Southern Discomfort Page 3

  I knew what was expected of me. "It's been such a shock to everybody. Ralph was still young, wasn't he?"

  "Only forty-six," Gladys agreed. "But then they always say that the younger you are, the more serious a heart attack is."

  I tried to sound concerned and interested. "And he'd never had any heart trouble before?"

  "Not a bit." She snapped the lid shut on the pecan puffs and one of her friends took the box and added it to a growing pile of plastic containers at the end of the table. "He'd had some summer flu—least that's what Dr. Bhagat called it. I thought it was too much tension over Ginger's wedding myself. Sometimes you have to wonder about these foreign doctors. Am I wrong? But Ralph swore by him. Anyhow, when he went to him with the flu, if that's what it was, Dr. Bhagat said his liver was a little enlarged and his blood pressure was high, but his heart was just fine. Maybe if he'd gone to an American doctor..."

  She shrugged and shook her head sadly.

  As a lawyer, I should be inured to how people can go on and on with the most intimate details of a loved one's final days. Nevertheless, I was relieved when Julia Lee came over to wind it all up. She really is wasted as John Claude's wife. She should have been running a corporation somewhere. No detail was too small to escape her notice.

  "Don't you want to take some of those cucumber sandwiches?" she asked. "You've paid for them."

  I looked around for Aunt Zell. It's her refrigerator.

  Julia correctly interpreted. "Zell already left and she said for you not to bring home anything you weren't going to eat yourself. She's put Ash on another diet. He ate too many chimichangas when he was in Mexico and she doesn't want him tempted."

  She gave my hips a critical glance. "The Martha Circle usually gives Lu Bingham whatever's left over, if the client doesn't object. She can give you a receipt for the IRS."

  Put like that, there was no way I could gracefully claim some of those yummy little cucumber sandwiches. Already Lu was piling them into a capacious cardboard box.

  "The kids at our day care love it when I scrounge party food," she said.

  She popped a cucumber sandwich into her mouth and happily licked the mayonnaise from her fingers.

  Sheer willpower—okay, sheer willpower and Julia's basilisk eyes—kept me from wrestling her to the ground for one.

  CHAPTER 2

  LAYOUTS AND ELEVATIONS

  "The elevation of any object is its vertical distance above or below an established height on the earth's surface."

  District court is the workhorse of North Carolina's three-tiered system of justice. On top, the Appellate Division has our supreme court with seven justices and a court of appeals where twelve judges, sitting in panels of three, act as intermediate appellate courts to take some of the load off the justices.

  Next comes the Superior Court Division. Except for a few special categories of cases, superior courts handle all felonies, any criminal de novo trials bucked up from below, and any civil disputes involving amounts over $10,000.

  At the bottom are the magistrates and judges of the District Court Division.

  Sooner or later, every judge has to run for office, but magistrates are appointed for two-years terms and they screen out a lot of the really petty stuff, since they're the first to hear someone who's just been booked. Like the old justices of the peace, they can accept certain misdemeanor guilty pleas and admissions of infractions, settle small claims, and issue warrants. (A magistrate is also, to my private disappointment, the only civil official who can perform marriages. I'd love to be able to marry my nieces and nephews.)

  District court judges get all the rest of the non-jury trials. In addition to juvenile court, we conduct preliminary hearings to determine probable cause in felony cases, we have original jurisdiction over misdemeanors, and we adjudicate civil cases involving less than $10,000. Last year 130,000 cases were filed in superior court; 2.3 million were filed in district court. Superior court has 77 judges; district court 165—you figure it out.

  Considering our caseload, you'd think that judges out here on the barricades of justice would have a few perks, right? If not a personal secretary, at least access to a pool of clerical staff?

  Uh-uh. We don't even get a paralegal to look up statutes or precedents.

  No personal offices either. When I arrived at the courthouse on Tuesday morning, I robed myself in one of the small bare chambers not being used that day by Ned O'Donnell, a superior court judge sitting in Courtroom 2, or F. Roger Longmire, who would be hearing probable causes in 1. The eight-by-eight cubicle held an empty bookcase, an oak veneer desk, four metal tube chairs, and nothing else. Not even a pencil holder on the desk top.

  There were two doors on the left wall. One led to a three-hanger closet, the other to an equally small lavatory. There was another door on the other side of the toilet. Presumably, it led to the room F Roger Longmire was using today.

  I hoped I wouldn't forget to knock before barging on through the door because I certainly didn't know Longmire that well. Ned O'Donnell probably wouldn't give a damn, but I had to grin when I pictured the reaction of a judge like stuffy old Harrison Hobart if I walked in on him sitting there with his pants down. Probably give him a stroke quicker than the one that felled his pal Perry Byrd.

  Just the thought of Hobart and Byrd made my temples throb and I opened the medicine cabinet over the sink, hoping to find something for my headache. I shouldn't have drunk that last bourbon-and-Pepsi.

  Not that I was hung over exactly. I never drink too much.

  Well . . . almost never.

  Last night, though, some of my rowdier kinfolks had insisted on toasting my appointment a few times more than I should have let them, and another aspirin would certainly have been welcome. Unfortunately, this cupboard was bare, so I wet a paper towel with cold water and pressed it to my forehead a few minutes. That seemed to help.

  Back in my chamber, I hung my green-and-white seer-sucker jacket in the closet and had no sooner zipped up my robe than Phyllis Raynor tapped on the door and handed in a piece of paper.

  "Add-ons, Your Honor."

  "I hope this means you're clerking for me this morning," I said as I adjusted the heavy folds of my flowing sleeves.

  She smiled. "Mr. Glover always assigns me to a new judge's first day."

  Very politic of him.

  As clerk of the court, Ellis Glover could have sent up anybody he damn well pleased, but he knows that Phyllis is everybody's favorite. An attractive mid-forties, Phyllis Raynor is efficient, professional, and totally unflappable. She knows as much about courtroom protocol and procedure as any judge or attorney in the courthouse, but she's savvy enough not to flaunt it. She seldom gets backed up, not even when the judge is zapping out decisions, defendants are trying to sort out their judgment papers, and attorneys are clamoring for case numbers. The rare times I have seen her get behind, she never snaps or gets all huffy and put-upon.

  God knows Ellis had plenty of those he could have sent up if he'd wanted to.

  "Anything special on today?" I asked.

  Phyllis shook her head reassuringly. "Just the usual."

  She continued on down the hall to Courtroom 3, and I scanned the top sheet of the day's calendar—seven pages of traffic violations, assaults on females, worthless checks, and misuse of alcohol. Despite my own misuse of alcohol the night before, the heading gave me a sudden ripple of chill bumps:

  IN THE GENERAL COURT OF JUSTICE

  DISTRICT COURT DIVISION—COUNTY OF COLLETON

  DOBBS DISTRICT COURT

  JUDGE PRESIDING: HONORABLE DEBORAH KNOTT

  Phyllis had left the door ajar and as I savored the words, Reid Stephenson, my tall, good-looking cousin and ex-partner stuck his curly head in through the opening. Old Spice aftershave wafted in, too, and the familiar smell was comforting.

  "Nervous?"

  "Nope," I lied and continued reading through the names. "Any of these belong to you?"

  "Just a couple of lead-foots who'l
l probably throw themselves on your mercy."

  We walked down the short hallway together. "Mercy?" I said. "What makes you think I have any mercy in me?"

  "'Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge,'" he reminded me, stealing one of John Claude's favorite quotes.

  "'Nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy,'" I retorted from my own stock of Shakespeare.

  At the end of the hall, several attorneys were clustered around the coffee maker that was kept plugged in year-round no matter how hot and muggy outside.

  "Here come de judge," someone murmured sotto voce.

  "Good morning, Your Honor," the others chorused.

  "Gentlemen," I said gravely. "Ladies."

  Reid held open the courtroom door and grinned. "Go get 'em, tiger!"

  * * *

  "All rise," said the bailiff.

  And they did.

  Attorneys, assistant district attorneys, state troopers and town police officers, accused and accuser, character witnesses and anxious parents. Monday and Tuesday sessions of district court are always crowded first thing in the morning, so every row was full of standing (if not upstanding or outstanding) citizens.

  I stepped onto the low platform, where Phyllis Raynor stood beside a computer screen that glowed with lists of names and case numbers, then up another shallow riser to the high-backed black leather chair that awaited me.

  I was barely a foot above the rest, but as I looked out on all the attentive faces, those twelve inches empowered me as nothing else had ever done.

  "Welcome to the bench!" crowed the pragmatist who had schemed and campaigned and compromised an ideal or two for this position and who now delighted in seeing every eye upon me . "Will you just look at all those people who—"

  My inner preacher hauled me up by the hinges.

  "They aren't standing for Deborah Knott," came that stern voice. "They're showing respect for what you symbolize—the justice to which they're entitled. You're like a priestess now, entrusted with the holy sacraments of Law."

  Suddenly, my pridefulness was gone, and I was filled by a wholly unexpected sense of deep humility.

  What am I, Lord, that thou art mindful of me?

  O God be merciful to me, a sinner.

  To my horror, I felt my eyes begin to puddle—that's Stephenson blood for you. Stephensons will cry just watching one of those sappy greeting card commercials—but some how I managed to rein in my emotions as I stood and waited with everyone else while the bailiff intoned, "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."

  We sat.

  I've been a trial lawyer long enough that I should've had the routine down pat, but there was no denying it: my perspective was suddenly different. I was part and parcel now of an institution as old as the wigs on English judges, or as the Hear ye, Hear ye! in the bailiff's corrupted pronunciation of the old French Oyez! A sobering moment. Even so, I think I appeared both competent and confident as I said good morning and began to explain courtroom procedure to those who might be facing it here for the first time.

  "Everybody has a right to counsel. It says so in the Constitution of the United States. If you are unable to pay for an attorney, the court will appoint one for you. You do have to meet the standard for financial need, though," I cautioned. "You can't just poor-mouth because you don't like what attorneys charge these days."

  A couple of my former colleagues seated on the side bench inside the bar snorted and some of the audience smiled.

  "If you think you want an attorney appointed," I continued, "now is the time to say so."

  Eight people came forward and a bailiff showed them where to go to fill out the forms.

  "Those of you who choose not to use an attorney will be asked to sign a release when you come up to plead your case.

  That brought whispers and uneasy stirring and I raised my voice one level. "There will be no talking in the audience during court or you'll be asked to leave."

  I uncapped my pen, carefully straightened the papers in front of me, and met the dark brown eyes of the young ADA seated at the table down below.

  "Call your calendar, Ms. DeGraffenried."

  She inclined her head in formal acknowledgement. "Thank you, Your Honor. And may I say it's a distinct privilege to be here your first day on the bench."

  I'll bet.

  Cyl DeGraffenried was still an enigma to me. Very pretty, very bright. We heard that she'd graduated in the upper five percent of her law class at Duke, which made some of us wonder why she had immediately chosen to come do donkey work for Douglas Woodall, our current district attorney. She should have been clerking for one of the justices if she wanted a political career, or joined some eyes-on-the-prize law firm in Raleigh or Charlotte if she wanted to stay in North Carolina and make a million dollars before she was forty.

  She was clearly ambitious; I just couldn't define what that ambition was.

  It certainly wasn't for the title of Miss Congeniality. In her few months with the DA's office, she'd proven an implacable prosecutor with very little give in what's usually a give-and-take situation. Her rigid adherence to the letter of the law and the way she called for maximum penalties not only had a lot of us defense attorneys grumbling, some of the judges had even spoken a few private words with Douglas Woodall, too. You honestly don't need to make an example out of every shoplifter or Saturday night rowdy. Freshmen ADAs often err on the side of harshness when they first begin, but Cyl DeGraffenried just wouldn't let up.

  A loner, too, even though she appeared at all the expedient meetings, both the political gatherings and the professional. When some of us invited her to join us for drinks afterwards, she would come and smile and talk with every semblance of cordiality. Sometimes I wondered if I was the only one who noticed that she managed never to divulge any personal information and that she always left to drive back to her apartment on the other side of Raleigh alone even though she was, as I indicated before, absolutely gorgeous: long fingernails painted a soft pink, a cloud of dark brown hair, a perfectly oval face with cheekbones to kill for, a size six figure draped in softly feminine dresses or suits of tailored silk, a collection of high heels that would turn Imelda pea green.

  "I'll bet you a dollar she's a closet Republican," Minnie, my sister-in-law and a yellow-dog Democrat, said darkly when I discussed Cyl with her once. "I'll bet that's why she lives out of the district—so nobody'll know how she's registered."

  Minnie's usually a political realist, but she has a hard time understanding why any black person would, of her own volition, deliberately choose to join the same party as Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond or David Duke. For Minnie, a black Republican was hot ice and wondrous strange snow indeed.

  My guess was that if Cyl DeGraffenried were actually registered anywhere, it would be as an Independent.

  * * *

  She read through the calendar briskly. Many of the cases had already been disposed of because Doug Woodall always dismisses a few after the calendar's printed. Before I even entered the courtroom, a dozen or more minor traffic violators had decided to plead guilty and were lined up to pay their automatic fines and leave. Others would be held over because of personal conflicts with work or child-care schedules or because their lawyers had previous commitments in other courts. Seven pages of names could dwindle to three or four in no time.

  But now all the preliminaries were done and Cyl half turned in her chair to call, "Jaime Ramiro Chavez?"

  A Mexican migrant came forward and took the place Cyl indicated behind the opposite table. His hair was neatly combed and he wore faded but basically clean jeans and T-shirt. He was charged with driving without a valid driver's license and failure to wear a seat belt. There to stand with him and speak in his behalf was a local farmer who said that Chavez possessed a Florida license but it'd been lost and he was, in fact, on his way to take the No
rth Carolina exam when Trooper Ollie Harrold pulled him over.

  Cyl asked for a hundred-dollar fine and costs, but I was feeling sentimental.

  Jaime Ramiro Chavez.

  My very first judgment.

  I wanted to reach out and pat his wiry brown arm and assure him that he had not fallen into the hands of an unjust system. Instead I had to make do with memorizing his features. For some reason it felt crucial to me that I not let this moment and this man pass out of my memory, and I wound up concentrating so hard on the swoop of his brows and the cut of his chin that his deepset eyes shifted uneasily from me to the farmer who employed him.

  Both waited stolidly.

  I said to the farmer, "Are you prepared to see to it that he does go take the driving test?"

  The older man nodded. "I can take him over Thursday evening."

  "Very well," I said. "I'm going to suspend judgment. All charges against Mr. Chavez will be dismissed if he can bring me a valid driver's license before Friday at noon."

  Relief crept over the defendant's face. Evidently he could understand more English than he wanted to admit.

  "Gracias," he said with simple dignity.

  "Call your next case," I told Cyl DeGraffenried.

  She always takes a patrolman's schedule into consideration and the next ten or twelve were more traffic cases from Trooper Harrold: speeding, driving while impaired, improper passing, driving while the license was revoked. Depending on circumstances, I fined, accepted prayers for judgment, sent to drivers' refresher courses, or gave suspended jail terms.

  One of the young black males was an army lieutenant who had been driving a government vehicle. "I just got back from Germany, Your Honor," he explained.

  "You thought Highway Forty-Eight was an autobahn?" I asked, quirking an eyebrow.

  He smiled sheepishly.

  "Pay the court costs and try to stay inside this state's posted limits," I said, smiling back.

  Reid's client pleaded guilty to failure to yield to an emergency vehicle and to speeding fifty-two in a thirty five zone, something I take a lot more seriously than doing eighty on an open interstate. Despite his attempt at boyish charm, I gave him a hundred-dollar fine and a thirty-day suspended sentence.