Monday and Tuesday were uneventful. Now it was Wednesday. “This game is starting to get monotonous,” Bertie said, with a sigh.
Harry chuckled. “You wanted to be part of it.”
“Is police work always like this?”
“Sometimes… sometimes things move fast, sometimes they crawl.”
They walked up the trail to where Henry had seen the skull and took up their positions again, both hoping that today would be the day. But then, they had hoped that for the past two days, with no success.
A little over half an hour later, three boys about Henry’s age came up the trail. One of them was swinging a plastic bag that appeared to have something inside it. They all stopped at the same place. They were giggling and as one of them stooped by the side of the road, another said, “You know Henry’s soon going to catch on.”
Harry rose from his position, quickly and quietly stepping to the middle of the trail. “How about you tell him instead?” He held out his hand. “I’ll take the bag.”
All three boys spun around and, when they saw Harry, hung their heads. They knew who he was and they knew they’d been caught. The bag was handed over. Harry glanced inside and saw the skull.
“Okay, now tell me what’s going on here.” All three started talking at once. “One at a time, please.” Harry pointed to one of the boys, slightly taller than the other two. “You. What exactly are you doing?”
“We were just playing a prank on Henry, sir. Just having a bit of fun. He’ll soon catch on to it anyway.”
“And we know he collects strange things like this to study.”
“Yeah, he’s smart, Henry is, always got his nose in a book, but he’s okay.”
Harry looked at his watch. “You can tell him that when he gets here… in another minute or two.” He knew Henry had joined Bertie right after school.
Sure enough, exactly one minute and twenty seconds later, Henry and Bertie jogged up the trail together.
“Well, well, well… what have we here?” Bertie looked at them sternly. “Up to mischief again, are you?”
“Just a prank, Miss Bertie,” one of them said.
“Do you know these boys?” Harry asked as Henry stopped in front of them.
Henry pointed to each in turn… “Arnie, Willie and Paul. They’re in some of my classes.”
“They ever give you any trouble?”
“Nah, they just like to joke around a lot,” Henry said. The other three were nodding in agreement.
“We didn’t mean any harm.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” Harry said, “but tell me, where did you get the skull?”
“It’s just an old thing we found off the side of the trail a bit farther on. We knew it would catch Henry’s attention ‘cos he collects them.”
“Hmm, can you show me just where you found it?”
Three heads nodded vigorously. “Yes, sir.” “Sure can.” “No problem.”
After walking about ten minutes, the three boys stopped and Arnie said, “This is it, just a few feet off the trail.”
“Lead the way,” Harry told him.
In the middle of a small dried up patch of mud, there was an old deteriorated cardboard box. Several large bones were still inside. The smaller ones had probably been carried away by animals. Harry pulled a pair of disposable gloves from one pocket and a large garbage bag from the other. He carefully put all the pieces of the box and the bones into the bag. He added the bag with the skull and tied it. “I’ll take this to the station when I get back.”
The four boys walked ahead, chatting and laughing, with Harry and Bertie following behind.
“Do you think it’s what you had in mind?”
“It could be but I’ll let the boys at the station figure it out.”
“So, are you going to tell me?”
“The university was getting a new skeleton for the lab and one of their science teachers was going to take this one. It was boxed up, but when he went to pick it up, it was gone. It was low priority and soon got dropped.”
* * * * * * * * * * * *
