his choices to either dinosaurs or footballs when Dwight’s pager went off. It was work, of course.
“Sorry,” he said when he’d called in, “but I’m going to have to go see what this is about.”
Since we’d driven over in my car, we all went out and piled in and Dwight drove to the courthouse.
Several officers were milling around a white SUV in the courthouse parking lot when we got there.
“It’s the damnedest thing,” said the middle-aged black man who owned the car. “I drove down to Georgia Friday night to see about my mother. She had a heart attack and was in the hospital. When it hit, I thought maybe it was a little rock thrown up from the road, but my brother took one look and said, ‘Uh-uh.’ Then I got back to Raleigh last night and my wife told me they were asking on TV if anybody’s car got shot about then, and—well, take a look.”
There in the left rear window was a neat bullet hole. All the other windows were intact.
Dwight looked at Mayleen Richards. “Get Denning out here,” he told her.
A few minutes later, Percy Denning hurried out to join us while his assistant drove the crime scene van over to the SUV.
“This is probably going to take a while,” said Dwight. “If you want to go on back to the farm, I’ll have someone drive me out.”
“Da-ad!” Cal protested.
“Sorry, buddy, but I have to stay.”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “We’ll go back and finish deciding which sheets, maybe do a little Christmas shopping and grab some lunch, then we’ll swing back here before we head home. If you can turn loose earlier, call me.”
“I really like Chinese,” said Mary Pat.
“Me too!” said Jake.
“Okay,” said Cal.
CHAPTER 24
Florence Hartley,
MONDAY MORNING, DECEMBER 20
While Percy Denning worked inside the SUV, Dwight questioned the man, a Mr. Harper, himself.
“Do you remember what time it was on Friday?”
“Probably between four-fifteen and a quarter to five? Late afternoon, but not dark yet. I wasn’t paying attention to the time and I didn’t have the radio on. I was thinking about my mother. Remembering how hard she and my dad worked to get us all through school. The kind of thing you think about at a time like that. Your mother still young and healthy?”
Dwight nodded.
“Then you don’t know yet how it feels to think you might lose her.”
“Is she okay now?”
“Thanks be to God. They put in a pacemaker and she’s doing fine, all praise to His name.”
With his assistant’s camera documenting every stage of the search, it took Percy Denning less than fifteen minutes to find where the slug had ricocheted off a metal seat-belt buckle and buried itself in the upholstered rear seat.
“Weird,” he said, holding the little clear plastic evidence bag up to the sunlight, “but it sure does look like another .44. Let me go run it under my microscope.”
“We’ll be in my office,” said Dwight. “If you’ll step this way, Mr. Harper?”
“This isn’t going to take too long, is it? My wife wanted to go Christmas shopping this afternoon.”
“We just need to get your address and phone number and have your statement typed up,” Dwight assured him.
“Give me a keyboard and I’ll type it myself,” said the man. “I’m an insurance adjuster and I spend half my life typing up reports.”
Twenty minutes later, Denning walked into Dwight’s office.
“It’s a match, Major. And there’s a tiny, tiny fleck of dried blood. I don’t know if it’s enough for a DNA match, but I’ll send it in.” He hesitated.
“Something else, Denning?”
“I didn’t say anything Friday because it didn’t seem important, but Whitley’s liquor bottle . . .”
“What about it?”
“It might not mean a thing, but his were the only prints on the bottle.”
“So?”
“The
“Oh,” said Dwight in dawning comprehension. “No smears, no blurs?”
“No, sir.”
