Hard Row

by Margaret Maron

  The treated post was approximately five feet high and about half as thick as a telephone pole. Several men were clustered upwind from it. As Lomax and the deputies got out of their vehicles, the men edged back and they had a clear view. For a split second, looking at the thing rammed down on the top of the post, Dwight was reminded of a rotting jack-o’-lantern several days past Halloween when the pumpkin head verged on collapse. This head was worse—a thatch of graying hair, darkened skin, empty eye sockets, and a ghastly array of grinning teeth because most of the lips were gone as well.

  Crows? Buzzards?

  Blowflies buzzed and hummed in the warm afternoon sun and a few early yellow jackets were there as well. A thick rope of red ants snaked up one side of the post.

  “Oh dear God in the morning!” Denning murmured as he moved in with his camera. With his eye on the viewfinder, he zoomed in on what was nailed to the post almost exactly halfway between the grisly head and the ground. “Was that his dick?”

  If so, there was almost nothing left of it now except where a nail held a flaccid strip of skin that fluttered in the light spring breeze.

  In the next hour, Dwight had called the sheriff in Jones County, then sent two detectives down to start interviewing the migrants who had been transferred over to Harris Farm #3 between Kinston and New Bern. He had pulled Raeford McLamb and Sam Dalton out of Black Creek and they were now helping Jamison and a translator question everyone who still worked here on the Buckley place. Sid Lomax had volunteered his office desk and his kitchen table for their use. He was under the impression that Juan Santos could be trusted to help translate accurately, “But hell, bo,” he told Dwight wearily. “At this point, I don’t know who’s telling the truth and who’s lying through his rotten teeth. It’s gotta be one of ’em though, doesn’t it?”

  “Somebody familiar with the farm, for sure,” Dwight agreed and led Lomax through a retelling of how they had discovered Buck Harris’s head.

  “Between the cold and then the rain, we’re behind schedule on the plowing. This field’s so sandy though, the rain drains right through it and I thought it’d be okay to finally get the tractors out here this afternoon. First pass they made, Vazquez spotted it. Santos had the walkie-talkie and as soon as he saw that post, he called me. Ten minutes later, I was on the horn to 911. I thought your people had already left. Man, was I glad to hear they were still here and you were, too.”

  Mayleen Richards had given Dwight the third set of names that Lomax had run off for them and he held them out to the farm manager now. “How ’bout you save us some time and put a check mark by every name that ever had words with Harris.”

  “I’m telling you. None of ’em had that much to do with him. Yeah, he’d come out in the fields once in a while, plow a few rounds on the tractor, haul a truckload of tomatoes to the warehouse, but he didn’t speak a word of their lingo. Harris was one of those who think if people are going to come work in this country, it’s up to them to learn English, not for him to have to speak Spanish. He’d talk real loud to them. If they didn’t understand enough to answer, then he didn’t bother with them. Not that he did much, even with those that could.”

  “Like Juan Santos?”

  “Nothing more than to ask how the work was going, were the tomatoes ripening up on schedule, how bad were the worms? I’ll be honest with you, Bryant. I don’t think Harris thought of these people as fully human. More like work animals. Just a couple of notches up from horses or mules. If it hadn’t been for Mrs. Harris and OSHA, I believe he’d have worked them like mules and stabled them like mules, too. The only time he really put his hand in for more than a day, though, was last spring when my parents were out in California and Dad had a heart attack so I had to fly out. I thought we ought to bring somebody over from Kinston, but he said he could handle it for a few days. My dad died, and it was over a week before I could get back. He wasn’t too happy about that, but he did keep everything on schedule. God knows what actually went on. Santos never said much, just that Mrs. Harris was out here and they had a big fight about something. They were legally separated by then, though.”

  “You think he got on Santos’s ass about something while you were gone?”

  Lomax let out a long breath and settled his cap more firmly on his head. He met Dwight’s eyes without blinking. “You’re asking me if Santos could’ve done this. Ol’ son, I don’t know anybody that could’ve done it. Besides, that was almost a year ago. If Harris still had a beef with him, he’d’ve fired him. And if Juan Santos had a beef with him, I do believe he’d’ve quit or done something about it long before this, don’t you? Who has a hate this big that waits a year to get even? Besides, I thought you had fingerprints.”

  “We do,” Dwight conceded. “But we don’t have comparison prints for everyone who ever walked across this land. So tell me about Mrs. Harris?”

  “What about her?”

  “She get along with everybody?”

  “She’s a hard-nosed businesswoman, if that’s what you mean, but she treats her people fair. Sees that the housing’s up to government standards, makes sure the kids go to school. Expects value for her dollar, but doesn’t forget that these are human beings, not work animals. She used to work out in the fields when they were first married, so she knows what it takes to make a crop. Even better, she’s from the ‘trust ’em or bust ’em’ school of thought. You show that you know your job and you’re doing it and she leaves you alone.”

  “I hear she was out here that Monday when Harris went missing. You see her?”

  “Sure. She came over with the trucks to move the workers to Farm Number Three. Trucks brought some new furniture. Two new refrigerators. Well, new to us. I think she buys everything at the Goodwill store. Claims it helps them and upgrades us and I reckon she’s right.”

  “She ask about Harris, where he was?”

  Lomax shook his head. “Ever since they separated, it’s like he didn’t exist. She never mentioned him if she could help it. She just took care of the things she wanted done and didn’t worry if that’s what he wanted or not.”

  “I heard she sat down in a mud puddle around lunchtime.”

  “Yeah?” For a moment he almost smiled. “Didn’t see it.”

  “Hear about it?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “The bosslady up to her butt in mud? I’d’ve thought so.”

  “We were pretty busy around then. Where’d it happen?”

  “Somewhere around the camp’s what I heard.”

  “Sorry. Maybe you should ask the women.”

  “Good idea,” said Dwight, knowing that’s where Mayleen Richards was at the moment, taking advantage of the men being tied up here for a while.

  But when Richards rejoined them, she had nothing to confirm or deny the mud puddle story. “The women say they saw her in the morning when she came with new refrigerators for the married quarters and they had to empty the old ones, which were on their last legs. She asked about the children and about their health. She had picked up a couple of bilingual schoolbooks for the women, but after that they didn’t see her again.”

  It was nearing four before they were finished with all the statements. Denning had bagged the head and what was left of Harris’s penis. He stopped by the farm manager’s place to tell them that he was taking the remains over to Chapel Hill. “Don’t know if y’all noticed or not, but there was a knotted bloody rag around the fence post where it caught on the wire. Looks to me like it could’ve been a gag that slipped down when the crows got at him. Would explain why nobody heard him scream. But unless there’s a bullet hole I’m not seeing in this head, I don’t know that it’ll tell the ME anything he didn’t already know but I guess we ought to go through all the motions.”

  Dwight nodded. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything back on those fingerprints yet?”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “What about Santos or Sanaugustin?”

  “Yessir. I did a quick and dirty on th
e men. No match. Haven’t had a chance to compare the prints on the axe with the women’s prints yet. I can let you know by in the morning though.”

  “Good.”

  McLamb and Dalton volunteered to go back to Black Creek to interview Mrs. Stone and her son. “See if we can’t pick up a lead from them.”

  “Fine,” Dwight said. “I’ll authorize the overtime.”

  Rather than go all the way back to Dobbs himself, he called Bo and brought the sheriff up to date, then headed off to pick up his son.

  CHAPTER 27

  When a young man gets married, and the little chaps come along according to nature, he ought to get on a farm to raise them.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  DEBORAH KNOTT

  TUESDAY NIGHT, MARCH 7

  That night was a bar association dinner in Makely, and Portland and I drove down together. Avery had opted to skip the dinner and stay home with his daughter, but we still left late because she had to nurse little Carolyn first.

  Avery asked me about the rumors flying around the courthouse that they’d found Buck Harris’s head stuck on a fence post, but I didn’t get a chance to call Dwight till after I’d adjourned at five-fifteen and I was afraid I might interrupt the talk he planned to have with Cal. Satisfying my curiosity could wait. That head wasn’t going anywhere.

  Except maybe over to the ME’s office in Chapel Hill.

  “You’re not making Dwight take sides, are you?” Portland asked when we were finally in the car and I had told her a little about the situation with Cal. She was totally thrilled when I married Dwight, and she worries that I’m going to mess up if I’m not careful.

  “Of course not,” I said.

  “Because he may be crazy about you, but Cal’s his son.”

  “Like I need a lecture on this? After four years of family court? After watching Kidd Chapin’s daughter make him choose between her and me? Hell, Por! I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid. Cal and I got along just fine before Jonna died. I’m pretty sure he liked me back then and he’ll probably like me again once he settles in. It’s a rough time for him, a lot of adjustments, but I don’t think he wants to split Dwight and me up. He’s not a conniver like Amber. Besides, boys don’t usually think like that. My brothers and their sons have always been pretty easy to read, even when they were getting ready to bend the rules or break the law. Unlike my nieces. Girls are out there plotting three moves ahead. Remember?”

  “Oh, sugar!” she said with a grin, and I knew she was recalling some of the stuff we used to get into, the way we could manipulate teachers and boyfriends from kindergarten on.

  She pulled out a pack of Life Savers, the latest weapon in her diet arsenal and offered me one. The clean smell of peppermint filled the car.

  “Have you talked to your friend Flame since Buck Harris’s body was identified?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she stopped by for coffee this afternoon on her way back to Wilmington. She said there was no reason for her to stay, that his ex-wife and daughter certainly wouldn’t save her a seat at any memorial service and she didn’t want to add to his daughter’s grief.”

  “She okay herself?”

  “Not right now, but she will be. I’m not going to say she didn’t really love him, but I’m sure his bank account helped, so I doubt if her heart’s completely broken. Besides, Flame’s always known when to cut her losses.”

  “Not a total loss, though, is it?” I said as I dimmed my lights for an oncoming car.

  “Reid told her she was in the will. She didn’t say for how much though.”

  “Dwight kicked me out of his office before I could get Reid to tell me, but remember when he took your umbrella this morning?”

  “And did not leave it at the office, the bastard.”

  “Well, just before you got there, when he was trying to borrow one from me, he said she was down for half a million.”

  “Interesting. We had lunch last week and she was worried about the mortgage on her B-and-B. A half-million sure makes a nice consolation prize.”

  “Also makes a motive for murder.”

  “No way!” Portland protested. But she mulled it over as I pulled out to pass a slow-moving pickup. “Dwight got her in his range finder?”

  “Probably. Along with Mrs. Harris and everybody on the farm, I should think. Not that he tells me everything.”

  “Yeah, right,” she jeered. “I don’t suppose he’s said anything about Karen Braswell’s place getting shot up?”

  “Nope. But I haven’t really talked to him since this morning and that only happened last night, right?”

  “Well, when you do, would you please stress that this guy’s gone over the edge? Bo promised to tell his people to be on the lookout in her neighborhood and so did Lonnie Revell, for what that’s worth.”

  Lonnie Revell is Dobbs’s chief of police. Nice guy but not the brightest star in the town’s constellation.

  I repeated what Dwight had said about hurricanes and the need to head for high ground when you know one’s on the way.

  “Moving in with her mother’s not really high ground, but with a little luck, he’ll do something to get himself arrested again before he finds out that’s where she is. I just hope you’ll give him a couple of years next time.”

  “Hey, no ex parte talk here, okay?”

  “What’s ex parte? You’ve already heard his case and if there is a next time, there’s not a judge in the district who could possibly be unaware of the situation unless it’s Harrison Hobart and isn’t that old dinosaur ever going to turn seventy-two?”

  Seventy-two’s the mandatory retirement age and it looked like he was going to hang on till the end. Hobart’s a throwback to an earlier age when men were men and their women kept silent. Not only in church but everywhere else if he’d had his way. He had tried to keep female attorneys from wearing slacks in his courtroom, and whenever I had to argue a case before him, he never failed to lecture me that skirts were the only attire proper for the courtroom.

  “If that’s true,” I had said sweetly, gesturing to our district attorney who sat at the prosecution’s table and tried not to grin, “then the day Mr. Woodall comes to court in a skirt, I’ll wear one, too.”

  Hobart had threatened me with contempt, but the next day every woman in the courthouse showed up in pants, even the clerks who didn’t particularly like me but who liked being lectured on dress and decorum even less. He had been censured more than once and his last one came when he informed the jury that the defendant might not be sitting there if her husband had taken a strap to her backside once in a while.

  “I think his birthday’s this spring,” Portland said as I parked in front of the restaurant on the north edge of Makely.

  Because of our late start, most of the tables were filled by the time we paid our money and looked for seats. And wouldn’t you know it? The only table with two empty chairs had Harrison Hobart at it. It was a no-brainer.

  We split up.

  Portland caught a ride back to Dobbs with Reid, so I headed straight home after the dinner and got there a little before ten. Both my guys were in bed, but only Cal was asleep. Dwight was watching the early news, but he turned it off and came out to the kitchen for a glass of milk and the last of the chocolate chip cookies while I reheated a cup of coffee left over from the morning.

  I told him about the dinner and Portland’s comments about Flame Smith. “Is she a suspect?”

  “Probably not. She gave me the names of people who saw her down in Wilmington during the three days after Harris was last seen. I’ve got a query in with the sheriff down there. He said he’d check her statement for me.”

  “I hear you finally found the head?”

  “Yeah. Stuck on a fence post at the back of one of the fields out there, so it’s definitely someone familiar with the place.”

  “Get anything out of that migrant who knew Harris was dead?” I asked.

  “He says he stumbled into that emp
ty shed by mistake, and seeing all that blood and gore’s what made him go looking for a quick high on Saturday.”

  “But?” I asked, hearing something more in his voice.

  “Oh hell, Deb’rah. I don’t know. I got the feeling that he was holding something back, but if he ever had any real dealings with Harris, no one seems to know about it. The only other worker still there that had much to do with him is Sanaugustin’s buddy Juan Santos. Both of ’em are married. Both have kids. The farm manager, Sid Lomax, thinks Santos and Harris might have had a run-in last spring when he had to fly out to California and Harris came in to run things. But that was almost a year ago. Besides, it sounds like Harris’s real run-in was with his wife.”

  “Was he maybe trying to exercise his droit de seigneur with one of the migrant women?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The privilege of ownership.”

  “Like a plantation owner with his female slaves?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, his housekeeper did say he slept with the wife of a different worker, but they moved to the farm below Kinston months ago. I suppose he could have tried it with one of the other women, although the housekeeper says he was pretty much saving it for Flame Smith these last few months.” He broke a cookie in half, dunked it in his milk, then savored the soft sweetness. “You make a mean cookie, Mrs. Bryant.”

  “Why thank you, Major.” Then, just to make sure, I said, “You really don’t mind that I haven’t changed my name professionally, do you?”

  He smiled and glanced at my left hand. “Not as long as that ring stays on your finger.”