Ben Finney didn’t believe in locked doors. He was born and raised in Heaven and at the age of sixty- eight had never locked the door to his home, or anything else for that matter. He left the keys in his car. Left his tool shed and barn unlocked, and there wasn’t even a latchkey for his house.
Then, one day, someone entered his house while he was out in the barn tending the spring calves and took one of his long guns out of the gun rack. When Ben returned to the house for dinner, they shot him dead and left the body lying in the doorway.
Ben Finney’s murder remained unsolved; nobody has ever uncovered the killer. Not in the forty years that had passed between his death and the current day. However, there had been a lot of talk about his death and the four people who were suspects in the murder at the time.
Three of the four had met odd deaths over the years. Howard Keith died when his combine dragged him in, four years after someone had murdered Ben Finney. Some folks had claimed that someone pushed him into the machine.
Tom Harris met his end six years after the Keith incident when he stepped into what once was a mud pit and sank. It was determined that the pit was actually quicksand and a scattering of dead leaves had served as a disguise for the deadly earth.
A report indicated that a wild bear’s attack during hunting season caused Albert Ramsey to meet an unusual end. Not everyone in Heaven agreed with the bear story, and rumors went around that a madman living in the woods had hacked Albert to death with a knife.
So when Bryon Hanks disappeared without a trace, there was a sense of justification. Bryon had been the fourth man suspected of being involved in Ben Finney’s murder. But for Chief of Police Derek Landly, his disappearance would have to be investigated.
