The Blackstone Commentaries (11 page)

At first, she disappointed Dugan somehow. He didn't know if it was her voice or simply the beginning of an often-played scene. She was just another woman with maybe a high-school education, if that, judging by the slight twang in her voice and the peculiar inflections around her anger. She was certainly angry, but that, too, was no surprise. He'd heard how the preliminary hearing was continued, and that also was no surprise. They'd be damn lucky ever to get Pemberton inside a courtroom. And then for what?

But she was quite pretty when animated, an intelligence enhancing her attractiveness, though he hadn't noticed any of that at first. He'd hurried around the desk to greet them, towering over both of them because neither was much over five-foot-six.

“Sheriff Dugan, they continued that preliminary hearing!” she declared, storming by him to a chair. “First they just continued it without even calling us to court, and now they've continued it with us right in the courtroom and not even asking!”

He was sensitive to the twang immediately, giving away as it did her birth, her education and, with a little less certainty, her current position in the world. Her words themselves were not so much an announcement of fact but a challenge.

“That often happens, Mrs. Carver,” Dugan said politely. “Particularly on the first court day of a case like this. As I told you, ideally, this wasn't our best course to take, but probably the only one. I don't believe we could have gotten a true bill if we'd gone directly to the grand jury and superior court—we just don't have the case. At least this way, we gained some time for more investigation.” As he closed the door, he saw that Fillmore
was back in his cubicle with the radio, that big right ear of his just visible over the bottom half of the Dutch door that enclosed his space, his round-rimmed glasses glinting in the fluorescent light.

“No,” she countered, her eyes boring right into him. They were dark, he noticed, like her hair, which was chopped straight and hung around her like it had been done with a bowl. No games. Like his niece, Rachel, he thought, suddenly looking at her with new appreciation, realizing that even if she weren't as pretty, or even pretty in the same way, the reminder was in the unvarnished announcement of self: take it or leave it. Maybe he'd judged her too quickly. “Not only did they make us sit there all day, the solicitor telling us we had to be there or there wouldn't be no case—‘The doctor will be here any minute,' he said.
He
never did show, and the way people acted, it was the most normal thing on earth.” The
he
came out as if she were speaking of God Himself. Or Satan.

But Dugan went ahead and asked “Who?” his voice gentle and without challenge, though he already knew very well who
he
was and prayed she wouldn't go biblical on him.

“Dr. Pemberton,” she snapped. “
His
attorney said his client had been called out on emergency surgery at eight forty-five yesterday morning. ‘Someone is in danger of dying, Your Honor, and my client has to save a human life. This is something he is honor-bound as well as professionally required to do, but will only take a few minutes.' And he said the same damn thing at three-thirty or four, or whenever it was. ‘So we will just have to continue the case.' ” She mimicked so well, Dugan knew exactly who the defense attorney had been, as well as the judge, even though she hadn't named either. “Before, in June, they said his lawyer quit, so we didn't even get called, then the next time the lawyer had to go to Raleigh on some big case, and we didn't get called. Now this. It's all damned lies. Just because this man is rich, and connected, and a doctor …”

“Now, we don't know that,” Dugan said, glancing at the husband sitting beside her, who was watching her, but with patience, it seemed, not the clench-jawed acquiescence he usually saw when couples charged into his office like this. It suggested one thing the two of them might do together real well was be mad at someone else.
No, not even that,
Dugan suddenly thought.
He's even looking at her deferentially. He not only loves her, he likes her.

The man caught Dugan's glance and returned a look that was steady, the anger visibly there but focused, and none of it on her or even really on Dugan. Surprised and impressed, Dugan looked back at the woman.

“No,” she said, insisting once again that Dugan didn't get it. “The judge didn't even blink, or press the attorney to explain why we had to wait all day to find out, but continued the case before the attorney even finished telling what he wanted the judge to do.”

“Loretta,” her husband said.

Dugan began mechanically, “Well, you know, judges see a lot—”

“No,” she said, the outrage suddenly rising several degrees as she cast a new look at Dugan. “He'd been on that emergency since the morning, and here it was three-thirty or four, and they were just getting to our case. We'd been sitting there since court began at nine because we were told we had to be there or they might drop the case, and your own deputy himself, Mr. Trainor, didn't even show up till after ten.”

“I'll talk to my deputy,” Dugan said. “But that's the way court usually runs, Mrs. Carver. Pretty slow. Things will sort themselves out, but it might take some time.” Dugan was not really having trouble being patient. He'd been waiting for it to become shrill, as it usually did, only now he was beginning to wonder if it would. Despite her voice and that twang, he wondered. And no religion yet.

“No. Our own lawyer, the county solicitor, Mr. Lamb, just shuffled some papers and said ‘Fine,' almost before the judge did. And he never did talk to us about it. We'd both taken a day off from work to be there and had been sitting around in the heat and no air conditioning for hours because we are not going to drop this case, Sheriff Dugan, just because the man Danny saw is a doctor and county commissioner and rich and—”

“Thinks he saw,” Dugan corrected, but gently, because court and justice were not like TV, and most people didn't know that. Though they were both theater, of course. And certainly justice was not swift, which TV was because at least it had an on-off switch. Court was not like much of anything else in the world except people and bureaucracies and government and politics and circuses and …

She stopped then and looked at Dugan as though if it weren't his fault exactly, maybe it ought to be. He knew that look, too, and the warning bells started clanging. She certainly expected more from him. Maybe he
would have to talk to her a time or two more, to calm her down, but then she would finally get it.

“Mrs. Carver,” he said as earnestly as he could, still leaning over the desk. He was dressed in his gray suit pants and white shirt, sleeves rolled up, and the matching gray vest with the silk back. The gray suit coat was hanging on the clothes tree in the corner, along with his white Stetson and the derby. The small holster with the snub-nosed S&W .38 was riding just out from under the vest on his right side because he was left-handed, though the pistol on his bulk looked less intimidating than a child's cap gun. He'd gone from slim, about 195, to over 250 pounds since he'd gotten elected, although the gain had really begun when he married Dru and started eating well. His sheer size was usually sufficient to discourage most men from challenging him. But he wasn't in the least trying to intimidate her, even if he could have, or wanted to. The women were always the toughest, the ones who refused to see or even consider nuance but went straight to what they thought the issue was—which it generally was, nuance be damned.

“So are they going to continue the hearing again?” she asked finally.

“I don't know,” he said honestly. “I have no control over such things.”
But of course they will
, he thought,
particularly this one. Maybe forever, if they can swing it
. He wanted to say that. He'd sent a man to the town of Cary and to the other towns Mort Riddell, the trooper, had turned up with that partial number, assuming the plate was from North Carolina, and also a man to Tennessee, to check out plates and cars and alibis, like it was a murder that had been committed, but he couldn't tell them that. He couldn't tell anyone why he was being so thorough, unless it was to shut the case down with an easy conscience. Pemberton had no alibi—he disdained even offering one. Dugan had Carver's impression of a car and a bit of a tag, and a man driving, and now, since he filed the charges, he'd uncovered a tentative ID of the same car in Pinetown about an hour and a half before the incident, but it was hearsay evidence from a man in trouble so often he'd be laughed out of court if Dugan were fool enough to bring him in, which he wasn't. He needed something solid.

He still felt there was more to learn in Pinetown, but prying it out was another matter. And anyhow, everyone was alive and fine, just outraged, that's all, as Eddie had said—and was still saying, or not saying,
just looking at him a certain way. All cases seemed like murder when you were the victim.

“It might take awhile,” he said instead. “You're going to have to be patient.”

“What do you mean
patient
?” she demanded. “That's all you've told us! This is costing us money. We're working people.”

“Yes, ma'am. But what they do over there in that courthouse is beyond my control.”

“Those were our daughters, sheriff,” her husband broke in, placing a hand gently on the woman's shoulder. It wasn't a hesitant gesture, nor was it restraining. He just wanted his turn. Except for the sports coat, he looked like so many people Dugan had grown up with, the features a bit too lean and hardened, from some deprivation, probably, though not necessarily food, and maybe genetic by now. His right eye tended to wander out slightly. White shirt, collar out over the jacket collar, brown polyester slacks with a wide brass belt buckle with a Chevrolet emblem on it. The cowboy boots not unlike Dugan's, just not as expensive. “That was not only our car, but damn near our lives.”

“I understand, sir,” Dugan said, surprised by the man's quiet forcefulness. The night it happened, there'd been too much emotion to sort out any personalities. And just now, Dugan had been convinced once again that the husband must defer to her, would remain mostly in the background and intrude only at his peril, for that was the usual scenario. She would carry all the unmanly rage and even do the unpardonable, speak it, at least until they got home and the husband at last could do some proper yelling—at her, which was also what generally happened, and more. But this wasn't working out like that at all.

“My wife said it correctly, Sheriff Dugan, and I want you to understand it. We are not going to back away from this even if we have to mortgage everything we own. Even if we have to lose day after day of work to go to court. Even if we lose our jobs. We will fight it till we have no other legal recourse left. I read in the paper about cases being continued, or people being released with prayers for judgment or nol-prossed and such things, people never having a proper trial but just walking away, and I have thought,
My God, what's that about?
Now maybe you can tell me, or have we just enrolled in class? What are you asking us to tell our daughters
when they grow up remembering this, which they will?”

Dugan could feel his face color. Who the hell were they to patronize him?

He looked away through the blinds into the sunny street. Could he tell them it was all over even before the first cruiser had arrived at the roadside, its lights flickering over the shattered windows of their Monte Carlo? Was it? Could he tell Carver what it was like having Pemberton climb in his face the day after he got a search warrant, every word and gesture reminding Dugan how things really were, despite whatever hopes or ideals or beliefs or ought-to-be's he, Dugan, like other people, held? That law was one thing and power quite another? Still controlling his voice, he said, “I'm telling you that they are going to fight this, Mr. and Mrs. Carver. They're going to fight it harder than you can imagine. It's the man's reputation and political career, if nothing else. It could be very expensive.”

“Are you saying we shouldn't fight back?”

Dugan flushed again. He was. It wasn't worth going bankrupt over! These Carver people were pissing him off. “Whatever you wish to do. It will take time, and it will be expensive, because not only is a man's considerable reputation on the line, we haven't got much of a case, as I've already indicated. Once again, that's why we're going the preliminary-hearing route in district court. I hope to get him bound over to superior court, because we simply haven't got enough evidence to get a true bill of indictment from a grand jury. I've spent a good deal of time already checking out the little we have.” Which was certainly true—
Thank you, Eddie.
But he kept his emotions under control, the bitterness out of his voice, though all at once before these two people he felt mortified, worse than naked—transparent even, revealing something in himself he scarcely wanted to look at, much less have anyone else see.

She watched him skeptically. “Will you testify for us? That deputy, Trainor, gets pretty excited up there—we watched him in another case—and doesn't seem to do his cases a lot of good.”

Dugan nodded.

Now the husband didn't look convinced, but why the hell should he be trying to justify himself to Daniel Earl Carver? Again Dugan felt the anger, but this time mostly at himself.
They have no idea where this has to go. They don't get it! They'd think I was nuts, or bought, or both, if I told them
. And as
he thought this, the mortification of moments earlier rushed deeper, inundating him with the worst self-doubt and loathing he could remember since that rainy day in Alabama years before, when they dug his uncle out of that mine. Would he never be shut of that damn day?

“This county solicitor, Mr. Lamb. Is he any good?” Her turn again. “Will he do a good job for us, or is he just part of a club, like Danny says?” It was as though she already knew the answer and was daring him to contradict her.