Free The Secret of the Stones by Ernest Dempsey

felt
like you didn’t need to tell the police any of this?”  
    She
raised her eyes from the ground.   “I wasn’t here when the cops arrived the first time.   But I was working here in the library
when that tall, blonde cop came around.”
    “Tall,
blonde cop?”   Recognition of a
detective of that description did not immediately come to his mind.
    “Yeah,
I overheard him asking a lot of the same questions you were asking.   I think he said his name was Jurgenson
or something like that.   He talked
kind of funny, real deliberate.   I
couldn’t tell for certain, but I thought I heard a foreign accent a few times.”
    Jurgenson?   He’d never heard of that name before
and there were certainly not any cops that he knew of with accents, other than
southern, working for the department.  
    “What
exactly did this blonde cop ask about?”
    “He
kept bugging the head librarian about where Dr. Borringer did most of his
research, which computer he was using, any mail that he might have sent out
that day.   Stuff like that.”
    “What
did she tell him?”
    “Not
too sure, but it didn’t sound like she really knew too much about what the
professor was working on.   Jurgenson didn’t seem very happy about her lack of information.   He stormed out of the library, slamming
a stack of books to the floor as he left.”   The girl looked down in thought.   “I don’t guess he found anything he was looking for.”
    “Do
you know what he was looking for?”   Something about the girl’s demeanor led him to think she knew more than
she was letting on.
    She
looked up from the sidewalk.   “No,
not really.”
    “What
do you know?”
    “Only
that I think Dr. B was doing this project as a favor to someone over at the
IAA.   Pretty sure it wasn’t for
himself.”
    Bingo.   “You don’t happen to remember the name
of the person at the IAA he was helping, do you?”
    She
looked around a moment, trying to recall the name.   “Seems like it was Thomas…something”.  
    “Schultz?”   He finished the sentence for her.
    “Yeah,
that’s it,” she said with recognition in her voice.
    So
there was a connection.   “Thank
you, Ms. Meyers.   You have been
very helpful.”
    “You’re
welcome,” she started to turn around and walk back into the library while he
spun in the opposite direction.  
    “Detective?” 
She called out again.  
    “Yes,”
he turned around, stopping in his tracks.
    “I’m
not going to get into any trouble for not talking to that Officer Jurgenson, am
I?”
    “I’ll
take care of it,” he replied walking backwards away from the girl and then
turned the corner at a jog.  
    This
story wasn’t making sense, but now he had a connection.   Sense could come later.   Who was this Jurgenson?   Sounded like there was another player
involved in this fiasco.   For the
moment, though, his only thought was to check out the IAA headquarters and see
if he could find anything else about Schultz and more importantly, Wyatt.

Chapter
13
    Atlanta,
Georgia

 
    Sean
Wyatt’s carbon colored Maxima eased into a parking spot in front of the
Borringers’ house.   He and Allyson got
out and looked around; the neighborhood was completely lifeless, save for the
stereotypical random dog barking in the distance.   Even for a Thursday, it was unusually inactive.   Sean supposed the outrageous late night
board games would have to wait for the weekend for the suburbanites.   It was not a life he’d been interested
in pursuing.  
    Most
of his friends from college had made such a life change.   The endless parties and sleepless
lifestyle had been traded in for minivans with soccer balls on the back window
and family nights watching wholesome television.   For people who had, at one point, been persuaded to take a
spur of the moment trip to the beach, six hours away, spontaneity now
represented itself in an all expenses paid venture to the local fast food
playground.   On nights of