“Joy Medlin. One of the cheerleaders,” said Ruth.
“She was in that bad wreck right before Halloween,” Jessica reminded him. “The one that killed Ted Burke and Stacy Loring. And Dana Owens is still in a coma. They say she’s been flatlined from the beginning and her dad thinks it’s time to pull the plug, but her mom’s not ready for that yet.”
A momentary pall settled over the cousins as the lingering effects of that tragedy hit them anew.
“And Joy Medlin’s taking Vicodin?” asked Dwight.
Jessica nodded. “She’s had a couple of operations on her ankle, but she’s still on crutches and she’s still in pain. She says she’s going to wean herself off over the holidays even though there are times when it hurts too much.”
“And she was at the party?”
“All the cheerleaders were except for Emma, and even she was there for a few minutes.”
“Yeah, I heard about that,” Dwight said with a grin for Annie Sue.
He filled a go-cup with coffee, told the kids to be sure and put Bandit in his crate before they left, and headed back to Dobbs. He did not see the purposeful looks they shared as the door closed behind him, nor did he hear Stevie say, “We brought extra shovels. Where’re you planning to run the line?”
As he walked down the hall to his office a half hour later, Dwight met Raeford McLamb, who had spent the morning over in Chapel Hill. “Oh, hey, boss. I was just coming to report on the Wentworth autopsies.” He held up a couple of neatly labeled plastic bags. “Thirty-twos, just like we thought. Two in the older boy, one in the younger one. No surprises except that the shooting took place earlier than we thought. A
Dwight shook his head.
“Friday morning.”
“Honest to god, Major. The kid had a time-stamped receipt from a breakfast place on the edge of town. Nine forty-eight Friday morning. Blueberry pancake special with bacon and eggs. Eaten there, not take-out. The diener ran the gut and says he died about an hour later. Between ten-thirty and eleven-thirty at the very latest. Too bad he didn’t take a little longer to eat breakfast, huh?”
“Or go to school like his stepmother thought he did,” Dwight said grimly.
They walked on into the detective unit together, where they found Deputy Mayleen Richards working on the sheets of phone records Mallory Johnson’s service provider had sent them. McLamb had called her an hour earlier from Chapel Hill and she had immediately passed that updated information along to officers who were out questioning Jason Wentworth’s neighbors.
Brushing a strand of red hair from her eyes, she thumped the papers on her desk and said, “I tell you, Major, it’s getting a little scary how much information these phone companies keep on you. I wonder if people would be so indiscreet if they knew their text messages were being saved?”
Technology was always a trade-off between convenience and privacy, thought Dwight, as he looked at the printouts of phone numbers that Richards was trying to put names to. Good when they needed to track someone’s activities; bad to think yours could be tracked just as easily if someone wanted to attach spyware to your phone number.
Every time Mallory Johnson had used her cell phone in the last few months, there it was. Documented in date, time, minutes used, the numbers she had dialed, the numbers that had called her, even the general location of where she was when the call was made.
“My wife says this is why she doesn’t leave her phone switched on,” Dwight said.
Even as he concentrated on what his deputy was saying, a small corner of his mind savored those words. They still awed him. After so many years of thinking she would never be his, here they were: ready to celebrate a full year of marriage.
“Any of these numbers connected to the Wentworth boy?” McLamb asked.
“Nope. Neither outgoing or incoming. At least not that we can tell. If he had one of those disposable phones with a prepaid card, there’s no way to know. There’s no land line at that trailer, just Jason Wentworth’s cell phone, and when we found it this morning, it does show the 911 call that the Faison guy made. That number’s not on the girl’s records, though.” She pointed to the last incoming number. “That’s her dad’s number right at ten-thirty. She didn’t answer and it went into her voice mail.”
Richards picked up the girl’s phone and pressed some buttons and Dwight heard Malcolm Johnson’s voice say,
“What about her last outgoing?”
“It’s her brother’s number. The call lasted about three minutes, but Denning says her phone was switched on and the battery was drained.”
Richards pointed to the time: 10:37. “The kids at the party say she left the Crowder house around ten-thirty. She must have talked to him right before she crashed.”
She thumbed the stack of pages piled up on her desk. “Is there really any point to reading all these text messages?”
“Probably not.” As much as he felt sorry for Sarah and Malcolm, their daughter’s death was a lower priority than the Wentworth killings. “Why don’t you start on the day of her death and skim back through a week or so? I don’t expect anything to jump up about the Wentworths, but you never know. Let me have the brother’s phone number, though. I’ll see if she mentioned either of them to him.”
As McLamb went on to his desk to write up his report, Dwight paused in the doorway. “What about calls to and
