Hard Row

by Margaret Maron

  She stopped for gas on the east side of Raleigh and bought a Coke for caffeine and a BC powder for her headache. To hell with Buck Harris. She would go back to Wilmington, make sure things continued to run smoothly at Jackson House, and then maybe she would give ol’ what’s-his-name a call. The guy who had developed one of the first planned communities along the river. The one who kept sending her orchids and roses. What the devil was his name? He wasn’t as rowdy as Buck, but what the hell? Maybe solid and dependable would wear better in the long run.

  As I-40 veered southeast through Colleton County, her headache eased off and she flipped on the radio, turning the dial to an amusing local country station. Solemn organ music played softly beneath a somber voice that enunciated proper names, followed by the name of a funeral home.

  Flame had to laugh. Just what she needed—the local obituaries. “Add Mr. Effin’ Buck Harris to your list,” she told the announcer. “From now on that SOB is dead to me.”

  Obituaries were followed by the latest county news: the weekend had produced four car wrecks and a motorcycle accident for a total of three deaths. Several computers had been stolen from a Dobbs middle school. An employee with the county’s planning board had been charged with embezzling almost four thousand dollars.

  Stupid cow, thought Flame. Wreck your life for a paltry four thousand?

  Still no identification for the dismembered body of a muscular Caucasian male. The Colleton County Sheriff’s Department again urged the public to report any missing man between the age of thirty and sixty. Eighteen dogs had been confiscated in Black Creek and their owner charged with felony dog fighting and animal cruelty, while—

  “Wait a damn minute here!” Flame exclaimed. She was almost past the Dobbs exit, but she flashed her turn signal, yanked on her steering wheel and slid in front of a van that was trying to make its own sedate exit. The van honked angrily and veered to avoid rear-ending the Jeep, but Flame barely heard.

  It was crazy, but what if that bitch was even less willing than Buck to share what they had built?

  “Major Bryant?”

  Dwight looked up to see one of the departmental clerks standing in his doorway.

  “Mr. Stephenson’s here with a client and they’d like to speak to you if you have a minute?”

  “Sure,” he said, laying aside the ME’s report on the torso, a report which confirmed that it really was part and parcel of the other appendages they’d collected. If there had been scars, tattoos, or anything else unique to this body, they were obliterated by animal depredations or by the heavy blade that had dismembered it. Said blade, incidentally, appeared to be approximately six inches wide with a slight curvature of the cutting edge, all consistent with an ordinary axe.

  Nevertheless, in addition to the broken right ulna earlier X-rays had discovered, the torso did carry two markers that might help distinguish this body from another.

  First, there was a small mole just below the navel.

  Second was what the ME described as “a protrusive umbilicus.”

  “Thanks for seeing us, Major Bryant,” Reid Stephenson said formally as he held the door open for a very attractive redhead. A handsome six-footer himself, Reid was well-known for his penchant for knockout redheads, but this one was even more gorgeous than usual.

  Where the hell did he keep finding them? Dwight wondered as he stood and shook hands with Deborah’s cousin and former law partner.

  “This is Ms. Smith,” Reid said. “Flame Smith, from Wilmington.”

  “Major Bryant,” she said, offering a firm handshake.

  Up close, she was still gorgeous, if not quite as young as her flowing hair, slender figure and tight jeans implied at first glance. There were laugh lines around her wide mouth and small crinkles radiated from eyes as green as the snug sweater she wore beneath a beige leather jacket.

  “What can I do for y’all?” he asked when they were seated.

  Reid leaned forward. “That man, the one with his legs in one place and his body in another—has he been identified yet?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because my client has been missing for over a week now and he fits the general description that’s been released to the media.”

  Dwight frowned. “I thought you said Ms. Smith here is your client.”

  “Actually, I’m his client’s girlfriend,” said the redhead in a smoky voice that seemed to have Reid enthralled. “We were supposed to meet here in Dobbs this week for his divorce settlement, but he never showed up and I can’t find anyone who’s seen him lately. It’s weird to think it might be Buck you’ve found, but if it is—”

  “I see,” said Dwight. “Does he have any identifying marks that you know of?”

  “Identifying marks?”

  “Like a tattoo or scars or something?” Reid said helpfully.

  Flame Smith shook her head.

  “Wait a minute!” said Reid. “Isn’t he missing the tip of one of his fingers?”

  “That’s right!” She held up a beautifully manicured finger. Her long nails were painted a soft coral. “His right index finger. It got caught in a piece of farm equipment when he was a teenager.”

  They looked at Dwight expectantly. The big deputy frowned as he leafed through the file on the body. “The right hand we found is missing the tip of the index finger, but it’s also missing some other joints.”

  Flame Smith winced, but she did not go dramatic on them. Dwight had the impression that this was a woman who could, when necessary keep her emotions in check, but he was willing to bet she could also take advantage of a redhead’s reputation for a blazing tongue and temper if it suited her.

  “You say no one’s seen him,” he said. “Who have you actually asked?”

  “Well, first I tried everybody around here I could think of. I even drove over to the main office in New Bern thinking something might have come up, but no one’s seen him there since week before last. His wife’s been living at their New Bern place since they split and he’s been staying here.”

  “Here?”

  “At the old farmhouse he got from his granddaddy. It was their first tomato farm.”

  “Oh yes,” said Dwight. “I remember now. It belonged to his mother’s people, didn’t it? The old Buckley place?”

  “I guess. That’s his middle name. Judson Buckley Harris, but everybody calls him Buck.” She pushed a tress of hair away from her eyes. “I tried there first thing on Wednesday and again on Friday. No sign of him and the housekeeper says she hasn’t heard anything in over a week either. But in court Wednesday, I heard his wife say he might be holed up in the mountains.”

  “Deborah’s doing the Harris ED,” Reid murmured in an aside.

  “Deborah?” asked Flame. “Judge Knott? You know her?”

  With a repressive glance at Reid, Dwight nodded. “So then you—?”

  “—drove up to his lodge in the mountains?” she asked, finishing his question. “Yes. But he wasn’t there and when I finally caught up with the caretaker Sunday afternoon, he said he hadn’t heard from Buck in at least three weeks.”

  “You try calling him?”

  “Of course I did,” she said impatiently. “That’s why I drove up to Wilkesboro. The lodge is in an area where reception is spotty and he never answers a land line. I thought sure that’s where he’d be.”

  “When did you last speak to him, Ms. Smith?”

  “Sunday before last. He was all riled up about the settlement and said he was going to be too busy to come down to Wilmington, but we set it up for me to come here. He said the divorce would be final by then and we could name our wedding date.”

  “You didn’t worry when he didn’t call?”

  “I give my men a long leash,” she said with a rueful smile. “Buck hates to talk on the phone and I don’t push it.”

  “What about you?” Dwight asked Reid.

  Reid shrugged. “As she said, Mr. Harris doesn’t like to talk on the phone. I left messages on all his answerin
g machines and at his office. When Ms. Smith came in today, I checked with my secretary. According to our records, the last time he actually spoke to me was Friday the seventeenth. I told him that the judge was running out of patience and he promised to be in court this past Wednesday.”

  Dwight turned back to Flame Smith. “Do you know if Mr. Harris ever broke his arm?”

  “No, but I just remembered. He has a tiny little mole, right about here.” One coral-tipped finger touched an area of her jeans halfway below her waist. “Oh, and he’s an ‘outie,’ too,” she added with an electric smile.

  Dwight reached for a notepad. “Tell me the name of his housekeeper out at the Buckley place.” He glanced at Reid. “And maybe you’d better give me his wife’s contact numbers, as well.”

  “Oh God!” Flame Smith moaned. Her peaches-and-cream complexion had turned to ivory. “It is Buck, isn’t it?”

  CHAPTER 16

  City folks eat their meals more from habit than hunger, but country folks love to hear the horn blow.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  DEBORAH KNOTT

  MONDAY MORNING, MARCH 6

  Monday morning and my turn to handle felony first appearances. The State of North Carolina is obligated to bring an accused person before a judge within ninety-six hours of arrest and incarceration in the county jail or at the next session of district court, whichever occurs first. First appearance is where the judge informs the accused of the charges, sets the bond if bail is deemed appropriate, appoints an attorney if so requested, and calendars a trial date. Innocence or guilt is irrelevant. Neither plea can be accepted. This is just to get the case into the system and onto a calendar so that it can be moved along in a judicious manner.

  When I first came on the bench, Monday mornings might bring me twenty or thirty people—forty after a real hot August weekend if it followed a week of unremitting heat. (Heat and humidity cause tempers to flare and differences are too often settled with baseball bats, knives, handguns, and the occasional frying pan.)

  Between the building boom, and Colleton County’s exploding population growth, fifty’s no longer an unusual number, even on a Monday morning after some beautiful early spring weather. Here were the hungover drunks, the druggies coming down from their various highs, the incompetent burglars, the belligerent citizens and aliens alike, with attitudes that hadn’t softened after a night or two on a jail cot.

  Coping with all this is one judge and one clerk. If we’re lucky, we may have a fairly skillful translator on hand for the whole session, but that’s about it.

  North Carolina is forty-eighth in the country in its funding of the whole court system, so take a guess where that leaves its district court? Last year 239 district court judges like me disposed of 2,770,951 cases. While upper court judges are plowing through their lighter load in air-conditioned tractors equipped with cell phones, iPods, and hydraulic lifts, district court judges are out in the hot sun, barefooted, following the back end of a mule.

  I worked straight through the morning without even a bathroom break. Around 10:30, a clerk handed me a note from Dwight. “Lunch here in my office?”

  I sent word back that I’d be down at noon and managed to gear it so that I actually recessed at 12:07.

  Lunch in Dwight’s office when he’s buying tends not to be soup or a healthy salad, so it was no surprise to smell chopped onions and Texas Pete chili sauce as I turned into his hallway.

  Detectives Mayleen Richards and Jack Jamison were on their way out and we paused to speak to each other. Like Kate, Richards had a new haircut, too. Her cinnamon-colored hair still brushed her shoulders, but there was a softer, more feminine look to the cut.

  “Looks great,” I told her. “You didn’t get something that uptown here in Dobbs, did you?”

  “As a matter of fact I did,” she said. “There’s a new stylist at the Cut ’n’ Curl.”

  I made a face. “Too bad. That’s where I go when I need a quick fix. Ethelene would kill me if I went to someone else in the same shop.”

  “How long since you were last there?” Richards said. “I think the new girl might be her replacement.”

  “Really? Thanks.”

  New hairdo? New air of confidence? Heretofore she could barely look me in the eye without turning brick red.

  “You give Richards a promotion or has she got a new boyfriend?” I asked Dwight as soon as the door was closed behind me.

  He popped the tops on a couple of drink cans. “No promotion.”

  “Boyfriend, then,” I said. “Somebody here in the courthouse?”

  “Don’t ask me, shug. That’s Faye Myers’s department. Dispatchers seem to keep up with that stuff.”

  He handed over the sack from our local sandwich shop. “I got extra napkins.”

  “Thanks.” I took the chair beside his desk and unwrapped a hot dog, being careful not to let it drip on my white wool skirt.

  I know it’s full of nitrates and artificial coloring and probably a dozen other coronary-inducing additives, but a frankfurter tucked into a soft roll with onions, chili, and coleslaw is difficult to resist and I didn’t try.

  “Cheers,” Dwight said, touching his can to mine. “So how come you didn’t tell me that Buck Harris is missing?”

  “Huh?”

  “Or did the sight of Dent Lee in your courtroom run it right out of your head?” he asked sardonically.

  I groaned. “Do you remember every comment I ever made about every guy I ever lusted after?”

  The corner of his lips twitched.

  “If I’d realized I was going to wind up married to you, I’d’ve kept my mouth shut when we used to hang out together. You’ve never heard me say a single word about Belle Byrd, have you? Or Claudia Ward or Mary Nell Lee? Or Loretta Sawyer or—”

  His grin was so wide at that point that I had to laugh, too. He’d suckered me again. “You must have been talking to Reid.”

  “Yep.”

  “Guess he’s in no hurry to have his client show up. Have you seen the client’s girlfriend? Anyhow, why should I have told you how some self-important millionaire keeps ditching his court dates? I will tell you this, though. If he doesn’t come to court next week, I’m going to hear the case without him and he can whistle down the wind if he thinks I’ve acted unfairly. Until then—”

  I looked at him in sudden dismay as the last dime finally dropped.

  “Those body parts. Buck Harris?”

  He gave a grim nod. “It’s not a hundred percent positive, but it’s on up there in the nineties.” He finished his first hot dog and started on the second. “Nobody seems to have seen your missing Buck Harris since those legs were found last week. He had a mole just below his navel; so does the torso we found Friday night. His navel was an outie and so is this.”

  “His girlfriend—Flame Smith—does she know?”

  “She’s the one told me about the mole and the ‘protrusive umbilicus,’ as the ME put it. She contacted Reid and they were both in this morning. We’re getting a search warrant for the old Buckley place. That seems to be the last place he was seen.”

  “The old Buckley place,” I said slowly. “It’s on Ward Dairy Road.”

  “Yeah,” said Dwight.

  That big bull of a man reduced to chunks of hacked-off arms and legs? My hot dog suddenly turned to ashes. I set it back on the paper plate and took a long swallow from the drink can.

  “You know this Smith woman?” he asked.

  “Not really. Portland’s the one who introduced us the other day. They used to work together down at the beach. She was surprised to see Por here and I think they were going to get in touch with each other, have dinner or something.”

  “How far along was Harris’s divorce?”

  “It was final last month, but we’re still working on the ED. There’s a lot of money, property, and real estate to divide. That’s why Dent was there to testify.”

  “Was it going amicably?”

&
nbsp; “Not particularly. Mediation didn’t work for them. That’s why their case came to me. I can’t quote you chapter and verse but the one time they were in court together, you’d’ve needed a chainsaw to cut the hostility. They split hairs and argued every point. But what do Pete and Reid care? If their clients want to waste time sniping at each other and not cooperating, that’s just more billable hours. Wednesday, though, Mrs. Harris was furious that Flame was even there at all. Whether or not she’s the primary reason they split, I get the impression that Mrs. Harris blames her for the divorce. You’ve seen her.”

  “Oh yes indeed,” said Dwight with just a little more enthusiasm than I might have preferred.

  “Mrs. Harris is fifty-two and wears every year on her face. Flame Smith doesn’t look much over forty, does she? Buck Harris wouldn’t be the first man to trade in an old wife for a new model and try to give the back of his hand to the old one.”

  “Was she mad enough to do something about it?”

  “You mean kill him and then butcher him like a hog?”

  “More people are killed by their loved ones than by total strangers,” he reminded me.

  “I only saw him the one time he came to court, but yeah, her anger was pretty obvious. He was big, but she is too. They say that in the early years, she was out on the tractors, plowing and spraying and hoisting boxes of vegetables right alongside him till they were making enough to hire migrant labor for all the physical stuff, so I imagine there’s a lot of muscle underneath those extra pounds of fat.”

  “Kill him and she would get the whole company,” Dwight said.

  “Kill him before the divorce is final and then take a dismissal of her ED claim, she would,” I corrected. “Assuming rights of survival. At this point, though, the ED will proceed as if he were still alive.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ll have to look it up. There’s a similar case on appeal to the state supreme court but I’m pretty sure that’s how it would work. But since they’re divorced—”