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Dwight Bryant hung around our house so much when he was growing up, he could have been another of my brothers, fitting in somewhere between Will and the little twins. He has a football build now, but back then it’d been one-on-one basketball down at the barn and baseball out in the pasture. Whatever ball was in season, he’d be out there with the boys when they were free to play even if it meant he first had to help with their chores after he’d finished his own chores at home. Dwight’s father was killed in a tractor accident when he was young and his strong-minded mother never remarried, so I guess Daddy is the closest thing he has to a father figure; and Daddy’s always been partial to him, too.
That doesn’t mean though that Dwight didn’t cross-question us three ways to Sunday after the crime scene unit got there and he could give us his full attention. As Detective Chief of the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department, he would never stint his duty; but at least he didn’t start right in lecturing me for getting myself mixed up in another murder, not with Daddy sitting there on the tailgate of his old pickup.
Adam said he hadn’t seen anyone while he was burning trash back near the creek. Nor had he noticed the sound of a truck or car passing on the far side. Both of us had forgotten to wear a watch, so we didn’t know when it was that Dick Sutterly drove off toward Mr. Jap’s place, but Adam said they’d been talking about ten minutes when I got there. We both agreed that it was probably close to twenty minutes from the time he left till the time Daddy arrived.
“According to my piece, when I got back in my truck after finding Jap, it was exactly twenty-two minutes after one.”
Daddy pulled on the slender gold chain that was linked to a belt loop and his pocket watch slid into view. He flipped back the lid and compared the old-fashioned dial with Dwight’s digital wristwatch. They were less than a minute apart.
“And no,” he said, before Dwight could ask him, “I didn’t see Sutterly nor his truck neither when I turned in here.” He paused, remembering. “Did see Dallas’s wife when I passed. Least I reckon it was her, raking up leaves in her backyard. She might’ve noticed something.”
There were too many trees between the two houses for a clean view even if all the leaves had fallen, but it was true that she might have noticed if someone left by the far drive or if someone circled around by the back lanes.
Dwight made a note of it. “Now, you say you saw him at the flea market this morning. Did he seem any different?”
Daddy shook his head. “Nope. He was just Jap. This close to Thanksgiving, he reckoned it was the last time he could put out his corn and pumpkins before folks started wanting holly and mistletoe. He was thinking of shooting some down for next week. I thought it was a little early myself, but then I seen Christmas trees shining in some windows already, so maybe he was right.”
Mistletoe is an evergreen parasite on hardwoods. The seeds ripen inside waxy white berries and many cling to a bird’s beak while it’s eating. When the bird next lands in an oak or pecan tree, it cleans its beak on the nearest twig and the sticky seeds are glued to the spot. If conditions are just right, the seeds will sprout and send feeder roots down through the bark and soon there’s a bushy green ball of mistletoe putting out more white berries. Since the bird usually does its beak cleaning out on the tips of a tree’s branches, twenty or thirty feet off the ground, this does not make for simple gathering. Nevertheless, with a .22 rifle, a good marksman can prune you off enough mistletoe to kiss half the county.
“Jap did say he needed to come on back before dinner,” Daddy told Dwight. “Said he was expecting somebody.”
“He didn’t say who?”
Daddy shook his head. I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t speculate about the Wall boy. He wouldn’t put suspicion on somebody unless he knew it was true.
“What about Allen Stancil?” asked Dwight. “Any of y’all see him today?”
We told him no.
Even though Dwight had met Allen back when he and my brothers were messing around with their first cars, he was in the army and stationed in Germany at the time Mother died and I started college. There was no reason for him to’ve heard about my running off to Martinsville with Allen and I didn’t see any point in bringing him up to speed on it at this late date. I just hoped nobody else would either.
J.V. Pruitt, who’s acted as the county’s coroner most of my lifetime, stepped out of the garage. He’s an undertaker, not a doctor, but he’s seldom second-guessed by the ME over in Chapel Hill.
I have never seen Pruitt when he wasn’t dressed in a three-piece suit, white shirt and dark tie, and a plain felt hat—tan in the summertime, dark gray in the winter. He tipped his winter hat to me and nodded to Daddy, who always contributes to his campaign and hangs his poster in the crossroads store.
“Just what it looks like, Dwight,” he said now. “A single blow to the back of his head with that tire iron. Wouldn’t take much strength, just determination.”
“When?” asked Dwight.
“Now, Dwight, you been doing this long enough to know we can only approximate. When was he last seen?”
Dwight glanced at Daddy, who said, “Well, I seen him down at the crossroads around ten-thirty and I found him at one twenty-two.”
“Well, there you are,” said Pruitt, straightening his already straight tie. “Death occurred sometime between ten-thirty and one twenty-two. Chapel Hill won’t get it any tighter than that.”
The garage was a good hundred feet off the road, but a hundred feet back wasn’t enough to deter the curious. Cars were starting to clog up both lanes as people slowed to a crawl and craned their necks to see what had brought the blue-lights out to Jap Stancil’s. A highway patrolman arrived and began directing traffic in an effort to keep things moving.
