Hunter's Moon (31 page)

“Come on, Uncle Edward. You were probably in more danger in the mess hall in Korea than you were on my mom’s porch.” He paused, then added, “And if she’d wanted to hit you, she would have.”

At that, Edward smiled. “I guess she would have.”

As CJ left Edward to rejoin the other men, he thought he saw a curtain move in one of the living room windows.

“Uncle Edward said he was mistaken,” CJ said to Officer Hinkle. “Mom had the gun pointed up in the air when she shot.”

Hinkle opened his mouth and then shut it, then turned so that he could see Edward, who simply nodded.

CJ saw his father’s face turn a deep red. Stepping closer to him, CJ said, “I don’t think Uncle Edward’s going to play your little game anymore.” He didn’t wait for George to respond before returning his attention to Hinkle, who was wearing a smile now.

“There’s still the matter of discharging a firearm within the city limits,” Hinkle said.

“And what’s that? A misdemeanor?”

Hinkle nodded. “I’m still going to need her to come out of there. She did threaten an officer, after all.”

It was CJ’s turn to nod, after which he started for the house. By the time he got to the front door his mother had opened it a crack.

“Your father should just be glad he sent Edward,” was the first thing she said. “I wouldn’t have missed if he’d come himself.”

“Yeah, I mentioned that to Uncle Edward,” CJ said. He could barely see her through the cracked door, just a pair of eyes rimmed with red. “What were you thinking, Mom?”

“That it would feel really good to shoot him,” she answered.

She laughed, a short, sharp sound. She opened the door wider and peeked out, looking past CJ. “What kind of trouble am I in?”

“Not too much. Uncle Edward was kind enough to tell the police that you weren’t exactly shooting
at
him.”

“Good old Edward,” Dorothy said.

“But you have to come out, Mom. The officer’s going to have to write you a ticket.”

She looked surprised. “A ticket? That’s all?”

“That’s all. But you have to come out.”

Dorothy appeared to think about it for a moment, then shrugged and stepped onto the porch. She was wearing the same housecoat she’d worn the first time he saw her. She was about to follow CJ down the steps when she hesitated.

“Does he want me to bring the gun?” she asked CJ.

“I . . . I don’t know.” He turned to Officer Hinkle. “Should she bring the gun?” he called.

“Please,” Hinkle called back.

Dorothy ducked back inside and came out with the Winchester. In the sunlight it was obvious what a beautiful gun it had once been. Even now, with the significant water damage, it retained much of its beauty. He could understand why his father wanted it back. If it were CJ’s, and if Janet had it, he would have stolen it when he absconded with his dog.

Officer Hinkle put his hand on his holstered weapon as the pair approached, but he didn’t draw it. When CJ and Dorothy were close enough, she extended the gun butt first and he took it.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” Dorothy answered. Then, spotting Edward behind the Tahoe, she said, “Sorry, Edward.”

“Ms. Dotson, are you aware that city ordinances prohibit the discharge of a firearm within city limits?” Matt Hinkle asked.

“That has a familiar ring to it,” she conceded.

Her response pulled a smile from CJ, for there was something of the highbred woman in it—a woman who could gather up the tattered threads of her dignity to craft one appropriate bon mot.

Officer Hinkle caught his smile, and it might have been that which made him respond to Dorothy’s comment without wearing overbearing authority as a vest.

“Ms. Dotson, your neighbors are concerned—and rightfully so—about the danger posed by someone shooting a gun in the middle of a neighborhood.” He paused to see if his words were having the desired effect. Apparently he couldn’t get an accurate gauge because his next words took the form of an exasperated question. “What would have happened if there were children around when you shot at—” he stopped, looked first at CJ, then at Edward, who had stepped out from behind the Tahoe, before looking back at Dorothy—“at nothing in particular?”

“You’re absolutely right,” Dorothy said, lowering her eyes to some point just above Hinkle’s belt. “It won’t happen again, Officer. I promise.”

That seemed to satisfy him, but there was still protocol. “Ms. Dotson, I’m going to write you a ticket.”

“I suppose that’s only fair.”

Officer Hinkle pulled a ticket pad from his pocket and proceeded to write down the necessary information.

It was as Hinkle was preparing to tear off the ticket and hand it to his mother that CJ saw his father eyeing the gun. Later, when CJ was relaying the events of the day to Thoreau while administering a thorough ear scratching, he would recount this as the moment when everything went horribly wrong.

Before Hinkle could hand over the ticket, George said, “Officer, that’s my gun. If you look, you’ll see my name engraved on the butt plate. Mind if I just take it? Unless you have to hold it for evidence or something . . .”

Officer Matt Hinkle’s first mistake was, after a moment spent studying the engraving, agreeing with CJ’s father. His next was taking his eyes off of Dorothy as he extended the gun to her ex-husband.

By the time it was all over, the lights of two additional squad cars lit the neighborhood, Officer Hinkle was nursing a black eye the likes of which Sugar Ray might have administered, George had been felled by a brutal kick to the kneecap, and three officers had been required to wrestle a kicking and screaming Ms. Dotson into the back of a squad car.

As CJ watched the car holding his mother drive away up the street, the only sound beyond that of the rumbling engine was Uncle Edward, who said, “In Korea, we would have called your mom ‘unpredictable explosive ordnance.’ Which is why I’m standing over here.” With that, Edward removed a flask of something from his coat pocket, raised it in salute toward the receding squad car, and tipped it up.

CJ’s only response was to turn his back on the scene and walk to where Artie waited beside his idling truck.

Chapter 24

In spite of his having grown up in Adelia, CJ had never been in the courthouse before today. He’d never even had a speeding ticket—at least not one that required adjudication within the city limits. It surprised him how large it seemed once one was inside. From the outside, standing on the street and viewing the building, it didn’t look as if it could contain the area of the courtroom, not to mention the administrative offices, the few holding cells required for the more dangerous criminal element, and the small public break room at the end of the main lobby. What surprised him most, though, was that he and Julie were the only observers in the courtroom. CJ counted himself a member of the People’s Court generation, and although he knew better he couldn’t shake the image in his mind of a perpetually filled courtroom for every case brought before the judge.

A deputy had already led Dorothy in and it bothered CJ to see her handcuffed, but considering what damage she’d been able to inflict on several grown men, he couldn’t fault the jail personnel their caution.

The judge was an imposing-looking man, perhaps in his early sixties, and he had the kind of face that CJ couldn’t read. The name plaque identified him as the Honorable Jerome Butterfield, and this looked to be the first case heard today. The only other people in attendance were the county prosecutor and Officer Hinkle, in full uniform, on one side, and a public defender who sat with CJ’s mother.

The judge was reading through Dorothy’s case file, and while CJ could have imagined it, it seemed Judge Butterfield’s frown deepened the longer he read. When he finally looked up, he fixed an imperious eye on the defendant.

“Discharging a firearm within city limits; disturbing the peace; resisting arrest; assault on a police officer—Ms. Dotson, do you realize how serious these charges are?”

“I do, Your Honor,” Dorothy said. If nothing else, his mother was sober, but CJ was beginning to think that sobriety did not favor his mother. She looked older when not under the influence.

Judge Butterfield grunted and looked back down at the papers spread out in front of him. No one said anything as he read. When he looked up again, his eyes went to the prosecutor.

“What do you want to do here, Harold?”

The prosecutor, a man who appeared even older than the judge and who looked as if he could use a shave and a cup of very strong coffee, said, “We’d be happy with thirty days and a thousand dollars.”

“Thirty days?” CJ muttered to Julie, who shushed him.

But CJ had drawn the attention of the judge.

“Are you related to the defendant?” Butterfield asked.

“I’m her son, Your Honor.”

That seemed to pique the man’s interest.

“Ah, you must be the writer.”

“I
was
a writer, Your Honor. Right now I stock shelves.”

While CJ’s experience in front of a judge was limited, he was of the opinion that if you could make one smile, you were ahead of the game.

“What about you, Sam?” Butterfield said to Dorothy’s attorney.

CJ saw the public defender glance over at the prosecutor and understood that, in a town this small, these two had probably been working alongside and against each other for years. For all CJ knew they attended the same church and even played cards together. He wondered how a dynamic like that played itself out in a courtroom setting.

“Your Honor,” the public defender began, “Ms. Dotson has been the victim of a long period of domestic abuse, and I submit that this pattern of aggression by her ex-husband was the cause of my client’s actions.”

“You mean George Baxter made her shoot at someone and take a swing at a cop?” Butterfield asked with a disbelieving smile.

“In a manner of speaking,” the other man said, although he didn’t sound as convinced as CJ would have liked.

He looked over at Hinkle, who hadn’t said anything yet and who was studying the floor with an intensity the thing didn’t deserve.

Before the judge could say anything else, the courtroom door opened and all eyes turned to watch as Artie stepped in and made his way down the aisle, taking a seat behind CJ and Julie.

“Good morning, Artie,” Butterfield said.

“Jerry,” Artie returned.

The judge looked from Artie to CJ, then back at the older man. “Who’s watching the store?”

“No one,” Artie answered. “I closed for the morning.”

Judge Butterfield wasn’t the only one surprised by this news. From where CJ sat, he could see the expressions on the faces of most everyone in the courtroom, and it appeared the only one who didn’t react in some fashion was his mother.

“Twice in one week,” Butterfield commented.

“Just here to offer my support,” Artie said, but the shrug he gave signified discomfort.

CJ caught the slight smile that touched the corner of Dorothy’s lips.

Judge Butterfield grunted and turned his attention to Hinkle. “Officer Hinkle, can you speak to these charges? Perhaps help the court more clearly understand what happened that morning?”

Hinkle, who had been staring at the floor when the judge addressed him, looked up and the first pair of eyes he locked onto belonged to CJ. He didn’t say anything right away, but when he did he prefaced it with a furtive glance at the prosecutor sitting next to him.

“Your Honor,” Hinkle said, “I think this was just a big misunderstanding. I don’t think Ms. Dotson meant to hurt anyone.”

CJ didn’t know who looked more surprised—Butterfield or the two opposing attorneys.

“From what I understand, you and your fellow officers had to use quite a few ice packs as a result of this misunderstanding,” the judge said.

“Hazards of the job,” Hinkle said.

Less than ten minutes later, after Dorothy’s charges had been reduced to the original firearms violation, and after Artie, much to CJ’s surprise, had offered to pay the fine, CJ and Julie walked his mother to Julie’s car.

Speaking to CJ’s unasked question, Julie explained, “Artie and Judge Butterfield hunt together. They have for years.”

CJ was in the Honda, following Julie and his mother back to her house. He’d offered to drive his mother home, but Julie had said she wanted to, that she rarely got a chance to speak with Dorothy now that she didn’t attend all the family functions.

When they arrived at Dorothy’s house it was clear the morning was not to continue in the accommodating fashion in which it had begun.

“What’s that?” Julie asked CJ as they both exited their cars.

It seemed obvious to CJ. It was a trash bag. A large, black trash bag that had been ripped open and its contents scattered over the lawn. It looked like clothes, men’s clothes.

“Oh no,” he said, right before he heard his mother scream from inside the car.

Dorothy opened the car door mid-yell, which made the sound seem to double in volume.

Julie, who had no idea that the single ruptured clothes-filled trash bag undoubtedly signaled something much worse inside, looked first at Dorothy, whose scream had settled to something like a sob, and CJ, who was looking at the house as if it was some horrible accident.