Seeds of Evidence (9781426770838) (28 page)

The phone ringing jarred Kit out of the book she was reading. “David?”

But it wasn't him. “We've got a dead man on the side of 13. Looks like a trucker—shot,” Roger Lee said. “Want to go?”

She sat straight up. “Yes!”

He gave her the location and she called Chris. “Meet me at the car when you're ready.”

David, where was David? She pulled on clothes while dialing his cell phone number. “C'mon, c'mon . . .” she said. When he didn't answer, her mind began racing with fear.

The lights from the emergency vehicles created a surreal atmosphere at the crime scene. David shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, fighting to keep from slipping into death's dark despair.

“So you just came upon the victim?” the trooper was asking.

“Yes, sir.”

“Mind if we go through your vehicle?”

“Go ahead.”

“What were you carrying?”

“Tomatoes. It's empty now.” That night, David had forgotten his gun. He'd been mad at himself earlier. Now, he was grateful for that omission.

Kit pulled up to the scene, her heart in her throat. Chris pulled up right behind her. A white box truck stood parked on the shoulder. Oh, God! It had C&R's logo!

But then she saw him. David was standing on the side of the road, next to a cop, his hands jammed in his pockets, his face drawn. “We don't know him,” she cautioned Chris, who nodded his agreement.

Flashing their credentials, they made their way past the cops standing around looking curiously detached, to the body on the ground. “Who's the vic?” Chris asked a trooper.

“We don't know. Wallet's gone. Guy over there spotted him.” He gestured toward David.

Kit walked over to the body, which the medics had covered with a sheet. The air felt sticky hot and the crushed weeds smelled sweet, like cut hay. Locusts buzzed all around. Later, she would remember the sound of them, and the smell of the grass, and the oppressive humidity.

Dropping to one knee, Kit gingerly lifted the sheet to look at the victim's face. As she did, her heart stopped. She inhaled sharply. “Oh, God!” she said, “I know this man.”

The shock of seeing Connie Jester's husband, Bob, dead on the side of the road, made Kit's head spin. “I know him,” she said, standing up. The sound of her own voice seemed strange, distant, like it belonged to someone else. The ground seemed to move under her feet. The trooper put a hand on her elbow to steady her.

“Are you OK? Who is he?”

“He's from Chincoteague. Bob Stewart. He's a trucker. Dear God!” Kit put her hand to her face. Regaining control, she looked at the officer. “Who's in charge?” The man nodded toward the trooper standing near David. That's when she noticed David's eyes were fixed on her.

She walked toward them, fighting to regain composure. “His name is Bob Stewart. He's from Chincoteague. His wife, Connie Jester, is a friend of mine.” The words spilled out.

David's eyes widened.

“Wonder where his truck is?” The trooper took a deep breath. “OK. You want to come with us to notify her?”

David's chest tightened. Connie's husband! The dead man was Connie's husband?

“So you were just driving and saw him?” Chris questioned David as if he didn't know him.

“Yes, sir. I saw something out of the corner of my eye that struck me as odd. I couldn't just go on. I turned around up there,” David motioned up the road, “and came back at it. Then I saw it was a hand. And so I stopped.”

“There's nothing in his truck,” a trooper said, coming over to them. “He's clean.”

“All right,” the other trooper replied. “You have any more questions?” he asked Chris.

“Not tonight. Just be sure we can contact him.”

The trooper nodded. “Guess that's all, sir. You OK to drive?”

David responded positively, but as he climbed back in his truck, his hands and knees were shaking.

It took David thirty minutes to return the truck to the C&R Enterprises property and pick up his Jeep. Then he didn't know where to go or what to do. But he knew he could not go back to that motel room. He'd feel like a caged animal. He drove by the offsite, and then Kit's motel. Her car wasn't at either place. Didn't the trooper ask her if she'd go with him to notify Connie? Why was everything so blurry in his head?

Lacking a better plan, he drove to Chincoteague. When he got there, he turned his SUV toward Chicken City Road. He knew where Connie lived—he'd picked up paint at her house once. But he'd never met her husband, didn't know what he looked like, until tonight. And tonight, he'd watched him die.

Kit had seen death before. She'd even been on a notification team one time, when a co-worker had died of a heart attack at the office. She'd gone with the boss to inform the widow.

But this was different.

Connie's house looked dark except for a small lamp in the living room window, no doubt intended to welcome Bob home, and the side porch light.

Kit felt a physical ache in her chest as she and the trooper walked up to the front door. Connie's expression as she opened it indicated instant recognition—and horror.

“What's happened? What's happened?” she said.

The trooper held his hat in his hand. “Ma'am, we have some bad news.” The next half hour felt surreal. Connie seemed in shock. She kept crying over and over, “Bob, oh, Bob! Not Bob! Oh, please, not Bob!” Her grief filled the house, a keening wail that plucked the heart like a harp. “He's gone! My Bob is gone!”

Professional or not, Kit cried. She cried for Connie. She cried for Bob. She cried for all the pain and grief that death had caused.

The trooper left. Kit stayed. She held Connie in her arms. Helped her call the children. Phoned Connie's minister and a neighbor. And prayed . . . prayed more than she had in years, because she knew no one but God could touch a grief that raw.

There were four or five cars parked outside Connie's house. David scanned the cluster of vehicles. Then he saw it: the Crown Vic Kit had been driving.

He felt foolish, but he wanted to be near her, wanted more than anything to hold her in his arms, as if somehow that would diffuse the feelings that were raging inside. It was impossible, he knew.

At least he could be close. He parked down the street. Turned off his engine and just watched as a few people arrived. As the front door opened and the warmth of the light inside spilled into the night. As the door closed again and the house encircled the mourners inside.

Outside in his car, the dark night enveloped David. He shivered in his aloneness, his stomach a knot of emotion. He looked up through the windshield, into the night. The stars he
could see moved across toward the west. He sagged back in his seat, closed his eyes, trying to make sense of it all, trying to understand, trying to let go of what he had seen, and the memories it had stirred.

He couldn't. Finally, he turned to the One who had set the stars on their courses and made the Heavens resound with his thunder. And acknowledging the ache in his chest, he let the tears fall. Hours later, David drove back to the Main Street house, sat on the porch, and watched the dawn arrive. His cell phone rang.

“I didn't wake you, did I?” Kit asked.

His heart jumped at her voice. “No.”

“Look, can we meet? You and Chris and I?”

“Where?”

“I'm on Chincoteague.”

“Me, too.”

“You are? OK, how about your place, in an hour?”

“Fine,” he said. His palms were sweaty when he hung up the phone.

Connie's last words haunted Kit: “God's hand is in this, honey, I know it. He's in control. Somehow, he's going to get me through. But honey, life is shorter than you think. Don't give up the fight for joy.”

The fight for joy. Right, Kit thought. How could Connie even think about joy in the face of Bob's murder? Where's the justice in that? Much less joy! Good grief. What was Connie thinking?

Oh, God, she breathed as she inserted the key in the ignition of the bureau's Crown Vic, there's so much I don't know. None of this makes sense. I'd like to believe that you're in control. But God! Why Bob? Of all the truckers . . . why Bob?