Dwight opened the door she had indicated and found a perfectly normal teenage room—unmade bed, clothes piled on the chair and dresser top, posters of rock groups that had appeared at local concerts taped to the walls. On the single bookshelf over a cluttered desk were a paperback dictionary, a West Colleton yearbook, some comic books, a cigar box that held a handful of arrowheads, a go-cup half full of pennies, and a Little League trophy with his oldest brother’s name engraved on the brass strip.
The only time Dwight had seen Hux Wentworth was when that young man lay dead on a bathroom floor, shot down by the kid he had terrified when he crashed through the locked door.
He took down the yearbook and found Matt Wentworth’s picture among last year’s freshman class. As he had suspected, the kid had flunked his first attempt at freshman year. When he started to put it back on the shelf, a newspaper clipping fell out. It was a picture of Mallory Johnson and her court from a feature story about West Colleton’s homecoming game that had run last month in the
The desk had two drawers and Dwight found more comic books, a comb, pencils and pens, a deck of playing cards, some dice, old school papers marked in red, some snapshots of the boy standing proudly by his Honda, and, at the very back of the second drawer, an unopened package of condoms.
The package was crumpled, as if it’d been kicking around in that drawer for at least a year, and Dwight wondered if the kid had ever gotten lucky before he died.
A bedside table held an alarm clock, a lamp, and a radio that played tapes and CDs. Inside the drawer were a stack of CDs, all rap except for a surprising one of traditional Christmas carols. Underneath lay a small plastic folder. He opened it and frowned. One side held the boy’s picture, the other a picture of Mallory Johnson. Both were head shots and appeared to be last year’s school pictures.
He carried the pictures and the newspaper clipping out to the kitchen, where Mrs. Wentworth sat at the table, stirring sugar into her coffee. A second mug awaited him.
He thanked her, took a sip of the strong black brew, and said, “Can you think of anyone who would do this to the boys?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t seen much of Jason this winter. He came for Thanksgiving. I tried to make it nice for them. With Victor gone, it was a good day. He
“Matt say if he or Jason had any enemies?”
Again, that shake of her head.
“What about friends?”
“There was a Barbour boy that came here once in a while. Nate Barbour. That’s the only one I ever knew. And he had a girlfriend, but I never met her.”
Dwight spread the pictures on the table between them.
“Were they friends?” he asked.
“Friends?” Mrs. Wentworth smiled indulgently. “That’s Matt’s girlfriend. They’ve been going together since October.”
Dwight tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice. “Mallory Johnson was your stepson’s girlfriend?”
“Is that her name? He wouldn’t tell me.” She pulled the news clipping closer and frowned in concentration as she read it. “She was homecoming queen?”
With her finger, she traced the words beneath the picture. “ ‘… daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Johnson.’ That the same Malcolm Johnson that has the insurance company?”
Before Dwight could nod, she said, “No wonder he didn’t want me to know her name. He said her parents didn’t like him and—Omigod! That’s the same girl that wrecked her car last week and died a couple of days later!”
“Yes.”
“I saw her picture in the paper, but I never connected it to this picture. Of course, I only saw it that once before he put it away.” Tears filled her eyes again. “So that’s why he was so torn up these last few days. Those poor, poor kids.”
Dwight cradled the mug in his hands and said, “Tell me about them.”
“I don’t really know anything. Matt didn’t talk about her much. It was a couple of months ago. I went into his room to ask him something and he was sitting on the edge of the bed putting her picture in this folder. I asked him who she was and first he told me it was none of my business, but I asked was she his girlfriend and he said yes, but she hadn’t finished breaking up with her old boyfriend yet and they had to keep it a secret.”
“You say he was upset these last few days?”
She nodded. “And Thursday night, he didn’t go to work. He was in his room when I got home, and when he came out to use the bathroom, his eyes were red. I thought he was coming down with something, but he yelled at me to leave him alone, so I did. He wouldn’t say what was bothering him and I never put it together that the Johnson girl who died was the girl in that picture.”
“Did he go to school last Tuesday?”
She nodded. “And then he went to his job at the Food Lion. He spent the night at Jason’s so they could get up early Wednesday morning to go deer hunting. Jason has a friend that has a deer stand over in Johnston County— Willie Somebody-or-other—and they needed to be in it before the sun came up.” Her smile was rueful as she drained the last of her coffee and got up to top off their mugs. “Only thing you can get a teenage boy up that early for.”
Dwight covered his mug with his hand. Any more and he’d never get to sleep tonight. “So Matt ditched school on Wednesday?”
She shrugged. “I know, I know. But he said they never really did anything the last few days before Christmas and he promised to go on Thursday and Friday, so I didn’t fuss. You have to pick your battles.”
