MARGARET MARON
and differences are too often settled with baseball bats,
knives, handguns, and the occasional frying pan.)
Between the building boom, and Colleton County’s
exploding population growth, fifty’s no longer an un-
usual number, even on a Monday morning after some
beautiful early spring weather. Here were the hungover
drunks, the druggies coming down from their various
highs, the incompetent burglars, the belligerent citizens
and aliens alike, with attitudes that hadn’t softened after
a night or two on a jail cot.
Coping with all this is one judge and one clerk. If
we’re lucky, we may have a fairly skillful translator on
hand for the whole session, but that’s about it.
North Carolina is forty-eighth in the country in its
funding of the whole court system, so take a guess
where that leaves its district court? Last year 239 dis-
trict court judges like me disposed of 2,770,951 cases.
While upper court judges are plowing through their
lighter load in air-conditioned tractors equipped with
cell phones, iPods, and hydraulic lifts, district court
judges are out in the hot sun, barefooted, following the
back end of a mule.
I worked straight through the morning without even
a bathroom break. Around 10:30, a clerk handed me a
note from Dwight. “
I sent word back that I’d be down at noon and man-
aged to gear it so that I actually recessed at 12:07.
Lunch in Dwight’s office when he’s buying tends not
to be soup or a healthy salad, so it was no surprise to
smell chopped onions and Texas Pete chili sauce as I
turned into his hallway.
Detectives Mayleen Richards and Jack Jamison were
138
HARD ROW
on their way out and we paused to speak to each other.
Like Kate, Richards had a new haircut, too. Her cinnamon-
colored hair still brushed her shoulders, but there was a
softer, more feminine look to the cut.
“Looks great,” I told her. “You didn’t get something
that uptown here in Dobbs, did you?”
“As a matter of fact I did,” she said. “There’s a new
stylist at the Cut ’n’ Curl.”
I made a face. “Too bad. That’s where I go when I
need a quick fix. Ethelene would kill me if I went to
someone else in the same shop.”
“How long since you were last there?” Richards said.
“I think the new girl might be her replacement.”
“Really? Thanks.”
