Not guilty. Eddie was glad he wasn’t there.
They even ran in the Episcopalian priest from out at St. James to testify to the great remorse the doctor felt and had been feeling for so long, to tell how he’d battled with himself to bring out the truth and do the right thing. But of course he hadn’t been driving, was just a passenger who had no control over events at all, not even himself, he was so drunk. So of course it had to be not guilty as charged. Of course. People just love to see the weakness in another revealed, failings they might know in themselves. Then they can acquit and feel good. That poor man, but now he’s saved! “The man’s making fools of us all,” Eddie muttered, shaking his head.
Charlie wasn’t surprised by the verdict. It was what he’d feared from the moment he found Mary Stacy and put her on the stand—he’d opened the door to the backseat and an acquittal. He’d said it at the time. But like a lot of things, Eddie hadn’t seen it. At least it’s over, he thought, and continued thinking until the phone rang the following Monday evening as he laid a TV chicken dinner on the table.
“Commissioners just called the sheriff over to their meeting,” Fillmore said.
“What’s it about?” But already Eddie didn’t like it. “Is it an executive session?”
“Not that I know.”
“Thank you, Fillmore.” Hanging up, he realized that was probably the only time in almost eight years he had ever thanked that man for anything, and he felt a bit of shame. Maybe he was the arrogant asshole the rest of them thought he was.
That night, for the first time in weeks, Charlie looked good, Eddie thought. His arm was still in a sling, but he looked rested and better fed, almost the old Charlie, steadfast and powerful and uncompromising when it came to the spirit of the law. Eddie was glad for him. The commissioners were scared to death of him and always had been, even when they were buying him his silver Dodge and falling all over each other in praise of his work. Eddie wanted to say it was just politics, but that wasn’t true; politics were one thing, but some people went into politics to wield their cowardice like a virtue. Intimidation being such a fundamental part of their life, they couched their fear in terms of victory or loss, good or evil, all or nothing. Moderation, the possibility it wasn’t all black and white, was chickenshit. You could never turn your back on them.
Eddie was in uniform—he’d put it on again for the occasion, pistol and all—when he pushed open the heavy oak door into the big commissioners’ room with its platform up front like a low judge’s bench, only real long, all five commissioners sitting behind it, four of them staring at him like he’d caught them behind the woodshed doing something nasty. The fifth commissioner was Pemberton, looking his old unflappable self. Apparently Eddie had interrupted a welcome-back-to-the-fold session for the doctor put on by the other four, who’d always known he’d be exonerated, yessir, been behind him all the way. Anyone can get a little tanked now and then. We all have our moments.
Charlie, at a table down front, apparently had been subjected to the entire spectacle. For all Eddie knew, it was put on for his benefit. There might have been twenty other people in the room. He saw that the press was there scribbling away, and more than the usual Gazette & Reformer reporter. The press seemed to know what was coming, too. He could feel the anticipation in the air. He walked right down the center aisle, pulled out a chair and sat down beside Charlie. Charlie, his Stetson on the table in front of him, gave Eddie a glance that betrayed nothing, then looked back at the commissioners and waited.
The commissioners glanced at each other when Eddie sat down, wondering what they were going to do now. All except Pemberton, who sat there calm as anything, with that smile that wasn’t a smile fixed on his face as he looked right at Eddie and Charlie. Eddie didn’t believe that counted as courage or guts, but it sure was power, and brother, those other commissioners knew it. Sometimes when you run into it, he admitted to himself, it’s all you can do not to bow down and roll over.
They were working from an agenda, and so they did a little other business, but first they had to open the meeting officially with a prayer; there had been a recent push to bring religious values back to county government, along with patriotism, so there was also a Pledge of Allegiance. A very healthy-looking local preacher in a blue suit and tie got up and asked the good Lord to give the commissioners guidance and direction in their work, to bless them and the flag and the county and North Carolina. Then he sat down, and they got going.
After a while, Jack Lasier, the chairman and the one with the gavel, asked if there was “any other new business,” and another commissioner—not Pemberton, who just sat there taking it all in, his face as unreadable as Dugan’s, so there was no doubting whose game this really was, as far as Eddie was concerned—said, “I believe the sheriff’s got some business,” like it was Charlie had business with them, not the other way around. So they made sincere, interested and encouraging faces at Charlie and waited with the utmost patience for him to say what was on his mind, which of course Charlie, one hand on the table, the other arm in its sling, didn’t.
Finally Lasier, who was the plant manager at a small furniture factory just outside Damascus, said, “Sheriff, we’re glad to see you here and your arm mending.”
“Thank you,” Charlie said. Not “Thank you, sir,” as he might once have said out of basic—not necessarily earned—respect, or force of habit.
“What do you have to say about these complaints, sheriff?” Lasier said finally.
“I haven’t been informed of any complaints,” Charlie said.
“Well, there’s certainly a bunch!” The chairman looked around at the others with a didn’t-I-tell-you? look, then lifted his nose a bit as he turned back, putting Eddie in mind of a nice brick wall to slam it against, scruff it up a bit. “First of all, there’s the shooting in which you got wounded by your own deputy, and though we are sincerely sorry about your injury, it certainly seems you had no control of your own men, no control of that situation, and that you put human life needlessly at risk. And there’s another question of dereliction of duty—”
“I don’t understand,” Charlie interrupted, his voice soft like always at such times, a contradiction, betraying nothing.
“It’s been brought to our attention that you let a man who sustained a head injury earlier in the evening of Friday, October 6, work an extra shift while you went home.” Before Charlie could answer, the chairman barged right on to the meat of it, working himself into a perfect rage: “And when deputies chase drunks right down the middle of the main street of the county seat, or start a brawl in some hardworking taxpayer’s store, you know … Well, we’re a growing community, not some damn-fool Wild West show, and we have businesses to think of.” At this point, he yanked a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket and put them on while he flapped some newspaper clippings in the air. “This headline is from the Charlotte Observer: ‘Bad Day In Blackstone.’ And here’s another from the eastern part of the state: ‘Outlaws, Monster Terrorize County.’ Good God, man, I got a handful of them!” He threw the clippings onto the table, yanked his glasses off and glared at Dugan.
“Dereliction of duty, I believe you said, Mr. Chairman. Are these charges you’re bringing against me?”
“Well, no,” Lasier said. Clearly caught by the question, he lost his train of thought and turned to his colleagues for assistance.
A new voice cut in. “I think what we’re talking about here, Charlie, is incompetence,” the voice smooth and familiar and self-assured. You could hear breath sucked in on that one. Everyone in the room looked at Pemberton. “This county has been subjected to the kind of antics you might expect from circus clowns, not a professional sheriff’s department. We seem to have lost sight of true law enforcement, haven’t we? We have wasted money on show trials and, I might add, on public theater on the courthouse square that might have set the example for all this nonsense, and I think we all feel our public safety has become compromised, if not outright imperiled, as a result. Not to mention Blackstone County’s reputation as a reasonably safe place to raise a family and do business. If you were not directly involved in some of these events, you are certainly directly responsible, as I’m sure you know. They are your men. Have we lost our bearings just a bit, Charlie?” He spoke softly and slowly and with such audacious authority it took Eddie’s breath away.
But at least it was now clear what was happening, and what had already happened—what Pemberton’s courtroom admission three days earlier had meant and the verdict confirmed. Not that they, Charlie and Eddie, hadn’t known, though they would have been hard pressed to convince anyone else in that courtroom otherwise, the prosecution and the Carvers excepted. Still, it was breathtaking, this audacity and skill. The other commissioners faded into the background, were comfortably out of it, and they even looked relieved. The truth of the setup was there, but as Eddie acknowledged later, you can’t prove setups, or not so you can report them in the paper. The room was absolutely still, waiting for Charlie to speak, to answer, to defend himself against those apparent facts. Eddie felt the poised-pen anticipation.
“Come now, Charlie.” Spoken softly. “We realize you’ve been through a lot, and you know how supportive we’ve been. Surely you have an explanation.”
What could he say? It was all so true and untrue at the same time. Eddie felt if he didn’t wake up quickly, he’d suffocate.
Then Charlie did speak, softly, too, and with force and dignity, refusing to be intimidated. “I think this is improper, Dr. Pemberton. I think this entire proceeding is improper. This is obviously a personnel matter, this charge of incompetence. I was neither informed prior to this meeting of the direction of the board’s thinking, nor that there were charges against my performance. I believe this belongs in executive session, without the press, where we can freely discuss your concerns and I can more freely answer.”
“No, Charlie. You chose—you have always chosen—public, even theatrical, undertakings to express your views. You can’t deny that’s a political choice. You have thrived on politics in order to build your and your department’s reputations. Now I believe the public is entitled to some explanation for what appears to be an egregious betrayal of their trust these past few weeks, and longer. I think, viewed that way, the presence of the press is justified, and we’re entitled to an explanation.”
Charlie let out a sigh and looked down at his lap a moment. Then, reaching for his hat with his good hand, he rose to his feet, put the hat in the hand in the sling and slipped his jacket off the back of the chair. “I can’t honor these proceedings,” he said flatly, as Eddie rose in turn, stepped into the aisle—sensing the faces of the press and whoever else was there but seeing nothing but a blur—and let Charlie by.
“Dugan!”
Charlie stopped and slowly turned to face Pemberton. Eddie was convinced, and had been since walking into the commissioners’ room, it was never about anybody or anything but the two of them that night, never had been since the night Dugan shamed that hundred dollars out of him, at least as far as Pemberton was concerned.
“Given your attitude, perhaps for the sake of the county, you had better resign.” Pemberton’s voice quaked slightly.
“Yes, that would certainly be the honorable thing,” another commissioner chimed in, though Eddie didn’t know which one because he couldn’t see straight. There were only two people in that room he could see.
“Perhaps for the sake of democratic principles, Dr. Pemberton, and this seems to be an ongoing issue with you,” Charlie said, never raising his voice, truly calm—better than he’d ever been, it seemed to Eddie as he watched him standing not inches away, Eddie feeling and despising the heat of all those eyes looking at them—“I’d better not. There’s an election next week. Let people speak for themselves.”
“For the sake of the democratic process, you might let someone else in your party who could still have a good race restore respect for the office!” Pemberton snapped, his mask for that brief moment pulled right down, not that anyone cared.
Dugan didn’t look back, just pushed out through that oak door, on across the lobby and into the night. It was cold, but there were stars—Eddie had noticed them coming in—and a wind that scrabbled leaves along the concrete walk. The Dodge was parked in front of the county building, gleaming silver in the light from the porch. Beyond it were the orange mercuryvapor lights of downtown Damascus running up North Charlotte Street toward a dark mass of trees that only half-hid the courthouse now that it was late autumn, lights winking in the windows of the little building that was the jail, just down the hill. Eddie hurried ahead to open the door while Charlie adjusted his Stetson.
“I’ll walk back to the office, Eddie, thanks.” It was clear he wanted no company. “And thank you for being there.”
Eddie watched him walk around the front of the car and into the shadows on the lawn. “You know, sheriff,” he called as Charlie became just another silhouette, “it’s an honor working for you.”