There was only a single streetlight at the far end of the quiet block, but a light was on by the front door, and as soon as Dwight pulled up to the curb in his Colleton County cruiser, he saw a man come to the front window and peer out at him.
The door was opened before Dwight could cross the yard.
“What’s happened?” he called from the porch. “Is it my wife? Is she all right?”
“Evening, Mr. Bullock,” Dwight said.
Even though both had played softball together the night before and eaten pizza at the same table afterwards, Dwight was now in full official mode and Jason Bullock stopped dead on the porch steps as he registered the deputy sheriff’s formality.
“Was she in a wreck? She always drives too fast. Oh Jesus, I’ll
The contradiction of words would have been funny if Dwight didn’t know what was going on in the man’s head, that he was bracing himself to hear what a rumpled officer of the law had come to tell him at ten o’clock at night.
“I’m sorry,” Dwight said. “There’s no easy way to say this—”
“She’s
All the air seemed to go out of Jason Bullock and Dwight put out his hand to steady him.
“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned. “I told her and told her, but she wouldn’t slow down. I swore I was going to buy a clunker that wouldn’t go over forty miles an hour and she just laughed. Oh, Jesus. What happened?”
“Where was your wife this weekend, Mr. Bullock?”
“She drove up toward Virginia—there were some antique stores near Danville. Look, are you absolutely sure? I mean, her sister was with her. Maybe they made a mistake?”
Dwight shook his head. “No mistake.”
“She called me just before our game. She said she’d bought me a surprise. She said she loved—”
His face crumpled and he sank down on the wooden steps that led onto the porch.
Awkwardly, Dwight patted his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Bullock said. He fumbled at his pockets, stood up and went into the house.
Dwight followed through the open door and into the kitchen where Bullock pulled a handful of paper towels from the dispenser by the sink and blew his nose.
The kitchen table was set for two with a bowl of slightly wilted salad in the center. A couple of steaks had thawed on the drainboard and runnels of blood had dried on the white porcelain.
“What about Lurleen?” asked Bullock when he had his emotions in check. “Her sister. Is she okay?”
There was no way to mask the truth. Quietly but succinctly, Dwight explained that his wife had never left Colleton County. That she hadn’t died in a car crash, that she’d been murdered in the Orchid Motel out on the Dobbs bypass.
“What?” Bullock was looking like someone had sucker-punched him.
As neutrally as possible, Dwight described how his wife had been found—the wine glasses, the black lingerie, her partial nudity, how the door showed no sign of being forced.
Bullock listened numbly, his jaws clenching tighter and tighter with each new humiliating detail, till faint patches of white appeared along his chinline.
“I’m sorry,” Dwight said again.
“Where is she?” he asked abruptly. “What do I need to do?”
“We sent her body to Chapel Hill for the autopsy,” said Dwight, “but they’re fast. If you have a funeral director call, they’ll probably be finished within twenty-four hours.”
He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. Inside was a slim ballpoint pen. Sterling silver and expensive. Not an advertising gimme, although it looked elusively familiar to him for some reason. They had found it under Lynn Bullock’s body though he didn’t tell her husband this.
“Is it hers?” Dwight asked.
Jason Bullock took the bag and looked closely at the sleek design. “If it is, I never saw it before.”
He looked at Dwight bleakly. “But I guess there’s a lot I didn’t see, huh?”
CHAPTER | 7
These storms, which are common to the southern and southeastern coasts of the United States, invariably originate in “the doldrums,” or that region in the ocean where calms abound.
Monday morning—Labor Day—and I was surfing channels, trying to find more details about Lynn Bullock’s death while waiting for the coffee to perk. All I was getting were the bare facts voiced over uninformative shots of the Orchid Motel draped in yellow police tape from yesterday afternoon, although a helicopter view from above showed me that the motel was closer to the ball field than I’d realized. All the time Jason was talking to his wife, thinking she was a hundred miles away, she was right there less than half a mile from us.
The TV reporters didn’t seem to know as much as Amy had. I felt sorry for Tom and Marie O’Day, who bought the motel six years ago and have worked hard to make it succeed. This wasn’t the kind of publicity they needed. Tom appeared on camera long enough to say they had nothing to say, and viewers got to see a draped gurney being wheeled from a ground-floor room at the back of the building.
