Winter's Child

have a problem with us taping this, do you, Major?”

“Fine,” said Dwight.

Clark recorded the time and place and the names of those present, then asked, “When was the last time you spoke to Mrs. Bryant?”

“The twenty-ninth of December, when I brought our son back from North Carolina.”

“Not since then? Not even on the phone?”

“No.”

The two looked at him expectantly, as if he were a nice fresh bone to gnaw on, but seeing no reason to elaborate, Dwight gazed back, maintaining a relaxed posture.

“How would you characterize your relationship with the victim? Good, bad, antagonistic?”

He hesitated. “I didn’t think of it as a relationship. She was the mother of my son, so we kept it polite. He was the only thing we had in common.”

“Why’d y’all split up?”

“That was almost eight years ago and it’s not relevant to this situation,” he said, willing himself to maintain his composure. If he were sitting in their seats, he would certainly think his questions were hitting home if the suspect suddenly crossed his arms protectively over his chest.

“A little cheating on the side, maybe?”

“No cheating on either side and I didn’t remarry till this past Christmas,” Dwight said, sidestepping the spirit of Clark’s question, because yes, when you got right down to it, wasn’t wanting Deborah the whole time he was married the same as cheating on Jonna? (“Whosoeverlooketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adul-tery with her already in his heart.”) 1 Not that these men would suspect that he’d had to wait seven years after the divorce to do anything about it.

(“And Jacob served seven years for Rachel . . . for the love hehad for her.”)

“She got custody,” said Clark. “Did you resent that?”

Dwight shook his head. “Cal was a baby. It made sense for her to have him.”

“I’m talking about recently, now that he’s older.”

“He’s only eight. He still needs his mother.”

Saying the words drove the truth of it home like the blow of a sledgehammer.

How’s Cal going to deal with this? Or does he alreadyknow that Jonna’s dead? Dear God, was he there? Was heused as a bargaining chip in a game Jonna had alreadylost? Forced to watch while someone put a gun to hismother’s head? And what about Deborah? She loves Cal,but she’s not Jonna. She can’t be for him what Jonna—

“Major Bryant?”

“Sorry,” he said. “Look, could we do this later? My son—”

“Every law agency in a five-state area has your son on their computer screens,” Clark said mildly, “and I believe Chief Radcliff has officers out questioning neighbors and friends?”

Paul Radcliff nodded.

“So unless you know where he’s likely to be, it’ll help him more if you finish bringing us up to speed. Now, we understand you got into town yesterday morning and your wife—sorry, your ex-wife—was already missing?”

Dwight nodded. “Cal said he hadn’t seen her since she dropped him off at school Thursday morning.”

With the tape recorder running, he repeated every- thing Cal had told him, from their breakfast of bacon and pecan waffles and the drive to school, to his coming home to an empty house and how she hadn’t answered her cell phone.

“And you spent yesterday looking for her?”

“I tried.” He told of his visits to Jonna’s mother and to the Morrow House and how he had come up colder than the slushy rain pounding on the skylight above them.

“Her mother said she planned to go in to work that morning, and that jibes with what one of the trustees —”

He glanced at Radcliff, who helpfully supplied the name. “Betty Ramos.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Ramos said she saw Jonna briefly when she stopped by the Morrow House Thursday morning.”

“Anybody else see her there?”

“When I spoke to the director the first time, he said he hadn’t seen her since the weekend before,” Dwight said.

“I didn’t exactly lean on him, though.”

“And when we were there the second time,” said Radcliff, “we were more concerned with the guns.”

They described Mayhew’s discovery of the missing antique guns, as well as the bloody history of the presentation pistol that had killed Jonna.

Lewes lifted his sorrowful bloodhound eyes to Radcliff.