Sand Sharks (19 page)

“Ex-wife, but no kids,” she whispered back. “Don’t know about siblings or parents.”

Buckner recognized the recently retired and recently appointed emergency judges and asked the chief district judges to introduce
to us those newly on the bench in their districts.

Next came Chief Justice Sarah Parker of our supreme court, who spoke to our salary needs and the bills that were currently
before the general assembly in Raleigh. I wondered if that young reporter from the local NPR station had interviewed her yet.
She also touched on the problems of alcoholism and depression among some judges and attorneys, but commended our court system
for its professionalism and overall lack of corruption.

I hope she’s right and that judges like Pete Jeffreys are a tiny, tiny minority.

Justice Parker was followed by John Smith, the director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, who spoke about the updated
technology being put into place, everything from e-filing to e-citations.

Finally, the executive director of judicial standards spoke to us on campaign ethics and what we could and couldn’t do.

When the mid-morning break arrived, I was more than ready for it.

The burden of proof is upon the party affirming, not on the party denying.

—Justinian (AD 483–565)

A
s soon as he got off the phone with Judge Knott, Detective Edwards called headquarters and arranged to have an officer stationed
by Judge Fitzhume’s bed.

Next, he called the SandCastle Hotel and asked to speak to Mrs. Fitzhume.

“I’m sorry,” said the desk clerk, “but Mrs. Fitzhume checked out about ten minutes ago.”

Edwards identified himself, then asked, “Did she happen to say if she was on her way to the hospital?”

“No, sir, but I do know that she was moving over to a hotel in town to be nearer the hospital. The Hilton.”

A call to the Hilton confirmed that she had reserved a room, but had not yet checked in.

As he showered and shaved, Edwards decided that Martha Fitzhume would no doubt go to the hospital first, so he stopped by
the department, where he picked up the list of names he had compiled earlier and checked to see if any progress had been made
on identifying the license plate on the red Geo Metro.

“It looks like the plate was deliberately smeared with mud or something,” the squad’s computer jock told him. “It also looks
like one of those specialty plates, but I haven’t been able to match it yet.”

North Carolina issues dozens of different license plates to special interest groups. From its many colleges to the Sons of
Confederate Veterans to horseless carriage enthusiasts, each group has a plate with a different design. Most of them carry
the state name in blue along the bottom, and while Edwards could make out a fuzzy—
TH CAROLINA
when he peered at the screen, the design was unfamiliar. Nor did it fit any of the electronic templates that had been tried
so far.

“Any chance that those first three letters at the bottom are S-O-U instead of N-O-R?” he asked. Wilmington was only about
seventy miles from the border.

“Hey, that’s a thought,” the younger man said, and his fingers flew over the keys.

“Buzz me if you get anything,” Edwards said, and headed over to the hospital through a steady rain that was causing deep puddles
in low areas of the street. An oncoming car threw up such a sheet of water, he had to brake until the wipers cleared the windshield
enough for him to see through the gray morning light.

Inside the medical center, the sharp hospital smell hit him as soon as he passed the main reception desk and turned down a
wide hall, a chemical blend of cleaning agents, antiseptics, and bleached linens. The smell always upped his anxiety level,
rousing dormant childhood memories of his younger sister, who had died of leukemia when he was twelve. Not for the first time,
he found himself wondering if he would feel differently about hospitals if he and his ex had had a baby. Would a joyous birth
balance out death? He was forty-four years old and glumly aware that every year increased the odds that he might never know.

At the intensive care unit, Martha Fitzhume and her son were emerging through the door that led to the ICU pods when he arrived.
He spoke to the uniformed officer and then to the judge’s wife. There were dark circles under her keen blue eyes and she looked
drawn and tired, yet she recognized him immediately and her voice was strong when she asked, “Have you found the car, Detective
Edwards?”

“Sorry, ma’am. Not yet. How’s Judge Fitzhume?”

“No change,” the son said, positioning a chair for her. He had his mother’s bony face and nose and there were a few gray hairs
at his temples.

“You’re mistaken, Chad. When I spoke to him and squeezed his hand, it felt as if he squeezed back.”

“I know you want to believe that, Mom, but are you sure you didn’t imagine it?”

“I do know the difference,” she said crisply, but did not argue the point. “Why are you here, Detective? And why is that rather
large officer here, too? Is he guarding Fitz?”

“It’s just standard procedure, ma’am.”

“Oh, please,” she said. “Credit me with a few brains.”

Chad Fitzhume grinned and shook his head.

Edwards smiled, too. He’d always had a weak spot for opinionated old women who spoke their minds. “You’re right, ma’am. We
may be closing in on the reason why your husband was run down.”

“Reason can have nothing to do with it,” she said tartly. “Explain.”

Trying to match her straightforwardness, Edwards repeated his conversation with Judge Knott less than an hour ago.

She frowned, reliving the lunch in her mind, then nodded. “Deborah’s right. That’s exactly what Fitz said, and I should have
picked up on it myself. I wish I could say that we discussed it again later, but we didn’t.”

Edwards drew a list of names from an inner pocket of his tan sports jacket. “I questioned everyone from the conference who
was in the restaurant that night. Fourteen judges, five attorneys, and assorted spouses or friends. Twenty-seven names in
all. I’d like you to go over the list and mark anybody you think your husband would not have known if he saw him in the restroom.”

“Men only, I suppose?”

“No, because maybe it was a woman he saw as he came out.”

She put on a pair of reading glasses and asked for a pen, then very carefully went down the list, commenting as the pen point
touched and then marked through names. In the end there were three names left: one wife, one attorney, and two male judges.

Judge and Mrs. Albert Beecher, Judge James Feinstein, and Bill Hasselberger.

Hasselberger he remembered because he was an attorney, not a judge, but the other three had not stood out from the group when
he questioned them earlier.

“These are the ones I don’t know, at least not by name,” said Mrs. Fitzhume. “Fitz might, though. Albert Beecher was appointed
to the bench last month and we haven’t met him or his wife. Some of the others on the list I know only by sight, but if I
could recognize them on the street, then they should have looked familiar to him, don’t you think? Or are you just clutching
at straws?”

Before he could answer, his phone buzzed and he excused himself to walk a few steps away. “Edwards here.”

“You were right,” said the voice in his ear. “It’s South Carolina. Want to hear something funny? It’s a ‘Share the Road’ plate.”

“Too bad the judge wasn’t riding a bicycle,” Edwards said grimly.

“I got enough numbers to cross-match it to a Sidney Kyle Armstrong of Myrtle Beach, age twenty-six. I ran the name through
our records here and there’s a speeding violation from last December that has a local address on it and South Carolina’s going
to E us the picture from his driver’s license.”

Edwards jotted down the address that had been written on the speeding ticket, a building off Market Street. The name Armstrong
sounded familiar, but he could not put a face to it. Turning back to the Fitzhumes, he asked, “Does the name Sidney Armstrong
mean anything to you?”

Mother and son both shook their heads.

“You sure? Sidney Kyle Armstrong? Twenty-six years old?”

“Kyle?” said Martha Fitzhume. “One of the waiters at Jonah’s was named Kyle. He’s an actor, but he’s only eighteen or nineteen
and I didn’t get his last name.”

Edwards riffled through his notes and there it was. He had interviewed the slender young man at the restaurant on Sunday.
Like Mrs. Fitzhume, he had pegged the guy as being in his late teens. Judge Knott was there to look for a lost earring, and
after denying it emphatically, this Kyle kid finally admitted seeing Jeffreys when Judge Knott and the headwaiter practically
drew him a picture.

“Would your husband have noticed him?” he asked, knowing that most people never really look at a waiter’s face.

“Yes, of course. He waited on our table.”

“What you have to understand, Detective Edwards,” said Chad Fitzhume, “is that if a waiter says, ‘Hi, my name’s Kyle and I’ll
be your server,’ she’ll introduce herself and then find out how long he’s been working there, his favorite dish on the menu,
the name of his first puppy, and what he’s doing with his life.”

“My son exaggerates, Detective Edwards, but Kyle did tell us about his acting career. Surely he wasn’t the driver of that
car?”

“The car’s registered to him,” Edwards said and rose to leave.

“I trust you will keep me informed,” she said, and gestured to the uniformed officer, who obediently came over to her. “I’m
Martha Fitzhume, Officer. And you are?”

Edwards suppressed a grin as he stepped into the elevator and turned his thoughts back to Judge Fitzhume’s unfinished words.

“I didn’t see anyone I knew, but—” Fitzhume had said.

“
But our waiter was there
”?

Is that how he would have ended that sentence had he not been interrupted?

It occurred to Edwards that Kyle Armstrong had been standing nearby when Deborah Knott said something about Fitzhume being
the last to see him as they passed in the doorway of the restroom. The very next afternoon, he ran down the judge.

But how would Armstrong know where to find him? Figuring out which hotel was hosting the conference would be easy, but how
could he possibly know that the judge he wanted would be crossing the parking lot at 6:30? A lucky guess? A stakeout?

Well that was something he could ask the twerp when they picked him up. He called for his partner to meet him at Jonah’s and
gladly left the hospital and its depressing smells behind.

As Detectives Edwards and Wall entered the restaurant, the perky young waitress at the reception stand said, “Two? Inside
or out?” Then she giggled at her own question. “Sorry. It’s just automatic to ask. Obviously you don’t want to sit out in
the rain.”

“Naw, we left our umbrellas in the car,” said Andy Wall, shaking raindrops from his iron-gray hair. He was eight months away
from retirement and not out to risk anything by calling her honey or flirting with her as he once would have, even though
she was terminally cute with those two ponytails on either side of her head that bounced when she moved.

As did other things.

They identified themselves and her blue eyes widened. “Oh, wow, yeah. I heard that one of our customers was killed and dumped
in the river. I had the weekend off and missed it all.”

“We need to speak to Kyle Armstrong again. Is he here?” Edwards asked.

“I don’t think he’s working lunch,” she said. “Let me check.”

She returned a few moments later, followed by a stocky middle-aged man in a short-sleeved white shirt and a loosened tie that
he was tightening as he walked toward them.

“I’m the manager here,” he said. “How can I help you?”

“We’d like to speak to one of your waiters,” Edwards said. “Kyle Armstrong?”

“He doesn’t come in till four.
If
he comes in.”

“If?”

“He was supposed to work the dinner shift last night, and he never showed up. Kids today! They work when they want to, take
off when they want to, never think twice about if they’re screwing up everybody else’s workload. He don’t show up at four
on the dot, though, his ass is so fired.”

“Does he still live at—” Edwards fumbled in his pocket for the scrap of paper he’d written the address on and read it off.

The manager shrugged. “So far as I know. What’s this about? More questions about Saturday night?”

“Something like that,” Edwards said.

“Y’all come back now,” said the bouncy waitress as they trudged back out into the rain.

“Kyle?” said the young man who opened the door to the walk-up apartment two blocks off Market Street. “He moved out in February.”

A very pregnant brunette appeared at his elbow. “Y’all looking for Kyle? He’s got a place near the Cotton Exchange.”

No, she did not know the address, but it was one block up Walnut Street and there was a hardware store on the ground floor.

“He still have that red Geo?” Edwards asked.

“So far as I know,” the former roommate replied.

They circled the block before pulling up in front of the circa-1920 brick building. No sign of a red Geo. As always, it was
a toss-up as to whether to risk getting soaked or struggle with an umbrella. This time they found a parking space right in
front, close enough that they could make a dash for it.

The tiny lobby showed remnants of bygone glory. The outer door was bronze, tarnished now, as were the filigreed mailboxes,
but still bronze. The grungy floor was white marble with a long crack across the middle. Three names were listed for Apartment
F: G. Smith, K. Armstrong, and R. Loring. No response when they pressed the buzzer, but the inner door wasn’t locked and they
were able to walk up the four flights without challenge.