nobody was there when I went past his shop the first time?”
“Yes.”
“He was there when I came back out. I saw his truck and I had that sticky valve so I tooted my horn and went inside and—” He took another deep breath. “He was already dead, Deb’rah. Laying there on the floor.”
“With the safe open?”
“No. Billy must’ve done that. It was a little after eleven-thirty. Say eleven-forty, maybe? Soon as I saw Mr. Jap laying there with that tire iron, I knew somebody’d killed him and it scared the shit out of me. I wasn’t supposed to be there anyhow, so I just took off. Soon as I was out on the road and straightened up good, I looked back in my rearview mirror and I seen Billy turn in. He might’ve taken the money, but he never killed him.”
“You’ll have to tell Dwight,” I said, looking around for him.
“No!” said Reese. “You tell him. Please?”
“Listen, ma’am,” said the paramedic. “If we’re going to transport him, we need to do it now.”
Reluctantly, I stepped back and they finished loading him into the ambulance and headed back to Dobbs minus the siren and flashing lights.
I walked over to where Dwight was watching the hunters. Still muttering angrily, the two men carried the tagged and now thoroughly dead buck down across the ditch and put it in the back of their own truck.
“Eight points,” Dwight said admiringly.
I nodded. “No wonder Reese was tempted.”
The wildlife officer was a friend of Kidd’s and apologized for having to cite my nephew for unlawful possession of a deer, but I assured him there would be no hard feelings on my part.
He and the hunters drove away. Trooper Harrold was finishing up his report in his cruiser and Dwight walked with me over to Reese’s truck.
When we were alone, I told him what Reese had just told me about Saturday morning.
Dwight gave a sour laugh. “Zack Young hauled Billy Wall down to my office last thing Wednesday evening. Billy wanted to confess that he’d kept the money and burned open the safe to get at the chits Jap was holding on him, but he said Jap was dead when he got there. I’m not real sure Zack believed him any more than I did.
“Dammit, Deb’rah! Why the hell did Reese run? And why didn’t he tell me this when I first talked to him?”
“Probably for the same reason he picked up a stunned buck and put it inside his truck,” I said wearily. “Congenital stupidity.”
Dwight closed and locked the far door of the truck. I pulled the keys from the ignition and lifted Reese’s Winchester from the gun rack.
“I’d better take this with me,” I said and stowed it in the trunk of my car.
“You want me to run with you over to Jimmy’s?” asked Dwight. “If he’s not there—”
His radio crackled and he reached in and turned it up. “Yeah, Laurie?”
The dispatcher’s voice came through clearly. “Jack just called in about that shooting. Guy in a white truck on Pleasant Road near Old Forty-Eight? He wants to know how come you’re not there yet.”
Dwight looked at me. We were on Pleasant Road, near Old Forty-Eight, beside Reese’s white truck.
“
“Between the west side of Old Forty-Eight and Pleasant’s Crossroads.”
We were on the east side of that highway.
“On my way,” said Dwight. “See you, Deb’rah.”
As he pulled even with Trooper Harrold’s cruiser, he paused and relayed the information.
Many people would have chased right after Dwight and the trooper to see who’d been shot, but I’m a responsible adult. I did a three-point turn and drove sedately over to Jimmy’s. I arranged to have Reese’s truck towed. I called Nadine to say that her son was on his way to Dobbs in an ambulance.
28
« ^ »
Dick Sutterly’s truck was sitting in a ditch almost at the same angle as Reese’s, but the damage to his truck was minimal.
There wasn’t even any broken glass since the window was down when the bullet smashed into Sutterly’s brain.
He’d been found by four Makely women on their way home from Christmas shopping at the malls in Raleigh. After getting their names and addresses, Detective Jack Jamison had let them go.
“They found the car in gear with the keys in the ignition,” said Dwight. “Looks like he might’ve had his foot on the brake, talking to the person who shot him, and then when he died, the car just rolled on into the ditch and
