Hard Row Part 2

Both reporters promised they would run the department's phone numbers with their stories.

Eventually, the emergency medical techs arrived, drew on latex gloves, bagged the legs separately, then left for Chapel Hill. The yellow tape was taken down and the reporters and patrol cars dispersed, along with their witness, who pedaled off into the night.

"We probably won't hear much from the ME till we find the rest of him," Mayleen Richards said.

"Well-nourished white male," Denning agreed. "They'll give us his blood type, but what good's that without a face or fingerprints?"

"We're bound to hear something soon," Dwight said. He grinned at Richards. "Men with clean toenails usually have a woman around. Sooner or later, she'll start wondering where he is."

As he turned toward his truck, he paused beside the dimly lit church sign. Beneath the church name, the pastor's name, and the hours of service was a quotation from Matthew that entreated mercy and brotherhood and reminded pa.s.sersby that "With what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again."

Not for the last time, he was to wonder what measure their victim had meted to provoke such violence against him.

Back at the house, Dwight let Bandit out of his crate, put a couple of logs on the fire, then switched on the television. End of the second period and the Canes were behind 3 to 2. He went back to the kitchen and rummaged around in the refrigerator until he found a bowl of chili that one of Deborah's sisters-in-law had brought by the day before. While it heated in the microwave, he drew himself a gla.s.s of homemade lager from the refrigerated tap, a wedding present from his father-in-law.

Every time he used the tap or held his gla.s.s up to the light to admire the color and clarity he had achieved with his home brew, he thought again of the potent crystal clear liquid Kezzie Knott used to produce.

He hoped that "used to produce" was an accurate a.s.sessment. Deborah would not be happy with either one of them if he had to arrest her daddy for the illegal production of untaxed moonshine, but with that old reprobate, anything was possible.

The microwave dinged and he carried his supper into the living room to watch the game. Bandit jumped up on the leather couch beside him and curled in along his thigh as if prepared to cheer the Canes on to victory. Going into the third period, they tied it 3-all. Cal was probably swinging from the rafters about now, Dwight thought. He hoped Deborah was not too bored.

He finished eating, then stretched out on the couch and stuffed a pillow behind his head. Tie games can be exciting, but it had been a long day. The chili was hearty, the beer relaxing, the room comfortably warm. The fire gently crackled and popped as flames danced up from the oak logs.

The next thing he knew, the kitchen door banged open and Cal erupted through the door from the garage, his brown eyes shining, his arms full of Hurricanes paraphernalia. Deborah followed, a Canes' cap on her light brown hair.

"It was awesome, Dad! We won! Tie game, overtime, and a shootout! Did you watch it?"

They both glanced at the television screen just in time for Dwight to see himself on the late newscast. He hit the mute b.u.t.ton.

Talking more excitedly than Dwight had seen him since he came to live with them, Cal unloaded a souvenir book, a flag for the car window, a couple of Canes Go Cups, and a long-sleeved red T-shirt with a number 6 on it onto the coffee table.

"Who's number six?" Dwight asked.

"Bret Hedican. He signed it for me. Well, not for me. It's Deborah's. And I got Rod Brind'Amour to sign my stick, too. Look!"

"New cap?"

"Yeah, and she got you one, too."

He laughed. "So I see."

Deborah's face was flushed and her blue eyes sparkled with an excitement that matched Cal's.

"That was absolutely amazing, Dwight! It's so different seeing a live game. Did you know that Hedican's married to Kristi Yamaguchi?"

"I knew it. I'm surprised that you do."

"He scored the tying goal at the beginning of the third period," she told him.

"Yeah, Dad," Cal chimed in. "He was awesome. Just drove down the ice and slapped it in."

"So we had a tie game-"

"-then the tie-breaker-"

"-but no one scored so we had to have a shootout."

"Ward blocked their shot, then Williams put it in!"

"Yes!" Deborah exclaimed and they high-fived.

Dwight shook his head at the pair of them. "Did I just lose my seat here?"

"Deborah says that next year we're getting three seats," Cal told him. "For the whole season."

CHAPTER 4.

There are few things that have so important a bearing upon the success or failure of the farmer's business as the choice of crops to be produced.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 DEBORAH KNOTT.

FRIDAY NIGHT, FEBRUARY 24.

Cal called to Bandit and went to bed soon after we got home, totally worn out and nearly hoa.r.s.e from cheering the Canes to victory, but it took me till almost midnight to come back down from the high of my first live hockey game, and it wasn't till Dwight and I were in bed ourselves that I remembered the reason I had gone instead of him.

Lying beside him with my head on his chest in the soft darkness of our bedroom, I asked about the legs that had been found in front of Bethel Baptist and he described the scene, right down to the bare feet.

"None of your friends are missing a man, are they?" he asked.

"Not like that," I said. "Although K.C. was grumbling about Terry being gone all week to teach some training seminar up in Chicago."

Terry Wilson's an SBI agent, a man who could make me laugh so hard that I seriously considered hooking up with him a few years ago. He was between wives at the time, still working undercover. While I was almost willing to take second place to his son, no way was I going to take third behind the job. These days, though, he's a field supervisor working from a desk and K.C.'s come in off the streets, too. She used to work undercover narcotics, one of the most successful agents the State Bureau of Investigation ever had. She was absolutely fearless and so blonde and beautiful that dealers fell all over themselves to give her drugs. Somewhat to my surprise, they had gotten together late last summer and he had moved into her lake house.

"She keeps swearing it's just for laughs," I told Dwight, "but this may be fourth time lucky for Terry."

"That would be nice," said Dwight, who likes Terry as much as I do.

I smiled in the darkness. "Now that you're an old married man, you want everybody else to settle down?"

"Beats sleeping single in a double bed," he said as his arms tightened around me.

Next morning, after breakfast, our kitchen filled up with short people. During the week, Cal goes home on the schoolbus with Mary Pat, the young orphaned ward of Dwight's sister-in-law Kate, who keeps him for the hour or so till Dwight or I get home. In return, we usually take Mary Pat and Kate's four-year-old son Jake for a few hours on Sat.u.r.day so that Kate can have some time alone with Rob and their new baby boy.

It was raining that morning, a cold chill rain that threatened to turn to sleet, so I kept them indoors and let them help me make cookies. I'm no gourmet chef, my biscuits aren't as tender and flaky as some, and my piecrusts come out so soggy and tough that I long ago gave up and now buy the frozen ones, but I'll put my chocolate chip cookies up against anybody's. (The secret is to add a little extra sweet b.u.t.ter and then take them out of the oven before the center's fully set. Black walnuts don't hurt either, but pecans will do in a pinch.) We had a great a.s.sembly line going. I did the mixing and got them in and out of the oven, Mary Pat and Cal spooned little blobs of dough onto the foil-lined cookie sheets, while Jake stood on a stool and used a spatula to carefully transfer the baked cookies from the foil to the wire cooling racks. Of course, they nibbled on the raw dough as they worked and their sticky little fingers went from mouth to bowl whenever they thought I wasn't looking.

I pretended not to notice. Didn't bother me. If there were any germs those three hadn't already shared, the heat of the oven would probably take care of them and I knew the eggs were safe.

Once Daddy's housekeeper Maidie heard about the dangers of raw eggs, she kept threatening to stop baking altogether until Daddy and her husband Cletus rebuilt the old chicken house and started raising Rhode Island Reds again. The flock was now big enough to keep the whole family in eggs, and when the wind's right, I can hear their rooster crowing in the morning. Every once in a while, another rooster answers and it's a comforting signal that there are still some other farms in the community that haven't yet given way to a developer's checkbook.

Whenever I make cookies, I quadruple the recipe, so it was almost noon before we finished filling two large cake boxes to the brim. I planned to take one box to Seth and Minnie's the next day, I'd send some home with Mary Pat and Jake, and I figured the rest should last us at least a week if Dwight and Cal didn't get into them too heavily.

"Ummm. Something in here smells good enough to eat," said Dwight, who was back from helping Haywood and Robert pull a mired tractor out of a soggy bottom.

"Why was Haywood even down there on a tractor this time of year? It's way too wet."

"He wants to plant an acre of garden peas." Dwight had left his muddy boots and wet jacket in the garage and was in his stocking feet, making hungry noises as he lifted the lid on a pot of vegetable soup. I cut him off a wedge of the hoop cheese I was using to make grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the soup and it disappeared in two bites.

"Garden peas? A whole acre? What's he going to do with that many peas?"

"Well you know how your brothers are trying to come up with ideas for cash crops in case tobacco goes downhill?"

I nodded.

"So Haywood's thinking he might try his hand at a little truck farming. He even said something about raising leeks for the upscale Cary and Clayton crowds."

"Leeks?" I had to laugh. "Haywood's heard of leeks?"

"He's decided they're just fancy onions and he's already taken a dislike to Vidalias. Says they're nothing but onions for people who don't really like onions."

Privately, I agreed with my brother. What's the point of an onion with so little zest that you could peel a dozen without shedding a tear? Give me an onion that stands up for itself.

After so much cookie dough, the children weren't very hungry and asked to be excused to go play in Cal's room. When we were alone, Dwight told me that he'd heard from Chapel Hill. The ME could not give them a specific time. Depending on whether or not those legs were outdoors and exposed to the freezing night temperatures or inside, the hacking had been done as recent as forty-eight hours or as long ago as a full week. The dismemberment had been accomplished with a heavy blade that was consistent with an axe or hatchet. And yes, the legs did indeed come from a well-nourished white male, probably between forty and sixty, a male with blood type O.

"The most common type in the world," he sighed, reaching for the untouched half of Cal's grilled cheese.

"Maybe someone will call in by Monday," I said and slid the rest of my own sandwich onto his plate.

After lunch, Dwight volunteered to take the children to a new multiplex that recently opened about ten miles from us. I grumble about all the changes that growth has brought, but I have to admit that sometimes it's nice not to have to drive thirty miles for a movie. With the house quiet and empty, I finally got to do some personal weekend pampering. I put Bandit in his crate out in the utility room, gave him a new strip of rawhide to chew on, then took a lazy bubblebath, followed by a manicure. And as long as I had clippers and polish out, I decided to paint my toenails as well.

The phone rang when I was about halfway through. Portland Brewer. My best friend since forever and, most recently, my matron of honor.

"Why are you putting me on speaker phone?" she immediately asked. "Who else is with you?"

"No one," I a.s.sured her. "But I'm giving myself a pedicure and I need both hands. What's up?"

"Nothing much. I'm just sitting here nursing the deduction while Avery works on our income tax. You know how a.n.a.l he is about getting it done early."

The deduction, little Carolyn Deborah, is about eighteen hours younger than my marriage. Back in December, my brothers were making book on whether or not Portland would deliver during the ceremony.

"How'd it go this week?" I asked.

After the baby's birth, she'd taken off for two months and this was her first week of easing back into the practice she and Avery shared. He did civil cases and a little tax work; she did whatever else came along, although she was particularly good in juried criminal cases.

"It's okay. I hate leaving the baby, but she doesn't seem to mind one bottle feeding a day as long as I'm here for the others. And let's face it, after working fifty-and sixty-hour weeks, thirty hours is a piece of cake."

She told me about the new nanny ("a jewel"), how her diet was coming if she expected to get into a decent bathing suit by the summer ("I'm an absolute cow and if anybody gives me one more 'got milk?' joke, I'm gonna stomp him"), and whether or not Reid Stephenson, my cousin and former law partner, was having an affair with that new courthouse clerk ("I saw them going into one of the conference rooms at lunch yesterday").

I told her about my newfound hockey enthusiasm ("Did you know Bret Hedican's married to Kristi Yamaguchi?"), how Cal was settling in ("He still acts like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but I think we really connected last night"), and what my docket had looked like yesterday ("Doesn't anybody just talk anymore? Why does it always have to be knives or fists or baseball bats?").

"That reminds me," said Portland. "I have a new client. Karen Braswell. Was her ex one of your cases yesterday? A James Braswell? a.s.sault?"

"a.s.sault?"

"A Mexican took a broken beer bottle to his arm out at that Latino club. El Toro Negro."

"Oh, yes." The details were coming back to me. "Your client's his ex-wife? That's right. He violated a restraining order she took out against him? He's supposed to come up before Luther Parker the first of the week, but I've got him cooling his heels in jail till then."

"Good. She's really scared of him, Deborah. That's why she's retained me to speak for her when his case comes up. I just hope Judge Parker will put the fear of the law in him."

Our talk moved on to other subjects till the baby started fussing. "Lunch sometime this week?" Portland asked before hanging up.

I agreed and put the finishing dab of polish on my toenails. It was a fiery red with just a hint of orange. Later that evening, I wiggled my bare toes at Dwight. "It's called Hot, Hot, Hot," I told him. "What do you think?"

He patted the couch beside him. "Come over here and let me show you."

Cool!

CHAPTER 5.

If farmers wish their sons to be attached to the farm home and farm life they must make that farm home and farm life sufficiently attractive to induce some of their boys to stay.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 "What's wrong with garden peas?" my brother Haywood asked belligerently as he reached for another of my chocolate chip cookies next day. "Everybody I know likes 'em, they don't have no pests and they're easy to grow."

"Which is why they wholesale for less than a dollar a pound in season," Zach said patiently. "And picking them is labor intensive. After we pay for help, what sort of return would we get on our investment?"

"Messicans work cheap," Haywood said, "and they can pick a h.e.l.l of a lot of peas in a hour."

His wife Isabel rolled her eyes at the use of profanity on a Sunday, but it was Daddy who frowned and murmured, "Watch your mouth, boy." Not because it was Sunday but because there were "ladies" present and the older he gets, the more he holds with old-fashioned beliefs about the delicacy of our ladylike ears. (For Daddy, all respectable women, whatever our race or color, are ladies. The only time he huffs and mutters "You women!" is when we try his patience to total exasperation.) Seth and Minnie had called this meeting for those of us who still live out here on the farm. Even though Dwight and I are not directly involved with crops, what's grown here is certainly of interest to us since we're surrounded by the family fields and woodlands. Both of us grew up working in tobacco-hard, physical, dirty work. From picking up dropped leaves at the barn when we were toddlers, to driving the tractors that ferried the leaves from field to barn as preteens, to actually pulling the leaves (Dwight) or racking them (me), we each did our part to help get the family's money crop to market. We never needed lectures at school to know about the tar in tobacco. After working in it for a few hours, we could roll up marble sized b.a.l.l.s of black sticky gum from our hands.

Now the old way of marketing has changed. The farm subsidy program has ended and the money's been used to buy out the farmers who had always raised it. Instead of the old colorful auctions where compet.i.tive bids could net a grower top dollar for a particularly attractive sheet of soft golden leaves, tobacco companies now contract directly with the growers for what's pretty much a take-it-or-leave-it offer that can be galling to independent farmers who are more conservative than cats when it comes to change.

My eleven brothers and I had grown up in tobacco without questioning it. Tobacco fed and clothed us, and those who stayed to farm with Daddy-Seth, Haywood, Andrew, Robert, and Zach-pooled their labor and equipment to grow more poundage every year and buy more land until we now collectively own a few thousand acres in fields, woods, and some soggy wetlands.