Winter's Child

by Margaret Maron

  “And not from the Morrows?”

  “You heard about that, too?”

  “Same gun, they tell me.”

  “Did they tell you that he had gambled with Shay money?”

  “Stock market losses, right?”

  Mrs. Prentice shook her head. “He lost most of his own fortune in the crash of 1929, but he didn’t shoot himself till two years later when it turned out that he’d been embezzling money for his gambling debts. He would have gone to prison. That was the disgrace he could not face. The Shays covered it up and put the best face on it they could because they didn’t want to be-smirch the Morrow name. I’m not sure that Laura knows about her grandfather even to this day.”

  “You’re not a Morrow?” asked Dwight.

  “Oh, good Lord, no! Laura’s mother and mine were Ansons, not a speck of kin to the Morrows except by marriage.”

  “Mrs. Prentice—”

  “Call me Eleanor,” she said. “After all, we’re con- nected, you and I, through Cal. I’m sorry we never met before. I can’t get over how much Cal looks like you.”

  Before he could reply, the door opened and one of the elderly friends poked her white head into the room.

  “So this is where you disappeared,” she scolded.

  “Laura needs you. You know how she asked Mr. Thomas to bring pictures of caskets? Well, he’s come and she wants you to help her choose.”

  “Oh dear,” said Eleanor Prentice, rising at once. “I thought she agreed to wait till Pam was here. Will you show Major Bryant out for me?”

  C H A P T E R

  16

  Again, if during a storm from the north there is a whitegleam from that quarter, while in the south a solid mass ofcloud has formed, it generally signifies a change to fairweather.

  —Theophrastus

  Saturday afternoon, 22 January

  The woman who escorted Dwight down the wide staircase of Mrs. Shay’s house was a hand-wringer who wanted to pause on almost every step to be-moan Jonna’s death and the unlikelihood of finding “that poor little boy” unharmed “because, oh dear, everyone knows why little children are taken and it’s just wicked!”

  Grimly, he saw that more women waited in the foyer so that they could add their own commiserations.

  Except that they didn’t. Once again he had made a stereotyped assumption about ineffective, hand-wringing women; and once again, practical women like his mother or Deborah’s Aunt Zell were there to haul him up short.

  The blue-haired ladies who met him at the bottom of the steps handed him two large flat boxes. “We know you can’t stay and eat something now,” one of them said briskly, “but we want you to take this back to Paul Radcliff’s office and share it with the officers who are trying to find Cal. It’s way too much food for Laura’s small family and there’s no sense in having it go to waste, you hear?”

  “Yes, ma’am. And thank you. I know they’ll appreciate it.”

  He certainly did, he thought as he carried the boxes back to his truck. He could smell hot biscuits and fried chicken. Despite his anxiety about Cal, his stomach rumbled. The small bowl of soup Mrs. Shay had given him at noon was long gone.

  His phone rang just as he put his key in the ignition, and when he answered it, Bo Poole’s voice said,

  “Dwight? What the hell’s going on up there, boy?”

  As concisely as possible, he told his boss about Cal’s disappearance and the discovery of his ex-wife’s body.

  The sheriff listened quietly, asked a couple of questions, then said, “What about those state police agents?

  They giving you a hard time? Say the word and I’ll speak to an old buddy of mine in Richmond.”

  “That’s okay for now,” Dwight told him. “If things get dicey, I’ll let you know. How’s the Rouse case coming?

  Any breaks yet?”

  Poole repeated the report that Mayleen Richards had given him a little earlier. “She’s shaping up to be a right good detective, isn’t she? She still hasn’t found much of a loose string to pull on, but they’ll keep on it. She and McLamb left a little while ago to go interview Rouse’s married girlfriend down near Makely. I’ll let ’em know what you’ve told me. They’re all concerned about you and Cal. Gotta run. My pager’s beeping, but you keep in touch, hear?”

  Back at the police station, the fried chicken and biscuits soon disappeared as the cold and hungry canvassers came in from the streets. The second box contained two or three pounds of cold cuts and several packages of rolls, and they were going fast, too.

  Munching on a ham and cheese sandwich, Paul had to report that there was no word on Cal. “Clark told me that they’ve asked the ME to expedite Jonna’s autopsy in light of Cal’s disappearance. And for what it’s worth, the prints we lifted off the doorknob yesterday don’t match Jonna’s, but they do match the ones on the medicine cabinet. We’ve run them through the system. No hits.”

  No hits. He didn’t know whether to be glad or dispirited by that. “A match would’ve given us a name and a description,” he said, stating the obvious.

  “On the other hand,” said Paul, striving for something optimistic to give his friend, “no match means it wasn’t a hardened criminal that took Cal. I keep trying to understand why he went with her in the first place. You and Jonna both must have warned him about going off with strangers. And he wouldn’t fall for the old trick about helping to look for a lost pet, would he?”

  “No, but he might fall for the line that Jonna was hurt and calling for him. Not ordinarily, but yesterday? When we’d been looking for her and he was already worried and upset? And the woman couldn’t have been a stranger.

  Not if she was in the house. She has to be someone he was familiar with and trusted. Mrs. Shay named a couple of her friends—Lou Cannady and Jill Edwards.”

  Radcliff was familiar with both names.

  “Lou Cannady’s husband owns the local Honda deal-ership and Jill Edwards is president of the PTA.” He handed over the address book that Dwight had given him earlier. “They’re both in here. I had a couple of clerks call every nonbusiness name just in case somebody had any suggestions about Cal. They came up dry.”

  He paused as an attractive woman appeared in his doorway. She wore a short red car coat, black slacks, and boots. Her dark blond hair was damp from the rain and the wind had turned her cheeks as red as her coat.

  Dwight dropped his sandwich and stood up so quickly that he almost knocked his chair over as he reached for her.

  “I was about to call you when I spotted your truck parked out front, so I—”

  The rest of her words were muffled against Dwight’s chest.

  Paul grinned. “I guess this means the Marines have landed?”

  C H A P T E R

  17

  But if a tree stands sideways to the north with a draughtround it, the north wind by degrees twists and contorts it,so that its core becomes twisted instead of running straight.

  —Theophrastus

  Saturday afternoon, 22 January

  The news about Major Bryant’s missing son and murdered ex-wife had the makings of a seven-day sensation within the department, but as Deputy Mayleen Richards reminded them, “The best way to help him right now is to clear up the shooting down here so he can concentrate on what’s going on up there.”

  She contacted Sheriff Poole to advise him of the situation in Virginia. Then, while Raeford McLamb and Jack Jamison batted around possible scenarios and polished off the rest of the catfish and hushpuppies, Richards called the only Overholt in the Makely area listings.

  Michael Overholt.

  The phone rang so many times that she expected to hear it switch to an answering machine, but after ten rings, she broke the connection.

  “Maybe we should ride down to Makely and see what we can dig up.”

  Jamison still had people and places to check out along the Rideout Road area, so McLamb volunteered to go along with her.

  When they were fifteen minutes from Make
ly, a male voice finally answered the phone. “Sergeant Mike Overholt here.”

  “May I speak to Mrs. Overholt, please?” Richards asked without identifying herself.

  “Sorry,” he said. “She can’t come to the phone right now.”

  “Is she there?”

  “You a friend of hers?”

  “No. I’m with the sheriff’s department up in Dobbs,”

  she said smoothly. “We wanted to get a statement from her about a traffic accident she might have witnessed.

  When would be a convenient time for me to see her?”

  There was a long silence. “I’m getting ready to check in at the base now. How ’bout you give me your number and I’ll tell her to call you?”

  Richards rattled off her mobile number, but told McLamb to keep driving. “If he’s going out and she’s there, it’ll give us a chance to talk to her without him knowing.”

  Makely was in the next county south, on the way to Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, but its calling area included a narrow swath of Colleton County, and according to the county map that lay open in her lap, the Overholt residence fell inside that swath. After several turns from the main highway, they wound up in a sparsely settled neighborhood that was a mixture of small stick-built houses interspersed with older mobile homes, the kind that 15 resembled boxcars with windows rather than the newer ones that mimicked regular houses.

  The Overholts’ flat-roofed trailer was set back from the road in a stand of pine trees. It was painted khaki green and someone with more enthusiasm than artistry had painted a screaming eagle on the wall beside the door. A black Subaru sedan sat in the graveled driveway. As they drove past, a white soldier in desert cammies came out of the trailer and got into the sedan.

  They continued slowly along the level flat road until they spotted an empty house with a “For Sale” sign near the mailbox. Playing the part of a prospective buyer, McLamb hopped out of their unmarked car and appeared to scrutinize the roof as the Subaru passed them. Before he was fully in the car again, he saw the Subaru turn around and head back past them to the trailer.

  “Did he forget something or do you think he made us?” asked Richards, suddenly conscious that their car carried the permanent plate of an official department rather than the usual blue-and-white “First in Flight” design of civilian plates. Looking in her side-view mirror, she saw the soldier emerge from his sedan, unlock the door of the trailer, and disappear inside.

  “Get your notebook and pretend you’re taking notes on the house,” said Richards as she reached for her own notebook and got out of the car.

  Like the trailer, this shabby little house was also sheltered by tall longleaf pines so prevalent in southeastern North Carolina. Here in January, the grass was a dull auburn brown, almost hidden beneath a thick layer of pine straw. More brown needles had dropped on the steps and shallow porch. A cool wind ruffled her red hair but the air wasn’t quite cold enough to require hat or gloves. Together the two deputies walked up on the porch and peered through the dirty windows while Raeford McLamb made a show of pointing out various ar-chitectural features.

  As Richards nodded feigned agreement, the phone clipped to her jacket rang. “Richards here,” she answered automatically.

  “Yeah,” said a tight male voice. “I had a feeling you were the same bitch as called before. Take your jungle bunny and get your lying ass the hell off my road.”

  Richards turned and faced the trailer. Staring back at her through the large front window was the cammie-clad soldier with a phone to his ear.

  “Sir, we’re here on official business. All we want is to interview your wife about an accident that—”

  “Cut the crap, bitch!” he snarled. “I know why you’re here. You want to ask her about that bastard she was whoring around with while I was out there putting my life on the line. Well, he got what he deserved and so has she.”

  “Shit!” said McLamb, who had heard every word.

  They both knew the statistics. The abuse and murder rate for children in military communities was double that of civilian communities elsewhere in the state. For wives, it was even higher. The macho mentality. The deadly training. Add mangled pride and you had a volatile combination that could blow without warning any time, any place.

  “Sergeant Overholt,” she began again in her most diplomatic voice. “If we could just talk?”

  “I’m through talking!”

  The sound of breaking glass was all the split-second warning they got. As they both dived for the ground behind the car, Richards registered the report of the rifle at the same instant that her right side erupted in fiery pain.

  From the nearest houses and trailers, doors opened and people yelled.

  “Police officers!” McLamb yelled back. “Stay inside!”

  Another burst of shots raked the side of their car, and pebble-sized bits of shatterproof glass rained down on them.

  From her position flat on the cold ground, Mayleen Richards saw a neighbor farther down the street step out into his yard. He wore Army fatigues and a brown sweatshirt and he yelled, “Mike? What the hell’s going on, buddy?”

  The man took one more step, then the rifle barked and he crumpled to the ground. A woman screamed and ran to him but she never got there. Overholt’s next bullet spun her around and she dropped in midstride.

  By then, Richards and McLamb were both on their phones calling for backup.

  A second later, he realized that she had been hit, too.

  “Officer down! Officer down!” he screamed into his phone.

  Suddenly gunfire blasted from the house next door to them and diagonally across from the Overholt trailer.

  Several automatic rounds sprayed the trailer.

  “I’ll hold him down,” yelled the soldier who lived there. “Y’all run around to the back of my house. The door’s open.”

  There was no way Mayleen was going to try to run, and McLamb was not going to leave her. “Stop the god-damned shooting!” he cried.

  An eerie silence fell over the neighborhood. Long minutes passed and they heard one of the shooting victims groan. Impossible to say which it was. Dogs barked and children were crying. A woman’s hysterical voice called to her friends and they heard her beg someone to let her go help them. It seemed like half a lifetime before the blessed sound of sirens reached them from a distance, coming ever closer until the air was full of raucous wails.

  No sooner did the first patrol cars swoop down the street than a chopper appeared overhead and hovered like a protective guardian angel.

  The ground troops piled out of their cars and took cover, but nothing moved behind the shattered windows of the Overholt trailer. A SWAT team arrived on the heels of two rescue trucks and one of the team members immediately came over to get briefed by Richards and McLamb. While rescue workers hurried to the other shooting victims, one EMT stanched the blood in Richards’s side.

  “Lucky,” he grunted as he finished bandaging it. “You need stitches, but looks like the bullet passed right through the fleshy part without nicking anything major.”

  He went back to the truck for a shot of painkiller and wanted to transport her to a hospital in Fayetteville, but she refused.

  “What about the other two that got shot?” she asked.

  “Through the heart,” said the tech. “The woman’s still breathing, but I doubt she’ll make it. Most soldiers are good with a rifle, but they say this guy’s a Ranger with a really high proficiency rating.”

  Someone on a bullhorn called for Overholt to come out with his hands over his head.

  There was no answer and no sign of movement inside.

  Sheriff Poole arrived about the time they lobbed a tear gas canister into the trailer. A moment later, the SWAT

  team stormed it.

  “All secure! Two down!” someone called from inside.

  Richards had been sitting on the ground while the painkiller took effect, and now, with a hand from McLamb, she stood upright and walked over to
join the other law officers who were milling around the front of the ravaged trailer.

  A raised ten-by-ten concrete square served as a front patio and was level with the door. A single shallow step led up to it, and when the two deputies approached, they saw that strings of tiny multicolored Christmas lights still dangled from the top edge of the trailer. The front door stood wide, as did a rear door to help disperse the tear gas fumes.

  While they waited, Richards stepped to one side of the patio and looked in through what had been the picture window. A single long shard of glass remained, and as she watched, it slid loose from the caulk and crashed to the concrete, making several men jump. Inside, a woman lay face up on the couch. Darla Overholt. Late thirties, thought Richards, automatically cataloging. Bright red lipstick, blue eye shadow on the closed lids. But the blood that caked and stiffened her blue sweater was dry, and Richards heard one of the EMTs say to another,

  “What do you think? Twelve hours?”

  “At least,” said his colleague.

  Overholt’s body lay crumpled between the couch and the window.

  Too soon to say whether it was the neighbor across the street who had taken him out or if he died by the M16

  rifle they were going to have to pry out of his cold dead hands after they finished taking pictures to document the scene.

  The neighbor’s rifle had already been confiscated and would be subjected to a thorough examination by ballistics experts.

  Overhead, two TV helicopters, one from Raleigh, the other from Fayetteville, circled overhead like two buz-zards looking for fresh roadkill. On the ground, Richards recognized a familiar face among the SBI agents in the crowd—Terry Wilson, a longtime friend of Major Bryant’s. As soon as he spotted her, he came right over.

  But it wasn’t the two bodies inside that concerned him at the moment.

  “Hey, Richards,” he called. “What the hell’s this Amber Alert on Cal Bryant?”