Winter's Child

“Bad enough,” Jamison said with a stern look toward the weeping Nita Rouse.

“It was only a flesh wound,” McLamb told him, touching his side to indicate the place where the bullet had grazed Richards.

“She is in the hospital?”

“No, she’s able to come in to work as long as she takes it easy. Now, about Overholt. Did y’all see him hanging around the Orchard Range area Thursday? Maybe he parked his Subaru back there?”

Diaz translated for his brother-in-law, who shook his head.

“But I will ask our men,” said Diaz, “and I will tell you if they saw him.”

From the Diaz y Garcia compound, they looked in on Mrs. Harper and her dog, Dixie, in the Holly Ridge development off Rideout Road. She, too, shook her head when shown Overholt’s picture.

“Like I told you and Detective Richards yesterday, I don’t remember any cars other than that pickup truck.

And now she gets shot? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the news last night. Here she was sitting in my living room one minute and the next minute she’s down there in Makely getting shot at. That man was a disgrace to his uniform. Good riddance to bad cess!”

She saw the deputies exchange glances and gave a sheepish smile. “The Colonel used to say that my temper rides my tongue. All the same, I’m really sorry to hear she got shot. Please give her my best.”

There were fifteen houses in the Holly Ridge development, which was not on a ridge nor possessed of any holly trees. On this cool Sunday afternoon, most people seemed to be home. All had heard about the shooting even though none of them admitted to knowing Rouse.

They were familiar with Mrs. Harper’s dedication to keeping the road free of litter; and at one house, two pre- teen black sisters said they occasionally went along to help. “Dixie’s cute and Mrs. Harper always gives us hot chocolate with marshmallows afterwards.”

To their extreme disappointment, they had not been outside on Thursday afternoon when the shooting actually occurred. They had heard about it almost immedi- ately afterwards and, although forbidden to leave their street, they were watching at the intersection when Mrs.

Harper came back.

“She was so shook, that we pulled the wagon the rest of the way for her,” one girl said virtuously, “even though she didn’t want to let us do it.”

“I didn’t know white folks could turn that green,” said her sister.

Near the end of Rideout Road itself, they came across a homeowner who had known Rouse casually for years.

“His mama might’ve loved him and maybe his little girls, but he’s not much loss to the rest of the world.”

“Why, Thomas Conners!” his scandalized wife scolded.

“What a thing to say. And on the Lord’s day, too.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” he retorted. “Besides, if you can’t tell the truth on Sunday, when can you?

He never cared for anything or anybody ’cepting hisself, far as I ever saw. Too bad that poor woman had to be the one to see it happen.”

“You know her?” his wife asked. “You never told me you knew her.”

“Not to say know,” her husband protested. “But you see somebody enough, you get to thinking you do, you hear what I’m saying? She’s out at least once a week when I’m coming home.”

But when Conners walked out to the drive with the deputies, he grinned and described how Mrs. Harper had read him the riot act once.

“See, the wife, she’s real religious. Doesn’t hold with alcohol of any kind. Me, I like a beer once in a while. Espe-25 cially in the summer, you hear what I’m saying? I’ll stop off after work once in a while, get me a cold one and nurse it all the way home. Sometimes, I’d be almost home, so I’d stop along Rideout Road, finish it off and toss the can, then use a mouth spray so the wife wouldn’t know. Well!

I hadn’t paid much mind to her before then. I mean, yeah, I knew she was out picking up stuff, but it didn’t really sink in what a slob I was being till she came up outta that ditch and lit into me. I thought for a minute there she was going to sic her little dog on me! Well, I apologized for my beer can and she cooled off, but you better believe I’ve never so much as tossed a peanut shell since. In fact, it makes me right mad myself now when I see somebody dumping their ashtrays or cleaning out their cars by trashing up our roads, you hear what I’m saying?”

Detective Mayleen Richards was not a happy camper.

Part of it was coming down off of yesterday’s adrenaline high, part of it was the painful throb in her side whenever she forgot and lifted her arm too quickly, but mostly it was having to sit here and cool her heels while waiting for a lab report on the guns they had taken from Sergeant Michael Overholt’s shattered trailer.

She had given Special Agent Terry Wilson all her contact numbers and he had promised to pass them on to the lab techs. He had also promised to move this matter to the front of the line back at SBI headquarters so that Major Bryant could stay focused on events in Virginia.

Sheriff Bo Poole had told her to take the day off, give her gunshot wound time to start healing, but she knew she would only be calling in every five minutes to ask the guys if they had heard anything. Better to be here catching up on paperwork than to stay home pacing the floor like an anxious teenager waiting for some boy to call and ask her for a date.

Of the two handguns in Overholt’s trailer, one was a