comfortable sharing the spotlight as long as everyone remembers who the star is. Although Tracy often worked district court, she really shone in superior court’s serious criminal cases, and after Cyl went to Washington, Tracy moved up from second chair and handled some of the big cases when Doug was stretched too thin. She enjoyed demolishing the defense and procuring stiff sentences for career felons.
The house phone rang.
“Deborah? How come you’re not answering your cell? I’ve been calling all over for you.”
“Hey, Portland,” I said. Portland Brewer’s an attorney here in Dobbs and we’ve been best friends since childhood. I explained about leaving my phone in the pocket of my robe, “and you don’t have to yell at me about it. Dwight already did.”
But Portland didn’t want to natter about my absentmindedness. “You hear about Tracy Johnson?”
“I was here when Dwight got the call,” I said. “You know anything more?”
“Other than that she and the baby were both killed?”
“No, Mei’s still alive. They’re airlifting her over to Chapel Hill.”
“Really? I heard she died, too. And that Tracy crashed because someone shot her.”
“Who told you that?”
“Avery. Is it true?”
Avery is Portland’s husband and an attorney, too. A tax attorney. If he’d already heard that Tracy had been shot then it was all over the courthouse.
“It’s true, but I don’t know any details. Dwight doesn’t think it’s a hunter’s stray bullet, though. I just hope we haven’t suddenly acquired our own interstate sniper.”
“A random shooter? Oh Lord! I drive back and forth on that stretch two or three times a week.”
“Me too. But if it isn’t random, who could she have angered so badly, Por?”
“Well, she did get another death threat a couple of weeks ago.”
“She did? Who?”
“That manslaughter case over in Widdington, where the guy shot his girlfriend’s brother and claimed self- defense.”
I only vaguely remembered it. “Last year? Where the brother tried to stop him from beating up his sister?”
“That’s the one. It came to trial right before Thanksgiving and Tracy went for the maximum because he had a history of domestic violence.”
“Wife-beaters don’t usually have friends willing to kill for them,” I said.
“No, but somebody else could maybe think she’s the reason their man or woman’s in prison.”
“True.”
Portland has more contact with the major violent felony cases than I do these days, but she couldn’t think of any others that had generated a desire for revenge on Tracy. Most defendants pour their venom over prosecuting witnesses, not the prosecutors themselves.
Changing directions, I asked, “You ever hear who she was seeing these days?”
“Nope, but you know what a clam she could be. Getting disclosures out of her was like pulling stumps with a mule. She’d give you what you asked for, but you had to ask for every specific thing by its name, rank, and serial number. Wasn’t she ADA down in Makely today?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She left early, though. Mei had a doctor’s appointment late this afternoon or she’d have been at daycare.”
We talked about how unreal it was that Tracy should be dead so abruptly when everything had been so normal today. We kept going over the last times we’d seen her, which triggered a couple of odd memories. “Remember last week when you and she came in to see me about your motion to suppress some evidence against your client?” It was a motion I had denied.
“The Puckett business? I still think your reasoning was jesuitical on that.”
“Give it a rest,” I told her. “If anybody was arguing from arcane precedents, it was you.”
Portland gave an unladylike snort. “So what happened?”
“After we dealt with your motion and you flounced off, she—”
“Hey! I did
“You flounced,” I told her firmly. “Anyhow, Tracy stayed behind a few minutes.”
“What for?”
“I’m not sure.”
It was only a few days ago, but between the wedding, Christmas, and having my house torn up six ways to Sunday, I can’t seem to concentrate on anything else outside my courtroom unless someone practically grabs me by the shoulder and pushes my nose in it. And Tracy hadn’t been that direct. Now that I thought about it, I realized that she might have been working herself up to discuss something important, but at the time, she’d been too circuitous for me to pursue it.
“She wondered if I thought the ends ever justified the means, then she looked at my ring and said something about the wedding, and one thing led to another till I almost forgot why she’d stayed. As she was leaving, though, I asked her if there was anything else she wanted to talk about and she said it was nothing important.”
