He’s one of those up-by-his-bootstraps guys. Always
saying he started with nothing and built it into some-
thing. Wasn’t completely nothing though, was it? He
had what was left of his granddaddy’s farm. Gave him a
place to stand while he leveraged the rest. Not the most
patient man you’d ever want to meet. Couldn’t bear to
see any workers standing around idle if the clock was
running. Thought they ought to keep picking tomatoes
or cutting okra even if it was pouring down rain because
that’s what he did when he first started. Always pushing
the limits.”
“You got along with him though?”
“Enough that I never quit him. Came close a couple
of times. But he paid good wages for hard work and
156
HARD ROW
he knew he didn’t have to be breathing down my neck
every minute to make sure I was keeping to the sched-
ule. And most of the time he could laugh about things.
He liked to keep tabs on whatever was going on. He’d
come out here in the fields and get his hands dirty once
in awhile or plow for a few hours. That man did love to
sit a tractor.”
“Yet you weren’t surprised when he didn’t show up
for two weeks?”
Again the shrug. “I knew he and Mrs. Harris were
fighting it out in court. I figured that’s where he was.”
“You have a couple here named Ramon and Strella?”
“Ramon? Sure. Only they’re not on the place now.”
Once more he consulted his Palm Pilot. “They moved
over to Harris Farm Three back around Thanksgiving.
That’s down near New Bern.”
“Any objection if we question the people still here?”
Dwight asked.
“No problem. Either of you speak Spanish?”
As both deputies shook their heads, Lomax unclipped
the walkie-talkie on his belt. “Let me get Juan for you.
He’s pretty fluent in English.” When the walkie-talkie
crackled, the farm manager said, “Hey, Juan? Come on
in, bo.”
Immediately, one of the tractors broke off and headed
in their direction.
Before it reached them, though, Dwight’s own phone
buzzed again.
“Hey, Major?” Denning said. “You might want to get
back over here. We’ve found Harris’s car. I think we’ve
also found the slaughterhouse.”
157
C H A P T E R
18
A good barn is essential, and no farmer can afford to be
without one, which should be of sufficient size for all the
purposes to which it is to be appropriated.
—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890
Dwight Bryant
Monday Afternoon, March 6
% Sid Lomax followed Dwight and Jack Jamison
back to a cluster of outbuildings, which were
screened from sight of the farmhouse and garage by a
thick row of tall evergreen trees and bushes. In addition
to the usual shelters, several of the sheds held special-
ized equipment for the different crops. The two trucks
pulled up in front of a shed where Richards was already
cordoning the place off with a roll of Denning’s yellow
crime scene tape. This shed was built for utility, not
beauty: a concrete slab flush with the ground, steel
studs, steel framing, a tinned roof that sloped from front
to back, no windows. One of the tall double doors stood
open and gave enough light to see that a silver BMW
was parked inside.
158
HARD ROW
“What’s this shed used for?” Dwight asked Lomax as
they walked closer.
“It’s where we store the tomato sprayers, but we sent
them on to the other farms before Christmas because
we’re going to grow beans here this year. It’s supposed
to be empty right now.”
“Watch where you put your feet and don’t touch any-
thing,” Richards cautioned him as he started to follow
them inside.
Not that there was that much to touch. The car was
the only object of any size in a space designed to hold at
least two large pieces of machinery.
door fastenings. The hasp was a hinged steel strap that
slotted over a sturdy steel staple meant to hold a pad-
lock and secure the strap. A wooden peg hung from a
string but there was no padlock in sight and no sign that
the doors had been forced.
Lomax followed his eyes. “We keep the sheds locked
if there’s something worth stealing in them,” he said,
“but we don’t bother when they’re empty, just peg the
doors shut. I doubt I’ve stuck my head in here since
Christmas.”
Carefully, Denning used a screwdriver to pull a chain
that released the catch for the other door and let it
swing wide, then used equal care to switch on a couple
of bare lightbulbs overhead that immediately lit up the
gory scene at the rear of the shed.
Blood, lots of blood, had pooled at a slight low spot
and blow flies and maggots were busily churning it on
this mild spring day. Small dried chunks were scattered
around.
159
MARGARET MARON
“Bone,” Denning said succinctly.
The bloody axe had been flung to one side but there
were deep gouges in the concrete floor where the blade
had come down heavily.
But that wasn’t the worst.
The real horror was a length of bloody rusty iron
chain that lay in heavy loops, the links caked in blood
and gore, the two ends secured with a lock.
“Dear God,” Lomax murmured. “He was alive and
conscious when the hacking started?”
Denning nodded grimly. “Looks like it.”
“And after it was finished,” said Dwight, “the killer
didn’t need to open the lock. He just pulled away the
pieces.”
Lomax turned away and bolted for the door. They
heard him retching, but there were no grins from any of
them for a civilian’s involuntary reaction.
Except for Denning, all of them had grown up on
working farms where food animals had been routinely
slaughtered to fill the family freezer for the winter, but
that sort of killing was done cleanly and as humanely as
possible.
This though—!
I’m getting too hardened, Richards thought sadly.
What would Mike think of me that I’m not out there
throwing up, too?
“Looks like his clothes over here,” said Denning.
Jockey shorts lay tangled with a jacket, shirt, and pair
of pants. Shoes and socks had been tossed into a corner.
“No blood,” said Richards. “So he was stripped naked
before the chain went on.”
160
HARD ROW
Jamison was appalled by the level of cruelty.
“Somebody really hated his guts, didn’t they?”
“But where the hell’s the head and penis?” asked
Dwight. “Either of y’all check the
car?”
“Not there,” Richards said. “The keys are in the igni-
tion though.”
Dwight peered through the windshield. The steering
wheel sported a black lambswool cover, so no chance of
fingerprints from it.
“Y’all open the trunk?”
“Not yet,” Richards admitted.
They waited for Percy Denning to dust the door han-
dle. “Too smeared,” he reported.
After gingerly extracting the key from the ignition, he
fitted one of them into the trunk lock.
Richards held her breath as the lid lifted and immedi-
ately realized she was not the only one when the others
collectively exhaled.
The trunk was upholstered in dark gray and, except
for the spare tire, appeared at first to be empty. And
then they took a second look.
“Shit!” said Denning. He got his camera and took
pictures of the stains on the floor and lid of the trunk
and of the once-white undershirt with which the killer
had probably wiped the worst of the blood from his
hands. “This was the delivery truck.”
161
C H A P T E R
19
With a zest, seasoned and heightened by congenial compan-
ionship, let him have at times . . . such festivities as sweep
from the brain the cobwebs of care.
—Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890
Deborah Knott
Monday Afternoon, March 6
% After lunch, I finished up the first appearances.
Normally, unless an address is familiar for other
reasons, I don’t pay much attention to the ones given
by the miscreants who come before me, but so soon
after talking with Dwight and with the Harris divorce
on my mind, I looked closer at the Latino who had been
picked up Saturday night and was charged with posses-
sion of two rocks of cocaine.
“Ward Dairy Road?” I asked through the interpreter.
“Harris Farms?”
“Sí,” he said and followed that with a burst of Spanish.
The only word I caught was Harris and the interpreter,
a young woman going for an associate degree in edu-
cation out at Colleton Community, confirmed that he
162
HARD ROW
lived in the Harris Farms migrant camp out there on the
old Buckley place.
I appointed him an attorney, set his bond at five thou-
sand, and before remanding him to the custody of the
jailer, asked if he knew Mr. Harris.
“¿Conoce el Señor Harris? ”
From the negative gestures and the tone of his reply,
I was not surprised to hear that this guest worker knew
the “big boss” by sight but had never had direct deal-
ings with him.
The rest of his reply was almost lost to me as a dis-
traught white woman burst through the doors at the
rear of the courtroom with a wailing infant. There was
a huge red abrasion on the side of her face and blood
dripped from her cut lip onto the dirty pink blanket
wrapped around the baby.
A uniformed policewoman hurried in after her, call-
ing, “Ma’am? Ma’am?”
“Please!” she cried as the bailiff moved out to inter-
cept her. “He’s going to kill me and the baby, too! You
got to stop him! You got to! Please?”
Between us, we got her calmed down enough to
speak coherently and give me the details I needed to
issue an immediate domestic violence protection order.
Someone from the local safe house was in the court-
room next door and she volunteered to take the woman
and her baby to the shelter.
As things returned to normal, I finished the last of
the first appearances and sent them snuffling back to jail
to await trial or try to make bail. While the ADA got
ready to pull the first shuck on today’s criminal trials,
163
MARGARET MARON
I asked my clerk to check on when I’d signed the sum-
mary judgment for the Harris divorce.
At the break, I phoned Dwight, who was out at the
old Buckley place by then and gave him the date—
Monday, February 20. “Four full days before those legs
were found,” I said.
“So if he died before then, maybe the wife decided
she’d rather inherit everything instead of having to di-
vide it with his heirs?”
“Only if she withdraws her request for the ED,” I
reminded him.
“Who are they, by the way?”
“I haven’t a clue,” I said, resisting the urge to go into
all the possible legalities that could complicate his sim-
plistic summation. “Reid might know. Am I still going
to see you in a couple of hours?”
“I’ll be there,” he promised.
I adjourned at 5:30, then got held up to sign some
orders, so that I went downstairs prepared to apologize
for being a little late. I needn’t have worried.
Melanie Ashworth, the department’s recently hired
spokesperson, was holding forth about something to
reporters in the main lobby, so I crossed out of camera
range and asked the dispatcher on duty what was up.
“They just identified all those body parts,” he whis-
pered. “It’s Buck Harris.”
I walked on down the hall. Dwight was in Bo’s office
with a couple of deputies, and they seemed to be dis-
cussing something serious. He held up a with-you-in-a-
minute finger and I signaled that I’d wait for him in his
164
HARD ROW
office. It did not look good for the home team. Even
though Cal and I both needed for me to follow through
on this, I should have known better than to try to set up
an evening with Dwight when he was in the middle of a
sensational murder investigation.
Fortunately, I had brought along some reading mate-
rial, although it didn’t make me happy to read that a col-
league had been reversed on an earlier ruling. She had
ordered the divorced father of minor children to turn
in all his guns until the children were grown. This was
after he himself testified that yes, he did keep a loaded
handgun on the dash of his truck and loaded long guns
in the house and no, he didn’t plan to lock them up in
a gun cabinet or have them fitted with trigger locks be-
cause his kids knew better than to mess with them.
The father had appealed and the higher court had
sided with the dad. I just hoped my friend would never
have to send those judges the obituary of one of those
kids with an “I told you so” scribbled across it.
I had rendered a similar judgment almost a month
ago, but so far that father hadn’t appealed. With a little
luck, he might never hear that there were higher courts
that would let him put his preschoolers in harm’s way. I
certainly wasn’t going to tell him.
Dwight was still tied up when I finished reading the
official stuff, so I pulled out Blood Done Sign My Name,
my book club’s selection for
March.
I know, I know. My club is always behind the curve,
but hey, sometimes it’s helpful to let the first waves of
enthusiasm wash out what’s trendy and leave what’s
solid. We’ve spared ourselves a lot of best sellers that
weren’t worth the trees it took to print them. With this
165
MARGARET MARON
book, the first sentence grabbed me by the throat and
was so compelling that I was deep into it by the time
Dwight finally got free
“Sorry about supper, shug,” he said when he joined
me. To my surprise, it was five past seven. “I guess we’ll
have to get something at the game.”
I slid my book into the tote bag that held my purse
and papers. “You’re not going to blow me off ?”
“Nope. You’re right. We’ve got good people. Let ’em
run with the ball.”
He picked up his jacket, held my coat for me, and
switched off the light behind us.
“Enjoy the game,” Bo called as we passed his office.
Happily, the lobby was now bare of reporters.
“They were all over the Harris story when I got here.
Y’all hired Melanie Ashworth just in time, didn’t you?”
I said, holding out my hand for his keys. Late as it was,
we didn’t have time to meander in to Raleigh with him
behind the wheel.
He handed them over without dissenting argument
and said tiredly, “You don’t know the half of it. It’s
been one hellacious day. Remember that second right
hand we found?”
“The Alzheimer’s patient who drowned in Apple
Creek?”
Dwight nodded. “The autopsy report just came in.
The body’s definitely Fred Mitchiner, but it turns out
that an animal didn’t just pull the hand loose. Somebody
cut it off.”
“What?”
“Yeah. That hand had been in the water so long that
the connective tissues were pretty much gone, but there
166
HARD ROW
was a ligament that must have still been intact because it
was only recently cut off. Not when he first died.”
“Someone killed him?”
“Hard to say. The ME doesn’t think so. There’s no
evidence of trauma to the body, but he’d been in the
water so long that there’s no way to know if he drowned
by accident or if someone held him under.”
I gave Dwight my tote bag to stash behind the seat
and unlocked the truck. Although we were in danger
of missing the opening face-off, we would also miss the
rush hour traffic.