skull. I doubt they cared.”
“Have you been out to your old house?”
“I have. A man named Cyrus Tanner lives there now. He said he was renting it.”
Blum interjected, “He’s quite attractive and interesting.”
Graham smiled. “Yes he is. And Cy Tanner says lots of things. It doesn’t make them all true.”
“So he’s not renting it?” asked Blum.
“I don’t think anyone even knows who owns that place anymore, so I doubt he’s sending in payments to anyone.”
“Then he’s squatting?”
“He’s not the only one. The town has lost nearly thirty percent of its population since 2000, not that we had a lot to begin with. Now, the rest of Sumter County is doing better. Wages are up and so are employment and property values. There’s more young people. But there are abandoned places, and your old home is one of them.”
“I guess I can see that.”
“Do you really think you can solve it all these years later?”
“Lots of cold cases get solved,” Blum pointed out.
“But most don’t,” said Graham.
“How do you know that?” asked Pine.
“I’m actually working on a crime novel,” answered Graham. “As I mentioned, this place gives me a living but not much more. I’m hoping to break out of that rut by establishing myself as a writer of historical crime fiction.”
“So you have more ambition than you let on?” said Blum.
Graham glanced at her lap. “I guess so.”
“Let me guess—your story takes place during Civil War times,” said Pine.
“Nice deduction. Good historical fiction reeks of atmosphere. And the war is fully settled into every fiber of this town, for good and bad. For me, I hope it’s good. The point is, I’ve done a lot of research into old crime cases. And most remain unsolved.”
Pine rose. “Well, mine won’t, not for lack of trying anyway. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a long day.”
Pine walked out of the room, leaving Blum and Graham alone.
Graham looked at Blum. “Do you think she can really do this?”
“If she can’t, I’m not sure who can.”
Chapter 8
ALL GROWN UP NOW, I see.”
It was the next day, and Pine and Blum were seated across from Dave Bartles at the Macon County Sheriff’s Office in Oglethorpe, Georgia.
Bartles was in his fifties with iron-gray hair, a solid, fit physique, sharp-edged features, and the look of a man who had seen his share of depravity over his law-enforcement career.
“All grown up,” said Pine, her lips set in a firm line.
“FBI agent, I hear.”
“That’s right.”
“I guess I know why you’re here.”
“I’m sure it was an easy deduction.”
“We didn’t solve the case back then, and neither did the GBI, or even your own agency.”
“You had a suspect.”
“Your father.”
“Do you still think he did it?”
“We didn’t even have enough to charge him. And we could never find a motive. They were both really young, but from all the people we talked to, they were doting parents.” He paused. “When they weren’t drunk or stoned.”
“So is that what you think? He was intoxicated and did what he did because of that?”
“I did. At first. But then what did he do with the body? They only had the one old clunker car, and no one saw him driving it that night. We looked all over the property and the woods around. No freshly dug graves. No body turned up in the water. No body turned up anywhere. It’s hard to hide a corpse sober. Much less drunk.”
“Daniel James Tor was operating in the area right around that time.”
Bartles looked at her thoughtfully. “He killed a little girl from Macon, about an hour from here. The FBI finally got the bastard. You think he took your sister?”
“They did investigate his presence in the area, but my sister’s abduction did not fit his geometric pattern of activity.”
Bartles frowned. “Geometric? What does that mean?”
“Tor was a math prodigy. And he selected his victims based on their locations adhering to mathematical shapes. That’s how he was eventually caught. They predicted his next area of activity and had assets there that deployed swiftly.”
“So your home’s location didn’t fit this ‘math’ pattern?” He looked skeptical.
“No. Over the course of eighteen months in 1988 and 1989, Tor was suspected of abducting and killing four people in the state of Georgia, one each from Albany, Columbus, Atlanta, and the little girl you mentioned from the city of Macon. That formed a rough geometric shape. I called it a diamond. He corrected me and called it a rhombus.”
“He corrected you?” Bartles said sharply.
“I’ve been to see Tor three times now at