“Why didn’t you take them when you went inside the trailer to call 911?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was too freaked. I mean, they were out there on the ground in the freezing rain. For all I knew, whoever did that could have still been hanging around. I just wanted to get out of there and get back in my truck. What was so wrong about that? I could’ve just driven off, but I didn’t. I waited till the trooper got there, and what’s the first thing he does? Makes me blow in that damn Breathalyzer with Jason and Matt blown to kingdom come. Where’s my truck anyhow?”
“Calm down,” Dwight told him. “Your truck’s still out at the trailer and I can have someone drive you out to get it. First, though, I need you to answer some questions and write out a statement.”
“And who’s gonna write me an excuse for my boss?” young Faison grumbled, but in the end he was cooperative.
He described how he and Jason Wentworth had been friends since grade school. They fished and hunted together, played poker and pool with some other guys from Cotton Grove—he wrote down their names. Yes, Jason could be a horse’s ass at times, but on the whole, he was a good guy to watch your back. “Everybody liked ol’ Jase.”
“What about that assault charge?” Dwight asked him.
“The guy that swore out a warrant on him? Hell, he was the one threw the first punch. Jason was just defending himself.”
“What about the things in the shed back of the trailer?”
Faison frowned. “What things?”
“The lawn mowers and tools y’all stole from the Welcome Home store.”
“No way, man! That was nothing to do with me.”
“You knew about it, though, didn’t you?”
“Not till last week when he wanted me to help him sell it. He thought some of the guys on my crew would want to buy a cheap push mower. Look, yeah, maybe I used to do stuff like that with Jase, but not anymore. I got a good job and a girlfriend. My aunt says we can live with her till we can get a place of our own.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Monday when he came by and I loaned him that cold-weather gear.”
“Not since then?”
“Not to see. I talked to him on the phone Thursday night. He said he’d drop my things off on Friday, but he never showed or called or nothing. I kept calling, but he wouldn’t pick up.”
He finished writing out his statement about finding the bodies around ten, dated and signed it, then slid it back across the table.
“I hope y’all locked my truck and left somebody out there to guard it. It’s got my tools and my guns.”
“About those guns,” Dwight said.
Faison was instantly wary. “Yeah?” he asked cautiously.
“I had them brought in so we could examine them more closely. We’re not going to find that one of them is the gun that shot those two boys, are we?”
“Hell, no! No way in this world, man!” He pushed his chair back till he almost banged into the rear wall in an abrupt and involuntary denial.
“So tell me about them,” Dwight said.
Faison’s jaw tightened in mulish denial. “Nothing to tell.”
“Fine. We’ll just wait and see what my detective finds to tell me. I’ll let the officer know you’re ready to go back to your cell.”
“Wait a minute! Don’t I get a phone call?”
“Sure. You want to call your mama or your boss or your attorney? ’Cause it looks like you’re going to be here for a while.”
The youth slumped back in his chair. “Okay, okay. I loaned Jason one of my rifles to go deer hunting. Big damn deal. He saw a big buck last week and wanted to bag it before the season ended.”
Dwight gave a cynical shake of his head. “He was worried about the end of deer season when he shouldn’t have been hunting in the first place? He’d already lost both his own gun and his hunting license.”
“That’s why he needed to borrow mine. My gun, I mean. Not my license. I wouldn’t give him that.”
“Matt told his stepmother they were going to use his friend Willie’s deer stand over near Clayton. Your stand?”
“Huh? No, I don’t have no stand.”
“So you weren’t with them Wednesday morning?”
Faison stared at him blankly. “Wednesday morning?” he said slowly. “No, man, I was working all day Wednesday.”
Dwight had the feeling that he was missing something, but Faison had settled on that story. He had lent Jason a rifle and that’s why he was out at the trailer last night. The gun and the hunting cap were all he’d taken from the place. He hadn’t seen Jason since he borrowed the gun on Monday, honest, and now could he please make that phone call?
Dwight instructed the officer to take Faison before the magistrate on duty and get her to set his bail. “And then
