Southern Discomfort Read online

  "She wasn't home when you arrived?"

  Reese shook his head.

  "And you didn't threaten her? Or him?"

  "We don't beat up on women," he said indignantly. "And Bannerman was already dead, wasn't he?"

  He and A.K. had tailed the women over to Redbud Lane, gotten the main facts from Deputy Jamison (who hadn't thought to mention to Dwight that he'd seen the boys), and had then driven on over to Chapel Hill. "But Mama made us come on home 'cause she wanted me to open the office this morning. Besides, A.K. called from the hospital and Uncle Andrew told him he was going to be in big trouble if he didn't get home before midnight."

  I glanced at my watch and knew I was going to be in big trouble if I wasn't sitting on the bench in eight minutes.

  * * *

  Around the courthouse, the connection between Bannerman's death and my brother, his daughter, and me was such a muddle that conversations broke off whenever I appeared and no one found the nerve to broach the subject directly. "Sorry to hear about your brother," was the closest anyone came; and I pushed it all out of my mind till court adjourned for the day.

  I had been a district judge for a full week now and it seemed to become more interesting every day, although cases involving drugs were more depressing than I'd expected. I can't get seriously upset about marijuana anymore. Not when there's so much hard stuff floating around the country. Heroin, crack, angel dust, China white—it's everywhere, in every stratum of Colleton County society from migrant camps to million-dollar houses, and I've pretty well reversed the never-in-a-million years position I had when I first passed the bar exam.

  "Every day, legalization starts to make more and more sense," I tell Dwight. "You and Bo may think everybody in your department's straight, but there's so damn much money in trafficking and your salaries are so damn low—"

  "Who you think's not straight?" growls Dwight.

  "That's not what I said. I'm saying if drugs were legal, you could cut your operating costs in half."

  "If we had stiffer laws—"

  "You can't enforce the laws we have."

  Dwight doesn't like to hear me talk that way. "You see that documentary they did on the needle parks in—where was it? Holland? Denmark? Kids overdosing. Hypodermics all over the sidewalks. I'm telling you: drugs are flat-out bad."

  "Hey, I never said they weren't. A fried brain is disgusting. Wave your magic wand, make the stuff disappear, and you'll get no argument from me. But till you do, the only real difference between those needle parks and what's happening in the side streets and back alleys of Durham, Fayetteville, or parts of Dobbs right now is that at least those European addicts didn't mug helpless old people or break into houses to get money to buy the stuff."

  "Yeah," says Bob McAdams, who heads up a local independent insurance company. "You guys don't put a cap on drug crimes pretty soon, everybody's premiums are going to be right through the roof. The industry's hemorrhaging money from drug-related thefts and bodily injuries."

  "Legalization's not the only answer," Dwight argues. "What about education and rehabilitation? They'd work if the legislature would fund them right."

  "Big if," says Lu Bingham, who daily tries to wheedle more money from government agencies. "Instead of spending millions on something that works, Congress would rather waste billions on trying to keep drugs illegal."

  "For the last three years, at least once a week I'd have a client that'd beg the judge to get her in a treatment program," I say. "You want to guess how long some of the waiting lists are?"

  I spouted off like this in frustration to one of our state's older elected representatives at a fund-raiser last month. He'd nodded sagely. Oh, yes, indeed. He remembered Prohibition, when the U.S. government told its citizens they couldn't drink booze and then couldn't or wouldn't enforce it.

  "From the White House to the courthouse, everybody kept a bottle in the desk drawer. Whole police forces were bribed, judges subverted. Gangs distributed the stuff. There were turf battles, innocent bystanders got mowed down in drive-by shootings. Sound familiar, young lady?"

  "So how come you don't introduce a bill to decriminalize drugs?" I goaded.

  "Too late," he said, patting my shoulder. "Too much vested interest in keeping it illegal on both sides of the law. Take away the crime and you take away the cash, cash that needs to get laundered through otherwise legitimate banks and businesses. Good ol' supply and demand."

  He was just tipsy enough to keep patting my shoulder and nodding agreement. "But nobody's gonna give up that Niagara of cash without a bloody fight. I'm not saying both sides'll use Uzis or busted kneecaps, but you watch what happens to the first round of politicos who advocate legalization, little lady. Pay attention to who contributes to whose campaign. Hell, maybe I'll even introduce a bill like that myself when I'm ready to retire. Just to see what crawls out of the woodwork. Long as I want to keep this seat, though"—he tucked his tongue firmly in his cheek—"I'm going to vote for tougher laws and bigger prisons every time. Yes, ma'am!"

  Disheartening.

  Yet, even though I was beginning to feel we'd never get a handle on drugs, I did as much as I was allowed to, and the view from the bench continued to fascinate.

  Wednesday was no different.

  A reformed alcoholic appeared before me to throw himself on the mercy of the court in regard to a fugitive warrant for arrest that had been outstanding since it was issued four years ago. He wanted to clear his record and he brought along an affidavit from the complainant that he'd made good all damages.

  "So where've you been hiding these last four years?" I asked.

  "In Florida, Your Honor. That's where I found a kinder, gentler way of life." He handed me a letter from the minister of a church down there attesting to his sterling character. "But Jesus told me to come back to Dobbs and get straight with Caesar."

  "Caesar?" Puzzled, I looked over at Phyllis Raynor, who was clerking for me. "I thought the complainant's name was Jasper Something."

  "No, no," said the defendant. "Caesar. Like in 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's.' Worldly stuff. The laws of man. That's what Jesus wants straight."

  Laughter rippled along the attorneys' bench.

  "Any other worldly charges against you scattered around the country?"

  "No, ma'am, Your Honor. I had a policeman friend run me through his computers."

  "Very well," I said. "Since Jesus has done a better job with you than jail ever did, I'll vacate this warrant. Go and sin no more."

  He was followed by an elderly man and the man's even more elderly neighbor, two old white men who'd been feuding for thirty-five years from the testimony I heard. The first accused the second of killing his dog. No, he hadn't seen the act; no, the dog's body hadn't been found; but the accused had threatened the dog's life and now the dog was gone. And yes, ma'am, he'd agree that dog might've barked a lot, "but King was a pure-out scairdy cat and he'd never leave the yard on his own, so what else could've happened to him?"

  Even though he brought along a second neighbor to witness the accused's threats, the witness hadn't seen or heard anything except threats either.

  I had a feeling that the only reason the DA had calendared the case was because the complainant was his wife's uncle and he was tired of trying to explain probable cause to the stubborn old coot. Let me do his dirty work.

  "Sorry," I said, "but until you get more proof, I have to rule no grounds for complaint."

  * * *

  The waiting room at Chapel Hill's North Carolina Memorial Hospital looked and smelled like a family reunion without the laughter when I got there that evening.

  Daddy wasn't there, but all my local brothers and their families were. Most of my sisters-in-law held public jobs these days, but the habit of comforting with food was so strong that they'd all brought along buckets of take-out chicken and bottles of soft drinks to supplement the waiting room's coffee urn.

  Herman and Nadine's other two children, Edward and Denise,
had come in early this morning.

  "They let us see him twice," said Nadine. "But he's so groggy I don't know if he knew it was us." She looked haggard after a night on the hospital couch and Annie Sue was trying to persuade her to go lie down a few hours in one of the motel rooms various family members had rented.

  "It's not going to do Dad a bit of good if you wind up in the hospital, too!" she declaimed. "I'll come get you the minute there's any change. And you don't have to worry about me. Paige says she'll stay over and keep me company. You've just got to lie down."

  "We'll see," was all Nadine would say. "Settle down, child."

  The bruises had come up good on Annie Sue's face and arms, but the scrape was healing properly. Except for worrying over Herman and Nadine, she seemed almost back to normal. Of course, dramatic worry was natural for Annie Sue, especially with someone as solicitous as Paige Byrd to hover and worry with her and hold her hand. I was surprised not to see the third member of their trio.

  "Cindy's sister heard about what she was doing with Carver Bannerman," Annie Sue whispered, "and told Miss Gladys and Miss Gladys went nuclear! Thank the Lord for Paige! I couldn't stand it without her."

  Paige turned bright red under her strawberry bangs, but I could see she was happy Annie Sue felt that way.

  * * *

  As the evening wore on, some of those who'd come directly from work were replaced by those who'd come from home. Seth and Minnie drove over with Andrew and April, but they'd worked in tobacco all day and were physically drained. Too, they needed to get home early to check on their bulk barns. One of Andrew's was nearing the point where he needed to run up the heat to set the leaf's golden color, so they left before eight, just as Dwight Bryant and Terry Wilson arrived.

  Both lawmen had been in and out of our lives so long, they felt like family, too.

  The seriousness of Herman's condition preyed on us, but human nature always bubbles up at even the most solemn wakes, and conversation went from dark to light in looping circles.

  Aunt Zell asked me about the pup, which led her to tell the others about Miss Sallie's missing beagle, her strayed Goldie, and Alice Castleberry's registered bull terrier. I told her about the dog feud I'd had in court that morning, and we debated the possible reappearance in Dobbs of the dogman.

  Reese's girlfriend ignored the fact that most of the family didn't approve of her and talked about the time her cat got inside a friend's van and went home with them. That put Terry in mind of his second wife's cat.

  "Big old gray fuzzball," he told us. "Every time I'd leave the car window down, the dang cat would crawl inside to sleep. Cat hairs everywhere. And of course she said if I'd keep the windows closed, the cat wouldn't get in. She was just scared that someday I'd drive off with the thing and lock it inside and it'd suffocate to death. Reckon you could see how me and that cat ranked in her affections."

  My brothers grinned and Will's Amy asked with great innocence, "Well, Terry sugar, which one of you was most faithful?"

  He gave her a mock scowl and continued. "So this one day, I came out in a hurry, jumped in my car and ran down to the grocery store for a jug of milk. When I was coming back across the parking lot, I saw something under my car—that big old gray fuzzball. And yeah, I'd left my windows down again. First off, I thought I'd just drive away and leave it there and act dumb whenever she missed the stupid thing; but being an upright righteous husband—"

  "Yeah, sure!" everyone hooted.

  "—I decided I'd better try to catch him. Now that cat and me, we never did get along too good, and I called till I was purple before he came out from under my car. Then I had to chase him all over the parking lot and when I finally grabbed him, he gave me such a scratch it dripped blood all the way home. But I'm a special agent for the SBI, right? And he was just a dumb old cat, right? So I did eventually throw him in the car and off we set. He stomped back and forth on the backseat and snarled at me the whole way home. Well, we get home and I pull into the driveway and there's the real old fuzzball sound asleep on the roof of my wife's car."

  Before he could tell us what he did with the feline doppelganger, a white-coated doctor appeared in the doorway. "Mrs. Knott?" he asked. "Mrs. Herman Knott?"

  Instinctively, we fell silent and clustered around Nadine.

  "We've confirmed the cause of your husband's condition," he said briskly. "It isn't his heart or a stroke."

  "Then what?" asked Nadine.

  "Chronic poisoning," said the doctor. "Somehow or other, your husband's ingested a good deal of arsenic over the past week or so."

  CHAPTER 14

  SAFETY RULES

  "The posted or promulgated rules for the safe operation of all power equipment must be strictly followed, unless an unavoidable suspension of a rule is authorized by proper authority. The suspension must end as soon as the necessity for it has passed."

  "Arsenic?"

  The word ran around the room and bounced off the ceiling.

  Nadine seemed bewildered. "Where would he get arsenic?"

  The doctor flipped to Herman's admittance chart. "His occupation is listed as an electrician. Is he also engaged in farming where he might handle insecticides or other poisonous chemicals?"

  Nadine shook her head. "Sometimes he has to crawl up under old houses where they've put out rat poison. Maybe—"

  "No, that's warfarin, an anticoagulant."

  "But he's going to be all right, isn't he?" asked Annie Sue. She pushed close to her mother, as if seeking physical comfort and her big blue eyes were frightened. "He's not going to die, is he? Is he?"

  "Now hush that kind of talk," said Nadine, but she, too, was shaken. "Doctor?"

  He shook his head. "I wish I could give you a cut-and-dried answer, Mrs. Knott, but chronic arsenic poisoning's a tricky thing. We don't yet know how much neurological damage there is. The lack of paralysis is encouraging, but the anesthesias in his legs and extremities, the liver involvement—"

  We stood numbly as all that medical terminology flowed over us. What it boiled down to was that Herman would probably recover, but it was going to be long and slow—six months or longer—and he might never recover full feeling in his fingers and feet. A wheelchair could not be ruled out.

  Nor was treatment itself going to be a simple thing. Some doctors advocated doing nothing. Let the body heal itself. If a more aggressive course were taken, the antidote might be as dangerous as the arsenic itself.

  Yet even as we listened, we all kept circling back to the central question: how the devil was he getting arsenic? Because on that point, the doctor was quite clear: Herman had ingested the stuff more than once in the last ten days.

  The doctor finished outlining the treatment they planned to use. As he rose to go, he cocked his head and looked around the circle of faces surrounding him. "You live close to one another? See each other every day? Then perhaps I should check. Is everybody healthy? Any stomach cramps or nausea that won't go away? Summer flu? Dizziness, pins and needles in your fingers or toes? Numbness?"

  We all shook our heads, although I saw a considering expression cross the face of Nadine's sister. Her robustly healthy body imprisoned the soul of a hypochondriac.

  "Great!" He closed Herman's chart with a snap. "Oh, one thing more, Mrs. Knott. Someone from Environmental Health will probably be in contact with Mr. Knott and you to try to trace the source of the arsenic. They'll want you to think what you two may have eaten or drunk differently, any places where he eats that you and your family don't, maybe a list of all the locations he's worked lately that might have old arsenic-based paint or wallpaper, things like that. Okay?"

  The family milled around as he left, so simultaneously worried and titillated that no one else seemed to notice the looks Dwight and Terry exchanged before following the doctor from the waiting room. I slipped out, too, and hurried down the hall after them. As they rounded a corner, I heard the doctor say, "Well, yes, I suppose there always is that possibility, Major Bryant."

  "
What possibility?" I asked, halting them in their tracks.

  The doctor turned and frowned, Terry immediately went into his official secrets mode, but Dwight said, "I don't believe you've met Herman's sister. This is Judge Deborah Knott, Doctor."

  "Judge?"

  "Judicial District Eleven-C," I said. "What possibility?"

  "That your brother's poisoning was not accidental," he answered bluntly.

  "That someone poisoned Herman? On purpose?"

  The three men shuffled their feet and I could have laughed if it hadn't been so outrageous.

  "I almost forgot. Yeah. Her husband was treated here, wasn't he? Well, you can push that notion right out of your heads," I said hotly. "Nadine Knott is no Blanche Taylor Moore. Come on, Dwight! Terry? You guys have known Nadine forever. Can't you see how upset and worried she is?"

  "The Reverend Moore was never my patient," the doctor said carefully, "but I'm told Mrs. Moore was a loving wife right up to the minute they arrested her. And they say she was real attentive to the boyfriend who did die. Brought him potato soup when he was in Baptist Hospital, even spoon fed him. Held the straw for him to sip iced tea. The nurses thought she was a real sweetie."

  "I know, I know," I said impatiently. "And later they found out that there was arsenic in the soup and arsenic in the tea." I turned to Dwight and Terry. "But this is Nadine!"

  "Wives aren't the only ones who do things like that," Terry said soothingly. "Besides, it'll probably turn out to be a contaminated well or something at some old house that's being renovated."

  "We're just touching all the bases," Dwight chimed in. "Laying the groundwork for the public health guy."

  "Long as you don't forget this is Herman, for God's sake."

  The doctor had his hand on a door marked STAFF ONLY, but I asked, "While we're laying groundwork, Doctor, can you give us any idea of when he first got the arsenic? Didn't I read somewhere that you could tell by the hair or fingernails?"