A Judgment of Whispers (2 page)

One

At first Saunooke thought
the dog was going to bite him—it growled at him from under the big rhododendron that spread across Mrs. Whitsett's yard. But Saunooke knelt down and whistled softly, avoiding direct eye contact, his hand open and unthreatening. Then the dog bounded from beneath the bush gratefully, as if he'd found an old friend. He came to Saunooke, tail wagging, trying to lick his face. Why he'd gotten a vicious dog call on him at eight in the morning, Saunooke couldn't say, except for the fact the animal had no tags on its dingy red collar and the people of Elk Mountain Estates liked their property free of strays. That coons and bears and wild turkeys had roamed here for centuries made no difference; the upscale home owners were voters and taxpayers who wanted their neighborhood kept safe. Raccoons carried rabies. Turkeys shit on their driveways. Bears turned over garbage cans and destroyed expensive bird feeders.

“Come on, buddy. Let's go for a ride.” Saunooke opened the door of his cruiser. The dog looked at him questioningly, then hopped in. He was male, long-legged, of indeterminate breed—dirt-colored with a white chest, floppy hound ears, fifteen pounds too thin. Saunooke guessed he'd once belonged to someone; he had no fear of people and jumped in the car as if he'd ridden in them all his life. A runaway, thought Saunooke. Or maybe just dumped. When people ran out of money, pets became expendable. Animal Control would at least fill his belly before they put him down.

Saunooke radioed dispatch to tell them he was on the way to the pound. Boots Gahagen's cackle came through the static. “10-4, Saunooke. Don't let your prisoner get the drop on you.”

He signed off and turned his cruiser around, stung by the derision in Gahagen's laugh. Two years ago he'd been Sheriff Jerry Cochran's fair-haired boy, brought up from the Highway Patrol, seemingly on the fast track to detective. Then he'd blown his part in the Fiddlesticks case—taken Joe Slade's word about his brother's whereabouts on the night a girl was murdered. His blunder had almost cost attorney Mary Crow her life. Certainly it had cast him out of the inner circle of Pisgah County detectives and back into the chilly darkness of Pisgah County patrol.

“Guess I'm the dog catcher now,” he said to his passenger, who looked at him with sad, old man eyes. Saunooke sighed. He needed a break—a good case to work his way back into Cochran's good graces. Otherwise, he'd be catching dogs and writing traffic tickets for the rest of his life.

He kept his radio on but drove to the Sonic drive-in, where waitresses delivered your food on roller skates. He ordered an egg sandwich and coffee, then added an extra sandwich to his order. “May as well make your last ride a good one,” he told the dog, who still watched him with sad eyes. A few minutes later, a waitress named Sandra rolled up to his cruiser.

“Hey, Rob.” She smiled, then saw his passenger in the backseat. “Aw, what a cute dog. What's his name?”

“Rover.”

“When did you start working with the Canine Squad?”

For an instant he was tempted to tell her he now worked narcotics and this was a drug-sniffing hound. But he was a bad liar and the dog looked more like he'd been
on
drugs rather than sniffing them out.

“I haven't,” admitted Saunooke. “He's a stray. I'm taking him to the pound.”

“Aw.” Sandra stuck out her lower lip. “But he looks so sweet. Here, give him this.” She handed him an order of bacon destined for some other customer. “I'd take him home with me, but my landlord would have a fit.”

“You're still nice to give him the bacon,” said Saunooke. He watched her as she rolled back to the kitchen, wondering what it was like to strap on roller skates the first thing in the morning. He ate then, feeding the dog little bites of egg and bacon through the mesh of the cage. They'd almost finished when the radio squawked again.

“Saunooke? What's your 10-20?”

“Soco Road,” he replied vaguely, not wanting admit he was at the Sonic Drive-In, feeding bacon to a stray dog.

“You been to the pound yet?”

He winced. “Not yet.”

“Okay. I need you to stop off at the Lone Oak Acres construction site. I got a call about somebody up there trying to hot wire a bulldozer.”

“10-4.” Saunooke started his engine. “On my way.”

Lone Oak Acres was a newer development than Elk Mountain Estates. Pricey green houses were scheduled to be built along winding Salola Drive, with bike paths to the university, walking paths to town, and a shared green space for a playground and community vegetable gardens. Most of the old '50s ranch houses had been leveled, their lots now just mounds of red Carolina clay. But four families remained, today having a yard sale, junk piled high on card tables. Saunooke drove past the shoppers trudging from house to house and turned towards the construction site, where a number of bright yellow bulldozers and backhoes surrounded the huge old oak tree his people called
Undli Adaya
. His heart gave a funny jump. Twenty-five years ago, this was where little Teresa Ewing had disappeared. The whole county had gone nuts searching for her, then a month later, a jogger found her body between the roots of that big tree. Though the police had half a dozen suspects, they weren't able to pin the murder on any of them. Saunooke, who'd been in diapers when the girl died, had studied the case at the police academy. It remained unsolved, and every Halloween dispatch would get calls from people wildly claiming to have seen a pretty little girl in a green jacket standing wraith-like beneath the tree, until she vanished before their astounded eyes.

He pulled up next to one of the bulldozers. Suddenly the dog began to whine, pawing at the back window. Saunooke hesitated a moment, wondering if he ought to let the animal out. If he did, he might run away and annoy a different neighborhood. But if he didn't, the dog might crap in his backseat. He'd eaten a lot of bacon at the Sonic.

Not wanting to clean dog crap out of his cruiser, Saunooke got out and opened the back door. “Okay, Rover. Go do your business.”

The dog hopped out and trotted off, lifting his leg against one of the backhoes. Saunooke made a circuit of the construction vehicles, slipping through the rutted clay soil. Considerable excavation had gone on back here—they'd carved up the earth for underground utility lines and staked skinny little orange flags down to mark off the boundaries of the yet-to-be-built houses. Saunooke glanced over his shoulder at the dog, half-hoping the animal might grasp his last chance at freedom. But the dog ambled along behind him, nose to the ground, making little forays to explore the churned-up dirt.

“Must be part bloodhound,” Saunooke muttered. He walked over to the biggest bulldozer. Two empty Coke cans had been left in the driver's seat, but the engine cowling was locked down and there were no scratches around the gas cap. He ran his hand along the dozer's massive fender, thinking how he would have loved to climb up on one of these monsters when he was little. He wondered if some kids bored by the yard sale hadn't felt the same way.

He'd just turned back toward his cruiser, when a gray-haired man appeared from behind the backhoe. He was tall and lean, dressed in khaki pants and a blue FOP windbreaker. He startled Saunooke so that he almost reached for his weapon.

“Easy, officer.” The man lifted his hands. “I'm unarmed.”

“You have business here?” Saunooke felt silly, almost drawing on an old man. But everyone carried guns these days, even at restaurants and playgrounds. You had to be careful.

“Just looking around.” The man stepped forward but kept his hands raised. “Detective Jack Wilkins, Pisgah County Sheriff Department, retired.”

Now Saunooke felt even dumber. Almost drawing on one of Pisgah's own. “Sorry,” he began. “I got a call about somebody hot-wiring one of these things. I didn't see you there.”

“It's okay,” said Jack. “I was just taking a little walk down memory lane.”

“You lived here?”

“No. I just spent a lot of time here.”

Saunooke looked at the man. He was the right age, had the right air of regret about him. “Teresa Ewing?”

Wilkins nodded as he lowered his hands. “I was the lead detective. Worked with a rookie named Buck Whaley. He still on the force?”

Saunooke squelched a groan. He despised Whaley, who detested him in equal measure. “He is.”

“Really?” Wilkins seemed surprised. “I didn't figure he'd last that long.”

“He's senior detective now,” said Saunooke. “You guys really went all out on Teresa Ewing.”

Wilkins gave him a bitter smile. “In thirty years, it's the only one I didn't clear.”

Saunooke looked at the man's muddy sneakers. They were beige, fastened with Velcro straps—exactly the kind old men with bad bunions wore. “You come here a lot, to think about it?”

“I haven't been here in years. I just wanted to see the neighborhood one last time, before they tore it up completely.” He turned and looked at the bulldozers, the mounds of dirt. “The only things I really recognize now are those houses and this tree.” He turned to the massive oak towering over them. “Teresa and the other children played here. The soil had eroded around the roots. They had a great network of hidey-holes here.”

“Didn't they find her in one of those holes?” asked Saunooke.

“Yeah, we did.”

Suddenly the dog bounded up, a cast-off tin of chewing tobacco in his mouth, his tail wagging as he dropped the item at Saunooke's feet.

“Go on,” Saunooke said, growing irritated. “I'm not here to play fetch with you.”

The dog looked at him disappointed, but then ran back into the scrubby vegetation that had once comprised someone's back yard.

“He belong to you?” asked Wilkins.

“He's headed for the pound,” Saunooke replied. “I got this bulldozer call on my way there.”

“Too bad,” said Wilkins. “He seems like a nice dog.”

“I should probably check the rest of this site out,” said Saunooke. “Want to come along?”

“Sure.” Wilkins shrugged. “Be like old times.”

They walked slowly around the edge of the development, Wilkins explaining how they'd worked the Ewing case. The SBI had come in; some anonymous benefactor had two cadaver dogs flown in from New York.

Wilkins turned and scowled back at the tree. “We searched under that tree more times than I can count. Teresa Ewing's body was not there.”

“And then it was,” said Saunooke, the case etched in his brain as indelibly as the paragraphs of the Miranda rights. “A jogger found her there. He thought somebody had put a jacket under the tree. Turned out to be a body.”

“And we've all looked like fools ever since.” Wilkins kicked at a clump of dirt.

“You know, people still talk about her,” said Saunooke.

Jack gave a bitter laugh. “Last week somebody on the golf course asked me if I knew who did it.”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Oh, I've got some ideas. But I can't prove 'em. No point in talking about what you can't prove.”

“I guess not.”

The two men turned. They'd just headed back toward the bulldozer when the dog began to bark, loud and frantic.

Wilkins said, “Sounds like your pal's found something interesting.”

Saunooke looked around. “Where did he go?”

“He's over there.”

They walked toward the ancient tree. The Spanish Oak was famous in its own right, having supposedly saved the Cherokees from Desoto's conquistadors. Lately someone had nailed on a little bow tie of a label, proclaiming it a “Quercus Alba” and had dumped new manure and potting soil around the old roots. Flowers and some kind of ground cover had been planted around it, all protected by a perimeter of low plastic fencing. On the forbidden side of the fence was the dog, digging at the tree's roots, barking like mad.

“Shit!” said Saunooke. “He's messing all that landscaping up.”

He ran over to the fence, whistling for the dog. “Come on, boy. Come on over here.”

But Saunooke's command only made the dog dig faster.

“Damn it!” cried Saunooke.

Jack said, “He's probably got a chipmunk trapped. Come on, I'll help you pull him out.”

They stepped over the fencing. The dog was still digging, still throwing dirt in the air, when suddenly his tail started wagging like a buggy whip. As he backed out of the hole, his front legs and paws were caked with dirt, but his eyes were shining. He turned to Saunooke with what looked like a greasy plastic sandwich bag in his mouth.

Jack Wilkins laughed. “Looks like he dug up someone's lunch.”

“Drop it, dog,” ordered Saunooke.

The dog refused to drop the bag, but he did allow Saunooke to pull it from his mouth. Saunooke held it up, thinking he would find some construction worker's moldy sandwich. Though the outside of the bag was smeared with grease, it held a piece of clothing, folded neatly inside.

“What the hell?” said Saunooke. Turning to Wilkins, he opened the bag, pulling out a pair of girl's underpants, pink flowers printed on a field of dingy white. As strange as that was, what stopped his heart was the faded letters of a laundry marker that spelled out, along the waistband of the garment,
Teresa E. Cabin 8.

Two

“Ladies and gentlemen, it's
my special pleasure to introduce our second candidate, Hartsville attorney Mary Crow.” Yvette Wessel adjusted the microphone that stood in the corner of the Chat N Chew Restaurant. Fifty Pisgah County voters had just consumed a breakfast of rubbery eggs and cheese grits, now they were going to hear from the people running for District Attorney.

“Not only is Mary a graduate of Emory law school and former special prosecutor for Governor Ann Chandler,” said Yvette, “but she's the first candidate for any Pisgah County office who's also an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians. She serves on the Domestic Violence Committee for the North Carolina Bar Association, the Health Initiative for the Quallah Boundary, and the board of directors of Pisgah-Cherokee Sports Park.” Yvette paused to smile at Mary. “She's also a very good tennis player and makes a mean peach cobbler.”

The audience laughed politely and started to applaud. Mary rose from her seat. As she made her way to the microphone, she looked out at the crowd. Most were female and white, though there were a couple of tables of Cherokee ladies. At the back of the room sat the people who'd gotten her into this—Ginger Cochran, Emily Kurtz, and Anne Babcock.
You'd make a great DA,
they'd said.
You could do so much good in that office. People are so over Turpin. Go for it, Mary. The time is right!

That she could do better than George Turpin, she had no doubt. Convincing the voters at the Chat N Chew was something else—particularly since Turpin was sitting just one table over, ready to give out free bottles of his prize-winning barbeque sauce.

She thanked Yvette for her introduction, smiled at Victor Galloway, who had sneaked into the back of the room, then began. With only ten minutes to speak, she decided to tell the voters who she was and why she thought she'd make a good DA. Negative campaigning had turned her off since the days of the first George Bush, and she was determined to keep things positive.

“First, let me say how proud I am to be here,” she began. “It reflects highly on the voters of Pisgah County that they would consider a Native American woman as a candidate for District Attorney. When my mother was born in the late forties, North Carolina had only recently guaranteed us Cherokees the right to vote, so I consider it a particular honor to be here running for office.”

The audience clapped, pleased to be considered progressive in their political thinking. She went on, telling them about growing up on the Quallah Boundary, working as an ADA in Atlanta, and being dubbed “Killer Crow” by the Atlanta newspapers because of her perfect record in capital murder trials.

“That nickname may seem a bit harsh,” she said, “but when I was a senior in high school, my mother was the victim of a homicide. That incident marked me for life. Never have I forgotten what it feels like to lose someone you love to violence. Though the courts can't return the person who was taken from you, they can ensure fair trials and stern punishments for those found guilty. As DA, that would be my goal and my total commitment to the voters of this county.”

She ended her speech quickly after that. The audience looked at her questioningly, shocked, she guessed, that an eighteen-year-old kid would make avenging a murder her life's work. She nodded her thanks to enthusiastic applause, taking her seat as Victor gave her a thumbs-up from the back row.
So far, so good
, she thought.
My first stump speech. And nobody threw any tomatoes.

Next up was perennial candidate Prentiss Herbert, a small, slender man who wore bow ties and reminded Mary of an earthworm wearing glasses. He had a small defense practice in town, advertising on billboards that he was the man to call next time the cops collared you for DUI. To Mary's knowledge, he'd never worked a capital case. She tried to look interested as he rambled on about how the framers of the Constitution believed in liberty and justice for all. From the glazed looks on the audience's faces, they were as bored with Herbert as she was. She caught a flicker of motion from the corner of her eye. She turned to see Victor hurrying out the door, cell phone to his ear.
That's a business call,
she thought.
Somebody must need the SBI, double quick
. Unless, of course, Victor had just called his own number so he could escape Prentiss Herbert.

Finally the little man finished. Though everyone clapped, there was an unspoken sense of relief in the room. Maybe the audience figured almost anything George Turpin had to say would be more interesting than Prentiss Herbert's yammering about the Constitution.

Turpin was out of his chair almost before Yvette was finished introducing him. A big, broad-shouldered man with an ever-widening gut, Turpin wore a blue suit with an American flag pin and so much cologne that Mary could smell him from six feet away. He raised the microphone to accommodate his height, booming his thanks to Yvette and his opponents who flanked him on either side.

“I've known Prentiss for a long time,” he said jokingly, as if he and the wormy little man played poker every Friday night. “But Mary Crow, not so much. She usually gets her clients set free before I can get ahold of them.” He looked at her with a sly grin. “How many is it, now Mary? Two? Three?”

She was surprised, never dreaming that Turpin would bring up old cases. But she also saw the trap he was setting for her—trying to force her to defend her own record. She just sat there and returned his smile.

“Let's see, I know there was the Indian boy who was accused of murdering that teenager. Then there was the bird rescuer who we tried to convict for killing Governor Carlisle Wilson's daughter. Were there any more?” He made a show of scratching his head. “I can't remember.” He turned back to the audience.

“It really doesn't matter. Ms. Crow's a fine attorney, although I was surprised to learn that she believes so strongly in law and order. My own dealings with her have been more along the line of catch and release.”

The audience chuckled, casting glances at Mary. Though she was dying to stand up and tell the asshole that all her clients had been innocent, she said nothing. She wondered if Turpin was going to add that she'd once applied for a job in his office and he'd turned her down. But no, Turpin had apparently taken all his shots at her. He moved on to how crime rates had dropped ten percent since he'd been in office.

She listened along with the rest of the audience. Turpin was expansive, welcoming. No woman need be afraid while he was in office. He had a wife and two daughters; he knew how they felt when their children came home late, when they were bullied in school, when their girls lingered too long on the Internet. “I promise you that I will enforce every law on the books in this county, and I will advocate for harsh punishment for those who put women and children at risk.”

He went on, ringing the bell for family values and a return to the morality that the country had been founded on. Mary watched the audience for their reaction. Half seemed comforted by his words; the other half looked unimpressed. Mary couldn't help but wonder what the Cherokee women thought of the morality of the Founding Fathers. It hadn't done their ancestors a hell of a lot of good.

Finally Turpin began passing out barbecue sauce, and Yvette ended the meeting with thanks to all the candidates. As everyone rose to leave, Mary shook hands first with Yvette, then with Prentiss Herbert, and finally with Turpin himself.

“Interesting speech,” she said.

He shrugged, his jowls quivering. “Just using my talking points.”

“But you did it in such a clever way,” said Mary.

“Those are the facts, Ms. Crow. You were the attorney of record in those cases.”

“I know. I just hadn't heard them related with such a twist at the end. But it was great.” She pinioned him with a look, then gave him a big smile. “I learned a lot, George. Thanks for giving me my first lesson in politics.”

For an instant, his gaze faltered. She knew she'd struck a nerve.

“Well, I'm sure we'll be doing this a lot before the election.”

“Good.” She shook his fleshy paw again, now squeezing a little harder. “I'll look forward to it.”

She left Turpin and headed for her table of supporters in the back of the room. Ginger Cochran was there wearing sunglasses and a straw hat pulled low over her face. As Sheriff Jerry Cochran's wife, she wasn't supposed to get involved in politics. But as Mary's best friend, she'd been heavily involved since day one. She split the difference by coming incognito.

“So how'd I do?” asked Mary.

“Fantastic!” Ginger gave her a hug. “That story about your mom was incredible.”

“It was a stroke, Mary,” said Anne Babcock, a former beltway lobbyist now retired to the Carolina mountains. “Having a candidate who was also a victim gives a whole new level of voter identification. We can really run with this.”

Anne's words made Mary uncomfortable. She'd told of her mother's death to explain who she was as a person, not to add an extra coat of gloss to her burgeoning political career. “But … ”

“And just look at what Grace Collier brought over.” Emily Kurtz pushed an older woman forward. Like Mary, she had black hair and olive skin, but with dark eyes and a stockier frame. She carried an artist's portfolio that she unfolded across the table, displaying an array of artwork for political signs. Each design was beautiful, with stylized mountains in blue and green. Mary Crow's name was always prominent in black letters, but with a tiny crow sitting atop the O in her last name.

“Grace!” Mary cried. “These are beautiful!”

“I hoped you'd like them,” she said, pulling at one of the long-sleeved shirts she always wore buttoned at the wrists. “I didn't know what your campaign slogan would be, so I left a lot of white space between your name and the mountains.”

Mary put an arm around her shoulders. “They're just gorgeous. Cherokee, but not totally Cherokee. Just like me.”

Smiling, Grace turned to Anne and Ginger. “Did you all ever decide on a slogan? I had to leave the last campaign meeting early.”

“Equal Justice for All,” said Ginger. “The main plank of her platform. Turpin's way too lax on domestic violence. Did you know he doesn't keep the sex offender register up to date? And he considers spousal abuse a victimless crime! It's so unfair, it's just … ”

“Ginger.” Anne put a hand on the woman's arm. “You're preaching to the choir.”

“Oh.” Ginger looked at them. “I guess I am.”

“Listen,” Mary said. “I want to thank everybody for all their hard work. Grace, your posters are amazing; Ginger, your research is superb; Emily and Anne, you two have done an incredible job getting me started.”

“It's our pleasure, Mary,” said Emily. “You'll make a wonderful DA.” Always the taskmaster of the group, she looked at the women gathered around her. “When shall we meet again? Monday night at Mary's office, just like always?”

“I'll order pizza,” said Mary.

“And I'll bring the wine,” Anne volunteered.

“Great. Then I'll work out a campaign schedule and we'll talk about that on Monday.” Emily smiled. “Thanks for coming, ladies. Mary, you were terrific!”

Anne and Emily bustled off, politicos who had another candidate in neighboring Swain County. Mary and Ginger helped Grace pack up her artwork, then they all left the restaurant together.

“Gosh, Mary,” Ginger said as they stepped out into the bright morning light. “How does it feel to be a real candidate?”

She thought of Turpin and her old disappointment when he hadn't hired her, and of his snide remarks today about catching and releasing criminals. She had hated him for an awfully long time. “It feels great,” she said. “Like I'm finally going back where I belong.”