declared themselves ready for bed, too, I thanked them again for their part in the party.
“Well, now, I thank you for helping Kayra and her young man,” said Bessie. “I know you don’t really have time, but they sure do appreciate it.”
“What are you helping them with?” Amy asked idly when I sat back down to wait for Kate to return.
“They’ve got their own private Actual Innocence project going,” I explained. “They’re trying to get a stay of execution for a woman who’s due to die next month. Martha Hurst.”
“Martha Hurst? Oh my Lord! I’d almost forgotten about her. Poor Martha.”
I was surprised. “You know her?”
“She was an aide at the hospital when she killed that guy.”
Amy has spent her whole working life in the hospital’s human resources department. I should have remembered.
“What was she like?”
“Hard worker. Very nice. She did have a temper, but it blew over as quickly as it flared up. Underneath, she was a good-hearted woman and very detail-oriented. Nothing got by her. The patients loved her, and she never lost it with them.”
“Were you surprised when you heard she’d killed her stepson?”
“Not really. Like I said, she really could fly off the handle, and he was such a bastard. Somebody needed to give him a taste of his own medicine and she was the one who could do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“The way he beat up on his girlfriends. He broke Janella Hobson’s nose and knocked out two of Deenie Gates’s teeth and—”
“Deenie Gates?” In my mind’s eye, I saw that scrap of paper in Brix Junior’s handwriting and again felt that sense of near familiarity. “Why do I know that name?”
Amy frowned. “Well, she did take the guy she was living with to court back in the summer. Would that have been you?”
“Domestic violence?” It was coming back to me. A skinny, defeated-looking white woman and a brawny Mexican without a green card. “He punched her in the ear? Burst her eardrum?”
Amy nodded. “That would be Deenie. She’s bad for hooking up with guys who like to beat up on her.”
“She works at the hospital, too?”
“Yep. Dropped out of school at sixteen to come empty bedpans and scrub floors. She’s a little slow. Not retarded exactly, just not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Excellent, excellent worker. I wish we had a half-dozen more like her. Anyhow, Martha Hurst sort of took her under her wing. Unfortunately, she’s the one who introduced Deenie to the Hurst guy. What was his name?”
“Roy,” I said. “Roy Hurst.”
“That’s right. They broke up around the time Martha killed him. But not before he got her pregnant.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah. She had an abortion, though. Said she wasn’t ready to be a mother. Still isn’t, if you ask me.”
I would have pursued it, but Kate came down then and Aunt Zell and Nadine told Amy they were ready to go. We thanked Kate for a lovely evening.
“Tell Rob it’s safe to come home,” she called as I headed for my car.
Back at the house, Rob’s car was still there and so was Nolan’s, but the truck was gone.
“Where’s Dwight?” I asked.
“He had to leave. Said to tell you not to wait up,” said Rob. “Something about a missing deputy?”
CHAPTER 18
Florence Hartley,
TUESDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 14
“Damn, damn, damn!” said Bo Poole as he stared through the open door of the car.
“Yeah,” Dwight agreed.
The night air was so mild that their words made no puffs of steam when they spoke.
The car, flooded with portable lights, brightened even more each time Percy Denning’s camera flashed.
Inside the car, in the driver’s seat, Don Whitley lay with his head lolled back on the headrest. Except for the blood that had dried on his chin, his face didn’t look that bad, but blood and brains and fragments of his skull spattered the car’s headliner where the bullet had exited.
The gun itself had fallen between his legs. It was a .44 revolver that looked suspiciously like one of the old standard-issues before the department switched over to the newer automatics.
An open, half-empty fifth of bourbon had been carefully set in the well of the console between the two bucket seats. The cap lay on the dash. They watched as Denning’s assistant slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then screwed the cap back on the bottle and bagged it.
“Came out here, drank himself stupid, then did it,” Bo said.
