Hard Row

by Margaret Maron

  I sighed. “Not particularly. Without the head and torso, Dwight and Bo are beginning to think they may never get an identity. The fingerprints aren’t in any official databases and there don’t seem to be any men missing who match the body type the medical examiner’s postulated, based on two legs, a hand, and an arm.”

  We ordered, then talked about the baby, about Cal, about Dwight and Avery, about the Mideast situation and the President’s latest imbecilic pronouncements until our food came. Our talk was the usual bouncing from subject to subject that friends do when they know each other so well they can almost finish each other’s sentences. She laughed when I told her Haywood and Isabel’s reaction to the idea of raising ostriches and she shared a bit of catty gossip about a woman attorney that neither of us likes. We worried briefly about Luther Parker, a judge that we do like, and how it was lucky he’d only twisted his ankle when he fell on the ice yesterday.

  “How did he rule on that violation of the restraining order by—what’s his name? Braswell? Your client’s ex-husband?” I asked.

  “James Braswell,” she said. “Imposed another fine and gave him ten more days in jail, but since it’s to run concurrent with what you gave him, he’ll be out again by the middle of next week. If he violates it again, Parker warned him that he could be doing some serious time. I hope this convinces him to stay away because Karen’s really scared of him, Deborah.”

  “Any children?”

  “No, but she’s got a sick mother that she’s caring for, so she doesn’t feel she can just cut and run even though that’s what her gut’s telling her.”

  This was not the first time we’d had this discussion about why some men can’t accept that a relationship is over when the woman says it’s over.

  “At least Judge Parker’s going to take away his guns.”

  “That’s a step in the right direction,” I said trying to ignore the dish of butter between us that cried out to be spread on the last of my cornbread.

  My back was to the door so I didn’t immediately see the woman who spoke to Portland by name as she started to pass our table.

  Portland looked up and did a double take. “Well, I’ll be darned! Hey, girl! What brings you up to Dobbs?”

  “A man, of course,” the laughing voice said. “Isn’t it always?”

  I half-turned in my seat and immediately recognized the redhead who had been in my courtroom yesterday.

  “Deborah,” said Portland, “do y’all know each other? Robbie-Lane Smith?”

  I smiled and shook my head.

  “Well, you’ve heard me talk about her. Deborah Knott, meet Robbie-Lane Smith. She managed that restaurant down at Wrightsville Beach where I worked two summers.”

  “I thought her name was Flame—? Oh, right. The hair.”

  The woman laughed. “A lot of people still call me that.”

  Portland arched an eyebrow at her old roommate. “People of the male persuasion?”

  A noncommittal shrug didn’t exactly deny it. She wore jeans again today and carried her tan fleece-lined jacket over one arm. Her silk shirt was a dark copper that did nice things for her green eyes and fair complexion even as I realized that she was probably mid-forties instead of the late thirties I’d first thought her.

  “Are you by yourself?” Portland gestured to the empty chair at our table. “Deborah and I are almost finished, but why don’t you join us?”

  “Sorry. I’m meeting someone.” She pulled a card from her pocket. “Here’s my cell number and email, though, and why don’t you give me yours? It looks like I’m going to be around for a couple of days. Maybe we could get together for drinks or something?”

  “Sure.” Portland rummaged in her purse and came up with one of her own cards.

  “Portland Brewer now? You’re married?”

  “And the mother of a two-and-a-half-month-old,” she said proudly. “You still at the restaurant?”

  “Nope. I own a B&B just two blocks from the River Walk down in Wilmington. We have some serious catching up to do.” She turned to follow the waitress who had been waiting to show her to a booth in the back. “Call me, okay? Nice meeting you, Judge.”

  “Oh, God, look at those hips!” Portland murmured enviously as the other woman walked away. “She’s at least five years older than me and I never looked that sexy in jeans. I’m a cow!”

  “You are not a cow,” I soothed. “Besides, didn’t you say you’d lost another two pounds?”

  Her face brightened beneath her mop of short black curls. “True. And I didn’t eat any bread or butter today.”

  “There you go, then.”

  I signaled our waitress that we were ready for our check and we gathered up our coats and scarves.

  “How did Flame know you’re a judge?” asked Portland as we were leaving.

  I explained that she’d been in my court the afternoon before. “The Harris Farms divorce,” I said. “And Mrs. Harris was furious that she was there. I get the impression that your friend Flame is Buck Harris’s new flame.”

  “Really? I’ve heard tales about him for years but I never met him. Is he good-looking?”

  “I’ve only seen him once and he’s not our type—musclebound with a thick neck as I recall. I’ve had to grant four continuances because he just won’t come to court. Reid’s his attorney and I warned him yesterday that if Harris doesn’t show up next week, I’m going to try the case without him.”

  “Speak of the devil and up he jumps,” said Portland, and we watched as my cousin Reid Stephenson entered the restaurant and went straight on back to join Flame Smith in a rear booth.

  “If Buck Harris doesn’t get himself down from the mountains and tend to business, he’s liable to find Reid warming her bed.”

  “You’re getting cynical in your old age,” Portland said. “She’s got at least ten years on him.”

  “You’re the one who said how sexy she looked in those jeans,” I reminded her. “And we both know Reid’s weakness for redheads.”

  “Not to mention blondes and brunettes,” Portland murmured.

  “Now who’s being cynical?”

  At the afternoon break, I called Dwight’s number.

  He answered on the first ring. “Bryant here.” His tone was brusque.

  “And hey to you, too,” I said. “Does this mean the honeymoon’s over?”

  “Sorry. I didn’t check my screen.” Warmth came back into his voice. “I assumed it was Richards calling back. What’s up?”

  “I just wanted to know if you remembered to pick up Bandit’s heartworm pills from the vet? Or should I do it on my way home?”

  “Could you?” he asked. “And call Kate to let her know I’m running late?”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll pick Cal up, too.”

  I heard voices in the background. “What’s going on?”

  “Another hand’s been reported,” he said grimly. “At the edge of Apple Creek, just off Jernigan Road.”

  “Jernigan Road? That’s nowhere near Ward Dairy. Was there a wedding ring on the finger?”

  “I doubt it,” Dwight said. “They say it’s another right.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Cold does not injure the vitality of seeds, but moisture is detrimental to all kinds.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  DWIGHT BRYANT

  THURSDAY AFTERNOON, MARCH 2

  Dwight hung up the phone as several officers crowded into his office to get their instructions. Using the large topographical map of the county that covered most of one wall, he located Apple Creek and traced it with his finger till it crossed Jernigan Road. It was well south and east of Dobbs and, as Deborah had just pointed out, nowhere near Ward Dairy Road or Bethel Baptist where the other limbs had been found.

  “Here’s where the kids found the hand. Most animals won’t usually carry something all that far, but it could have washed down, so for starters, I want you walking at least a half-mile up the creek and maybe a quarter-mile down
. Both sides. Pay particular attention here and here, where there’re lanes that get close enough to the creek that a body could be easily dumped from a vehicle. And keep your eyes open for anything out of the ordinary that might give a clue to whoever did the dumping. Mel, you and your team take it north and the rest of you go south. Richards says it looks like that hand’s been out there a while, so take some rods and check anything that looks like a log.”

  “Not much of a creek, as I remember,” said Sheriff Bo Poole when the room was clear. “Just a little offshoot of Black Creek.”

  “Best I recall, it pretty much dries up every August,” Dwight agreed, “but we’ve had a right wet winter and I’ve heard it can pool up in places.”

  Bo nodded. “Beaver dams.”

  He was a small trim man, but he carried his authority like a six-footer. “I used to run a trapline through there when I was a boy. Muskrats and beavers, even the occasional mink.”

  He went over to the map and looked at it so intently that Dwight was sure his boss was walking the creek again in his mind.

  While Dwight called Detective Mayleen Richards to tell her reinforcements were on the way and how she should deploy them, he watched as Bo put his finger on the creek and traced it a little further west.

  “Here’s where it flows out of Black Creek. Used to be good trapping along in here, too.” He looked up at Dwight. “You fixing to head out there?”

  Dwight nodded.

  “Let me get my hat. Maybe I’ll ride along with you.”

  After so many gray days, the blue sky was washed clean of all clouds. Even the sunlight seemed extra bright, and they rode out of Dobbs in companionable silence, enjoying the novelty of a clear windshield and no wipers swishing back and forth.

  “Everything’s going good then?” Bo asked.

  “Would be better if somebody’d come forward and tell us who’s missing.”

  “No, I meant at home. You and Deborah and your boy.”

  “He’s handling it better than I would. Bedtimes can be a little rough. That seems to be when he misses Jonna the most.”

  “How’s Deborah handling it?”

  “Cal and me, we’re real lucky, Bo.”

  “She got any long-range plans for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some women, they think they want a lawman and then when they get him, they don’t want the law part.”

  “That happen with you and Marnie?”

  “Naw, but Marnie was special.”

  “So’s Deborah.”

  “All I’m saying is let me know if I need to start looking me another chief deputy.”

  “And all I’m saying is don’t plan on writing a want ad anytime soon.”

  When they pulled onto the shoulder of Jernigan Road near the little bridge that crossed Apple Creek and stepped out of the truck, a bitter wind whipped through the trees and dead vines that overhung the water. It stung their eyes and cut at their bare faces. Richards walked up from the creekbank to meet them, a wad of tissues in her gloved hand. She had been fighting a drippy cold all week and the tip of her nose was raw from blowing. Tendrils of cinnamon brown hair worked their way loose from her cap and blew across her freckled face until she tucked them back in.

  “Nothing yet, sir,” she reported. “It’s up this way.”

  Thin crusts of ice edged the creek, which was only about eight feet wide and slow-moving. At this point it was less than eighteen inches deep.

  The two men followed as Richards led the way down a narrow rough footpath that paralleled the south bank. Nearly impassable here at the end of winter, one would almost need a bushaxe to get through it in summer. Dried briars tore at their pantlegs and tangled vines caught at their feet. All three of them carried slender metal rods and they used them as staffs to keep their balance and brush back limbs.

  Dwight was pleased to see that Mayleen was a savvy enough woodsman to hold back the small tree branches she pushed aside till Bo could grab them in turn and hold them for Dwight, rather like holding open a set of swinging doors to keep them from hitting the person behind in the face. It was a reminder that Mayleen grew up in this area and that Bo knew her people, which is how she talked him into giving her a job.

  “Who’d you say found it?” asked Bo, who kept having to duck low-hanging branches to keep from losing his trademark porkpie hat—a dapper black felt in winter, black straw in the summer.

  “Three girls from the local high school.” Richards paused to blow her nose. “They were looking for early fiddleheads for a science project. One of them’s my niece. Shirlee’s oldest daughter?”

  Bo grunted to acknowledge he knew her sister Shirlee.

  “Soon as they realized what it was, she called me on her cell phone and sent me a picture of it. I’m afraid they trampled the ground around it too much for us to see any animal tracks.”

  Bo shook his head and Dwight knew it was not over the messed up tracks, but that teenagers came equipped these days with cell phones that could transmit pictures instantaneously.

  “Getting too high tech for me,” he said. “Any day now I expect to hear they’ve put a chip in somebody’s brain so they can tap right into the Internet without having to mess with a keyboard or screen.”

  A few hundred feet or so in from the road, they reached the scene, a popular local fishing spot, according to Richards. A ring of stones encircled an old campfire and a few drink cans and scraps of paper were scattered around.

  “There’s actually a way to drive here closer, but it means going around through someone’s fields. That’s how the girls got here,” she said.

  Detective Denning was already there taking pictures and documenting the find. The hand lay at the edge of the water among some ice-glazed leaves.

  “My niece said it had ice on it, too, when they first found it,” said Richards. “But when they poked it, the ice broke off.”

  It had been in the open so long that the skin was dark and desiccated around the white finger bones.

  “Not gonna be easy getting fingerprints,” said Denning as they joined them. “I haven’t moved it yet, but just eyeballing it?” He gave a pessimistic shrug inside his thick jacket. “Doesn’t look hopeful.”

  “Were the bones hacked or sawed?” Dwight asked.

  “The cartilage is pretty much gone, so it’s hard to say. Should I go ahead and bag it?”

  Bo Poole deferred to Dwight, who nodded.

  Abruptly, the sheriff said, “Tell you what, Dwight. Let’s you and me take a little drive. I need to see something.”

  “Call me if they find anything else,” Dwight said, then followed Bo back out to the road and his truck.

  “Which way, Bo?” he asked, putting the truck in gear.

  “Let’s head over to Black Creek.”

  They drove north along Jernigan Road until they neared a crossroads, at which point, Bo told him to turn left toward the setting sun. As they approached the backside of the unincorporated little town of Black Creek, population around 600 give or take a handful, the empty land gave way to houses.

  “Slow down a hair,” said Bo and his porkpie hat swung back and forth as he studied both sides.

  Dwight knew Bo was enjoying himself so he did not spoil that enjoyment by asking questions.

  “There!” Bo said suddenly, pointing to a narrow dirt road that led south. “Let’s see how far down you can get your truck.”

  The houses here were not much more than shacks and the dark-skinned children who played outside stopped to stare as the two white men passed.

  The dirt road ended in a cable stretched between uprights that looked like sawed-off light poles. Beyond the cable, the land dropped off sharply in a tangle of blackberry bushes and trash trees strangled in kudzu and honeysuckle vines. A well-worn footpath began beside the left upright and disappeared in the undergrowth.

  Bo looked back down the dirt road to the low buildings clustered in the distance, then nodded to himself and struck off down the path.
>
  Dwight followed.

  In a few minutes, they reached the creek that gave the little town its name and the path split to run in both directions along the bank. Without hesitation, Bo followed the flow of water that ran deep and swift after so much rain.

  They came upon the charred remains of a campfire built in a scooped-out hollow edged with creek stones next to a fallen tree that had probably toppled during the last big hurricane and that now probably served as a bench for the kids who had cleared the site. A dirt bike with a twisted frame lay on the far side of the log. Scattered around were several beer cans, an empty wine bottle, cigarette butts and some fast-food wrappers. There were also a couple of roach clips and an empty plastic prescription bottle that had held a relatively mild painkiller, which Dwight picked up. The owner’s name was no longer legible, but the name of the pharmacy was there and so was most of the prescription number. If this was all the kids were into though, things weren’t too bad in this neighborhood.

  He pocketed the bottle for later attention and hurried after Bo, who had not paused at the campfire, but kept walking as if he were late for his own wedding, ducking beneath the tree branches, his small trim body barely disturbing the bushes on either side of the path that pulled at Dwight’s bulk as he tried to pass.

  The creek deepened and narrowed and the path made by casual fishermen and adventurous kids petered out in even rougher underbrush, yet Bo pushed on.

  When Dwight finally caught up, his boss was standing by the water’s edge. At his feet was what at first appeared to be a half-submerged log.

  “Over yonder’s where Apple Creek wanders off,” he told Dwight, pointing downstream to the other side of the creek just as one of their people broke through the underbrush and stopped in surprise in seeing them on that side of the fork. Then he looked down at the remains that lay in the shallows. “And here’s where poor ol’ Fred Mitchiner wandered off to.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The world seeks no stronger evidence of a man’s goodness of heart than kindness.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890