John M. Floyd's

Law and Daughter Series

It was a puzzling case: a body lying in an orchard, no suspects, no known cause of death. But, as usual, the sheriff's mother has some ideas . . .

Oversight

by John M. Floyd

The dead woman lay in a pecan orchard fifty yards from the road. When Sheriff Lucy Valentine arrived she found one of her deputies, Dallas McKay, squatting on his heels beside the body, his black shoes brown with mud. The other two deputies were spread out among the trees, studying the ground.

McKay grinned. “Afternoon, boss. Fine weather, huh?”

Lucy looked past him at the bloody corpse. “Fine weather for what?” she said. Her stomach felt queasy.

“For anything. Sun's a pretty sight after three days of rain—”

“Dallas, we got a dead person here. Okay?”

McKay looked hurt. “I doubt she minds us exchanging pleasantries, Luce. What's got into you?”

The job, Lucy thought. That's what. And having to see things like this. How could it not get into you? Sometimes she worried a little about Dallas McKay.

But at least he hadn't mentioned the fact that she was late arriving. Lucy had been with her mother at an elderly friend's funeral in Altondale when the call came in. That body, she recalled grimly, had looked a lot better than this one.

With a sigh, Sheriff Valentine knelt for a closer inspection. After a moment she closed her eyes and rubbed them with a thumb and forefinger. She found herself wondering, not for the first time, why she had let her father talk her into this job. Until his retirement two years ago, he had been Sheriff Valentine. “What happened to her, Dal?”

“Don't know, boss.” McKay took a stick of Juicy Fruit from his pocket, unwrapped it, and pointed it at the body. “Somebody beat her up pretty good, looks like. Cut her too. If it wasn't for the tracks—”

McKay stopped. Both he and Lucy looked up to see a plump, attractive woman in her fifties standing there, staring wide-eyed at the corpse.

“Mother,” Lucy said, rising to her feet, “I asked you to wait in the car.”

Frances Valentine pulled her gaze away long enough to give her daughter a hard look. “Your daddy was sheriff for twenty years, Lucy. You think I've never seen a dead body?”

“Have you?”

“No,” Frances admitted. She turned to look at Deputy McKay. “Afternoon, Dallas.”

“Fran. Want some gum?”

“No thanks.” She swallowed and straightened her back a little. “There's not a breath of wind out here—I already heard everything you two have said. Keep going.”

“Mother, this is a crime scene. You'll have to—”

“I don't see any police tape.”

Which was true. “That's my fault, boss,” McKay said. “But we been over the immediate area a dozen times. It's clean.”

“Keep going, Dallas,” Fran said again. Impatiently.

McKay glanced at Lucy, got a weary nod, and picked up where he'd left off. “If it wasn't for the tracks,” he said, folding the stick of gum into his mouth, “I'd say she got run over by a truck.”

“The tracks?” Lucy said.

“The fact there ain't any.”

Both the women blinked. “You didn't find any tire tracks?” Lucy asked.

“No footprints either. Except for the guy who found the body.” McKay pointed again, this time toward a line of boot prints in the short grass.

Lucy stared at them a moment, then at the two deputies—Malone and Wilson—slogging through the orchard. They looked worn out.

“Are you telling me,” she said, “that whoever did this got her out here somehow, killed her . . . and then smoothed out their tracks?”

“I'm just telling you the tracks ain't here.” Chewing on his gum, McKay looked at the dead woman's face. “It's a dern shame, is what it is. She seemed like a nice lady.”

“You knew her?” Lucy asked.

“Name's Rosie Dockett. Her husband runs a freight service, out on 280.”

“Dockett . . .” Lucy tipped her hat back off her sweaty forehead. “Wasn't he in some trouble years ago, before my watch?”

“He got kicked out of the military,” McKay said. “‘Conduct unbecoming' with a fellow officer and trainee. After that we got him for assault once. Joe Dockett's a piece of work.”

“I think I remember that,” Fran murmured.

“How did you know his wife?” Lucy asked McKay.

“I've seen her at the club, lately.” Dallas McKay had moonlighted as a bartender at the Officer's Club at Kendall Air Force Base for as long as Lucy could remember. The base was thirty miles away, in the next county.

“She'd been coming to the O Club?” Lucy asked.

“Once or twice a week.”

“But you said Joe Dockett's a civilian now.”

“She hadn't been coming with Joe.”

Sheriff Valentine pondered that for a moment. Somewhere far away, a dog yapped, the sound clear and sharp in the stillness of the afternoon. Sparrows chirped in the green canopy above their heads. Once more, Lucy steeled herself and looked down at Rosie Dockett's body. “Any idea when it happened?” she asked.

“Sometime this morning,” McKay said.

“How do you know?”

He nodded toward a small house a hundred yards away. “That's Elmore Skinner's place there . . . and that's his grandmother's, over there. They both live alone.” The houses lay on opposite sides of the orchard, their tin roofs shimmering in the heat. “Skinner told me he checks on his grandma three times a day, walking through here as a shortcut. He found the body around noon—it hadn't been here when he went past at sunup.”

“He see anything?” Lucy asked. “Hear anything?”

“He was in town all morning.”

“How about his grandmother?”

“She's bedridden, and her window faces the wrong way.”

“Any sounds?” Lucy asked. “A truck engine? Car door? ATV?”

“Nothing.”

“Great. We're down to someone on foot or someone on a bicycle.”

“Or a horse,” McKay said.

“Does Joe Dockett have a horse?”

“I doubt he has one that doesn't leave tracks.”

All three of them—sheriff, deputy, and the sheriff's mother—were quiet for a minute. Even here in the shade of the pecan trees, sweat trickled down their faces and into their collars. McKay was wrong, Lucy thought: sunny weather didn't always mean comfortable weather. It was hot and still and humid. A lone crow cawed in the distance.

“This is crazy,” Lucy said finally.

Deputy McKay just nodded. He had squatted beside the body again, chewing his gum and holding his palms together in front of his chin. He looked as if he was either about to dive into the mud or offer a word of prayer.

After a long pause Fran asked, “What kind of assault was it?”

“Beg pardon?” McKay said.

“That time awhile back. What did Joe do, exactly, to get arrested?”

“Look, Mother,” Lucy said. “Maybe you better leave this to me and Dallas—”

“What did he do, Dal?”

McKay scratched his chin and squinted. “As I recall, he pushed his cousin Nate out of a car.”

Lucy frowned. “He what?”

“Pushed him out of a moving car. An old Jeep, with no doors.”

Fran stared at the body, then at the surrounding countryside, then at the body again.

Without looking up, she asked, “What kind of freight?”

“Excuse me?” McKay said.

“Dockett's company. What kind?”

“Cargo,” McKay said. “Air freight. Why?”

And, very slowly, Fran's face brightened.

“What is it?” Lucy said.

“Joe Dockett wasn't just an officer,” Fran murmured. “He was a pilot. Wasn't he?” She looked at McKay. “That trainee you mentioned—that was flight school, wasn't it.”

Fran was smiling now, her eyes twinkling.

“What are you saying, Mother?” Lucy asked.

“I'm saying you were right, Dal: It is fine weather today. The first we've had in a while.”

Dutifully, he said, “Fine weather for what?”

Fran Valentine raised her head and stared up through the splintered branches at the bright blue sky.

“For flying,” she said.