Chapter Three

Well, I'm slogging along tonight, bloody but unbowed. Thank you, everybody, for the encouraging words. I'm breaking every Nano rule in the book — Write Every Day, they say, Don't Revise, Don't Do Research, Don't Use Contractions ... and so on. Yup, I'm a rebel.

Meanwhile, here we are at Chapter Three. It only gets weirder.


CHAPTER THREE

GO TERRIERS

The wide, white-painted double doors on the other side of the antechamber stood open, framing the courtroom inside. Leda’s sneakers made no sound, but Luther’s footsteps tapped behind her on the hardwood floor, an oddly comforting sound. Light streamed in from two 8-foot windows on either side of a small, framed Michigan flag. The furnishings were spare, shiny and neutral: the walls were beige, the moldings were white, the floors, chairs and railings were light-colored wood. The paintings were small, dark and boring, carefully matted in identical frames.

Leda had only been there once. Before the whole Lesson Plan Debacle, Uncle Fred had taken her on a grand tour of Winslow historic sites: the Courthouse, the Train Depot, Winslow’s statue, the Kootchikoo River exhibit. Everyplace except the Goosey Mansion, where Uncle Fred wasn’t allowed any more after they caught him excavating in an upstairs bathroom during a Historical Society Tea.

The courthouse was as much a yawner as it was a year ago, with one rather large exception: Police tape was wrapped around the jury box and Chief Bronson himself was bent over it, taking pictures of something inside. The curved wood of the box’s spindly chairs looked like faces frowning in disapproval.

She wanted to look anywhere but inside the jury box, so she looked at the floor. Nothing to see, of course — the courtroom had no carpets, no cushions, no frosted lamps, nothing comfortable or welcoming. This was a serious place, a place of stern judgment, all smooth white plaster and faded 18th-century land deeds under glass. Uncle Fred had spent a lifetime preserving that world — how could such a life end in violence and despair?

Chief Bronson looked up from his clicking camera. He was a large, bluff, hearty man with a tanned face and a thick shock of white hair. In mid-October he was usually to be found in a tree north of town with his hunting bow. Once bowhunting season ended it was time for rifle hunting, then ice fishing, then bass fishing. Police business rarely interfered with his outdoor pursuits.

Except today. Bronson looked down at Leda from the step beside the witness box. Wrinkles creased his face from worry and fatigue. "Thank you for coming, Miss," he said. "Not much to look at, I'm afraid. Nasty scene, single gunshot wound.” He pointed to a bagged gun on a nearby podium. “A 4th-grade class from Goosey Elementary arrived for a field trip this morning. They found him.” Bronson, shook his head regretfully. “Too bad. I wanted to spare you, but Luther here insisted."

Leda cautiously approached the box and peered in. Uncle Fred lay doubled up on the floor, his eyeglasses crooked, his thin mouth pulled back in a grimace, revealing yellowy teeth. She couldn't see the wound, but telltale red stained the white paint of the box's interior and the neck of his light brown jacket below his straggly brown-gray hair. He needed a haircut. His hands were clasped as if in prayer.

She didn't remember falling, but suddenly she was sitting on the floor with her back against the box and Luther was giving her cold water in a tiny Dixie cup.

"What's the point of this?" Chief Bronson was asking testily. "It's as plain as day here. Why don't you take the poor girl home?"

"She’s all right," Luther said. "Miss, there's something we want you to look at."

"What, there's more?" she asked.

Kneeling before her, Luther held out a piece of white Winslow Historical Society stationary in a clear, gallon-sized Ziploc bag. "We found it on the chair next to him."

Leda sipped her water as she looked at the single page. At the top was the society’s elaborate, dark blue logo: A figure of Victory with her sword and scales surrounded by an outline of a simple pointed building (presumably the courthouse), all inside a large W.

Below that were a few handwritten lines in thick black ink. The words were written clearly, actually with almost picky care, like a schoolboy's handwriting practice. Every word was precisely spaced, with the tail of the letter "g" dangling exactly one-quarter the size of the circular part of the letter.

---

10-13-07

I am a big fat liar. I don't deserve to live. Go Terriers.

Fred Stark

___

Leda looked up at Luther, standing over her like some blond specter, and Bronson, who just looked bored. "He wrote this?" she asked.

"It's his handwriting," Bronson said. He set down his camera and flipped through some papers. "Matches the writing here, some kinda speech ..."

The chief began reading aloud: "There is a kind of magic at the Winslow Historic Courthouse, glittering in the light, with artistry in every chair, every stair step and every hand-hewn poplar plank ..."

Bronson looked up, slightly appalled, then cleared his throat. "I also got this half-finished letter to the Centennial Farm Program."

"The what?"

He pulled out a stiff piece of stationary. "Yup, the Centennial Farm Program by the Michigan Historical Society. Fred was telling them that the old Darbee place is technically a Sesquicentennial Farm, not a Centennial Farm, and so it oughta get a blue ribbon with a 150 at the ceremony, not a red ribbon with a 100 —"

"I thought the Darbee farm was 140 years old," Sam said.

'Well, Fred says that's wrong, because the Darbees planted some apple saplings — oh, who gives a shit?" Bronson exploded. "That's his handwriting! Poor Fred here had a guilty conscience, he had to have some secret goings-on somewhere. Makes sense — nobody can be that into Winslow history —"

"What kinds of goings-on?" Leda asked.

"Who knows? Maybe he stole something. Or found something. Maybe he had a woman somewhere."

"Uncle Fred?"

Bronson gave her the smile of a village police chief who's seen it all. "You'd be surprised, Miss Morris."

"Yes, I would," she answered shortly. "I can't believe Uncle Fred would commit suicide. Look at this note — big fat liar? Go Terriers? It doesn't even sound like Fred!"

The chief quickly stacked his papers on the edge of the witness box, obviously offended. "I've given you my professional opinion here, and I'll stand by it. I've known Fred Stark a long time, and it doesn't give me any pleasure to say this, but he obviously had some problems we didn't know about." Bronson picked up the camera and crammed it into its case. "Now if you'll excuse me, we're mighty short-handed over here, so —"

Leda scrambled to her feet. "You don't have to take my word for it, Chief. I watch Fox as much as anybody. I bet a nice forensic anthropologist would clear all this right up."

Bronson's face turned red. "Oh really, you think so, do you?"

"Sure — or if you can't swing that, just do some swabs and check them for DNA. Or fingerprint the gun. Hey!" Leda pointed to some dirt on the floor. "Look at that! Fred would never allow that dirt on his hand-hewn poplar planks!"

Luther stepped forward, giving the purpling Bronson an uneasy look. "Miss Morris, are you saying that you think Mr. Stark was murdered?"

"Well, he didn't kill himself," Leda said stubbornly. "General Winslow's birthday is in 10 days. He'd never miss that."

The two men looked at each other a moment, then stared back at Leda. You could almost see Luther mentally riffling through every sordid gunshot murder case he could remember. Chief Bronson looked for patience in his camera case and apparently found it.

"Miss Morris ..." he said, "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but we're not a big-city outfit here. Forensics cost money. We don't have the money for a pathologist, a DNA test or even a decent goddamn camera! It's only October 14 and our police budget is in the red by $15,000. We've been in the red since July! No non-essential funding from the village until Jan. 1."

"Winslow has a big deficit," Luther said mournfully. "Overspending in every category. The state won't give us any more money."

"But if Uncle Fred —"

"That man there—" Chief Bronson stabbed a stubby finger toward the witness box. "That man there committed suicide. Very sad, but it's the truth. I don't have the manpower, the equipment or the resources to chase some half-cocked theory without evidence."

Leda looked down at the crumpled corpse in the witness box. She didn't really know Fred Stark, but he was a historian. A real historian. Careful, methodical, detail-oriented. To shoot himself in his beloved courthouse, bleeding all over this meticulously sanded and restored witness box — Fred never would stain this glossy little building's reputation in such a way.

"He wouldn't do this," she said. " She raised her head and glared at Chief Bronson. "At least he would've laid down a tarp first."

Bronson threw up his hands. "I'm finished here. This is a suicide, Miss Morris, and I'm reporting it that way. And I would take a very dim view of any ... shall we say ... rumors to the contrary."

"But Chief—"

"Luther, escort the lady out of here. Thank you for your time, Miss Morris."