in about two weeks earlier. “The first few times it was for gas, cigarettes, a loaf of bread, or a handful of Butterfingers, and always a six-pack of Bud Light. The last time—I believe it was Wednesday or Thursday a week ago, there were some people ahead of him in line. He popped the top on a beer and took a swig before he’d even paid for it. I told him nobody was allowed to drink on the premises and he told me to shove it. I was ready to come around the counter but he slammed the money down and was out the door. I might’ve let it go—people spout off all the time—then one of my customers pointed out the window. Damned if that SOB didn’t take his ashtray and dump cigarette butts all over the concrete. Not only that, when he pulled out of my drive, he slung his beer can back out the window just to jerk me off. I see that bastard again, I’ll ram a beer can right up his sorry ass.”
McLamb looked at Jamison. “So where were you last evening between five-thirty and six o’clock?” asked Jamison.
“Right here,” the man said. “Watching the plumber snake out one of my toilets. Why?”
At the very next convenience store two miles down the road, the manager remembered running Rouse’s credit card the evening before. “A tank of gas, a pack of Marl-boros, and a six-pack of Bud Light.”
“You sound pretty sure of that.”
“He’s stopped by almost every day this week,” the clerk said. “Tells me he’s working that new development on the other side of Old Stage Road.”
“Yeah? What else did he tell you?” they asked.
“That’s pretty much it. I think he said he’s a roofer?
What’s he done?”
“Got himself shot dead,” said McLamb. “You sure he didn’t have more to say?”
The man shook his head. “Sorry, he wasn’t much of a talker.”
Rouse’s sister and mother were only slightly more helpful when the two deputies questioned them later that day.
“Everybody loves J.D.,” said his mother, teary and red-eyed.
“Name two,” his sister muttered.
“What? What?” the old woman said, putting her hand to her ear.
“I said, especially you, Ma.”
“He’s a good boy,” she agreed. “Brings me a Butterfinger almost every Friday night.”
When McLamb and Jamison questioned the sister out of earshot of her mother, Marsha Rouse named a couple of men that her brother had fought with.
“We took a closer look at his truck this morning,” said McLamb. “Seems like somebody took a car key and scratched something on his door and then tried to scratch it out. New marks, too. You know anything about that?”
She gave a crooked smile. “Happened last weekend.
Probably Saturday night. He didn’t even notice it till Sunday dinner when Selena—she’s only six, but sharp as a hypodermic needle. She was looking out the window and said, ‘Aunt Marsha, what does D-I-C-K-H-E-A-D
mean?’ J.D. was mad as I’ve ever seen him. He was real particular about that truck of his. First brand-new one he ever had, but he grabbed up Ma’s sewing scissors and went out there and scratched some more till you couldn’t make out what it said.”
“Did he say who he thought did it?”
“No, but it must’ve happened at the Hub Saturday night.”
The Hub was a juke joint on the outskirts of Cotton Grove that catered to a mostly white, mostly male crowd.
It was dark and dingy inside and the sawdust and peanut shells on the floor were there not to create ambiance but to soak up spilled beer.
A few regulars were helping to hold up the bar that Friday afternoon, but neither they nor the bartender seemed to know anything about J.D. Rouse’s scratched door.
They did offer up two more names, though, of men who had invited Rouse to step outside within the last couple of months.
Checking out three of those men would have to wait till the next morning. As for the fourth, the man the others agreed was most likely to have scratched his opinion of Rouse on the truck door, he was sitting in their own 6 jail at the moment. A trooper had arrested him Wednesday night for driving drunk on a suspended license.
Deputy Mayleen Richards returned in the late afternoon as shifts changed and she was telling them the ME’s opinion about the path the .45 had taken when Major Bryant called.
He sounded a little distracted when she repeated what she had learned at the autopsy, and his only comment after she reported that Jamison and McLamb had turned up no hard suspects was, “Sometimes knowing who didn’t do it is halfway to finding who did. You might want to lean on the wife’s brother tomorrow.”
“Will you be here?” she asked, trying to sound casual.
“I doubt it. Sheriff Poole around?”
“Sorry, sir, I think he’s gone for the weekend. Anything I can do?”
“That’s okay. I’ll get up with him later.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, swallowing her disappointment.
C H A P T E R
