Christmas Mourning Page 17

  I closed the file and turned off my laptop.

  Dwight carried his plate and glass back to the sink and went on into the bedroom. I picked up the cushions and a few stray pieces of popcorn, then switched off the lights and followed.

  When I got there, Dwight was already in bed and he propped himself up on one elbow to watch as I slipped off my jeans. “I’m really sorry about tonight, Deb’rah. I wanted this to be special. Make you think you were right to marry me.”

  “Oh, darling, do you really think a date on the calendar is going to make a difference in how I feel about you?”

  “And I was too damn busy to stop in somewhere and get you a present.”

  I shook my head at him. “We agreed we weren’t going to give each other anything, remember?”

  “No,” he said. “You agreed. I didn’t. I guess you’ll just have to make do with that.”

  He lifted my pillow and there sat a small flat velvet box.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Happy anniversary, Mrs. Bryant.”

  I lifted the lid. Nestled on a velvet bed was a narrow gold circlet etched in tiny leaves and flowers. As I lifted it out to slide it onto my wrist, I saw that it had been engraved inside with today’s date and the words One year, but who’s counting?

  “Oh, Dwight, it’s beautiful!” I threw myself down beside him so that I could hug him properly.

  “I thought it would go with the bracelet Miss Sue left you.”

  “It will,” I agreed, lifting my arm in the air to admire the way it looked and imagining how it would look when paired with the blue forget-me-nots of that other bracelet. “I just wish I had something for you.”

  “Actually, you do.” He grinned and tugged at the waistband of my Carolina sweatshirt. “But first we need to get rid of these flannel pajamas.”

  (Ping!)

  CHAPTER 22

  There was a startled stillness, and then the colonel said slowly, “Please say seriously what all this means.”

  —“The Flying Stars,” G. K. Chesterton

  MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—TUESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 23

  Good job, everybody,” Dwight said next morning as his briefing with the CCSD drug squad wound down.

  While most drug users claimed they were hurting no one but themselves, meth labs with their volatile chemicals were serious health hazards to everyone living at the site, especially any children; and decontamination was a growing drain on EPA resources. Sometimes the only solution was complete demolition, which was the probable fate of the van they had seized last night.

  “Wish we had some good news for you, too, Major,” Deputy Mayleen Richards said glumly when he asked for a progress report on the Wentworth shootings.

  “It’s like we’ve hit a brick wall on this case,” Raeford McLamb said. “No leads. Just dead ends. We’ve talked to every name that’s come up. Jason had pissed off the usual number of people for someone like him and so had the younger kid, but as for what motivated someone to gun them down?” He gave a frustrated display of empty hands. “He was drawing unemployment, but Employment Security Commission’s pretty overwhelmed these days and all they could say is that his paperwork was in order. No help there.”

  “What about Mrs. Higgins’s bumper?” he asked Denning.

  “I brushed along the place where she made contact, but I don’t know if there’s enough there—one really tiny chip and some paint dust. We did get lucky in that the car’s been in her garage since Friday. She doesn’t drive in ice and her daughter took her to church on Sunday, but I don’t know, boss. White on silver?”

  “Did that Barbour kid the stepmother mentioned give you anything?”

  “Nothing we didn’t already know. He last saw Matt at school on Thursday, right after they announced that the Johnson girl had died. He says the same as everyone else—that if Matt claimed they were an item, he was lying, but he did say that Matt seemed pretty shaken up about her death. Nate Barbour made a smart-ass remark and Matt started cussing him. They mouthed off to each other some more in the parking lot, then Matt drove off alone. Our boy Nate’s been caught with some pot. He’s out on bail right now for shoplifting two cameras from Target, and I gather there was an assault charge that got dismissed. Turns out he worked part-time at the Welcome Home store last summer, but he denies all knowledge of how the store’s stuff wound up in Jason’s shed and was all innocent wide eyes when I asked him about it. I expect we’ll be seeing more of him down the road.”

  “What about the grocery store where Matt worked?”

  McLamb gave a sour laugh. “Nothing missing, if that’s what you mean. And the manager had no complaints. In fact, he said Matt was pretty reliable. His hours were five till eight, nine if they were really busy or shorthanded, and he usually showed up on time. Did what was expected of him. Thursday night was the first time he’d missed without first calling.”

  “Anything from the bullets that killed them?” Dwight asked Denning.

  That deputy shook his head. “Sorry, boss. All the slugs show the same characteristic marks, but until we get a gun to match them to, it’s another dead end.”

  “What about the rifles you took from Faison’s truck Sunday night? He’s asking for them back.”

  “He can have ’em far as we’re concerned. Both guns were dirty so it’s hard to know when they were last fired. Faison’s fingerprints were on both and the victims’ on just one. Nobody else’s. And, of course, they aren’t the murder weapons.” Almost as an afterthought, he said, “One odd thing. I found a piece of plastic wedged into the top of the rifle barrel that Jason borrowed.”

  “Plastic?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What kind?”

  Denning handed him a small baggie with a shard of clear rigid plastic inside. There was nothing distinctive about it, so far as he could see. Thinner than window glass. Flat. No discernible curvature.

  “There were new scratches on the outside of the barrel tip. Like somebody’d smashed the rifle through a sheet of this plastic. Want me to send it to the SBI lab? See if they can ID it?”

  “As backed up as they are? It’ll be six months before they could get around to this.”

  “I saw bits of plastic like that on the floor of the trailer when Dalton and I were there yesterday morning,” said Richards, glancing up from her paperwork. “Looked like something got broke and no one got up all the pieces. Want me to go back and get them?”

  “No, I have Joy Medlin coming in this afternoon and I’d like you to sit in on the interview.”

  “I’ll go,” said Dalton. “It was there at the end of the couch, right, Mayleen?”

  She nodded.

  “Probably a waste of time,” Dwight said, “but if we do eventually wind up sending it to Garner, might as well send them enough to work with.”

  Dwight stopped by the break room, refilled his coffee mug, and went on down to his own office to dig into some of the paperwork that had accumulated on his desk. This was his least favorite part of the job, but he learned long ago that if he did not keep up with the stuff as it came in, disposing of it would take even more time because he would have to go back and refresh his memory. Years ago, while still in the Army, he seemed to remember predictions that computers would eventually do away with paper. So much for predictions.

  By 10:30, he was reaching for the last file when his desk phone rang and the duty officer at the front desk said, “Major Bryant? There’s a Charlie Barefoot here to see you.”

  “Send him on back,” Dwight said. He signed a final paper, put the file in his out-box, and walked over to the open door.

  Watching his onetime teammate’s son walk down the hall was almost like seeing Jeff Barefoot in the halls of their old high school. Same shambling, loose-knit walk, same shock of straw-colored hair, same narrow-set hazel eyes in a long face. Except for some minor updating, he could have been wearing the same uniform: jeans, sneakers, a dark blue Duke hoodie that was unzipped and the hood pushed back on th
is mild December day. There seemed to be nothing of Sarah in that face. The young man was all Jeff until he gave a sheepish smile and held out his hand, and then it was his mother’s smile.

  “Major Bryant? Charlie Barefoot. Sorry I hung up on you like that yesterday. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “No problem.” Dwight gestured to the chair beside his desk. “You’re here now.” He sat down in his own chair and pulled a notepad toward him.

  Barefoot sat with his elbows on the arms of the chair and tented his long fingers in front of him. “Mom says you and my real dad played ball together in high school.”

  Dwight nodded.

  “So you knew all three of them back then?”

  For a moment Dwight wondered who was interviewing whom here, then decided to go with the flow for a while. See where it led.

  “I was a year ahead of them, but yes, I played with Jeff and Malcolm both. And your mother was a cheerleader. You play?”

  “No. I’m as tall as my dad was, but I’m a klutz. What was he like?”

  “I didn’t really know him outside the gym. Back in those days, town and country didn’t mix all that much. I was country. Rode the school bus. He and Malcolm were town. And he wasn’t a starter till their senior year, after I graduated.”

  “He wasn’t as good?”

  Dwight shrugged.

  “My granddad says he was better than Dad—Malcolm—my stepfather.”

  “He could have been,” Dwight agreed. “He just didn’t want it as badly.”

  “And Malcolm always gets what he really wants.” His voice was bitter.

  “What he’s willing to work for, Mr. Barefoot.”

  “Call me Charlie.”

  “Charlie, then. Look, son, I don’t know what your problems are with your dad, but—”

  “He’s not my dad.” He glared at Dwight across the desk. “He’s only my stepdad.”

  Dwight shook his head. “He may not be your biological father, but he did become your legal parent when he adopted you, and changing your name doesn’t change that.”

  “Maybe not legally, but as far as I’m concerned, we’re done. I moved in with my grandparents a few weeks ago. I’m living in my real dad’s old room now and I’ve learned more about him these last few weeks than I knew in my whole life.”

  No surprise there, Dwight thought. Remembering the rivalry between Jeff and Malcolm, he doubted if Sarah would have spoken much about her first husband to this boy, and certainly not in front of Malcolm, whereas there would be no brakes on Mrs. Barefoot’s tongue now that she and her husband had him to themselves.

  “I’m glad that’s working out for you,” Dwight said. “But I want to ask you about Tuesday night.”

  “What about it?”

  “Your sister went to a party at Kevin Crowder’s house. Were you there, too?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “According to your sister’s phone records, she was talking to you when she crashed.”

  “No!” He almost strangled on the word and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his thin throat. He tried to meet Dwight’s eyes but his own eyes were filling with tears and he dropped his head. “She called but I didn’t pick up.”

  “Why?

  “I don’t know. I was driving back to my grandparents’ house.”

  “Back from where?”

  “Somewhere between Cotton Grove and Garner. I went to see a movie.”

  “Go with anyone?”

  “No, I wanted to be alone.”

  “See anybody you knew?”

  “No, I told you. I wanted to be alone.”

  “Did you know your sister was going to Kevin Crowder’s party?”

  “When we talked earlier that day, she said she might stop in at a party after the game, but she didn’t say where. We didn’t hang out together, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t know the guy, and even if I did, it would’ve been high school kids. Mostly jocks and their crowd.”

  “So you wouldn’t know if she was seeing Matt Wentworth?”

  “Who?

  “Matt Wentworth. He was shot this weekend.”

  “Oh yeah, I heard about him and Jason. Mal with a Wentworth? No way!”

  “You and Mallory didn’t get along?”

  “Look, if you’re asking me if I loved my sister, yes, I did. If you’re asking me if I thought she walked on water like everybody else did, then no, okay?”

  “Is that why you didn’t pick up when you saw her name on the screen?”

  He shrugged and Dwight sat silently, letting the awkward pause stretch out until Charlie Barefoot blinked first.

  “We had a fight when we talked that morning and I was still mad at her,” he admitted, shame and sorrow in his downcast eyes.

  “What about, Charlie?”

  “N-nothing important. She thought I was being unfair to Da—” He caught himself. “To Malcolm. She didn’t like some of the things I said. She didn’t want me to change my name last spring and she didn’t want me to move out. She said it was a slap in Mom’s face, too. So we fought.”

  “Did she leave a message?”

  He nodded.

  “I’d like to hear it, if you don’t mind.”

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a DVD in a cardboard sleeve. “I downloaded it from my voice mail to my computer so I could save it, and I made a copy.”

  Dwight reached for it, but Charlie seemed reluctant to let him have it.

  “I didn’t listen to it till I was driving to the hospital after Mom called and told me about the accident. I let her listen to it at the hospital while Malcolm was charging around making sure everybody in the emergency room knew who he was and what he expected of them, then I made them a copy the next day. Wednesday.”

  He laid the disc on the desktop and stood up. “I can’t stand to listen to it again, so I’m going to go now. If you want to ask me anything else, call me. And leave my mother out of it, okay? She doesn’t answer for me anymore.”

  “One final question, Charlie. Was your sister into drugs?”

  “Because of what Malcolm’s saying? No way, Major Bryant. As far as she was concerned, drugs—all drugs—were for losers. She wouldn’t even try pot or alcohol. Not because she was so pure and righteous, but because they didn’t fit her image.”

  Dwight gave a wry smile. “Too bad more of your generation doesn’t feel that way.”

  “Our generation learned it from yours,” the boy said.

  When Charlie Barefoot had gone, Dwight took the disc into the detective squad room, explained what it was, and called for a player.

  Richards pointed to one atop a file cabinet and as soon as Dwight inserted the disc and pushed PLAY, the room filled with the sound of a car engine, Christmas music from the radio, and the dead girl’s voice.

  “Charlie? Damn you, Charlie, why won’t you pick up? You can’t do this to us. To me. To Dad and Mom. Not here at Christmas. You don’t—Omigod! Where did that—? Dim your stupid—Get over! I can’t see! I—oh, shit! No!”

  There was a horrendous scream that seemed to go on forever above the music, interspersed by the thumps and bangs of the crash itself. For a moment or two all was quiet except for low whimpers and a half-whispered “Mommy?” that trailed off into silence.

  Dwight started to push the eject button, but Richards said, “What was that?”

  They listened to the ending again with the volume turned up to maximum.

  “Is that a car engine starting up?” asked McLamb.

  “And going away,” said Dalton. “Not passing.”

  CHAPTER 23

  “I wear the chain I forged in life… I made it link by link, and yard by yard.”

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—TUESDAY AFTERNOON, DECEMBER 23

  When Dalton returned well before lunch, he brought enough of those plastic pieces that they could fit it together like a jigsaw puzzle. Although most of the edges were missing, e
nough remained that they could tell it had begun as a six-by-six-inch square with rounded corners. Obviously it had fit onto or over something, but what?

  Just as clearly, someone—Jason Wentworth?—had smashed it with the barrel of Willie Faison’s rifle, which was how a shard got wedged inside.

  “I went by where Faison was working and asked him if he knew anything about it since he was the one who took the rifle out of that trailer,” said Dalton. “He looked a little freaked, but he didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, damn!” As he suddenly recognized what this plastic had once covered, Dwight slapped the table so hard that the pieces slid apart. “Of course! Go haul Faison’s sorry ass in here.”

  “Huh?”

  In a few terse words, Dwight told Dalton why. “And get a search warrant for his truck.”

  Grinning, Dalton hurried off to do as he was told, and in less than two hours he was back with a very apprehensive Willie Faison. Dalton had also retrieved the broken flashlight Dwight had remembered seeing in Faison’s truck box Sunday night and had bagged it up along with a few more shards of the rigid plastic lens, which he had found on the bottom of the box.

  “It’s yours, right?” Dwight asked him when they were seated in the interview room with the flashlight on the table between them.

  “Yessir.” The slender young man wore muddy jeans, scuffed leather high-tops, and a red plaid wool work shirt over a red tee. His dark eyes were wary as he searched the big deputy’s face for a hint of what was coming.

  “Part of the stuff you wanted back from Jason Wentworth?”

  “And he went and broke it,” Faison said indignantly. “You know how much them things cost?”

  “I can imagine,” Dwight said. “Halogen bulb? That’s a real powerful light for crawling around under houses looking for busted water pipes. What was Jason going to use it for?”

  Faison shrugged his thin shoulders. His hands were large and work-stained and already well callused. When he nervously brushed back a lank of dark hair from his forehead, Dwight saw skinned knuckles where the young man had evidently lost a struggle with a rusty pipe joint.