into the living room where Cal seemed absorbed by the
game. “Fred Mitchiner.”
“Once Mitchiner slipped away from the nursing
home, it would have been a long walk for him, but they
do say Alzheimer’s patients often try to find their way
back to where they were happy. Bo figures the old guy
probably thought he’d go check his traps, fell in the
water, and either drowned or died of exposure. High
water and animals did the rest. It wasn’t murder.”
“But it does sound like negligence,” I said. “Is that
what his family feel?”
He shrugged. “We haven’t told them yet. Bo wants
to wait till we get an official ID; but yeah, that’s the
talk.”
83
C H A P T E R
10
% Friday’s criminal court is usually a catchall day for
me—the minor felonies and misdemeanors that
don’t fit in elsewhere. Sometimes I think Doug Woodall,
our current DA, goes out of his way to see that the
weird ones wind up on my Friday docket. On the other
hand, sometimes his sense of humor matches mine and
when I entered the courtroom that morning and saw
Dr. Linda Allred seated in the center aisle, it was hard
not to smile.
“All rise,” said Cleve Overby, the most punctilious
of the bailiffs, and before she’d finished giving him a
rueful hands-up motion from her motorized wheel-
chair, he grinned and added, “all except Dr. Allred.
Oyez, oyez, oyez. This honorable court for the County
of Colleton is now open and sitting for the dispatch
of its business. God save the State and this honorable
court, the Honorable Judge Deborah Knott presiding.
Be seated.”
I ran my finger down the calendar and found the case
84
HARD ROW
she was probably there for, then sat back and listened
as ADA Kevin Foster pulled the first shuck on Anthony
Barkley, a nineteen-year-old black kid who had ridden
through a parking lot on his bicycle and tried to snatch
a woman’s purse. Before the shoulder strap fully left her
arm, she gave it a sharp yank, which sent him sprawling
into the path of a slow-moving car. The car immediately
flattened his bike and the man who jumped out to see
