ANDREA PAGED SLOWLY through the old case file from the 1972 murder of Tanner Mathis. Crane is getting nowhere, she thought. There’s got to be something; some tie in that we’re just missing. She’d found some notes in the file box she’d pulled the case file out of that were made by a Deputy Ackerman who had been first on the scene. He’d started to make a list in what she presumed had been his notebook of everyone that was present at the Lafferty home that Thanksgiving Day including their ages. She counted 37 people, nearly two dozen of them adults over 18.
She compared the deputy’s list against the statements in the file and realized several people had not been asked for statements. She saw that the majority of those were minors. She skimmed a finger along the note page and stopped at one e
