The Hanging Judge (Nowhere, USA Book 4)

by Ninie Hammon

  Now, there was no denying it. He had written the first message on her kitchen blackboard yesterday and a second in stick-pins on Pete’s map this morning.

  She had kept it together rather well, she thought, was right proud of herself that she didn’t collapse in a puddle when Pete told her about it in the veterinary hospital parking lot.

  Your husband’s name wouldn’t happen to be Stuart, would it?

  And the word “Stuart” had gone off like a fifty-megaton nuclear warhead in her mind.

  She had tried to contribute in a meaningful way to all the conversation that followed, because it was important — a “breakthrough” for the Breakfast Club, whose members had banded together to try to solve the Jabberwock mystery before E.J. died of rabies … and before the monster absorbed everybody in the county. Getting some kind of communication from “the outside world,” even if it was in as bizarre a fashion as stickpins on a map, was huge.

  But that “huge” was a mouse among elephants compared to the revelation that Stuart really had come looking for Charlie.

  No doubt about it this time.

  He’d written his name in stickpins on Pete’s map, for crying out loud. It was real.

  And her response to that revelation somehow managed to be equal parts ecstasy and devastation. She didn’t want to care! She had put him out of her mind, had “divorced” herself from him emotionally in the days following the shattering discovery of the credit card statement and the phone call to Hawaii. She would have returned to Clarendon Hills after cleaning out her mother’s house to begin the legal side of that process. She hadn’t let herself consider that part, though, not yet.

  Perhaps it was because Charlie was a writer, was used to compartmentalizing the lives of several people in her head at the same time. Maybe that’s what made her able to take what had happened when she spoke to the desk clerk at the Oahu Marriott — “Mr. and Mrs. McClintock have already left” — and seal it away in its own little box. She fully intended to open up that box as soon as she got back home and when she did, she would have to confront Stuart. They would have to … what? Discuss it. Seriously? No, thank you very much, she had no intention of discussing anything. What they would have to do was start the arduous task of ripping apart their marriage.

  File divorce papers.

  Given that the person she’d be suing for divorce was an attorney, it could get ugly. And what about Merrie?

  But when she’d come home to Kentucky to sort out her mother’s belongings and straighten up the details of her life, she had stuffed all those considerations into the box and had given herself permission not to think about any of what lay ahead. One step at a time. Settle her mother’s affairs. Arrange for the sale of what it had taken her mother a lifetime to accumulate, belongings that didn’t mean anything to anybody but Sylvia Ryan. Charlie had even set up a time out there in the future when she would allow herself to consider what was about to happen next.

  Not until she’d boarded the plane in Lexington bound for O’Hare Airport in Chicago, had settled into her seat, had occupied Merrie with a coloring book, had accepted the obligatory soft drink and package of three peanuts — only then would she open up the box. Not until.

  She had made an emotional survival strategy much like that of Scarlett O’Hara. “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

  But then Jabberwock gobbled up all the tomorrows. The shiny mirage cinched tight around the county had stopped time. The Jabberwock had screwed all that to a tree.

  And in so doing, it had granted her a reprieve. During the strange time here in limbo, she had left the box where it sat, locked safely away in the back of her mind, a bomb that would destroy her whole world when she opened it. But just sitting there. Ticking.

  Then the old man with the shaggy beard had peered at her with kind eyes this morning.

  Your husband’s name wouldn’t happen to be Stuart, would it?

  And the contents of that box rumbled. Wile E. Coyote lights the fuse on a little black ball, drops it into a box and closes the lid and the explosion makes the box dance in place.

  The husband who had been playing bump and tickle with another woman on a beach in Hawaii … had come looking for Charlie.

  Stuart had come to Kentucky to find her.

  Why?

  What did he want?

  To tell her he wanted a divorce so he and Whateverhernamewas could live happily ever after? He could have done that on the phone. In fact, a message like that was much safer delivered from a distance.

  Then what did he want?

  She was spared the task of puzzling that out. Before the Breakfast Club members even left the breakroom, Raylynn poked her head in and announced, “I just got a call from my aunt. She said Viola Tackett’s at the courthouse about to start a trial.”

  “Trial?” Malachi asked.

  “She’s charged Dylan Shaw with murdering his grandmother, Martha Whittiker. And Viola’s going to be the judge … and the jury, too, I guess.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Viola tried to look like she was listening to that Shaw kid’s meandering tale of woe, how he hadn’t done nothing, didn’t kill his pore ol’ granny and didn’t know who did — with side rants about how he’d been treated by her boys, how Obie’d punched him in the face and blacked his eye and Neb’d kicked him when he fell down so hard in the back that he was peeing blood. Sniveling the whole time, snot running down his nose either because he was bawling or because he was coming down off crack and that’d make anybody’s nose run something fierce.

  And maybe he hadn’t killed her. Who knew? They was folks thought he did it and that was all that was important. And Viola’d planted folks at last night’s meeting to make it look like half the county was scared whoever killed Martha Whittiker was gonna sneak into their houses in the middle of the night and bash their heads in like he done hers.

  Didn’t matter who really had killed that poor old lady. Viola had caught Dylan Shaw and if he wasn’t the doer, well he’d just have to take one for the team, sacrifice himself for the greater good of Viola Tackett and her boys.

  He stood before her in the big county courtroom, where a big crowd was slowly beginning to gather, courtesy of Zach’s announcement on the phone tree. Not having no telephone herself, Viola only had a vague idea how that thing worked. Somebody called and give you a message, and you called other folks — something like that. The county meeting had been testimony to the fact the thing didn’t work perfect because wasn’t no way the whole county showed up. But this little event might be better attended. It was something folks would want to see.

  Hadn’t nobody shown up yet who was like to cause any trouble, though after Liam Montgomery got hisself shot at the meeting last night and she’d had no choice but to step forward and restore order, she suspected weren’t many left who’d give Viola Tackett any grief. Oh, there was folks who probably wasn’t going to like what was about to happen. Dylan Shaw’s mother had run off years ago and he didn’t have no people left here except the grandmother he either offed or didn’t.

  But they was others, folks of “high morals,” like that preacher Reverend Norman, whose face always looked so pinched he musta spent his life walking around with a wedgie. He’d been one of the first to show up at the courthouse, but he didn’t appear to be as interested in the goings on as he was in questioning everybody who came in. Seems he’d misplaced his daughter, the fat one who’d shown up in the Middle of Nowhere blind on J-Day. She hadn’t come home last night and sounded like he’d spent the whole night trying to find her.

  And Big Ed, a man who stood six-ten if he was a foot, a rival doper who didn’t give a rip about the Shaw kid but who would be liable to start trouble just because he was smart enough to figure out that once Viola was in charge, his little dope operation was toast.

  Mrs. Throckmorton, the crazy cat lady from the far side of Bishop Mountain who’d made it her life’s mission to provide a home for every litter of stray cats in every barn in the cou
nty was so softhearted she wouldn’t have approved of giving the kid a spanking. And they was others like her out there, just simple folks who “didn’t want no trouble,” wouldn’t want to see the violence they was about to witness but too gutless to try to put a stop to it.

  Viola sat up on that raised platform in the big judge’s chair, that she’d had to roll up all the way to the top to be tall enough so’s she could see out over that desk thing where they was supposed to be a gavel that she could bang to make people shut up and listen. Gavel was gone. So was the benches where the spectators was supposed to sit out behind that railing that separated them from the “officers of the county.” The prosecutor, county attorney, and the defense attorneys, sitting on opposite sides of the room. Least that’s the way it was the times she’d been in this courtroom, and that was more times than she liked to remember, there to get her boys or her crew out of one mess or another.

  Courthouse had been closed for years, but there had still been a functioning sheriff’s department, though how that was she couldn’t imagine, ‘less it was something paid for from all that grant money foundations and such was always throwing at the “poor folks” in the mountains. With the sheriff’s department in the basement, the rest of the courthouse was mostly let be. It was all empty, ‘course, all the offices, furniture was gone, drapes and curtains and shades took off the windows. But hadn’t been hardly any vandalism a’tall. And the things that couldn’t be picked up and moved — like the judge’s desk and that railing thing — they was still there. The benches, the prosecutor’s table and where the defense sat, the chairs for the jury — all that was gone. So was the little desk and chair where that court reporter sat — her name was Selma Spinnett and she’d clicked away at that little machine every day for forty years.

  She hadn’t never typed in the name of Viola Tackett, though. Not once. Viola’s record was squeaky clean as a newborn chick! She hadn’t never been caught doing nothing! Not in a whole lifetime spent on the wrong side of the law. Oh, she woulda been hauled into this courtroom in cuffs and then off to do time in the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Peewee Valley a dozen times over the years if one of hers had ever been willing to rat her out. And don’t think them prosecutors didn’t try to talk them into it — here and in Marion County, Nelson County, Harlan County and neighboring Beaufort, Crawford and Drayton counties. Once, her crew’d got caught and ended up in federal court in Lexington. But didn’t nobody ever point the finger at Viola. Not one of them, not a single time. They wasn’t a big bunch of folks — didn’t take a whole lot of people to work the business she run. They was a small crew but a mighty one and loyal to the bone.

  It put her in mind of what that circuit-riding preacher’d said in a sermon once when she was a kid, talking about Jesus’s disciples. He’d said the proof that they hadn’t made up their story about all the miracles He done was that they stuck to it to the end, ever last one of them, even when they was tortured and crucified and fed to lions and such. And she b’lieved that, b’lieved they hadn’t made the whole thing up, but the fact that they stuck to their stories wasn’t proof of that. That’s what loyal people done, they stuck to those they’s loyal to. Hers done the same for her, and because they did, they knew she’d look after their families while they’s away. She’d see to it there was food on the table and coats and shoes for the kids in the wintertime. She didn’t never let none of those that was loyal to her down, not in almost half a century of being in charge. And they knew it’d be the same now that she was in charge — really in charge, running the whole kit and caboodle all by her lonesome. They knew she’d look after them same’s she always done. So when she’d reached out to ‘em, said she was looking for Dylan Shaw, they rolled over and coughed him up quick.

  Now he was standing there looking up at her — that’s what that raised platform was for, so’s them as was accused of wrongdoing had to look up at the folks sitting in judgment. She’d long ago figured out that it was planned that way, psychological persuasion. It was all set up to let them on the wrong side of the law know they was outgunned from the git-go.

  Which put her in mind of that movie, Cool Hand Luke, the one with Paul Newman where he was on a prison farm but wouldn’t bow to authority or to the system … and consequently got the crap beat out of him over and over. Viola never seen that movie the way other folks did. They was all over the Paul Newman character, oohing and aahing over how … cool he was, admired his courage and what they called his “indominable” spirit. Viola thought that whole thing was a pile of the warm sticky stuff you found on the south side of a jackass heading north. Yeah he was brave, but he was way more stupid than brave. How dumb do you have to be to set yourself up on one side with a whole prison full of guards and a mean-as-a-snake warden on the other? All he got for his trouble was pain, prancing around all defiant-like, feeling superior to all the rest of the folks because he’d decided he just flat out was not going to play in their reindeer games.

  In the end, they killed him for it. What was the point in that? And them inmates talking about him after he was dead, exaggerating whatever he done until they made him into some kinda superhero. That was all well and good for that Dragline character who was so impressed by him. But Luke? Luke was a corpse moldering in a grave, worms a eating at his insides.

  And he picked it. Stuck his chest out like some kinda banty rooster and dared the rest of them to knock that stupid lopsided smile off’n his face.

  Idiot!

  Now if it’d been Viola, she’d a played the game a whole lot smarter. She’d a’seen what side her bread was buttered on quick. She’d a sucked up to that captain fella, woulda traded information for special privileges — decent food and a good bed, woulda rode out her sentence in the best circumstances possible. And she’d a walked outta there a free woman when she’d served her time — with time off for good behavior, of course. She’d a been out there smelling the roses and chasing butterflies or getting drunk or finding her a good man to shack up with for about a week to make up for all the time she’d gone without. She sure as Jackson wouldn’t a been dead.

  If they was anybody to be admired in that movie, it was the captain. He was just as determined as Luke, had the same kinda iron will. ‘Cept he started out on the winning side and he knew it. And he won. In the end it was him told them folks to drive Luke to the hospital “real slow,” so’s he’d have time to bleed to death on the way.

  It was him she was thinking about while the kid in front of her whined and sniveled and alternated between begging for mercy and claiming that he was innocent. Whiny, lowlife coward that he was, he was still like Cool Hand Luke in one respect. He didn’t get it. He was operating under the misapprehension that he had some say about what happened to him, that he could convince Viola Tackett he didn’t do it and then she’d say, “Oh, you’s innocent? Well, pardon me. I’m sorry I inconvenienced you like I done, sending my boys to dig you out from under that chicken house where you’s hiding.”

  He didn’t understand that his fate was sealed soon’s Viola settled on him to use as an example of her authority and absolute power. Soon’s she picked him, he was good as dead.

  When he shut up his whining to get a breath, she so wanted to say to him what that Captain had said to Luke, the line out of the movie everybody quoted. “What we got here is a failure to communicate.”

  She didn’t say it, though. He wouldn’t a got it. She’d just let him babble on for awhile ‘til there was a decent crowd of people in the courtroom. Soon’s there was, she’d come down on him with both feet.

  Chapter Twenty

  E.J. Stephenson had never dreamed the human body could endure the kind of agony he felt and survive. Surely the pain itself, regardless of the wound that had caused it, would be sufficient to cause death. E.J. could feel his screams making his throat raw and the sound was a vibration in his ears. But for some reason he couldn’t actually hear the sounds, just felt them.

  In his crazy reality of waking
dreams, he was both the man on the bed in agony, and an objective observer. Dr. Elijah Stephenson, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, LLC. The good doctor could no longer remember what the letters LLC stood for, but he could make accurate observations about the raving lunatic who was writhing in agony on the bed.

  The man was hot. Why? Did he have a fever? A fever was not a symptom of rabies and even if it were, he wouldn’t be developing symptoms yet. It would be several days yet — he was no longer sure how many — before the rabies virus began eating him alive from the inside, digesting the nuclei of his brain cells and reducing him to an unresponsive puddle of goo.

  Or making him violent. So he’d have to be chained up to keep him from hurting somebody.

  Oh dear holy God, what if he bit somebody and gave them rabies?

  The thought so totally horrified him that both the E.J. Stephensons were shocked into silence — the lunatic in agony and the clinical observer who’d been watching him. Both of them froze in place, then settled as one into the pain-wracked body on the bed, gasping for air.

  “Are you okay now? You were moaning and crying out, thrashing around.”

  Raylynn. It was Raylynn’s voice, but he’d never heard it sound like that before.

  Or had he? Had he heard her voice sound tender and caring and … loving — was that loving? — any number of times before but he had blown right by it. Why was it he was able to stop, absorb and appreciate it now when he’d never noticed?

  Maybe it was the dying. Dying, as he understood, did strange things to a person.

  He opened his eyes and Raylynn looked down at him, concern coupled with exhaustion stapled in a pleat between her eyebrows — that seemed to wing up at both ends, framing her startling gray eyes. Her eyes were arresting, set against her black skin. Stunning, really.

  “E.J.?”

  He hadn’t answered her, found that he was having difficulty forming coherent words that conveyed meaning from one human being to another.