Murder at the Courthouse

by A. H. Gabhart

Michael shook the thought away, tired of thinking about any of it. He wanted to push aside the memory of the surprised look on the dead man’s face as if his last thought was that this wasn’t supposed to happen. That’s how Michael felt. It wasn’t supposed to happen. Not in Hidden Springs.

  If only he could go back to yesterday when his biggest problem was figuring out who stole Bonnie Wireman’s laptop. He really hoped it wasn’t Anthony Blake.

  He liked Anthony in spite of the boy’s determined effort to keep him from it. What was it Buck had said about him? A hard-luck kid. That was true enough. Anytime there was a report of vandalism or petty theft, Anthony was first on everybody’s suspect list. But surely he had nothing to do with the man on the courthouse steps.

  Yet something bothered Michael about the way Anthony ducked out of sight when Michael spotted him. It was more than getting caught skipping school. Anthony would have simply dared Michael to do something about that, but this morning the boy hadn’t looked defiant. Rather he’d looked . . . Michael searched his mind for the right word and was surprised when it came to him. Confused. The boy looked confused.

  Michael carried the dishes to the sink. As he dumped them in, he caught sight of his own reflection in the kitchen window. Maybe when he’d thought Anthony looked confused, it was just his own expression reflecting back to him. Maybe murder was supposed to be confusing. Surprising, confusing, and frightening.

  Then again, could be the boy had seen something. If so, Michael would have to find out what. Tomorrow. Till then he’d put it out of his mind and call Karen.

  Karen did have questions, but when he didn’t have answers, she just said she’d pray for the victim’s family whoever they were. Then she talked about the play they planned to go see on Thursday night and if he’d be able to help with the youth picnic on Sunday.

  As they talked, he pictured her honey-brown hair hanging loosely over her shoulders. She’d have on her slightly ratty red warmups while she studied for her next sermon. Her Bible would be there beside her and she would be skimming Scripture verses or making notes as they talked. It was a talent of hers, being able to think about two things at once.

  Michael sometimes wished he could get all her attention, but even when they were alone together, she seemed to have some other thoughts in reserve that she wasn’t ready to share. He told her that once. She hadn’t denied it, but simply smiled a little sadly and insisted it was a fault they shared.

  Perhaps she was right. He was fond of Karen, but he shied away from any talk of love or marriage. She never spoke of anything more than friendship between them either. No strings. No demands. Just easy companionship for a dinner out or a movie. Yet it seemed possible they might eventually drift toward a more serious relationship the way the whole town seemed to think they should. All except Aunt Lindy.

  Later as the water flowed over Michael in the shower, he wondered if he should try to take that next step with Karen. After all, hadn’t he come back to Hidden Springs looking for the kind of settled happiness he remembered his mother and father having? Happiness had almost radiated from them. They were in love with each other. They were pleased with Michael for a son. They were content with their church and the church people who were the same as family to them. They were even happy with Aunt Lindy in spite of the way she tried to shake things up from time to time.

  She accused them of being afraid to try new things. She claimed that simply wrapping oneself in happiness could be mind-numbing. Michael’s father would smile at her and say there were worse things than being numb with happiness.

  As the steam rose around him, Michael began to feel a little numb himself. He twisted the hot water faucet off and let cold water dash him awake.

  His skin was still tingling when he went out on the deck, where the gentle sounds of the spring night surrounded him. With Jasper stretched out at his feet, Michael thought through what he knew about the murder, but nothing came one bit clearer. The victim was a John Doe. There were no suspects. No witnesses. No murder weapon. No leads.

  All he had were two people who hadn’t wanted to meet his eyes. By the time he and Jasper went inside, he was almost ready to believe the mob or maybe the CIA had done it. Never mind why they’d picked the Hidden Springs Courthouse steps to dump the body. That was one of those details regular folks ignored when they were working out their theories. Tonight he’d be a regular folk himself. Searching out answers that made sense could wait for morning.

  The next day Michael went through the back door into the courthouse the same as every morning. But this time he paused in the hallway to listen.

  In the sheriff’s office, Betty Jean was making coffee. The container made a thud when she put it back in the cabinet. The clerks in Neville Gravitt’s office were turning on their computers, electronic beeps signaling the beginning of the workday. A phone rang in the judge’s office, but no one was there yet to answer it. Somewhere in the back of the building, Roy’s keys jangled on his belt.

  Normal sounds. The same sounds he heard the morning before when a dead man was on the steps out front. Michael glanced at his watch and wondered if Miss Willadean would appear at the courthouse at nine sharp as usual. Of course after yesterday, she had probably taken to her bed with the vapors or was still on the telephone. Maybe both. Sixteen minutes from now, he’d at least know the answer to that particular question.

  Betty Jean looked up from her newspaper when Michael came through the door and nodded toward his desk. “Hank got the paper out early this morning, so I bought you a copy. It’s in the Eagleton News too, but just one paragraph, no pictures.”

  Michael unfolded the Hidden Springs Gazette and the black headline jumped out at him. BODY FOUND ON COURTHOUSE STEPS.

  Betty Jean put her copy down long enough to get a cup of coffee. “The picture of you is nice.” She peered at the paper as she sat back down. “Thank goodness I came back inside before Hank pointed that camera at me. I look like a cow in pictures.” Betty Jean took a sip of coffee. “But you look good. The way an officer of the law should look. Concerned, serious, in control.”

  Michael scanned the pictures on the front page. The biggest one was of the body being loaded into the hearse. Hank would get complaints about that. A hometown weekly paper was supposed to be different from the big-town dailies that might print that kind of thing. Then again, maybe this would be different since nobody knew the deceased.

  At the bottom of the page were a couple of smaller pictures. One showed Paul Osgood talking to Miss Willadean, and another caught Michael standing by the bloodstained post after the body had been taken away. The bloodstains looked like smudges of ink on the paper. The caption under the picture identified Michael as the first law officer on the scene. Michael studied his own face in the picture and tried to see the in-control look Betty Jean said he had, but all he could see was a baffled expression.

  He looked up from the paper. “Any new developments this morning? No new bodies on the steps?”

  “Nope. I peeked out there when I got here to be sure. Felt silly doing it, but I did it anyway.”

  “You probably weren’t the only one who looked.” Michael smiled a little, remembering his own urge to check out front. “Anything else?”

  “Nothing except Paul Osgood called a few minutes ago. Something about being sick. I don’t know. I never talk to him any longer than I have to.”

  “Paul’s not that bad,” Michael said.

  “You talk to him then.” Betty Jean turned back to her paper and coffee. “Boy, I sure could use a doughnut this morning.”

  “Go up to the Grill and get one. I’ll watch the office till you get back,” Michael offered innocently, as if he didn’t know Betty Jean was on one of her periodic diets, this time a little more seriously than usual because she was sure that the new teacher at the middle school would ask her out if only she were a little slimmer.

  Betty Jean glared at him. “Go soak your head in a bucket. Or better yet, call Paul Osgood up and find out his ma
rching orders for you today.” When she flipped open the newspaper, it crackled loudly. Then as quickly as she’d snapped at him, she was laughing. “Wait till you see the picture Hank put in here of Paul and Buck going at it. Sheriff Potter’s got a hand on each guy’s arm, and it looks like he’s barely preventing the second homicide of the day.”

  “Hank likes to stir things up. I don’t even want to read what he quotes us as saying. Worst thing about it, we probably said every word.” Michael skimmed the article, glad he spotted his name only a couple of times.

  “Oh, it’s not too bad. He just keeps harping on how nobody knows who, what, or why about any of it.”

  “Truth in journalism.” Michael turned over to the back page. “Great picture of Lester patrolling the police lines.”

  “I saw it. We won’t be able to live with him,” Betty Jean said.

  “It’ll make his day for sure.” Michael put the paper down. “Any other calls?”

  “Just Miss Willadean. She wants to know if it’s safe for her to come to the courthouse.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “What do you think? That the brave and mighty Deputy Sheriff Keane would be in soon, and she had absolutely nothing to fear.” Betty Jean lowered her paper and looked across at him, her eyes suddenly serious. “You don’t think she does, do you?”

  “Of course not,” Michael said quickly. “It’s probably the way Buck says. Some kind of domestic quarrel that just happened to come to a head here in Hidden Springs.”

  “On the courthouse steps?”

  “Maybe the wife decided on a more final separation. Who knows?”

  “Not you obviously.” Betty Jean turned her attention back to her paper.

  Michael looked at his watch. It was almost nine. “Did Miss Willadean buy it? Is she coming?”

  “I guess we’ll know in a few minutes,” Betty Jean answered without looking up.

  Michael picked up the phone and pressed the speed-dial button for the city police station. Chief Sibley said Paul had some kind of stomach bug and wasn’t able to come in to work. But if Michael had anything to report, he could call Paul at home.

  “He said not to worry about catching him at a bad time, if you know what I mean.” The chief laughed a little. “He’ll have his phone with him in the john. You have his number, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Just because he had the number didn’t mean he’d use it, but no need telling the chief that. “Did Paul get an ID on the guy?”

  “Not yet,” the chief said slowly. “Look, Michael, I don’t know how long Paul’s going to be, well, out of commission, so why don’t you just run things out of the sheriff’s office there till he gets back.”

  “If you say so, Chief, but don’t worry. We’ll keep Paul posted. You heard anything from Buck this morning?”

  “Buck isn’t gonna be reporting in to Paul.” Chief Sibley snorted. “You know that. He has his own way of doing things.”

  The Christian Church clock started chiming down the street as Michael put the phone down. Before two chimes sounded, Miss Willadean’s heels clicked through the front door. Betty Jean grinned over at Michael when Miss Willadean’s yoo-hoo to Neville at the county clerk’s office carried down the hall.

  Then the little lady came on back to step into their office and glare at Michael. She had on a lavender suit with a deep purple pillbox hat that had to be fifty years old, perched a bit haphazardly on her tightly curled hair.

  “Good morning, Miss Willadean,” Michael said. “Is everything all right today?”

  “No indeed, it’s not all right.” She pointed toward the front of the courthouse. “There are bloodstains on the post out front. It makes a person tremble to walk past it.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see if Roy can take care of that today.”

  “I should think so. What about you?” She sniffed loudly and gave her head a little shake. Her hat slid to the side. “You do know a murderer is on the loose.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We are aware of that.”

  “Well, isn’t it time you did something about it then?” She shoved her hat back in place, upsetting a few curls in the process. She turned her glare on Betty Jean. “Where is Sheriff Potter anyway?”

  “He’ll be in soon, Miss Willadean. Did you think of something else to tell him about what happened?” Betty Jean picked up a pen as though ready to take notes. Michael was impressed that she kept a smile off her face.

  “I have something to tell him all right. We elected him to keep the citizens of this county safe and not let people get shot on the courthouse steps.” She slid a purple-flowered handkerchief out of her pocket and touched her eyes. “Oh dear, I could hardly sleep last night thinking about that poor man.”

  She was still sniffling when Lester came in from his crossing guard duty and pushed in front of her to get to the supply cabinet. “Excuse me, Miss Willadean. I need to get some parking tickets.”

  “We don’t write parking tickets, Lester,” Michael said. “The city police do that.”

  “Well, I’m writing this one.” Lester kept digging around in the cabinet until he came up with a ticket book. “That car’s been there too long. And it’s not even a local car.”

  While Lester lacked a little in a lot of departments, he did know his cars. He kept up with what the townsfolk drove from stopping and waving them past at the school crossing.

  “What car?” Michael silently berated himself for not checking out the parking lot already. What did he think? The man had dropped out of the sky?

  “A Buick. Blue. The big model,” Lester said. “License number CDF-149.”

  “You’re right, Lester. Go on out and ticket it.” After Lester hurried back outside, Michael went around his desk to put an arm around Miss Willadean’s shoulders. “Now, Miss Willadean, I know how upset you are and with reason. But as you said, it’s time we got busy keeping the streets of Hidden Springs safe.”

  She blustered a little but allowed him to usher her out of the office. He watched her go up the hall, where she stopped to wave her hankie at poor Neville. Back in the office, Betty Jean ran the license plate number. It took only a few minutes to find out the car was registered to a Jay Rayburn of West Chester up in the northern part of the state.

  Out at the parking lot, Lester was sticking the ticket under one of the windshield wipers when Michael got there. The paper flapped a little in the breeze, a useless piece of paper. Nobody would ever collect this ticket.

  Michael tried the door and found it unlocked. Not only that, but the keys were pitched onto the floorboard. Obviously, the driver hadn’t been worried about crime in Hidden Springs. A fatal error on his part. The car smelled of fast-food fries and coffee. A few shirts and pants hung on a rack across the backseat and a duffel bag held underwear, socks, and a shaving kit. A pair of brown shoes were on the back floorboard. Several bundles of rubber-banded slick brochures with pictures of office printers on the front were stacked in the passenger-side front seat.

  The console had a supply of napkins, a couple of ink pens, and some CDs. Country music. No phone. If the man had a phone, and surely he did, the murderer must have taken it.

  Michael ran his hand under the seat and touched the wallet he hadn’t dared hope to find. He opened it and the dead man stared up at him from the driver’s license, but there was no surprise on his face in this picture. Just an ordinary guy with a smile.

  11

  After that, everything was almost too easy, and before noon, Michael knew not only who the victim was but a little something about him, even if he still didn’t know why he ended up dead on the courthouse steps.

  Jay Rayburn was a printer salesman and technician for TEKCO, a company based in Louisville. When Michael called the number on the back of the brochures in Rayburn’s car, the man’s supervisor made all the expected sounds of surprise, but he couldn’t really help Michael with much information. The supervisor had been with the company only a few months and hadn’t actually talked to Rayburn
face-to-face but twice. Rayburn was on the road most of the time. However, he could connect Michael with a secretary, Lisa Williams, who’d started with TEKCO about the same time as Jay Rayburn, some twenty years ago. He put Michael on hold while he broke the news about Jay’s death to the woman.

  At first the secretary was so shocked she only managed to squeak out the words that it couldn’t possibly be true. But after a few minutes, she regained enough composure to answer Michael’s questions.

  The next of kin was a daughter, Amy. Lisa Williams said the girl was married to a man named Cartwright, just like on that old television show Bonanza. That’s why she could remember the name. Jay himself was divorced. For ten years at least. Maybe longer. She couldn’t say for sure. Time went by so fast. His ex-wife had remarried after their divorce. Her name was Alice. Alice Hancock . . . Hansford. Something like that.

  The secretary didn’t have any idea where the ex-wife lived now. Jay had an apartment in West Chester, but he wasn’t there much. Always on the road. The daughter got married a few years ago, and Lisa Williams was pretty sure she lived in Cincinnati. There was also a son, Jimmy. The last time Jay mentioned him, the boy was out in California. Lisa Williams didn’t think Jay heard from him very often since he didn’t talk about him much.

  No, as far as she knew, Jay hadn’t been in a relationship with anybody. Of course, he was on the road practically all the time, but if he had a girlfriend, she didn’t know about it. She laughed when Michael asked if there was any kind of romantic entanglement between her and Rayburn. She let Michael know she’d been happily married for thirty-five years. Her laugh was clean and honest, with nothing hidden behind it.

  The laugh cut off abruptly as the woman remembered Jay Rayburn was dead. No, the company didn’t supply cell phones for their people. Part of their cost-cutting efforts. But yes, Jay did have one. She could give Michael the number. She thought it was the kind you bought with airtime loaded on it instead of one with a contract.

  When Michael asked if that was because the man didn’t have good credit, her voice became a shade cooler as she admitted that might have been the case. In the last few weeks, a few creditors had called the office in an attempt to track Jay down, but she was sure it was nothing major. Some shaky investments probably. Jay was always talking about someday striking it rich, but she figured that meant he was playing the lottery in some of the states he went through.