A Reasonable Doubt by Susan Sloan (free novels .txt) 📕

For several hundred years, the area had been a stable home for half a dozen Indian tribes.  But by the late 1700’s, their populations had been almost decimated, thanks to territorial wars among the tribes themselves, and strange new diseases brought by white explorers and missionaries -- small pox, measles, syphilis -- that wiped out a whole generation.

Their livelihoods were systematically destroyed -- settlers logged the massive stands of cedar trees that the natives relied on for basket weaving and clothing, using only downed trees for shelter and warmth.  For little more than trophies, hunters slaughtered the wild game that had sustained generations of Indians, and fishermen overharvested the salmon, killed seals for their skins and shellfish for pearls, and polluted the waters.

By the middle 1800’s, little more than a thousand natives were around to greet the colonizers.  By the end of the century, only a few hundred remained, swindled out of most of their property, removed to reservations, left to eke out meager livings off the land that remained, if they could, or work on the docks or as servants, if they were lucky, and get drunk in the bars along the streets of Old Town.  Once a proud and independent people, they had come to be regarded in their own community as second-class citizens.

Named not for John Hancock, as most people quite naturally assumed, but for Commodore Edward Hancock, a relatively obscure seaman who had plied the waters of the Pacific with George Vancouver back in the late 1700’s, the town was officially settled in 1854, incorporated as a city in 1862, designated the seat of Jackson County in 1863, thrived until the 1890’s, and was then essentially abandoned until the late 1930’s when a resurging logging industry took hold, and the Port Hancock Paper Mill opened.  Even then, a great many of the grand buildings remained uninhabited for another thirty years, until budding entrepreneurs stumbled into an essentially untouched utopia for business opportunities, young people began to migrate in search of work and a good place to raise a family, and old people came looking for a comfortable place to retire.  What they found was an incredible collection of Victorian, Edwardian, and Romanesque structures that had been preserved, almost as time capsules, for nearly a hundred years.

The Jackson County Courthouse was one such building.  The fabulous Romanesque structure, begun in 1888 and completed in 1894, was constructed of red brick and sandstone, and replete with arches, gables, and turrets.  Four stories high, not counting the clock tower, it sat on the edge of New Town, overlooking Old Town, presiding over both.  It had withstood earthquakes, floods, abandonment, a rare lightning strike, and countless renovations with amazing grace and fortitude.

Built at a time of enormous promise, the interior of the building was finished in nothing but the finest materials, walls paneled in mahogany, floors of polished marble, and furniture that had been hand-carved out of rosewood, walnut, and oak.

The first floor of the courthouse held most of the county’s offices.  The second floor, accessed by a grand marble stairway as well as an elevator, contained four courtrooms of varying size and grandeur.  And the two upper floors housed the quarters of the prosecutors, the public defenders, the judges, and their staffs.

By contrast, the Port Hancock Police Department, an unremarkable two-story concrete building with a daylight basement, circa 1975, sat just across the plaza from the courthouse.  Within its austere confines of bare plaster walls and cement floors, one police chief, one deputy chief, two lieutenants, three sergeants, six detectives, and some eighteen officers worked diligently to keep the city safe.

While Jackson County, as a whole, had a slightly higher than average crime rate, Port Hancock’s crime rate was reasonably low -- just the way everyone in town liked it.  Vandalism was, of course, the most common crime, attributed mainly to teenagers, and there were the typical number of assaults, burglaries, arsons, DUIs, and drug-related episodes, and even the occasional rape got reported.  But in the past decade, there had been only four homicides.

The city’s main sources of income had changed somewhat over the last fifty years.  The paper mill was still in business, and fishing and tourism were still important, but the economic focus was now on professional and related occupations.  Despite the setbacks caused by the fiscal disaster of 2008, service jobs were still available, financial operations were regaining ground, and most of the corporate firms were holding their own.  Even small business owners were seeing signs of a brighter future.

. . .

Lily Burns walked quickly down the fourth-floor corridor of the Jackson County Courthouse, her high-heeled shoes tapping smartly against the polished marble, looking neither to her right nor to her left, and neither stopping nor even hesitating until she reached the door at the far end, the door with the small brass plaque affixed to it that read: Presiding Judge.

Lily always walked quickly, as though she didn’t intend to waste so much as a minute more than was absolutely necessary to get where she was going.

At the age of thirty-five, she stood a trim five-foot-seven inches tall, with light brown hair that waved more than curled and fell just below her shoulders, her mother’s prominent nose, and hazel eyes that were either green or gold, depending on the weather, her mood, or the clothes she had chosen to wear.

Lily had pretty much grown up in this building, scurrying behind her father from the time she was eight years old, sitting on the floor of the Jackson County Prosecutor’s office, spinning stories with crayons, picture books, and imagination.  Then, as she grew older, she had been allowed to sit behind her father in the courtroom and watch, totally enthralled, as he spun his stories for a jury.  And finally, after graduating from law school, she had worked from an office of her own, just down the hall from his.

For almost thirty years, her father had occupied the big