A Specter of Justice (2 page)

“That's true. Directly from the house to my car which demonstrated to me how enraged he was. But when Mrs. Atwood placed the call to me, she left her cell phone on. That's how I heard her. Would you like me to repeat what she said?”

The defense attorney's face glowed like a stoplight. He'd made the rookie mistake of asking a question for which he assumed he knew the answer. In our depositions, Peterson had only asked about making the call, not when the call ended. When Hewitt learned that, he urged me to hold back the fact, and, for once, D.A. Carter was happy to take the advice of his old nemesis.

For a second, it appeared Peterson might choke on his tongue. To his credit, he took a deep breath, and then said, “That won't be necessary at this time. I'd rather hear the testimony from Mrs. Atwood herself.”

His sidestep was the best play he could make until he could regroup. He picked up a legal pad and studied it thoughtfully. I knew he was buying time to compose himself.

He dropped the pad. “Mr. Blackman, would you say Mr. Atwood saw your arrival at his home as a provocation?”

“I can't attest as to how he saw me. He became more enraged when I refused to leave.”

“You were clearly on his property, weren't you?”

“Yes, but I made no attempt to enter the house.”

“And it was only after you refused his order to get off his property that he retrieved the pistol, isn't that true?”

“That's correct.”

“And if you had obeyed his order, a police officer wouldn't have been accidentally wounded.”

“I'm under oath, sir,” I said. “I can't testify as to what might or might not have happened.”

“Come now, Mr. Blackman, don't you think if you had run back to your car and waited for the police, the situation wouldn't have escalated like it did?”

I hesitated. It would be a cheap shot, but Hewitt had instructed me to set it up if I could. Carter started to rise to object that the question asked for speculation, but I shook my head, signaling that I wanted to answer.

“I couldn't run, Mr. Peterson. I have only one leg. I lost the other one in Iraq. I have a good prosthesis, but it's not the same thing. I'm sure you understand.”

Tom Peterson froze. He was attacking the testimony of a wounded vet trying to protect a woman who was being beaten by her drunken husband. The damning photos were already etched in the minds of the jurors.

Tom Peterson might have been new to his profession, but he wasn't stupid. “I have no further questions.”

Carter stood and addressed the judge. “Redirect, your Honor?”

Judge Clemmons nodded. “Proceed.”

Carter smiled and I knew he appreciated why I'd gone off script and not mentioned my war injury earlier.

“Mr. Blackman, is it your opinion that if you had gone back to your car, Mr. Atwood would have continued assaulting his wife?”

“Objection,” Tom Peterson shouted. “Calls for speculation on the part of the witness.”

Carter stood as tall as he could, indignation on his face. “Your Honor, Mr. Peterson has certainly asked his share of questions requiring the speculation of this witness. Mr. Blackman is an experienced and highly decorated former U.S. Army investigator who has been in numerous situations similar to what he experienced at Mrs. Atwood's home. I'm asking the opinion of a trained law enforcement officer.”

“Objection overruled,” Clemmons said. He looked at me. “You may answer the question.”

Now it was my opportunity to turn toward the jury. “Without a doubt, I was afraid that if I left, Heather Atwood would face the wrath of an intoxicated man waving a pistol. And speculation or not, that pistol nearly killed someone.”

“No further questions,” Carter said. “Thank you, Mr. Blackman. And thank you for your service and for your sacrifice.”

Two days later, I was back in the courtroom. This time I sat directly behind Heather Atwood between Cory DeMille and Hewitt Donaldson. We'd been alerted that the jury had reached a verdict after only an hour's deliberation. Although I took it as a good sign, juries can be fickle. Nothing is a sure thing until the verdict is read.

Heather turned around. “What do you think?” she asked Hewitt.

“I think we trust our fellow citizens to provide justice.”

She looked at me.

“Clyde will never hurt you again,” I said.

Heather bit her lower lip and blinked back tears. “Thank you for what you said and did.”

I was saved from making protests of modesty by the arrival of the jury. As they filed in, I looked across the aisle. The row behind Clyde was empty as if no one wanted to be near him. The buddies present on the day of my testimony had disappeared. His parents were in the same spot on the second row and seemed to be sitting closer together. Mrs. Atwood clutched a lace handkerchief in her right fist and stared at her son. Clyde sat turned in his chair. He wasn't looking at the incoming jurors; he wasn't looking at his attorney. He was staring at Heather.

“Mr. Foreman, have you reached a verdict?” Judge Clemmons peered over his reading glasses at the lanky, retired business executive who had been elected by the other eleven.

The man stood. “We have, your Honor.”

The clerk took the verdict form from the foreman's outstretched hand and brought it to Clemmons. The judge studied it for a few moments.

“The verdict is in order.” He handed it to the clerk, who returned the form to the foreman.

“Will the defendant please rise,” Judge Clemmons ordered.

Clyde Atwood stood by his attorney. D.A. Carter also rose. Clemmons nodded to his clerk.

The man stepped back and cleared his throat. “On the count of felonious assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflicting serious injury, how do you find?”

The foreman kept his eyes straight ahead, ignoring everyone but the clerk. “We find the defendant guilty.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clyde Atwood stiffen.

The clerk continued. “On the count of assault and inflicting bodily harm, how do you find?”

This time the foreman cut his gaze to Atwood for the final pronouncement. “We find the defendant guilty.”

The verdicts on Carter's two indictments, one for the shooting of the police officer and the other for the beating of Heather Atwood, meant mandatory sentencing guidelines would send Clyde Atwood away for years. The shooting was the big verdict. Hewitt had been afraid the jury might break down over whether the pistol discharged by accident or was fired intentionally.

On the stand, Clyde had been a less than credible witness, and upon cross-examination, Carter managed to make him angry. The decision to have Clyde testify had backfired, although I doubted Tom Peterson had little choice in the matter. Clyde wanted to vent at what he saw was his unjust arrest, and with just a few character witnesses, the defense was doomed.

Judge Clemmons thanked the jurors for their service and ordered the court deputies to take Clyde away.

As he crossed in front of the bench, Clyde yelled at the judge, “I'll see you in hell for this.”

The deputies looked up at Clemmons, expecting a response. In that brief moment, Clyde wrestled free and grabbed the pistol from the duty belt of the deputy on his left. Then, instead of springing for the judge, he lunged toward the stunned spectators, pulling back the semi-automatic's slide to chamber a round. He fired point-blank at Heather. The shot sounded like a cannon. Then he aimed the pistol at me. A second shot erupted and the top of Clyde's forehead exploded, spewing blood and brains in the air.

Screams filled the room.

Hewitt shouted in my ear. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” I looked down at Heather lying on the floor in front of me. Her mother cried over the still body. I turned to Cory. She had sat down, her face turned up to me. Her lips moved and I read the single word, “Sam.”

A bright red stain was spreading across the front of her starched white blouse.

Chapter Two

On the first Monday afternoon in August, I was taking a nap on the leather sofa in our conference room when the office door opened. I sat up quickly, hoping I wasn't drooling.

Shirley stepped inside. “Sorry to interrupt. I can see you were deep in thought about one of your many cases.”

“Deductive reasoning,” I said.

“Hewitt does the same thing. He claims what sounds like snoring is his dynamo of a brain working.”

I waved for her to sit in one of the two matching leather chairs. “And you buy that?”

“I asked why I never hear that dynamo when his eyes are open.” Shirley glanced in Nakayla's office. “Where's your smarter partner?”

“She ran to the bank. I expect her back in a few minutes.”

Nakayla had actually gone to make a wire transfer from our offshore Cayman account to put a little more capital in our checking account in Asheville. Nakayla and I first met when her sister was murdered, and our pursuit of her killer had uncovered a fortune that was best left off our books. So, although we ran our detective agency as a professional operation, we had the luxury of taking only those cases we wanted to investigate.

“Were you looking for her?”

Shirley sat across from me. Her pale face softened, and I sensed she was turning off her rapier wit. “I have a favor to ask of her. Well, both of you actually.”

I leaned forward. I'd never seen Shirley so serious. “Sure, what is it?”

Her hands fidgeted in her lap. “You'll probably think it's stupid, but I believe it can make a lot of money.”

I didn't know where this was going. Was Shirley looking for investors in some side business? “Tell me what it is and I'll tell you if it's stupid.”

“We want to do a fundraiser for the Atwood twins.”

Two months had passed since the shooting in the courtroom left Heather and Clyde dead and turned the twin boys into orphans. The outpouring of sympathy had come from all corners of the city, but sympathy and cash donations are two different responses. Then, the custody battle Hewitt sought to avoid through Clyde's conviction returned with amplified animosity between the grandparents. Heather's mother, Helen Wilson, saw Clyde's parents as a dysfunctional couple whose childrearing practices created the man who slaughtered her daughter. Mrs. Wilson wasn't about to allow her grandchildren anywhere near them. The Atwoods considered Heather an ungrateful shrew who drove their son to the breaking point that absolved any responsibility he bore for his actions. They felt entitled to the boys as a replacement for their loss.

Helen Wilson had temporary custody. She was a widow with limited income, but Hewitt Donaldson had agreed to represent her. Tom Peterson had resigned his position as a public defender and taken the Atwoods as his first private client. Neither family had great financial resources and I wondered if this fundraiser was for Helen's legal expenses.

“The custody fight?” I asked.

Shirley drew back. “Oh, no. Hewitt's not charging Mrs. Wilson a dime. He feels an obligation to pursue the case for Heather's sake.”

“Who is we?”

“Cory and me. The doctors won't let her return to work for another two weeks and she can use the time for planning.”

Cory had undergone not one but two operations. The first had been an emergency procedure to stop the bleeding caused by the bullet ripping through her chest at an oblique angle. Forensic evidence determined that the shot that killed Heather also wounded Cory. As the second victim, she was struck by a mangled slug that nicked the aorta as well as damaged lung and muscle tissue before shattering her shoulder socket.

I survived unharmed because the second deputy had dropped to his knees and fired upwards into the back of Clyde's head, a quick-thinking maneuver that saved others from the bullet's exit trajectory.

“Is she coming back full time?” I asked.

Shirley shook her head. “A couple of weeks working from home and then half days at the office. She's anxious to return to work, but Hewitt insists she pace herself. Her arm's still in a sling from her last shoulder operation.”

Nakayla and I had visited Cory several times in the hospital. When Cory was discharged, Nakayla teamed with other friends of Cory to provide meals. And every morning, a delivery man brought fresh Starbuck's coffee and pastries, courtesy of Hewitt. He was particularly distraught because he thought the trial tricks we used on the defense attorney had contributed to Clyde's rage, especially since he targeted me as the victim of his second shot.

“So, what's the money for?” I asked.

“An educational trust fund. Cory thinks if we can get enough seed money, in fifteen years when the twins graduate from high school, there will be a nest egg large enough to send them to college.”

“Count us in. That doesn't sound stupid at all.”

Shirley bounced up and down on the chair cushion like a kid. “Thank you! Thank you! Cory will be so pleased. She didn't think you'd do it.”

“Of course, we'll do it. Why would she think otherwise?”

“Well, not everyone believes in the supernatural. Cory was afraid you wouldn't play your role with conviction like she said you did on the witness stand.”

The conversation had suddenly spun in a direction that left me adrift.

I made a stab at regaining my bearings. “This is the stupid part, right?”

The joy vanished from Shirley's chalk-white face. “You're backing out?”

“How can I back out when I don't even know what I'm in?”

“The ghost tour. You'll be a host on the ghost tour.”

I made a time-out signal. “You neglected to mention any ghost tour and it sounds pretty important. Why don't you fill in that little detail.”

She took a deep breath. “You know several companies conduct ghost tours through Asheville. Something for the tourists.”

“Nakayla and I went on one last year. A walking tour after dark. Yeah, it was fun.”

“Some are walking, others go in open-air buses and vans, and the guides spiel the history of who was killed where and what spirits have been reported. Well, Cory and I would like to do something more elaborate. Have some re-enactments and hosts at the various sites so there's not just one guy talking on a PA over traffic noise.”

“I'm not dressing up as a ghost, Shirley.”

“No one's asking you to. There's a difference between being a ghost and being a host.”

“It had better be more than the letter g.”

Shirley looked confused for a moment, and then laughed. “The letter g. That's a good one. Use it in your speech.”

“You need to finish your speech first.”

She stood and started pacing between the sofa and the chairs. “I've lined up people to play the ghost parts. I belong to a spiritualist group.”

“Really? You?”

She either missed or more likely ignored my sarcasm.

“Yes. The Asheville Apparitions. For about five years now. We meet every couple of months. Share articles and books of interest. Describe any paranormal activities we've experienced.”

“Working for Hewitt's got to be a paranormal activity.”

“I'm talking about out-of-your-body, not out-of-your mind.” She stopped pacing. “But Hewitt's all for this.”

“You had Cory ask him, didn't you?”

“Of course. Right now she can ask him anything. Hewitt suggests we do it in early fall when it starts getting dark earlier.”

“Aren't you going to be stepping on the toes of the other ghost tours?”

“Not really. We're only doing it one night, and we'll be selling sponsorships. That's where the real money comes from, not the ticket sales.”

“And you and Cory are organizing the event and lining up sponsors?”

“We'll have a steering committee. Mostly Asheville Apparitions, but we're looking for other volunteers. We'll need drivers and food preparers for snacks we can sell along the route.”

“Walking or riding?”

“Both. The tour will go for a couple of hours. We'll walk through central Asheville but then take buses to some sites too far to walk. That's where you come in.”

“I'm a bus driver?”

“No. You'll be the on-site storyteller. You've heard of Helen's Bridge, haven't you?”

“No. Does it have something to do with Helen Wilson?”

Shirley's eyes widened and she seemed to be peering into a different time zone, one measured in decades, not hours. “Maybe,” she said to the corner of the ceiling behind me. “They both lost their daughters.”

“Hello? Shirley? It's me. Sam. I'm down here.”

She blinked and stared at me as if I'd materialized out of thin air. “Very weird. I wouldn't have made that connection, Sam.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. Weird.”

“Helen's Bridge is up on Beaucatcher Mountain near where College Street ends. It's a stone arch bridge that once was a carriage road for the old Zealandia Mansion. College Street passes under it.”

“Is that the big house that's now the office of some online timeshare rental company?”

“Yes. But the bridge was reinforced and preserved by a special fund raised to protect it. The shock waves from the blasting for the I-240 loop around Asheville threatened to bring it crashing down if repairs weren't made.”

“I take it the bridge is old.”

“1909. Thomas Wolfe mentioned it in
Look Homeward, Angel
. How he would shout beneath it to hear the echo.”

“Did he call it Helen's Bridge?” I asked.

“Not that I remember.” Shirley returned to the leather chair across from me and sat. “The legend is a woman and her young daughter lived in a small house near the Zealandia Mansion. This was in the early nineteen hundreds. The mansion was unoccupied at the time, and the daughter would sneak inside to play. There was a fire in the house. Maybe the child was playing with matches, or it started from some other cause. Anyway, the girl died in the blaze. The mother was so distraught, she hanged herself from the bridge. Only her first name remains to tie her to the story. Helen.”

“And she haunts the bridge?”

Shirley nodded solemnly. “Yes. Not as a hanged woman, but as a mother desperately trying to find her child. The story is if you go up there at night under the bridge and call out three times, ‘Helen, come forth,' she will appear.”

“Have you seen her?” I asked.

“No. But I've felt the chill of her presence. I drove up alone and gave the summoning cry. The air temperature must have dropped ten degrees, and my car, which was idling, stalled. I managed to jumpstart it coasting down the mountain, and when I got home, do you know what I found on the hood?”

“A hangman's noose?”

“Don't be ridiculous. How could a hangman's noose stay on the hood of a car all the way down Beaucatcher Mountain?”

I felt defensive, even though the whole discussion was nonsense. “I don't know. It seems to fit your story.”

Shirley held up her hand. “A palm print. Not just surface grime but a discoloration of the paint itself.”

“Is it still there?”

“No. I totaled the car five years ago.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And every bit of the hood was dented except for that print.”

“Too bad she didn't run her hand over the entire car.”

Shirley stiffened. “Go ahead and laugh. Cory and I are just trying to help two little boys who've lost their parents.”

The rebuke stung. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make light of what you're doing. But really, is that the best use of time and resources? A ghost tour? It's not very dignified, given that Heather Atwood was murdered.”

“This isn't about dignity and it's not about murder. It's about raising the most money so that these kids have a decent shot at life. What do you think Heather would want? Dignity or her children taken care of?”

Heather Atwood's tearful face floated before my eyes. I heard my own voice—
Clyde will never hurt you again.
She took that as a promise, a promise I hadn't kept.

“Okay. I'm in. What do you need me to do?”

“Speak for Helen. Tell her story at the bridge. I'll give you the facts.”

Facts and a ghost story were an odd combination for a detective who makes his living collecting hard evidence. But, how difficult could it be to spin a yarn to a bunch of gullible ghost stalkers?

“And Nakayla?” I asked.

“I'm going to ask her to be the guide on one of the buses. If we have any problem, that's probably where it will occur. Nakayla thinks well on her feet.” Shirley swept her eyes along the length of the sofa. “Whereas you, by your own admission, think better lying down.” She stood. “I'd better let you get back to work.”

“So, what's the next step?”

“An organizational meeting. I was thinking we'd hold it at your place.”

“My place?”

“Sam, you live in an ancient, haunted hotel that was once a hospital and a mental institution. Where else would we meet to plan a ghost tour?”

***

The Kenilworth Inn stands on a hilltop overlooking Biltmore Village. The village had been constructed over a hundred years ago on the site of a little crossroads community called Best. I guess Best wasn't good enough because the man who purchased the property, George Vanderbilt, changed the name to match that of the spectacular estate he was creating.

The Kenilworth Inn, completed in 1891, predated Vanderbilt's summer home, Biltmore, by several years. In fact, the story goes that Vanderbilt was an investor and was particularly impressed that the Kenilworth had a bowling alley in the basement. So he had one installed in the basement of the Biltmore House.

The original inn burned in 1909, but it was rebuilt in the Tudor style in 1913. Its life alternated between stints as a grand hotel and as a military hospital during the two world wars. Later it was converted into a mental institution known as Appalachian Hall. In the late 1990s, a developer saved it from being razed and he converted the former hotel/hospital rooms into apartments. Each had a unique layout because of the challenge of working around the existing infrastructure.