“The estate can reimburse me. It’ll work.” Ray wasn’t sure how it would work, but he’d let Harry Rex worry about that. He signed the forms as guarantor of payment. Forrest signed at the bottom of a page listing all the do’s and don’ts.
“You can’t leave for twenty-eight days,” Oscar said. “If you do, you forfeit all monies paid and you’re never welcome back. Understand?”
“I understand,” Forrest said. How many times had he been through this?
“You’re here because you want to be here, right?”
“Right.”
“And no one is forcing you?”
“No one.”
Now that the flogging was on, it was time for Ray to leave. He thanked Oscar and hugged Forrest and sped away much faster than he’d arrived.
CHAPTER 25
Ray was now certain that the cash had been collected since 1991, the year the Judge was voted out of office. Claudia was around until the year before, and she knew nothing of the money. It had not come from graft and it had not come from gambling.
Nor had it come from skillful investing on the sly, because Ray found not a single record of the Judge ever buying or selling a stock or a bond. The accountant hired by Harry Rex to reconstruct the records and put together the final tax return had found nothing either. He said that the Judge’s trail was easy to follow because everything had been run through the First National Bank of Clanton.
That’s what you think, Ray thought to himself.
There were almost forty boxes of old, useless files scattered throughout the house. The cleaning service had gathered and stacked them in the Judge’s study
and in the dining room. It took a few hours but he finally found what he was looking for. Two of the boxes held the notes and research—the “trial files” as the Judge had always referred to them—of the cases he’d heard as a special chancellor since his defeat in 1991.
During a trial the Judge wrote nonstop on yellow legal pads. He noted dates, times, relevant facts, anything that would aid him in reaching a final opinion in the case. Often he would interject a question to a witness and he frequently used his notes to correct the attorneys. Ray had heard him quip more than once, in chambers of course, that the notetaking helped him stay awake. During a lengthy trial, he would fill twenty legal pads with his notes.
Because he was a lawyer before he was a judge, he had acquired the lifelong habit of filing and keeping everything. A trial file consisted of his notes, copies of cases the attorneys relied on, copies of code sections, statutes, even pleadings that were not put with the official court file. As the years passed, the trial files became even more useless, and now they filled forty boxes.
According to his tax returns, since 1993, he had picked up income trying cases as a special chancellor, cases no one else wanted to hear. It was not uncommon in the rural areas to have a dispute too hot for an elected judge. One side would file a motion asking the judge to recuse himself, and he would go through the routine of grappling with the issue while proclaiming his ability to be fair and impartial regardless of the facts or litigants, then reluctantly step down and hand
it off to an old pal from another part of the state. The special chancellor would ride in without the baggage of any prior knowledge and without one eye on reelection and hear the case.
In some jurisdictions, special chancellors were used to relieve crowded dockets. Occasionally, they would sit in for an ailing judge. Almost all were retired themselves. The state paid them fifty dollars an hour, plus expenses.
In 1992, the year after his defeat, Judge Atlee had earned nothing extra. In 1993, he’d been paid $5,800. The busiest year—1996—he’d reported $16,300. Last year, 1999, he was paid $8,760, but he’d been ill most of the time.
The grand total in earnings as a special chancellor was $56,590, over a six-year period, and all earnings had been reported on his tax returns.
Ray wanted to know what kinds of cases Judge Atlee had heard in his last years. Harry Rex had mentioned one—the sensational divorce trial of a sitting governor. That trial file was three inches thick and included clippings from the Jackson newspaper with photos of the governor, his soon-to-be ex-wife, and a woman thought to be his current flame. The trial lasted two weeks, and Judge Atlee, according to his notes, seemed to enjoy it tremendously.
There was an annexation case near Hattiesburg that lasted for two weeks and had irritated everyone involved. The city was growing westward and eyeing some prime industrial sites. Lawsuits got filed and two years later Judge Atlee gathered everyone together for
a trial. There were also newspaper articles, but after an hour of review Ray was bored with the whole mess. He couldn’t imagine presiding over it for a month.
But at least there was money involved in it.
Judge Atlee spent eight days in 1995 holding court in the small town of Kosciusko, two hours away, but from his files it looked as though nothing of consequence went to trial.
There was a horrendous tanker truck collision in Tishomingo County in 1994. Five teenagers were trapped in a car and burned to death. Since they were minors, Chancery Court had jurisdiction. One sitting chancellor was related to one of the victims. The other chancellor was dying of brain cancer. Judge Atlee got the call and presided over a trial that lasted two days before it was settled for $7,400,000. One third went to the attorneys for the teenagers, the rest to their families.
Ray set the file on the Judge’s sofa, next to the annexation case. He was sitting on the floor of the study, the newly polished floor, under the vigilant gaze of General Forrest. He had a vague idea of what he was doing, but no real plan on how to proceed. Go through the files, pick out the ones that involved money, see where the trail might lead.
The cash he’d found hidden less than ten feet away had come from somewhere.
His cell phone rang. It was a Charlottesville alarm company with a recorded message that a break-in was in progress at his apartment. He jumped to his feet and talked to himself while the message finished. The same
call would simultaneously go to the police and to Corey Crawford. Seconds later, Crawford called him. “I’m on the way there,” he said, and sounded like he was running. It was almost nine-thirty, CST. Ten-thirty in Charlottesville.
Ray paced through the house, thoroughly helpless. Fifteen minutes passed before Crawford called him again. “I’m here,” he said. “With the police. Somebody jammed the door downstairs, then jammed the one to the den. That set off the alarm. They didn’t have much time. Where do we check?”
“There’s nothing particularly valuable there,” Ray said, trying to guess what a thief might want. No cash, jewelry, art, hunting rifles, gold, or silver.
“TV, stereo, microwave, everything’s here,” Crawford said. “They scattered books and magazines, knocked over the table by the kitchen phone, but they were in a hurry. Anything in particular?”
“No, nothing I can think of.” Ray could hear a police radio squawking in the background.
“How many bedrooms?” Crawford asked as he moved through the apartment.
“Two, mine is on the right.”
“All the closet doors are open. They were looking for something. Any idea what?”
“No,” Ray answered.
“No sign of entry in the other bedroom,” Crawford reported, then began talking with the cops. “Hang on,” he told Ray, who was standing in the front door, looking through the screen, motionless and trying to think of the fastest way home.
The cops and Crawford decided it was a quick strike by a pretty good thief who got surprised by the alarm. He jammed the two doors with minimal damage, realized there was an alarm, raced through the place looking for something in particular, and when he didn’t find it he kicked a few things for the hell of it and fled. He or they—could’ve been more than one.
“You need to be here to tell the police if anything is missing and to do a report,” Crawford said.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Ray said. “Can you secure the place tonight?”
“Yeah, we’ll think of something.”
“Call me after the cops leave.”
He sat on the front steps and listened to the crickets while yearning to be at Chaney’s Self-Storage, sitting in the dark with one of the Judge’s guns, ready to blast away at anyone who came near him. Fifteen hours away by car. Three and a half by private plane. He called Fog Newton and there was no answer.
His phone startled him again. “I’m still in the apartment,” Crawford said.
“I don’t think this is random,” Ray said.
“You mentioned some valuables, some family stuff, at Chaney’s Self-Storage.”
“Yeah. Any chance you could watch the place tonight?”
“They got security out there, guards and cameras, not a bad outfit.” Crawford sounded tired and not enthusiastic about napping in a car all night.
“Can you do it?”
“I can’t get in the place. You have to be a customer.”
“Watch the entrance.”
Crawford grunted and breathed deeply. “Yeah, I’ll check on it, maybe call a guy in to watch it.”
“Thanks. I’ll call you when I get to town tomorrow.”
He called Chaney’s and there was no answer. He waited five minutes, called again, counted fourteen rings then heard a voice.
“Chaney’s, security, Murray speaking.”
He very politely explained who he was and what he wanted. He was leasing three units and there was a bit of concern because someone had vandalized his downtown apartment, and could Mr. Murray please pay special attention to 14B, 37F, and 18R. No problem, said Mr. Murray, who sounded as if he was yawning into the phone.
Just a little jumpy, Ray explained.
“No problem,” mumbled Mr. Murray.
______
It took one hour and two drinks for the edginess to relent. He was no closer to Charlottesville. There was the urge to hop in the rental car and race through the night, but it passed. He preferred to sleep and try to find an airplane in the morning. Sleep, though, was impossible, so he returned to the trial files.
The Judge had once said he knew little about zoning law because there was so little zoning in Mississippi, and virtually none in the six counties of
the 25th Chancery District. But somehow someone had cajoled him into hearing a bitterly fought zoning case in the city of Columbus. The trial lasted for six days, and when it was over an anonymous phone caller threatened to shoot the Judge, according to his notes.
Threats were not uncommon, and he’d been known to carry a pistol in his briefcase over the years. It was rumored that Claudia carried one too. You’d rather have the Judge shooting at you than his court reporter, ran the conventional wisdom.
The zoning case almost put Ray to sleep. But then he found a gap, the black hole he’d been digging for, and he forgot about sleep.
According to his tax records, the Judge was paid $8,110 in January 1999 to hear a case in the 27th Chancery District. The 27th comprised two counties on the Gulf Coast, a part of the state the Judge cared little for. The fact that he would voluntarily go there for a period of days struck Ray as quite odd.
Odder still was the absence of a trial file. He searched the two boxes and found nothing related to a case on the coast, and with his curiosity barely under control he plowed through the other thirty-eight or so. He forgot about his apartment and the self-storage and whether or not Mr. Murray was awake or even alive, and he almost forgot about the money.
A trial file was missing.
CHAPTER 26
The US Air flight left Memphis at six-forty in the morning, which meant Ray had to leave Clanton no later than five, which meant he slept about three hours, the usual at Maple Run. On the first flight, he dozed off en route, again in the Pittsburgh airport, and again on the commuter flight to Charlottesville. He inspected his apartment, then fell asleep on the sofa.
The money hadn’t been touched. No unauthorized entries into any of his little storage units at Chaney’s. Nothing was out of the ordinary. He locked himself inside 18R, opened the five fireproof and waterproof boxes, and counted fifty-three freezer bags.
Sitting on the concrete floor with three million dollars strewn around him, Ray Atlee finally admitted how important the money had become. The real horror of last night had been the chance of losing it. Now he was afraid to leave it.
In the past few weeks, he had become more curious about how much things cost, about what the money could buy, about how it could grow if invested conservatively, or aggressively. At times he thought of himself as wealthy, and then he would dismiss those thoughts. But they were always there, just under the surface and popping up with greater frequency. The questions were slowly being answered—no it was not counterfeit, no it was not traceable, no it had not been won at the casinos, no it had not been filched from the lawyers and litigants of the 25th Chancery District.
And, no, the money should not be shared with Forrest because he would kill himself with it. No, it should not be included in the estate for several excellent reasons.
One by one the options were being eliminated. He might be forced to keep it himself.
There was a loud knock on the metal door, and he almost screamed. He scrambled to his feet and yelled, “Who is it!”
“Security,” came the reply, and the voice was vaguely familiar. Ray stepped over the cash and reached for the door, which he cracked no more than four inches. Mr. Murray was grinning at him.
“Everything okay in there?” he asked, more of a janitor than an armed guard.
“Fine, thanks,” Ray said, his heart still frozen.
“Need anything, let me know.”
“Thanks for last night.”
“Just doing my job.”
Ray repacked the money, relocked the doors, and drove across town with one eye on the rearview mirror.
The owner of his apartment sent a crew of Mexican carpenters around to repair the two damaged doors. They hammered and sawed throughout the late afternoon, then said yes to a cold beer when they were finished. Ray chatted with them as he tried to ease them out of his den. There was a pile of mail on the kitchen table, and, after ignoring it for most of the day, he sat down to deal with it. Bills had to be paid. Catalogs and junk mail. Three notes of sympathy.