car and that made him curious. Why was the car there?
Then when he got closer, he heard the flies and smelled
the stench of blood. Lots of blood. Bloody chains lay on
the floor. Nearby, a bloody axe.
He had panicked, slammed the door shut, then found
the tractor hitch he’d been sent for. As soon as he could
get away, he had made his wife give him money and
had come into town to buy something that would take
away the sight and the smell. That was the truth. On his
mother’s grave he would swear it.
Ever since a killer had suckered him with a convinc-
ing show of grief and bewilderment over the death of
a spouse, Dwight no longer trusted his instincts as to
whether someone was lying or telling the truth, but
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MARGARET MARON
there was something about the man’s show of exag-
gerated wide-eyed innocence at the end that made him
wonder if they were hearing the whole story.
“Who did he tell?”
“He says nobody.”
“Ask him who hated his boss enough to do that?”
Again the negative shrug and a refusal to speculate.
“Juan Santos? Sid Lomax?”
But Rafael Sanaugustin continued to swear that this
was the full extent of his knowledge and beyond that
they could not budge him.
Dwight switched off the tape recorder and carried it
back out to the desk, leaving Millard King to discuss the
possession charges with his client.
When Juan Santos and the two women returned, he
had them go around to his office with him. According
to the jailer’s log, no one had visited Sanaugustin since
he was locked up Saturday night, so the likelihood of
their having conferred was minimal but not wholly out
of the question because he’d used his one phone call to
tell Santos where he was. When Dwight first asked about
Sanaugustin’s movements on Saturday, Santos did not
immediately mention sending him for a tractor hitch.
That detail was sandwiched in between their problems
with one of the tractors and how they were falling be-
hind schedule with the spring plowing, and it seemed to
come almost as an afterthought, as if it were something
of little importance. Despite rigorous questioning, all
three denied knowing what Sanaugustin had seen on
Saturday and all declared that they had first learned of it
and of Buck Harris’s death when Dwight was out there
on the farm yesterday.
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