Hard Row Page 17

  Richards and Denning made notations of his remarks on the pages he’d given them. “And the rest?” she asked.

  “They’re the ones we moved over to one of the other farms the day after I last saw him. That was Monday, the twentieth of February. The last page is the people still here.”

  Again, they marked the pages and when they were finished, the farm manager held out his hands. “Want to take my prints first?”

  “Why don’t we go down to the camp and do them all at once?” Denning said.

  “Fine. I don’t know if everybody’s there, though. Hard as it’s raining, we couldn’t get the tractors into the field so I gave everyone the morning off.”

  As migrant camps go, this one was almost luxurious compared to some the deputies had seen. It reminded Richards of motels from the fifties and sixties that sprouted along the old New York–to-Florida routes through the state before the interstates bypassed them—long cinder-block rectangles falling into disrepair.

  Here, communal bathrooms with shower stalls and toilets, one for each sex, lay at opposite ends of each rectangle. The men’s bunkhouse was a long room lined with metal cots. Most were topped by stained mattresses bare of any linens, but some still had their blankets and pillows and a man was asleep in one of them. At the far end was a bank of metal lockers. Most of the doors hung open, but a few were still secured by locks of various sizes and styles. At the near end was a battered refrigerator, cookstove, and sink. An open space in the center held a motley collection of tables and chairs where three more men were watching a Spanish-language program.

  “¿Dónde está Juan?” Lomax asked.

  Richards was pleased to realize that she could catch the gist of the reply, which was that the crew chief and his wife, along with another woman and two men, had gone into Dobbs to do laundry and buy groceries. And when Lomax could not seem to make them understand what the deputies wanted, she was able to explain with the generous use of hand gestures.

  They knew, of course, that el patrón had been murdered in the shed over by the big house?

  “Sí, sí.”

  Whoever did such an awful thing had left fingerprints on the axe handle, she explained, so they were there to take everyone’s prints.

  At this, the men exchanged furtive looks and started to protest, but Richards tried to reassure them by promising that they were not there to check for green cards or work visas and the fingerprints would be destroyed as soon as they were compared with the killer’s prints.

  They were uneasy and highly suspicious, but Lomax went first and that helped convince them that they were not being singled out. As he wiped the ink from his fingers, the others came forward one by one and let Denning ink their fingertips and roll each one across the proper square on the white cards. Someone woke up the man in the cot. Reeking of alcohol, he, too, shuffled over to give his prints.

  When Denning started to pack up their cards, Richards said, “No. I told them they’d be destroyed as soon as you did the comparison, so why don’t you go ahead and do it now while we’re questioning them, okay?”

  Grumbling, Denning went out for a powerful magnifying glass and his field microscope and set to work. He had blown up the prints of the killer and marked the most prominent identifiers on each print—the forks, eyes, bridges, spurs, deltas, and island ridges that are easiest to spot. From the position of the killer’s fingerprints on the bloody axe handle, he was able to say which were the three middle ones, which meant he could look for conspicuous markers on one of the workers’ three right fingers and see if they matched one on the killer’s.

  While he squinted at the lines and ridges, Lomax unlocked a nearby door that opened onto quarters for a couple with children. It was marginally better than the bunkhouse: a good-sized eat-in kitchen that also functioned as a den with thrift store couch and chairs, two tiny bedrooms, a half-bath with sink and toilet.

  “Mrs. Harris comes out a couple of times a season to check on things,” Lomax told Jamison and Richards. “Makes sure the stoves and toilets and refrigerators work. Has the Goodwill store deliver a load of furniture every year or so. She’s good about that.”

  “Even after their separation?” asked Jamison.

  “Oh yeah. The big house isn’t part of Harris Farms, but the camp and the sheds are. She was over here the day we moved the others to Farm Number Three to see what was going to need replacing or fixing.”

  “Was Harris around?”

  “Like I told Major Bryant, ma’am. I didn’t see him after Sunday dinner at the Cracker Barrel. I figured he knew she was going to be here, so he just stayed out of her way. She’s got a right sharp tongue on her, if you know what I mean.”

  Despite their earlier friction, Jamison raised an eyebrow to Richards and she gave a half nod to indicate that Mrs. Harris’s presence had registered. Someone else to check on.

  In the meantime, she set her legal pad on the table before her, looked at the list, and asked Lomax to send in Jésus Vazquez.

  An hour later, the two deputies had finished questioning all four men, who each swore that he knew nothing about the murder. They were all vague about that Sunday, although they remembered Monday very clearly since that was when their friends left on the trucks, the same day that la señora swept through the camp. No, they had not seen el patrón either day.

  Who hated him?

  Shrugs. Why would anybody hate him? He was the big boss—el gran jefe. He gave orders to Lomax, Lomax implemented them. Only one man admitted ever speaking to Harris and that had been months ago. The work was hard, but that’s what they were there for. Their quarters were okay. They got paid on time. Lomax and Juan between them kept the camp pretty stable because Juan had children. So no open drug use. No drunken displays of violence or excessive profanity.

  The sheds? Why would anyone go over there on Sunday? Sunday was a day off in the wintertime. Those who were leaving had spent most of the day packing up. Those who were staying had either played cards or gone into town or visited a club—El Toro Negro in Dobbs or La Cantina Rosa in Cotton Grove.

  By midday, the deputies had finished with their questions and Denning had cleared all four men. Their relief was evident when Denning tore the fingerprint cards to shreds. Nevertheless one man held out his hand for the scraps and stuffed them into the half-empty mug of coffee on the table.

  CHAPTER 24

  A farmer’s wife adds comfort which only a certain quality of feminine ingenuity can devise and execute.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  DWIGHT BRYANT

  LATE TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 7

  Although Dwight would always prefer fieldwork to clearing his desk, paper had piled up that needed his attention and a rainy March day was as good a time as any to tackle it. After deploying his detectives, he spent the morning reading reports, filling out forms, updating the duty rosters, and earmarking things that Bo needed to see.

  Time to get a little more aggressive about filling the empty slots in the department, too, he thought. Even if Dalton’s provisional promotion were made permanent, they were still going to be short two detectives if Jamison really did leave. Three officers were needed in the patrol division and they could really stand to beef up Narcotics. Maybe he and Bo ought to go talk to the criminal justice classes out at Colleton Community. Hell, maybe they should even start trolling in the high schools.

  By midday, the most pressing chores were behind him and when Deborah called around 12:30, he agreed to splash over and join her at a nearby soup and sandwich place where she was already having lunch.

  This close to the courthouse, the café was always busy. The sky had begun to lighten, but there was still enough rain to make courthouse personnel reluctant to walk very far. The place was jammed today with every seat taken and a long line waiting at the counter. As soon as he reached the table where Deborah and another judge were seated, he sensed her barely concealed excitement.

  “Here, Dwight,” said Judge Parker,
setting his dishes and utensils back on his tray. “Take my seat. I’m finished.”

  “You sure?”

  “Just holding it for you, son.”

  “Thanks, Luther,” said Deborah, as the older man rose. “And I really appreciate it.”

  He laughed and white teeth flashed in his chocolate brown face. “Just remember that you owe me one.”

  “Owe him one for what?” Dwight asked, sliding into the chair on the other side of the narrow table. She was wearing the cropped blue wool jacket that echoed her clear blue eyes. Around her neck, gleaming against her white sweater, was the thin gold chain with the outline of a small heart encrusted with diamond chips that she had worn almost every day since the night he gave it to her.

  “He’s going to ask Ellis Glover to assign Ally Mycroft to him for the rest of the week. Get her out of my courtroom.”

  Dwight grinned, knowing how that particular clerk irritated Deborah. “So what’s up?”

  “It’s—” She paused, then gave an exasperated, “Look, something odd happened yesterday. I didn’t give it a second thought at the time, but it must have registered on my subconscious and talking about the murder with Luther just now made me remember, which is why I called you. And I know we said I wouldn’t stick my nose in your work and you wouldn’t complicate mine, but— Oh God! Sorry. I’m babbling, aren’t I? Here, have the rest of my soup.”

  “Why don’t I just get my own?” he said, amused that she was taking their agreement so seriously.

  “Because you might not want to wait on the line. Because maybe I’m seeing mountains where there’s not even an anthill, but I had a migrant in court yesterday for a first appearance. Simple possession. He lives at the camp out there at the old Buckley place. One of the Harris Farms workers.”

  “And?”

  “And I asked him through the interpreter if he knew Buck Harris. He said he did, but only by sight. Then he said, ‘Es muerto, no?’ or something like that, but I didn’t think twice about it because you’d just told me that the torso belonged to his boss, and besides, I got distracted by a screaming woman and a crying baby.”

  “Well, damn!” said Dwight, immediately recognizing the significance of what she was saying.

  “Right. How did he know Harris was dead? He’d been in jail since Saturday night. Even you didn’t know it was Harris till yesterday.”

  “Where’s this guy now?”

  “Still over there in your jail so far as I know. I set his bond, appointed him an attorney, but unless he made bail, he’s still there. His name is Rafael Sanaugustin,” she said and scribbled it on a napkin. “And for what it’s worth, I got the impression that he wasn’t really involved, that it was more like something he’d heard and wanted confirmed.”

  After reading the name, Dwight tucked the napkin in his shirt pocket. “Who’d you appoint?”

  “Millard King.”

  He finished the rest of her vegetable soup in three spoonfuls and pushed back in the chair. “Thanks, shug. And I’m probably going to regret saying it, but any time your subconscious throws up something like this, nose away, okay?”

  She cut her eyes at him as he stood. “Really?”

  “Just don’t abuse it,” he warned, looking as stern as he could in the face of her sudden smile.

  The rain was now a thin drizzle as Dwight took the courthouse steps two at a time and cut through the atrium to ring for the elevator that connected the third- floor courtrooms with the Sheriff’s Department and the county jail down in the basement. To his bemusement, when the doors slid open, there was the same attorney Deborah had appointed to defend that migrant.

  Millard King had the blond and beefy good looks of a second-string college football player. Courthouse gossip had him engaged to a Hillsborough debutante, the daughter of a well-connected appellate judge. King was said to be politically ambitious, but no one yet had a handle on whether that meant he wanted to run for governor, the North Carolina Assembly, or the US Senate. As he was only twenty-eight, it was thought that he was waiting for a case that would give him big-fish name recognition in Colleton County’s small pond. Besides, said the cattier speculators, his sharp-tongued wife-to-be would probably have a thought or two on the subject.

  He nodded to Dwight as the chief deputy stepped in beside him. “Bryant. How’s it going?”

  “Fine. Talk to you a minute?”

  “Sure. I was just on my way down to the jail.”

  “To see”— Dwight pulled out the napkin Deborah had given him —“Rafael Sanaugustin?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “That’s where I was headed myself. I need to have a talk with your client.”

  “About those two little rocks? That’s hardly worth messing with, is it? Unless you think he’s part of something bigger?”

  “That’s what I want to ask him. I’ll call around and see if we can find someone to translate.”

  “Oh, that won’t be necessary,” King said with an air of smug complacency. “I’m pretty fluent.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’ve studied Spanish since high school. My roommate in college was Cuban and we spent our junior year in Spain. The way things were going even back then, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be able to speak to voters directly if I ever got in the game.”

  Heretofore, Dwight had paid scant attention to rumors that the debutante had cut King out of the pack to further her own aspirations. Having been there himself in his first marriage, he had felt a stab of sympathy for King, a sympathy that was now plummeting to the basement faster than the elevator.

  If King had fixed his eyes on the prize as early as high school, maybe it was a match made in heaven after all, Dwight decided, and a spurt of happiness shot through him as he thought of his life with Deborah. He could almost feel sorry for the younger man. Would the satisfaction of reaching even the highest office in the land equal the pleasure of planting trees with a woman you loved?

  They were almost too late. Three Latinos were there to bail Rafael Sanaugustin out—two women and a man—and they were just finishing up the paperwork when Dwight called over their shoulders that he was here with Sanaugustin’s attorney to see the prisoner.

  “Five minutes and y’all would’ve missed him,” the officer said and explained why.

  King stepped forward and introduced himself in Spanish that sounded to Dwight every bit as fluent as he had earlier bragged.

  Wearing jeans and wool jackets, the three looked back at him impassively. The women were bareheaded and appeared to be in their early thirties; the man wore a brown Stetson and was at least ten years older. When he spoke, it was to Dwight. “Juan Santos, crew chief at Harris Farms.”

  “Sanaugustin is a member of your crew?” Dwight asked.

  The man nodded.

  “You were at the farm yesterday? On the tractor?”

  Again he nodded.

  “One of these women related to him?”

  Santos nodded to the shorter woman. “His wife.”

  “Please tell her that I’m sorry, but she’s going to have to wait a little longer. I need to question him first.”

  Both women immediately tugged on Santos’s arms anxiously, speaking so rapidly that the only words Dwight caught were los niños.

  He shook off their hands and before Millard King could translate, said, “They say we cannot wait long. The children come home at three-thirty.”

  Dwight glanced at his watch: 12:56. “We’ll try to be brief.”

  “How long?” said Santos. “We’ll go to the grocery store and come back.”

  “Fifteen or twenty minutes for me, if he cooperates,” Dwight said. “What about you, King?”

  “Fifteen minutes, tops.”

  “Bueno,” Santos said.

  Sanaugustin’s wife protested sharply, but the crew chief herded them both out of the office and the jailer brought Sanaugustin down to the interview room.

  When the migrant worker came strolling in, he was obviously surpris
ed to see two Anglos instead of his friends. According to his booking sheet, Sanaugustin was five-eight and thirty-three years old. He had straight black hair, wary dark eyes, a prominent nose, and a small scar on his left cheek. His jeans, black sweatshirt, and the unbuttoned plaid wool lumberjack shirt that topped them were all a little worse for the wear after three nights in jail. He hesitated in the doorway, but the jailer nudged him inside and closed the door behind him.

  Dwight gestured for him to take a seat and waited while Millard King explained that he was the attorney the judge had appointed to represent him yesterday and that he was here to discuss those charges, but first this officer, Major Bryant, had some questions for him.

  Dwight had procured a tape recorder from the front desk and as he set it up, King frowned. “What’s this about, Bryant?”

  “Ask him to state his name and address, please,” Dwight said pleasantly.

  Both men complied and Dwight added the date and the names of those present.

  “How long has he worked for Harris Farms?”

  “Two years.”

  “How did he know that Buck Harris was dead?”

  They had released the identity of the mutilated body last night, so it had been all over the morning news. Nevertheless, Millard King drew himself up and said, “What? Wait a minute, here, Bryant. You accusing my client of murder?”

  “I have witnesses who can testify that he suspected that Harris was dead before it was public knowledge. All I’m asking is how did he know it before the rest of us?”

  “Okay, but I’m going to warn him that he doesn’t have to answer if it self-incriminates.”

  “Fine, but remind him that we now have his fingerprints on file.”

  “You have the killer’s fingerprints?”

  Dwight gave a pointed look to his watch. “Once his people come back, he’s free to go, you know.”

  Annoyed, King translated Dwight’s questions and it was soon apparent that the farmworker was denying knowledge of anything, anywhere, any time. But when King pressed him and rubbed his thumbs across his own fingerprints, Sanaugustin went mute.