Hard Row Part 20

"A bunch of people saw her."

She took a deep breath and came back to the table. "All right. Yes. She was here that Monday, but there is no way under G.o.d's blue sky that she could have done that awful thing."

"She came to the house?"

Mrs. Samuelson gave a reluctant nod.

"What time?"

"I don't know. He wasn't in the house when I came in that morning and I didn't see his car, so I thought he'd taken off. I figured she'd be coming over to bring some stuff for the camp when the trucks came to move most of the crew back to New Bern, and I reckon he did, too. For all his big talk, she could always get the best of him in an argument and anytime she was coming to check up on things, he'd clear out."

She gestured to a door off the kitchen. "There's a little room in there with a television and a lounge chair so I can take a rest without going out to my apartment. I fixed lunch and then I went in to put my feet up for a few minutes. Only I went to sleep. And when I woke up, she was upstairs taking a shower."

"She came all the way from New Bern to take a shower?"

Mrs. Samuelson gave an impatient shake of her head. "There was a mud puddle down by the camp. Had ice across it, but it wasn't solid and she backed into it accidentally and wound up sitting down in it. Got soaked to the skin, she said. Cut her leg and her hand, too, so she came over here and took a shower and changed into one of his s.h.i.+rts and an old pair of jeans."

"What did she do with her own clothes?"

"Took 'em home to wash, I reckon. They went out of here in a garbage bag. And before you ask me, it was her own shoes she went out in and they certainly weren't b.l.o.o.d.y."

Dwight raised a skeptical eyebrow at Mrs. Samuelson's a.s.sertions. "Anybody see her take this tumble?"

"I don't know. Maybe one of the women helping me?" She stood as if to go call them.

"In a minute," Dwight said. "Your apartment. It's over the garage, you said?"

She nodded.

"So you would hear the door open and Mr. Harris's car start up?"

"If it was in the garage. A lot of times he parked around by the side door."

"Where you could see it from your windows?"

"If I was looking. If he was gone and I didn't hear him come in during the night, then I'd look out the window first thing every morning to see whether I needed to come over and start breakfast. There's an intercom, too, and sometimes he'd buzz me and say he wanted breakfast earlier than usual."

"So when's the last time you heard or saw his car?"

She frowned in concentration, then shook her head. "I'm sorry, Major Bryant. He came and went at all hours and I just can't fix it in my mind. All I can say is that it wasn't there Monday morning and I really did put it down to Mrs. Harris coming. Now can I please get back to my work?"

Dwight nodded. "One thing more though. Who did you really work for, Mrs. Samuelson? Buck Harris or his ex-wife?"

"He signed my paycheck," she said promptly.

"But?"

She returned his gaze without answering.

"Is there a Mr. Samuelson? Or do you and Mrs. Harris have that in common as well?"

Tight-lipped, the housekeeper stood up. "Which one of those women you want to talk to first?"

Before he could answer, his pager went off and he immediately called in. "Yeah, Faye?"

"Aren't you out there at the Harris Farm?"

"Yes."

"There's a Sid Lomax screaming in my ear for you to come. He says he's out there in the field. They just found a head."

CHAPTER 26.

Successful farmers do not break up a cart or so, and kill a mule or so during each year, and then curse their crops because the price is not high enough to pay for their extravagance.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 A clearly shaken Sid Lomax waited in his truck for them at a cut through some woods that separated one of the large fields from the other.

As Dwight stopped even with him, the farm manager pulled the bill of his cap lower on his forehead. His leathery face was pale beneath its tan and his only comment was a terse, "Follow me," as his tires dug off in the soft dirt to lead them up a lane at the edge of the field. Dwight put his truck in four-wheel drive and glanced in his mirror. Denning had caught up with him and Richards and Jamison were with him. She must have realized that a car might mire down out here after all the rain. They topped a small rise, then down a gentle slope to where two tractors with heavy turning plows blocked their initial view of a fence post at the far corner of the field.

The treated post was approximately five feet high and about half as thick as a telephone pole. Several men were cl.u.s.tered upwind from it. As Lomax and the deputies got out of their vehicles, the men edged back and they had a clear view. For a split second, looking at the thing rammed down on the top of the post, Dwight was reminded of a rotting jack-o'-lantern several days past Halloween when the pumpkin head verged on collapse. This head was worse-a thatch of graying hair, darkened skin, empty eye sockets, and a ghastly array of grinning teeth because most of the lips were gone as well.

Crows? Buzzards?

Blowflies buzzed and hummed in the warm afternoon sun and a few early yellow jackets were there as well. A thick rope of red ants snaked up one side of the post.

"Oh dear G.o.d in the morning!" Denning murmured as he moved in with his camera. With his eye on the viewfinder, he zoomed in on what was nailed to the post almost exactly halfway between the grisly head and the ground. "Was that his d.i.c.k?"

If so, there was almost nothing left of it now except where a nail held a flaccid strip of skin that fluttered in the light spring breeze.

In the next hour, Dwight had called the sheriff in Jones County, then sent two detectives down to start interviewing the migrants who had been transferred over to Harris Farm #3 between Kinston and New Bern. He had pulled Raeford McLamb and Sam Dalton out of Black Creek and they were now helping Jamison and a translator question everyone who still worked here on the Buckley place. Sid Lomax had volunteered his office desk and his kitchen table for their use. He was under the impression that Juan Santos could be trusted to help translate accurately, "But h.e.l.l, bo," he told Dwight wearily. "At this point, I don't know who's telling the truth and who's lying through his rotten teeth. It's gotta be one of 'em though, doesn't it?"

"Somebody familiar with the farm, for sure," Dwight agreed and led Lomax through a retelling of how they had discovered Buck Harris's head.

"Between the cold and then the rain, we're behind schedule on the plowing. This field's so sandy though, the rain drains right through it and I thought it'd be okay to finally get the tractors out here this afternoon. First pa.s.s they made, Vazquez spotted it. Santos had the walkie-talkie and as soon as he saw that post, he called me. Ten minutes later, I was on the horn to 911. I thought your people had already left. Man, was I glad to hear they were still here and you were, too."

Mayleen Richards had given Dwight the third set of names that Lomax had run off for them and he held them out to the farm manager now. "How 'bout you save us some time and put a check mark by every name that ever had words with Harris."

"I'm telling you. None of 'em had that much to do with him. Yeah, he'd come out in the fields once in a while, plow a few rounds on the tractor, haul a truckload of tomatoes to the warehouse, but he didn't speak a word of their lingo. Harris was one of those who think if people are going to come work in this country, it's up to them to learn English, not for him to have to speak Spanish. He'd talk real loud to them. If they didn't understand enough to answer, then he didn't bother with them. Not that he did much, even with those that could."

"Like Juan Santos?"

"Nothing more than to ask how the work was going, were the tomatoes ripening up on schedule, how bad were the worms? I'll be honest with you, Bryant. I don't think Harris thought of these people as fully human. More like work animals. Just a couple of notches up from horses or mules. If it hadn't been for Mrs. Harris and OSHA, I believe he'd have worked them like mules and stabled them like mules, too. The only time he really put his hand in for more than a day, though, was last spring when my parents were out in California and Dad had a heart attack so I had to fly out. I thought we ought to bring somebody over from Kinston, but he said he could handle it for a few days. My dad died, and it was over a week before I could get back. He wasn't too happy about that, but he did keep everything on schedule. G.o.d knows what actually went on. Santos never said much, just that Mrs. Harris was out here and they had a big fight about something. They were legally separated by then, though."

"You think he got on Santos's a.s.s about something while you were gone?"

Lomax let out a long breath and settled his cap more firmly on his head. He met Dwight's eyes without blinking. "You're asking me if Santos could've done this. Ol' son, I don't know anybody that could've done it. Besides, that was almost a year ago. If Harris still had a beef with him, he'd've fired him. And if Juan Santos had a beef with him, I do believe he'd've quit or done something about it long before this, don't you? Who has a hate this big that waits a year to get even? Besides, I thought you had fingerprints."

"We do," Dwight conceded. "But we don't have comparison prints for everyone who ever walked across this land. So tell me about Mrs. Harris?"

"What about her?"

"She get along with everybody?"

"She's a hard-nosed businesswoman, if that's what you mean, but she treats her people fair. Sees that the housing's up to government standards, makes sure the kids go to school. Expects value for her dollar, but doesn't forget that these are human beings, not work animals. She used to work out in the fields when they were first married, so she knows what it takes to make a crop. Even better, she's from the 'trust 'em or bust 'em' school of thought. You show that you know your job and you're doing it and she leaves you alone."

"I hear she was out here that Monday when Harris went missing. You see her?"

"Sure. She came over with the trucks to move the workers to Farm Number Three. Trucks brought some new furniture. Two new refrigerators. Well, new to us. I think she buys everything at the Goodwill store. Claims it helps them and upgrades us and I reckon she's right."

"She ask about Harris, where he was?"

Lomax shook his head. "Ever since they separated, it's like he didn't exist. She never mentioned him if she could help it. She just took care of the things she wanted done and didn't worry if that's what he wanted or not."

"I heard she sat down in a mud puddle around lunchtime."

"Yeah?" For a moment he almost smiled. "Didn't see it."

"Hear about it?"

"No. Should I have?"

"The bosslady up to her b.u.t.t in mud? I'd've thought so."

"We were pretty busy around then. Where'd it happen?"

"Somewhere around the camp's what I heard."

"Sorry. Maybe you should ask the women."

"Good idea," said Dwight, knowing that's where Mayleen Richards was at the moment, taking advantage of the men being tied up here for a while.

But when Richards rejoined them, she had nothing to confirm or deny the mud puddle story. "The women say they saw her in the morning when she came with new refrigerators for the married quarters and they had to empty the old ones, which were on their last legs. She asked about the children and about their health. She had picked up a couple of bilingual schoolbooks for the women, but after that they didn't see her again."

It was nearing four before they were finished with all the statements. Denning had bagged the head and what was left of Harris's p.e.n.i.s. He stopped by the farm manager's place to tell them that he was taking the remains over to Chapel Hill. "Don't know if y'all noticed or not, but there was a knotted b.l.o.o.d.y rag around the fence post where it caught on the wire. Looks to me like it could've been a gag that slipped down when the crows got at him. Would explain why n.o.body heard him scream. But unless there's a bullet hole I'm not seeing in this head, I don't know that it'll tell the ME anything he didn't already know but I guess we ought to go through all the motions."

Dwight nodded. "I don't suppose you've heard anything back on those fingerprints yet?"

"Sorry, sir."

"What about Santos or Sanaugustin?"

"Yessir. I did a quick and dirty on the men. No match. Haven't had a chance to compare the prints on the axe with the women's prints yet. I can let you know by in the morning though."

"Good."

McLamb and Dalton volunteered to go back to Black Creek to interview Mrs. Stone and her son. "See if we can't pick up a lead from them."

"Fine," Dwight said. "I'll authorize the overtime."

Rather than go all the way back to Dobbs himself, he called Bo and brought the sheriff up to date, then headed off to pick up his son.

CHAPTER 27.

When a young man gets married, and the little chaps come along according to nature, he ought to get on a farm to raise them.

-Profitable Farming in the Southern States, 1890 DEBORAH KNOTT.

TUESDAY NIGHT, MARCH 7.

That night was a bar a.s.sociation dinner in Makely, and Portland and I drove down together. Avery had opted to skip the dinner and stay home with his daughter, but we still left late because she had to nurse little Carolyn first.

Avery asked me about the rumors flying around the courthouse that they'd found Buck Harris's head stuck on a fence post, but I didn't get a chance to call Dwight till after I'd adjourned at five-fifteen and I was afraid I might interrupt the talk he planned to have with Cal. Satisfying my curiosity could wait. That head wasn't going anywhere.

Except maybe over to the ME's office in Chapel Hill.

"You're not making Dwight take sides, are you?" Portland asked when we were finally in the car and I had told her a little about the situation with Cal. She was totally thrilled when I married Dwight, and she worries that I'm going to mess up if I'm not careful.

"Of course not," I said.

"Because he may be crazy about you, but Cal's his son."

"Like I need a lecture on this? After four years of family court? After watching Kidd Chapin's daughter make him choose between her and me? h.e.l.l, Por! I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. Cal and I got along just fine before Jonna died. I'm pretty sure he liked me back then and he'll probably like me again once he settles in. It's a rough time for him, a lot of adjustments, but I don't think he wants to split Dwight and me up. He's not a conniver like Amber. Besides, boys don't usually think like that. My brothers and their sons have always been pretty easy to read, even when they were getting ready to bend the rules or break the law. Unlike my nieces. Girls are out there plotting three moves ahead. Remember?"

"Oh, sugar!" she said with a grin, and I knew she was recalling some of the stuff we used to get into, the way we could manipulate teachers and boyfriends from kindergarten on.

She pulled out a pack of Life Savers, the latest weapon in her diet a.r.s.enal and offered me one. The clean smell of peppermint filled the car.

"Have you talked to your friend Flame since Buck Harris's body was identified?" I asked.

"Yeah, she stopped by for coffee this afternoon on her way back to Wilmington. She said there was no reason for her to stay, that his ex-wife and daughter certainly wouldn't save her a seat at any memorial service and she didn't want to add to his daughter's grief."

"She okay herself?"