Hard Row dk-13 Read online

MARGARET MARON

  When Dwight and Seth and I were figuring how

  much it’d cost to add on a new master bedroom, we

  actually overestimated by a thousand. Either we’re

  smarter than those professional consultants who get

  paid big money out of the state’s budget or else those

  consultants maybe fudge the figures so that legislators

  won’t panic and refuse to fund a project until it’s too

  late to back out.

  Even though I’m a Carolina fan, I don’t begrudge

  the Wolfpack their new arena. I just wish it could’ve

  been named for something a little less commercial than

  a Canadian bank.

  On the drive in, Cal tried to bring me up to speed on

  the rules and logic of the game and I really did try to

  concentrate, but it was so much gobbledygook.

  When we got to the entrance, orange-colored plas-

  tic cones divided the various lanes and he knew which

  lane would get us to the parking lot closest to our seats.

  Inside, we bought pizza and soft drinks, then found

  our seats in the club section, which was sort of like first

  balcony in a regular theater. Up above us, the retired

  jerseys of various NCSU basketball players hung from

  the rafters. Down below us, red-garbed hockey players

  warmed up on the gleaming white ice.

  Don’t ask me who the Hurricanes played that night. I

  don’t have a clue. But a couple of minutes into play, the

  Canes scored the first goal and the whole building went

  crazy. Cal and every other kid in the place jumped to

  their feet and waved their hockey sticks. Men high-fived,

  women hugged and screamed, horns blared, and the

  18

  HARD ROW

  near-capacity crowd roared maniacal cheers of triumph,

  while flashing colored lights chased themselves around

  the rim of our section in eye-dazzling brilliance.

  Wow!

  19

  C H A P T E R

  3

  Shall we ask, Am I my brother’s keeper? Or say in the lan-

  guage of a former cabinet officer, “Gentlemen, this is not

  my funeral.”

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  Dwight Bryant

  Friday Night, February 24

  % Even before he turned onto Ward Dairy Road,

  Dwight could see flashing lights in the distance.

  When he got there, state troopers were directing

  homeward-bound commuter traffic through a single lane

  around the scene, so he turned on his own flashers behind

  the grille of his truck, slowed to a crawl as he approached,

  and flipped down the sun visor to show the card that iden-

  tified him as an officer of the Colleton County Sheriff’s

  Department. Activity seemed to be centered directly in

  front of Bethel Baptist, between the entrance and exit

  driveways that circled the churchyard. He started to power

  down his window, but the troopers recognized him and

  immediately shunted him into the first drive. He parked

  and pulled on the new wool gloves Deborah had given

  20

  HARD ROW

  him for Christmas, grabbed his flashlight, and walked over

  toward the others.

  Most of the county roads had wide shoulders and

  this one was no exception. Even with the yellow tape

  that delineated the crime scene, there would have

  been enough room for two cars to pass had there not

  been so many official vehicles gathered around like a

  flock of buzzards there for the kill, as his father-in-

  law would say.

  Trooper Ollie Harrold gave him an informal two fin-

  ger salute. “Over here, Major Bryant,” he said, illumi-

  nating a path for Dwight with his torch.

  Yellow tape had been looped across a shallow ditch and

  was secured to the low illuminated church sign a few feet

  away. Inside the tape’s perimeter, the focus of all their at-

  tention, two brawny legs lay side by side—male, to judge

  by their muscular hairiness. Even in the fitful play of flash-

  lights, Dwight could see that they were a ghastly white,

  drained of all blood. He aimed his own flash at the upper

  thighs. The bones that protruded were mangled and splin-

  tered as if hacked from the victim’s torso with an axe or

  heavy cleaver. No clean-sawn cut. No apparent blood on

  the wintry brown grass beneath them either, which indi-

  cated that the butchery had taken place elsewhere.

  The pasty-faced man who had reported them was a

  thoroughly shaken local who worked at a nearby auto

  repair shop and who now stood shivering in a thin jacket

  that did not offer much protection against the sharp

  February wind.

  “I was riding home,” he said, “when I saw ’em a-laying

  there in the ditch. Almost fell in the ditch myself a-look-

  ing so hard ’cause I couldn’t believe what I was a-seeing.

  21

  MARGARET MARON

  I went straight home and called y’all, then came back

  here to wait.”

  Dwight glanced at the rusty beat-up bicycle propped

  against one of the patrol cars behind them. “Bit chilly

  to be riding a bike.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” The words trailed off in a shame-

  faced shrug.

  “Lost your license?”

  “Used to be, you had to blow a ten to have ’em take

  it.” The man sounded aggrieved. “I only blew a eight-

  five, but the judge still took it. I’m due to get it back

  next month.”

  “There’s no light on your bike,” Dwight said, look-

  ing from the bicycle to the grisly limbs in the shallow

  ditch.

  “I know, but I got reflecting tape on the pedals and

  fenders and on my jacket, too. See?” He turned around

  to show them. “Didn’t need my own light to see that,

  though. People don’t dim their high beams for bicycles.”

  “You ride past here on your way to work?”

  The man nodded. “And ’fore you ask, no, they won’t

  here this morning. I’m certain sure I’d’ve seen ’em.”

  The officer assigned to patrol this area was already on

  the scene and others of Dwight’s people started to ar-

  rive. Detective Mayleen Richards was first, followed by

  Jamison and Denning on the crime scene van. As they

  set up floodlights so that Percy Denning could photo-

  graph the remains from all angles, Richards took down

  the witness’s name and address and the few pertinent

  facts he could tell them, then Dwight thanked him for

  his help and told him he was free to go.

  “I can get someone to run you home.”

  22

  HARD ROW

  “Naw, that’s all right. Like I say, I just live around the

  curve yonder.” He seemed reluctant to leave.

  An EMT truck was called to transport the legs over to

  Chapel Hill to see what the ME could tell them from a

  medical viewpoint.

  “We already checked with the county hospitals,”

  Detective Jack Jamison reported. “No double amputees

  so far. McLamb’s calling Raleigh, Smithfield, Fuquay,

  an
d Fayetteville.”

  “We have any missing persons at the moment?”

  Dwight asked.

  “Just that old man with Alzheimer’s that walked away

  from that nursing home down in Black Creek around

  Christmas. His daughter’s still on the phone to us al-

  most every day.”

  Despite an intensive search with a helicopter and

  dogs, the old man had never been found.

  “I hear the family’s suing the place for a half a million

  dollars,” said Mayleen Richards.

  “A half-million dollars for an eighty-year-old man?”

  Jamison was incredulous.

  “Well, a nursing home in Dobbs wound up paying fifty

  thousand for the woman they lost and she was in her nine-

  ties. And think if it was your granddaddy,” said Richards,

  a touch of cynicism in her voice. “Wouldn’t it take a half-

  million to wipe out your pain and mental anguish?”

  Jamison took another look at those sturdy legs. In the

  glare of Denning’s floodlight, they looked whiter than

  ever. “That old guy was black, though, and they said he

  didn’t weigh but about a hundred pounds.”

  “Too bad we don’t have even some shoes and socks

  23

  MARGARET MARON

  to give us a lead on who he was or what he did,” said

  Richards. “You reckon he’s workboots or loafers?”

  She leaned in for a closer look. “No corns or calluses

  and the toenails are clean. Trimmed, too. I doubt if they

  gave him a pedicure first.”

  It was another half hour before the EMT truck ar-

  rived. While they waited, Denning carefully searched

  the grass inside the perimeter. “Not even a cigarette

  butt,” he said morosely.

  The patrol officer was equally empty-handed. “I

  drove down this road a little after four,” he reported.

  “It was still light then. I can’t swear they weren’t there

  then, but shallow as that ditch is, I do believe I’d’ve

  noticed.”

  A reporter from the Dobbs Ledger stood chatting with

  someone from a local TV station. Because neither was

  bumping up against an early deadline, they had waited

  unobtrusively until Dwight could walk over and give

  them as much as he had.

  The television reporter repositioned her photogenic

  scarf, removed her unphotogenic woolly hat, and fluffed

  up her hair before the tape began to roll. “Talking with

  us here is Major Dwight Bryant from the Colleton

  County Sheriff ’s Department. Major Bryant, can you

  give us the victim’s approximate age?”

  Dwight shook his head. “He could be anything from

  a highschool football player to a vigorous sixty-year-old.

  It’s too soon to say.” Looking straight into the camera,

  he added, “The main thing is that if you know of any

  white male that might be missing, you should contact

  the Sheriff ’s Department as soon as possible.”

  24

  HARD ROW

  Both reporters promised they would run the depart-

  ment’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 wit-

  ness, 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 usu-

  ally 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 passersby 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 rum-

  maged around in the refrigerator until he found a bowl

  25

  MARGARET MARON

  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 glass of homemade lager from the refrig-

  erated tap, a wedding present from his father-in-law.

  Every time he used the tap or held his glass 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

  assessment. 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 ga-

  rage, his brown eyes shining, his arms full of Hurricanes

  paraphernalia. Deborah followed, a Canes’ cap on her

  light brown hair.

  26

  HARD ROW

  “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 button.

  Talking more excitedly than Dwight had seen him

  since he came to live with them, Cal unloaded a souve-

  nir 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. L
ook!”

  “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 dif-

  ferent 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 shoot-

  out.”

  “Ward blocked their shot, then Williams put it in!”

  27

  MARGARET MARON

  “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.”

  28

  C H A P T E R

  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 hoarse

  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

  29

  MARGARET MARON

  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