Among the ones who did have a personal connection were Mike Castleman and Don Whitley, both white, and Eddie Lloyd, black, the three deputies who worked drug interdiction. According to Dwight, out on the interstate, they were like bird dogs in a covey of bobwhites, especially Castleman. “Going sixty-five miles an hour, he can look at two cars you’d swear were identical and point out the one that’s carrying drugs while the other one’s clean as a whistle.”
Indeed, he’d even been in my court before lunch on Friday to testify at a probable cause hearing for a couple of Haitian mules who were being bound over for trial in superior court. Coincidentally, he was on duty Friday evening and was one of the first responding officers, but when he repeated the story again for the group, it was Mei’s death that seemed to bother him more.
“When we talked about my testimony that morning, Ms. Johnson did say she was taking off early, but you never expect it to be somebody you know,” he said. “But the baby. God! I didn’t even see her at first. You automatically go for the driver or a front-seat passenger. Check for vitals, you know? When they told me there was a baby in the backseat—” He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Man, all I could think about was Heidi.”
Heidi? I raised my eyebrows at Dwight.
“His daughter,” Dwight murmured in my ear. “Grown now, but she hung the moon for him.”
I knew he was divorced and I had him pegged more for a good-timing lover than a doting daddy. Early forties with thick curly black hair and dark flashing eyes, Castleman had even cast one of those eyes my way back while I was still in private practice and he testified against one of my clients, but I was involved with someone else at the time and wasn’t interested.
He was personable and funny as a rule, but there was nothing funny about his story of coming up on Tracy’s wrecked car. Eddie Lloyd had been off duty that night and listened without his usual hip-hop flippancy. When standing on a street corner in the seedier parts of Makely or Widdington, Lloyd could look like a strung-out user in bad need of a hit. Tonight he was sharp in a black turtleneck and dark gray jacket.
Don Whitley sat off at the end of the table and he didn’t have much to say either.
“That’s right,” Dwight said to Don. “You and Tracy worked pretty closely on that carjacking case, back in the spring, didn’t you?”
Whitley nodded sadly. “She was one smart lady.”
The case had come to trial last month, and although I hadn’t followed it closely, I knew that Tracy had gotten stiff sentences for all the perps involved, thanks to the meticulous case Whitley had built for her. He was mid- thirties and nowhere near as flashy as Castleman or Lloyd. In fact, I barely knew him except by sight, but Dwight had given him a commendation for that piece of work, and whenever he talked about the productive members of the department, Whitley, Lloyd, and Castleman were always mentioned. Between them, they were responsible for confiscating close to a hundred thousand dollars in drug money last year, which was partly why the department got a new crime scene van and was able to provide Kevlar vests for everyone.
Lloyd and Castleman seemed stone-cold sober but Whitley had clearly had more than one. He wasn’t drunk, but he didn’t seem in control of his emotions either. “She’s the reason I’m going for my associate degree,” he said mournfully. “She encouraged me to do it.”
We were joined by Deputy Mayleen Richards, recently promoted to detective and one of those investigating Tracy’s death. She’s four or five years younger, a few inches taller, and always reminds me of a half-grown filly that still has moments of coltish, lurching awkwardness. For some reason, she often gets tongue-tied around me, and tonight was worse than usual. With shoulder-length hair the color of cinnamon and thick freckles, she turned brick red and only briefly met my eyes when she shook my hand and wished us happiness. It was with visible relief that she turned to Castleman and asked if he’d noticed a Palm Pilot in Tracy’s car. “We know she owned one, but we haven’t been able to locate it.”
Castleman shook his head. “The window was open on the passenger side. Maybe it bounced out and one of the gawkers grabbed it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Richards sighed and glanced up at Dwight. “We have a list of the bystanders, though, and we’ll check it out. Maybe we’ll find an honest person who’ll give it back.”
I’ve never used one of those electronic schedulers, but I remembered Tracy singing their praises when she first got hers.
“I can see why you’d want it,” I said. “She used it for everything: address book, calendar, notes. She told me she’d thrown her old Rolodex in the trash. Everything was computerized.”
Since Dwight was distracted by something another deputy was telling him, I sneaked in a question of my own. “Do you know who she was seeing?”
“Not yet. Didn’t she tell you?”
“Sorry. Maybe he’s just a figment of our imagination.”
“Figments don’t get you pregnant,” Richards blurted just as Dwight turned back to us. She flushed an even brighter red and looked at him like a guilty kid with her hand in the cookie jar. “Oh gosh! That was really dumb of me.”
“Yes, it was,” said Dwight, and his face was as stern as I’d ever seen it. He looked around the small circle of officers, fixing each of them with his eyes. “This goes no further. Understood? If I hear even a whisper of this before we get the ME’s official findings, I’ll put every one of you on report. Is that clear?”
There were murmurs of “Yessir” and uncomfortable glances towards Richards, who stood there looking as if she could burst into tears.
Stunned as I was by hearing that Tracy had been pregnant, I nevertheless put my hand on Dwight’s arm. “You’d put me on report, too?”
He relaxed enough to grin down at me. “Damn straight.”
I made a face and that broke the tension. Except for Richards, the others laughed, and talk moved on to a series of break-ins in the Cotton Grove area that had them baffled.
Since Thanksgiving, there had been a systematic looting of houses around Cotton Grove and nobody had a clue who was doing it. In each incident, the owners had been gone for at least three or four days, either on vacation or traveling for business or pleasure during this holiday season. All the houses were without burglar alarms, in
