Bill Hopkins - Judge Rosswell Carew 01 - Courting Murder (15 page)

The ugly stick, sitting on duty behind the desk of the nurses’ station, didn’t greet Rosswell’s appearance with streamers and confetti. Instead, she glanced up from her
People
magazine, giving him a glare that would’ve killed Samson before he got his haircut. Her portable television was tuned to
The Price Is Right
. On the small screen, people cheered and clapped.

“Judge, do you want me to call security?”

Rosswell, on the drive over, decided the non-cautious approach would be the best. Where else would Candy go?

“Yes, immediately.” Rosswell galloped past Priscilla. “Tell them to get here on the double. And call Frizz, too.”

“What?” She sprang from her chair, knocking a plastic bottle of Diet Coke to the floor where it thunked and spewed. “Wait. Don’t go in there.”

Junior threw down an
X-Men
comic book he’d been looking at and said, “Judge, what the hell’s going on?”

When Rosswell reached Tina’s door, he turned and faced the cop and the nurse. “Call security. Tell them it’s an emergency. Tell them to get here right now.”

Junior said, “There’s no emergency. I’ve been here the whole time.”

The stick gasped an unprofessionally loud gasp when she followed Rosswell into Tina’s room where they discovered Candy roosting on a high stool by his sweetie’s bedside. Candy, draped over a sleeping Tina, was tangled in the tube going from a hanging bag into Tina’s arm. If Candy moved the wrong way, the needle in Tina’s arm could be torn loose. Above Tina, all the machines purred, giving no sign that there was distress in the room. For that small favor, Rosswell was thankful.

“How did you get in here?” the nurse asked Candy. “Who are you?” Rosswell said, “Candy, you have to leave right now.”

Junior said, “Lady, you’re under arrest.”

Rosswell said, “How the hell did she get in here?” Neither the nurse nor the cop seemed to know. Rosswell suspected Candy had slipped up the stairwell and sneaked in when she saw Junior take a break. Candy was crazy, not stupid.

Candy didn’t budge.

The nurse said, “Candy?” Then, to Candy, she said, “He’s right. Get out of here.”

Candy, dressed in baggy blue jeans, gray sweatshirt, sunglasses, big bracelets, and a John Deere cap, hummed and rocked back and forth. Her clothes stunk of old sweat. She didn’t speak. Instead, she sat stroking Tina’s hair and whispering to her in sounds that didn’t quite form words. Tina lay in a deep sleep. Rosswell hoped Tina wouldn’t remember anything Candy did or said to her.

Rosswell said, “Nurse, did you call security and Frizz?”

Junior found his handcuffs and said, “Judge, I can cuff her right now.”

Rosswell said, “Let’s try the easy approach first. Candy, you need to move away from Tina. Right now.”

Candy removed the large sunglasses she had pushed up on her head but otherwise didn’t change position. Her big bracelets clanked when she moved her arms. The ugly stick hustled over, unwound the tubing off Candy, then inserted herself between Candy and Tina. Rosswell regretted his nasty thoughts about Priscilla Brewster after he witnessed her brave devotion to a patient under her care.

Priscilla punched two buttons on her pager that, he guessed, called security. Rosswell’s eyes never left Candy. As far as he could tell, she had nothing in her hands. If Candy had a weapon on her, it wouldn’t be noticeable in the baggy outfit she wore.

The nurse said, “I’ve called Father Mike.”

Rosswell said, “We don’t need a priest. We need security.”

Priscilla said, “I paged security.”

Rosswell said, “Junior, radio Frizz.”

Junior clicked his radio several times. “Battery’s dead.”

Rosswell said, “Junior, do you know how to use a telephone?”

Father Mike strolled into the room, not at all hurrying as Rosswell thought he would’ve done had he known the situation he was entering.

Rosswell said, “Father Mike, call security and Frizz. Tell them we need them right now.”

“Candy,” Priscilla said, “shouldn’t be here. And I already called security. We’re not going to let anything happen to our patient.”

“That’s right,” Junior said. “Not on my watch.”

Father Mike said, “A guard is on her way.”

Rosswell, at that point, still couldn’t tell if Candy was armed. There was no way of determining if Candy even realized that the priest, nurse, cop, and Rosswell were in the room.

“Judge,” Father Mike said, “I was a St. Louis City cop until I went into the priesthood at age thirty. I’ve faced down people a lot scarier than a young woman in a running suit.” The priest turned to the cop. “Back me up, Officer Fleming.”

“Yes, sir,” Junior said.

The priest wasn’t armed, but his police background would help. He headed for Candy.

Rosswell said, “After Candy posted bail, she found Hermie Hillsman and killed him.”

“Candy,” Father Mike said, without the slightest surprise in his voice about Rosswell’s accusation, “did you kill Hermie?”

Candy said, “Hermie is a bad man.”

She hadn’t answered the question.

Candy reached around Priscilla, trying to touch Tina. Priscilla slapped Candy’s hands.

“Candy,” Rosswell said, “you need to come out in the hallway with me.” She didn’t move. Father Mike, Junior, and Priscilla all three stood over Candy. Rosswell hoped the priest would check Candy for weapons. Soon.

The security guard appeared. She marched into the room, surveyed the situation, then asked Junior,“We can carry her to the sheriff’s station.”

Father Mike said, “Wait a minute, please.” He asked Candy, “What are you doing here?”

“Am I my sister’s keeper?” Candy said. “Yes, I am. True religion is helping our brothers and sisters in their time of need.”

Father Mike and Rosswell exchanged glances. Rosswell said, “You’re the expert in that field.” Rosswell nodded, hoping the priest understood him. Hoping to make it plainer, Rosswell said, “You need to take over here.” Rosswell was part of law enforcement. If he dragged a confession out of Candy without giving her the Miranda warnings or got other evidence from her, everything could be thrown out during her trial. As a former cop, Father Mike should know that.

Father Mike said to her, “Candy, listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“We need to leave here right now.”

Candy said, “Tina needs me to soothe her brain. She’s had a lot of trouble.”

Father Mike said, “Yes, she has indeed. And what she needs now is sleep and rest.”

Candy slipped her hand somewhere deep into her outfit and pulled out a slender object. Father Mike bent to see what it was. Rosswell leaned over Candy and screamed, “Knife!” Rosswell pushed Priscilla aside and jumped between Candy and Tina, ready to take the cut himself rather than letting his sweetie suffer any more trauma. The cop and the guard rushed Candy.

“Stop!” Father Mike said, “That’s an MP3 player.”

Rosswell swallowed hard and breathed deeply. “A what?” His voice screeched like a dry hinge on a heavy door.

Candy said, “It plays music downloaded off the Internet. I selected a lot of comforting New Age melodies for Tina.” She turned the thing on and stuck ear buds in Tina’s ears. Father Mike lifted Candy away from Tina. Candy left in the custody of Junior and the security guard. Father Mike and Priscilla followed them out of the room.

“Officer Fleming,” Rosswell hollered after him, “take her directly to Frizz.”

He said, “Not to worry, Judge.”

After everyone else left the room, Rosswell unplugged one of Tina’s ear buds and listened. Soft, tinkling noises, occasionally
interrupted by a chord, joined random notes running up and down the scale. In the background, wind sighed. It didn’t sound like music, but it was better than rap. After he removed the second ear bud, he stuffed the thing in his pocket.

He’d give it to Ollie, who needed to hack the thing to make sure there were no terrorist secrets stuffed in it. Such as how to sneak a polycarbonate knife onto an airplane. Or stuff one under a judge’s couch.

Rosswell wanted Tina to perk up. Damn it, the anesthesia shouldn’t have knocked her down this long. It had been nearly 48 hours. There were, to Rosswell’s way of thinking, only three things that could be happening: First, Tina was sicker than anyone realized; or she was suffering a normal reaction to whatever anesthesia she’d gotten; or, number three, something else. The third possibility, he thought, made him feel paranoid.

Someone’s pumping her full of dope.

Tomorrow, he’d arm himself.

After Rosswell and Ollie went
through the breakfast buffet at Merc’s a couple of times, they tramped to the courthouse, where Rosswell unlocked the front door of the three-story brick building. The perpetual stink of the place greeted them. Although smoking had been banned several years ago, the wood of the building remained permanently stained a dirty brown from generations of tobacco clouds, and continued to release the soaked-in odors.

Rosswell was glad the courthouse was closed for the
Hogfest, so he and Ollie could have a little privacy to discuss the case. They climbed the steps to the second floor courtroom where Rosswell clicked on the brass chandeliers. He shuffled—the activity lately generating muscle pain—to his chair on the high, old-fashioned bench. The bench and the paneling in the courtroom were dark, polished oak.

Rosswell nearly tripped over a wrinkle in the carpeting.
I feel like death walked me home from the dance.
Placing his hand on the paneling to brace himself, he winced at the state seal hanging on the wall behind the chair. The defective thing never failed to irritate him. Some illiterate craftsman cast it in plaster before World War II. The date of Missouri’s admission to the Union, written in Roman numerals as MDCCXX (1720), was wrong. The correct date was MDCCCXX (1820). A word in the motto was misspelled, reading, “United We Stand, Divied We Fall.” Early in his career, he’d offered to buy a new, correct seal for the county and pay for it himself. There was a fancy copper style he’d found in a catalog. The descendants of the original craftsman pitched a hissy fit at the thought of replacing the old seal. Fearing the loss of votes, Rosswell dropped the matter. He understood that you don’t irritate voters, especially if they were taxpayers.

Now, something else bothered Rosswell. “I’ve viewed every inch of this courtroom for years, yet I wonder how much of it I’ve really seen.” He pointed to the tin ceiling. “For example, what ran through the mind of the guy who designed those weird curlicues in that tin? No one can tell what that stuff’s supposed to be. They’re random patterns dreamed up by a fellow who made tin ceilings. They’re meaningless.”

Ollie peered at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s the beveled clover and thorns design. A similar design was popular during medieval times on the plaster works in the great houses and castles around Oxford, England.”

By now, Rosswell was beyond amazement at Ollie’s vast knowledge of obscure facts. That Ollie knew arcane trivia was why Rosswell had hired the mouse as his snitch. Sometimes an obscure fact is a key to a riddle.

Rosswell said, “My thoughts exactly.”

I can’t see any damned clover and thorns on the ceiling, much less any that were beveled, whatever the hell that means.

“Interesting, Judge. Have I caused you to think?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, you have.”

“We didn’t come up here to talk about tin ceilings.”

“That’s not my point.”

“Is it that crappy seal with the mistakes on it?”

“Ollie, listen.” Rosswell paced behind the bench. The space there afforded little room for a major pacing. He did his best in the cramped area with a minor pacing. “I came on the death scene first. I saw it before anyone else did.”

Something sticky glommed onto the bottom of Rosswell’s shoe. The janitorial service in the courthouse had gone to hell.

Ollie said, “Besides the killer.”

“Or killers.”

Whatever it was on the bottom of Rosswell’s shoe smelled of wintergreen. Ollie said, “Or killers. Plural. I know we haven’t established how many bad guys or girls there were.”

“That’s what bothers me.”

A muted thumping began. The courthouse air-conditioning unit ranked down there with Frizz’s system. Mildew scented air oozed from the registers.

Ollie said, “You lost me.”

“I saw something or smelled something or heard something or felt something out there that I can’t recall.”

Scratching his mustache, Rosswell found that the scrawny thing had trapped a crumb of something that he flicked onto the floor, which didn’t smell all that good since the carpet hadn’t been vacuumed in two or three weeks. Budget cuts.

Ollie said, “How do you know you can’t remember something, if you don’t recall knowing it in the first place?”

“When I was studying the bodies before anyone else got there, I noticed something that was strange.”

“What?”

“If I knew, I’d tell you. But I keep thinking that it’s important.”

“Two corpses in a picnic area is strange. And important.”

“Yes.” Rosswell scratched his mustache, took his glasses off, and then put them back on. Picking up a pencil, he beat a quick rhythm on the bench. “That’s strange, but something tickling my brain tells me that something about the bodies themselves was strange.”

Rosswell unlocked and slid open the drawer under the bench to reveal a box. He unlocked and lifted its lid, then laid his hand atop his sidearm, a Smith & Wesson 442
Airweight .38 Special. He withdrew its holster, stuck the gun in it, and shoved the holstered pistol in his pocket.

Ollie showed no surprise. “Do you know how to use that?” Maybe he thought every judge had a weapon handy when holding court.

“I didn’t want a gun,” Rosswell said. “I had enough of firearms in the military. In fact, I earned the expert badge.”

“You’re a sharpshooter?”

“You’re not listening, Ollie. I said I was an expert. Pistol and rifle. Sharpshooter is the middle, marksman at the bottom. I was at the top.”

“I hate it when you know something I don’t.”

“Frizz insisted I buy the weapon. I stored it on the bench in case there was ever some kind of desperate problem in the courtroom.”

“A problem in the courtroom requiring a gun to solve it?” Ollie bowed his head, as if in prayer. However, it wasn’t prayer. A bad thought must’ve struck him. “You mean that you had access to that gun every time I came before you?”

“Yes.” His head was still bowed.

“I’m proud I behaved myself.”

“I came close to shooting you between the eyes a couple of times.” Ollie jerked his head up.

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s hilarious.”

Ollie rubbed his head and pouted. Rosswell loved it when he made Ollie pout.

Ollie said, “What the hell did you see? Or smell? Or taste? Or hear?”

“You mean out at the park?”

“You’re as dense as Nordic bread.”

“I certainly didn’t taste anything out there.” Rosswell again pawed at his mustache and adjusted his glasses. Neither action helped him
think. “I give up.”

“No.”

“No, what?”

“You can’t give up. Think! What was there that you can’t remember?”

“Can you hypnotize me?”

Ollie squeaked. The mouse noise verged on pushing Rosswell to commit physical harm on his snitch. Ollie said, “Hypnotism’s a bunch of unadulterated bullshit.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that phrase.”

“Which one?”

“Unadulterated bullshit. Is there such a thing as adulterated bullshit?”

“Unadulterated bullshit is pure bullshit, just like the bullshit you tasted out there at the park.”

“I didn’t taste anything,” Rosswell said. “I smelled the worst smell a human can smell. I didn’t feel anything. It was quiet so I didn’t hear anything. It must’ve been something I saw, but I don’t know what it was.”

After double checking the gun to assure himself it was fully loaded, Rosswell scooped up a handful of cartridges, each feeling a little greasy, smelling of gun oil, and stuffed them into his pocket.

“Let’s go,” Rosswell said. “The next time anyone comes after me, I’ll be ready.”

“You could take that sword you’re so proud of.”

“That sword is in the evidence locker.” Rosswell explained about his weapon being found stuck through Hermie, Frizz’s search of Vicky, and the knife Frizz found under his couch.

“Holy shit,” Ollie said. “Why aren’t you in jail?”

“Because I didn’t kill anyone. Frizz is smart enough to see that.”

“Let’s hope so.”

Rosswell shoved the gun back in the holster and then pocketed his weapon. The oily cartridges in his pocket gave off a metallic clicking sound when he walked. “The smell of a clean gun in a new leather holster raises the spirit of courage in me.” Rosswell smiled.

“That’s scary.”

“Ollie, we need to see a man about a dog.”

“You need to pee?”

“No. The dog in that Sherlock Holmes story.”

“The one that didn’t bark in the night?”

“The same. The one that isn’t there.” Rosswell corrected himself. “I mean, the
ones
that aren’t
here
.”

They set off to track the killer.

The streets of Marble Hill were crowded. A good place to hunt for the murderer.

The Harley riders, as expected, made up the bulk of the traffic. When bunches of people show up in a little town year after year, other people also show up to sell things to them. It’s called capitalism.

The lemonade and sweet tea vendors were dipping up drinks as fast as they could pour. Ollie and Rosswell stopped at one stand and each got a large sweet tea. Rosswell’s caffeine and sugar levels had fallen to a precarious low since breakfast. Watching some of the local artists sketching portraits of a couple of motorcyclists took up more of their time, as did buying two cheeseburgers from a sandwich vendor. The smell of frying onions had prodded Rosswell’s taste buds into a slobbering fit that could only be quelled by cheeseburgers. Boy Scouts demonstrated their signaling skills with mirrors and semaphore flags. A woman who specialized in making copper jewelry had sold out of nearly everything she’d brought to town. Crafters who had made all kinds of wooden do-dads hawked them to the crowd. Scented candles perfumed the air. The cotton candy guy had a line twelve deep.

In general, there was a street fair going on.

“Ollie,” Rosswell said, “how do we find two people who aren’t here?”

“My grandpa said when he was a kid that if someone left Bollinger County for a visit to somewhere else, everyone knew it. It’s not like that anymore. Now people go to Europe and no one ever knows it until they get back and spread the word.”

“Why is that? The population hasn’t gone up in this county for a hundred and fifty years.”

“Simple,” Ollie said. “Cheap cars and cheap gas. The population is mobile. You don’t even realize how much people travel anymore. It’s too common.”

“Gas isn’t cheap.”

“Comparatively speaking, it is.”

Since Rosswell knew he was going to lose the argument, he shut up.

They stopped on a street corner and soaked in the view. There might have been five hundred tourists in the little town, running up and down the streets. Money on the hoof.

Who, if anyone in that crowd, was suspicious? No one. At least on first inspection.

Rosswell reassessed everything. Harley riders. Portrait artists. Jewelers. Boy Scouts. Crafters. Cold drink vendors. Sandwich sellers. Cotton candy guy. A mass of confusion. In his mind, he separated each person or each group, scrutinizing them anew.

When Rosswell watched several people standing still, moving their arms in slow motion, a glacial coldness slugged him in the gut.

Rosswell pointed. “Ollie, they have our dog.”