Rituals of the Season

by Margaret Maron

“Hard worker. Very nice. She did have a temper, but it blew over as quickly as it flared up. Underneath, she was a good-hearted woman and very detail-oriented. Nothing got by her. The patients loved her, and she never lost it with them.”

  “Were you surprised when you heard she’d killed her stepson?”

  “Not really. Like I said, she really could fly off the handle, and he was such a bastard. Somebody needed to give him a taste of his own medicine and she was the one who could do it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The way he beat up on his girlfriends. He broke Janella Hobson’s nose and knocked out two of Deenie Gates’s teeth and—”

  “Deenie Gates?” In my mind’s eye, I saw that scrap of paper in Brix Junior’s handwriting and again felt that sense of near familiarity. “Why do I know that name?”

  Amy frowned. “Well, she did take the guy she was living with to court back in the summer. Would that have been you?”

  “Domestic violence?” It was coming back to me. A skinny, defeated-looking white woman and a brawny Mexican without a green card. “He punched her in the ear? Burst her eardrum?”

  Amy nodded. “That would be Deenie. She’s bad for hooking up with guys who like to beat up on her.”

  “She works at the hospital, too?”

  “Yep. Dropped out of school at sixteen to come empty bedpans and scrub floors. She’s a little slow. Not retarded exactly, just not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Excellent, excellent worker. I wish we had a half-dozen more like her. Anyhow, Martha Hurst sort of took her under her wing. Unfortunately, she’s the one who introduced Deenie to the Hurst guy. What was his name?”

  “Roy,” I said. “Roy Hurst.”

  “That’s right. They broke up around the time Martha killed him. But not before he got her pregnant.”

  “What?”

  “Oh yeah. She had an abortion, though. Said she wasn’t ready to be a mother. Still isn’t, if you ask me.”

  I would have pursued it, but Kate came down then and Aunt Zell and Nadine told Amy they were ready to go. We thanked Kate for a lovely evening.

  “Tell Rob it’s safe to come home,” she called as I headed for my car.

  Back at the house, Rob’s car was still there and so was Nolan’s, but the truck was gone.

  “Where’s Dwight?” I asked.

  “He had to leave. Said to tell you not to wait up,” said Rob. “Something about a missing deputy?”

  CHAPTER 18

  A lie is not locked up in a phrase, but must exist, if at all, in the mind of the speaker.

  Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

  TUESDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 14

  “Damn, damn, damn!” said Bo Poole as he stared through the open door of the car.

  “Yeah,” Dwight agreed.

  The night air was so mild that their words made no puffs of steam when they spoke.

  The car, flooded with portable lights, brightened even more each time Percy Denning’s camera flashed.

  Inside the car, in the driver’s seat, Don Whitley lay with his head lolled back on the headrest. Except for the blood that had dried on his chin, his face didn’t look that bad, but blood and brains and fragments of his skull spattered the car’s headliner where the bullet had exited.

  The gun itself had fallen between his legs. It was a .44 revolver that looked suspiciously like one of the old standard-issues before the department switched over to the newer automatics.

  An open, half-empty fifth of bourbon had been carefully set in the well of the console between the two bucket seats. The cap lay on the dash. They watched as Denning’s assistant slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then screwed the cap back on the bottle and bagged it.

  “Came out here, drank himself stupid, then did it,” Bo said.

  “Out here” was a thick stand of trees and bushes along Ryder Creek, south of Dobbs. The rough trail that led in from the highway was used in summer by fishermen after sun perch and catfish, in the winter by occasional hunters. The four teenage boys and their coon dogs who had found Whitley were still over there by the creekbank. Their initial fear and excitement had begun to wear off now, and when one of the deputies came to ask if they could leave, Dwight nodded, having heard their story himself.

  Denning finished bagging Whitley’s hands and told the morgue attendant that they could take him.

  Rigor had long since passed off, of course, so getting him onto a gurney and into the transport was no problem.

  What was a problem was all the disturbance around the scene, and Dwight had already chewed chunks from the hides of the responding officers, who had thoughtlessly driven their units down the creek trail and right up to the car instead of walking in.

  “Yeah, it looks like he shot himself,” he told them, “but you didn’t know that. What if this was a homicide? You’d’ve destroyed any tire tracks that might identify a perp. You walked all around the damn car so there’s no way now to tell if a second person was here. First thing tomorrow, you get your dumb asses out to the community college and sign up for their elementary procedures class.”

  One of the officers made the mistake of saying he’d already taken that class.

  “Then take it again,” Dwight snarled. “And this time, it’s on your own clock since you didn’t learn squat the first time around.”

  He walked over to Mike Castleman, who had heard it on his radio. For more than four years, he and Whitley had worked drug interdiction together like a matched pair of hunting dogs, and now the deputy paced blindly around the clearing, oblivious to low-hanging branches that still had dried leaves clinging to the twigs.

  “Why’d he do it, Major? Did he shoot Johnson? Is that why?”

  “What do you know about him and Johnson?” Dwight asked.

  “Nothing.” With his back to the glare of the lights, Castleman’s deep-set eyes were unreadable.

  “Ditch the games, Mike. You were closest to him. Now he’s dead, and I want the truth.”

  The deputy sighed and brushed dried leaves out of his curly black hair. “Ever since back in the spring, I had a feeling he was seeing somebody, but he would never say. Always claimed he was hitting the books when I tried to set him up with somebody. Then I happened to pass her place late one night about two weeks ago. His car was parked out front and there were no lights on inside. I wrote up a phony ticket and stuck it under his wiper. He was sore as hell with me next day. Made me promise not to say anything. And he wouldn’t talk about her. Said she had some issues to work out.”

  “Issues?”

  Castleman shrugged. “I don’t know, Major, and that’s the truth, but he was acting weird all last week. If I didn’t know for a fact that he’d never touch the stuff, I’d’ve said he was dipping into some of the pharmaceuticals we confiscated.”

  “Weird how?”

  “One minute he’d be fine-tuning ways to target drug runners, next minute he was talking about leaving the department, going back to school full-time. ‘And live on what?’ I asked him. He said money wasn’t a problem, and hell, Major, you know what we make, so I figured she was going to support him. I said maybe you and he could have a double wedding, just joking, not meaning any disrespect, but he said they weren’t to that stage yet. That she wouldn’t even let him give her a bracelet, much less a ring. Then Thursday and Friday, he wouldn’t talk to me. Acted like everybody pissed him off. And you saw how he was Sunday night. Sat off by himself. Hardly talked to anybody. I figured he was grieving, what with her getting killed like that and nobody knowing they’d been together. I told him I was there for him if he wanted to talk, but he told me to fuck off.”

  It was as if, having kept quiet for so long, Castleman had to let it all out. Dwight put his hand on the other man’s shoulder.

  “Damn it, Major! Why didn’t he trust me? Talk to me? We were supposed to be friends.”

  He sounded so genuinely bewildered that Dwight could only give his shoulder another squeeze.

  �
�We’ll probably never know. That wasn’t much of a suicide note he sent you and there was nothing more at his place or in the car.”

  Now that Whitley’s body was gone, Castleman walked back over to the car with him and they watched as Denning finished lifting prints off the steering wheel and door handles.

  “Here’s part of the seal from the bottle,” said his assistant from the backseat. She held up a small scrap of brown plastic in a pair of tweezers and Denning added it to his collection. “And here’s another frag.”

  “Wait a sec.” Denning found the bag in which he was gathering fragments of the bullet and she dropped in the bit of lead she had found.

  “Too bad we couldn’t find the slug that killed Ms. Johnson,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky tomorrow.”

  “Where’d he get the .44?” Dwight asked Castleman. “And why you reckon he used it instead of his own gun?”

  Castleman shook his head.

  Silas Lee Jones walked up to them in time to hear Dwight’s question. “Wadn’t his daddy on the force down at Havelock? Maybe it was hisn’s.”

  “If he did use it to kill Johnson,” the sheriff mused, “it couldn’t be traced back to him. Then when he decided to do this”—he gestured to the bloody interior of the car—“maybe it was his way of admitting guilt for her death.”

  It was well after midnight before Dwight got back to the farm. Deborah was asleep, but she had left a light on and the door unlocked. As he slipped into bed beside her, she stirred and came awake.

  “Rob said they found Don Whitley. Does that mean—?”

  “Yeah.” He wrapped his arms around her warm softness. She wasn’t wearing a gown. Quietly, he described what Whitley had done to himself and she listened without interrupting. “He was one of my first hires.”

  “Oh, Dwight. I’m so sorry, darling.”

  Even with everything else, that gave him pause. “That’s the first time you’ve called me that.”

  “Is it? Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She touched his face in a gentle caress, and for a little space of time, he let himself forget what he had seen that night.

  WEDNESDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 15

  Before the sun edged over the treetops, Dwight was already dressed, and he was on his second cup of coffee by the time Deborah stumbled out. No lipstick, tangled hair, barefooted, and wearing one of his sweatshirts. She looked beautiful to him.

  “You’re going in this early?” she asked.

  “Over to Chapel Hill.” He filled a second mug and handed it to her. “Whitley’s autopsy.”

  “But why? I thought you said it was suicide.”

  “It probably is. But I still want to be there. He was one of mine so I want to do it by the book.”

  “Okay. But don’t forget Miss Sallie Anderson’s dinner for us tonight.”

  She saw the look on his face and immediately said, “It’s all right. You can skip it. I’ll call and tell her you have to work. It’s for some of her and Aunt Zell’s neighbors that have known me since I was a kid. I’ll probably be the only one there under sixty-five.”

  “You sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Thanks. And let’s plan on my place tonight, okay? I’d like to be close to the office the next couple of days.”

  “Fine.” She gestured to the files that Nolan Capps and Kayra Stewart had left stacked at the end of the table. “What about those? Did the kids finish with them?”

  Dwight shrugged. “Probably, but I left first, so I don’t know. I think they were going to stay the night with Bessie again, so you could call over and ask.” He holstered his gun, grabbed his jacket, and opened the door. “See you tonight.”

  “Well, at least it’s warmer today,” said Deputy Silas Lee Jones as they returned to the scene of Tracy Johnson’s death and unloaded the metal detectors. Denning had borrowed extras from neighboring jurisdictions so that the four officers could cover more ground faster.

  Using cans of fluorescent spray paint, Tub Greene and Mike Castleman gridded off a section of the road bank along the southern and western perimeters of the area they’d searched the day before. In summer, this raised bank would be bright with golden daylilies or red poppies. Here in December, all the roots were dormant.

  Denning had left his assistant processing the prints they’d lifted from Whitley’s car and he was anxious to get back to Dobbs to finish the report on their colleague’s suicide. They didn’t have conclusive DNA proof yet, but his blood type matched the fetus Tracy Johnson had been carrying and it was beginning to look more and more like he’d shot her. Would’ve been nice to have the slug to prove it conclusively, but, “We don’t find anything by lunchtime, we might as well hang it up,” he said.

  At the office, Mayleen Richards found Jack Jamison doggedly plowing through the bank records they’d brought from Johnson’s house.

  She hung her jacket on the back of her chair. “Finding anything?”

  “She had the premium cable package,” he said enviously. “HBO and all the rest.”

  “I don’t suppose she wrote any checks to Don?”

  “Nope.” He ran his finger down her check register again. “Wonder what would’ve happened if he hadn’t shot her? Reckon she’d’ve kept the baby?”

  “Probably. Her doctor seemed to think so.” Richards dipped into the box and pulled out utility bills neatly clipped together. Water, electricity, heating oil. “I’d hate for anybody to have to go through my bills. I just throw everything into a drawer and sort it all at the end of the year. By the way, how’d it go out at the prison farm? That guy that made the death threat?”

  “Like we thought. Swore he was just mouthing off in the heat of the moment. Seemed surprised we even remembered.” He paused to reach over and clear his computer screen. “The phone company said they’d forward a list of all her cell phone calls for this past month. Oh good. Here it is.”

  He followed the links the phone company had sent and soon his screen was filled with the minutes the slain ADA had used, from the end of the last bill until about a half-hour before she was shot. He printed it out and began by calling the last number.

  Beneath the open Christmas cards and other papers in the box, Richards found three long yellow legal pads held together by a thick rubber band. They hadn’t paid much attention because they looked new and unused. Indeed, the top two were, but the third . . . ? The first five or six pages were covered in writing that she now recognized as Tracy Johnson’s.

  “Hey, here’s some notes she made,” Richards told Jamison. “Wonder if it’s for that drug case the DA’s worried about.”

  There were Latino names and dates from back in the summer. Then, two pages over, at the bottom of a fresh page, “12 pkts (1gm ea) + $120K > 10 & $80K. $40K????” The four question marks had been gone over several times till they were thick and black. In block letters were “DANNO R. a.k.a. DANIEL RUIZ” and the words “time served?” Beneath, Johnson had scribbled, “Talk to Don.”

  “What do you think?” she asked Jamison as he paused between calls.

  “He looked at it a long moment, then said, “Same thing you’re thinking. That he was sticking money from the drug stops into his own pocket and one of the perps has asked for a deal to help prove it. You need to show this to the major. This could be Don’s real motive.”

  “Well, hot damn!” Deputy Jones yelled above the roar of morning traffic. “Looky what I just found!”

  “Hey, way to go!” said Castleman, who’d been working the next box over.

  The others crowded around to see the slug Jones had picked up.

  “I was just taking it slow and easy, like you said, checking every damn ping. Not that there’s as many up here as down closer to the road, and there it was on my first sweep of this box. Looks like a .44 to me, don’t y’all think?”

  The bullet was surprisingly undamaged.

  “But then it wouldn’t be banged up much, would it?” mused Percy Denning as he
slid the slug into one of his small collection bags, then labeled and dated it. “It only passed through soft tissue and her side window before ending up here in the clay. If I’m lucky, I might even find some of her DNA material. Good work, Jones.”

  Silas Lee Jones stripped off his latex gloves and lit himself a cigarette. “And y’all thought I wadn’t being careful,” he said. “Reckon that shows y’all.”

  “So what were you hoping for?” asked the medical examiner as her diener began to empty out Don Whitley’s digestive tract. “Bruises? Traces of tape on his wrists where he’d been constrained? Cut knuckles to show he’d tried to fight off somebody?”

  Dwight gave a tired shrug.

  “We’ll run the gut just to cover all the bases,” she said, “but I’m afraid that what you see is what you get. It’s suicide, Major. Sorry.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Avoid, at all times, mentioning subjects or incidents that can in any way disgust your hearers.

  Florence Hartley, The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette, 1873

  Although it was only seven-thirty when Dwight left, I knew Miss Sallie Anderson would be up. Indeed, she answered on the first ring. She was sorry to hear that Dwight wouldn’t be with me that evening, “but I do understand. You knew them, didn’t you, honey? That poor woman that got shot and her little girl, too? And then I heard on television about people needing to check their cars for bullet holes. What in the world is Colleton County coming to, Deborah?”

  “Feels like the world is coming to Colleton County, doesn’t it?” I said.

  “Oh, honey, you know it!”

  When I called over to the Stewart house, Bessie told me that Kayra was still asleep, but Nolan was up. I reckon he was if he’d slept on Bessie and Willie’s couch. Even though this is the winter lull for farm chores, I doubt if either of them do much tiptoeing around once the sun is up.

  Yes, he said, they’d finished with those files and they planned to sit and read the transcripts in Ellis Glover’s file room today. No, they hadn’t found any loose strings to pull on and help unravel the case against Martha Hurst.