High Country Fall

CHAPTER 5

Neither twin made it up before time for me to leave next morning. I rapped on the door of one bedroom and stuck my head in. The face beneath purple hair blinked at me groggily, rolled over to tilt the bedside clock so she could read it, then moaned, “Just another half-hour, okay?” and pulled the quilt back over her bare shoulders.

“Will I see y’all again before the end of the week?” I asked.

“Mmmff,” was my only answer.

Happily it was none of my business whether or not they got to class on time.

With my judicial robe slung over one arm and the strap of my laptop looped over the other shoulder, I let myself out into a fall morning so picture perfect it had probably been ordered up by the Cedar Gap Chamber of Commerce: turquoise blue sky, one puffy white cloud, and a bit of a breeze so that brown, gold, and orange leaves floated down and swirled around my feet as I crossed the drive. The air smelled fresher and cleaner than the fusty humid air I’d left in Colleton County and its slight nip of fall encouraged me to walk briskly down the steps to Main Street. I was feeling virtuous as hell by the time I reached the courthouse.

The Lafayette County Clerk of Court wasn’t around at the moment, but someone in her office had been watching for me.

“Judge Knott? I’m Mary Kay Kare,” said the woman, who looked to be about ten or twelve years older than me. “I’ll be clerking for you this week.” Short and blond, she wore a bright yellow cardigan over black slacks and a white shirt, with a string of purple beads around her neck.

“Is it Mrs. Kare or Ms.?”

“Well, it’s Mrs., but you can just call me Mary Kay.” She was as cheerful as sunshine as she handed me the day’s calendar. “Is there anything else you need?”

“A cup of coffee?” I said hopefully.

“Already waiting for you,” she said, beaming as she led me downstairs.

Most courthouses are built up. Lafayette County’s was built down. Entering at street level got you the usual Register of Deeds, Board of Elections, Clerk of Court, and so on, then the building literally went downhill from there. The lobby outside the two courtrooms on the level below had floor-to-ceiling glass walls that overlooked breathtaking vistas.

The bottom level housed the sheriff’s department and county jail, Mrs. Kare told me.

I followed her through a door marked “Official Personnel Only” and down a hallway to an office behind the courtroom I’d be using. An insulated carafe sat on the desk with a business-size mug. “Judge Rawlings drinks coffee all day long, so we’re in the habit of keeping it full for him.”

She pointed to a tiny refrigerator built into a low bookcase. “There’s half-and-half, if you use it.”

“I don’t, but thanks.” A photograph of a chubby middle-aged white man and an equally chubby woman and boy stood on the desk. I thought he looked familiar from various conferences we’d probably attended together, but he wasn’t someone I could say I knew. “Is that Judge Rawlings?”

She nodded and her blue eyes misted over. “Bless his heart, this is the first vacation he’s taken since his wife and son died.”

“Died?” Startled, I looked again at the photograph, my automatic condescension washed away by the tears in Mary Kay Kare’s eyes. Yes, it was a picture of three Teletubbies, but from the way the two adults smiled at each other, the photographer had also captured an aura of love that seemed to wreathe them.

“She was broadsided by a drunk driver two years ago, taking their boy to Little League practice. Guy ran the stop sign. Both of ’em were wearing seat belts, but they were still killed instantly.”

“What about the driver?”

“Barely scratched. He’d been cited before, though, so this time it was prosecuted as vehicular homicide and he’ll be in prison another few years. What made it so bad for Judge Rawlings is that he’s the one that turned the kid loose with community service the last time he was up for DWI. Felt sorry for him. Two weeks later—”

It’s a judge’s worst nightmare in these days of budget deficits that spawn overcrowded penal institutions and overextended substance abuse programs: balancing the need to protect the community with the need to believe that offenders can reform themselves before they hurt someone else. Rawlings must have spent the last two years replaying his courtroom decision a million times, begging God for just one do-over.

I’ve been there. I know. God doesn’t bargain and He doesn’t give do-overs.

According to Mary Kay, I was the only judge hearing cases here today. The calendar held the usual Monday morning assortment of DWIs, assaults, and simple possession of marijuana or drug paraphernalia. From the coast to the mountains, it’s the same predictable catalog of minor sins, and when I looked out over the people sitting there on the benches in front of me, it was the same panoply of wary, embarrassed, defiant, or defeated faces, although … ?

There was something different about this group, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Was it the assistant DA? Most ADAs are young men or women at the beginning of their careers. William Deeck had to be at least fifty and his rumpled blue suit was that of a man who didn’t care about looks or labels. He sounded cranky and his facial expression struck me as dour when he stood to call the first case, but I soon realized that there was a twinkle behind his rimless glasses and that he had an exceedingly dry wit. More to the point, he was efficient and single-minded, presenting the state’s cases so concisely that we had cleared more than half the day’s calendar before the morning break.

I was congratulating myself on probably getting through before three o’clock, when I noticed that the courtroom was starting to fill back up again.

I leaned over and got Mary Kay’s attention. “Are there add-ons I don’t know about?”

She frowned and hastily rechecked the calendar. “Oh, gosh, yes! A probable cause hearing’s scheduled for this morning. I’m so sorry, I don’t know how I could have left that off. Oh, gosh!”

“It’s okay,” I soothed and turned my attention back to the DA, who said, “Call Dava Edwards Triplett.”

An elderly attorney stood up and gestured to someone at the back of the courtroom. “Come on up, Dava.”

A rabbity-looking white woman with lank blond hair and a gray pallor to her skin came forward and stood beside the attorney at the defense table, and that’s when I finally realized that not a single person in this court today was black. Nor did I remember seeing any people of color on Cedar Gap’s crowded sidewalks yesterday.

I’d heard that there were very few African-Americans in this part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and here was confirmation. Although Latinos and Asians are filtering in, the population is still mostly white, still mostly Protestant, and the perception, deserved or not, is that bigotry is alive and well up in the hollows. The mountains have a history of harboring white supremacists and paramilitary separatists—look how bomber Eric Rudolph hid himself from FBI agents and bounty hunters alike for five years down in Cherokee County. More than one fundamentalist, conservative cult flourishes throughout Appalachia, although up in Watauga County there’s a seven-thousand-acre transcendental meditation center founded by the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, so maybe that particular stereotype is breaking down?

“Your Honor,” said the DA, “Mrs. Triplett is charged with carrying a concealed weapon.”

“How do you plead?” I asked the woman.

“Not guilty, ma’am.”

“Proceed,” I told the DA.

“Call Detective Fletcher.”

The detective was of medium height and weight. Sandy brown hair thinning at the temples; neatly dressed in dark sports jacket, khaki pants, shirt, and blue tie. He came to the witness stand, placed his hand on the Bible, and swore to tell the truth.

“State your name and occupation.”

“Glenn Fletcher. I’ve been a detective with the Lafayette Sheriff’s Department for eight years now.”

“And where were you on the afternoon of September twenty-fourth?”

“At the home of Mrs. Dava Triplett up near the end of Little Carlton Road.”

“Why were you there?”

“We had been told that Mrs. Triplett was running a meth lab and we went up to ask her about it.”

“Objection, Your Honor. Hearsay,” said defense counsel.

Evidently, he was one of those who thought that every repeated conversation needed an objection, whether or not it pertained to the charges.

“Overruled,” I said.

“Did anyone else go there with you?” asked the DA.

“Yes, sir. Sheriff Horton, Officers McKinley and Adams, and Agent Forrester of the SBI.”

“Describe what happened when you got there.”

“We knocked on the door, but the house appeared to be empty and there were no cars in the yard. While we were deciding how to proceed, we saw Mrs. Triplett’s car slow down like she was going to turn in and then she must’ve seen us and changed her mind—”

“Objection,” said defense counsel. “Calls for an unwarranted conclusion by the witness.”

“Sustained,” I said.

“What did you see Mrs. Triplett do?” the DA asked.

“I observed her as she drove past her driveway, up to the end of the road, where she turned around and started back down, so I went out and waved to her to stop.”

“And did she?”

“Yes, sir. I identified myself and asked her if she was Dava Triplett. She replied that she was and asked if I wanted to see her driver’s license. She started to reach over for her purse—”

“Objection. Conclusion.”

“Overruled.”

“—and I told her to keep her hands on the steering wheel.”

“Then what happened?”

“I asked her if she had any weapons in the car?”

“What was her response?”

“She said she had a handgun, so I asked her to step out of the car and put her hands on the roof.”

“Then what happened?”

“I asked her where the gun was and she said it was on the seat. I found it down in the crack between the seat and the back, completely covered by her purse. It was a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol with a fully loaded magazine.”

“You then placed her under arrest?

“Yes, sir.”

“No further questions.”

Defense counsel stood. His hair was white, his shoulders slightly stooped, but his voice was strong and confident. “Detective Fletcher, you said that the sheriff’s department had been told that Mrs. Triplett was running a meth lab. Was it her ex-boyfriend that told y’all that?”

“I wasn’t the one who spoke to the informant, sir, so I don’t know.”

“You do know, do you not, that he was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia the day before you went out to Mrs. Triplett’s house?”

“Objection,” said the DA. “Irrelevant.”

“Sustained,” I said.

“What was Mrs. Triplett’s behavior when you stopped her car? Was she defiant? Uncooperative?”

“No, sir. She was very cooperative.”

“You said you went up there to search her house. Did you in fact carry out that search?”

“We did.”

“What did you find?”

“We found four one-gallon jugs of antifreeze and three cans of lantern fuel in the garage and two brand-new Igloo coolers in the trunk of her car.”

“Those are items you might find in any garage in Lafayette County. What about all the essential items that go into furnishing a meth lab, Detective? Did you find a case of over-the-counter cold remedies in the house?”

“No, sir.”

“Plastic tubing? Clear glass containers? Excessive amounts of drain cleaners? Coffee filters stained red?”

“No, sir.”

“In short, all you found were jugs of antifreeze my client bought for her car because it has a leaky radiator and lantern fuel she keeps on hand for when the power goes out. Is that correct?”

“And the two new coolers,” the detective said doggedly.

We’re all educated these days on what it takes to cook up a batch of methamphetamine, and this woman might well have planned to start her own kitchen lab, a serious problem out here in these hills; but if she’d been at it before, the house would have smelled like the worst litterbox in the world and fumes would have so permeated curtains, carpets, and furniture that air fresheners and window fans would barely dent it. The point was moot though since Mrs. Triplett had not been charged with making meth. She was charged with concealing a weapon.

“Is it not a fact, Detective Fletcher, that when you first stopped Mrs. Triplett and looked through the open window, you actually saw her gun on the seat beside her in plain sight?”

“No, sir.”

“Didn’t the so-called concealment occur when she tried to extract her driver’s license from her pocketbook and inadvertently covered the gun with her pocketbook at that point?”

“No, sir. It was over the gun and the gun was pushed down in the crack of the seat so that only the edge of the handle was visible when I lifted the purse.”

“Sheriff Horton, two other officers of your department and an SBI agent were standing in Mrs. Triplett’s yard. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Were any of them with you at the car when you found the gun?”

“Sheriff Horton came over when he saw her step out of the car, but I had already found the gun by the time he got there.”

“So none of your colleagues can corroborate your story?”

“No, sir, not really.”

“When did you officially place my client under arrest? As soon as you found the gun or after you didn’t find a meth lab?”

“Objection,” said the DA. “Irrelevant.”

“Overruled,” I said. “The witness will answer.”

“My colleagues were still searching the premises,” he said, which was probably technically truthful.

“And just for the record, was Mrs. Triplett’s gun properly registered and licensed?”

“Yessir.”

“No further questions.”

When Mrs. Triplett took the stand, she naturally testified to the same scenario her attorney had laid out: the gun was in plain view on the seat of the car until she unwittingly covered it with her pocketbook. “I never tried to hide it and I told him soon as he asked that I had it.” She looked up at me. “It’s a real rough neighborhood up there, ma’am. That’s why I keep my gun close at hand, right there beside me where anybody can see it and know I’m not afraid to use it if I have to.”

In the end, despite the physical signs on her body that she was a likely user, I was left with her word against that of a detective who was probably frustrated that they hadn’t found enough evidence to arrest her for the more serious charge.

Unfortunately for Detective Fletcher, wishing doesn’t make it so and there wasn’t enough evidence nor even simple corroboration. Had I heard this case two weeks ago, I might have given him the benefit of the doubt, but now that I’m engaged to a sheriff’s deputy, I know I’m going to have to lean over backward to keep my judgments fair and unbiased.

I nodded to the defense attorney and he and Mrs. Triplett stood to hear my decision.

“I find the defendant not guilty.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” she said, finally smiling.

“But in the future, Mrs. Triplett, I’d suggest that you keep your purse on the floor and your gun on the dashboard.”

“I surely will, ma’am.”

“At this time,” I said, “the court will recess for fifteen minutes.”

“All rise,” said the bailiff.