Hard Row Part 25

Her own fingers itched to call Diaz, but she kept both hands on the steering wheel. Beside her, Jack Jamison seemed to be on an adrenaline high, a combination of wrapping up this homicide and the antic.i.p.ation of leaving for Texas next week.

"If I pa.s.s the selection and training process, they'll ship me out immediately, so this could be my last weekend with Cindy and Jay for a year."

"I'm not going to say break a leg," she said tartly.

"How do you mean that?"

"Oh h.e.l.l, Jack. I don't really know. Both ways, I guess. I still think you're crazy to put yourself in harm's way like this, but if it's what you want, then I really do hope you pa.s.s and that it works out for you."

It was after nine before the second team reached the nursery. The woman who came to the door seemed frightened by so many police cars. Dwight recognized her from a murder investigation back in January and the sight of him seemed to rea.s.sure her. In halting English, she told them that her cousin Miguel Diaz and his crew had left for a job nearly two hours ago.

"Ernesto Palmeiro," said Dwight. "Is he here or with your cousin?"

She shook her head. "No here. He leave sabado-Sat.u.r.day. Go Mexico. You ask Miguel."

"Tell me about him," Dwight said. But she immediately lapsed into Spanish and claimed not to understand.

Fortunately, they had brought along a translator.

"She says he was from the village next to theirs back in Mexico, but they did not really know him until his wife gave birth to a badly deformed baby in January. A baby that died. After that, the wife left and Ernesto went crazy. He was arrested and from jail he sent word to her brother and her cousin that they must help him, as compatriots of the same valley. They didn't want to, but felt it was their duty. They gave him work, gave him blankets and let him sleep in the shed. They also helped him repair the damage he had done. Sat.u.r.day, her cousin Miguel gave him his wages and told him to leave. More than that, she says she doesn't know."

She did give them the number for her cousin's cell phone though; and when Dwight called it, Miguel Diaz told them where they were working. The site was a new development off Ward Dairy Road near Bethel Baptist, less than fifteen minutes away.

He was waiting for them at the entrance of the new subdivision, and Dwight tried to take his measure as Diaz got out of his truck to meet them. A clean-shaven man with light brown skin and straight black hair. Without that black Stetson and the workboots, he'd probably stand five-nine or five-ten, just a shade taller than Mayleen Richards. Regular features. Slim hips and a slender build that conveyed strength and confidence. Hard to read his face because he wore mirrored sungla.s.ses this bright sunny morning.

Dwight introduced himself and they shook hands. In lightly accented English, Diaz asked how he might be of service.

"We're looking for Ernesto Palmeiro," Dwight said. "We're told you went to court for him last week and that he works for you now."

"Did work," Diaz said easily. "No more. He left for Mexico on Sat.u.r.day. At least that's where he said he was going. Is there more trouble, Major Bryant?"

"Didn't you guarantee he'd repair the yards he plowed up?"

"They're finished. We put the last yard back with new bushes Friday night. I let him work for me during the day, then work on the damages in the evening, and I kept his pay till it was finished, just like I promised the judge."

He seemed puzzled by the three cars that still flashed their emergency lights. "All this for some flowers and bushes? I can show you, Major. It's all fixed."

"Not flowers and bushes," Dwight said. "You've heard about Buck Harris? Palmeiro's boss? Owner of the farm where he used to live and work, and where he stole that tractor?"

"He was killed, yes?" He shook his head. "A bad business. Very bad."

"Ernesto Palmeiro did it."

Impossible to gauge his reaction behind those reflective gla.s.ses. Diaz did not exclaim or protest, but he did let out the long indrawn breath he had taken.

"You don't seem surprised," Dwight said grimly.

"Did I know he was the butcher? No, Major. But you're right. I think I am not surprised. You heard about his son? His first child? Who died the same hour he was born, thanks be to G.o.d?" He crossed himself.

Dwight nodded. "Why did he blame Harris?"

"It was his farm. Maria was working there. Beyond that I don't know. I didn't want to know. I gave him work and a place to stay. I spoke for him in court and as soon as I had done all that I pledged, I paid him his money and told him to leave. He said he was going home. The honor of my village required me to help him when he asked for it. It did not require me to like him or take him to my bosom."

No, thought Dwight. Just my deputy. And how much did she know? She had flushed bright red when Deborah mentioned Diaz's name.

"How much money did he leave with?"

"Fifteen hundred dollars. I gave him the flowers and shrubs at our cost."

"We'll want to speak to your men who worked with him."

"Of course, Major, but they'll only tell you the same."

"I bet they will," Dwight said. He motioned to Raeford McLamb, who had stood nearby listening. "Separate those men and get a statement from each of them as to what they knew about Palmeiro."

"Want me to translate for you?" asked Diaz with a slight smile.

"No thanks," Dwight said. "We brought our own translator."

It took less than an hour. Each man was separately questioned, then allowed to go back to work.

Dwight did not wait to hear the predictable results. Instead, he got in his truck and drove over to the old Buckley place, Harris Farm #1, where Richards and Jamison were bearing down on Felicia Sanaugustin and Mercedes Santos, who swore separately and together that they knew nothing about the Palmeiros or their baby.

"I don't understand why they keep saying that," a frustrated Richards told Dwight. "They know we know that the baby was born here in the camp and that the EMS truck responded to an emergency call here in January. Why won't they admit that the baby was stillborn and had serious birth defects?"

"Maybe for the same reason they didn't tell you about Mrs. Harris falling in the mud puddle till they knew she had told you," Dwight said. "Let me go see if she's here."

He drove up to the house and found Mrs. Harris and her daughter having coffee in the bright sunny kitchen with Mrs. Samuelson. Even though the housekeeper immediately stood and busied herself over at the sink the moment he entered, it was clear from the plates and cups on the table that neither woman stood on ceremony with the other. No bosslady/servant protocol here.

More than ever, the Harris daughter looked like someone who had come straight from a soup kitchen. She wore loose-fitting black warm-up pants and an oversized Duke sweatshirt that hung on her thin frame.

"We know who killed your father, Mrs. Hochmann," he said when the formalities were done.

She looked at him, startled. "Who?"

"One of the migrant workers here, an Ernesto Palmeiro."

The name clearly meant nothing to her. Even Mrs. Samuelson looked blank. But not Mrs. Harris.

"He and his wife Maria worked in the tomato crop here," he said. "She got pregnant last spring and had a baby here in January. Either stillborn or it died soon after. We've heard conflicting stories."

Mrs. Hochmann looked concerned and murmured sympathetically. Her mother sat silently.

"It was born without arms or legs. It was only a torso with a head," he said.

"Oh my G.o.d!" said Susan Hochmann. "That's why he-? But why, Major?"

"Ask your mother," Dwight said harshly.

"My mother?" She turned in her chair. "Mother?"

"Has she told you what she and your father really fought about last spring when Maria Palmeiro was less than one month pregnant? When that baby was still forming in her womb?"

"Mother?"

"Be still, Susan! He doesn't know," her mother said. "He's only guessing."

"Am I? We'll subpoena the records for this farm. They'll show who was where when the tomatoes were sprayed that week. Too many people know."

"Records are sometimes spotty." She gave a dismissive shrug. "And these are my people. They won't talk."

Dwight looked at her, genuinely puzzled. "Why are you still protecting him?"

"He made the workers go into the field before it was safe?" asked her daughter.

"Sid Lomax described your father as somebody who couldn't bear to see workers standing around idly while the clock was running," Dwight said. "You yourself described the trailers he used to house them in, trailers that had no running water where they could wash off the pesticides. Why did they need to wash off the pesticides, Mrs. Harris? They would have been safe if they'd waited forty-eight hours to go back in the fields."

Susan Hochmann looked sick.

"Oh, Mother," she whispered.

At that moment the light finally broke for Dwight as he looked at the older woman's weathered face. "You're afraid of another fine, aren't you? Another OSHA investigation. Maybe a huge lawsuit. You don't want another scandal for Harris Farms. Did you give Maria Palmeiro money to go back to Mexico, Mrs. Harris?"

"She wanted to go home," Mrs. Harris said angrily. "She'd lost her baby. The marriage was a mess. She just wanted to leave and forget it all. So yes, I gave her money. But that doesn't mean Harris Farms caused the baby's birth defects."

Susan Hochmann's shoulders slumped as if weighted down by a ton of guilt and she shook her head in disbelief.

"It all fits, doesn't it?" Dwight said wearily. "Buck Harris was killed in that empty shed, but it was a shed that held spraying equipment. He was dismembered to look like the baby. Then his head and his"-he hesitated over leaving that second grisly image in the daughter's mind-"his head was left in the field where his wife was contaminated. It was that back field, wasn't it?"

Mrs. Harris nodded. "She didn't go in too soon," she said dully. "She was there while they were spraying. When I got down there that day and saw what was happening, I screamed at them to come out of the field and I sent them back to the camp to take showers. They were all green with it. But it was the second day of spraying and she was at the most vulnerable stage of pregnancy. I didn't know she was pregnant. I don't think she even knew for sure at that point. Buck and I got into it hot and heavy then. Sid Lomax wouldn't have let it happen, but Sid was in California. His father had died. So Buck was in charge and by G.o.d he wasn't going to coddle anybody or pay a dime for people to stand around and wait till it was safe. 'You made me put in fancy hot and cold showers,' he said. 'Let 'em go wash off. Where's the harm?' After that, I stayed in New Bern and I didn't know about Maria till Mercedes Santos called me. I came immediately. And yes, I gave her the money to bury her baby and yes, I gave her money to fly home. Enough to buy a little house and a sewing machine and start a new life for herself. All her husband wanted to do was stay drunk. She's better off without him."

"He didn't think so," Dwight said and turned on his heel and walked out. He needed air. Long deep drafts of clean spring air.

Mayleen Richards was waiting beside his truck. "No luck, Major?"

He gave her a quick synopsis of what had pa.s.sed in the kitchen but before they could confer on their next actions, Susan Hochmann called from the back porch and crossed the yard to them.

"You were right," she said, nodding to Richards. "Mother's terrified of a lawsuit. I'm not though. What can I do to help?"

"Do you speak Spanish?" Richards asked.

The woman nodded.

"Mrs. Sanaugustin let slip something that makes me think her husband might know more than he's told, but she's clammed up altogether now and won't say a word."

"Sanaugustin?"

Dwight told her about the worker who said he had seen the b.l.o.o.d.y slaughter scene in the shed on Sat.u.r.day, two days before they discovered it.

"Sanaugustin," Mrs. Hochmann said again. "Felicia?"

"Si," said Richards and immediately turned as red as the shoulder-length red hair that gleamed in the sunlight. "I mean, yes."

"Let me talk to her. I think she trusts me almost as much as she trusts Mother."

She got in the prowl car with Richards and Dwight led the way back down to the camp. It took a few minutes, but at last Felicia Sanaugustin threw up her hands and told them everything. Yes, the baby was as they had said. Yes, Maria Palmeiro had been covered with pesticide. No, she did not know the name. Only that it was green and it made them break out in a rash even though they washed it off every day. And yes, she admitted, she and Rafael knew that Ernesto had killed el patron. Early Monday morning, before it was really light, Rafael had walked up to the sheds to get a dolly to move the old refrigerator out in preparation for the new one la senora had promised to bring. As he approached the empty shed, he had felt a great need to relieve himself and so had stepped into the bushes there. A moment before he finished, he heard the rusty hinge squeak and saw the door open. Then Ernesto Palmeiro had put out his head and looked all around.

Rafael had stood motionless. Something about the man's stealthy movements frightened him so that he could not even pull up his zipper. The light was still so poor that it was hard to be sure that it even was Ernesto. Especially since he was not supposed to be there. He had been fired the month before.

Sanaugustin waited until he was sure the other was gone, then curiosity compelled him to look inside the shed.

"She says we know what he saw," said Mrs. Hochmann.

"Your father's remains?"

She put the question to Felicia Sanaugustin and the woman shook her head.

"Sangre solamente," she whispered.

Only blood.

"But it was fresh blood. And it dripped from the back of the car," said Susan Hochmann, desperately trying not to let the horror of the woman's tale become personal. "He closed the door and immediately went back to the camp and said nothing of what he'd seen to anyone. Everyone said that Palmeiro was crazy and he was fearful for his own life if he accused him. He told himself that he didn't really know anything for certain at that point. He did not know for sure what man or animal it was that had been killed there."

The migrant woman continued and Mrs. Hochmann translated. Rafael had brooded all week as the body parts began to appear along the road, yet no one else connected them with their boss, even when word drifted down to the camp that people were starting to ask for him.

So last Sat.u.r.day, Rafael had sneaked back to the shed. The smell! The flies! Ai-yi-yi!

This time he had taken some of the money that they were saving to get a place of their own and he had gone into town and bought drugs and got arrested. And what, she wailed, was to happen to them now?

Susan Hochmann spoke in soothing tones and when the woman had quieted, she said to Dwight, "I told her nothing was going to happen to them, Major. They've done nothing wrong. Have they?"

"Nothing illegal maybe," said Dwight, "but they may have just cut your inheritance pretty drastically. If he's willing to testify that he saw Palmeiro leave that b.l.o.o.d.y scene early that Monday morning, then your parents' divorce is invalid. The summary judgment wasn't signed until that afternoon. Depending on what your mother does, it could mean that you won't get half the business now."

A wry smile flickered across her broad plain face. "Want to bet?"

Dwight left the mopping up to Jamison and the other detectives and told Richards to ride back to Dobbs with him to start the reports and put out an APB on Ernesto Palmeiro, who had a five-day lead on them and was probably already back in Mexico by now.

Their talk was of the case and the ramifications of what they'd learned and the very real likelihood that they'd never get him extradited back to Colleton County. All very professional until they were about five miles from town and Dwight said, "Anything you need to tell me, Richards?"

"Sir?"

"You heard me."

"About what, Major?"

"About Miguel Diaz."

"On a personal level? Or about him speaking for Palmeiro and giving him work while he repaired the damage he'd done?"