Christmas Mourning Page 9

  “That’s too metaphorical for me,” I said. “Plain English, please?”

  The windows were as fogged up as her words and I switched on the defroster. As the windows cleared, so did her meaning.

  “Mallory could have had anyone she wanted, but she didn’t want a steady boyfriend, which is not unusual these days. The kids don’t pair off the way they still did when you and Dwight were teenagers. That doesn’t mean there can’t be some rather intense relationships within the group, and Mallory liked to mess with those. She was very open about it. Claimed she was just a little ol’ tease who couldn’t stop herself from flirting with every boy around, like it was all a joke. And because she didn’t take it seriously, nobody else was supposed to. But sometimes the boys would be so dazzled, it spoiled them for whatever more ordinary girl they’d been perfectly happy with before.”

  I suddenly remembered Jess’s quiet “Tell me a single guy in this school who didn’t think she was hot.”

  “I think she enjoyed being Little Miss Wonderful just a little too much,” Miss Emily said. “She worked hard at it and I daresay most everyone thought she was wonderful, but every once in a while I would catch a sense of… I don’t know. Smugness? No, that’s not the right word.”

  “Egotism?” I suggested.

  “No.” She was silent as the windshield wipers swept back and forth in front of us. “Complacency,” she said at last. “That’s what it was. Complacency.”

  When I got home, before taking off my coat and barely saying hey to Dwight, who was on the phone, I went straight to the dictionary on my desk: “complacency: self-satisfaction accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead?”

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  When I walked back into the living room, unbuttoning my coat and fluffing my damp hair, Cal was lying on his stomach beside the tree to read a book and watch the train go around. Dwight was still on the phone, getting his Sunday afternoon update from the various divisions within the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department. Learning who spiked Mallory Johnson’s Coke was only one item on a very long list.

  I knew that the narcotics squad was hoping to find and bust up a meth lab that was thought to be operating somewhere near Widdington, a little town east of Dobbs, but so far that hadn’t come off. A routine traffic stop on the interstate had netted an embezzler wanted in New Jersey, and New Jersey was sending the paperwork down to begin the extradition process. Last week, a fire had destroyed one of those McMansions in an upscale housing development near Pleasants Crossroads. At first, everyone blamed a shorted-out plug on a Christmas tree. Now the experts were calling it arson, so ATF would be poking around in the ashes.

  The owner had recently lost his job and was behind on his mortgage payments. The house was well insured.

  “We’re probably gonna see a lot more of this if the economy doesn’t pick up,” Dwight said.

  Due to the icy roads, there were the usual number of fender benders. Three wise men had been stolen from the Christmas display in someone’s yard, eight mailboxes had been smashed along a backcountry road down near Makely, and a chain-link fence had been cut open at the rear of Welcome Home, a building supply store outside Cotton Grove. There not being much call for lawn and garden items in the dead of winter, the owner could not say for sure exactly when it happened, but he was missing three push mowers, four one-hundred-foot garden hoses, a generator, and a concrete statue of Jesus.

  Dwight shook his head in amusement as he repeated that last to me. “Who steals Jesus?”

  “Any luck with the mistletoe?” I asked, pausing in the archway between the living room and dining area.

  Cal giggled as Dwight put away his phone and stood to give me an exaggerated kiss. I looked up and there hanging from the arch was a healthy sprig of green. It still had a few glistening berries on it. You’re supposed to pull one off every time someone gets kissed, and when all the berries are gone, no more kissing.

  I left those berries right where they were.

  “Dad was awesome,” Cal reported. “We got enough for Grandma and everybody else. Lots of berries, too.”

  “How’d you do?” I asked.

  “Pretty good. I hit the can the first time.”

  “He’s got a good eye,” Dwight said, smiling at his son. “We dug some cans out of Seth’s barrels for target practice. Too bad I took all our trash to the dump yesterday.”

  As Cal chattered on about how amazing the whole experience had been, I made a mental note to buy a pad of paper targets for an extra Christmas gift. And maybe I’d get Robert or Andrew to sell us a few bales of hay and deliver them to the far side of the pond. When Daddy was teaching us to shoot, he always made a point of setting up our targets on a downward slope so that there was no danger of the bullets traveling anywhere but into the ground. I figured Dwight would want to do the same with Cal.

  And that reminded me: maybe Dwight would appreciate finding a box or two of extra cartridges under the tree if his own were going to be digging themselves into hay or dirt. Something else to add to that mental list.

  Outside, that mixture of sleet and freezing rain continued to fall as twilight faded into darkness. Supper was a salad and toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, and I diced a little ham over some greens to take for my lunch tomorrow so that I could go shopping during my lunch recess.

  “Long as you’re making lunches,” Dwight said, “how about fixing me a sandwich? Tomorrow’s shaping up to be real busy.”

  “And both of you do remember what tomorrow is, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow? December twenty-second?” He tried to look as clueless as Cal, who was shaking his head. “Is there a Hurricanes game? An eclipse of the moon?”

  I laughed. “No, and it’s not the opening of snipe season either.”

  “There’s no such thing as snipes,” Cal said. He got up to check the calendar that hung on the side of the refrigerator. “Hey, winter begins today? I thought that was before Thanksgiving.” His finger moved to the next square. “What’s Ha-NOO-ka?”

  “Hanukkah? The Jewish festival of lights,” I explained and gave him an encapsulated version of the Maccabees, the miracle of the oil that lasted eight days, and the symbolism of the menorah.

  “We’re going to celebrate that tomorrow?”

  “No,” Dwight said. “Think about it, buddy. What were you doing this time last year?”

  A sudden grin lit his freckled face. “Oh yeah. Y’all got married!” He paused and looked at us. “I guess I’m spending the night at Grandma’s again?”

  “You got it,” his father said.

  Because there was no school for him the next day, we put another log on the fire and watched a Christmas special that lasted till ten. Eyelids drooping, Cal didn’t argue about going to bed, and I was ready for pajamas myself.

  But Dwight was worried about his young trees, so we bundled up and went out with flashlights and hiking sticks to knock ice off the tender new twigs of the dogwoods and crepe myrtles he’d planted the length of our driveway before the weight of the ice could bow them down and snap the branches.

  Pine branches at the edge of the woods were sagging almost to the ground. It’s like dipping candles. Rain coats the needles, then freezes. More rain, another coat of ice. If the rain continued, by morning each pine needle could be glazed in a quarter-inch thickness of ice. Multiply that by the number of needles on a pine tree and their combined weight would leave the ground littered with snapped branches.

  We walked along the drive, gently tapping the trunk of each small tree, and shards of ice tumbled down like broken glass. The wind and rain tore at our exposed faces and I was glad when Dwight’s phone rang a few minutes after we got outside, so that I could retreat to the house before I was chilled to the bone.

  I headed straight to our bathroom, shed my clothes, and stood under the hot shower till my circulation
returned to normal. I had expected Dwight to join me, but when I walked back into our bedroom, he was still wearing his hat as he took his pistol out of the gun safe in his closet and buckled it on. His badge was clipped to his jacket.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “Trouble with one of the Wentworths again. Two bodies out at a trailer on Massengill Road. No ID yet. Don’t wait up for me.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold.

  —A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

  MAJOR DWIGHT BRYANT—SUNDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 21

  Dwight reached the end of his long driveway and turned onto the hardtop that ran past the farm. A dark and stormy night, he told himself with grim humor.

  Literally.

  It was the dark of the moon so there was nothing to lighten the sky behind the solid gray cloud cover overhead. Rain mixed with sleet beat against the cab of his truck. Tree limbs sagged out over the narrow two-lane road, and the road itself was coated with ice. He was thankful for four-wheel drive, but mindful that even four-wheel drive is not much help if all four wheels are on ice.

  Massengill Road was less than seven miles from the farm, but it took him almost fifteen minutes to get there without sliding into a ditch whenever the truck fishtailed on a curve. Fortunately, it was all back roads and he met less than half a dozen vehicles on the way. They too were inching along cautiously.

  There was no real need to look for a street address once he was in the vicinity. He could have followed the glow of blue and red lights that bounced off the low-hanging clouds, but the faded numbers on a rusty, dilapidated mailbox confirmed that this was indeed the dirt lane that would lead up to the house trailer occupied by one of the Wentworths.

  The lane was rutted and almost washed out in places, but his tires grabbed the dirt with confidence and he easily reached the top of the rise, where he circled past two prowl cars and pulled in beside Detective Mayleen Richards’s truck, which was parked next to Deputy Percy Denning’s crime scene van. A red two-door Honda Civic and a black Ford F-150 pickup were nosed in next to the right side of the trailer.

  Floodlights had been set up around the front of the mobile home and they illuminated the two forms covered in plastic sheeting that lay on the bare ground.

  With her flaming red hair tucked inside the hood of her dark blue parka, Richards squatted off to one side and just beyond the yellow tape to watch while Denning sheltered under an umbrella and videotaped the whole area. She held a powerful flashlight in her gloved hands and played the beam at an angle as she slowly swept the yard. The ice-coated dirt sparkled in the rain and made it hard for her to distinguish what was there.

  “On your left!” she called to Denning. “Is that anything?”

  Being careful where he stepped, Denning moved over to the small brass object pinpointed by her torch and said, “Good eyes, Mayleen. Our first shell casing.”

  It lay just inside the cordoned-off area and Denning documented it in relation to the sheeted bodies a few feet away, then leaned in for a close-up. Deputy Raeford McLamb placed a marker on the dirt and carefully bagged and tagged the casing.

  “Only one casing?” Dwight asked Richards when he was near enough to be heard.

  She continued to sweep the area inch by inch with the angled beam. “Only one so far, sir. We’re beginning to think the shooter cleaned up after himself.” She paused. “Or herself. Seems to have missed that one, though.”

  “Who called it in?”

  In the cold night air, their breath sent out little puffs of steam when they spoke.

  Richards stood and pointed her torch toward a light blue pickup parked beyond the floodlights on the edge of the scruffy yard. “His name’s Willie Faison. He blew a point-ten when the responding trooper got here to check out his story. Says that Jason Wentworth owed him some money and he came by to collect it and found him lying there on the ground near his brother.”

  “He make a positive ID?”

  “Sounded positive to me. Jason and Matt Wentworth.”

  Denning had finished with the exterior and had moved on toward the trailer itself. Dwight noted that the dwelling was dark and that the door was ajar. A cheap plastic wreath of white holly leaves sprinkled with silver glitter hung on the door. Denning seemed to be paying particular attention to the steps and the floor of the entryway.

  “What are you seeing, Denning?” Dwight called.

  “Not sure, Major, but it looks like someone tracked dirt in after it started raining.”

  Dwight lifted the yellow tape and ducked underneath. He, too, watched where he was walking and took care to step in the tracks already made by his deputies. Richards followed. He turned back the sheeting on the nearer body. The youth had fallen on his back and his right hand rested on a large bloodstain over his heart. A thin layer of ice had crusted over his face and clothes. Between the icy rain and the floodlights, the eyes of the green viper tattooed on the back of his hand seemed to glisten with life.

  Dwight remembered that tattooed hand reaching for his pistol only a few days ago at West Colleton’s Career Day. Afterward, Deborah had remarked that it was probably only a matter of time before this kid showed up in her court, just like his brothers before him.

  No chance of that now.

  He pulled the sheet back over the boy and turned to the second body. This one lay facedown on the frozen ground and had apparently been shot twice in the back. He, too, had been lying exposed long enough to be covered in ice.

  “Looks like he was trying to run away,” Mayleen Richards said.

  Both victims were dressed in boots, jeans, flannel shirts, and pullover sweatshirts. Neither wore jackets.

  “I’m guessing someone pulled up in front here, honked the horn, waited for them to come out, and then gunned them down.”

  “Tire tracks?” Dwight asked. “Shoe tracks?”

  “Far as we can tell, just Faison’s,” she said, illustrating with her torch where tires had circled close to Matt Wentworth’s body. “He says he saw them lying there when he drove up and he got as near as he could without getting out of his truck. Soon as he realized they were both dead, he pulled up over there, then went inside to call 911 because his cell phone died on him yesterday. Or so he says. And of course, the trooper drove in over Faison’s tracks.”

  A wisp of red hair had escaped from her hood and was now glazed with ice. She hunched deeper into her parka and shook her head pessimistically.

  “It’s too soon to tell when they were shot. If it happened this afternoon, the rain probably washed away any tire marks.”

  “Rigor?”

  “Hard to say,” she replied. “They’re well on their way to being frozen like a side of deer meat.”

  “Well, let’s see what Faison’s got to add to all this.”

  By now, the rain had finished changing over into sleet and the wind had picked up so that icy granules stung their faces as Dwight led the way over to the Toyota pickup truck. There was a dent in the door on the driver’s side and the rear bumper sagged as if held on by baling wire. He rapped on the door, but there was no response from the man inside. He pulled open the door and saw Faison seated upright with his head back against two rifles that rested on the truck’s gun rack. Loud snores reverberated off the cab’s hard surfaces and the smell of beer hit them in the face. Three empty cans lay on the floor by Faison’s feet and his hands clutched a fourth can even though it emptied itself across the man’s jacket and pant legs.

  “I’m guessing that no one thought to check whether he had more beer with him,” Dwight said mildly.

  “No, sir,” Mayleen said.

  From the embarrassment in her tone, Dwight knew that her face was probably flame-red.

  “Not your fault,” he said kindly. “That was the trooper’s job.”

  He summoned that officer over and showed him the results of his sloppiness. To the young officer’s credit, he didn’t try to make excuses.


  “I understand he blew a point-ten?” Dwight asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “So you’ll be charging him with a DWI?”

  “Yessir. I got here fifteen minutes after it was called in. He was here by himself, behind the wheel, with his keys in the ignition and the motor running to keep the heater going. No reason to think he hadn’t driven himself here. And even if he’d drunk something else after calling, I didn’t think he had time to get that drunk. I did flash my light over the interior, but I didn’t see any cans, empty or full.”

  “You do a field sobriety test?”

  “No, sir. Those bodies were my primary concern.”

  “What about his truck box?”

  Embarrassed, the officer admitted he hadn’t checked.

  Dwight reached over and pressed the catch on the metal box clamped onto the truck bed directly beneath the cab’s rear window. Inside were an assortment of plumber’s tools—wrenches, pipe putty, a rusty plumbing snake, a heavy-duty flashlight with a broken lens, pipe clamps, and several elbow joints in various diameters. On top of those lay a billed cap in fluorescent orange, and an empty twelve-can beer carton.

  “Your first homicide scene?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Don’t worry, son,” Dwight told him. “I’m not going to write you up on this. You were probably concerned with securing the scene and calling in your report.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Just take him in, book him, and see that he’s sober by the time I get there in the morning.”

  “Yessir!”

  It took three officers to pry Willie Faison out of the truck and into the backseat of the patrol car. As the trooper headed back down the lane, he had to pull aside for the EMS truck that had arrived to transport the bodies to the morgue.

  Before they were loaded onto the truck, the contents of their pockets were bagged. Both had died with their wallets and car keys in their pockets.

  “So robbery wasn’t the motive,” Dwight said, stating the obvious.