Chapter 21
MelMonday Morning, November 9th
North Zanesville, Ohio
I knew Dana took the Mathis case file up to my upstairs den. When mama called to beg off her shift at the bakery and Dana left to cover for her, I saw my chance and went and took it back and went through it piece by piece.
It wasn’t hard to track down the deputy that had been first on the scene, Alex Ackerman. He’d left the Sheriff’s department but he worked North Zanesville for years. I’d had a couple of run-ins with him when I was a patrol deputy. Figuring on starting at the beginning, I had Holly pack up the carving set and send it off to the crime lab as soon as I got to the station and then I left again, his last known address in hand to set out and call on him.
Now in his mid-sixties and out of police work for a h
