Hard Row dk-13 Page 3
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
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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!
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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
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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.
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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.”
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“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
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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.”
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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
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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.
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“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!”
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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.”
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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
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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