Hard Row dk-13

by Margaret Maron

  “I know, sweetie, but did you see him go?”

  “Who?”

  “Remember Fred? He had the bed next to you.”

  Mr. Bell frowned. “Jack?”

  “No, sweetie. Before Jack. Fred. Fred Mitchiner.”

  Silence, then unexpected laughter shook the frail

  body. “My cousin.”

  “That’s right.” Mrs. Franks beamed. “That was Fred.”

  “Where’d he go, anyhow? I ain’t seen him lately.”

  Raeford McLamb leaned in close. “When did you last

  see him, Mr. Bell? Your cousin Fred?”

  “He ain’t really my cousin, you know. Crazy ol’ man.

  He’s blacker’n you are.” He paused and looked up at

  Mrs. Franks. “Idn’t anybody else gonna eat today?”

  Mrs. Franks sighed. “It’s only nine-thirty, sweetie.

  Dinner won’t be ready till twelve.”

  McLamb sat back in frustration and Dalton pulled his

  chair around so that his face was level with Mr. Bell’s.

  “Mr. Bell? Tom?”

  “Thomas,” Mrs. Franks murmured.

  “Thomas? Tell us about the last time you saw Fred.”

  The old man stared at him, then reached out with

  a shaky hand to cup Dalton’s smooth cheek. Sudden

  tears filled his eyes. “Jimmy?” His voice cracked with

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  remembered grief. “Jimmy, boy! They told me you was

  dead.”

  In the end, Sam Dalton had to help Mr. Bell to his room.

  The confused nonagenarian would not let go of his arm

  until they persuaded him to lie down on the bed and rest.

  Eventually, he calmed down enough to close his eyes and

  release his unexpectedly strong grip on Dalton’s arm.

  “Who’s Jimmy?” Dalton asked as he walked back

  down the hall with Mrs. Franks to rejoin McLamb.

  “His son. He got killed in a car wreck when he was

  thirty-one. I don’t think Mr. Bell ever got over it.”

  Back in the lobby, at the central desk, McLamb was

  interviewing Mary Rowe, the LPN who oversaw the

  medication schedules. A brisk, middle-aged blonde who

  was going gray naturally, Rowe wore a white lab coat

  over black slacks and sweater. She shook her head when

  told that Mitchiner’s death might not have been as ac-

  cidental as they first thought, but she was no more help

  than Mr. Bell.

  “I’m sorry, Officers, but like I said back when he

  walked away, I gave him his meds right after breakfast

  and I think I saw him in the lounge a little later, but

  there was nothing new on his chart so I didn’t take any

  special notice of him.”

  It was the same story with the housekeeping staff

  who cleaned, did laundry, and helped serve the plates

  at mealtimes.

  “I made his bed same as always while he be having

  breakfast,” said one young woman, “and somebody did

  lay on it and pull up the blanket between then and when

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  they did the bed check, but I can’t swear it was him.

  Some of our residents, they’re right bad for just laying

  down on any bed that’s empty, whether it’s their own

  or somebody else’s.”

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  C H A P T E R

  23

  It takes time to revolutionize the habits of thought and ac-

  tion into which a people have crystallized by the practice of

  generations.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  Tuesday Morning (continued)

  % “What took you so long?” Mayleen Richards asked

  when Jack Jamison finally slid in beside her in the

  unmarked car they were using this morning.

  “Handing in my resignation,” he said tersely.

  She laughed as she turned on the windshield wipers

  and shifted from park to drive, but the laughter died

  after taking a second look at his face.

  “Jeeze! You’re not joking, are you?”

  “Serious as a gunshot to the chest,” he said, in a grim-

  mer tone than she had ever heard him use.

  “So where’re you going? Raleigh? Charlotte?”

  “Texas first, then Iraq if I pass the physical.”

  Richards was appalled. “Are you out of your gourd?”

  She had seen the flyers, had even visited the web sites.

  “You’re going to become a hired mercenary?”

  He flushed and said defensively, “I’m not signing

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  up for security. I’m signing up to help train Iraqis to

  become good police officers. And in case you haven’t

  noticed, you and I are already hired mercenaries if that

  means keeping the peace and putting bad guys out of

  business.”

  “We don’t have a license to kill over here,” she

  snapped. “And the bad guys aren’t lying in wait to am-

  bush us for no reason. I can’t believe you’re going to

  do this.”

  “Believe it,” he said. “I’m just lucky I can go as a

  hired hand. I can quit and come home. Soldiers can’t

  and they get paid squat.”

  Richards did not respond. Just kept the car moving

  westward through the rain.

  Eventually her silence got to Jamison. “Look, in two

  years, I’ll have a quarter-million dollars. Enough for

  Cindy and me to pay off all our bills and build a house.

  And it’s not like Jay’ll even know I’m gone. I’ll be back

  before he’s walking and talking good.”

  “Be sure you get one of those life-size pictures of

  yourself before you go,” she said angrily. “Cindy can

  glue it to foam board and cut it out and Jay can have

  his own Flat Daddy for when you get blown up by a car

  bomb.”

  “That’s not very damn funny, Mayleen.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to be.”

  “Easy for you to talk,” he said resentfully. “No kids,

  your dad and mom both well and working. You’ve even

  got brothers and a sister to help out if one of them gets

  sick or dies.”

  His words cut her more than he could ever realize,

  Mayleen thought. No kids. No red-haired, brown-

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  skinned babies. Because if she did have kids, then she

  would have no brothers and sister. No mother or father

  either. They had made that very clear.

  She had gone down to Black Creek last night expect-

  ing to celebrate a brother’s birthday and they had been

  waiting, primed and ready to pounce. No nieces or

  nephews, no in-laws around the birthday table, just her

  parents, her two brothers, and her sister, Shirlee. Her

  mother had been crying.

  “What’s wrong?” she had asked, immediately alarmed,

  wondering who was hurt, who might be dying.

  “There’s been talk,” her father said, his face even

  more somber than when she had told them nine years

  ago that she was divorcing a man they had known and

  liked since childhood, a hard-working, steady man who

  didn’t use drugs, didn’t get drunk, didn’t hit her or run

  around on her. That had been rough on them. There

  had never been a divorce
in their family, they reminded

  her. Leave her husband? Leave a good town job that

  had air-conditioning and medical benefits after growing

  up in the tobacco fields where her father and brothers

  still labored? Ask Sheriff Poole to give her a job where

  she’d carry a gun and wear an ugly uniform instead of

  ladylike dresses and pretty shoes?

  “You ain’t gay, are you?” her brother Steve had asked

  bluntly.

  She had slapped his freckled face for that. Hard.

  “What kind of talk, Dad?”

  “Somebody saw you at a movie house in Raleigh,” he

  said. “They say you was with a Mexican and he had his

  arm around you. Is it true?”

  “Is he Mexican?” Steve demanded.

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  “Would that make a difference?” she said coldly.

  “Damn straight it would!” said her brother Tom.

  “I’m thirty-three years old. I’m divorced. I’m a sher-

  iff ’s deputy. Who I choose to see is my own business.”

  “Oh dear Jesus!” her mother wailed, bursting into

  tears again. “It is true!”

  Her father’s shoulders had slumped and for the first

  time, she realized that he was getting old. Suddenly

  there was more white than red in his hair and the lines

  in his face seemed to have deepened overnight without

  her noticing.

  While her brothers fumed and her sister and mother

  twittered, he held up his hand for silence.

  “Mayleen, honey, you know we’re not prejudiced.

  If you’re seeing this man, then he’s probably a good

  person.”

  “All men are created equal, Dad. That’s what you

  always told us.”

  He nodded. “And they’ve got an equal right to ev-

  erything anybody else does. But there’s a reason God

  created people different, honey. If He intended us to

  be just one color, with one kind of skin and one kind

  of hair, then that’s how He would have made us. He

  meant for each of us to keep our differences and stay

  with our own.”

  “So how come you didn’t marry another redhead,

  Dad?”

  It was an old family joke, but no one laughed tonight.

  “That ain’t the same, and you know it, honey.”

  “It is the same,” she said hotly. “Mike’s skin’s a

  little darker than ours and his hair is black, but it’s no

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  different from Steve and Tom and Shirlee being freck-

  led all over and marrying people with no freckles.”

  “We’re white!” Steve snarled. “And we married white

  people. White Americans. I bet he’s not even here le-

  gally, is he? He probably wants to marry you so he can

  get his citizenship.”

  “He’s been a citizen for years,” she snarled back.

  “And believe it or not, butthead, he wants to marry me

  because he loves me. He even thinks I’m beautiful. So

  maybe you’re right. Maybe there is something wrong

  with him. Maybe he’s loco.”

  But all they heard was marry.

  “Oh Mayleen, baby, you can’t marry him!” her

  mother sobbed.

  “You do and you’n forget about ever setting foot in

  my house again!” Steve had shouted.

  “Shirlee?”

  Her sister’s eyes dropped, but then her chin came up.

  “Steve’s right, Mayleen. I’d be ashamed to call you my

  sister.”

  “Daddy?”

  She saw the pain in his face. “I’m sorry, honey, but

  that’s the way it is.”

  “Fine,” she had said and immediately turned on her

  heel and walked out.

  With each absorbed by personal problems, Richards

  and Jamison drove the rest of the way in silence, a silence

  underlined by the back-and-forth swish of their wind-

  shield wipers. Just before they reached the westernmost

  of the Harris Farms, they met a camera truck from one

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  of the Raleigh stations. A long shot of the shed was all

  they could have gotten though because Major Bryant

  had posted a uniformed officer there to keep the site

  secured from gawkers. With rain still pouring from the

  charcoal gray sky, they passed the main house and went

  first to the white frame bungalow occupied by the farm

  manager. Richards stopped near the back door, and at

  the sound of their horn, Sid Lomax walked out on the

  porch and motioned for them to drive under the car

  shelter, a set of iron posts set in a concrete slab and

  topped by long sheets of corrugated tin.

  “I was afraid you might be those reporters back,” he

  said as Percy Denning pulled in right beside them with

  his field kit in the trunk.

  “We need a list of everybody on the place,” Richards

  told Lomax when the courtesies were out of the way.

  “And Deputy Denning’s here to take everybody’s finger-

  prints.”

  “He was dumb enough to leave prints on the axe

  handle?” Lomax asked.

  “And on the padlock, too,” Denning said with grim

  satisfaction.

  “If you want to start with the names, come on in to

  my office,” Lomax said and led the way back into the

  house.

  The deep screened porch held a few straight wooden

  chairs. A couple of clean metal ashtrays sat on the ledges.

  No swing, no rockers, no cheery welcome mat by either

  of the two doors. The one on the left was half glass

  and no curtains blocked a view of a kitchen so spartan

  and uncluttered, so lacking in soft touches of color or

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  superfluous knickknacks, that Richards instantly knew

  that no woman lived here.

  The door on the right opened into a large and equally

  tidy office. More straight wooden chairs stood in front

  of a wide desk where an open laptop and some manila

  file folders lay. The top angled around to the side to

  hold a sleek combination printer, fax, and copier. A

  lamp sat on a low file cabinet beneath the side window

  to complete the office’s furnishings. Both the desk and

  the worn leather chair behind it were positioned so that

  Lomax could work with his back to the rear wall and see

  someone at the door before they knocked.

  He sat, pulled the laptop closer and tapped on the

  keys. “I’m assuming you’re only interested in the peo-

  ple working here now? Not the ones who moved to the

  other farms?”

  “Everybody here on that last Sunday you saw your

  boss,” said Richards.

  “Right.”

  More tapping, then the printer came to life with a

  twinkle of lights and an electronic hum as sheets of

  paper began to slide smoothly into the front tray.

  “Two copies enough?”

  “Could you make it three?” Richards asked.

  “No problem.”

  They waited while Lomax aligned the pages and sta-

  pled each set.

  “The first list, that’s the names of everybody working

  here o
n the first of January. The ones with Xs in front

  of them are those we fired or who quit.”

  “Any of them leave mad?”

  “Yeah, but Harris didn’t have anything to do with

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  them, if that’s what you’re asking. I was the one fired

  their sorry asses.” His fingers touched the names in

  question. “These two were always drunk. This one was

  a troublemaker. Couldn’t get along with anybody. This

  one went off his nut. Those five just quit. Said they

  were going back to Mexico.”

  Richards and Denning made notations of his remarks

  on the pages he’d given them. “And the rest?” she

  asked.

  “They’re the ones we moved over to one of the other

  farms the day after I last saw him. That was Monday,

  the twentieth of February. The last page is the people

  still here.”

  Again, they marked the pages and when they were

  finished, the farm manager held out his hands. “Want

  to take my prints first?”

  “Why don’t we go down to the camp and do them all

  at once?” Denning said.

  “Fine. I don’t know if everybody’s there, though.

  Hard as it’s raining, we couldn’t get the tractors into

  the field so I gave everyone the morning off.”

  As migrant camps go, this one was almost luxurious

  compared to some the deputies had seen. It reminded

  Richards of motels from the fifties and sixties that

  sprouted along the old New York–to-Florida routes

  through the state before the interstates bypassed them—

  long cinder-block rectangles falling into disrepair.

  Here, communal bathrooms with shower stalls and

  toilets, one for each sex, lay at opposite ends of each

  rectangle. The men’s bunkhouse was a long room lined

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  with metal cots. Most were topped by stained mattresses

  bare of any linens, but some still had their blankets and

  pillows and a man was asleep in one of them. At the far

  end was a bank of metal lockers. Most of the doors hung

  open, but a few were still secured by locks of various

  sizes and styles. At the near end was a battered refrig-

  erator, cookstove, and sink. An open space in the center

  held a motley collection of tables and chairs where three

  more men were watching a Spanish-language program.

  “¿Dónde está Juan?” Lomax asked.

  Richards was pleased to realize that she could catch

  the gist of the reply, which was that the crew chief and

  his wife, along with another woman and two men, had