“Well, damn!” said Dalton. “He was shot?”
A few moments later, the EMT who drove the rescue truck confirmed that J.D. Rouse was dead and yes, he had indeed been shot through the back of the head.
“No exit wound, so the bullet’s still in there,” she said.
There was an open six-pack on the seat beside the dead man. It held three cold Bud Lights. A fourth can lay on the floor in a pool of beer and blood. Otherwise the interior of the truck was uncluttered. No fast-food boxes or plastic drink cups, but the open ashtray was full of butts and there were burn marks on the vinyl seats as if hot cigarette coals had fallen on them. A smoker, thought Dwight, and a careless one at that. It went with what he knew of Rouse, who had grown up in the same community: a man who grabbed what he wanted with greedy hands and with no regard for what he might be wrecking.
“Looks like he’d just popped the top on his beer when he got hit,” said the med tech.
Rouse had worn a fleece-lined denim jacket, jeans, and heavy work boots when he died. The jacket was unzipped to reveal a blue plaid flannel shirt even though it was a cold night and the passenger-side window was open about four inches.
While Dalton secured the area, Dwight called for the crime scene van and a couple of his detectives, then he walked over to the people standing across the road.
“Which one of you reported it?”
“That was us,” said the older gray-haired man, whom Dwight immediately recognized.
Victor Johnson was a generation older and had lived on this farm all his life, so he had known Dwight’s family long enough to speak familiarly, but tonight’s circumstance made him more formal.
“Did you see it happen?” asked Dwight.
“No, sir. It was getting on for dark and my wife had just called me to the table when we heard Miz Harper banging at the door. She was the one actually called y’all.
Soon as she said a truck’d run off the road, Catherine showed her the phone and I come out here to see about it.”
“Was the motor still running?”
“Yessir. I opened the door and reached in under him to cut it off. Knowed it was J.D. soon as I seen the truck.
He lives on the other side of Old Forty-Eight and cuts through here all the time. Young man like that?” He shook his head. “And there’s that poor wife of his with two or three little ones. Somebody needs to go tell her.”
“We’ll do that,” said Dwight. “This Mrs. Harper.
Which one is she?”
“Oh, she ain’t here. She was so shook up, she wanted to go on home. I tried to get her to let me drive her, but she had her dog and her wagon with her and I couldn’t talk her into leaving the wagon here.”
“Harper?” Dwight asked, trying to place the woman.
“Eddie Harper’s mother?”
“No, I doubt you’d know her,” said Johnson. “She’s one of the new people.”
“She lives just over the rise there,” said Mrs. Johnson, stepping forward. “First little white house on the right when you turn into that Holly Ridge development. They moved here from Virginia about ten or twelve years ago.
Daughter’s remarried now and lives in Raleigh.”
The woman paused and beamed at him. “I heard you got married last month yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Kezzie Knott’s girl.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said and waited for the sly grins that usually accompanied his admission that Sheriff Bo Poole’s chief deputy had married the daughter of a man who used to run moonshine from Canada to Florida in his long-ago youth.
There was nothing sly in the older woman’s smile. “I knew her mother. One of the nicest people God ever put on this earth. I hope y’all are half as happy together as her and Mr. Kezzie were.”
“So far, so good,” said Dwight, smiling back at her.
“So this Mrs. Harper was walking along the shoulder and saw it happen?”
Husband and wife both nodded vigorously. “She’s out two or three times a week picking up trash. Said that just about the time he got even with her, she heard a big bang, like the tire blew out or something, and then the pickup slowed down and ran right off the road and into the ditch.”
Ten minutes later, Dwight stopped his truck in front of the neat little house at the corner of one of those cheaply built developments that had popped up around the county in the last few years like mildew after a summer rain. No sidewalks and the street was already pockmarked with potholes. The porch light was on and a child’s red metal wagon stood near the steps. Its carrying capacity was increased by removable wooden rails and was lined with a large black plastic garbage bag whose sides had been snugged back over the rails. The bag was half full of dirty drink cups, plastic bottles that seemed to have been run over a couple of times, beer cans, scrap paper, yellow Bojangles’ boxes, and fast-food bags. A soiled pair of thin leather driving gloves lay on top.
When he rang, a dog barked from within, then the door was opened by a wiry gray-haired woman. She wore gray warm-up pants and a blue Fair Isle sweater and Dwight put her age at somewhere on the other side of sixty.
