“He raises ornamental corn,” said Merrilee.
It was clear that Dwight didn’t think this amounted to much, so I briefly described my encounter with Mr. Jap and Billy Wall a few weeks ago. “The Wall boy was supposed to sell the last of it this past week. I think they expected to net about ten or twelve thousand.”
Merrilee was sure this was all the motive a user and taker like Allen Stancil needed and she insisted that Dwight put out an arrest call on him.
Dwight doesn’t jump to conclusions, but he agreed that it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a talk with Allen.
“Prob’ly wouldn’t hurt neither to find out if Billy Wall ever actually paid Jap,” Daddy told Dwight reluctantly.
As we walked back outside, we saw Blue and Ladybelle trotting down the lane toward us.
Daddy seldom gets as flustered as he was at that moment. He hollered at the dogs, gave a sweeping motion of his hand, and they instantly veered off and went and jumped up in the bed of his pickup.
“Dwight, I’m plumb ashamed of them,” he apologized.
Dwight gave a rueful laugh. “Don’t worry about it, sir. Everybody else has been up and down this lane. Couple of dogs can’t do much more damage.”
“Wonder what they did with Hambone?” I said. Aunt Zell wasn’t going to be too happy with me if I lost her beagle pup. “If you’re finished with me for right now, Dwight, maybe I’ll walk back and see if I can find him.”
“Just try to walk in the middle of the lane and stay off any tire tracks,” he said.
He had a few more questions for Daddy, so Adam said he’d wait and ride back in the truck.
I gave Merrilee my condolences again, then skirted the yellow tape and struck off down the lane. Almost immediately, I noticed something that I hoped Dwight wouldn’t: the dogs had been around the garage sometime after the rain stopped last night and when they arrived just now.
They could have wandered over in the early morning hours, of course. Blue and Ladybelle are never chained up at night. On the other hand, at their age, they don’t usually roam far from the house unless they’re with one of the family. I thought back to my earlier conversation with Adam. He never actually said that he only briefly crossed the creek to talk to Dick Sutterly. I kept looking for boot tracks, but if he’d walked this far, his tracks could have been covered up by those laid down by Sutterly and Daddy.
Daddy’s zigzag treads were the only ones I could recognize and they overlay most of the marks. Occasionally, though, different drivers had veered from his straight path and I saw a crisp wide diamond tread, an equally crisp hexagonal pattern that reminded me of chicken wire, and one tire that must have been completely bald since the tread mark was smooth and patternless.
The lane soon entered the first patch of trees, then crossed alongside Mr. Jap’s pumpkin patch. The vines were browning off after all the rain and a wonderful funky smell rose up from the earth itself—damp sand, dead weeds and grass, decaying leaves. Every gust of the wind winnowed down more leaves from the trees around me.
For that matter, the wind was out of the north and had picked up enough to blow my hair, push away the gray clouds above, and open up large patches of blue that let the sun shine through. Despite the sun, though, the temperature was dropping perceptively minute by minute. For the first time since last March I thought seriously of sweaters and jackets and wool skirts. Maybe we were finally going to get some colder weather for Thanksgiving.
As I stepped from bright sunlight into the last stretch of thick woods before the creek, I heard the scuffle of leaves, as if a larger animal were passing somewhere to my left. I quickly slipped behind a large oak tree and waited.
Deer have been coming back into these woods, working their way west along the Neuse and then down along Possum Creek. Andrew’s son A.K. had taken a nice little six-point stag last year and most of his male cousins, especially Reese, were determined to best him before the season ended in January. I’ve seen lots of tracks these past few years, but only twice have I seen the deer themselves.
The woods had gone suddenly silent. Uneasily, I noted that even the mindless chirp of sparrows and chickadees was missing and the busy scratching of towhees had stopped as well. My flesh crawled as I sensed that someone else was there in the woods, watching.
Behind me?
I whirled and saw nothing at first. Then there was movement and a young man in full camouflage materialized in the underbrush. He held a .22 rifle loosely in his hands.
The barrel was pointed just as loosely in the direction of my heart.
Behind me, from the other side of the lane, a cold hard voice said, “I do believe you’re trespassing, Judge Knott.”
13
« ^ » I have seen the inhabitants hunting foxes, bears, and deer, through the woods…“Scotus Americanus,” 1773
I turned and made my voice as cool as his. “Mr. Talbert, I presume?”
We had never formally met, but I’ve seen him on Channel 5 and in the News and Observer enough times over the years. Discussing plans of a new merger, standing behind various governors as they announce the successful luring of yet another rustbelt industry to North Carolina, beaming widely on election night as Jesse Helms or others of his conservative cronies squeak into office, G. Hooks Talbert moves in much more rarefied circles than a district court judge does.
Nevertheless, if he hadn’t pushed my name with the Republican governor who appointed me to replace a judge who died in office, I’d still be practicing law from the attorney’s side of the bench.
Not that supporting me was his choice, of course. Normally, a man of his standing would never waste political pull on a minor local judgeship and certainly not for a Democrat, but he was caught in a Mexican standoff. Behind my back, Daddy had sent him word that if I didn’t get the appointment, Channel 5 would be getting a videotape of the vigorous crop of marijuana which Grayson Hooks Talbert Junior was growing in his greenhouses at the time. I’d been ambivalent when Daddy told me what he’d done, but I couldn’t blame him for savoring his revenge—not after he’d been so roundly snubbed when he offered to buy the Talbert property years ago. (Back then, word was sent to him that, quote, “Mr. Talbert doesn’t care to have any dealings with a known bootlegger,” end quote.)
G. Hooks must have hated having to ask a moderate like Governor Hardison for a personal favor almost as much as I hated getting on the bench that way, so we may not have met, but as we warily faced each other there in the underbrush, yes, each knew who the other was.
He held his squirrel rifle cradled in the crook of his arm with the barrel pointed skyward. Walking toward us around the bend in the lane was a third hunter whose own .22 was slung across one shoulder.
Like G. Hooks Talbert, this man was expensively togged out in brown coveralls and fluorescent orange hunting cap. He had the same well-barbered steel gray hair and moved with the same I-own-the-world aura of self-entitlement as G. Hooks. Another Triangle mover and shaker, no doubt, but I couldn’t put a name to him.
“Well, Hooks, she’s certainly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but is she in season?” he asked, with a warm, crinkly-eyed smile at me to show that he was just kidding.
I gave him a cool nod and didn’t smile back.
Nor did Talbert.
“This is Judge Deborah Knott,” he said.
“Judge?”
His disbelief was probably conditioned reflex. After all, most of the judges in his Old Raleigh circle would be male. They would wear Brooks Brothers suits, play gentlemanly rounds of golf, and sport distinguished touches of gray at their neatly trimmed temples. Although my sky blue sweatshirt is from the Bull’s Head over in Chapel Hill, my jeans and sneakers are both off-brands. My hair, rougher than a haystack at that moment, is almost shoulder length and shows no immediate signs of going gray. (And never will if Ethelene down at the Cut ’n Curl has her way about it.)