Dead Guilty

comment when asked if this was a racially motivated crime.’’
‘‘What do you mean?’’ Diane asked.
‘‘We heard that someone lynched three black men.’’
‘‘You’ve been given incorrect information. For more than that, you need to talk to the sheriff.’’
‘‘That’s who we’re going to see.’’ She turned to her passenger. ‘‘I see a road down there. I think that’ll get us to the crime scene.’’
‘‘That roadway’s part of the crime scene. You can’t go there,’’ said Diane.
‘‘People around here want to know what’s going on. It’s my job to tell them, and I’m going to do it.’’
‘‘Not by contaminating the crime scene, you’re not. You get near that roadway, I’ll impound your vehicle.’’
‘‘You can’t do that.’’
‘‘Yes, I can. If you continue on after I’ve told you it’s a crime scene, I’ll have you arrested. You can get the information you want, just not through here. Drive back to the road. I’ll call the sheriff and tell him you want to speak with him.’’
Diane took her phone and punched in the sheriff’s number with her thumb, not taking her eyes off the woman. When he answered she told him about the reporter. She also asked him to send one of her team with some crime scene tape to rope off the roadway to the scene.
‘‘Damn reporters,’’ he said. ‘‘I suppose they’ve got ten on to this racial thing going around.’’
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘You told them it wasn’t, didn’t you?’’
‘‘Yes. And I also told them that all other informa tion had to come from you.’’
‘‘You did, did you? I suppose I got to talk to them sometime. Tell them I’ll meet them up at the road.’’
Diane relayed the message. The woman was reluc tant. She sat in her SUV, not making a move to put her car in gear. ‘‘I need to pull down there so I can turn around.’’ She pointed to the forbidden path.
Diane had the impression she was planning to make a break for it. ‘‘I’m sorry, but you can’t. As I said, it’s part of the crime scene.’’
‘‘Well, where the hell do you expect me to turn around?’’
‘‘Not at the crime scene. If you back up several feet, there’s a small turnaround between those trees.’’
‘‘Back up?’’ She said it as though her vehicle didn’t have a reverse gear.
‘‘Yes.’’
She reluctantly put her car in gear and started to back up, then abruptly slammed on the brakes, throw ing her passenger forward and backward. She stepped out of the car and turned toward Steven and Chris. ‘‘Who are you two? Are you the ones who found the bodies?’’
The passenger, a tall lean man close to thirty, stepped out and shouldered his video camera and trained it on the two timber cruisers.
‘‘You are the two who found the bodies, right?’’ the reporter asked again.
‘‘We found them and called the sheriff. That’s all there was to it,’’ Steven told her.
‘‘Tell us about the scene.’’
‘‘The sheriff told us not to talk about it,’’ said Chris.
‘‘He can’t order you not to talk.’’
‘‘And you can’t order us to talk.’’ Chris shrugged. ‘‘As soon as we saw the bodies, we left and called the sheriff. That’s it.’’
‘‘How many bodies were there?’’
‘‘We can’t say anything about it.’’
‘‘What was it like, coming upon dead bodies?’’
The two of them glared at her a moment. ‘‘What do you think it was like?’’ said Steven. ‘‘How many times have you found dead bodies in your work place?’’
Diane was glad to see that they were more reluctant to talk to the reporter than they were to talk with her.
As the reporter was trying to pull answers from Chris and Steven, Diane saw the two deputies, Chuck and Leon, coming up the trail from the crime scene to tape off the vehicle path through the woods. She walked down to meet them.
‘‘I’m glad you’re here. I fear I was going to have a hard time keeping that reporter from crashing the crime scene.’’
‘‘That’s Pris Halloran from that little TV station in Atlanta, WXNG,’’ said Chuck. ‘‘She cruises around listening to her scanner. She’s always trying to break a big story. Mostly, she makes a whole lot out of nothing.’’
‘‘The guy’s Kyle Anthony,’’ said Leon. ‘‘He got fired from one of the big Atlanta stations after he was arrested for possession of cocaine.’’
‘‘I think both of them’s hungry for some kind of big news score,’’