Half Past Dead

by Meryl Sawyer

  Kat couldn’t possibly know the Hills, could she? Maybe their paths had crossed in high school. They both had been loners with few friends. But how had they reconnected—and why?

  “Early this morn, ya know, afore dawn, I followed a deer. Jeez-a-ree! I didn’t know I was on Hill land. Leastways I didn’t see any signs.”

  Justin wasn’t buying this. The Hills were notorious for having their land posted every twenty feet. Not that they were opposed to hunting. They just didn’t want anyone taking their game. If Cooter went after a deer, he must have been positive he could bag it and haul the carcass away before the Hills spotted him.

  “The dogs started barkin’ ’n spooked the deer. Whoo-ee! It took off like a shot. I hightailed it.”

  Justin bet Cooter had run as fast as his bandy legs would take him. No telling what the Hills would do if they caught anyone hunting on their land.

  “Thass it. Thass when I seed the Toyoter.”

  Running for all he was worth, Cooter couldn’t be relied upon as a credible witness. Still, Justin couldn’t help thinking about two loners who just might have reconnected—somehow. The bank could have been their connection. Justin instantly dismissed the idea. The hollow folks—especially the Hills—never trusted banks. What money they had, they kept God-only-knew-where.

  “I’ll pay Throck a visit and check it out,” he told Cooter.

  “No can do. Throck’s gone yonder.”

  Gone to glory meant you were heaven bound. Gone yonder meant gone to hell. Aw, shit. He would have to deal with Dwayniac. The sullen boy with a dirty look permanently imprinted on his face was now in charge of his own kingdom.

  Common sense said to round up a few deputies before marching onto Hill property. But no one had ever accused Justin Radner of having a lick of sense.

  He had no doubt that the Hills would be armed to the teeth, but other than that he had no idea what to expect. He hustled out of Cooter’s trailer, wondering if he had a death wish.

  “Don’t cha be forgettin’ my reward.”

  “Can it. We’re a long way from a reward.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  JUSTIN CHOSE the direct approach to the largest house at the compound of wood frame homes on cinder blocks. He’d considered going around to the back to check on the Toyota, but he wasn’t within a hundred yards of the complex when the dogs started baying and motion sensors flooded the yard with blinding light. Seconds later, a hulking shadow with a shotgun flung open the front door.

  A gruff voice yelled, “Whoze out there?”

  “Sheriff Radner.”

  There was no response. Justin opened the chain link fence’s gate even though seven blue-tick hounds, fangs bared, were gathered, snarling on the other side.

  “Stand down,” the man called to the dogs as Justin strode through the gate. The hounds sat on either side of the flagstone path, still slavering, bodies twitching for his hide.

  “Dwayne?” he asked, still unable to see the man because of the floodlights.

  The figure stepped forward. “You’re on private property.”

  Justin immediately recognized Dwayne Hill, although the guy had gained weight, his body now bulked-up but still muscular. Dwayne’s face had filled out, too. Deep creases at the corners of his eyes and skin toasted brown and crispy like a campfire marshmallow said he spent his days in the fields.

  “Want me to come back with a warrant and a dozen highway patrolmen?” Justin was bluffing. No judge would issue a warrant on Cooter’s suspicious sighting.

  “Better come in,” he replied with a smile that seemed to darken his brown, almost black eyes. Just then, Justin remembered something about Dwayne—he’d always smiled at things that weren’t funny. This and his combative personality made most kids in school avoid him.

  Justin walked inside and was surprised by the pale yellow interior, tastefully furnished with a moss-green sofa and matching chairs. The wood floor had been buffed to a high shine and matched the handrail on the staircase leading to the second floor. The parlor opened up to a family room where a huge television was tuned into West Coast Choppers. A very pregnant woman waddled toward them from the family room. He recognized her but couldn’t come up with a name.

  “This here’s Betty Jo,” Dwayne said as he shelved the shotgun on the wall rack with a dozen other weapons. “’Spect you remember her.”

  Justin remembered Dwayne’s cousin now. He’d had a couple of classes with her. “Hey, how are you?”

  “Mighty fine.” Betty Jo said, revealing tiny, even white teeth. She looked at Dwayne.

  “G’wan. I’ll be down here a spell.”

  Betty Jo mumbled good-night and went up the stairs, hiking her skirt as if she were wading through a stream. Dwayne motioned for Justin to have a seat on the sofa while he took a matching easy chair opposite him.

  “Now what the hell are you lookin’ for? You have no call to tear this place apart.” Dwayne flashed another ill-timed smile. He picked up a tin from the glass coffee table between them, took a pinch of Copenhagen, and wedged the tobacco between his jawbone and cheek. “I’ve got three young’uns upstairs. You can see my wife’s about to pop out another. I don’t want her riled up.”

  Justin exhaled slowly, his eyes on the seascape that dominated the wall. He wondered if Dwayne had ever seen the ocean. Somehow he doubted it. Hollow people seldom ventured far from the backwoods.

  “I don’t have to search your home. I can rely on your word just the way I relied on you when we played ball.”

  This time Dwayne didn’t smile. With his tongue, he switched the chaw to the other side of his mouth. And kept staring.

  “An informant tells me there’s a blue Toyota out behind your house.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  Justin had expected shock or surprise or even a lame excuse but not Dwayne’s casual reaction. He went rigid, every muscle tensed and his breath rattled against his ribs. “So? Haven’t you heard about Elmer Bitner’s murder two nights ago?”

  Dwayne treated him to another off-beat grin and sucked on the wad of tobacco. “No. Don’t get into town much. My brother Billy Dean gasses up the trucks and takes the gals shopping. Don’t watch the news much. Just a bunch foreigners tryin’ to kill our boys.”

  “The Toyota was spotted on the road to the riverboat where Bitner was shot.” When Dwayne didn’t comment, Justin asked, “How did you get the car?”

  “I don’t ’xactly have the car,” he replied.

  “Come on, Dwayne. Don’t fuck with me. Is there a blue Toyota behind this house?”

  Eyes gleaming savagely, Dwayne stared him down. After a moment’s silence, he grinned and cocked his head to one side like a bird. “Car’s behind Ma’s house.”

  For a gut-cramping second, the room froze. Holy shit! Cooter had been right. The car was here. Kat must be around, too, or Dwayne knew where she was. His mind again scrambled to make the connection between them but came up empty except for the school connection. “There’s a seven-state APB out on that car. Explain what you’re doing with it, and where’s the driver, Kat Wells?”

  Dwayne threw his head back and laughed. An image came to Justin of Dwayne laughing after they’d lost a close game. He hadn’t made any noise when he’d laughed. Still didn’t.

  Justin wondered if Dwayne was “a little skippy” as his mother used to say. He figured it came from too many cousins marrying each other. It had earned him the nickname Dwayniac, but Justin had the feeling it might be his way of keeping people at a distance. Whatever. It worked.

  “Betty Jo and I were driving back from Jackson,” Dwayne said, his voice slurred slightly from the wad of tobacco. “She gets these…cravings. Gotta have Cherry Garcia. The nearest place they sell the friggin’ ice cream is the capital.”

  Get on with it. Justin couldn’t believe the guy who rarely said two sentences was making a long story out of this. Justin tuned out the bit about the long line to get the ice cream, his mind on Kat.

  He’d been missing Kat
so much that it amazed him. Missing her tentative smile. Missing the way the breeze flirted with her hair. Missing the way her eyes held him. Missing her and hating himself for it.

  He was going to find her. And then he’d have to haul her off to jail. He could do it, he assured himself. It was his job. His personal feelings didn’t matter one damn bit.

  “We ran into Billy Dean and Ma coming back from the Gator Grill. She fancies their chicken pot pies. They followed us back here. We hauled ass to get home before the ice cream melted. Know how much that stuff costs?”

  Justin nodded as if he cared. “Ben & Jerry’s is damn expensive.”

  “That’s Yankees for you.” Dwayne shrugged. “We come upon this car piddling along. A blue Jap car goin’ real weirdlike.”

  “What time was that?”

  “A little before eight-thirty. I know ’cause Betty Jo wanted to make sure the kids were in bed so’z she could watch some TV show.”

  “What happened?”

  “The car fishtailed off the road into the bar ditch.”

  Justin mentally kicked himself. His deputy had checked area hospitals and doctors and ruled out an accident. He hadn’t considered Kat could be in a private home. He’d been too quick to condemn. Too willing to believe she was a con who would never reform.

  “I jumped out to help. So did Billy Dean.”

  “How bad was it?” Justin forced himself to keep his voice level even though a speedball of rage was shooting through him. What had he been thinking? Why hadn’t he given her the benefit of a doubt?

  “Not bad. She wasn’t goin’ that fast. She was wacky, though. Thought there was a bunch of us. She was yellin’ ‘n kickin’ ’n shiverin’ like it was the dead of winter.”

  This sounded like a concussion to him. “Had Kat hit her head?”

  “Nope. Not a mark on her. The car had a bent fender where it plowed into the bank, was all. It still runs. Didn’t take Billy Dean but two shakes to pull the whole shebang outta the bar ditch with the winch on his pickup. Ma drove it home. The woman rode with us, rantin’ all the way.”

  You stupid shit, he silently cursed himself. His judgment had been so clouded by Kat’s status as an ex-con that he’d assumed she’d run. He’d never considered the possibility something had happened to her.

  “Where is Kat now?”

  Dwayne studied him a moment, and Justin wondered if he sounded more personally involved than someone would expect the sheriff to be.

  “Ma checked her. Said the gal was sick. That’s why she was acting so…goofy.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Ma’s takin’ care of her. She’s better. ’Spect she can go home tomorry.”

  Justin nodded slowly. Most people would have taken Kat to old Doc Walther’s twenty-four-hour clinic. A nurse was on duty every night. If someone was seriously injured, Doc lived in a cottage behind the clinic.

  Hollow folks were different. They treated their own when they could. Dwayne’s mother, Mavis, was well-known in these parts as a healer. Of course she would have taken care of Kat.

  “I need to see Kat.” Justin stood up.

  “I’ll ask Ma if it’s okay.”

  Justin followed Dwayne out the back door. Light from a new moon shafted through the clouds. A whorl of June bugs danced around the light posts along the path. They walked over a swale toward a smaller home where a single lamp burned in the front window, the pack of dogs at their heels. Dwayne knocked softly and waited.

  The door opened and a stout dumpling of a woman with silver hair hanging to her shoulders answered the door with a frown. She spotted Justin and her scowl deepened. “Who’s he?”

  “It’s the sheriff, Ma. Remember Justin Radner? I played football with him.”

  “’Course I remember.”

  “He needs to see that gal we found.”

  She turned to Justin and trained her dark brown eyes on him. “What fer? She’s sleepin’.”

  “She’s wanted for questioning in a murder case,” Justin responded, although he now thought Kat had an ironclad alibi.

  Mavis stared at him in a way that sent a cold, liquid tingle down the back of his spine. After a long moment, she asked, “Whose murder?”

  Justin explained but omitted that the crime had occurred after the Hills had come upon Kat.

  Mavis gazed at him from between drawn brows. “When was this exactly?”

  Smart woman. Not much got by her. No doubt she was the Ma Barker of this clan. Planting soybeans had probably been her idea.

  Justin explained when Bitner’s body had been found. Dwayne cut loose with one of his soundless laughs. Mavis stopped him with a look that would have felled a charging rhino.

  “Couldna’ been Kat. We picked her up at eight-thirty. She was fixin’ to feel puny. Weak. Upchuckin’. We brought her back here.” Mavis offered him a proud smile. “I cured her with one of my potions.”

  “Food poisoning,” Dwayne told him. “Betty Jo heard the symptoms on TV.”

  Mavis harrumphed. “What does Betty Jo know? She’s a Buford.” Mavis turned to Justin. “Someone tried to poison the po’ thing.”

  The softly spoken words rang in his head like a furious shout. Pequita Romero had been poisoned, too. He barged his way by Mavis into the small parlor where a marmalade cat was curled into a ball on the sofa. “I need to see her—now!”

  Mavis stared pitchforks at him. “Your mother wouldn’t cotton to you bein’ uppity.”

  How did she know his mother? They must have talked years ago while in the stands watching their sons play football.

  “Look, this is official business,” he said with all the patience he could muster. “Two people have died already. Someone might have tried to kill Kat.”

  She stepped aside without uttering another word and gestured to a room nearby. Justin rushed into a small bedroom where a single lamp not much brighter than a night-light cast a mellow glow. A four-poster brass bed was centered in front of a fireplace that must be the room’s only heat in the winter.

  Justin paused in the doorway to allow his eyes to adjust. Ahead of him he saw a small figure dwarfed by the bed. Dark hair spread across a stark white pillow. A petite form, sleeping, encased in a quilted comforter.

  Kat.

  Thank you, God.

  He heaved a sigh of relief and stepped forward. The scent of pine mixed with lavender greeted him. The light flickered, and he realized it was a pillar candle lighting the room, not a lamp.

  In the dim light Kat seemed unusually pale. The vision shouldn’t have shaken him so much, yet it did. He knew she’d been in a crash—but a minor one. Could Mavis be right about the poison?

  “Is she okay?” he whispered to Mavis.

  “She’s just weak and needs her rest. Don’t you be long.” Mavis turned and left the room.

  Walking softly across the wooden floor, Justin ventured closer. He stood over Kat for a moment, then lowered himself to his knees on the rag rug beside the bed. “I’m sorry, babe,” he whispered. “I was thinking…bad things. You’ve done nothing wrong since I met you.”

  He gently brushed a wisp of hair off her forehead with his fingertips. “I’m crazy about you. That’s why I was so upset and—” he stopped himself, not realizing the truth until this moment “—hurt. I’ll make it up to you.” He lightly kissed her cheek. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  TORI THANKED HEAVEN for the trees protecting the dais from the tyrannical sun scalding the town square. It was barely ten o’clock, but spring seemed to have passed over Twin Oaks in favor of summer. The navy linen suit she was wearing felt hot and itchy. Rob Everett’s idea. Judge Kincaid’s “Call me Dad” media advisor insisted black, navy, and gray were the only appropriate colors for the campaign circuit.

  “Don’t worry,” the judge had assured Tori and the equally mortified May Ellen. “I’ll treat you to new wardrobes in Atlanta.”

  Tori had gamely agreed, but May Ellen had balked, insisting her “Southern” clo
thes were just fine for a Mississippi campaign. Rob had patiently explained the crime angle would give the judge national exposure, priming him for who-knew-what in the future.

  Tori hated dark colors, preferring peach, lavender, and yellow, but Rob insisted her blond hair and delicate features were better highlighted by darker, more fashionable shades. Conservative, Rob had told her, was the operative word. Her wardrobe was too eye-catching. She took that to mean people would be looking at her—not the judge.

  Despite his flattering words, Tori knew manipulation when exposed to it. Rob Everett needed to control the situation at all times. This morning the judge was to give his first statewide press conference. Last evening she’d joined the family at Oakhurst. Rob had rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed them. The judge was to speak out on violence in America and the necessity to keep convicts in jail for as long as possible. Tori was supposed to give a short, teary speech about how crime can touch every family, ruin lives.

  The speech irritated her. It sounded canned. She knew the message they wanted to impart. She could do much better on her own. When her moment to shine came, she was giving the speech she’d spent the wee hours of the night practicing in front of the mirror.

  Tori looked out over the crowd of reporters. Thanks to Rob, television crews from Jackson, New Orleans, Memphis, and Atlanta were covering the press conference. He thought with luck some of the footage might be shown on national television. Scores of print media people were huddled in the dappled shade beyond the dais. Clay gave her a reassuring smile, and Tori returned it, but she couldn’t help feeling annoyed. Truth to tell, she was here because the judge wanted to use her.

  And Clay allowed it.

  To Tori’s way of thinking, Clay should have insisted that he loved Tori and married her long ago. Where would she be if the judge hadn’t seen Elmer Bitner’s death as an opportunity?