keys impatiently. “Let ’em drive you, Mom. I’m gonna
be late for school myself if you don’t.”
“All right,” she said, but as the boy dashed through
the rain to the Honda, she called after him. “You bet-
ter be on time picking me up today, you hear? You not
there when I come out, you’re not getting the car for a
week. You hear me, Ennis?”
But he was already backing out of the drive and into
the street.
“Boys!” she said, shaking her head. “Soon as they
turn sixteen, they start climbing Fool’s Hill. Let ’em
get to talking to their friends, flirting around with the
girls, and they forget all about what they’re supposed to
be doing and where they’re supposed to be. I believe to
goodness he had more sense when he was six than he’s
got now that he’s sixteen.”
McLamb smiled, having heard the same words from
his own mother when he first started driving. He mo-
190
HARD ROW
tioned to Dalton, who drove up to the porch so that
they wouldn’t get too wet. McLamb helped Mrs. Stone
into the front seat and he climbed in back.
“So what’s this about?” Mrs. Stone asked after she
had told them where she worked and they were under
way.
As gently as possible, McLamb told her that the med-
ical examiner over in Chapel Hill was pretty sure that
her father’s hand had been detached from his wrist not
by an animal, but by human intervention.
Mrs. Stone turned in the seat and faced him, her face
outraged. “Somebody cut off my daddy’s hand?”
“Well, not the way you’re probably thinking. Mostly
they say the flesh was so—” He searched for an inof-
fensive word that would not sicken the woman. “—so
degraded, that the hand probably pretty much pulled
loose by itself when it was lifted, but there was a liga-
ment that was holding it on and when the pathologist
looked at the edges under a microscope, he could tell
that it was definitely a recent cut. You’re his only rela-
tive, right?”
“Me and Ennis, yes.”
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted
your dad dead?”
Mrs. Stone shook her head. “The only person who
couldn’t get along with him was my mother and she passed
six years ago, come June. You can let me out right here,”
she said and opened the door as soon as Dalton slowed the
car to a stop in front of the motel where she worked.
