The Trial of Dr. Kate

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Austin, Texas
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Copyright ©2014 Michael E. Glasscock III

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First Edition

This novel is dedicated to the memory of Bill Wilson (Bill W.) and Dr. Robert Smith (Dr. Bob), the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous.

“A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity
.”

—Robert Frost

N
odding to her coworkers, Shenandoah Coleman wandered across the noisy, smoke-filled city room of the
Memphis Express
, oblivious to the clatter of typewriters ricocheting off the bare walls and linoleum floor. She stopped at the large open window overlooking the Mississippi River and glanced out at the rising water. She could see a tugboat maneuvering a barge alongside one of the docks between Mud Island and the mainland. The water, muddy from rains in Missouri and Illinois, swirled like chocolate milk behind the tug’s powerful propellers.

Turning toward the clickety-clack of the Associated Press Teletype, Shenandoah noticed an incoming message, tore it off, and took it to her desk.

Nashville, Tennessee, July 14, 1952—Dr. Katherine Marlow, age 32, of Round Rock, Tennessee, is scheduled to go on trial July 21 for the murder of one of her patients, a Mrs. Lillian Johnson, age 32, also of Round Rock.
    Dr. Marlow, indicted in March of this year, pleaded not guilty to the charge at her arraignment. Jake Watson, Dr. Marlow’s attorney, was unavailable for comment. The suspect currently resides as an inmate in the Parsons County Jail.—Associated Press


Shenandoah read the two paragraphs three times. She couldn’t believe that Kate Marlow was capable of murder. Shenandoah hadn’t seen either the accused or the victim in fourteen years—not since the year she’d graduated from high school, the same year that she’d moved to Nashville and taken a secretarial job at the National Life and Accident Insurance Company.

When Shenandoah left Round Rock, she planned never to return. As a young girl she had become fascinated by the exploits of Amelia Earhart and her Nashville heroine, Cornelia Fort. Once she arrived in Nashville, every extra penny had gone for flying lessons at a grass strip just outside the city. When the war broke out, she was among the 1,000 applicants who’d made it into the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) out of 25,000 who’d applied. She’d been stationed in Sweetwater, Texas, so after termination from the service near the end of the war she took a BA in English from the University of Texas in Austin. Upon graduation, she’d become a reporter for the
Memphis Express
newspaper.

Shenandoah felt ashamed of herself for not keeping up with Kate more regularly, but she was even more shocked that Dr. Marlow could be in such a mess. Shenandoah picked up the phone and dialed the operator. “I’d like to place a call to the sheriff’s office in Round Rock, Tennessee,” she said.

After several rings, a woman answered.

“Sheriff Marlow, please.”

“Old Jeb’s been dead two year now.”

“Dead?”

“Heart attack.”

“Who’s sheriff?”

“Jasper Kingman. Want to talk to him?”

“No, thanks.”

Replacing the receiver, she looked out over the city room and wondered what she should do. She dialed the operator again.

“I’d like to place a person-to-person call to a Mr. Jake Watson in Round Rock, Tennessee.”

Seconds later, the operator said, “I can’t find a listing for a Jake Watson.”

“He’s an attorney, operator. Try the yellow pages.”

“Sure you have the correct name?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, but there’s no listing for Jake Watson.”

Shenandoah picked up a pencil and started doodling on the Teletype message.
What should I do? Forget it? Go home? Lay open all the old wounds? I thought that misery was all behind me.

Shenandoah walked across the city room to the office of her boss, Ned Baker. A year from retirement, the editor was a holdover from the golden age of the press when city editors ran their papers with an iron fist. Balding and overweight, Ned chewed on a Havana from sunup to sundown. Every few minutes he spit brown-streaked saliva into the rusty fruit juice can he kept beside his desk.

Shenandoah tapped lightly on the doorframe as she entered Ned’s office.

“Morning, Shenandoah. What’s my investigative reporter up to?”

She handed Ned the news report. “I know this doctor,” she said. “I’d like to cover the trial.”

“You’re from Round Rock?”

“I’m actually from a place called Beulah Land, about two miles outside of Round Rock.”

“Beulah Land—as in Heaven?”

“Hardly—just squalor. I’ve got a couple of vacation weeks coming. It’ll make a good human interest story.”

“Keep tabs on your expenses, and I’ll try to get the boss to reimburse you. Going to interview Buford Frampton for your book while you’re up there?”

“He
is
Boss Crump’s man in East Tennessee.” For the past six months, Shenandoah had been planning an exposé of the old-time party boss, E. H. Crump, who was said to vote names from the city’s cemeteries, and she had been gathering information on his political machine in Memphis.

The editor picked up his can, spit into it, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He fixed his dark brown eyes on Shenandoah and said, “Remember Thomas Wolfe’s
You Can’t Go Home Again
? His protagonist, George Webber, alienated himself from the people of his hometown. To paraphrase, I’d say that it’s hard to go home again. Things are never as you remember them. The buildings don’t seem as big, the ponds and lakes look smaller, the roads appear narrower, and the people are often not what you remember. You’ll be amazed.”

* * *

Shenandoah parked her new Chevrolet Bel Air at a meter in the Round Rock town square and slipped a nickel into the slot. A little over five-seven, Shenandoah had what the Bard referred to as “a lean and hungry look.” Bell’s palsy at age sixteen had left her with a slight droop of her mouth on the right side that gave her a Mona Lisa smile. Men found that minor flaw, her flaming red hair, her flawless cream complexion, and her green eyes enchanting. A fashion maven, she always looked as if she’d just stepped off a page in
Vogue
, and on this day she wore a free-flowing swing skirt with a floral pattern and wedge open-toed sandals.

She stood on the hot asphalt for a moment and glanced around the square. Waves of hot air radiated off the pavement, her blouse stuck to her back, and perspiration beaded across her forehead. The stately limestone courthouse looked just as it had on the day she’d left, but the buildings surrounding it appeared to be in worse shape. The whittlers, prune-faced old men, kept their vigil as ever on the courthouse steps, piles of cedar shavings hiding their rough brogans. Two Civil War cannons stood like sentinels on either side of the steps, each with a pyramid of cannon balls stacked beside it. A teenage boy, red-faced and gasping for breath, pedaled up the hill toward her on an old Schwinn Road Master.

Bradshaw’s Drugstore, where Saturdays had once found Shenandoah sweeping the floor and stocking the storeroom, still stood at the bottom of the hill. It was from the door of the storeroom that she used to watch Katherine Marlow and her boyfriend, Army Johnson, share a chocolate sundae.

The lone Esso station remained on the far side of the courthouse. It was there, at sixteen, that she’d bought her first rubber. She’d sneaked into the men’s restroom when she’d decided it was time to lose her virginity. It was a fruitless goal because all the boys were afraid of her. The condom had remained in her wallet, wearing a ring in the leather, until she finally used it with a young second lieutenant in the winter of 1942, when she was taking the training required for the women pilots of the WASP.

The whittlers ignored her as she climbed the stairs and entered the cool interior of the old building. It had been years since Shenandoah had last been there, and she was amused to see that the smooth plaster walls still displayed large photographs of judges, county court clerks, and sheriffs. In the center of the lobby, a marble spiral staircase led to the upper floors that held the courtroom, the jail, and the sheriff’s office. She started up the first flight, knowing that the sheriff would not welcome her visit. Would Kate?

On the third floor, Shenandoah entered an open door and approached a secretary typing on an old Royal typewriter. A woman in her early sixties with gray hair pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck, she wore thick spectacles on the tip of her long nose. When the woman didn’t acknowledge her presence, Shenandoah said, “Hello.”

Looking up, the woman asked, “What?”

“I’d like to see Dr. Kate Marlow.”

“Sheriff’s got to okay it.”

“Jasper in?”

“His office,” his secretary said, pointing to her right.

Shenandoah hesitated for a moment. Dealing with Jasper Kingman was not something she wanted to do. But if she wanted to see Kate Marlow, she had no choice. Just uttering Jasper’s name brought back distasteful, angry thoughts.

* * *

Like all the Coleman clan, Shenandoah went to school barefoot in the autumn and spring, and like her cousins, she always wore ratty, soiled, and wrinkled clothes. Shenandoah’s feet were always filthy and her toenails were always long, with Parsons County clay caked beneath them. Her red hair, which was her pride and joy, was the one thing that she insisted be clean at all times. She washed it daily in a galvanized gallon bucket that she kept in her small bedroom. The lard soap her mother made would not lather, so Shenandoah stole bars of city soap from the girls’ bathroom at school. She wore her hair in one long pigtail that hung down the middle of her back to her waist.