Dust in the Heart

by Ralph Dennis

  DUST IN THE

  HEART

  RALPH DENNIS

  Copyright © 2020 Adventures in Television, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN: 1-7324226-1-3

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7324226-1-2

  Published by

  Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  Also by Ralph Dennis

  The War Heist

  The Broken Fixer

  A Talent for Killing

  The Spy in A Box

  The Hardman Series

  Atlanta Deathwatch

  The Charleston Knife is Back in Town

  The Golden Girl And All

  Pimp For The Dead

  Down Among The Jocks

  Murder Is Not An Odd Job

  Working For The Man

  The Deadly Cotton Heart

  The One Dollar Rip-Off

  Hump’s First Case

  The Last Of The Armageddon Wars

  The Buy Back Blues

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  Author Ralph Dennis is best known for his ground-breaking Hardman series, twelve crime novels set in Atlanta in the 1970s. He died in 1988, leaving behind several unpublished manuscripts. Dust in the Heart is one of those manuscripts, the final book he completed before his death.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Webster County Sheriff Wilton Drake watched the winter sky change as he turned onto the secondary county road and headed for the old Benjamin Henshaw farm. The sky shook and darkened and thunderheads tumbled and rolled toward him. Wind battered the cruiser and the first of the late afternoon rain drummed and splattered against the windshield.

  One building remained on the Henshaw land, a log tobacco barn chinked with red-yellow mud that stood near the center of the fifty-acre plot. The main house and the outbuildings had been razed and the timbers trucked away. While that was being done the barn was renovated. It was cleaned and polished and the heavy wood beams varnished. As a final dressing, the architects from Raleigh added rows of plastic leaf tobacco tied on the thin slats. The barn, according to the land developers, was a county landmark, a classic and a reminder of the past. The preconstruction advertising for the condominiums and apartments coming to the property used a romanticized sketch of the barn as a logo.

  The access road from the secondary highway had deep and uneven ruts. A recent logging operation had cleared away all but a sprinkling of trees. What remained was a quarter acre pecan orchard. Wilt knew, if construction needs dictated it, the pecan trees would go the way of the pines and the hardwoods.

  Another Sheriff’s department cruiser was parked beside the barn. When Wilt drew abreast of the cruiser, Joe Croft, his chief deputy, stepped from behind the wheel and adjusted the yellow slicker he wore. Joe was thirty-two or three, with sandy hair and the lean and hard body of a man who worked out every day with weights and the heavy bag and the speed bag. His face, flushed now with the chill, was fair-skinned. He was usually sunburned all summer. His nose had a slight bend to it, the result of walking into a left a number of years ago in the finals of the North Carolina Golden Gloves. He’d won with blood pouring down into his mouth.

  During the drive from town, Wilt’s left hip had stiffened. He rubbed at the ache before he opened the car door and stepped into the rain.

  “It’s bad,” Joe said. “I’ve never seen anything that even comes close to it.”

  “Where is she?”

  Joe tilted his head. “Back there. At the edge of the pecan trees.”

  “Floyd’s there?” Floyd was a new man on the roster, a big slow man with hands the size of baseball gloves. He wasn’t good at much of anything but he filled in well at a number of jobs.

  “I thought one of us ought to stay with her.”

  “Show me,” Wilt said.

  He followed Joe around the barn and down the path that led to the pecan orchard. Floyd waited at the edge of the trees. He touched the bill of his cap with two fingers, a kind of salute. “Evening, Sheriff.” Wilt dipped his head a couple of times and stepped around Floyd. For all his experience, he wasn’t prepared for his first look at the tiny form sprawled on the scattering of wet, rotting leaves.

  The little girl was dead. There was torn flesh and a smear of blood at the vagina. Rain had washed most of the blood away. Her right leg was at an odd angle, either broken or dislocated. Swellings and bruises covered her face and upper body. Her lips were cut and puffed. The broken stubs of teeth showed beyond the lips. Her eyes were open.

  Wilt backed away and stopped. A flash of sodden white behind the child’s head caught his attention. “What’s behind the girl’s head?”

  “Panties,” Joe said.

  “Hers?”

  “A woman’s. Way too big for her.” Joe turned to Floyd. “Watch the road. Doc Simpson ought to be here any minute. Him and the photographer. We don’t want anybody else down here. Newsmen and TV people will tramp all over the evidence.” Joe looked to Wilt, as if to check that he agreed with the order and to see if Wilt had anything to add.

  Wilt closed his eyes. He felt sick. Floyd was halfway up the path when Wilt called to him. “You got a tarp in your cruiser?”

  “It’s twelve by five.”

  “That ought to do,” Wilt said.

  Joe watched Floyd go out of sight beyond the barn, then turned to Wilt. “You think that’s a good idea …?”

  Wilt knew covering the body was wrong but he didn’t care.

  “I’m not going to look at this one minute longer than I have to.” The rain was heavier now, slapping against their slickers and against the leaf-covered ground. “We’ll say we’re protecting any evidence near the child from rain damage.”

  Joe nodded. “I’d buy that.”

  Floyd returned with the tarp. Joe and Floyd unfolded it, walked the tarp forward and covered the child. Wind whipped at the edges of the tarp. J
oe and Floyd gathered stones and dead limbs and anchored the corners and the sides.

  “Hell of a thing, ain’t it?” Joe said.

  That didn’t need an answer. Wilt walked around the tarp and put his back against a pecan tree. This positioning didn’t help. The cold rain found him. It ran down his face and soaked his uniform shirt collar. He wasn’t pleased that he’d been right, that he’d been expecting this. “Tell me how you happened to look here.”

  “Pure dumb bad luck,” Joe said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Earlier that afternoon, around five, Wilt had needed a drink. The dampness and the cold had his hip screaming at him. A drink eased that a bit. It was excuse, though. He really just wanted to see Diane again.

  He shuffled paper at his desk and moved, from time to time, around the office to be certain the hip didn’t stiffen on him. He watched the clock and he told himself he’d remain in the office until six.

  His hip was a constant reminder of his past, of the sniper in Lebanon who’d put a bullet in him and ended his military career after fifteen years.

  Wilt came back home to Edgefield. He brought with him very little baggage, a medical discharge and the rights to a disability check from the government. After looking around and settling in, with nothing better to do with his time, he decided that his military training and prolonged experience were good preparation for one profession. Law enforcement. He ran for Sheriff of Webster County and won by a wide margin.

  Wilt’s shattered hip, repaired as well as the best Navy doctors and medical science allowed, prevented him from being hired by the Webster Police Department, except for dull desk work. He couldn’t pass the physical. But he could run for Sheriff of Webster County. His military service would be a political plus, not a drawback.

  The incumbent, a man who’d been in office for twelve years and had a stomach like a beer barrel, faced Wilt in a debate late in the campaign. He’d argued, with almost mock sadness, that while he respected Wilt for his military service to his country as much as anyone did, he wasn’t sure that Wilt could handle the rigors of the job.

  Wilt’s answer was brief and to the point. He admitted that he couldn’t tapdance as well as he could before his wound, but if it came down to wrestling a bear, he thought he had as much chance of winning as a short-armed Sheriff who couldn’t reach all the way across his stomach. Wilt won by a wide margin.

  When Wilt took over the office, he kept Joe Croft and fired the rest of the deputies. Floyd was one of Joe’s high school friends. He needed the job and he was honest, Joe said, and Wilt hired him. The other deputies were hand-picked and trained by Wilt and Joe.

  As Edgefield grew, Wilt asked for and received a budget increase that allowed him to hire two more men and Susie, a fulltime switchboard operator. The increase in manpower wasn’t enough. Wilt was already drafting his request for next year. Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that most of the town’s growth had taken place, not in the town proper, but in the outlying areas of the county. The new bars and clubs located there because they wanted to be beyond the control of the city council. What should have been the city Police Department’s problems fell to Wilt and his deputies.

  The rising crime rate bothered Wilt. He couldn’t say with any certainty that it was organized crime, not in the way the Mafia functioned in parts of the county, or the Dixie Mafia operated in the south. But it was not totally disorganized either. It all ran too well, the gears didn’t clash and the engine hummed and purred.

  Biker Mafia, as he liked to call them, had control of most of the topless bars that had surfaced in the county. He also believed the bikers ran the massage parlors along the highway and many of the truck stops where the cross-county drivers would buy their fuel, get a hot meal, a free shower and a bed. It was rumoured, but not yet proved that a trucker could get a girl as well if he had the thirty or forty dollars that was the going rate for that kind of work.

  At ten of six, Susie buzzed from the switchboard. It was Amos Wilson, The Edgefield Police Chief, on the phone.

  “Sheriff, can you come over here?” Amos asked. “It’s important.”

  “What’s it about?” Wilt replied. Amos was longwinded and a meeting with him interested Wilt about as much as a second case of chicken pox.

  “We’ve got a missing child. Six years old. First grade.”

  Couldn’t ignore that.

  “Be right there.” Wilt grabbed his cap and his rain slicker. The drink was forgotten. It didn’t even matter how he felt about the politics and the protocol between his Department and the Police Department. Some other day he and Amos could worry and argue about which one of them was low man and had to make the office calls.

  Amos Wilson had been an All-Conference guard at the University of North Carolina in the early 1960’s. He’d played on a team that made trips to a couple of minor bowls. If he ever went to class it was more than likely he slept through the lectures. In case those twenty years had dimmed the memory of visitors to the Chief’s office, there was a huge blowup of Amos in his Carolina blue and white on the wall. A certificate on one side of the photo assured everyone that Amos had graduated from the F.B.I. school for local law enforcement officers. Balancing that, on the other side of the photo, was a scroll from the Institute of Government at Chapel Hill that proclaimed that he had completed a course of study in the Constitution and the Law.

  Wilt stopped at the front edge of the desk. He didn’t offer to shake hands and Amos’ hands didn’t move from the desk top.

  Amos motioned him toward a chair on the left side of the desk. On the other side, directly facing Wilt, was a young man wearing faded jeans and a fringed leather jacket. Old acne scars spotted the skin high on his cheekbones.

  “This is Earl Newton. He drives a school bus. Earl, you tell the Sheriff the last time you saw Cathy Dobbs.”

  “It was early this afternoon, a bit after three. She got on the bus at the school and I dropped her at her usual stop, like I did every school day.”

  “Where’s that?” Wilt asked.

  “Corner of West Oak and 12th,” Earl said,

  Wilt knew the street and the bus stop. It was near The Traces, the condominiums that opened for sale a little over a year ago.

  “Was she alone?”

  Earl blinked. “Huh?”

  “When she left the bus was there another child with her?”

  “Today there wasn’t. Usually Emily Carter got off there with her. Today Emily was sick and didn’t go to school.”

  “You see anybody on the street when she left the bus?”

  Earl thought a long time. “No.”

  “Any cars parked along the street?”

  “Cars? Sure.” Earl nodded. “But I didn’t see anybody in the cars.”

  “I’ve got a guess,” Wilt said. “I’d bet you know your cars pretty well. Makes and models and years.”

  “I know most of them.”

  Wilt looked at Amos. “While he still has it fresh in his mind, I think we ought to get Earl to make a list of all the cars he saw within a block of that bus stop.”

  Amos looked at the bus driver. “You’ll do that, Earl?”

  “I’ll help any way I can, Chief.”

  “Remember anything you can about those cars. Colors, dented fenders, cracked windshields, anything.”

  Amos sent Earl Newton down the hall with one of his officers. After the door closed, Wilt lit a cigarette and, staring at the blowup of Amos, blew a smoke ring that drifted upward and bounced off Amos’ nose. He was aiming another ring at the chin in the photo when the chief stopped him.

  “You think a list will help us find the little girl … Cathy Dobbs?”

  “Alive?” Wilt shook his head. “I doubt it. But if she’s been harmed it might help us find who did it.” At that moment, Wilt realized that the possibility that the child was dead hadn’t occurred to Amos.

  Amos leaned forward and planted his thick elbows on the desk blotter. “You think …?”

  “It�
�s better than an even chance,” Wilt said. He leaned forward and stubbed his cigarette in the ashtray directly under Amos’ chin.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Just dumb bad luck,” Joe repeated.

  The rain was heavier now. It pounded down upon the tarp. Wilt was soaked except for the hat which was covered with a transparent plastic and the part of his body that was under the slicker.

  “It was the list of cars the bus driver gave you,” Joe said.

  “Which car?”

  “A red and white Thunderbird. The kid’s guess was that it was a 1980 or 1981.”

  The Newton boy had a good eye for cars and a memory for details.

  “Go on.”

  “Floyd and me, we did the sweep search over here the way you told us to. Along the way we stopped off at Buster’s.” Buster’s was a combination grocery store and gas station. “I went in to get a coffee for Floyd and a Coke for me. Buster’s son-in-law … what’s his name?… was working and I asked him about a red and white Thunderbird. No, I started through the list and the Thunderbird was first.”

  “Rance Dawkins’s his name,” Wilt said.

  “That’s right. Well, Rance said he was on his way to work, on the county road, when he thought he saw a Thunderbird, it was red and white, on the access road heading for the tobacco barn. According to him, he didn’t think much about it. For some months the place’s been a lovers’ lane and he thought it was some high school kids going in there to make out.”

  “When was that?”

  “He said he couldn’t be sure but he thinks it was right around four o’clock.”

  “He get a look at the people in the car?”

  “He said he was too far away.” Joe shrugged his shoulders. “Bad luck there.”

  That was Rance’s way, the way he’d been all the years Wilt had known him. Always in the right place but never there at the right time. A few minutes earlier and he’d have had a look at the driver of the Thunderbird.

  “Bring Rance in tomorrow and get his statement about what he saw. Otherwise he’ll drink another fruit jar of that pop skull and lose the rest of what’s left of his memory.”

  “Soon as I see the schedule, I’ll slot him in.”