knocked over by a short, very angry, barrel-shaped man. He pushed past with a muttered apology and I caught an expression of perplexed dismay on Darlene Leonard’s face.
It changed to a warm smile as she stood to welcome me from behind a desk cluttered with manila folders, computer printouts, pictures of children and grand-children, and a cut-glass vase of pansies. The office wasn’t much wider than the desk, but tall windows stretched toward an even taller ceiling and lent a sense of spacious amplitude.
Things were slow enough back in Colleton County that when District Court Judge Roydon Mercer suddenly underwent emergency bypass heart surgery three days ago, my chief judge, E Roger Longmire, volunteered me for a substitute. “They’ve never had a woman sit on a Beaufort bench,” Roger said when he asked me to go. “Should be an interesting experience.”
I forgot to ask him who was expected to find it interesting.
Evidently Darlene Leonard did.
“I’ve given you the judge’s chamber that has its own private washroom.” The sparkle in her eye announced an amused sensitivity to one of the biggest grumbles I hear from some of my male colleagues. They claim they’re getting gun-shy about using any bathroom that has a connecting door because sometimes I forget to knock. We chatted a minute or two about inconsequentials—if she’d heard of the murder off Harkers Island, she didn’t seem to connect it with me. Her assistant interrupted to say an expected phone call was on the line, and Mrs. Leonard said, “Now you be sure and let me know if there’s anything you need.”
I said I would.
Superior court was in session, too, the bailiff told me as we crossed into the modern section of the courthouse. “Insurance fraud. It’ll probably go to the jury today.”
In fact, I was zipping up my robe when Superior Court Judge Chester Amos Winberry tapped at my door and poked his head in without waiting for me to answer.
“What if I’d been standing here in my slip?” I asked sternly.
“I’d say when did you start wearing slips?” he grinned.
He had me there. I only own one: a black lace thing that keeps my black silk dress from clinging too tightly when I wear it to funerals; but I never thought anybody’d noticed the other times. Guess I’m going to have to start checking my silhouette against a brighter light.
Chet’s a competent enough jurist. Some of us feel he goes a little too easy on white collar crime and a little too hard on blue collars, but that’s not an unpopular mix down here. He’s getting some gray now and the laugh lines no longer go away when he stops laughing; nevertheless, at fifty he’s still a sexy man, knows it, and loves to act the cowboy. Most of the time, his wife, Barbara Jean, keeps him reined in; but she’ll never break him from calling every female “darlin’,” “honey,” or “sugar.”
“Heard you were down,” he said. “Also heard you found Andy Bynum shot dead out by the banks. Are you okay?”
I nodded. “Did you know him?”
“Hell, everybody knew ol’ Andy.” He shook his head. “Bad, sad thing. Barbara Jean’s all torn up about it. He was one of the few people that everybody listened to.”
“About what?” I rummaged in my briefcase for a legal pad and a pen in case I needed to make notes to myself.
“About everything. How ‘bout you recess at twelve sharp and let me and Barbara Jean take you out for some of the best she-crab soup you ever dipped a spoon in?”
“Can we cram that much lunch into an hour?”
“Oh, I always give my juries ninety minutes,” he said magnanimously.
“Sounds about right to me,” I told him.
We walked down a maze of short hallways and I entered the front of my courtroom from a door beside the bench.
“All rise,” said the bailiff.
• • •
Most vehicular violations follow a predictable pattern across the state and Beaufort district court began no differently. There were the usual charges of speeding, driving under the influence, driving with suspended licenses, failure to wear a seat belt or to provide proper child restraints. (That last is something I take pretty seriously. It’s one thing to risk your own life, but you don’t want me on the bench if you’re caught risking the life of a child.) One after another came calendared cases that could be duplicated from the mountains to the sandhills.
About mid-morning though, I hit something that could only occur at the coast: Felton Keith Bodie and James Gordon Bodie. Brothers. Twenty-two and nineteen, respectively. Charged with driving while intoxicated, impeding traffic, and unlawfully discharging a firearm to the public endangerment.
In simple English, according to the trooper who testified against them, he’d come across a small traffic jam off Highway 70, heading for Gloucester, shortly before midnight last Tuesday night. I’m familiar with that road and I know that stretches of it can get pretty dark and deserted. Too, there are deep drainage ditches on either side, so if anything blocks the road, it’s hard to get by.
“Please describe to the court what you found,” said the assistant district attorney.
“Well,” said the trooper, referring to his notebook in a distinctive Down East accent, “these two were operating a 1986 F-150 Ford XL pickup. At the time I arrived on the scene, the pickup was skewed across the road and blocking traffic from both directions. Mr. Felton Bodie was trying to aim a spotlight mounted on the side of the truck and Mr. James Bodie was shooting at something on the edge of the road.”
“And did you ascertain what their target might be?” asked the ADA.
“Well, I didn’t have time to see anything at first, because as I was heading over to the driver’s side of the truck, Mr. Felton Bodie yelled, ‘You got him!’ and then he jumped out of the truck and ran over to where Mr. James Bodie
