A Clean Kill (7 page)

Bright blue skies belied near-freezing temperatures, but it felt good to get out of the house and drive through the countryside. After Joey and Loutie Blue left, I had piddled around, typed a few notes on my laptop, and made some lunch. By one o’clock, I couldn’t stand it any longer. Now I was heading north toward Bay Minette, the county seat, to talk with a friend at the courthouse. I knew that I was probably wasting my time, but I was out of the house. And I was doing
something
. Someone had tried to stop me. It was important to keep going.

I followed County Road 104 through Silverhill to Highway 59 and turned north. It was a workday, and I passed half a dozen log trucks and that many more refrigerated vans hauling seafood. Every few miles, an entrepreneur with a pickup truck had set up either a firewood or a Christmas-wreath stand by the side of the road. One old guy was selling both. I met two Volvos and one Jeep with Frazier firs roped to their roofs.

Around 2:30, I pulled Joey’s safari vehicle into a metered space next to the Bay Minette town square. Baldwin County long ago erected a gorgeous courthouse with character and architectural detail to burn; so, of course, they tore it down. Instead, I followed a concrete walkway to the side door of the kind of government building people build nowadays, which is to say square and ugly. Inside, I walked the familiar hallways of justice to the Office of the Clerk of the Court.

I had called ahead, and Janie—the clerk’s secretary—
greeted me by name. “Tom! What in the world happened to you?”

I’d forgotten the spiderweb of shallow cuts on my forehead. Apparently, the air bag had protected most of my face during the collision, but the Jeep’s windshield had splattered my crown and forehead with tiny glass projectiles. I smiled. “I ran my Jeep into a horse trough.”

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But you’re right. It was a terrible idea, especially for the Jeep. Is Curtis in?”

Janie stood and walked back to a door and leaned inside. “Curtis? Tom McInnes is here to see you. You got a minute?”

A booming voice said, “Sure I do. Tell him to come on in.”

Curtis Krait is one of those men who continues to insist in middle age that he wears a forty-regular suit, because that’s what he wore in college. Every time I saw him around the courthouse, I cringed at the sight of starched cotton digging into his neck and expensive wool suits that pulled and puckered across his expanding vanity. But it was a harmless vanity, to everyone except Curtis.

As I stepped into his office, I saw that Curtis had shed his coat, and the only apparent discomforts were the contrasting and painful-looking cinches at his neck and waist. The county court clerk stood and held out a soft brown hand. And I had to smile. Everyone likes Curtis. You can’t help it. He’s one of those natural political animals who radiate likability, even on those occasions when he’s otherwise irritating the hell out of you.

Following a few concerned questions about my encounter with a horse trough, we moved on to basic Southern pleasantries about each other’s jobs and families. I only had the former; Curtis had both. In the real South—which is to say, not Atlanta or South Florida—if you ever decide to skip the small talk and go straight to business, well, you’re just an asshole is what you are.

Finally, I got around to why I’d come. “Curtis, I’m trying to dig up information about a woman who was on jury duty here three weeks ago. It would have been the second week in November.”

Curtis squinted his eyes behind smudged, horn-rimmed glasses. “Does she have a complaint about something?”

“Well, she’s probably not real happy about being dead.”

“God, Tom.” Curtis chuckled, then said, “Oh! I bet you’re talking about that woman … What’s her name?”

“Baneberry.”

“Yeah, Kate Baneberry.” He reached up to push his glasses up the bridge of his nose. The round horn-rims immediately returned to half-mast. He seemed not to notice. “I remember her. I guess you’re working for the family.”

“Why would you remember one sick juror?”

“ ’Cause of the case. Don’t you know what case she was on?”

I shook my head and tried to look ashamed.

Curtis pushed at his glasses again. It was a nervous habit. “That was the Federal Life case. The plaintiffs got fourteen million dollars out of that thing.”

“Okay. Yeah, I remember seeing something about it in the paper. Bad faith.”

Curtis nodded. “Woman got most of her skin burned off in a car fire, and Federal wouldn’t pay.”

“Was she covered?”

He shrugged. “Who knows? The jury thought so. What’s going on here, Tom? Are you getting into plaintiff’s work?”

“No way. I’m just looking into Mrs. Baneberry’s death for a family member. And why I’m here is really kind of a long shot. It’s just that Kate Baneberry’s doctor told me that stress could have played a part in her death. Now that I know what case it was, I can see where she probably was under a lot more stress than she was used to.”

Curtis just nodded.

I studied his face. There was something there. “Curtis, you’ve got hundreds of jurors filing through here every week. Is there any
other
reason you remember Kate Baneberry?”

He folded his hands, formed an arrow with his index fingers and bumped it against his lips. He was thinking. I shut up and let him.

Finally, he said, “You quote me on this and I’ll tell people you’re a lying SOB.”

“Okay.”

“Tom, you know how bailiffs are. It’s a relatively boring job. Herding jurors around and fetching lunch, guarding folks who really don’t need to be guarded. Basically, it’s a lot of standing around waiting. So, they tend to entertain themselves by gossiping like a bunch of old biddies. And, since they’re stationed outside the jury room where they can hear most of what’s going on, they usually have plenty to gossip about.”

I nodded. Every lawyer knows that, if they like you,
bailiffs can be an invaluable source of information about which way a jury is leaning.

Curtis went on. “Well, when this Baneberry woman turned up dead, the bailiffs were laughing—well, not laughing, but you know what I mean. They were talking about it because they claimed Baneberry was the sole holdout on the jury.”

Now he had my attention. “You’re telling me that Kate Baneberry was the only juror standing between the plaintiff and fourteen million dollars?”

He laughed. “Worse than that. She was the only thing standing between Russell and Wagler and forty percent of fourteen million dollars.”

“What?”

Curtis got up and walked around me and closed the door. “I’m serious now. You going to keep this to yourself?”

I nodded.

“Well, the bailiffs were saying that, one other time about three months ago, a holdout juror on a Russell and Wagler case got sick and had to be replaced by an alternate. They claim that in that case too, after the sick juror left, the jury ended deliberations early and returned a plaintiff’s verdict.” Curtis reared back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “Tom, you know as well as I do that stuff like this gets better in the telling. But, true or not, it’s kind of getting to be a running joke around the courthouse. You know, stuff like Russell and Wagler should come with a surgeon general’s warning:
Disagreeing with this firm can be hazardous to your health
.”

“Do you think there’s anything to it? Other than gossip, I mean.”

“Tom.” His light-brown eyes scanned my face. “I
think it’s just a bunch of bored guys trying to stir up a new courthouse legend. I’m not taking it seriously, and you shouldn’t either.”

“It is interesting, though.”

Curtis nodded and his glasses slipped further down his nose.

“Who was lead counsel?”

“Chris Galerina was first chair for the plaintiff.” He pushed at his glasses. “Is any of this helpful?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Well, good, bad, or indifferent, that’s all I know. I’m sorry to rush you out, but I’ve got to get some work done.”

I stood to leave. Curtis followed me to the door and put his hand on my shoulder. “You owe me one.”

I opened the door and stepped out. “Any time I can help, Curtis. You know that.”

Curtis held my eyes. “I know. That’s why I’m talking to you.” He smiled and closed the door.

Whether it’s the Office of the Clerk of the Court of Baldwin County, Alabama, or the hallways of the U.S. Senate, politics is politics. Information is swapped for favors, and favors beget even better information. Curtis was good at it. He knew who to talk to, who to bullshit, and who to ignore. But he
still
talked when it suited his needs, which is precisely why I hadn’t told him that Jim Baneberry had now hired Russell & Wagler to bring suit in connection with a death that had already benefitted that firm to the tune of about six million dollars.

It was beginning to look as though—just maybe—Jim Baneberry had the fox guarding the henhouse, and I wondered if he knew it.

That evening, I was home by five. I was still too banged up to take a run, but a long walk along the shore helped work the kinks out of sore muscles.

A couple of neighbors had strung tiny white lights along the lengths of their docks. One had perched a Christmas tree on a small, free-floating platform in the bay and decorated its branches with strings of those big green, red, and blue bulbs you don’t see much anymore. As I turned onto the pathway to my back door, I was beginning to feel better—more than a little overwhelmed, but better.

I ordered Chinese from a new place in Fairhope.

After dinner, I was hunched over my laptop making notes on the meeting with Curtis when I sensed someone or something stirring in the shadows outside. Enough was enough. I retrieved a Browning nine-millimeter from the gun closet, flicked off the interior
lights, and stepped out into the cold December night, locking the door behind me.

Heavy cloud cover shrouded the moon as I moved through deep shadow, scanning the yard and beachfront for any hint of movement, for any unfamiliar form or sound. Vague, lavender-edged shapes floated across the sky. Leafless trees rustled in the frigid air. And I was in the mood to shoot something. But I could find nothing that needed shooting.

Still, when I finally stepped back inside the empty house, my heart raced. My fingers fumbled with nervous energy as I twisted the dead bolt into its slot. And the imagined shadow, the sense of unseen movement, remained.

I slept that night with pots and pans stacked in front of the doors. I scattered wadded newspapers in the hallway and on the floor around my bed. Then I burrowed deep inside cool sheets and beneath the down comforter, where I thought of how much more ingenious and streetwise the wadded-newspaper thing had sounded in
The Maltese Falcon
.

When I awoke, the house was just as I had left it. The shadow had disappeared with the night. I showered and dressed. I put away pans and stuffed newspapers into black plastic trash bags.

But outside, on the hood of Joey’s Land Rover, I discovered the rigid, furry-gray corpse of a squirrel. And sitting in that off-road tank, parked on my own driveway at nine o’clock on a bright December morning, I found myself hurrying to lock the doors.

By midmorning, I was in my Mobile office and had found refuge in the familiar comfort of my cracked-leather chair. Kelly had cleared my schedule following the wreck, so I had nothing much to do. And I found my thoughts consumed by echoing images of a deceased rodent.

Squirrels die. And, when they die, it’s not unheard of for them to seek out a warm place, like the hood of a car, to do it—especially on a cold December night. But I knew that wasn’t what had happened. I was certain that the tiny reminder of mortality on my hood wasn’t natural. And I knew it the way you know someone you’ve just met has had hair plugs or a boob job.

Human intervention leaves an imprint.

The squirrel’s rigid posture didn’t quite form to the hood; the tiny cadaver had been too perfectly centered between the spare tire and the windshield; and the glassy stare of its dead-rodent eyes was directed too precisely at the driver’s seat.

Someone—some subtle, intelligent asshole—wanted to either scare me off the case or split my attention. I was being discreetly violated—gingerly mind fucked—and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do about it. Calling the cops to report a dead squirrel would have been even more laughable than reporting a stack of furniture in my living room.

But what had I done instead? I had searched the beach with a loaded handgun. I had set the alarm. I had scattered kitchenware and reading materials throughout my house. It was embarrassing.

I glanced at my watch. It was close to eleven. I
needed something useful to do, something else to think about. I fetched a fresh mug of coffee and called Sheri Baneberry to set up a meeting.

She told me I couldn’t come to her place of business.

“I’ll wear a suit and everything.”

“My boss doesn’t like us taking care of personal business here in the office. I’ll come by your office at lunch, if that’s okay.”

I always prefer talking with clients and witnesses in their natural environs but, since I wasn’t given a choice, I told her that was fine. “By the way, what is it you do in that office where no one can come see you?”