down in one section and had landed on a couple of uprights, so that it now resembled a rough lean-to. He supposed that 27 in the summer, Pam could have sheltered under it from the sun and rain. Here in dead winter, though? With the sides open to chilling winds and icy sleet? He saw some faded fast-food cartons and an empty plastic water bottle but nothing recent.
Even though he was now almost positive Pam and Cal could not be here, he called several times, then let Bandit off the lead. “Where’s Cal?” he said. “Find Cal!”
The dog raced around the area from the shoreline to the collapsed boathouse and back again without notice- able interest in any one spot until he suddenly lunged toward a bush that overhung the water, barking excitedly.
Dwight hurried over just in time to watch a pair of startled wood ducks take flight across the lake in the darkening twilight. The bleak landscape mirrored the bleakness he felt as yet another possibility came to nothing.
“That’s it,” he told the dog. “Let’s go.”
On his way back to town, Dwight phoned the Colleton County Sheriff ’s Department and got Detective Richards, who gave him a negative update. The discouraged note he heard in her voice sounded like an echo of his own feelings. They had both been chasing down dead-end roads all weekend and she had even taken a bullet for her troubles. Nevertheless, she was probably closer to winding up the Rouse shooting than he was to finding Cal. And at least she’d found a solid motive for that murder, while Jonna’s was still a mystery.
“Just because no one’s come forward to say they saw Overholt doesn’t mean he wasn’t the shooter,” he told Richards. “The Army that taught him how to use a hand- gun with that much accuracy also trained him how to am-bush an enemy, so don’t worry about the gun. If it’s there, Wilson will find it. There’s bound to be a buddy or someone who’ll know what guns he had. Give the investigation time to play itself out.”
“Yessir. But what about your son? Any news? Agent Wilson was asking.”
“Nothing concrete, but we still have a few people to interview. I’ll call if anything breaks. And for right now, go home, Richards. You’ve got nothing to prove to me or Sheriff Poole, okay?”
He called Deborah to tell her that he might be a little longer getting there than he’d intended.
“Have you talked to Dix Lunsford yet?” she asked.
“Just turning down their street,” he said. “Why?”
“Mayhew said he heard Jonna quarreling with him on Monday. He doesn’t know what it was about, but she was angry enough to tell Mayhew they ought to think about firing him.”
“I’ll ask him,” Dwight said. “See you in a half hour or so.”
With that, he parked his truck in front of the Lunsford house. Bandit begged to come in with him, but Dwight figured he would be back out before the cab of the truck became too cold for the little dog.
C H A P T E R
29
Dwight called to say he was running late. I told him about the fight Mayhew said Jonna and Lunsford had on Monday and returned to my fruitless search.
I had forgotten to ask if Mrs. Shay’s house could be seen from the third floor of this one, and yes, I could have run upstairs to see for myself, but the house was dark and I didn’t know where the light switches were. I told myself that it certainly wasn’t because I was nervous here alone.
Besides, all old houses creaked and groaned.
Nevertheless, I found myself tensing at every tiny sound.
To distract myself while waiting for Betty Ramos to return, I contemplated the six four-drawer filing cabinets that lined one wall of this office that Jonna and Mayhew had shared. Twenty-four drawers packed tightly with hanging files. If one of them held the reason Jonna had been killed or a clue as to where Pam had taken Cal, find- ing that specific piece of paper would be sheer luck. As I thumbed aimlessly through the inventory, it struck me how very peaceful Shaysville was on a Sunday evening.
Two blocks off of Main Street and I heard no cars. Of course, that might be because the house was so well built.
I hadn’t heard Betty’s car leave the parking lot either.
Not that I sat in complete and utter silence. Following an afternoon with sixty extra people walking around here, the old house snapped and clicked as the floorboards readjusted themselves. All the same, it was so quiet that I jumped when the grandfather clock out in the hall struck the quarter hour.
Deciding that I might as well print out Cal’s records as long as they were on the hard drive, I pulled up the document again, set the printer for fast draft, pressed print, and sat back to wait for the pages.
The printer coughed into life and quickly began to turn out sheets. It was set so that the last sheet printed first.
To my surprise, instead of printing the last page of Cal’s records, it printed a picture and the page was numbered twenty-six.
Huh?
I quickly scrolled down the computer’s screen. Pages five to twenty-two were blank. The second picture was emerging from the printer when I hit page twenty-three.
