Killing Time Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  Epilogue

  Other Books by Linda Howard

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Peke County Courthouse, Kentucky

  January 1, 1985

  There was a small turnout, about fifty people, to watch the time capsule being buried next to the flagpole in front of the county courthouse. The first day of the new year was cold and windy, and the leaden sky kept spitting tiny snowflakes down at them. A full half of the crowd was composed of people who, through office, ambition, or twisted arms, had to be there: the mayor and councilmen, the probate judge, four lawyers, the county commissioners, a few of the local businessmen, the sheriff, the chief of police, the high school principal, and the football coach.

  Some women were also present: Mrs. Edie Proctor, the school superintendent, and the wives of the politicians and lawyers. A reporter from the local paper was there, taking both notes and photographs because the paper was a small one and couldn’t afford to have a professional photographer on staff.

  Kelvin Davis, the owner of the hardware store, stood with his fifteen-year-old son. They were there mainly because the courthouse was directly across the street from where he and his son lived over the hardware store, the New Year’s bowl games hadn’t started yet, and they had nothing else to do. The boy, Knox, tall and thin, hunched his shoulders against the wind and studied the faces of everyone present. He was oddly watchful and sometimes made the adults around him feel uncomfortable, but he didn’t get into any trouble, helped Kelvin in the store after school, kept his grades up, and was generally well liked by his peers. All in all, Kelvin thought he was lucky in his son.

  They’d moved to Pekesville from Lexington nine years before. Kelvin was a widower and meant to stay that way. He’d loved his wife, sure, but marriage was hard work and he didn’t think he wanted to go through that again. He went out with different women now and then, though not so regularly any of them got ideas. He figured he’d get Knox through high school and college, then maybe he’d rethink his position on marriage, but for right now he’d concentrate on raising his son.

  “Thirteen,” Knox said suddenly, keeping his voice low. A frown drew his dark brows together.

  “Thirteen what?”

  “They put thirteen items in the capsule, but the paper said there would be twelve. I wonder what the other one was.”

  “You sure it was thirteen?”

  “I counted.”

  Of course Knox had counted. Kelvin mentally sighed; he hadn’t really doubted the number of items. Knox seemed to notice and double-check everything. If the newspaper said twelve items would be placed in the time capsule, then Knox would count to make certain the paper was right—or, in this case, wrong.

  “I wonder what the thirteenth one was,” Knox said again, still frowning as he stared at the time capsule. The mayor was placing the capsule—actually, it was a metal box, carefully wrapped in waterproof plastic—in the hole that had been dug the day before.

  The mayor said a few words, the crowd around him laughed, and the football coach began shoveling dirt on the box. In just a minute the hole had been filled and the coach was stamping the dirt level with the surrounding ground. There was dirt left over, of course, but the coach didn’t mound it up. The mayor and one of the city councilmen then took a small granite slab that had been engraved with the day’s date and the date a century from then, when the time capsule was supposed to be opened, and dropped it with a thud on the fresh dirt. They had probably planned to place the granite slab just so, with the proper gravity for the reporter to record with his flash camera, but the weight of the slab evidently took them by surprise and they dropped it. The slab landed a little off to the side. The coach got down on his knees on the freezing ground and used both hands to shove the slab into its proper place.

  The newspaper reporter took photographs to record the event for posterity.

  Shivering, Knox shifted his weight restlessly back and forth. “I’m going to ask,” he said suddenly, and left Kelvin’s side to stalk the reporter through the tangle of people as they began dispersing.

  Sighing, Kelvin followed. Sometimes he thought Knox was more bulldog than boy, because he found it impossible to just let something go.

  “What do you mean?” Kelvin heard the reporter, Max Browning, say as he looked at Knox with a distracted frown.

  “The time capsule,” Knox explained. “The newspaper said there are twelve items but there were thirteen put in it. I counted. I wanted to know what the thirteenth thing was.”

  “There were just twelve. Just like the paper said.”

  “I counted,” Knox repeated. He didn’t get surly, but he stood his ground.

  Max glanced at Kelvin. “Hey,” he said in greeting, then shrugged at Knox. “Sorry, I can’t help you. I didn’t see anything different.”

  Knox’s head turned and he locked his attention like a homing missile on the departing mayor’s back. If Max couldn’t help him, he’d go to the source.

  Kelvin caught the back of Knox’s jacket as the kid started in pursuit. “Don’t go dogging the mayor,” he said in a mild tone. “It isn’t that important.”

  “I just want to know.”

  “So ask the coach when school starts back next Monday.”

  “That’s six days!” Knox looked horrified at having to wait that long to find out something he could find out today.

  “The time capsule isn’t going anywhere.” Kelvin checked his watch. “The ball game’s about to start; let’s go on in.” Ohio State was playing Southern Cal, and Kelvin was really rooting for the Buckeyes because his youngest sister’s husband had played for Southern Cal about ten years ago and Kelvin hated the son of a bitch, so he always rooted for whomever the Trojans were playing.

  Knox looked around, scowling as he realized the mayor was already out of sight and the coach was driving away. Mrs. Proctor, the superintendent, was talking to a tall man Knox didn’t recognize, and he didn’t want to approach Mrs. Proctor anyway because she looked sour and fake, with too much makeup caked in her frown lines, and he thought she probably smelled as sour as she looked.

  Disgruntled, he followed his dad back to the hardware store.

  He never got to ask the football coach what else had been in the time capsule, because the next morning the coach, Howard Easley, was found hanging from a tree in his backyard. There was no note, but the cops figured suicide because the coach had gotten divorced the year before and had been trying without success to convince his ex-wife to give him another chance. He’d been hanging there long enough that he’d gone completely cold, and snow had collected on his head and shoulders.

  The coach’s suicide knocked all thoughts of the time capsule out of Knox’s head. When he heard the detail about snow on the coach’s head, he took off for the library to look up rigor mortis and how long it took a body to cool that much. There were a lot of variables, including if there’d been a wind that night that would have caused the body to cool faster, but if he figured right, the coach had been hanging there at least since midnight.

  Fascinated, he kept digging,