Free Effigies by Mary Anna Evans Page B

maybe three run-ins with the victim. Faye wasn’t overly concerned. She had the utmost respect for the truth, and the truth was that she’d had nothing to do with Calhoun’s death.
    She could handle being under suspicion. She was innocent and she believed in the integrity of the law. Still, there was one thing that bothered her. No one other than Faye and Joe and Sheriff Mike McKenzie, back home in Florida, knew that Joe had once killed a man with a stone implement, but if she ever breathed a word of that truth to anyone, Joe would be in serious trouble now.
    Sweet Jesus. Joe probably had his pockets full, right this minute, of deadly sharpened rocks that he’d made himself. Flintknapping was simply what he did, and he carried his treasures with him everywhere. If he were searched, then Joe would be headed for questions and accusations and maybe even jail. If he escaped arrest tonight, but Sheriff Rutland learned later about his special skills, he would again be in jeopardy.
    She was Joe’s alibi for this killing, just as he was hers. If she were sheriff, she wouldn’t believe either of them, not for a minute. Faye knew she could take care of herself. If it came down to it, she could hire a lawyer who would help her say the right things to law enforcement and in court. Joe, on the other hand, didn’t know how to tell anything but the truth. A crafty prosecutor could trick him into hanging himself.
    Faye would be damned before she’d let that happen.

Chapter Seven
    Sheriff Rutland marshaled her resources with aplomb. Neshoba County couldn’t have much more than a dozen sworn officers but, in Faye’s inexpert opinion, Neely Rutland knew how to make good use of what she had. She had quickly found a well-traveled dirt track through the woods that was just barely wide enough for the SUV carrying the county’s spanking-new mobile crime lab, then she’d told an investigator to note the track’s presence in the site sketch. Perhaps Calhoun had used it to bring in a tractor to cultivate the field of contraband where he was found dead.
    Armed with powerful lights, Neely had searched for footprints herself along the track before allowing the mobile lab’s tires to obliterate any evidence. No prints were found, but Joe wasn’t surprised.
    “Mr. Calhoun wouldn’t have wanted people to see him walking out to his own private field of pot. That wide-open trail is almost as big as a road. I bet he only used it when he had to move something big, and I bet he didn’t do that any more than he had to.”
    Joe’s theory sounded good to Faye, but it led naturally to a disappointing situation. The rest of the wooded area was heavily carpeted with leaves and pine straw. Maybe, if Neely and her staff were damn good, they could find where the killer had walked, but they’d have to be damn lucky to find a spot of bare ground big enough to retain any prints. Then, they’d have to distinguish those prints from the ones Faye and Joe and the deputies had left on their way to discovering the murder site. Not to mention the ones Calhoun left while he was hunting Faye and Joe. Plus the ones he’d made on his last trip out to the marijuana field where he’d died.
    Faye and Joe sat together in matching lawn chairs that had been thoughtfully provided by the Neshoba County Sheriff’s Department. There had been a nervous heartbeat’s worth of hesitation on Neely’s face while she decided what to do with the two of them. They were witnesses, and she might need them. They were also potential sources of contamination that she didn’t dare allow near her crime scene. And her crime scene had no obvious boundaries. It could theoretically extend all the way to town and beyond, getting bigger every second that the killer was able to flee.
    Even worse, the moonless night was surely obscuring critical clues. Neely was working against time. While she waited for the sun to rise, blood was soaking into the soil and drying. Footprints were being