Long Upon the Land (14 page)

B
reakfast that morning consisted of toasted bagels and sweet chunks of chilled cantaloupe from their garden, served with a side dish of fresh
Clarion
innuendos.

The lead story—“Victim’s Uncle Questions Lack of Progress”—was based on an interview the paper’s editor had conducted with Joby Earp.

“My nephew’s body was found on what used to be our family’s land till Kezzie Knott fast-talked my daddy out of it,” Earp was quoted as saying. “How hard is the sheriff’s department really looking at him and why is his son-in-law in charge of the investigation? Major Bryant asked me for my alibi. Did he ask for Knott’s?”

Deborah’s blue eyes flashed upon reading that aloud. “But you did ask him,” she said.

“I know, shug, and so does the
Clarion
. They probably also know that Joby Earp’s alibi is just as unsubstantiated as Mr. Kezzie’s.”

“What’s unsubstantiated?” asked Cal.

“Means not proven. No one’s confirmed that it’s true,” Deborah said.

“Why does Granddaddy need an alibi?”

“Because he and the Earps have had disagreements in the past,” Dwight said.

“But Uncle Robert and Uncle Haywood didn’t like that man that got killed either.”

“Why do you say that, buddy?”

Cal shrugged and took another bite of his cantaloupe. Orange juice ran down his chin and Deborah handed him a fresh napkin before it could drip onto his T-shirt. “They were talking about him Sunday. I think they used to get in fights when they were kids. They said his uncle was a mean man, too. Uncle Haywood said he was always looking to yell at them.”

Dwight grinned at him. “Maybe I ought to check
their
alibis.”

“Oh, Dad!” And Cal went back to the comics while Dwight finished reading the
Clarion
story Deborah had abandoned.

Buried at the end of it was another appeal to the public for anyone with information about the death or the whereabouts of the victim’s truck, which was described in detail.

When Dwight got to the office, Deputy Mayleen Diaz’s freckled face was flushed with triumph. “Jerome Williman was arrested in Buncombe County last night!”

“Great,” Dwight said. “Now remind me who Jerome Williman is.”

“Two weeks ago. The shaken baby case up near the Wake County line.”

“Oh. Right. How’s she doing?”

“Still in a coma on life support.” Unconsciously, Mayleen touched her expanding waistline in a protective gesture. “No matter how many times we see it, I’ll never understand why somebody can do that to a baby.”

“How’d they catch him?”

“Expired registration sticker. He was parked at a Bojangles outside Asheville and a sheriff’s deputy stopped by for a chicken biscuit. He noticed the sticker on his way out the door, ran the plate, and Williman popped right up on his computer.”

“Good man,” said Dwight. “Thank the Buncombe sheriff and ask if they want to ship him over to us or do we need to have somebody go fetch him.”

A moment later, he had a call from the police chief down in Makely, about twenty-five minutes south of Dobbs. “Major Bryant? Jimmy Locklear here. I think we’ve found that red Ford pickup you’re looking for.”

“No joke?”

“No joke.” He rattled off the license plate number and it matched Vick Earp’s. “Guy from Cotton Grove said he read today’s paper before driving down here to see his mother. He stopped to pick up some spark plugs at one of our auto repair shops and the truck was parked out front. He took pictures of the license plate and the windshield with the bullet hole on the passenger side and then drove right over to the station. Give me your email address and I’ll send them to you.”

“Is it still there?”

“Sorry. I drove past a few minutes ago, but it was gone and I didn’t stop ’cause I figured you’d want to speak to the manager yourself.”

“Thanks,” Dwight said.

Without waiting for the pictures, he called to Ray McLamb and the two of them headed for Makely. Normally, Dwight drove a sedate four or five miles under the speed limit, but today it was flashing blue lights and a siren as he wove in and out of traffic in the unmarked sedan. Once inside the town limits, Dwight turned them off so as to approach inconspicuously. By then, Mayleen had relayed the pictures. Two men stood in front of the truck, but both had their backs to the camera.

Locklear had given him directions to the repair shop, part of a national chain. When they entered, no one was inside except a clerk who was stocking the shelves and the manager who was on his computer. He stood up briskly when they entered. “Help you, gentlemen?”

The name embroidered on the pocket of his green denim shirt was L. Roberts.

Dwight showed him his badge and then the picture on his phone. “This you, Mr. Roberts?”

Clearly it was. The same green shirt, the same khaki pants, same stocky build, same head of thick white hair.

“What’s this about?” he asked in an accent that sounded more like Chicago or Cleveland than Colleton County.

“We’re looking for this truck and whoever’s driving it.”

“Because of that bullet hole?”

“That’s part of it.”

“Y’know, I had a feeling something wasn’t right with that kid. Real antsy he was.”

“You know his name?”

Roberts shook his head. “Never saw him before. He wanted an estimate for the windshield and a new paint job.” He gestured toward the computer. “That’s what I was looking up. Doubt if he can afford either one. Just another goofy kid. Doesn’t look like his old man’s name is Rockefeller either. I did get his number, though. Told him I’d call him and let him know how much it was gonna run.”

“You think you could talk him into coming back in?” Dwight asked.

“You still didn’t say why you want him.”

“The truck belonged to a murder victim over in Cotton Grove.”

“Really? Hmmm. Let me think.” Roberts ran his hand through his prematurely white hair. “Okay. This might do it.”

He touched the numbers on his cell phone and Dwight heard him say, “This is Les. You the guy that was in the repair shop about an hour ago? You wanted an estimate on some replacement glass for your F-150? It’s your lucky day. I found what might work for you already here. Some guy ordered it and never picked it up. I was going to send it back by UPS this afternoon, but if it’ll fit your truck and you can get over here before I pack it up, I can let you have it real cheap. Save me the cost of shipping.”

He listened with a smile on his face and flashed Dwight and Ray the OK sign with his thumb and index finger. “Okay, pal. See you in twenty minutes.”

His smile grew even broader as he clipped the phone back to his belt. “My girlfriend keeps telling me I ought to be a writer, all the stories I make up.”

The skinny young white man who got out of Vick Earp’s truck twenty-two minutes later had a bad case of acne and stringy yellow hair that brushed his shoulders. No more than seventeen or eighteen, Dwight decided, and still climbing Fool’s Hill if he thought painting a red truck black would be enough to disguise it without a different license plate. He came bounding through the doorway and up to the counter with a happy smile of anticipation on his face, but as soon as Dwight tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Colleton County Sheriff’s Department,” he whirled around and raced back outside, straight into the arms of Deputy Ray McLamb, who had waited there in case he tried to run.

Dwight thanked the shop manager for his help and joined Ray in the parking lot.

“What’s your name, son?”

With his hands cuffed behind him, the boy was defiant. “I don’t have to tell y’all anything. I want a lawyer.”

“Watch a lot of cop shows, huh?” said Ray. “Where you want him, boss?”

The rear of the unmarked car they’d driven down in was outfitted with bars and a divider for transporting suspects.

“Put him in the cage,” said Dwight and he put in a call for a tow truck to take the pickup back to Dobbs.

The crime scene team was waiting when the tow truck made it to the department’s parking lot and they went right to work on Vick Earp’s truck.

In the interrogation room, the young truck thief had given them his name—Wayne Booker—but continued to insist he wanted an attorney.

“Good idea,” Ray said easily. “Hope you can afford a smart one. Maybe he can get you off with life instead of a death sentence.”

“Death?” Booker’s voice went up two octaves and all the blood drained from his face. “I didn’t kill nobody!”

“Wish you could tell us about it,” said Dwight, regret in every syllable. “But we can’t ask you anything till your attorney’s present. Do you have one?”

Booker shook his head.

“Then you’ll have to sit in jail till you can come before a judge who will appoint you one. In the meantime, Wayne Booker, I’m arresting you for the murder of Victor Earp. Anything you say—”

“Who the hell is Victor Earp?” the boy cried.

“The man whose truck you were driving. The man you carjacked.”

“Carjacked? No! I didn’t! I never! Honest! I found the truck.”

“Book him,” said Dwight.

“No! Wait! I take it back. I don’t want a lawyer. I want to talk.”

“You sure? You want to speak on the record of your own free will?”

Booker nodded.

“Okay, then. Turn on the recorder, Ray.”

After the formalities were recorded, Dwight said, “Now then, Wayne Booker. Tell us how you came to be driving Victor Earp’s pickup.”

“I found it. I thought maybe it’d been abandoned because of the way the windshield was shot up.”

“Found it where?”

“Down by the railroad tracks, near the creek. I live on the south side of Cotton Grove where Forty-eight and Old Forty-eight and the tracks all cross Possum Creek.”

Although passenger service had been discontinued decades earlier, a freight line still bisected Cotton Grove on its way to Fuquay-Varina and points west. Trees and thick shrubbery hid most of the track from view and muffled the noises in summer, but in winter, when Dwight was a boy and the wind was right, the train whistle could be heard at night all the way out to the farm. A lonesome sound, yet somehow, oddly comforting.

“I cut through there on my bicycle all the time and I saw the truck backed up in the bushes last week.”

“When?” asked Dwight. “What day?”

“Monday. I didn’t think nothing about it. Thought someone was out on the creek fishing. But it was there on Tuesday, same exact spot. Wednesday I went fishing and it was still there. Hadn’t been moved. It was unlocked and when I was opened the door, the keys were just laying there on the seat, so I cranked it up. Half thought someone would come running and yell at me, but nobody did. There’s a service track beside the railroad, so I put my bike in the back and drove it on down to an old shed I know and I left it there till today. I figured somebody might recognize it if I tried to get the windshield fixed there in town, so that’s why I took it to Makely. How’d y’all find me so quick?”

“We’ve been asking people to keep an eye out for that truck,” said Dwight. “I guess you don’t read the newspaper.”

“I don’t read nothing. Get all my news offen the TV,” Wayne Booker said with a scornful shrug of his thin shoulders. “Wait a minute, though! Is that the dude that got dumped out on Kezzie Knott’s land?”

“You know Kezzie Knott?”

“Know who he is. My grandmother’s brother used to make shine for him.”

Dwight sighed. Sometimes he felt as if everybody in the whole damn county was connected to Mr. Kezzie one way or another through moonshine whiskey.

After lunch, with Wayne Booker fingerprinted and stashed in an interrogation room but not yet formally charged, Dwight and the team working on the case gathered to discuss what had been learned from Vick Earp’s pickup.

“That must be how he was transported out to where he was dumped, Major,” said Sam Dalton. We found blood on the gas pedal and in the truck bed. Probably his. Crabtree’s taken them out to Dr. Singh.” He grinned. “She said she’d try to sweet-talk him into giving her a rough analysis right away.”

Deputy Janice Crabtree was thirty-seven, blond, and attractive. She also had an associate degree in biology from the community college and loved to talk medical forensics with Dr. Singh, so there was a very good chance they could hear the results before the end of the day.

“We got the slug that went through the windshield.” Dalton handed Dwight a small plastic bag. “Looks like a deer slug from a smooth-bore twelve-gauge shotgun just like the one we brought in from the brother. We can get a warrant for his ammo and do a test firing.”

“Find any prints?” Dwight asked.

“The only useable ones in the cab are Booker’s and the victim’s. In fact, Booker’s seemed to be on every surface—glove box, radio, CDs, mirror, GPS. I swear he was like a monkey looking for peanuts. We found a lot of Earp’s prints but Booker’s are the only clear ones on the steering wheel, gearshift, door handles, or the vinyl. His prints overlay all the others. Same with the latch on the tailgate.”

“Maybe we can get something useful if the kid shows us where he found the truck,” said Dwight.

“Earp was killed over a week ago,” one of the team said dubiously.

“But it hasn’t rained since then,” Dalton reminded him. “We’re supposed to get some tonight, though, so right now’s probably our best chance.”

“Get Booker,” Dwight told McLamb.

Considering the amount of traffic on Highway 48—called “New 48” by longtime locals—and the old highway that followed the creek into Cotton Grove, the spot where the rails crossed under both roads was surprisingly isolated, a bit of waste ground made unattractive by the underpass, which sank the rails several feet lower than the surrounding ground level. Before the county built waste disposal sites twenty years ago, it had been an illegal dumping ground and an occasional refrigerator or box springs could still be seen rusting away under the weedy bushes.