Hard Row Part 14

A uniformed policewoman hurried in after her, calling, "Ma'am? Ma'am?"

"Please!" she cried as the bailiff moved out to intercept her. "He's going to kill me and the baby, too! You got to stop him! You got to! Please?"

Between us, we got her calmed down enough to speak coherently and give me the details I needed to issue an immediate domestic violence protection order. Someone from the local safe house was in the courtroom next door and she volunteered to take the woman and her baby to the shelter.

As things returned to normal, I finished the last of the first appearances and sent them snuffling back to jail to await trial or try to make bail. While the ADA got ready to pull the first shuck on today's criminal trials, I asked my clerk to check on when I'd signed the summary judgment for the Harris divorce.

At the break, I phoned Dwight, who was out at the old Buckley place by then and gave him the date-Monday, February 20. "Four full days before those legs were found," I said.

"So if he died before then, maybe the wife decided she'd rather inherit everything instead of having to divide it with his heirs?"

"Only if she withdraws her request for the ED," I reminded him.

"Who are they, by the way?"

"I haven't a clue," I said, resisting the urge to go into all the possible legalities that could complicate his simplistic summation. "Reid might know. Am I still going to see you in a couple of hours?"

"I'll be there," he promised.

I adjourned at 5:30, then got held up to sign some orders, so that I went downstairs prepared to apologize for being a little late. I needn't have worried.

Melanie Ashworth, the department's recently hired spokesperson, was holding forth about something to reporters in the main lobby, so I crossed out of camera range and asked the dispatcher on duty what was up.

"They just identified all those body parts," he whispered. "It's Buck Harris."

I walked on down the hall. Dwight was in Bo's office with a couple of deputies, and they seemed to be discussing something serious. He held up a with-you-in-a-minute finger and I signaled that I'd wait for him in his office. It did not look good for the home team. Even though Cal and I both needed for me to follow through on this, I should have known better than to try to set up an evening with Dwight when he was in the middle of a sensational murder investigation.

Fortunately, I had brought along some reading material, although it didn't make me happy to read that a colleague had been reversed on an earlier ruling. She had ordered the divorced father of minor children to turn in all his guns until the children were grown. This was after he himself testified that yes, he did keep a loaded handgun on the dash of his truck and loaded long guns in the house and no, he didn't plan to lock them up in a gun cabinet or have them fitted with trigger locks because his kids knew better than to mess with them.

The father had appealed and the higher court had sided with the dad. I just hoped my friend would never have to send those judges the obituary of one of those kids with an "I told you so" scribbled across it.

I had rendered a similar judgment almost a month ago, but so far that father hadn't appealed. With a little luck, he might never hear that there were higher courts that would let him put his preschoolers in harm's way. I certainly wasn't going to tell him.

Dwight was still tied up when I finished reading the official stuff, so I pulled out Blood Done Sign My Name, my book club's selection for March.

I know, I know. My club is always behind the curve, but hey, sometimes it's helpful to let the first waves of enthusiasm wash out what's trendy and leave what's solid. We've spared ourselves a lot of best sellers that weren't worth the trees it took to print them. With this book, the first sentence grabbed me by the throat and was so compelling that I was deep into it by the time Dwight finally got free "Sorry about supper, shug," he said when he joined me. To my surprise, it was five past seven. "I guess we'll have to get something at the game."

I slid my book into the tote bag that held my purse and papers. "You're not going to blow me off?"

"Nope. You're right. We've got good people. Let 'em run with the ball."

He picked up his jacket, held my coat for me, and switched off the light behind us.

"Enjoy the game," Bo called as we pa.s.sed his office.

Happily, the lobby was now bare of reporters.

"They were all over the Harris story when I got here. Y'all hired Melanie Ashworth just in time, didn't you?" I said, holding out my hand for his keys. Late as it was, we didn't have time to meander in to Raleigh with him behind the wheel.

He handed them over without dissenting argument and said tiredly, "You don't know the half of it. It's been one h.e.l.lacious day. Remember that second right hand we found?"

"The Alzheimer's patient who drowned in Apple Creek?"

Dwight nodded. "The autopsy report just came in. The body's definitely Fred Mitchiner, but it turns out that an animal didn't just pull the hand loose. Somebody cut it off."

"What?"

"Yeah. That hand had been in the water so long that the connective tissues were pretty much gone, but there was a ligament that must have still been intact because it was only recently cut off. Not when he first died."

"Someone killed him?"

"Hard to say. The ME doesn't think so. There's no evidence of trauma to the body, but he'd been in the water so long that there's no way to know if he drowned by accident or if someone held him under."

I gave Dwight my tote bag to stash behind the seat and unlocked the truck. Although we were in danger of missing the opening face-off, we would also miss the rush hour traffic.

"Another cute thing," Dwight said as we pulled out of the parking lot behind the courthouse. "A lot of Alzheimer's patients will try to get away, but the nursing home has said all along that Mitchiner wasn't one to wander off. For some reason the place reminded him of spending the summers at his grandparents' house with a bunch of cousins, so he was pretty content there."

"So content that they didn't put an electronic bracelet on him?"

"Exactly. Another reason that the family's claiming negligence. You do know that the town's speed limit is thirty-five, don't you?"

I braked for a red light and adjusted his mirrors while I waited for the green. "When's the last time a Dobbs police officer stopped a sheriff's deputy for speeding?"

"That's because we don't speed unless we've got a blue light flashing."

"Hmmm," I said, and reached as if to turn his on.

He snorted and batted my hand away. "You try that and I'll write you up myself."

"Any theories as to how and why he wound up in the creek? Who profits?"

"n.o.body. That's the h.e.l.l of it. He was there on Medicaid. No property. No bank account. His nearest relatives are the daughter who's suing and a sixteen-year-old grandson and everybody says they were both devoted to the old man. One or the other was there almost every day for the last two years, ever since she had to put him there because they couldn't handle him at home anymore what with her working and the kid in school. Wasn't like the Parsons woman."

"That the one down in Makely?"

"Yeah. She had children and grandchildren, too, but when she went missing, none of them noticed till the nursing home told them. They say n.o.body from the family had come to visit her in nearly a year."

"Didn't stop them from trying to get damages for mental anguish, though, did it?" I said, recalling some of the details.

He laughed and relaxed a little as I merged onto the interstate where it's legal to go seventy and troopers usually turn a blind eye to seventy-five.

"What about Buck Harris's place?" I asked. "Anything turn up there?"

"Oh yes," he said, his jaw tightening. "He was butchered in one of the sheds back of the house."

Without going into too many of the grisly details, he hit the high spots of what they had found-a locked chain, the fact that Harris had been naked and probably conscious when the first axe blow fell, how the killer must have used the trunk of Harris's car to strew the body parts along Ward Dairy Road.

I mulled over the chronology and tried not to visualize what he had described. "n.o.body saw him after that Sunday, the divorce was final on Monday, his legs weren't found till Friday and the ME's setting the time of death as when?"

"Originally between Sat.u.r.day and Thursday, but that's been narrowed down to Sunday as the earliest possible day."

"Because Flame talked to him then?"

"And because his farm manager saw him on Sunday around noon. If the body was in that unheated shed from the time of death till the night they were found, then Sunday's more likely. If somebody held him prisoner for a few days first though, it could be as late as Thursday. Denning's taking extra pains with the insect evidence in the blood."

Insect evidence?

Read maggots.

"Is that going to be much use? Cold as it was all that week, would there have been blowflies?"

"Remember the foxes?"

I smiled and lifted his hand to my lips. Of course I remembered.

It had been a chilly Sunday morning back in early January. The temperature could not have been much over freezing, but the sun was shining and when he asked if I'd like to take a walk, I had immediately reached for a scarf and jacket. Hand in hand, we had rambled down along the far side of the pond, going nowhere and in no hurry to get there, enjoying the morning and sharing a contentment that had needed few words. On the right side of the rutted lane lay the lake-size expanse of dark water; on the left, a tangle of bushes, trash trees, and vines edged a field that had lain fallow since early summer. Some farmers hate to see messy underbrush and are out with weed killers at the first hint of unwanted woody plants, but we've always left wide swaths for the birds and small mammals that share the farm with us.

That morning, sparrows and thrashers fluttered in and out of the hedgerow ahead of us as we approached and our footsteps flushed huge gra.s.shoppers that had emerged from their winter hiding to bask in the warm sun. At a break in the bushes, we paused to look out over the field and saw movement in the dried weeds less than fifty feet away. A warning squeeze of his hand made me keep still. At first I couldn't make out if they were dogs or rabbits or- "Foxes!" Dwight said in a half-whisper.

A pair of little gray foxes were jumping and pouncing. With the wind blowing in our direction, they had not caught our scent and seemed not to have heard our low voices.

"What are they after?" I asked, standing on tiptoes to see. "Field mice?"

At that instant, a big gra.s.shopper flew off from a tuft of broomstraw and one of the foxes leaped to catch it in mid-flight.

Entranced, we stood motionless and watched them hunt and catch more of the hapless insects until they spooked a cottontail that sprang straight up in the air and lit off toward the woods with both foxes close behind.

So no, not all insects died in winter.

"There are always blowflies in barns and sheds," Dwight reminded me. "They may hunker down when the mercury drops, but anything above thirty-five and they're right back out, especially if there's blood around."

We rode in silence for a few minutes. I was carefully keeping under the speed limit. With all he'd had to cope with today, I didn't need to add any more stress. So what if we missed the opening face-off?

"If it turns out Harris died on Sunday, what's this going to do to your ED case?" he asked.

"Not my problem. If it can be proved that he died before I signed the divorce judgment, then that judgment's vacated. If he died afterwards, then it proceeds unless Mrs. Harris dismisses her claim."

"And if n.o.body can agree on a time of death?"

"Then Reid and Pete get to argue it out. They or the beneficiaries under Harris's will. With a little bit of luck, some other judge will get to decide on time of death." I thought about Flame Smith, who had clearly planned on becoming the second Mrs. Harris. "I wonder if he made a will after the separation? Want me to ask Reid?"

"Better let me," Dwight said. "Could be the motive for his death."

"I rather doubt if Flame Smith swung that axe," I said.

"You think? I long ago quit saying what a woman will or won't do."

After such a harrowing day, I was glad to see Dwight get caught up in the hockey game. We ordered hamburgers and beers that were delivered to our seats and found we had only missed the first few scoreless minutes. Soon we were roaring and shouting with the rest of the fans as the lead seesawed back and forth. Each time one of our players was sent to the penalty box, the clock ticked off the seconds with a maddening slowness that was just the opposite of the way time whizzed by if it was our chance for a power play. Near the end, the Canes pulled ahead 3 to 2 and when Brind'Amour iced the cake with a slap shot that zoomed past their goalie, Dwight swept me up and spun me around in an exuberant bear hug.

Canes 4 to 2.

Yes!

CHAPTER 20.

Those farmers who are generally dissatisfied with their condition and imagine that they may be greatly benefitted by a change of place, will find, in the majority of cases, that the fault is more in themselves than in their surroundings.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 DWIGHT BRYANT.

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 7.

The clouds that had intermittently obscured the moon on the drive home last night had thickened in the early morning hours and now a heavy rain beat against the cab of the truck as Dwight and Deborah waited with Cal at the end of their long driveway for his schoolbus to arrive.

Normally, thought Dwight, the three of them would be laughing and chattering about last night's game, but his attempt to get Cal to speak of it earlier went nowhere. "The Canes won, you know."

"I didn't watch it," Cal had said, concentrating on his cereal.

Yes, they had watched the beginning of the game, he said, but then it was his bedtime. Yes, it was good the Canes had won. Yes, he'd had a good time with Jessie and Emma. When pushed for details, he allowed as how they had taken him over to Jessie's house for a couple of hours to ride horses across the farm. These boots that he was wearing today? "Jess said I could have them since they don't fit anybody else right now."

"That was nice of her," Dwight said heartily.

Cal shrugged. "I have to give them back when they get too tight, so that maybe Bert can wear them."

He wasn't openly sulking, and he wasn't rude. He did and said nothing that Dwight could use as a launching pad for a lecture on att.i.tude.

Sitting between them while the rain streamed down and fogged the truck windows, Deborah was pleasant and matter-of-fact. Had he not known her so intimately, he could almost swear that it was a perfectly ordinary morning. He did know her though, and he sensed her conscious determination to keep the situation from becoming confrontational.

He also sensed the relief that radiated from both of his pa.s.sengers when they spotted the big yellow bus lumbering down the road. Cal immediately pulled on the door handle.

Although his hooded jacket was water-repellent, Dwight said, "Wait till she stops or you'll get soaked," but his son was out the truck so quickly that he had to wait in the downpour for a moment before the driver could get the door open.

Dwight sighed as the bus pulled off and he gave a rueful smile to Deborah, who had not moved away even though the other third of the truck's bench seat was now empty. "Sorry about that."

She laid a hand on his thigh and smiled back. A genuine smile this time. "Don't be. If he wasn't mad because I made him miss the game, I'd be worried. I like it that he's feeling secure enough to show a little temper."

"You're still not going to tell me what it was all about?"

"One of these years, maybe. Not now though."

"All the same," he said as he pulled onto the road and headed the truck toward Dobbs, "I think he and I are due to have a little talk this afternoon."