Dwight gestured for him to take a seat and waited
while Millard King explained that he was the attorney
the judge had appointed to represent him yesterday and
that he was here to discuss those charges, but first this
officer, Major Bryant, had some questions for him.
Dwight had procured a tape recorder from the front
desk and as he set it up, King frowned. “What’s this
about, Bryant?”
“Ask him to state his name and address, please,”
Dwight said pleasantly.
Both men complied and Dwight added the date and
the names of those present.
“How long has he worked for Harris Farms?”
“Two years.”
“How did he know that Buck Harris was dead?”
They had released the identity of the mutilated body
last night, so it had been all over the morning news.
Nevertheless, Millard King drew himself up and said,
“What? Wait a minute, here, Bryant. You accusing my
client of murder?”
“I have witnesses who can testify that he suspected
that Harris was dead before it was public knowledge.
All I’m asking is how did he know it before the rest of
us?”
“Okay, but I’m going to warn him that he doesn’t
have to answer if it self-incriminates.”
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MARGARET MARON
“Fine, but remind him that we now have his finger-
prints on file.”
“You have the killer’s fingerprints?”
Dwight gave a pointed look to his watch. “Once his
people come back, he’s free to go, you know.”
Annoyed, King translated Dwight’s questions and
it was soon apparent that the farmworker was denying
knowledge of anything, anywhere, any time. But when
King pressed him and rubbed his thumbs across his own
fingerprints, Sanaugustin went mute.
Then, hesitantly, he framed a question and King
looked at Dwight. “He wants to know if fingerprints
show up on everything.”
“Like what?”
King gave a hands-up gesture of futility. “He won’t
say.”
Dwight considered for a long moment, his brown
eyes fixed on the Mexican, who dropped his own eyes.
Dwight had never thought of himself as intuitive. He
put more faith in connecting the dots than in leaping
over them. But Deborah had been a judge for four years.
Hundreds of liars and con artists had stood before her.
If it was her opinion that Sanaugustin’s question was to
get confirmation of something suspected but not posi-
tively known, surely that counted for something. But
if that were the case, why was this guy worried about
fingerprints? Unless—?
“Tell him that yes, we can lift fingerprints off of
wooden doors,” he said, hoping to God that Denning
had indeed dusted the doors of that bloody abattoir.
“And if he touched the car, his prints will be there as
well.”
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When translated, his words unleashed such a torrent
of Spanish that even King was taken aback. He mo-
tioned for his client to slow down. At least twice in the
narrative, the man crossed himself.
Eventually, he ran out of words, crossed himself a
final time, and waited for King to turn to Dwight and
repeat what had been said.
Everyone at the camp had heard about the body parts
that were appearing along the length of their road, he
had told King. They had even, may God forgive them,
joked about it. But no one connected it with their farm.
How should they? It was an Anglo thing, nothing to do
with them. As for him, yes, he had once been a heavy
user, but now he was trying to stay clean for the sake of
the children. That’s why he gave most of his money to
his wife to save for them. But on Saturday Juan had sent
him over to the sheds to get a tractor hitch and he went
to the wrong shed by mistake. Inside was the big boss’s
car and that made him curious. Why was the car there?
Then when he got closer, he heard the flies and smelled
the stench of blood. Lots of blood. Bloody chains lay on
the floor. Nearby, a bloody axe.
He had panicked, slammed the door shut, then found
the tractor hitch he’d been sent for. As soon as he could
get away, he had made his wife give him money and
had come into town to buy something that would take
away the sight and the smell. That was the truth. On his
mother’s grave he would swear it.
Ever since a killer had suckered him with a convinc-
ing show of grief and bewilderment over the death of
a spouse, Dwight no longer trusted his instincts as to
whether someone was lying or telling the truth, but
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MARGARET MARON
there was something about the man’s show of exag-
gerated wide-eyed innocence at the end that made him
wonder if they were hearing the whole story.
“Who did he tell?”
“He says nobody.”
“Ask him who hated his boss enough to do that?”
Again the negative shrug and a refusal to speculate.
“Juan Santos? Sid Lomax?”
But Rafael Sanaugustin continued to swear that this
was the full extent of his knowledge and beyond that
they could not budge him.
Dwight switched off the tape recorder and carried it
back out to the desk, leaving Millard King to discuss the
possession charges with his client.
When Juan Santos and the two women returned, he
had them go around to his office with him. According
to the jailer’s log, no one had visited Sanaugustin since
he was locked up Saturday night, so the likelihood of
their having conferred was minimal but not wholly out
of the question because he’d used his one phone call to
tell Santos where he was. When Dwight first asked about
Sanaugustin’s movements on Saturday, Santos did not
immediately mention sending him for a tractor hitch.
That detail was sandwiched in between their problems
with one of the tractors and how they were falling be-
hind schedule with the spring plowing, and it seemed to
come almost as an afterthought, as if it were something
of little importance. Despite rigorous questioning, all
three denied knowing what Sanaugustin had seen on
Saturday and all declared that they had first learned of it
and of Buck Harris’s death when Dwight was out there
on the farm yesterday.
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Dwight stared at them in frustration. Impossible to
know who really knew what, but he was willing to bet
that Señora Sanaugustin knew more than she was willing
to admit. Wives usually did. True to his word, though,
he turned them all loose at two o’clock and reached for
his phone to call Richards and bring her up to date on
what he’d learned.
She sounded equally dispirited when she reported
that they had come up pretty dry as well. “Bu
t we did
learn that Mrs. Harris was out here on the farm that
Monday,” she said. “And at least it’s stopped raining.”
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C H A P T E R
25
The employer who treats his help fairly and reasonably in all
respects is the one who will, as a general rule, secure the best
results from their service.
—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890
% No sooner did Juan Santos and the two women
leave, than Dwight’s phone rang. It was Pete
Taylor.
“Sorry, Bryant, but Mrs. Harris’s daughter is flying in
this afternoon and she can’t make it up to Dobbs today.
What about tomorrow morning?”
“Fine,” said Dwight. “Nine o’clock?”
“That’ll work for her. And . . . uh . . . this is a little
gruesome, but she was asking me about funeral ar-
rangements for Harris. The daughter’s going to want
to know. But his head’s still missing, isn’t it?”
“ ’Fraid so, Taylor,” he said, seeing no need for the
daughter to know what else was missing. “I know it’s
weird for her, but we may not find it for months. If ever.
The ME’s probably ready to release what we do have,
though.”
“I’ll get back to you on that,” said Taylor. “See you
in the morning. Nine o’clock.”
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With his afternoon unexpectedly clear, Dwight called
McLamb and got an update on the Mitchiner case.
Because the two deputies would not be speaking to
the old man’s daughter till five, Dwight sent them to
question some witnesses about a violent home invasion
that had taken place in Black Creek over the weekend.
“While you’re in that neighborhood, try dropping the
name of Mitchiner’s daughter. See if she has any en-
emies who might have thought that they’d hurt her if
they hurt him.”
After attending to a few more administrative details,
Dwight called Richards to say that he was coming out
to the Buckley place. “Tell Mrs. Samuelson we want to
speak to her again.”
“Should I try questioning Sanaugustin’s wife when
she gets here?”
“Not if the men are around. If she’s going to talk at
all, it’ll probably be when they’re not there.”
Despite the gory murder and the puzzle of Mitchiner’s
hand, Dwight felt almost lighthearted as he drove out
along Ward Dairy Road. The sun was breaking through
the clouds, trees were beginning to bud and more
than one yard sported bright bursts of yellow forsythia
bushes. The rains would have settled the dirt around
the roots of the trees they had planted this weekend,
and whatever the problems with Cal, Deborah seemed
to be taking them in stride.
He was not particularly superstitious but he caught
himself checking the cab of the truck for some wood to
touch.
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MARGARET MARON
Just to be on the safe side.
After years of wanting what he thought he could
never have, these last few months had been so good that
he was almost afraid he was going to jinx his luck by
even acknowledging it. He told himself to concentrate
instead on the cases at hand.
Start with Mitchiner. An old man with a fading grasp
on reality. Had he wandered away on his own or had
someone taken him? The hand proved that someone
knew where his body was because it had been cut loose
and carried from that isolated spot on Black Creek
downstream to a more frequented place on Apple
Creek. Why?
Because they wanted the hand to be found? Because
they knew it would lead back to the body further up-
stream?
Deborah was fond of asking “Who profits?” but on
the face of it, no one. Yes, Mitchiner’s daughter was
suing the rest home, but that was almost reflexive these
days even though most such cases no longer generated
large settlements. Besides, everyone said that she and
her son were devoted to the old man. Before he got his
driver’s license, the kid rode his bicycle over there after
school almost every afternoon to play checkers with
him; after he turned sixteen, he came as regularly to
take his grandfather out for a drive around town. The
daughter was there a couple of nights a week and again
on the weekends. On Saturdays, she had seen to his
physical well-being, trimming his hair and toenails and
seeing that he bathed properly. On Sundays, she had
taken him to church for his spiritual well-being.
According to the statements given when Mitchiner
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first went missing, he liked to visit the graveyard where
his wife and parents were buried and to walk the old
neighborhood, so that’s where their first search efforts
had been concentrated. How had he wound up in the
creek, miles from his childhood haunts?
And Buck Harris.
Everyone said he was a bull of a man, a physical man
who still liked to climb on a tractor and stay hands-on
with every aspect of his crops, yet always up for sex.
Whose ox had he gored?
The possibilities were almost endless. One of the
migrants at the camp? Someone he had done business
with? Someone whose woman he’d taken? Certainly
someone familiar with that empty shed. Mrs. Samuelson
had said the killer must be “a hateful and hating man.”
He couldn’t argue with that. To kill and butcher and
then strew the parts around for the buzzards?
And yeah, spouses and lovers were usually their best
suspects, but surely no woman would have done what
was done to Harris? On the other hand, that missing
part of his anatomy certainly did seem to suggest a sex-
ual motive. But what in God’s name could he have done
to inspire such cruelty? Think of gaining consciousness
to find yourself lying there in chains, naked and vulner-
able as a killer lifts an axe and swings it down on your
bone and flesh. The killer clearly meant for him to know
it was coming, otherwise why the chains? Why not just
go ahead and kill him quickly and cleanly?
If Harris was lucky, the first blow would have made
him black out from the shock to his system. If he wasn’t
lucky—?
Dwight tried to cleanse the images from his mind.
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MARGARET MARON
Mayleen Richards and Jack Jamison were waiting for
him near the rear of Buck Harris’s homeplace. Two
old-fashioned bench swings hung from the limbs of an
enormous oak tree and the deputies seemed to be enjoy-
ing the warm afternoon sunshine, although Richards’s
dispirited greeting made Dwight think that Jamison
must have told her about his resignation.
“Where’s Denning?” he asked.
“He’s back at the shed, going over the car with a fine-
tooth comb,” Jamison said.
“I thought he did that last night.”
“He did, but you know Denning.”
Dwight nodded. Attention to detail and a willingness
to check and recheck were precisely why he’d promoted
Percy Denning to the job.
He glanced inquiringly at the shabby, unfamiliar car
parked at the edge of the yard.
“Mrs. Samuelson’s got those two migrant women
helping her give the place a good cleaning. They got
here about ten minutes ago,” Richards said. “She ex-
pects Mrs. Harris and her daughter to stay here tomor-
row night. She also seems to think the daughter inherits
this place.”
“She’s right,” said Dwight as he rang the back door-
bell. “At least, that’s what his lawyer told me.”
After a minute or two with no answer, he rang again.
There was another short wait, then Mrs. Samuelson
opened the door with a visible annoyance that was only
slightly tempered by seeing him there instead of the two
deputies again. Today, her white bib apron covered a
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short-sleeved maroon dress and it was nowhere near as
crisp as the first time she had talked to them. This apron
had seen some serious action.
“I’m sorry, Major . . . Bryant, is it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Major Bryant, I’m real busy right now.”
“I’m sure you are, ma’am, but we have a few more
questions for you.”
She started to protest, but then seemed to realize that
it would save time in the long run to capitulate and get it
over with. She held the door open wide for them, “But
please wipe your feet on the mat. We already mopped
the kitchen floor.”
Feeling six years old again, they did as they were told
and followed her into the large kitchen. She invited
them to sit down at the old wooden table, but there
was no offer of coffee or cinnamon rolls today.
“You know what we found out there in that equip-
ment shed yesterday?” Dwight asked.
She nodded, her lips tight.
“That means he was killed by someone familiar with
this place. So I ask you again, Mrs. Samuelson. Who on
this farm thought they had a reason to kill Mr. Harris?”
“And I tell you again, Major Bryant, that I don’t
know. If it’s something to do with the farm, you need to
ask Sid Lomax. If it’s something to do with his personal
life, maybe you need to be asking that Smith woman.
Maybe she had a boyfriend who didn’t like her messing
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