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investigating a crime, Jerome, and you’d better stay out of my way while I do it. I don’t give a good goddamn if you’ve got yourself a still or two hidden in these woods. They aren’t my concern. That boy is my concern, and I’ll do whatever I have to and go wherever I damn well please to figure out who treated him that way. Now if you keep running your mouth, I just might make those stills my problem and yours on top of it. And I swear to God if you start spreading that Mexicans-killed-him shit in town, I will personally notify the rangers in Austin to come up here and sift through every foot of every acre until they find a reason to be unhappy with you. So move your hairy ass back about ten steps and put a clamp on that pie hole.”
    Blevins’s face burned a beet red, and his mouth hung open. Tom saw the man’s grip tighten on the barrel of his shotgun, but the sheriff wasn’t worried. He took care of this city, and he didn’t think it likely one of its citizens would draw down on him.
    “You should be moving back now, Jerome,” Tom said to the rigid man.
    “Sheriff Rabbit,” Don called.
    “In a minute,” Tom replied. “I said, step on back now, Jerome.”
    “Sheriff Rabbit,” Don insisted. “You’re going to want to see this. There’s something in his mouth.”
    Tom walked back to where his men knelt and crouched down himself. Rex already had his fingers in place at the boy’s jaw. Gently, the deputy separated the teeth to reveal a small, crimson lacquered box resting on the tongue.
    “Looks like a snuff box,” Don said, shaking his head and looking more than a little green. “Ain’t nothing right about this.”
    “How do we get that out without messing up fingerprints?” Rex asked.
    “You think we’re going to be able to get prints off of that?” This from Don.
    “Well, it’s about the only thing we got to dust, isn’t it?”
    “He’s right, Don,” Tom said. “Get me the tweezers and give me your handkerchief.”
    It took a few tries, but Tom managed to pinch an edge of the lid and remove it from the boy’s mouth. The crimson box, hardly larger than a matchbox, had been painted with the portrait of a fat man with bushy sideburns and a waxed mustache. Box in hand, Tom sent Blevins and his son back to the Packard to fetch the canvas bag he kept in the trunk; they would need it to haul the boy’s body back to the car.
    While they waited, Rex snapped photographs of Harold Ashton and the area surrounding him, and Don dusted the lacquered surfaces but the powder stuck in a uniform film over the whole thing, revealing no telling marks. Tom took the container from his deputy and turned it over a few times. The lid popped off with a gentle flick of his thumb. A folded scrap of paper lay inside, and Tom used the tweezers to lift it free. Grasping the corner tightly with the tweezers, he shook the page until it opened and managed to see someone had left a note. Only a few lines written on a scrap no larger than a piece of cigarette paper. Tom couldn’t read the scrawl – not because of the size or clarity of the penmanship, which appeared precise and legible, but because the note had been written in German.
     

Three: The German
     
    June 25th, 1944 – Translated from the German
    They found a dead boy today. His name was Harold.
    In the mercantile, after a day at home, I hear Weigle the butcher talking with Errol Ormand, the owner of the store. Weigle is an odd-looking man with a bush of white hair around a pink crown of scalp and eyes so tiny they appear no larger than a baby’s, stunted and unchanged since birth. Weigle’s accent is still thick, though he’s lived in Barnard for more than twenty years. Ormand stands much taller than Weigle, but he is less imposing. The owner of the mercantile has a soft countenance, with a slender nose and a feminine mouth.
    The two men ramble on as old men do, spouting suppositions about culprits both familiar and exotic. Weigle blames gypsies,