Starvation Lake (29 page)

“What cruiser?”

“Spardell liked to have a brand-new patrol boat every few years. He had one locked into the budget that year, and he went down to Detroit for the boat show and picked out the model and the town council was just about to approve the purchase when Dingus says he wants to drag the lake.”

“Wait. Why was the town council buying a boat for the county sheriff?”

“Oh, they were always fighting about that back then. Now nobody’s got any money for a new cruiser. Anyway, the sheriff’s department did all the policing on the lake, so they insisted that the town pay for the boat.”

“And any dredging would have cost Spardell his cruiser.”

“Exactly. So that ended that. No body, no weapon, no motive. No murder charge.”

And no wonder Dingus had shut down the press conference when Joanie suggested he was incompetent. And fell to his knees that night at Walleye Lake. All these years, he’d been forced to live with the memory of a man he’d despised, who wouldn’t really be gone until someone solved his demise. The snowmobile washing up onshore had given him another chance to bury Jack Blackburn properly. But in a way, first he had to exhume him.

“Did Dingus consider quitting?” I said.

“No. What would he do? Dingus loved putting that silly uniform on every day. He also thought Spardell might be out of there soon enough, and he’d be sheriff. Of course old Jerry hung on just about forever.”

“I guess I should talk to him. Where is he now?”

“St. Michael’s.” The cemetery. “Lung cancer.”

“Oh. When did you and Dingus divorce?”

“In 1990. I couldn’t live with Dingus
and
Jack.”

“You know,” I said, “he keeps a picture of you in his office.”

She tried, without success, not to look surprised. “How is he?” she said.

“OK, I guess. He’s certainly getting out more than usual.”

She laughed. “Is he going to figure it out this time?”

“I’m sure he will before I do.”

We sat there for a minute in silence. Then Barbara said, “I’ve heard people saying Dingus is just stirring the pot. Even though I haven’t talked to him in God knows how long, I know that simply isn’t true.”

“I believe you,” I said, and I did.

   She walked me out to my truck. Barbara drew her arms around herself, shivering without a coat. “You seem like a nice man,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said. “I don’t know if you knew, but I played for Blackburn.”

“Hockey? Really? I never paid much attention. I’m sorry.” She looked inside Glen’s, then back at me. “Could I just say one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Dingus is a better man than Jack Blackburn ever was. You can quote me on that.”

I wrote it down when I got in my truck.

   Before going back to the
Pilot,
I went up to my apartment to call my attorney.

“Scott Trenton,” he answered.

“It’s Gus.”

I heard his chair creak. Then he said: “She called you a coward.”

“Excuse me?”

“Julia Hanover. She called you a coward. In front of everyone. ‘How can he just hide like this?’ she said. The Superior guys loved it.”

I looked out the window at the falling snow. “If it weren’t for me,” I said, “she wouldn’t even be in this position.”

“Don’t kid yourself, son. You don’t have a friend on either side of the courtroom anymore.”

“Reporters aren’t supposed to have friends.”

“Thanks for the totally useless information,” Trenton said. “Look. Those people are counting on you to help them get their settlement done now, before the appellate court rules.”

“Are you still going to be my lawyer?”

“With great reluctance. I’m sorry, Gus, but you ignore my calls, you blow off an absolutely crucial meeting, you don’t answer questions. If it wasn’t for that family, I’d be out of here, friend.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re not. But you will be if you don’t listen this time. I got your message, and I got you one more day. You have until noon tomorrow. Superior will seek a warrant for your arrest at one second after noon if they don’t have a name. They’re not screwing around, Gus.”

“Why do they care, Scott?”

“About the name? I have no idea. Maybe they think the guy leaked other sensitive stuff. Maybe they’re just messing with you. A bigger bunch of frigging pricks I have never met. They don’t even get along with one another.”

“How so?”

“The lawyers and the PR guys obviously aren’t on the same page. The lawyers seem pretty cocky about their chances for winning the appeal. But the PR guys want a settlement so they can have a big press conference and let the Hanovers tell the world what a wonderful frigging company Superior is.”

“Really?”

“Really. But get this—the big press conference could be as far it gets, because the PR guys are betting these class-action lawyers who have filed their own lawsuit out in Philly will come in and challenge the settlement because it isn’t enough.”

“Isn’t enough in attorney fees, you mean.”

“Precisely. It’s all about checks and balances. But mostly it’s about checks.”

“Those flacks must think they’re pretty clever.”

“Oh, yeah. Clever guys. Is it true what I’ve heard that a lot of PR types are former reporters? How does that happen?”

“It happens when a reporter wants to be able to buy a house and isn’t good-looking enough for TV.”

Trenton chuckled. “Not bad,” he said. “I’m due in court. Noon tomorrow, Gus. Any later and you’ll be wearing a baggy orange suit.”

   Downstairs I found Tillie leaning against her counter, smoking, riveted by the TV. Over her shoulder I saw Tawny Jane Reese standing in front of the courthouse steps. “…arraignment of Alden ‘Soupy’ Campbell, charged with the murder ten years ago of revered hockey coach Jack Blackburn. Judge Horace Gallagher has rejected Channel Eight’s request to place a camera in the courtroom, but we’ll be bringing you updates throughout the day in this shocking…”

Behind her, a line of people waiting to enter snaked up one side of the stairs and clustered at the courthouse doors, where sheriff’s Deputy Skip Catledge stood guard. County workers in dingy red coveralls spread rock salt on the steps, barely keeping pace with the falling snow. A short man the shape of a beer keg, wearing a fedora and sunglasses, with two cameras slung around his neck, appeared on the top step, puffing on a fat cigar. It was Delbert.

“Did he kick and scream about having to shoot Dingus?” I said.

“You were in the photo file, weren’t you?” she said, ignoring my question. “Didn’t I tell you to stay out of there? You’ll just mess it up.”

“I was just checking on—”

“I’m the only one here who has taken the time to understand the very peculiar way that Delbert keeps those files organized. I would appreciate it if you would do your job and let me do mine.”

“Sorry,” I said. “So what do you think?”

“About what?”

“Do you think Soupy did it?” I really didn’t care what she thought; she’d been behaving strangely, and I was more interested in seeing whether the question would upset her. She took a long drag on her cigarette and then stubbed it out. “I wish it all would just go away,” she said.

   Seven dead judges peered down on the packed courtroom of the Pine County Courthouse. The portraits hung on walls of polished walnut, circa 1950, rising two stories from shellacked wood floors to a ceiling of pressed tin. Beneath the paintings, townspeople filled every one of the fold-down wooden chairs in ten rows of wrought-iron frames. Elvis and the Audrey’s crowd took up two rows on the prosecution side, just behind Dingus, D’Alessio, and Darlene. Joanie sat across the aisle one row behind the defense table, scrawling notes. I squeezed next to Neil and Sally Pearson standing along the wall on the prosecution side. I scanned the room for my mother. I figured she’d be there, if not for the action then at least for the socializing. A bunch of her bingo partners were sitting in the back, but Mom was not among them.

The room was dead quiet. Atop his tall wooden bench, Judge Horace Gallagher sat reading a piece of paper. On the brown leather of his chair back was the familiar dark spot left by the Brylcreem he wore on his just-so silver hair. Soupy sat before him with his head bowed slightly, his uncuffed hands flat on the table. I couldn’t see his face for the blond locks drooping around it. He wore an orange jumpsuit inscribed Pine County Jail on the back in big black letters. His attorney, Terence Flapp, sat next to him, digging in a folder.

Soupy had pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. That was a bit of a surprise, or so thought Sally Pearson, the town florist who in a rushed whisper filled me in on what had transpired so far. Everyone had expected a first-degree charge, but Sally said the prosecutor had cited “mitigating circumstances,” as yet unspecified, that dictated the lesser charge. The assault charge against Teddy Boynton had been dropped. He was now fully awake and feeling somewhat better, despite a slight skull fracture, a broken jawbone, and thirty-six stitches. I didn’t mind hearing about the jaw.

The unpredictable was as integral to Judge Gallagher’s courtroom as the delicate shapes of roses he had personally carved into the front of his bench. He was a distinctive man in Starvation Lake. He did not smoke, drink, swear, or cavort with women, but somehow he had been married six times. All of his ex-wives still lived in town, and all still claimed to be fond of Horace Gallagher, despite their apparent inability to live with him. His house on Main Street, one of the oldest in Starvation, was furnished almost entirely with items he had procured at a rent-to-own store in Traverse City, items that he frequently swapped out for even newer items two or three times a year.

In thirty-two years as a county judge, Horace Gallagher had won a reputation for driving lawyers crazy with his inscrutable questions and head-shaking rulings. He had a habit of interrogating prosecutors and defense counsel alike, even at pretrial proceedings. He was known for ordering hearings moved outside on balmy days—“Let’s play hooky,” he’d say—where he’d then indulge his hobby of bird-watching by noting in the middle of a lawyer’s disquisition that a pileated woodpecker had landed in an oak behind Fortune Drug. (This practice finally came to a halt when the state judicial commission got wind of it.) Yet for all of his eccentricities, he was a judge’s judge. He frequently took months to issue decisions that would be so precise and legally airtight that he had been overturned on appeal only three times, and in one of the cases he was later upheld by the state supreme court.

Now he was about to consider whether to grant bail to Soupy. “OK,” he said, handing whatever he’d been reading to the court reporter sitting below his bench. He squinted at the prosecutor. “Bond, Miss Prosecutor?”

Eileen Martin stood at her table, tall and gawky and looking like she might tip over in her heels. Leave it to Soupy to be prosecuted by a woman he’d once dated, cheated on, and then christened “Rudder Lips” to her face one night at Enright’s in front of five or six of her friends.

“Your Honor,” she said. “The county believes the defendant, Mr. Campbell, poses an unusually high flight risk. He is an unstable man with a long record of unpredictable behavior, as suggested by his various drunken driving arrests, as well as incidents as recent as last night in which—”

Flapp stood. “Objection, Your Honor.”

“Sustained,” the judge said. Sitting back, he looked as neckless as a turtle in his billowing robes. “Confine yourself to the case at hand, Miss Martin.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” she said. “Your Honor, the prosecution urges that bond be denied altogether and Mr. Campbell be returned to the county jail until trial.”

As she was speaking, I noticed Peter Shipman, who had been Leo’s attorney, slip into the jury box and sit down, alone.

Judge Gallagher turned to Flapp. “Counselor?”

Flapp stood, even taller and gawkier than Eileen. “Your Honor,” he said, “I can understand the court’s reluctance to grant bond where there’s an allegation of second-degree murder. Of course we expect at trial to show that my client is innocent. But for now, I beg the court’s mercy. Mr. Campbell is in a precarious time as regards his business, the Starvation Lake Marina. As you may know, Your Honor, the county zoning board is preparing to render a decision that could have a profound effect on this business and, frankly, on the entire town. My client would like dispensation merely to put his affairs in order. We would request forty-eight hours, Your Honor.”

“You want your client freed for forty-eight hours, then he goes back to jail?” Gallagher said. It was an unusual request but, as Flapp well knew, Gallagher was an unusual judge.

“Yes.”

“Your Honor,” Eileen said. “This is preposterous. There is no legal—”

“One moment, Miss Martin,” the judge said. He leaned forward and a sliver of neck appeared. “Mr. Flapp, if we’re going to consider something so out of the ordinary, I think it fair to everyone involved to hear a little more about the charges. This is a hearing, after all. Would you have an objection to hearing the affidavit for the arrest warrant read, or at least parts of it?”

Flapp looked flummoxed. “Well, Your Honor—”

“What I’m thinking, Mr. Flapp, is that perhaps we’ll hear something that might make me more inclined to be, as you say, merciful. Or I can simply rule now, and on the basis of there being a murder charge, I can assure you that your client would be headed directly back to the pokey.”

“No objection, Your Honor.”

Eileen stepped to a lectern in front of the judge and removed a thin sheaf of papers from a file folder. She cleared her throat. Everyone in the gallery leaned slightly forward. This was why they’d stood in line.

“Your Honor,” Eileen said. She began to read aloud. “At approximately eleven thirty-five p.m. on the date in question, the decedent Blackburn was in the forest approximately five miles northwest of the town of Starvation Lake, Michgan. He and an acquaintance, Leo Redpath of Starvation Lake, had been riding snowmobiles. They had stopped in a clearing to build a bonfire. The decedent Blackburn and Redpath heard the sound of a snowmobile approaching. The snowmobile was being operated by the defendant Campbell. The defendant Campbell stopped the snowmobile in the proximity of the bonfire. He appeared to be intoxicated. The defendant Campbell and the decedent Blackburn exchanged words. The defendant Campbell became highly agitated and—”