(10) Adam*
m.
Karen > 2 sons
Susan
(11) Zach*
m.
Barbara > Lee, Emma
Stephenson
(12) Deborah
m.
Dwight Bryant > stepson Cal
*Twins
C H A P T E R
1
The call came through to the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department just after sunset on a chilly Thursday evening in mid-January. A pickup truck had crashed on a back road near Possum Creek.
From the sound of her voice the caller was an older woman and more than a little upset. “I think he’s dead.
There’s so much blood, and he’s not moving.”
The dispatcher made soothing noises and promised that help would be there very shortly. “Where are you now, ma’am?”
“Rideout Road, off Old Forty-Eight. I’m not sure of the number.”
The dispatcher heard her speak to someone, then a second woman came on the line. “Mrs. Victor Johnson here,” she said and gave the house number as a man’s excited voice could be heard in the background. “My husband just came back from looking. He says it’s J.D.
Rouse.”
“We’ll have someone there in just a few minutes,” said the dispatcher and put out calls to the nearest patrol unit and to the rescue service.
Dwight Bryant, chief deputy and head of the department’s detective division, was halfway home and had just turned on his headlights when he heard the calls. He mentally shook his head. J.D. Rouse dead from a vehicu-lar accident? Rouse had been picked up for DWI at least once that Dwight knew of, so perhaps it wasn’t totally surprising that he’d crashed his truck.
On the other hand, if he’d ever been asked how he thought Rouse might meet his maker, he would have said, “Barroom brawl. Shot by someone’s disgruntled husband. Hell, maybe even stabbed with a butcher knife by his own wife the night she finally got tired of him knocking her around—assuming he had a wife. And assuming he’d treat her the same as he seemed to treat anyone weaker than himself.”
Rideout Road was less than three miles from home. He switched on the blue lights and siren behind the grille of his truck and floored the gas pedal. It wouldn’t be out of his way to swing by, he thought, as homebound traffic moved aside for him. His wife—and it was still a thing of wonder that Deborah had really married him—had a late meeting so she wouldn’t be there for a couple of hours yet.
By the time he arrived, it was almost full dark, but the night was lit up by a patrol unit’s flashing blue lights. A thick stand of scrub pines lined one side of the road, the other side was an open pasture that adjoined a farmyard.
There, too, a thin row of pines and cedars had grown up along the right-of-way. Despite the rapidly dropping temperature, three or four cars had stopped opposite the wreck and several people had gotten out to watch and exclaim, their warm breaths blowing little clouds of steam with every word.
A bundled-up deputy was emerging from his patrol car with his torchlight as Dwight pulled in behind him.
Dwight zipped his own jacket and put on gloves before stepping out into the bone-chilling wind.
“Hey, Major. You heard the call, too, huh?”
Together they approached the white Ford pickup that lay nose down across the shallow ditch.
“Straight stretch of road,” the younger man mused.
He flashed his torch back along the pavement. “No skid marks. You reckon he had a heart attack?”
Sam Dalton was a fairly new recruit and Dwight had not yet taken his measure, but he liked it that Dalton did not jump to immediate conclusions without all the facts.
Siren wailing, a rescue truck crested the rise and its emergency lights flashed through the pickup’s front windshield. As the two deputies approached the driver’s side of the pickup, Dwight paused.
“What does that look like to you?” he asked, nodding toward the back window. The glass had shattered in a telltale spiderweb pattern that radiated out from a small hole just behind the driver’s seat.
