Dwight gave a pointed look to his watch. “Once his
people come back, he’s free to go, you know.”
Annoyed, King translated Dwight’s questions and
it was soon apparent that the farmworker was denying
knowledge of anything, anywhere, any time. But when
King pressed him and rubbed his thumbs across his own
fingerprints, Sanaugustin went mute.
Then, hesitantly, he framed a question and King
looked at Dwight. “He wants to know if fingerprints
show up on everything.”
“Like what?”
King gave a hands-up gesture of futility. “He won’t
say.”
Dwight considered for a long moment, his brown
eyes fixed on the Mexican, who dropped his own eyes.
Dwight had never thought of himself as intuitive. He
put more faith in connecting the dots than in leaping
over them. But Deborah had been a judge for four years.
Hundreds of liars and con artists had stood before her.
If it was her opinion that Sanaugustin’s question was to
get confirmation of something suspected but not posi-
tively known, surely that counted for something. But
if that were the case, why was this guy worried about
fingerprints? Unless—?
“Tell him that yes, we can lift fingerprints off of
wooden doors,” he said, hoping to God that Denning
had indeed dusted the doors of that bloody abattoir.
“And if he touched the car, his prints will be there as
well.”
222
HARD ROW
When translated, his words unleashed such a torrent
of Spanish that even King was taken aback. He mo-
tioned for his client to slow down. At least twice in the
narrative, the man crossed himself.
Eventually, he ran out of words, crossed himself a
final time, and waited for King to turn to Dwight and
repeat what had been said.
Everyone at the camp had heard about the body parts
that were appearing along the length of their road, he
had told King. They had even, may God forgive them,
joked about it. But no one connected it with their farm.
How should they? It was an Anglo thing, nothing to do
with them. As for him, yes, he had once been a heavy
user, but now he was trying to stay clean for the sake of
the children. That’s why he gave most of his money to
his wife to save for them. But on Saturday Juan had sent
him over to the sheds to get a tractor hitch and he went
to the wrong shed by mistake. Inside was the big boss’s
