“Rigor?”
“Hard to say,” she replied. “They’re well on their way to being frozen like a side of deer meat.”
“Well, let’s see what Faison’s got to add to all this.”
By now, the rain had finished changing over into sleet and the wind had picked up so that icy granules stung their faces as Dwight led the way over to the Toyota pickup truck. There was a dent in the door on the driver’s side and the rear bumper sagged as if held on by baling wire. He rapped on the door, but there was no response from the man inside. He pulled open the door and saw Faison seated upright with his head back against two rifles that rested on the truck’s gun rack. Loud snores reverberated off the cab’s hard surfaces and the smell of beer hit them in the face. Three empty cans lay on the floor by Faison’s feet and his hands clutched a fourth can even though it emptied itself across the man’s jacket and pant legs.
“I’m guessing that no one thought to check whether he had more beer with him,” Dwight said mildly.
“No, sir,” Mayleen said.
From the embarrassment in her tone, Dwight knew that her face was probably flame-red.
“Not your fault,” he said kindly. “That was the trooper’s job.”
He summoned that officer over and showed him the results of his sloppiness. To the young officer’s credit, he didn’t try to make excuses.
“I understand he blew a point-ten?” Dwight asked.
“Yessir.”
“So you’ll be charging him with a DWI?”
“Yessir. I got here fifteen minutes after it was called in. He was here by himself, behind the wheel, with his keys in the ignition and the motor running to keep the heater going. No reason to think he hadn’t driven himself here. And even if he’d drunk something else after calling, I didn’t think he had time to get that drunk. I did flash my light over the interior, but I didn’t see any cans, empty
“You do a field sobriety test?”
“No, sir. Those bodies were my primary concern.”
“What about his truck box?”
Embarrassed, the officer admitted he hadn’t checked.
Dwight reached over and pressed the catch on the metal box clamped onto the truck bed directly beneath the cab’s rear window. Inside were an assortment of plumber’s tools—wrenches, pipe putty, a rusty plumbing snake, a heavy-duty flashlight with a broken lens, pipe clamps, and several elbow joints in various diameters. On top of those lay a billed cap in fluorescent orange, and an empty twelve-can beer carton.
“Your first homicide scene?”
“Yessir.”
“Don’t worry, son,” Dwight told him. “I’m not going to write you up on this. You were probably concerned with securing the scene and calling in your report.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Just take him in, book him, and see that he’s sober by the time I get there in the morning.”
“Yessir!”
It took three officers to pry Willie Faison out of the truck and into the backseat of the patrol car. As the trooper headed back down the lane, he had to pull aside for the EMS truck that had arrived to transport the bodies to the morgue.
Before they were loaded onto the truck, the contents of their pockets were bagged. Both had died with their wallets and car keys in their pockets.
“So robbery wasn’t the motive,” Dwight said, stating the obvious.
A strong odor of cigarette smoke was the first thing they noticed when they stepped inside the trailer. Next was the way at least one piece of clothing seemed to be draped over every chair. Neatness did not seem to be a virtue of the Wentworth brothers, which made it hard to tell if the place had been tossed or not. In the living room, a wastebasket overflowed with beer cans, cigarette butts, and fast-food cartons, and the coffee table in front of the television was covered in more of the same.
The television was on and tuned to one of the outdoor hunting and fishing channels, and the ceramic gas bricks of a wall unit glowed red hot to compensate for the open door, but no lamps were lit, which probably meant that the shooting took place before dark.
“Let’s have some light,” Dwight said and flipped a switch.
The place seemed to have been furnished in castoffs. It reminded Dwight of the trailer where Deborah’s nephew Reese lived: same mismatched flea-market furniture, same La-Z-Boy recliner, same big-screen plasma television. To be fair, though, Reese kept his place a lot cleaner and slightly less cluttered.
“Both brothers live here?” Dwight wondered aloud.
“Only one bedroom with one double bed,” Denning reported from the rear of the trailer.
“Somebody get me an address for the parents. I know they live in Cotton Grove, but where?”
Richards opened the younger boy’s wallet and read off the address on his driver’s license.
“That sounds about right,” Dwight said, heading out to the kitchen that was as cluttered as the rest of the trailer.
