High Country Fall

mortgage for her retainer and—”

“You reckon we could do it?” asked June.

“Chip in for a detective?” May said.

“No, I mean do some investigating ourselves.”

I about strangled on my coffee. “What?”

“Well, why not?” she asked stubbornly. “Between us all, we know a lot of people here in town.”

“We might could ask around,” May said, falling in with her twin’s suggestion.

“—get Carla and Trish to tell us who had it in for their dad—”

“—check their alibis—”

“Duc volunteers at his geriatrics clinic once a week—”

“Well, yeah,” said that young man, “but—”

By now the twins were picking up steam and they rolled right over his objections.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “This is too serious for you guys to start playing Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys.”

“We wouldn’t be playing,” said June.

“And if we did hear anything, we’d tell Danny’s lawyer right away. Let her handle it.”

Gary looked interested and said to me, “I think it’s cool you’re a judge. Most killers that show up in your court, what did they kill for?”

“I’m not that kind of a judge,” I said. “The only time an accused killer comes to district court here in North Carolina is for a first appearance or probable cause hearing. The actual trials are in superior court. Mostly, though, it’s either a drug deal gone bad or a domestic situation that gets out of hand or when somebody gets dissed and loses his temper.”

“But what about something like Dr. Ledwig? When it isn’t domestic or drugs?”

“In law, we usually ask cui bono? Who benefits?”

Gary had heard the term. “Like Carla’s mother?”

“Or Carla and Trish?” asked May.

“That too,” I told them. “But there are benefits other than inheritance. Was he gouging somebody for a lot of money, for instance? Was he planning to block someone from making a lot of money? Did he know something that someone didn’t want made public? In other words, whose life is going to be easier with him out of the way?”

“Not Carla’s,” Freeman said promptly, “and not mine either. Once I get my degree next spring, we can make it on our own. Besides, Carla loved him and I think he really loved her. Yeah, he was freaked about us once he heard I had black blood, but she says he would have come around. She never saw any sign that he was a bigot when she was growing up.”

He saw my skeptical look. “Yeah, yeah, I know. A lot of people can talk the talk till it affects them personally. But this was a guy who always voted a straight Demo-cratic ticket and didn’t care who knew it.”

Since Lafayette County has gone Republican every election since Eisenhower, he had a point. It takes a committed liberal to swim against the strong tide of conservatism out here.

“Listen,” I said to the twins, “if it makes y’all feel like you’re doing something constructive to ask questions while you’re out and about between your classes and your jobs, fine. But would you please remember that it’s not as clear-cut as television cop shows make it seem? People aren’t going to roll over for you just because you ask nicely, and you could be putting yourselves in danger. Whoever hit Ledwig probably didn’t mean to and probably regretted it the instant it was done, but all the same, it’s somebody who gets violent on impulse, so no one-on-one confrontations in lonely places, okay?”

“Okay,” they promised.

As I went out the door, June said, “See, Danny? I told you she doesn’t think you did it.”

If only it were that simple, I thought. Clearly the twins and those other two boys thought Freeman was innocent, and he was certainly giving off innocent vibes. But I’ve seen too many people who, in the heat of the moment, have done things so bad that they’ve gone into instant denial—Only a monster could do this. I am not a monster. Ergo, I did not do this.

Was that Danny Freeman?

Thank God I don’t have to make life-and-death judgments. Give me the speeders, the shoplifters, the druggies, the check kiters, the shoving matches, the DWIs any day of the week.

CHAPTER 12

Riding up to the Ashes’ party with Billy Ed Johnson last night must have inoculated me—that or realizing that I was later getting out of the condo than I’d planned and would have to jog down those steps if I wanted to get to court on time. Whatever, I threw my robe onto the front seat of my car, slid my laptop in on top of it, and brushed a handful of bright yellow leaves from my windshield. Then, gearing the engine to its lowest setting so that I wouldn’t have to stand on the brakes, I eased my car down that long steep drive.

As is often the case when I make myself do something I dread, the reality wasn’t anywhere near what my imagination had painted. I did not pass out with vertigo, I did not flip ass-over-teakettle, I did not burn out my brakes. A few prosaic minutes later, I successfully turned into the courthouse drive-through. Someone else had parked in Judge Rawlings’s space, though, and I had to drive on down a ramp to the visitors’ lot and enter through the lower level, where the sheriff’s office and jail were.