Injustice by Lee Goodman Page A

Then back.

    On the way home, we took a detour to the south through Lukus County to visit a crafts shop that Tina had heard about.
    Lukus County, along with its county seat, Lukusville, is notorious in our state. Originally located fifty miles to the north, Lukusville was settled by northern European immigrants. They farmed the fertile floodplain of the Slippery River Valley. But then the river was dammed for the reservoir, and all that good farmland became lake bottom. Thousands of residents moved south onto the unfarmable wetlands the state offered them in compensation. Poverty ensued and brought with it all the predictable social problems.
    State and federal officials had turned a blind eye for most of the century. Even as recently as twenty years ago, Lukus County led the state in alcohol and drug abuse, domestic assault, high school dropouts, fetal alcohol syndrome, suicide, incest, and STDs. The increasingly resentful, poorly educated, and unhealthy residents of Lukus County were suspicious of any intrusions by police, social workers, public health officials, and anyone else connected to the government. It was our own little piece of Appalachia. I knew lawyers who’d done public interest law in Lukus County back then. They had stories of the region that would curl your toes.
    Things were improving, though, and Lukus County was coming into the modern age. Locals used to have to drive almost two hours to the city if they needed a hospital; school kids got bused an hour each way to high school. But now they had a top-notch medicalclinic and a modern new high school. There were jobs programs. There was an extension branch of the university.
    The new craft shop near the reservoir was one of Lukus County’s attempts to create some regional pride. It was a tiny place off the highway. I was sure it couldn’t stay open if it weren’t subsidized. The crafts were old-world stuff: beaded hangings, ceramic bells, hand-knit mittens and sweaters, painted eggs, glass wind chimes, nesting dolls. Tina picked out some Christmas-tree ornaments.
    An elderly woman sat behind the counter knitting with arthritic hands.
    â€œYou have some lovely things,” Tina said.
    â€œYes, well, it’s a community endeavor,” the woman said. “Anybody in Lukus County can sell here.”
    That explained the variability of quality.
    We heard a crash. Tina and I ran back around the corner and found a large stained-glass lampshade ruined on the floor, and Barn standing there, deciding whether to deflect any recriminations with a tsunami of tears. Tina snapped him up into her arms, and I started pushing the wreckage into a pile with my shoe. The woman brought a dustpan, brush, and wastebasket. “There, there,” she said to Barn. “These things happen.”
    â€œWe’ll pay for it,” Tina and I said in unison.
    When everything was cleaned up, the woman went in the back and got a home-baked chocolate chip cookie for Barn.

    Barnaby fell asleep on the way home.
    â€œOkay, so tell,” I said. “What did you learn from Mr. Cunningham?”
    â€œQuite a bit,” Tina said. “I learned that the boy’s body was clothed and wrapped in a sheet when the dog found it. Shallow grave. Some animals had disturbed it. Dirt had been dug away, and Cunningham could see perfectly well that it was a body.”
    â€œStrange,” I said. “Had he—the body—had he been, you know, sexually . . . ?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œBut still the perp clothed him and wrapped him up in a sheet before burying him?”
    Tina nodded. “They say it means remorse. The perp felt guilty.”
    â€œWho’d they convict?”
    â€œThe guy’s name is Devaney. Daryl Devaney.”
    â€œYes. I remember that now. What makes you think he’s innocent?”
    â€œI don’t. I don’t have an opinion yet. But the guy’s sister has been trying to get our attention for