Hard Row dk-13

by Margaret Maron

  Dwight gestured for him to take a seat and waited

  while Millard King explained that he was the attorney

  the judge had appointed to represent him yesterday and

  that he was here to discuss those charges, but first this

  officer, Major Bryant, had some questions for him.

  Dwight had procured a tape recorder from the front

  desk and as he set it up, King frowned. “What’s this

  about, Bryant?”

  “Ask him to state his name and address, please,”

  Dwight said pleasantly.

  Both men complied and Dwight added the date and

  the names of those present.

  “How long has he worked for Harris Farms?”

  “Two years.”

  “How did he know that Buck Harris was dead?”

  They had released the identity of the mutilated body

  last night, so it had been all over the morning news.

  Nevertheless, Millard King drew himself up and said,

  “What? Wait a minute, here, Bryant. You accusing my

  client of murder?”

  “I have witnesses who can testify that he suspected

  that Harris was dead before it was public knowledge.

  All I’m asking is how did he know it before the rest of

  us?”

  “Okay, but I’m going to warn him that he doesn’t

  have to answer if it self-incriminates.”

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  MARGARET MARON

  “Fine, but remind him that we now have his finger-

  prints on file.”

  “You have the killer’s fingerprints?”

  Dwight gave a pointed look to his watch. “Once his

  people come back, he’s free to go, you know.”

  Annoyed, King translated Dwight’s questions and

  it was soon apparent that the farmworker was denying

  knowledge of anything, anywhere, any time. But when

  King pressed him and rubbed his thumbs across his own

  fingerprints, Sanaugustin went mute.

  Then, hesitantly, he framed a question and King

  looked at Dwight. “He wants to know if fingerprints

  show up on everything.”

  “Like what?”

  King gave a hands-up gesture of futility. “He won’t

  say.”

  Dwight considered for a long moment, his brown

  eyes fixed on the Mexican, who dropped his own eyes.

  Dwight had never thought of himself as intuitive. He

  put more faith in connecting the dots than in leaping

  over them. But Deborah had been a judge for four years.

  Hundreds of liars and con artists had stood before her.

  If it was her opinion that Sanaugustin’s question was to

  get confirmation of something suspected but not posi-

  tively known, surely that counted for something. But

  if that were the case, why was this guy worried about

  fingerprints? Unless—?

  “Tell him that yes, we can lift fingerprints off of

  wooden doors,” he said, hoping to God that Denning

  had indeed dusted the doors of that bloody abattoir.

  “And if he touched the car, his prints will be there as

  well.”

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  HARD ROW

  When translated, his words unleashed such a torrent

  of Spanish that even King was taken aback. He mo-

  tioned for his client to slow down. At least twice in the

  narrative, the man crossed himself.

  Eventually, he ran out of words, crossed himself a

  final time, and waited for King to turn to Dwight and

  repeat what had been said.

  Everyone at the camp had heard about the body parts

  that were appearing along the length of their road, he

  had told King. They had even, may God forgive them,

  joked about it. But no one connected it with their farm.

  How should they? It was an Anglo thing, nothing to do

  with them. As for him, yes, he had once been a heavy

  user, but now he was trying to stay clean for the sake of

  the children. That’s why he gave most of his money to

  his wife to save for them. But on Saturday Juan had sent

  him over to the sheds to get a tractor hitch and he went

  to the wrong shed by mistake. Inside was the big boss’s

  car and that made him curious. Why was the car there?

  Then when he got closer, he heard the flies and smelled

  the stench of blood. Lots of blood. Bloody chains lay on

  the floor. Nearby, a bloody axe.

  He had panicked, slammed the door shut, then found

  the tractor hitch he’d been sent for. As soon as he could

  get away, he had made his wife give him money and

  had come into town to buy something that would take

  away the sight and the smell. That was the truth. On his

  mother’s grave he would swear it.

  Ever since a killer had suckered him with a convinc-

  ing show of grief and bewilderment over the death of

  a spouse, Dwight no longer trusted his instincts as to

  whether someone was lying or telling the truth, but

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  there was something about the man’s show of exag-

  gerated wide-eyed innocence at the end that made him

  wonder if they were hearing the whole story.

  “Who did he tell?”

  “He says nobody.”

  “Ask him who hated his boss enough to do that?”

  Again the negative shrug and a refusal to speculate.

  “Juan Santos? Sid Lomax?”

  But Rafael Sanaugustin continued to swear that this

  was the full extent of his knowledge and beyond that

  they could not budge him.

  Dwight switched off the tape recorder and carried it

  back out to the desk, leaving Millard King to discuss the

  possession charges with his client.

  When Juan Santos and the two women returned, he

  had them go around to his office with him. According

  to the jailer’s log, no one had visited Sanaugustin since

  he was locked up Saturday night, so the likelihood of

  their having conferred was minimal but not wholly out

  of the question because he’d used his one phone call to

  tell Santos where he was. When Dwight first asked about

  Sanaugustin’s movements on Saturday, Santos did not

  immediately mention sending him for a tractor hitch.

  That detail was sandwiched in between their problems

  with one of the tractors and how they were falling be-

  hind schedule with the spring plowing, and it seemed to

  come almost as an afterthought, as if it were something

  of little importance. Despite rigorous questioning, all

  three denied knowing what Sanaugustin had seen on

  Saturday and all declared that they had first learned of it

  and of Buck Harris’s death when Dwight was out there

  on the farm yesterday.

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  HARD ROW

  Dwight stared at them in frustration. Impossible to

  know who really knew what, but he was willing to bet

  that Señora Sanaugustin knew more than she was willing

  to admit. Wives usually did. True to his word, though,

  he turned them all loose at two o’clock and reached for

  his phone to call Richards and bring her up to date on

  what he’d learned.

  She sounded equally dispirited when she reported

  that they had come up pretty dry as well. “Bu
t we did

  learn that Mrs. Harris was out here on the farm that

  Monday,” she said. “And at least it’s stopped raining.”

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  C H A P T E R

  25

  The employer who treats his help fairly and reasonably in all

  respects is the one who will, as a general rule, secure the best

  results from their service.

  —Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890

  % No sooner did Juan Santos and the two women

  leave, than Dwight’s phone rang. It was Pete

  Taylor.

  “Sorry, Bryant, but Mrs. Harris’s daughter is flying in

  this afternoon and she can’t make it up to Dobbs today.

  What about tomorrow morning?”

  “Fine,” said Dwight. “Nine o’clock?”

  “That’ll work for her. And . . . uh . . . this is a little

  gruesome, but she was asking me about funeral ar-

  rangements for Harris. The daughter’s going to want

  to know. But his head’s still missing, isn’t it?”

  “ ’Fraid so, Taylor,” he said, seeing no need for the

  daughter to know what else was missing. “I know it’s

  weird for her, but we may not find it for months. If ever.

  The ME’s probably ready to release what we do have,

  though.”

  “I’ll get back to you on that,” said Taylor. “See you

  in the morning. Nine o’clock.”

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  HARD ROW

  With his afternoon unexpectedly clear, Dwight called

  McLamb and got an update on the Mitchiner case.

  Because the two deputies would not be speaking to

  the old man’s daughter till five, Dwight sent them to

  question some witnesses about a violent home invasion

  that had taken place in Black Creek over the weekend.

  “While you’re in that neighborhood, try dropping the

  name of Mitchiner’s daughter. See if she has any en-

  emies who might have thought that they’d hurt her if

  they hurt him.”

  After attending to a few more administrative details,

  Dwight called Richards to say that he was coming out

  to the Buckley place. “Tell Mrs. Samuelson we want to

  speak to her again.”

  “Should I try questioning Sanaugustin’s wife when

  she gets here?”

  “Not if the men are around. If she’s going to talk at

  all, it’ll probably be when they’re not there.”

  Despite the gory murder and the puzzle of Mitchiner’s

  hand, Dwight felt almost lighthearted as he drove out

  along Ward Dairy Road. The sun was breaking through

  the clouds, trees were beginning to bud and more

  than one yard sported bright bursts of yellow forsythia

  bushes. The rains would have settled the dirt around

  the roots of the trees they had planted this weekend,

  and whatever the problems with Cal, Deborah seemed

  to be taking them in stride.

  He was not particularly superstitious but he caught

  himself checking the cab of the truck for some wood to

  touch.

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  MARGARET MARON

  Just to be on the safe side.

  After years of wanting what he thought he could

  never have, these last few months had been so good that

  he was almost afraid he was going to jinx his luck by

  even acknowledging it. He told himself to concentrate

  instead on the cases at hand.

  Start with Mitchiner. An old man with a fading grasp

  on reality. Had he wandered away on his own or had

  someone taken him? The hand proved that someone

  knew where his body was because it had been cut loose

  and carried from that isolated spot on Black Creek

  downstream to a more frequented place on Apple

  Creek. Why?

  Because they wanted the hand to be found? Because

  they knew it would lead back to the body further up-

  stream?

  Deborah was fond of asking “Who profits?” but on

  the face of it, no one. Yes, Mitchiner’s daughter was

  suing the rest home, but that was almost reflexive these

  days even though most such cases no longer generated

  large settlements. Besides, everyone said that she and

  her son were devoted to the old man. Before he got his

  driver’s license, the kid rode his bicycle over there after

  school almost every afternoon to play checkers with

  him; after he turned sixteen, he came as regularly to

  take his grandfather out for a drive around town. The

  daughter was there a couple of nights a week and again

  on the weekends. On Saturdays, she had seen to his

  physical well-being, trimming his hair and toenails and

  seeing that he bathed properly. On Sundays, she had

  taken him to church for his spiritual well-being.

  According to the statements given when Mitchiner

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  HARD ROW

  first went missing, he liked to visit the graveyard where

  his wife and parents were buried and to walk the old

  neighborhood, so that’s where their first search efforts

  had been concentrated. How had he wound up in the

  creek, miles from his childhood haunts?

  And Buck Harris.

  Everyone said he was a bull of a man, a physical man

  who still liked to climb on a tractor and stay hands-on

  with every aspect of his crops, yet always up for sex.

  Whose ox had he gored?

  The possibilities were almost endless. One of the

  migrants at the camp? Someone he had done business

  with? Someone whose woman he’d taken? Certainly

  someone familiar with that empty shed. Mrs. Samuelson

  had said the killer must be “a hateful and hating man.”

  He couldn’t argue with that. To kill and butcher and

  then strew the parts around for the buzzards?

  And yeah, spouses and lovers were usually their best

  suspects, but surely no woman would have done what

  was done to Harris? On the other hand, that missing

  part of his anatomy certainly did seem to suggest a sex-

  ual motive. But what in God’s name could he have done

  to inspire such cruelty? Think of gaining consciousness

  to find yourself lying there in chains, naked and vulner-

  able as a killer lifts an axe and swings it down on your

  bone and flesh. The killer clearly meant for him to know

  it was coming, otherwise why the chains? Why not just

  go ahead and kill him quickly and cleanly?

  If Harris was lucky, the first blow would have made

  him black out from the shock to his system. If he wasn’t

  lucky—?

  Dwight tried to cleanse the images from his mind.

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  MARGARET MARON

  Mayleen Richards and Jack Jamison were waiting for

  him near the rear of Buck Harris’s homeplace. Two

  old-fashioned bench swings hung from the limbs of an

  enormous oak tree and the deputies seemed to be enjoy-

  ing the warm afternoon sunshine, although Richards’s

  dispirited greeting made Dwight think that Jamison

  must have told her about his resignation.

  “Where’s Denning?” he asked.

  “He’s back at the shed, going over the car with a fine-

  tooth comb,” Jamison said.


  “I thought he did that last night.”

  “He did, but you know Denning.”

  Dwight nodded. Attention to detail and a willingness

  to check and recheck were precisely why he’d promoted

  Percy Denning to the job.

  He glanced inquiringly at the shabby, unfamiliar car

  parked at the edge of the yard.

  “Mrs. Samuelson’s got those two migrant women

  helping her give the place a good cleaning. They got

  here about ten minutes ago,” Richards said. “She ex-

  pects Mrs. Harris and her daughter to stay here tomor-

  row night. She also seems to think the daughter inherits

  this place.”

  “She’s right,” said Dwight as he rang the back door-

  bell. “At least, that’s what his lawyer told me.”

  After a minute or two with no answer, he rang again.

  There was another short wait, then Mrs. Samuelson

  opened the door with a visible annoyance that was only

  slightly tempered by seeing him there instead of the two

  deputies again. Today, her white bib apron covered a

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  HARD ROW

  short-sleeved maroon dress and it was nowhere near as

  crisp as the first time she had talked to them. This apron

  had seen some serious action.

  “I’m sorry, Major . . . Bryant, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Major Bryant, I’m real busy right now.”

  “I’m sure you are, ma’am, but we have a few more

  questions for you.”

  She started to protest, but then seemed to realize that

  it would save time in the long run to capitulate and get it

  over with. She held the door open wide for them, “But

  please wipe your feet on the mat. We already mopped

  the kitchen floor.”

  Feeling six years old again, they did as they were told

  and followed her into the large kitchen. She invited

  them to sit down at the old wooden table, but there

  was no offer of coffee or cinnamon rolls today.

  “You know what we found out there in that equip-

  ment shed yesterday?” Dwight asked.

  She nodded, her lips tight.

  “That means he was killed by someone familiar with

  this place. So I ask you again, Mrs. Samuelson. Who on

  this farm thought they had a reason to kill Mr. Harris?”

  “And I tell you again, Major Bryant, that I don’t

  know. If it’s something to do with the farm, you need to

  ask Sid Lomax. If it’s something to do with his personal

  life, maybe you need to be asking that Smith woman.

  Maybe she had a boyfriend who didn’t like her messing