Dwight smiled encouragingly, knowing how some people have to take a running start to launch into the horror of what they have witnessed.
“Anyhow, I was fishing a McDonald’s bag out of the ditch when I heard the truck coming. About the time it got even with me, I heard a loud bang. Like a backfire or something. And then the truck just rolled on off the road. I thought maybe it’d blown a tire.”
She hesitated and looked at him. “I was wrong, though, wasn’t I? I hear enough hunters, and the Colonel was in the infantry. It was a gunshot, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Dwight. “I’m afraid so.”
Her hand shook as she tried to bring the mug to her lips again.
“Could you tell where the shot came from?” he asked.
“Which side of the road?”
“Which side?” She considered for a long moment, then shook her head. “I’m sorry, Major Bryant. It happened so fast. The truck. The bang. The crash. All I know is that it came from behind me somewhere, but whether it was from the woods or the Johnson farm, I just can’t say.”
J.D. Rouse’s place of residence was a whole different experience from Mrs. Harper’s tidy home.
Three generations ago, this had been a modest farm, but dividing the land among six children, none of whom wanted to farm, had reduced the current generation’s holdings to less than two acres. A typical eastern Carolina one-story clapboard farmhouse in bad need of paint stood amid mature oaks and pecan trees at the front of the lot. Dwight seemed to recall that the house was now inhabited by Rouse’s widowed mother and older sister.
Behind it lay a dilapidated hay barn, and farther down the rutted driveway was a shabby double-wide that had been parked out in what was once a tobacco field. The mobile home was sheltered by a single pine tree that had no doubt planted itself, since his headlights revealed no other trees or shrubs in the yard to indicate an interest in landscaping.
Weather-stained and sun-faded plastic toys littered the yard along with abandoned buckets, and his lights picked up a vacant dog pen and the rusted frame of a child’s swing set. The original swings were long gone, replaced 1 with a single tire suspended by a rope. It swayed a little in the icy wind. An old Toyota sedan sat on concrete blocks off to the side, and more blocks served as makeshift steps. When he knocked on the metal door, it rattled in its frame like ice cubes in an empty glass. The place was dark inside and no one responded. He went back to his truck and tapped the horn.
Nothing.
As he started back down the rutted drive, he saw that the back-porch light had come on at the old Rouse home and a heavyset woman was standing in the open doorway, so he turned into the yard beside the back door and got out to speak to her.
It had been years since they had been in school together and he was not sure whether or not this was J.D. Rouse’s sister. The Marsha Rouse he remembered had been beanpole skinny, with long brown hair. This woman was carrying at least sixty extra pounds and her short hair was bright orange. She wore baggy gray knit pants and a thick black sweater over a bright purple turtleneck, and she hunched into her clothes with her arms folded across her ample chest as if to stay warm.
If she recognized him here in the darkness, it was not evident by the suspicious tone in her voice as he approached. “You looking for J.D.? He ain’t home yet.”
“Marsha?” he asked.
She peered at him more closely as he stepped into the light. “Dwight? Dwight Bryant? Lord, it must be a hundred years since I seen you. What brings you out here?
J.D. in trouble again?”
“I was hoping to speak to his wife, but she doesn’t seem to be at home.”
“Naw, she’s left him. Packed up the girls this morning and went to her brother’s. Is that what you’re here about? She take out papers on him this time?”
“This time?” he asked.
She shrugged. “J.D.’s got a temper. Always did. And he can have a mean streak when he gets to drinking too much. Is that why you want to see him?”
Dwight hesitated. A victim’s next of kin was usually the first one to be notified, but Marsha was his sister, while his wife was who knows where.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Marsha, but J.D.’s dead.”
“Somebody shot him about an hour ago.”
“Shot him? Oh my God! Who?”
“We don’t know yet. He was in his truck on Rideout Road when a bullet came through the back window. We don’t even know if it was an accident or deliberate.”
An elderly woman in a blue cardigan over a print housedress appeared in the doorway behind Rouse’s sister. She was pushing an aluminum walker and shuffled along in thick woolly bedroom slippers. “Marsha? Who you talking to? And how come you’re standing out in that cold with the door wide open? You won’t raised in no barn.”
“Go back inside, Mama,” Marsha said harshly. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
She pulled the door closed and shook her head at Dwight. “This is going to pure out kill her. She thinks J.D. hung the moon.”
“You don’t sound like you think he did,” said Dwight.
