by Bill Hopkins
sweetie suffer any more trauma. The cop and the guard rushed Candy.
“Stop!” Father Mike said, “That’s an MP3 player.”
Rosswell swallowed hard and breathed deeply. “A what?” His voice screeched like a dry hinge on a heavy door.
Candy said, “It plays music downloaded off the Internet. I selected a lot of comforting New Age melodies for Tina.” She turned the thing on and stuck ear buds in Tina’s ears. Father Mike lifted Candy away from Tina. Candy left in the custody of Junior and the security guard. Father Mike and Priscilla followed them out of the room.
“Officer Fleming,” Rosswell hollered after him, “take her directly to Frizz.”
He said, “Not to worry, Judge.”
After everyone else left the room, Rosswell unplugged one of Tina’s ear buds and listened. Soft, tinkling noises, occasionally interrupted by a chord, joined random notes running up and down the scale. In the background, wind sighed. It didn’t sound like music, but it was better than rap. After he removed the second ear bud, he stuffed the thing in his pocket.
He’d give it to Ollie, who needed to hack the thing to make sure there were no terrorist secrets stuffed in it. Such as how to sneak a polycarbonate knife onto an airplane. Or stuff one under a judge’s couch.
Rosswell wanted Tina to perk up. Damn it, the anesthesia shouldn’t have knocked her down this long. It had been nearly 48 hours. There were, to Rosswell’s way of thinking, only three things that could be happening: First, Tina was sicker than anyone realized; or she was suffering a normal reaction to whatever anesthesia she’d gotten; or, number three, something else. The third possibility, he thought, made him feel paranoid.
Someone’s pumping her full of dope.
Tomorrow, he’d arm himself.
Chapter Seventeen
Thursday morning
After Rosswell and Ollie went through the breakfast buffet at Merc’s a couple of times, they tramped to the courthouse, where Rosswell unlocked the front door of the three-story brick building. The perpetual stink of the place greeted them. Although smoking had been banned several years ago, the wood of the building remained permanently stained a dirty brown from generations of tobacco clouds, and continued to release the soaked-in odors.
Rosswell was glad the courthouse was closed for the Hogfest, so he and Ollie could have a little privacy to discuss the case. They climbed the steps to the second floor courtroom where Rosswell clicked on the brass chandeliers. He shuffled—the activity lately generating muscle pain—to his chair on the high, old-fashioned bench. The bench and the paneling in the courtroom were dark, polished oak.
Rosswell nearly tripped over a wrinkle in the carpeting. I feel like death walked me home from the dance. Placing his hand on the paneling to brace himself, he winced at the state seal hanging on the wall behind the chair. The defective thing never failed to irritate him. Some illiterate craftsman cast it in plaster before World War II. The date of Missouri’s admission to the Union, written in Roman numerals as MDCCXX (1720), was wrong. The correct date was MDCCCXX (1820). A word in the motto was misspelled, reading, “United We Stand, Divied We Fall.” Early in his career, he’d offered to buy a new, correct seal for the county and pay for it himself. There was a fancy copper style he’d found in a catalog. The descendants of the original craftsman pitched a hissy fit at the thought of replacing the old seal. Fearing the loss of votes, Rosswell dropped the matter. He understood that you don’t irritate voters, especially if they were taxpayers.
Now, something else bothered Rosswell. “I’ve viewed every inch of this courtroom for years, yet I wonder how much of it I’ve really seen.” He pointed to the tin ceiling. “For example, what ran through the mind of the guy who designed those weird curlicues in that tin? No one can tell what that stuff’s supposed to be. They’re random patterns dreamed up by a fellow who made tin ceilings. They’re meaningless.”
Ollie peered at the ceiling for a moment. “It’s the beveled clover and thorns design. A similar design was popular during medieval times on the plaster works in the great houses and castles around Oxford, England.”
By now, Rosswell was beyond amazement at Ollie’s vast knowledge of obscure facts. That Ollie knew arcane trivia was why Rosswell had hired the mouse as his snitch. Sometimes an obscure fact is a key to a riddle.
Rosswell said, “My thoughts exactly.”
I can’t see any damned clover and thorns on the ceiling, much less any that were beveled, whatever the hell that means.
“Interesting, Judge. Have I caused you to think?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, you have.”
“We didn’t come up here to talk about tin ceilings.”
“That’s not my point.”
“Is it that crappy seal with the mistakes on it?”
“Ollie, listen.” Rosswell paced behind the bench. The space there afforded little room for a major pacing. He did his best in the cramped area with a minor pacing. “I came on the death scene first. I saw it before anyone else did.”
Something sticky glommed onto the bottom of Rosswell’s shoe. The janitorial service in the courthouse had gone to hell.
Ollie said, “Besides the killer.”
“Or killers.”
Whatever it was on the bottom of Rosswell’s shoe smelled of wintergreen. Ollie said, “Or killers. Plural. I know we haven’t established how many bad guys or girls there were.”
“That’s what bothers me.”
A muted thumping began. The courthouse air-conditioning unit ranked down there with Frizz’s system. Mildew scented air oozed from the registers.
Ollie said, “You lost me.”
“I saw something or smelled something or heard something or felt something out there that I can’t recall.”
Scratching his mustache, Rosswell found that the scrawny thing had trapped a crumb of something that he flicked onto the floor, which didn’t smell all that good since the carpet hadn’t been vacuumed in two or three weeks. Budget cuts.
Ollie said, “How do you know you can’t remember something, if you don’t recall knowing it in the first place?”
“When I was studying the bodies before anyone else got there, I noticed something that was strange.”
“What?”
“If I knew, I’d tell you. But I keep thinking that it’s important.”
“Two corpses in a picnic area is strange. And important.”
“Yes.” Rosswell scratched his mustache, took his glasses off, and then put them back on. Picking up a pencil, he beat a quick rhythm on the bench. “That’s strange, but something tickling my brain tells me that something about the bodies themselves was strange.”
Rosswell unlocked and slid open the drawer under the bench to reveal a box. He unlocked and lifted its lid, then laid his hand atop his sidearm, a Smith & Wesson 442 Airweight .38 Special. He withdrew its holster, stuck the gun in it, and shoved the holstered pistol in his pocket.
Ollie showed no surprise. “Do you know how to use that?” Maybe he thought every judge had a weapon handy when holding court.
“I didn’t want a gun,” Rosswell said. “I had enough of firearms in the military. In fact, I earned the expert badge.”
“You’re a sharpshooter?”
“You’re not listening, Ollie. I said I was an expert. Pistol and rifle. Sharpshooter is the middle, marksman at the bottom. I was at the top.”
“I hate it when you know something I don’t.”
“Frizz insisted I buy the weapon. I stored it on the bench in case there was ever some kind of desperate problem in the courtroom.”
“A problem in the courtroom requiring a gun to solve it?” Ollie bowed his head, as if in prayer. However, it wasn’t prayer. A bad thought must’ve struck him. “You mean that you had access to that gun every time I came before you?”
“Yes.” His head was still bowed.
“I’m proud I behaved myself.”
“I came close to shooting you between the eyes a couple of times.” Ollie
jerked his head up.
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s hilarious.”
Ollie rubbed his head and pouted. Rosswell loved it when he made Ollie pout.
Ollie said, “What the hell did you see? Or smell? Or taste? Or hear?”
“You mean out at the park?”
“You’re as dense as Nordic bread.”
“I certainly didn’t taste anything out there.” Rosswell again pawed at his mustache and adjusted his glasses. Neither action helped him think. “I give up.”
“No.”
“No, what?”
“You can’t give up. Think! What was there that you can’t remember?”
“Can you hypnotize me?”
Ollie squeaked. The mouse noise verged on pushing Rosswell to commit physical harm on his snitch. Ollie said, “Hypnotism’s a bunch of unadulterated bullshit.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about that phrase.”
“Which one?”
“Unadulterated bullshit. Is there such a thing as adulterated bullshit?”
“Unadulterated bullshit is pure bullshit, just like the bullshit you tasted out there at the park.”
“I didn’t taste anything,” Rosswell said. “I smelled the worst smell a human can smell. I didn’t feel anything. It was quiet so I didn’t hear anything. It must’ve been something I saw, but I don’t know what it was.”
After double checking the gun to assure himself it was fully loaded, Rosswell scooped up a handful of cartridges, each feeling a little greasy, smelling of gun oil, and stuffed them into his pocket.
“Let’s go,” Rosswell said. “The next time anyone comes after me, I’ll be ready.”
“You could take