“Was his name Frank Britt?”
Amon nodded, then mumbled. “Yes, Frank Britt.”
“This morning,” Fornby continued, “you said you didn’t know any reason why anybody would want to kill that breadman. That was Greg Haynes. You do know a reason why somebody would want to kill Frank Britt, don’t you?”
Amon stared at the floor.
“Maybe,” he said at last.
“You got to do better than that,” Fornby told him. “Do you know a reason or don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” Amon almost whispered.
Roger Dale wrote on his pad. “Who had reason to kill Britt?” he asked.
Amon didn’t answer.
“Who was it?” Roger Dale asked again.
Still Amon did not answer.
“Was it Jubal Scroggs?”
When Amon still didn’t answer, Fornby stood silent, just letting the question hang in the air. Amon stared at the floor. At last he stole a glance at Roger Dale. The agent was staring down at him. Still silent.
Finally Amon nodded. “Yeah.” Again he almost whispered.
“Yeah what?” Fornby pressed.
“Yeah, Roger Dale, it was Jubal.”
Fornby wrote it down. “Britt was seeing Donna Scroggs, wasn’t he?”
Amon stared at the floor.
“Tell me out loud,” Roger demanded.
“Yeah, Roger Dale, he was seeing Donna.”
Fornby wrote it down. “Did he see her on Friday mornings while Jubal was at work, when Frank came over here to make deliveries?”
“Yeah, Roger Dale, that’s when he seen her.”
Roger wrote it down. “And I reckon he first met her when he was making deliveries — maybe right here at your store.”
Amon nodded. Then at last he began to tell the story. As Roger had planned, once the first few truths had been forced out, the rest poured out like olives from a bottle.
“He met her right here,” Amon began. “Maybe two years ago, maybe longer. She used to always shop early on Friday mornings. Jubal had to go in to work early on Fridays. Since she was awake anyway, and since I open at seven, she used to be my first customer, every Friday. Frank would come in to make his delivery, and he’d see her every week. At first he used to just kid her about being the early bird, and did she want to buy some worms.
“Then they got to talking about one thing and another. Then he started carrying her groceries out to the car. Wasn’t too long till he was driving out of here heading up into the Cove a few minutes after she’d left, instead of toward town where his next delivery was. Then a couple of hours later I’d see his truck go by again, heading into town.”
Roger wrote it all down.
“ ’Course, people got to talking after awhile,” Amon went on. “They would see that bread truck parked here and there up in the Cove. I never heard of anybody actually seeing her pick him up, but everybody knew she was. Jubal had to hear of it after awhile. Yeah, Jubal had reason to kill him.”
Roger wrote it all down. When there wasn’t any more, he and the two county officers finally walked out to the car and sat down.
“Just to put it all together,” Fornby told the sheriff, “over in Tennessee we talked to the warehouse manager. He told us, of course, that Britt was the regular Friday man, not Haynes. Haynes always had Fridays off. Then yesterday Britt all of a sudden asked for today off. Haynes said he’d drive for him. Company didn’t care. They pay by miles and sales, not hours. So it didn’t cost them overtime or nothing.
“So then we started asking him about Britt. Britt wasn’t like Haynes. Haynes was a straight arrow, and as regular as a clock ticking. They knew within minutes when Haynes would hit every store on his route. Britt was less dependable. They liked him okay, but he was less dependable.
“About two years ago, everybody on Britt’s Friday route except Amon started calling, wanting to know where he was at. He’d started running two or three hours late. Then they just got to looking for him later and quit calling. Storekeepers didn’t care much as long as he came, and the company didn’t care at all. Like I said, they didn’t pay by the hour anyway.
“And since Britt wasn’t a straight arrow like Haynes was, they just figured he had him a girlfriend somewhere. So when we put that together with what you found out at Flo and Dolly’s, we know why the breadman died, and who UNSUB is.”
The sheriff nodded. “UNSUB killed the wrong breadman. But we still don’t have enough to convict him, do we?”
Roger Dale nodded his head. “We don’t have enough to convict, but we’ve got motive. We know the means. We’ve got enough for probable cause to get a search warrant. Then I reckon ballistics will give us the hard evidence we need to convict him.”
“Ain’t you forgetting something?” Bud asked him. “We don’t know where to get a search warrant for. We ain’t got no idea where that gun is.”
The sheriff nodded agreement.
“Now, just you two think,” Roger told them. “Sometimes the most important information is what you remember about what you already know instead of what you can find out. Remember, you don’t have to have a gun to make a ballistics match. You have to have the bullets that came out of it. Now, let’s get down to your night magistrate and get a search warrant. And while we’re doing that, we’ve got another problem to worry about.”
“Frank Britt?” said the sheriff.
“Right,” said Fornby. “He must’ve come over here hunting for Donna when he hadn’t heard from her like he expected to. By now he knows about the murder and he’s figured out it’s Jubal, same as we have.”
Sheriff Taylor pursed her lips. “I guess we need to put some protection on Jubal Scroggs.”
“I reckon so,” said Fornby. “He ain’t much, but we don’t need another murder on our hands, even if the victim’s him. How many deputies you got on night duty?”
“Just two, like always,” said the sheriff. “For the whole county. I can order one of them to patrol the road around Scroggs Cove and alert him to be looking for Britt. Bud, do we have a special deputy good enough to run surveillance on Jubal’s house?”
Davis nodded. “Yeah. Bill Johnson just retired from the Wildlife Service. He’s got experience and time on his hands.”
“I’ll call him in,” she said. “And put out a bulletin to other law enforcement to be looking for Britt.”
As she keyed the mike to relay the message throughout her office, Roger signaled Bud to start the car. “Let’s go get that search warrant,” he said.
Early Saturday morning Jubal Scroggs heard someone pounding on his front door. Then he heard a shout.
“Jubal. You in there? Come on out.”
He pulled on his pants and raced to the door. When he threw it open, Roger Dale and Sheriff Taylor were standing on his porch. The sheriff was holding a paper. Roger Dale was holding a pistol.
At the foot of the steps stood Bud, Seth, and Billy. Bud was holding a shotgun, Seth a chainsaw, Billy an axe.
Bud pointed to the giant oaks downhill from the house. “Seth, you and Billy can get started on them trees in a minute,” he announced loudly.
“The devil they can,” Jubal shouted. “What in the name of sand do you think you are doing?”
“We’re executing a search warrant,” Roger Dale told him. “That’s it the sheriff’s holding. We’ll read it to you in a minute or two. But what it says is that there is probable cause to believe that in them trees there’s lead from your .30-.30 and that it will match up with the lead that came out of a dead bread truck driver. After we read it to you, we’re fixing to go down to that oak grove. And whenever we find a scar on one of them trees, we’re going to cut a chunk of it to take down to the lab.”
“You’re not cutting my trees,” Jubal said.
“Yeah we are, Jubal. Unless you want to tell us where the rifle is at.”