After leaving the airport, he tried to calculate how long it would have taken Bellamy to leave the principal’s office and go back to his classroom for his car keys, how much time would be required to find a substitute to take over his class for the day, and how many minutes a grieving father would need to drive the eighteen miles from the high school to Rodney’s house in the Grove. Fifteen? Twenty? Certainly no less.
Winston drove as slow as he could down Howe Street into downtown Southport, the water rising up before him at the end of the street. Here the Atlantic Ocean merged with the Cape Fear River as it led northwest to Wilmington and the Intracoastal Waterway to the southwest, which separated Oak Island from the mainland, and here, centuries earlier, pirates had reigned. Now the sleepy town depended more on the treasure of tourists than it did on the bounty of pirates. At the end of Howe, Winston turned right and drove along the water where boats of all kinds and sizes were tied up in slips and restaurants that had been closed for the season sat empty and dark. He made another right and circled back toward North Lord Street, where he drove into the Grove and found a little white house with a well-manicured yard and a tan sedan parked haphazardly behind a pickup truck in the driveway. A little of the tension that had been building inside Winston released itself because he knew that Bellamy had beaten him there.
Winston parked Marie’s car on the street in front of the house. Just up the road, a Black boy played with a little dog at the edge of a yard. The boy, who might’ve been three or four, must have held something in his hand that the dog wanted because the dog was leaping for it, and the boy was laughing, holding his clenched fist above his head. For a moment, Winston found himself back in Gastonia, sitting behind the steering wheel as a much younger man, the errand that brought him to park alongside the street just as tragic as the one that brought him to the Grove now. The little boy opened his palm and the dog took something from it. He wiped his hand on his shirt, and then he looked up the road at Winston. The sight of the little boy was almost too much for him to bear. The little boy ran back toward his house, the dog following, and Winston climbed out of the car.
He figured the truck parked in the driveway must have belonged to Rodney and that he had been driving his wife’s Datsun last night. The irony of that discovery settled on his chest with a weight that surprised him. He closed his car door and made his way across the yard. He could hear Janelle’s cries before he even stepped onto the porch.
On most occasions, the sound of a doorbell is loud and cheerful, loaded with mystery and curiosity and expectation. Doorbells have an element of surprise that feels manipulative—almost evil—when announcing the news of death. Winston had spent a lot of time thinking about this over the years, and he thought about it again at that moment as he delivered three almost silent knocks on Janelle Bellamy’s door. Inside, the woman’s cries seemed to go silent, and Winston feared that, in her sudden grief, Janelle might believe that he was Rodney returning home, that there had been some great mistake and that her husband was still alive. He feared that she would open the door and find him instead.
But when the door opened, there stood Ed Bellamy, his eyes damp and his face already collapsed with the kind of exhaustion that only grief can bring. He nodded at Winston. “Sheriff,” he said.
They shook hands, and for a moment Winston wanted to pull Bellamy into an embrace, but instead he just stepped into the living room, and Bellamy closed the door behind him. The interior of the small house reminded Winston of his and Marie’s home back in Gastonia: the living room full of secondhand furniture; the short hallway on the left that led to a kitchen and probably a small laundry room; the hallway on the other side of the living room, the open bathroom door on the right, the three closed bedroom doors on either side of the hallway just beyond it. Something about the house—the arrangement of the furniture or the smell of new carpet—told Winston that Rodney and Janelle Bellamy had not been living here for very long, and now, if she stayed in their home, she would be living here without him.
Bellamy walked to the sofa and sat down. He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. Winston had not been invited to sit, so he continued to stand by the door.
“Ed,” Winston said, “I just want you to know how sorry I am. I can’t imagine—” But he stopped speaking when Janelle opened one of the bedroom doors in the hall and walked into the living room. Winston saw that the woman he’d heard crying just moments before was now gone. This woman’s face was shining, her bright eyes showing no trace of tears aside from the redness they’d left behind. Her face portrayed no sign of sadness, but also no shock that the Brunswick County sheriff was standing in her living room. She held a fussing baby that didn’t look to be more than a few months old. She bounced the baby as she walked. She raised her eyebrows at Winston and nearly smiled, the gesture being the only false thing about her.
“He didn’t sleep much last night,” she said. Her voice was pitched and sharp, and Winston could feel her restraint and also the panic that fueled it. She patted the baby’s back, rubbed her open hand up and down across it. “None of us slept.” And that was the moment when her face changed, when she turned back into the woman Winston had heard. “He just went out for diapers,” she said, her face collapsing, her mouth nearly swallowing her lips as she choked back a great, heaving sob. The baby in her arms began to cry louder. Bellamy stood from the sofa and stepped around the coffee table toward her, reached out his arms to take the child. Janelle turned away from him, began whispering over and over. “Shhh, it’s okay, honey. Daddy’s just gone for diapers. Daddy’s just gone for diapers.”
It was all too much for Winston, but the only thing he could do now was look away.
Later, Winston’s name came over the walkie-talkie as he turned onto Howe Street. He pulled to the side of the road, wiped his eyes, took a breath, and picked up the walkie-talkie from where it sat on the passenger’s seat. On the other end was Randy Taylor, a retired officer who often ran dispatch during the morning hours once Rudy had gone home. Everyone in the office called dispatch “The Randy and Rudy Show,” and even though no one had ever said that to Randy or Rudy, Winston figured they probably knew just the same and probably even got a kick out of it.
“Sheriff?” Randy’s voice repeated.
“I’m here,” Winston said. He took another breath, rubbed his eyes and then his face with his free hand.
“Leonard Dorsey wants to talk to you,” Randy said.
“You know what it’s about?” Winston asked.
“He didn’t say, but I reckon it’s something about that airplane.”
“Is he still out at the airport?”
“He is,” Randy said.
“Well, do me a favor and call Hugh’s office. Tell them I’m on the way.”
“Ten-four,” Randy said.
Winston tossed the walkie-talkie back onto the passenger’s seat, where it landed on the campaign posters Marie’d had printed. He sat there on the roadside and watched as cars entered and left Southport. He rolled the window down, felt the warmth of the morning. He took another deep breath.