Chapter 7 - The Shadow on the Wall
On Wednesday morning, the magistrate’s court in Oakhaven smelled of wet floorboards and the stale, mentholated cough drops the clerk chewed to keep from spitting his plug onto the linoleum.
The room was narrow, lined with dark-stained oak benches that had been carved with initials by eighty years of petty thieves and delinquent taxpayers.
Evan sat at the defense table.
He was wearing a borrowed blue blazer that was two inches too short in the sleeves, showing the thick, red hair on his forearms and the cheap steel watch he had bought at the truck stop. He hadn't shaved in four days; the red stubble on his jaw made him look like a ditch-digger who had been pulled out of an access culvert.
His lawyer, Bannister, was a small, round man with a seersucker suit that had brown grease stains near the ticket pocket. He kept tapping an unsharpened yellow pencil against a legal pad.
"Your Honor," Bannister said, his voice whistling through a gap in his front teeth, "this is a domestic dispute arising from an accidental contact at a family memorial event. My client has no prior violent felonies. He is a small business owner—"
"What business, Mr. Bannister?" Judge Clough asked.
Clough was eighty, with skin the color of an old parchment map and eyebrows like two grey caterpillars that had died during the winter. He didn't look at Bannister; he looked at the medical photographs David Vance had laid on the bench.
"Logistical consulting, Your Honor," Bannister murmured.
"He doesn't have an office," David Vance said from our table. He didn't stand up; he simply leaned his heavy forearms on the oak rail. "He has an inactive charter that was revoked sixteen months ago for failure to pay the franchise tax. His last reported income to the county was eight hundred dollars from seasonal grass cutting."
Evan’s jaw worked. His eyes skittered across the rail to where I sat between David and the victim’s advocate.
He didn't look at my eye. He looked at the floor between my shoes, his fingers opening and closing against the seam of his trousers.
"The state is requesting a permanent no-contact order," the prosecutor said—a young woman named Miller whose family had run the dry goods store in Oakhaven since before the war. "And an order of complete exclusion from the parcel designated as the Barrows Homestead on Tax Map 44."
"We have an equity interest in that parcel," Bannister piped up, his pencil tapping faster. "Over six thousand dollars in capital improvements to the sub-grade living quarters—"
"Did you file a lien, Mr. Bannister?" the judge asked.
"We... we are in the process of drafting the notice of lis pendens, Your Honor."
"Did you file a lien prior to the seventeenth of June?"
"No, sir. But the doctrine of equitable restitution—"
"Mr. Bannister," Judge Clough said, taking off his glasses and letting them dangle from a black cord around his withered neck. "I knew June Barrows for sixty years. She was a woman who would give you the coat off her back if you were freezing, but if you took the buttons off without asking, she’d take a skinning knife to your knuckles."
He picked up the heavy brass seal on his desk and set it down with a flat, dry thump.
"The defendant will have no contact, direct or indirect, with Claire Barrows. He will not enter upon the real property of the Barrows estate for any purpose whatsoever. He will surrender any keys, openers, or codes to the sheriff’s office within two hours of his release."
"Your Honor," Evan blurted out, his voice cracking with that thick, desperate anger that had been simmering under the pilsners on Sunday. "Where am I supposed to go? My tools are in that shed! My boat is behind the barn!"
The judge didn't look up from his ledger.
"Mr. Mercer, the county maintains forty-eight beds at the shelter on the lower road. If you find those accommodations unsatisfactory, I suggest you consult with your wife’s family, who seemed so eager to share your company on Sunday afternoon."
He flicked his finger toward the bailiff. "Next case. State versus Gidley."
We walked out into the limestone hall.
Lauren was sitting on the wooden bench outside the double doors, clutching a green vinyl purse against her stomach. Her mother-in-law, a thin woman with grey hair cut like a helmet and the hard, triangular jaw of the river Mercers, sat beside her, staring at the floor with total, unblinking hatred.
As I passed, Lauren stood up.
"Claire," she said.
I didn't stop. David Vance’s hand was under my elbow, guiding me toward the wide, granite steps that led to the square.
"Claire, the boat!" she shouted after me, her voice bouncing off the high, plaster ceiling. "He owes four thousand dollars on the trailer! If the bank takes it, his credit is gone!"
"His credit was gone when he hit her, Lauren," David Vance said without turning around.
The sun on the courthouse steps was bright enough to burn the eyes. Down on the square, the traffic was moving around the statue of the Confederate infantryman—pickups from the mill, delivery vans from the pharmaceutical plant, old women with canvas totes going into the five-and-dime.
The world was entirely indifferent to the fact that June Barrows’s granddaughters had torn their lives into two pieces on the limestone gravel.
"Come on," David said, leading me toward his sedan. "We have to go to the bank before the teller line closes."
May you like
"Why?"
"Because," David said, opening the door for me, "when a rat leaves a corn crib, he always tries to carry one last cob in his teeth. We’re going to make sure the crib is iron-bottomed."
