The Bones of the Old Case

Mara stared at it. “That’s my dad.” “Not necessarily,” Jessa said, and then flipped farther down into the community notices and election ads. There, pasted into a margin, was an old photo clipped and re-glued so badly the edges were visible. Ben Quinn stood in the picture, much younger, beside Ruth Bell and a man whose face had been half-scraped away by time or ink. The remaining letters on the badge still showed: S. VENN Silas Venn. “Not a town guy,” Tobin said, frowning. “They erased him on purpose.” Nia stopped the reader on another page. It was a donation list from the radio station fundraiser in the fall of 1998. One large anonymous payment came from a company called Northline Systems. Nia frowned.