Shoveling Smoke by Austin Davis Read Free Book Online

your feet, by the way. Bromohydrosis? I’ll get you the name of a good podiatrist.”
    “So you heard about that, too,” I said.
    “A lawyer in Armani and beach sandals? That sort of news travels fast.”
    “There’s nothing wrong with my feet,” I said, dangling a sandal off the tips of my toes, and I explained the real reason behind my sartorial courtroom gaffe.
    “Nice socks,” she said.
    “What about you?” I asked. “You say you used to work for the firm. What do you do now?”
    “I’m the administrative coordinator for the Northeast Texas judicial district,” she said, and watched for my reaction.
    “Wow,” I said, impressed. “That’s quite a step up for a former office gofer.”
    “Yes,” she replied, “it is.”
    The district coordinator, usually called the D.C., helps to arrange schedules for all the judges who sit in a particular district. When a sitting judge wants to go on vacation or simply does not want not to hear a particular case, usually for political reasons, it is up to the D.C. to find a replacement judge. The coordinator keeps a list of available visiting judges, most of whom have either retired from the bench or been voted out of office. From this list the coordinator picks replacement judges.
    It would not be a strenuous job, especially in a district as sparsely populated as the one in which Jenks sat, but it would be an important one. By being able to pick and choose visiting judges in the district, Sally Dean, onetime office assistant for Chandler and Stroud, had a major say in how business got conducted at the courthouses in the district.
    “Where I’m from, there’s usually pretty stiff competition for the coordinator’s job,” I said.
    “It’s the same here,” she said. “And yet I got the job after working with Chandler and Stroud for only six months.” She shook her head and looked at me quizzically. “Now, how ever did a law firm lackey rise to such heights so quickly?”
    “Perhaps she was in the right place at the right time?” I suggested.
    She smiled. “I suppose that’s it. Or maybe she slept her way into the job?”
    “I suppose we’ll never know,” I said. Whatever sort of chip this girl had on her shoulder, I found that I really didn’t want to knock it off. Not tonight, anyway. “So what’s the administrative coordinator for the Northeast Texas judicial district doing riding the range on a steamy August evening?” I asked.
    “Right now she’s giving her horse a bath,” she replied.
    I watched the big horse let himself be doused, but mostly I watched Sally Dean. She was tall and slim with richly tanned skin, incandescent now with a slight sheen of water from the hose. There was a kind of dark light about her that made it hard not to stare. In a moment I determined that at least part of my fascination came from a slight asymmetry in her face: her eyes, deep green and widely spaced, were not quite level above the short thin bridge of her nose, and her smile tended to pull her mouth slightly to one side, as if she were savoring some paradox that had escaped you. There was an amused light in her eyes that flickered from a depth, like heat lightning. Her black hair, falling in curls to her shoulders, glistened. I made her out to be twenty-five, maybe twenty-six years old. All in all, not your run-of-the-mill judicial district coordinator.
    “Some horses don’t like this,” she said as she played the water over the horse’s flanks. “Ed loves it.” She turned the hose straight up so that the spray flowered for a moment over her. “Oh,” she said as the water hit her, “I can see why.” She smiled at me. “How about it, Mr. Parker? You look like you could use a good spray.” Before I could answer, she flicked her wrist, and icy pinpricks scattered across my face and shoulders.
    “Hey!” I gasped. I grabbed her hand to stop her from spraying me again.
    “Don’t like it? It’s spring water, Mr. Parker. Something you can’t get in