It was the dark of the moon so there was nothing to lighten the sky behind the solid gray cloud cover overhead. Rain mixed with sleet beat against the cab of his truck. Tree limbs sagged out over the narrow two-lane road, and the road itself was coated with ice. He was thankful for four-wheel drive, but mindful that even four-wheel drive is not much help if all four wheels are on ice.
Massengill Road was less than seven miles from the farm, but it took him almost fifteen minutes to get there without sliding into a ditch whenever the truck fishtailed on a curve. Fortunately, it was all back roads and he met less than half a dozen vehicles on the way. They too were inching along cautiously.
There was no real need to look for a street address once he was in the vicinity. He could have followed the glow of blue and red lights that bounced off the low-hanging clouds, but the faded numbers on a rusty, dilapidated mailbox confirmed that this was indeed the dirt lane that would lead up to the house trailer occupied by one of the Wentworths.
The lane was rutted and almost washed out in places, but his tires grabbed the dirt with confidence and he easily reached the top of the rise, where he circled past two prowl cars and pulled in beside Detective Mayleen Richards’s truck, which was parked next to Deputy Percy Denning’s crime scene van. A red two-door Honda Civic and a black Ford F-150 pickup were nosed in next to the right side of the trailer.
Floodlights had been set up around the front of the mobile home and they illuminated the two forms covered in plastic sheeting that lay on the bare ground.
With her flaming red hair tucked inside the hood of her dark blue parka, Richards squatted off to one side and just beyond the yellow tape to watch while Denning sheltered under an umbrella and videotaped the whole area. She held a powerful flashlight in her gloved hands and played the beam at an angle as she slowly swept the yard. The ice-coated dirt sparkled in the rain and made it hard for her to distinguish what was there.
“On your left!” she called to Denning. “Is that anything?”
Being careful where he stepped, Denning moved over to the small brass object pinpointed by her torch and said, “Good eyes, Mayleen. Our first shell casing.”
It lay just inside the cordoned-off area and Denning documented it in relation to the sheeted bodies a few feet away, then leaned in for a close-up. Deputy Raeford McLamb placed a marker on the dirt and carefully bagged and tagged the casing.
“Only one casing?” Dwight asked Richards when he was near enough to be heard.
She continued to sweep the area inch by inch with the angled beam. “Only one so far, sir. We’re beginning to think the shooter cleaned up after himself.” She paused. “Or herself. Seems to have missed that one, though.”
“Who called it in?”
In the cold night air, their breath sent out little puffs of steam when they spoke.
Richards stood and pointed her torch toward a light blue pickup parked beyond the floodlights on the edge of the scruffy yard. “His name’s Willie Faison. He blew a point-ten when the responding trooper got here to check out his story. Says that Jason Wentworth owed him some money and he came by to collect it and found him lying there on the ground near his brother.”
“He make a positive ID?”
“Sounded positive to me. Jason and Matt Wentworth.”
Denning had finished with the exterior and had moved on toward the trailer itself. Dwight noted that the dwelling was dark and that the door was ajar. A cheap plastic wreath of white holly leaves sprinkled with silver glitter hung on the door. Denning seemed to be paying particular attention to the steps and the floor of the entryway.
“What are you seeing, Denning?” Dwight called.
“Not sure, Major, but it looks like someone tracked dirt in after it started raining.”
Dwight lifted the yellow tape and ducked underneath. He, too, watched where he was walking and took care to step in the tracks already made by his deputies. Richards followed. He turned back the sheeting on the nearer body. The youth had fallen on his back and his right hand rested on a large bloodstain over his heart. A thin layer of ice had crusted over his face and clothes. Between the icy rain and the floodlights, the eyes of the green viper tattooed on the back of his hand seemed to glisten with life.
Dwight remembered that tattooed hand reaching for his pistol only a few days ago at West Colleton’s Career Day. Afterward, Deborah had remarked that it was probably only a matter of time before this kid showed up in her court, just like his brothers before him.
No chance of that now.
He pulled the sheet back over the boy and turned to the second body. This one lay facedown on the frozen ground and had apparently been shot twice in the back. He, too, had been lying exposed long enough to be covered in ice.
“Looks like he was trying to run away,” Mayleen Richards said.
Both victims were dressed in boots, jeans, flannel shirts, and pullover sweatshirts. Neither wore jackets.
“I’m guessing someone pulled up in front here, honked the horn, waited for them to come out, and then gunned them down.”
“Tire tracks?” Dwight asked. “Shoe tracks?”
“Far as we can tell, just Faison’s,” she said, illustrating with her torch where tires had circled close to Matt Wentworth’s body. “He says he saw them lying there when he drove up and he got as near as he could without getting out of his truck. Soon as he realized they were both dead, he pulled up over there, then went inside to call 911 because his cell phone died on him yesterday. Or so he says. And of course, the trooper drove in over Faison’s tracks.”
A wisp of red hair had escaped from her hood and was now glazed with ice. She hunched deeper into her parka and shook her head pessimistically.
“It’s too soon to tell when they were shot. If it happened this afternoon, the rain probably washed away any tire marks.”
