And with that she whirled and ran into the garage, pushing the automatic switch as she passed. A moment later the garage door closed smoothly and silently.
When Dwight walked into the squad room shortly after nine, there was an open box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts sitting atop one of the file cabinets and Mayleen was delicately licking sugar from her fingertips, but he shook his head when she pointed to the box. Mrs. Barefoot’s ham biscuit had been delicious and filling, but so salty that all he wanted at the moment was a big glass of water.
He set the phone on Mayleen’s desk and told her Charlie’s password while she looked for a napkin to clean her fingers. “He claims that the editing was accidental, but I’m beginning to think that it doesn’t matter, so don’t waste much time on it.”
“Why not, Major?” Dalton asked.
“I know we were all hoping that whatever he cut out of Mallory Johnson’s message would throw more light on her wreck, but I’m afraid it doesn’t. Not that I can tell. See what y’all think.”
He turned on the cell phone’s speaker and pulled up the relevant voice mail. Once again they heard “Silent Night” and Mallory Johnson’s voice.
He played it through a second time, but switched it off before they had to listen to Mallory’s dying moans.
“Who’s Gallie?” asked Dalton and McLamb together.
“Who knows? I called my mother on the way over here, but if he was ever a student at West Colleton, she’s not familiar with the name. She’s going to call some of the other principals. See if they have a kid named Gallie. I’m pretty sure Charlie and his mother know who this Gallie is, but they don’t want to discuss it. Mrs. Johnson says it’s none of our business, and unless you can suggest how it has any bearing on the wreck, I don’t think we should pursue it. Just make us a complete copy of Mallory’s message, Richards, and see if there’s anything else from that night that might be relevant. I told Charlie he could have his phone back at noon.”
“You say Avenger’s his password?” Richards asked.
“Yeah.” He turned to Denning and handed him the bag of trash. “This might not be relevant either, but my niece picked it up around the site early Friday morning. It’s trash from the Cotton Grove Bojangles’ and she says there’s a receipt taped to the box that’s time-stamped about thirty or forty minutes before Mallory crashed.”
Denning opened the bag, saw all the greasy papers, and beamed as if it were a stocking full of goodies. “I should be able to get some fine prints off this.”
He carried it into his makeshift lab, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, and carefully itemized each item:
3 aluminum beer cans (Budweiser)
1 Bojangles’ box
4 greasy napkins
1 receipt for an 8-piece chicken box—time-stamped 9:45 p.m. December 16
1 muddy beer bottle (Pabst)
1 crumpled form letter notifying the recipient of a sale on tires
1 foam Hardee’s drink cup with plastic lid and straw
1 empty cigarette package (Marlboro)
2 red plastic straws
1 sheet of rain stained notebook paper covered with third grade math problems
Humming to himself, Denning took the paper with the fingerprints of Major Bryant’s niece and set to work.
A large map of the county covered half of a wall in the squad room, and after quickly making an electronic copy of Mallory’s message, Mayleen Richards eyed the distance from the Bojangles’ at the edge of Cotton Grove to the site of Mallory Johnson’s crash where the trash had been found. “That’s no more than a thirty-minute drive, Major. It could well have been tossed by the person whose headlights blinded her. If you’re eating chicken and littering at the same time, you might forget to dim your lights and you might swerve across the center line.”
“Let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, Richards,” he cautioned. “
Mayleen Richards tossed her red head and reached for a folder. “I beg to differ with you, sir. Here’re the pictures the trooper took that night and the next morning.”
The pictures were in black and white. One of the night pictures, taken from the front of Mallory’s car and looking back, showed faint blurs of white on the far shoulder. An almost identical shot the next morning showed trash in the same location. Again, though, even if they blew it up, the distance was probably too great to be able to say for certain that it was a Bojangles’ box.
“Any good attorney would call it wishful thinking.”
She grinned. “Well, it
He laughed and went on into his office, but Mayleen noticed that he took the disc and the player with him.
She sat down at her desk, opened Charlie Barefoot’s cell phone, and when prompted for a password, typed in “Avenger.”
CHAPTER 28
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Next day was Christmas Eve and I almost overslept. Cal wasn’t all that eager to get up either. By the time we left the house, we were both cranky with each other.
“Try to take a nap today, if you can,” I told him, wishing I could crawl in for one myself. “We’ll be up again late
