If this was all the kids were into though, things weren’t
too bad in this neighborhood.
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HARD ROW
He pocketed the bottle for later attention and hur-
ried after Bo, who had not paused at the campfire, but
kept walking as if he were late for his own wedding,
ducking beneath the tree branches, his small trim body
barely disturbing the bushes on either side of the path
that pulled at Dwight’s bulk as he tried to pass.
The creek deepened and narrowed and the path made
by casual fishermen and adventurous kids petered out in
even rougher underbrush, yet Bo pushed on.
When Dwight finally caught up, his boss was stand-
ing by the water’s edge. At his feet was what at first ap-
peared to be a half-submerged log.
“Over yonder’s where Apple Creek wanders off,” he
told Dwight, pointing downstream to the other side of
the creek just as one of their people broke through the
underbrush and stopped in surprise in seeing them on
that side of the fork. Then he looked down at the re-
mains that lay in the shallows. “And here’s where poor
ol’ Fred Mitchiner wandered off to.”
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C H A P T E R
9
Deborah Knott
Thursday Evening, March 2
% I did not repeat what Dwight had told me, but at
adjournment, I asked my clerk if she’d heard any-
thing more about that first set of body parts, figuring
that if fresh rumors were circulating through the court-
house about another hand, she would mention it.
Instead, she shook her head.
“And Faye’s off today, so I wouldn’t anyhow. Lavon’s
on duty and he never talks.”
As I left the parking lot behind the courthouse, I
didn’t spot Dwight’s truck, but there seemed to be no
more activity than the usual coming and going of patrol
cars. A second hand though? Where were the bodies?
I thought of that crematorium down in Georgia that
stashed bodies all over its grounds rather than commit-
ting them to the fire, and a gruesome image filled my
head of a pickup truck bumping around the county,
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HARD ROW
strewing body parts as it went. Careless drivers are for-
