Courting Death Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Paul J. Heald

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Jacket design by Laura Klynstra

  Jacket photo: iStockphoto

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63158-101-4

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63158-107-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Andrea, Lewis, & Margaret

  SIDE ONE

  (May-November, 1988)

  I.

  THE CITY BY THE RIVER

  Arthur Hughes pulled his battered hatchback into a Majik Market just over the Georgia state line to grab a soft drink and fill up with gas one last time before he slogged on to Clarkeston. Humid July air filled his car the moment he cracked the door, and he pumped the cheapest unleaded in a swelter absent from his last stop in the highlands of eastern Tennessee. As he paid, he noticed a pile of road maps next to the cash register and considered exiting the sticky interstate to find a less tedious route to his new home.

  “I’ll take this too.” He gestured with a Georgia state map and pulled out his wallet again.

  “That’ll be five dollars.” Damned expensive for a folded sheet of paper. He raised his eyebrows and frowned at the stout woman across the counter.

  “Hey, it ain’t called the Magic Mark-Up for nothin’.” The clerk handed over the change with a wink and a broad smile of surprisingly straight teeth. “Drive safe now, hon.”

  He leaned against his car and studied the local roads that might carry him most directly to Clarkeston. Squinting hard in the bright sunlight, he identified the most likely candidate, Ga. Hwy 4, a thin black line that ran into the dark green leviathan of the Georgia countryside. He ran his finger along the ninety miles left to travel and decided to avoid sharing more interstate time with Midwestern families just passing through the South on the way to Disney World. Freshly divorced and still encumbered with bad mental habits picked up in law school, he wondered whether plunging off the beaten track might help scour away some of life’s barnacles. With a grim smile, he tossed the map on the passenger seat and set off to explore close-up the mysterious land of witty convenience store clerks.

  Traffic was light and he sailed down a series of two-lane roads through hardwood-covered hills and flatlands of exhausted cotton fields converted to pine, hay, and kudzu. Every ten miles or so a small town would appear, dotted with Greek Revival mansions on streets that could have been film sets for nineteenth-century costume dramas. But none of the tidy clapboard houses bore the haunted look demanded by gothic film makers. No inbred knife-wielding psychopaths lurked in the bushes—just children riding Big Wheels in their front yards and playing hide-and-seek behind the lattice work under their front porches. Smiling parents arrived home from work in Japanese sedans and lingered outside to gossip with their neighbors. His ex-wife would have been horrified at the thought of living there, but he wondered whether it might not be liberating. Three years in Chicago had made small towns look pretty attractive.

  Arthur had interviewed with the Judge in Atlanta for his one-year clerkship and had little idea what to expect from Clarkeston. His move, therefore, hit an unpleasant bump on its outskirts when his home for the next twelve months announced itself with a K-mart and a shabby Winn Dixie Supermarket. The entire main road into town was dominated by fast food outlets and cinder block student apartments bragging about their weight rooms and cheap cable television. A brief look at the complexes—Dogwood Terrace (no dogwoods to be seen), The Oaks (zero oaks), and Willow Gardens (four stumps and a large pot of pansies)—convinced him to look for lodgings in a more gracious neighborhood, more like the ones he had seen earlier in his drive.

  He approached the courthouse with mixed emotions. The prestigious clerkship he won had made him the envy of his law school classmates, but the interview questions posed by the Judge about his willingness to work on habeas corpus capital cases still echoed in his head like a cracked church bell. He stood on the sidewalk for a long while, contemplating the Latin scrawled above the concrete pillars on either side of the front door: Lux et Veritas. He took a deep breath. Time to climb the steps and join the light and truth machine.

  * * *

  Ms. Stillwater, the Judge’s secretary, quickly came to the rescue on the housing front. She was a well-groomed woman with neatly permed gray hair. He would later learn that she was in her late sixties, but her slim figure belied her age. Lacking the girth of Arthur’s matronly Scandinavian relatives, she still managed to send out grandmotherly vibrations as she opened the walnut double door that led into the Judge’s chambers. Why did he feel like the gate to the Emerald City had just swung wide?

  “Mr. Hughes!” She clapped her hands together and welcomed him in a voice that was as elegant as her dress. “Please come in! I hope you had a nice drive.”

  “It was interesting.” He nodded enthusiastically as he scanned the hallway, an intimidating corridor of bookcases and more walnut paneling. “I took the local roads instead of the interstate.”

  “Well, I hope you drove carefully.” For a moment he mistook the leisurely pace of her speech for a real chiding. “Some of those small-town sheriffs really love to ticket cars with foreign tags.”

  “Tags?” Arthur stole a glance into the huge side offices as he walked with her down the hall. “Do I need to get some sort of tag?”

  “I assume you’ve already got one on the back of your car, darlin’.”

  “Oh, you mean license plates.”

  “Of course I do!” Then, she cocked her head and snapped her voice through the door to the left of her desk, “Judge, Arthur Hughes is here!”

  A frowning white-haired man with half-rimmed glasses pushed down his nose opened the door and extended his hand. “Good to see you again, Mr. Hughes.”

  Arthur reached out and was surprised by the power in the seventy-year-old grip. Here was the man who almost single-handedly integrated the State of Georgia. A living legend if there ever was one, and Arthur couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Nice to be done with law school, I suppose? Ready for a year at the government rate before you head off to some big law firm?”

  “Yes, sir,” was the best Arthur could answer to the flurry of questions. “It’s nice to be here.”

  “Nice to have you here too.” He tipped his head back toward his office. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m on the phone with Judge Meriweather in Huntsville. Ms. Stillwater will get you set up. Get to bed early tonight—we’ll see you in the office tomorrow at seven a.m. sharp.”

  He shut the door, and Ms. Stillwater settled behind her desk and shuffled through her drawers.

  “Speaking of beds,” she queried as she looked up and handed h
im the keys to his office and to the front door of the chambers, “did you have any luck finding a place to live?”

  “No, ma’am.” First official use of ma’am! “I was supposed to sign a lease today, but I got a call right before I left saying that they had let the apartment to someone else. I’ll probably just stay at a hotel tonight and make some calls this afternoon and tomorrow.”

  Ms. Stillwater’s eyes lit up. “You know, I know a young widow who’s just lost a boarder. She lives on a lovely street about a fifteen-minute walk from here. Would you like me to call her?” She started writing even before he could blurt out his assent. “Here’s the address … I’ll give her a quick ring and tell her you’re coming.”

  On his way to the house, he paused at the top of the courthouse steps and looked across the street. Straight ahead stood the historic lunch counter, integrated thirty years earlier when the Judge overturned the trespassing convictions of four black students who had dared to sit down to order hamburgers and Cokes. Although it looked unchanged since the day of the sit-in, the rest of the town had evolved over time. Two doors down from the diner stood a new Thai restaurant and a coffee shop, both of which probably owed their livelihood to Clarkeston College, which lay just south of downtown on the other side of the river. A dry cleaner, a storefront Missionary Apostolic Holiness church, a men’s clothing store, and a florist’s shop completed the block.

  The courthouse was planted firmly in the middle of Court Street, a secondary avenue that ran a block north of and parallel to Main Street. Because the terrain sloped south down to the river, he could see over the rooftops of the buildings along Main Street to the edge of the college, which sat on a low bluff across the river. College Avenue ran perpendicular on right, connecting Court to Main before spanning the river into the tree-lined heart of the college. It was a bucolic view, incongruous with the scene from a recent made-for-television docudrama depicting an angry mob lynching the Judge in effigy on the top of the courthouse steps.

  Ten minutes later, he was climbing up a dozen wooden steps to the wide porch of a large, two-story white house and twisting the handle of a brass bell stuck in the middle of a door heavy with leaded glass. A two-seater swing hung invitingly to the left next to a brightly colored chest brimming with toys. A slight breeze stirred the leaves of the two enormous elm trees standing on each side of the broad staircase. High above the moist red clay, the porch was surprisingly cool, even in the July heat. The bright aqua painted on the porch ceiling also helped keep the summer swelter at bay, although its refreshing blue-green hue was an aesthetic disaster.

  He was critically examining the ceiling, head back and jaw slack, as the door clicked open behind him.

  “No, we’re not just tacky—the color keeps the wasps from building nests underneath the roof. They think it’s water, and they won’t land on it.” The voice was soft and melodious, with a delicate lilt too cultured to be called a drawl.

  He wrenched his head around to see her and felt the muscles in his neck spasm, but what he saw in the doorway pushed the pain into the distance. Outrageously thick hair cascaded a lustrous dark river down to the middle her back, flawless olive skin recalling dark Celtic or Mediterranean ancestors, or perhaps even gypsies. She held him in her dark eyes and waited for him to introduce himself.

  Her gaze momentarily panicked him, and he scanned downward as he attempted to remember his name and why he was there. His eyes immediately encountered generous curves, tastefully and accurately shown off by a black knit blouse. Sensing danger, he snapped his head back up, jolting an electric current through his neck and down to his shoulders. The moment of agony cleared his mind.

  “Hey! My name’s Arthur Hughes. Mrs. Stillwater sent me …”

  “I’m Suzanne.” She wiped her hand on a dish towel and gave him a warm smile. “Martha said you’d be coming. If you’ll wait out here for just a couple minutes, I’ll show you the room.” She glanced back into the house before she shut the screen door. “Don’t mind Maria if she comes out exploring … She’s four and as curious as a cat in a shopping bag factory.”

  He walked over to the swing and sat down to admire the gracious wood-frame houses that filled the neighborhood. The Queen Anne across the street had been painted by a frustrated artist who used four alternating colors on the spindles of the porch railing and four more colors to outline each gingerbread cut-out on the house’s many gables. Before too long he heard the door creak, and as predicted, a stumpy fireplug of a little girl stuck her head out and glared at him.

  “I want my giraffe,” she demanded. Arthur looked around the porch but could not see what she was talking about.

  “Where’s your giraffe, Maria?”

  “How do you know my name?” She squinted suspiciously at him and squirmed against the doorframe.

  Long hours spent babysitting his sister and a slew of younger cousins had equipped him admirably for confrontations with marauding munchkins.

  “Your mama told me that a little four-year-old girl named Maria lived here, and you look like a little four-year-old girl to me.”

  “She’s my mama!” Maria blurted out indignantly.

  “Ahhh … well, that solves the mystery. You two are related, huh?”

  “What did you say?” She was bright-eyed and aggressive, not a china doll sort of preschooler.

  “Where’s your giraffe?”

  She pointed at the box of toys behind him.

  “Why don’t you come and show me?”

  She shook her head.

  “Do you want me to get it?” She nodded, and he slid off the porch swing and started to rummage through the layers of junk in the container. Holding a blob of Duplos in one hand and pinning a squishy fabric doll under the same arm, he parted trucks and blocks with his free hand in a vain search for anything that looked like a giraffe. Maria slowly crept up behind him to check on his progress.

  “There it is!”

  “Where?” He looked around, confused by the certainty of her pronouncement. Setting down his load, he crouched on his knees to check the very bottom of the box. She sniffled and pointed with a trembling hand to the pile of Duplo rubble on the porch floor next to him.

  “Oh, it was a Duplo giraffe!” Worry showed on her face, and she managed a nod. “No problem … I’m Dr. Duplo. I can fix him up in no time.” He attempted to mesmerize her with the timbre and cadence of Mr. Fred Rodgers, and she began to calm down. By the time her mother came out, Maria was eagerly pointing out where various pieces went. She was delighted when he added a colorful plastic hat to the toy’s head, and she ran to show her mother how stylish he now looked.

  “I hope she’s not bothering you,” Suzanne said warily as she motioned him inside the house. “So, how do you like Georgia?”

  With a wave back at Maria, Arthur stepped into a wide hallway of buttery heart-of-pine planks extending the length of the house from the front door to the back porch. Two spacious rooms of roughly equal size on the left side of the hall mirrored two on the right. A broad staircase rose from the end of the hall, ascending halfway to the second floor and ending in a spacious landing before winding back toward the front and delivering them onto the second-floor breezeway that bisected the house. The four rooms on the second floor were situated as their twins below.

  “This four-over-four design was very common for houses built in the 1890s,” she explained.

  “It’s gorgeous.” He spoke with genuine admiration, grabbing his neck and wincing slightly as he looked up at the brown bead-board ceilings.

  “This one would be yours.” She walked down the hall to the very front of the house and opened the door on the left. As she entered, he looked through the window that hung at the end of the hall: a tree-house view with patches of street and sidewalk showing between the arrowhead-shaped elm leaves.

  “Maria and I have the two big rooms on the first floor. We share the living room and kitchen with Mr. Bernson, who lives on the other side up here, and with whoever takes this room.�
��

  Arthur smiled. The furniture was worn and tired, but the gleaming wood floor brightened the room and reflected its warm glow on Suzanne as he turned to nod his approval. After a quick look around, he stepped out into the hall, and she took a skeleton key out of her pocket and locked the door as if to say: It’s yours now if you want.

  But did he want share living space with an active four-year-old and two other adults? He expected the year to be exhausting, and the last thing he needed was noise and uncontrollable interruptions. His marriage had taught him to protect and treasure his privacy. Maybe a small apartment was the way to go.

  But the key sold him. The thought of living in a house where he needed such an old-fashioned device was irresistible. Now, this was the real South! He could live in a sterile apartment with a pool and weight room anywhere in the country. A communal television and the patter of little feet would be a small price to pay for an authentic experience. He had done enough private stewing about the divorce and obsessing about law school bullshit. A house with skeleton keys might be the perfect therapy.

  When the tour was done and a check for the first month’s rent handed over, Suzanne brought them iced tea on the porch and asked him about his day.

  He hesitated. “It’s a lot to take in all at once.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Iowa, originally.”

  She took a sip of her tea and shook her head. “That’s a long way to come for a one-year job.”

  “It’s more than just a job,” he tried to explain. Supreme Court Justices aside, the Judge was probably the most admired living American jurist. Among non-justices, only Henry Friendly and Learned Hand had as much name recognition in the twentieth century. His most famous cases filled law school textbooks. His treatise on Civil Rights law was still the standard text fifteen years after it first appeared. Case by case over a twenty-five-year period, he had become the most visible symbol of the evolution of the new South. “It’s an amazing opportunity.”