“Out here” was a thick stand of trees and bushes along Ryder Creek, south of Dobbs. The rough trail that led in from the highway was used in summer by fishermen after sun perch and catfish, in the winter by occasional hunters. The four teenage boys and their coon dogs who had found Whitley were still over there by the creekbank. Their initial fear and excitement had begun to wear off now, and when one of the deputies came to ask if they could leave, Dwight nodded, having heard their story himself.
Denning finished bagging Whitley’s hands and told the morgue attendant that they could take him.
Rigor had long since passed off, of course, so getting him onto a gurney and into the transport was no problem.
What was a problem was all the disturbance around the scene, and Dwight had already chewed chunks from the hides of the responding officers, who had thoughtlessly driven their units down the creek trail and right up to the car instead of walking in.
“Yeah, it looks like he shot himself,” he told them, “but you didn’t know that. What if this was a homicide? You’d’ve destroyed any tire tracks that might identify a perp. You walked all around the damn car so there’s no way now to tell if a second person was here. First thing tomorrow, you get your dumb asses out to the community college and sign up for their elementary procedures class.”
One of the officers made the mistake of saying he’d already taken that class.
“Then take it again,” Dwight snarled. “And this time, it’s on your own clock since you didn’t learn squat the first time around.”
He walked over to Mike Castleman, who had heard it on his radio. For more than four years, he and Whitley had worked drug interdiction together like a matched pair of hunting dogs, and now the deputy paced blindly around the clearing, oblivious to low-hanging branches that still had dried leaves clinging to the twigs.
“Why’d he do it, Major? Did he shoot Johnson? Is that why?”
“What do you know about him and Johnson?” Dwight asked.
“Nothing.” With his back to the glare of the lights, Castleman’s deep-set eyes were unreadable.
“Ditch the games, Mike. You were closest to him. Now he’s dead, and I want the truth.”
The deputy sighed and brushed dried leaves out of his curly black hair. “Ever since back in the spring, I had a feeling he was seeing somebody, but he would never say. Always claimed he was hitting the books when I tried to set him up with somebody. Then I happened to pass her place late one night about two weeks ago. His car was parked out front and there were no lights on inside. I wrote up a phony ticket and stuck it under his wiper. He was sore as hell with me next day. Made me promise not to say anything. And he wouldn’t talk about her. Said she had some issues to work out.”
“Issues?”
Castleman shrugged. “I don’t know, Major, and that’s the truth, but he was acting weird all last week. If I didn’t know for a fact that he’d never touch the stuff, I’d’ve said he was dipping into some of the pharmaceuticals we confiscated.”
“Weird how?”
“One minute he’d be fine-tuning ways to target drug runners, next minute he was talking about leaving the department, going back to school full-time. ‘And live on what?’ I asked him. He said money wasn’t a problem, and hell, Major, you know what we make, so I figured she was going to support him. I said maybe you and he could have a double wedding, just joking, not meaning any disrespect, but he said they weren’t to that stage yet. That she wouldn’t even let him give her a bracelet, much less a ring. Then Thursday and Friday, he wouldn’t talk to me. Acted like everybody pissed him off. And you saw how he was Sunday night. Sat off by himself. Hardly talked to anybody. I figured he was grieving, what with her getting killed like that and nobody knowing they’d been together. I told him I was there for him if he wanted to talk, but he told me to fuck off.”
It was as if, having kept quiet for so long, Castleman had to let it all out. Dwight put his hand on the other man’s shoulder.
“Damn it, Major! Why didn’t he trust me? Talk to me? We were supposed to be friends.”
He sounded so genuinely bewildered that Dwight could only give his shoulder another squeeze.
“We’ll probably never know. That wasn’t much of a suicide note he sent you and there was nothing more at his place or in the car.”
Now that Whitley’s body was gone, Castleman walked back over to the car with him and they watched as Denning finished lifting prints off the steering wheel and door handles.
“Here’s part of the seal from the bottle,” said his assistant from the backseat. She held up a small scrap of brown plastic in a pair of tweezers and Denning added it to his collection. “And here’s another frag.”
“Wait a sec.” Denning found the bag in which he was gathering fragments of the bullet and she dropped in the bit of lead she had found.
“Too bad we couldn’t find the slug that killed Ms. Johnson,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get lucky tomorrow.”
“Where’d he get the .44?” Dwight asked Castleman. “And why you reckon he used it instead of his own gun?”
Castleman shook his head.
Silas Lee Jones walked up to them in time to hear Dwight’s question. “Wadn’t his daddy on the force down at Havelock? Maybe it was hisn’s.”
“If he did use it to kill Johnson,” the sheriff mused, “it couldn’t be traced back to him. Then when he decided to do this”—he gestured to the bloody interior of the car—“maybe it was his way of admitting guilt for her death.”
It was well after midnight before Dwight got back to the farm. Deborah was asleep, but she had left a light on and the door unlocked. As he slipped into bed beside her, she stirred and came awake.
“Rob said they found Don Whitley. Does that mean—?”
