Claws For Concern

“How the hell did we miss this twenty years ago?” Johnson shook his head. “Delaney was out of the house after all. His mama sure put on a good act, though. She swore up and down he was out of it all night, sleeping it off in his room.”

“He might have fooled her into thinking that,” I said. “Maybe Mrs. Delaney really thought he was in his room.”

Johnson shrugged. “Too late to ask her now, but I’m sure the hell going to talk to Delaney the minute he’s able.”

“Now do you understand why we want to look at the autopsy reports?” Jack asked.

Johnson glared at Jack. “Of course I do. Time of death. You want to know if the Barbers were killed during that window of time.”

“Exactly,” I said. “There was maybe a little more than an hour when Delaney could have killed the Barbers. If he had left the house another time, the Coopers’ dog would have alerted them. So the key time is between ten and midnight, minus the time it took him to go back and forth from home to the Barber farm.”

“Wait a minute,” Johnson said. “What time did Delaney get home the first time? I can’t remember what his mama said.”

“According to Mrs. Cooper,” Jack replied, “it was around seven. He was drunk all right, so drunk he couldn’t find his own house key. He was making all kinds of noise, beating on the door and yelling to be let in.”

“He couldn’t’ve been that drunk if he was going out again at ten o’clock, driving a car,” the sheriff said. “I saw him a few times when he was bad drunk. He’d conk out and the trumpets of Jericho couldn’t wake him up.”

That was an interesting point, one I hadn’t considered yet. What if Delaney pretended to be drunker than he was? Could that be an argument for premeditation?

“The autopsies,” Jack said, his rising impatience obvious. “Come on, Elmer Lee, we made a deal.”

“I know that,” the sheriff replied, sounding testy. “I can tell you what you want to know, though, about the time of death.” He paused. “About the times of death, that is.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Weren’t all four of them killed within a short span of time?”

Johnson shook his head. “From what we could tell at the time, it looked like they had been. We thought Barber was shot first, then his wife and the boys. Turned out that was all wrong.”

“So Barber didn’t die first?” Jack asked.

“No, siree, he didn’t,” Johnson replied. “He was the last to die. In fact, he probably didn’t die until over two hours after his wife and the boys were killed.”

Jack and I exchanged startled glances. This wasn’t something either one of us would ever have suspected.

“That’s bizarre,” I said. “What was going on during those two hours? Was Barber out of the house during that time, with the killer waiting for him after he murdered the family?”

Johnson shrugged. “We don’t know. Between that and the shotgun disappearing, we couldn’t figure out what the hell happened in that house.”

“What about the times?” Jack asked. “Did the pathologist establish the relative times of the killings?”

“That I can answer,” Johnson replied. “Mrs. Barber and the boys were killed somewhere between approximately seven and nine o’clock.”

“So that means Barber was killed sometime between nine and eleven?” I asked.

Johnson nodded. “Roughly. The house was cold. Barber’s daughter told us he wouldn’t let them turn on heaters until the outside temperature got down under thirty-five degrees. It was a cold night, probably in the forties, and the house wasn’t insulated worth a damn.”

“So the cool temperatures slowed down the postmortem processes,” Jack said.

“Yeah,” Johnson said. “Now, the interesting thing about what you found out is that Bill Delaney has an alibi for the murders of Miz Barber and the boys.”

“But not for Hiram Barber,” I said. “Wouldn’t you think the same person killed all of them? It stands to reason, doesn’t it?”

“Normally, I’d say so,” Johnson replied. “But Delaney could have killed ol’ Hiram, couldn’t he? The timing fits with what Ronnie Cooper says in his notebook.”

“That’s true,” Jack said. “But don’t you think it’s more likely that Hiram Barber wasn’t home when his wife and the boys were killed? The killer waited for him to come home and then killed him, too.”

“Probably,” the sheriff said. “But then where was Hiram Barber while his family was killed? We talked to everyone we could find near the Barber farm, and nobody remembered seeing him after about five o’clock that evening. Nobody heard the shots, either.”

Jack shrugged. “Just because they didn’t see him doesn’t mean he wasn’t elsewhere at the time.”

“You got me there,” Johnson said.

“Elizabeth Barber reported the deaths the next morning, didn’t she?” I asked. “Around seven?”

“Call came in at seven minutes past seven,” Johnson said.

“I must say you have an incredible memory to pull all these details out of your head,” I said.

“I’ve studied that case on and off for years,” the sheriff said. “I’ve pretty much memorized most of the details. Always hated the fact that we weren’t able to crack it.”