question whether you have one writer thinking of himself as an ‘army of one,’ or you have multiple killers who are trying to seem like an individual and have just slipped up. Or, it could even be one individual who is leading a group,” He was getting into the idea trough and drinking deep. “If you don’t mind, I would like to have my secretary make a copy.”
“Don’t see why not,” Pappy said, “Why would you want to do that?”
“I think I would like to conjecture at length with some colleagues and see if we can’t give you an even better idea of who you might be dealing with.”
Hannibal agreed readily and the copy was made. The two men excused each other and the old man was feeling more hopeful than he had been since he started the revisiting of this case.
He even treated himself to a “beef burger” at the “Dairy Sweet.” This little greasy spoon was his favorite when he took classes here, and the loose meat sandwich had lost none of it’s allure.
Suddenly something happened to ruin his sandwich.
“Hannibal Agamemnon, is there a Hannibal Agamemnon here?” The waitress called, holding the phone.
He set his sandwich down. Mehitabel had to have told him were to look.
“That’s me,” He called looking down at the steaming bun full of goodness that would undoubtedly be a coagaulating cold mess when he finally got back to it.
He took the phone and the lady said, “Shouldn’t be no private personal calls,” and harrumphed away.
“This is Pappy,” He said.
“Pappy,” It was the voice of the Mayor, “We need you back here right away.”
“What is it Sebastian?”
“Tooley’s been shot!”
Without a word he hung up the phone and left his food on the table.
Tooley might not be a prize, but he was like that nitwit nephew you have. You get tired of him quick, but you love him.
© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens
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