CASE #1 – ANNA’S COLD CASES
November in Jeffries means corn stubble, gray skies, and the crack of shotguns across the fields when quail season opens. In 1938, a covey of quail on the supper table wasn’t sport for most families. It was meat. This case lives at the edge of a cornfield, where the law and an empty stomach met.
The Setup
Ward Hollis, 41, is found dead in a cornfield on the Eberly farm on the afternoon of Thursday, November 10, 1938. Ward was a deputy game warden for the county and an Army veteran of the Argonne. He had gone out that morning to hunt quail with his oldest friend, Ben Saylor.
Ben walked into town white as paper and told the sheriff what had happened. A covey flushed between them. Ben swung on the birds and fired both barrels. When he lowered his gun, Ward was down in the stubble. The county doctor ruled it a hunting accident, the kind that happens every fall somewhere in Indiana. Nobody blames Ben out loud. Ben blames himself. He hasn’t eaten since.
Ward is buried on Armistice Day. Anna goes out to the Eberly farm the next morning with the sheriff, who wants to close his report, and notices four things.
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