“Yes, sir,” Gordon said unenthusiastically.  He hung up the phone.  “Not right to leave two men, even men I hardly knew except as ‘waved out the window’, their bodies unattended.”

“I’ll leave two deputies here,” Winston said, “order them not to go inside or let anyone else in. Then we can be on our way.”

The two men slowly exited the tower.  Winston looked up at the southern sky, stopped, and stared.

“Mister Gordon,” Winston asked, “do you see that light, well up in the sky.  Is it an airplane?”

Gordon stopped to look.  “Not moving, so not an airplane.  It isn’t.  And not a buzzard,  Not Venus.  I’ve seen her at mid-day.  It’s way too bright, and the wrong color.  It’s also not finding the track outage for us.  Let’s get a move on.”

“I need to do one more detective thing, walk around the building, check the windows.  I’ll do it right quick,” Winston announced.

“Do your job, and then I’ll do mine,” Gordon said. 

Winston walked the circuit of the building.  The whitewash was new.  Window screens were each latched.   Screens were solid.  He looked carefully for a hole in the screen near each hook and eye latch.  None were found.   The back door was solidly locked in place.  Finally he reached the south side of the building. 

“Dear me,” he managed.  “Mister Gordon, sir, be so kind as to come here and see something. Was the paint job like this before?”

Gordon casually walked around the building. Starting close to eye level, the whitewash had been replaced with black char. It went up all the way to the roof.

“For sure, no,” Gordon said.  “Not something I’d’ve missed, either, since coming north I look for the tower and that tells me where to look for one of those signal lights. On a bright day, it’s way easier to spot the tower than the light.”

“I can ask whoever took a train through here recently if they noticed that black area,” Winston said.

“That would be Scotty McPherson, came here in the morning on the 1312, will be up and about by when we get back.  Bringing a train through at night, until you got right close it would’ve looked like the top half of the building wasn’t there.  Seeing black at night, just with the train headlight, and any distance? Even worse than the all-black cow on the tracks a couple years ago. Lucky. It saw the train coming and moved.”