Sand Sharks (24 page)

“Not much blood,” Edwards observed.

“Probably washed away by the rain,” said Wall, looking at the headshots Mrs. Rudd had given him, the wannabe actor’s publicity
photos. “Is it Armstrong?”

“Looks like him to me,” Edwards said as he tried to reconcile this battered face to the man he had met briefly on Sunday.
In the pictures Armstrong’s chin was as weak as he remembered, but thrust forward like this, in three-quarter profile, it
managed to convey a certain sensitive strength.

Too bad, thought Edwards, that he had heard nothing today to indicate an ounce of sensitivity for others. To strangle a man,
dump his body in a crab-infested river, and then run down another man in front of his wife?

“He hit that tree with one hell of a force,” the trooper said. “It’s gonna take the jaws to get him out in one piece. Wasn’t
wearing a seat belt, either.”

“You really think a seat belt would’ve helped?” Edwards asked.

The trooper nodded. “Naw, probably not.”

The bushes were strewn with sodden clothes, CDs, and bits of speakers and players from the waiter’s sound system. It looked
as if he had piled all his worldly goods into the back of the car without any rhyme or reason in his haste to leave town.

“Probably planned to stay with his aunt overnight,” said Wall, who had given him a condensed version of his trip out to see
Armstrong’s cousin. “Maybe he wanted to hit her up for some cash before clearing out. She told me that she helps him out when
he comes up short.”

“Who found him?”

“The traffic helicopter called it in,” answered the trooper. “Saw the wreckage and asked if we knew about it. Detective Wall
here says you think this is yesterday’s hit-and-run?”

“Yeah. So pay attention to the front right fender, okay? And copy us on all the pictures and reports.”

The rain had stopped completely by the time they climbed back up the slope, but the ground was so muddy that the pink umbrella
was a wreck where Wall had jabbed it in the ground to help haul himself up.

“One good thing,” Wall said. “He’s saved the state the cost of putting him on trial and then keeping him in prison for the
next thirty years.”

“Yeah,” Edwards agreed. “Just hope we find out why he killed Jeffreys before they pull us off the case. I can understand running
down Fitzhume. He was afraid the judge could place the two of them in the restroom right before the murder, but what was his
beef with Jeffreys in the first place?”

“Who knows?” Wall said, and glanced at his watch. “I’ll run by the office and get the paperwork started and then call it a
day. What about you?”

“I think I’ll stop by the hospital and tell Mrs. Fitzhume and then maybe ride back out to the beach, see if Judge Knott’s
learned of a link between Armstrong and Jeffreys.”

Andy Wall smiled at the younger man. “And maybe ask her friend out to dinner now that the case is practically closed?”

“Maybe.”

It is declared… that all marriages contracted by lawful persons in the face of the church, and consummated with bodily knowledge,
and fruit of children, shall be indissoluble.

—Sir William Blackstone (1723–1780)

O
ur last session of the day was a lively update on family law by Cheryl Howell, a brainy blonde professor from the School of
Government.

Just as Nina Totenberg can clarify and explain to her NPR audience the most arcane rulings of the Supreme Court, so Cheryl
manages to make the acts of our legislature sound almost logical. There are times, though, when the lack of clarity in the
specific language of a statute causes a disconnect between what the new legislation is supposed to do and what it actually
appears to do. Last year we spent an inordinate amount of time on civil no-contact orders (restraining orders in cases other
than domestic violence situations). Stalking had earlier been defined as, and I quote, “Following on more than one occasion
or otherwise harassing.”

What we needed to know was if the “more than one occasion” applied to harassing or only to the act of following. Could we
issue a civil restraining order after one harassment or must it be at least twice?

At such times, even Cheryl throws up her hands and says, “You’ll just have to use your best judgment on this until it comes
before the high court and they make a ruling on it.”

It’s the ever-recurring sticky flypaper between what is meant and what is said, which is why we have a Supreme Court still
parsing the words of our Constitution more than two hundred years later. Did the framers mean that every citizen could own
an assault rifle? Does free speech include hate speech? Does freedom
of
religion include freedom
from
religion?

On a more mundane level, today’s thorny issue was parent versus nonparent custody and visitation, as modified by the appellate
court’s recent rulings on third-party custody—in other words, the rights, if any, of stepparents, grandparents, blood relations,
or any other third parties who have been ceded (or
thought
they had been ceded) a parent-like relationship to the child by its natural parent.

It’s hard enough making custody and visitation decisions when you start with a traditional two-parent family unit and the
third party is a grandparent. Stir in lovers who claim they did all the parenting, or a sibling who’s been raising the children
for years, or same-sex couples who are breaking up with the same regularity as heterosexual couples, and you’ve got a witch’s
brew of tricky complications.

We were still arguing about certain aspects of the case studies Cheryl had brought us and comparing how we had ruled on similar
issues as we spilled out into the lobby at 5:30 and headed up to Room 628 for drinks.

The rain had finally stopped and when the balcony doors were thrown wide, everyone crowded outside to ooh over a vivid rainbow
that seemed to touch down in the ocean.

Chuck Teach pointed to that spot and said, “Somebody get me a boat. That pot of gold can’t be more than twenty feet under
the water.”

“Anybody heard from Martha?” I asked.

“Yeah, I talked to her at the break,” said Andy Corbett, the chief judge over in the next district from mine. “No change.
Fitz is still in a coma and still in intensive care.”

Across the room, Roberta Ouellette was opening a can of soda and I went over to her. She gave a friendly smile and said, “Interesting
session, wasn’t it? But I’m sorry. I do think that a blood relationship gives automatic standing and if grandparents want
to see their grandchildren on a regular basis and they aren’t pedophiles or raving lunatics, I’m going to keep trying to let
them. Children can’t have too much love in their lives.”

“I agree,” I said, adding a light splash of bourbon to my own diet cola. “And what about godparents? There’s often no blood
relationship.”

“True,” she sighed. “But again, don’t you find that a little judicial reasoning can sometimes mitigate a vindictive parent’s
desire to cut all ties to the past relationship?”

We took our drinks out to the terrace and leaned against the railing to enjoy the return of sunshine. Big patches of blue
sky appeared amid the retreating clouds and our rainbow had faded into nothingness.

“When you were telling us how Pete Jeffreys gave custody of that burned child to his father and stepmother, you didn’t mention
that he was Bill Hasselberger’s godson,” I said.

Ouellette looked surprised and pleased. “Bill Hasselberger? You know Bill?”

I nodded. “He and a cousin of mine were at Jonah’s the other night. Or rather, on the porch of the restaurant next door to
Jonah’s.”

“What’s he doing now, do you know? I’ve lost track of him since he left the bench.”

“He’s in private practice down here. Has a house in Wilmington.”

“Bless his heart. It really all came down on him, didn’t it? Losing his election, losing his wife. But I didn’t know that
little boy was his godson.”

“I don’t think he talks about it much. But what about the other cases Jeffreys mishandled?” I asked. “You’re from the Triad
area. Anybody here have a personal involvement with, say, the carjacker or the DWI cases that got dismissed?”

She gave me an amused smile. “Have you traded your robe for a detective’s badge?”

“Nope,” I said cheerfully. “Just terminally curious as to why someone killed him down here rather than in Greensboro.”

Her smile turned serious. “You honestly think it was one of us?”

“Not really.” I hesitated. Detective Edwards hadn’t told me not to mention the waiter, and if he’d told Martha Fitzhume, then
it was a safe bet everyone else would soon know. “Does the name Kyle Armstrong mean anything to you?”

Ouellette shook her head. “Who’s he?”

“A waiter at Jonah’s. Owns the car that ran Fitz down.”

She frowned. “He killed Judge Jeffreys and then tried to kill Judge Fitzhume? Why?”

“I was hoping you might’ve have heard of a connection to them.”

She turned the name over again. “Kyle Armstrong? Sorry. Have you tried Joe Turner or Bill Neely?”

Both were chief judges in neighboring Triad districts. I’d actually spoken to both of them during the afternoon break and
had gotten equally blank looks. But the Triad stretches from Winston to Greensboro to High Point and holds over a million
people. Even though the judicial community is relatively small and gossipy, how likely was it that any judge would know another’s
enemy? Especially if that enemy was a seemingly innocuous waiter with aspirations to stardom?

All sorts of fantastic scenarios scrolled through my head. Maybe there wasn’t a connection between Jeffreys and the waiter.
Maybe it really was a local, someone like Hasselberger, who killed Jeffreys in the heat of the moment and then stole Armstrong’s
car to run down Fitz. If the waiter was a cyclist, wouldn’t he normally leave his car parked somewhere for days on end and
ride his bike back and forth to work? I myself have never actually hot-wired a car, but most of my brothers know how.

As does Allen.

Allen?

“
Oh, please!
” said the preacher, who was getting tired of this fruitless round and round.
“He had his children with him that night, remember?”

“Yeah, but he left early enough that he could have brought the children back here to the hotel and then returned to the parking
lot,”
said the pragmatist, who couldn’t leave it alone.
“If Fitz saw him, Allen could’ve read the schedule at his leisure and would’ve known when Fitz would be crossing the parking
lot.”

“And what’s his motive for killing Jeffreys?”

“How the hell do I know? I’m looking at opportunity right now.”

“Half of Wilmington had opportunity. Give me a motive.”

By now Roberta Ouellette had been swept into a conversation with Shelley Desvouges and Yates Dobson, who were looking at pictures
of Aubrey Hamilton’s cats. I dumped my unfinished drink and decided to get out of the hotel for a while.

When I stepped out of the elevator into the hotel lobby, I saw Detective Gary Edwards standing by the touching tank that had
been abandoned by the child guests now that the sun was out again.

He smiled at me and returned a sand dollar to the tank. “I was hoping I’d see you.”

“Wish I had some information for you,” I said, “but if there’s a connection between Kyle Armstrong and Pete Jeffreys, I can’t
find it. Any luck locating him or his car?”

“Unfortunately.” With a grim face he told me that Kyle Armstrong was dead.

I was shocked. “What happened?”

“Looks like he loaded up all his things and was going to skip town when he ran off an exit ramp near Castle Hayne and crashed
into a tree. If you and Chel—I mean, Judge Pierce—haven’t picked up on anything substantive, I doubt if we’ll ever learn why
he killed the judge.”

“So that’s it? You’re closing the case?”

“As soon as we get the autopsy results and write the report.” His eyes strayed past my shoulder and his face lit up.

I turned and saw Chelsea Ann emerge from the elevator, her blonde curls shiny, fresh lipstick and eye shadow, a lowcut yellow
dress with a swirly skirt. She carried my white cotton sweater over one arm.

“Hope you don’t mind if I borrow it for one more night,” she said, smiling up at Edwards. “Gary and I are going to take a
dinner cruise.”

“Have fun,” I said.

Other colleagues came by on their way out to dinner or to gatherings further down the island and several invited me to join
them, but I had other plans.

I stopped by an ATM to replenish the cash in my wallet and twenty minutes later I was in the ICU waiting room at the New Hanover
Medical Center. I was not the first judge to come by that evening, but none of them had been able to persuade Martha Fitzhume
to break her vigil. She had been there since sunrise, almost as if it were her personal willpower that was keeping Fitz alive.
I was encouraged to hear that his condition had been upgraded from
critical
to
serious
even though he was still in a coma.

Martha herself was moving a little stiffly after the tumble she had taken. One of the nurses had given her an antiseptic ointment
for the scrape on her face and it was starting to fade a bit, but there were dark circles under her eyes.

She told me that Gary Edwards had been by earlier and had told her of Kyle Armstrong’s death.

“Maybe I’ll be able to pray for him later,” Martha said. “Right now I’m still so angry for what he did to Fitz that there’s
not an ounce of pity in my heart.”

“Come on, Martha,” I said. “You need to get out of here for an hour and breathe a little fresh air. The rain’s stopped and
it’s a beautiful evening. Come have supper with me. We’ll go eat a crab in Fitz’s honor.”

That got a smile and her son chimed in.

“Yeah, Mom. Go. You could use a break and I’ll be right here till you get back.”

“I don’t know, Chad. What if he—?” She stood up as if to come, then sat back down a moment later. “I don’t think I should.
I’m not very hungry.”