ran for governor, and Doug Woodall was no fool. “I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, but it’s sure playing hell with mine.”
“What about it, Dwight?” asked the sheriff. “What do the troopers say?”
“Wherever he is, he’s not driving one of our units,” said Dwight Bryant. “Ours are all accounted for. Nobody’s seen him since he drove off alone from Jerry’s night before last.”
He raised a nearly imperceptible eyebrow to Bo Poole, who nodded and fixed their visitor with a stern look. “Dwight’ll tell you what we’ve got, but it stays in this office for now,” he warned as he stirred sugar into his mug and returned to the swivel chair behind the wide desk. “Agreed?”
“Your call,” said Doug Woodall and leaned back against the doorjamb.
“Tracy Johnson was about six weeks pregnant,” Dwight said tersely. “We’re waiting on a DNA sample to see if Whitley’s the father.”
Woodall jerked upright. “The hell you say!”
“He was sucking down the beer at Jerry’s pretty heavy, and when Deb’rah heard he’d gone missing, she remembered he seemed pretty cut up about Tracy. She thinks it’s because they worked together on some recent cases and because Tracy had encouraged him to go for his associate degree.”
“She know Whitley was balling her?”
“Not from me, she doesn’t.”
Bo Poole grinned and Woodall said, “Oh yeah, right. She told me about y’all’s separation of powers.”
“Anyhow, we don’t know for a fact that he was. All we have are Tracy’s cell phone records that show they talked to each other at least once a day and sometimes more. Best we can tell, the personal calls started last spring. End of May. That’s when they spent a lot of time working together.”
“End of May?” Woodall frowned and they could almost see the calendar pages turning in his head. “Oh yeah, that’s when we went to trial on the Carson hit-and-run, right?”
“Right,” said Dwight. “Whitley’s testimony was key on that one, too. He was the arresting officer, the one who spotted the broken headlight before Carson could get off the interstate. When we first heard about Tracy Friday night, I did ask Deb’rah who she was with these days.”
“I thought you said she doesn’t know about Whitley.”
“She doesn’t. But Tracy dropped a hint that she
Woodall walked over to the coffee urn. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that coffee now.”
He inspected the inside of the extra mug on the bookcase, blew a speck of dust out of it and filled it with steaming hot coffee, then set it on the front corner of Bo’s desk as he took one of the empty chairs.
“So you’re thinking Whitley shot her Friday night?”
“Not necessarily. He was on duty then, though,” Dwight said. “Supposedly working the south side of Makely, but there’s nothing to show where he actually was.”
“And his motive would be what? The baby?”
Dwight gave a palms-up gesture. “We’re not that far along.”
“What do the state guys say?”
“Well, now, Doug,” said Bo, “we haven’t exactly talked to them about this yet. Whitley’s one of mine and I’m not gonna jump to any conclusions till I hear what he has to say.”
Dwight nodded in agreement. “No point limiting the investigation at this point. They’ve got better resources. Might as well see what they can turn up.”
They discussed it a few minutes more, then Woodall sighed, drained his mug, and stood to go. “I just hope to hell Whitley turns up before Thursday.”
As the door closed behind the DA, Dwight looked at his boss. “You didn’t tell him about Whitley’s e-mail.”
“Did I tell him I might have a deputy who’s gone somewhere to maybe kill himself? No.” He set his mug on the shelf behind his desk. “Which is it, Dwight? A love affair gone sour or something to do with the job?”
Dwight shook his head. “Can’t say, Bo. One thing we do know is that she was looking into the Martha Hurst conviction.”
“Martha Hurst? Who the hell’s that?”
“A Cotton Grove woman sitting on death row over in Raleigh. Due to take that gurney ride next month.”
“Oh yeah. Beat the living hell out of her boyfriend with a baseball bat if I remember rightly?”
“Ex-boyfriend, current stepson,” Dwight said. “And it was a softball bat.”
“Baseball, softball, what’s the connection with Tracy and Whitley? Neither one of them was around when that case went down.”
“I don’t know that there’s a connection,” Dwight admitted, “but just this past week, Tracy pulled the trial records and then she called over to Lee and Stephenson’s and asked if she could go through Brix Junior’s files. He was the one appointed to defend Hurst.”
“Yeah, I remember now. It was a cakewalk.”
“You work the investigation?” Dwight asked.
Bo Poole shook his head. “Just kept tabs on the reports. That was a hellacious summer. Four killings in a row. One right after another, and the worst was that little Langdon girl, remember? Oh, no, that’s right. You weren’t
