Murder at the Courthouse (5 page)

Michael guided his cruiser through the dusky shadows down the winding lane to his log house on the lake. He'd rather be driving his old Chevy pickup that he called Old Blue. Rust was spreading like cancer on the wheel wells and along the dent in the driver's side door where somebody had sideswiped it while it was parked up in the city. Old Blue didn't ride all that smooth, but it still got him where he needed to go when he wasn't working.

In ways, the truck had helped him fit in again when he came home to Hidden Springs. Folks saw the old truck he'd always driven and decided maybe he was the same old Michael too.

His city friends told him he was crazy to move back to the sticks. What was he going to do? Pull dandelions out of the sidewalk cracks for fun? Watch to see when the corn tasseled out? Arrest people for shooting groundhogs? They warned him his mind would dry up and blow away.

When he assured them intelligent people lived in Hidden Springs, they laughed. And they began to look at him as if he lacked some gray matter up top as well. It was easy to see
they thought he lacked the courage or ambition to make it in the big world.

Michael didn't care what they thought. He was glad to be back in Hidden Springs. He had gone to Columbus after he got out of school. A man needed to try new things, new places. At least that's what he thought then. Big towns had more opportunities. He could get more training. Be a detective on the force or even land a job with the FBI.

A man needed ambition. A man needed to amount to something. Especially if he wanted to impress certain women who moved through life to a fast tune of ambition. Women like Alexandria Sheridan. Alex's ambitions far outstripped Michael's. Right out of law school, she got a position with a high-powered law firm in Washington, DC. There wasn't any way she would ever be impressed with a guy walking a beat no matter what city he was in.

When they were teens, they used to talk about what they would do when they got out of school. But she never mentioned Hidden Springs, and Hidden Springs seemed right in the center of Michael's future. He hadn't felt that itchy, crawly feeling inside his skin that made other people jump the fences of their youth and find more exciting pastures.

Michael liked the grass fine in Hidden Springs. He especially liked the feeling he was taking care of his town, protecting people he knew and cared about, keeping the peace without having to pull out his gun.

That thought brought him up short and made him too aware of the gun on his belt. The gun had felt extra heavy ever since Buck's parting shot that morning.

It wasn't that Michael didn't like guns. He did. He liked the solid feel of a gun in his hand when he was target shooting.
He enjoyed the challenge of keeping his eye true to the mark and figuring out the quirks of different firearms, especially the antique guns passed down from his Keane ancestors. Last summer he even put on the Confederate gray and carried Pascal Keane's Sharps rifle in the Civil War reenactment over at the state park in Buxley. Like Uncle Pascal, he'd been shot early on in the battle, but next year he'd been promised a longer-lived part, maybe as a Union captain like another of his ancestors, William Keane.

The only thing he didn't like about guns was actually using them in his job. Most of the time, even in the city, he was able to leave his gun in its holster and handle confrontations with his voice and confident posture. And with Pete right behind him, his gun ready in an instant, that strange gleam in his eyes warning perpetrators not to mess with him.

Then Michael found himself in that dim old warehouse looking down the barrel of his gun at that girl child. He wanted away from that. He wanted to save lives, not take lives.

He wanted to save that girl. After weeks of looking, he found her and a little brother living in the corner of another deserted warehouse. At least they'd been sleeping there. During the day, they stayed on the move. For almost a week he watched them, making sure not to let the girl spot him. He didn't want to spook her and give her a chance to disappear again. One evening he caught the little brother alone, and a sack of hamburgers and French fries were enough to win him over.

The girl wasn't as easy, but she wouldn't desert her little brother, whatever the cost. Michael did some fast talking and managed to convince her he wouldn't haul them off to social services. At least not until they talked. She stayed on
her toes, ready to grab the boy's hand and take off, but then the boy handed her some fries and a cookie.

Michael wasn't sure if the chocolate chip cookie won her over or whether she was simply too tired to run. He didn't badger her with questions. Instead, he sat there with them and waited, as though he had all the time in the world. At last she started talking, and like a dam bursting, her whole story rushed out.

Her name was Hallie. The little brother was Erik. In a few months their mother was up for parole and she'd promised to get a real job when she got out and leave the drugs behind. All they had to do was hold on a little longer. Hallie scavenged food out of supermarket trash cans and stole an apple or jar of peanut butter now and again.

But then school started, and Erik cried when she said he couldn't go. He was six and wanted to learn to read, but you had to have money to go to school. For fees and lunches. That kind of stuff. Erik couldn't say he didn't have it, not without people finding out no adults were on the scene. Hallie had already lost a little sister to social services. She was determined not to lose Erik. She'd promised her mother.

That first day, Michael gave her every cent he had on him. If Pete knew, he'd tell him he was crazy, that the girl was feeding him a line. Street kids learned fast who was a prime sucker for a sob story. But some sob stories were true. So he and Preacher Dan found the two kids a place to wait out the months. Michael had financed it. The last time he heard from Preacher Dan, the mother was out and had kept her word about getting a job. Hallie was going to high school and Erik had learned to read.

Michael still sent money. Nobody knew about it but Preacher
Dan. Maybe Michael couldn't make a difference in every street kid's life, but he had made a difference in Hallie's. The day she turned and looked at him in that warehouse, her life had been in his hands. Sometimes he felt as if it still was.

But he owed her something too. She was the reason he left the city before he got hardened like Pete. He was happy to be back in Hidden Springs where people didn't need a gun shoved in their faces to listen to reason. Where there was some real chance of keeping the peace.

Then what happened? Some John Doe got himself killed on the courthouse steps. A preliminary autopsy report had come in from Eagleton right before he left the office. The victim was shot in the back at close range with a Smith & Wesson .38 Special, a gun as common as fleas on a dog, even in Hidden Springs. There had to be four or five of them, confiscated for this or that reason, gathering dust in the sheriff's evidence room at the courthouse.

So knowing the type of weapon wasn't much help. They hadn't gotten an ID on the victim yet either. The man's fingerprints weren't on file in the computer system, and nobody matching his description had been reported missing.

Michael wondered again if maybe he should have stayed at the office in case something came in, but the sheriff had practically pushed him out the door. “Don't look so worried, boy. Nobody expects you to solve a murder in a day.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Michael muttered. Everybody he talked to that afternoon not only wanted a suspect behind bars, they had their own theories about the murder. Some wild stories that made absolutely no sense were making the rounds, but then what kind of sense did finding a body on the courthouse steps make?

The sheriff acted like he didn't hear Michael as they headed for the back door. The other offices were already locked up, and the hall was empty except for Roy White. The janitor pushed his mop along the hallway so slowly the mop practically had time to dry out before he finished his swipe and dipped it in the bucket again.

In spite of being stooped from years of pushing a broom, Roy was still half a head taller than Michael and a full head taller than the sheriff. His long bones had so little padding that sometimes Michael expected to hear them clattering inside his skin when the old man moved, but if they did, the jangle of the huge ring of keys clipped to his belt drowned it out. Roy looked up from mopping to ask the sheriff if he was sure it was safe in the courthouse.

“Now, have you ever had anything to worry about in all the years you've been cleaning the place here, Roy?” The sheriff smiled at the man. “Just how many years is that now?”

The old man leaned on his mop handle and gave the question some thought, concentration increasing the wrinkles lining his eyes. “Well, let's see, Sheriff. How long is it you've been in office?”

“Going on twelve years,” the sheriff answered. “And you were here a good many years before that.”

Michael tried not to fidget as they waited for the janitor to consider his answer. A phone rang in one of the offices, a muffled, somehow lonesome sound. Roy and the sheriff paid it no attention as they both stood there, one thinking of an answer, the other waiting for an answer he already knew.

Finally Roy said, “I reckon it was twenty-two years back in November, Alvin. It was dry that summer and the tobacco didn't bring in much that year. Me and the wife, we took this
on to make a little extra money for Christmas. So we could get all the kids and grandkids something nice.” The old man brushed his hand over his keys and smiled a little at the noise they made. “I'm thinking of turning in my keys come July.”

“What? Retire? You can't do that, Roy,” the sheriff said. “We need you.”

The old man laughed with pleasure. “So do the fish, Alvin. So do the fish.”

“I guess I can't fault a man for wanting to go fishing.” The sheriff's laugh joined the old man's before he got serious again. “But don't you be worrying none about what happened this morning. Mike here is checking into it all for us, and he'll find us some answers.” The sheriff grinned over at Michael. “Why, the boy went to school to learn to be a law officer.”

Michael knew the sheriff was poking fun at him, but he just smiled and took the opportunity to ask Roy a question he should have asked him hours ago. “Did you notice anything out of the ordinary today while you were cleaning, Roy?”

“Like what, Michael?”

“I don't know. A stray cell phone. Bloodstains maybe. A gun in a trash can.”

The old man chuckled. “I reckon that would be out of the ordinary all right, but no, son, I didn't see nothing like that. 'Cepting the blood on the post and porch out front and a few smudges the judge tracked in here. The only thing I might say was anywhere near to out of the ordinary was my keys. They weren't where they ought to have been when I got here this morning.”

“Where were they?” Michael asked.

“Oh, they were in the supply closet but not on the hook I use. I always hang them up on the top hook. That's my hook
'cause it's higher than most folks can reach easy. Keeps them out of their way. And then I only have to carry the key to the back door and the one to the closet in my pocket when I go home.”

“You think you might have hung the keys on a different hook last night by mistake?” Michael asked.

With a frown, the old man considered that. “It could've happened, I reckon, but it ain't likely. I always hang my keys on that high hook. Been doing that for years now. It'd feel funny putting them anywhere else.”

“How do you think they got on the other hook then?” the sheriff asked.

“Oh, I figure somebody must have borrowed them and stuck them back on the wrong hook. Nothing to get worked up about though. Can't nobody get into that supply closet 'cept them that have a key.”

“And who all is that?” the sheriff asked, more to show an interest in what the old man was saying than because he thought it was important.

“Why, you do, Alvin. And Neville and the judge and Josephine from up in the court and Wilma and Burton.”

“Somebody from all the offices here in the courthouse then?” Michael said.

“That's right, son. We keep the extra toilet paper in there, and folks has got to be able to get at that.” The old man laughed.

“But why would they bother your keys?” Michael said.

“They probably moved a broom or something and knocked them down. Not meaning to or anything, and then just stuck them back on a hook they could reach. Happens now and again.”

It had taken another ten minutes to get away from Roy.
He had to tell them why he thought some kind of extremist group was behind the murder.

“Burton says one of those bunch of crazies has been wanting to make a parade through town, and the mayor's been finding ways to put them off. So they dumped the body here as a kind of warning.” The old man looked satisfied with his explanation and a little worried at the same time. Burton Fuller was the jailer, and he and Roy enjoyed figuring things out over coffee in the little kitchen above the jail behind the courthouse.

“Then how come they didn't dump the body on the city hall steps where the mayor's office is?” Michael couldn't keep from asking.

When the old man got a confused look on his face, the sheriff shot a hard look at Michael before he smoothed things over. “Now that's an idea, Roy. About the extremists. We'll be sure to check into that.”

They left the old man looking satisfied with his theory again as they went on out the back door to the sound of the mop licking the floor.

Once outside, the sheriff said, “You're going to have to learn to humor folks, Mike. What might seem foolish to you makes perfect sense to them, and it's a comfort for them to think they've got things figured out.”

“Sorry, Sheriff, but it's been a long afternoon and I've heard just about every wild idea you can think of, from it was escaped convicts we don't even know have escaped yet to the mob. The mob's probably the front-runner right now.”