Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement (36 page)

The wound on his neck is consistent with the Koch blade which, as the plant foreman told us, actually cuts like a pair of scissors. The only fingerprints on the handle are my client’s. Butterfield, with Johnson’s permission, passes the knife to the jury and not a single member can resist touching the blade to test its sharpness.

Butterfield produces the tape for Bonner to identify and is allowed to introduce it into evidence.

Though this moment has been long anticipated, it is something of an anticlimax when Bonner plays it for the jury. Perhaps I have heard it too many times by now, and while the members of the jury all seem interested, some raise their eyebrows when it is finished as if they are wondering what the fuss has been all about.

Bonner tells the jury that he investigated every employee’s whereabouts between two and four and that the only suspect is Class Bledsoe. By the time he describes what he has done, it is five o’clock, and we are through for the day. The spectators, about equally divided between

blacks and whites, clear the courtroom rapidly. Outside, it is a perfect spring day and anybody in his right mind wants to get outside.

The tension has risen each hour, and everyone seems eager to get away from each other. Before he is led off to be taken back to Brickeys, Class whispers, “It looks bad, don’t it?”

I glance across at Butterfield, who smiles as Woodrow Bonner says something to him.

“The first part of any criminal trial is always the worst.”

“They’ll let Taylor go,” Class says, his voice doleful, “but not me.”

Tonight will be the hardest time for Class to keep from changing his mind and telling me to try to make a deal with Butterfield, who can’t be feeling too good about his chances of getting a conviction against Paul. Anybody who wasn’t impressed by Dick’s opening statement had to have been asleep, and I didn’t see any eyes closed.

“Tomorrow I’ll get to cross-examine Bonner,” I say.

“It’ll be better,” I promise.

A hopeless expression on his face. Class shrugs as Amos Broadstreet, Bonner’s elderly black deputy, who weighs at least three hundred pounds, comes over to the table to handcuff him and put him in leg chains. He has gotten to like Class and has waited an extra moment to pick him up.

I look behind me and see Tommy Ting behind the spectator railing waiting

to speak to me. Connie had told me he wouldn’t be getting into Bear Creek until late last night, and though I got a glimpse of him in the courtroom, this is the first time I have had a good look at him. He is wearing a tailored olive-colored suit that must have cost him a thousand dollars and is easily the best-dressed man in the room. His face is fleshier but still recognizable, his cheeks pushed up in a smile I remember after thirty years. His hair is much longer, of course. Boys in eastern Arkansas in the early sixties didn’t know what long hair was or if we did, we didn’t care. Now, Tommy’s salt-and-pepper hair comes to his collar in the back, making him look even more Asian than I remembered.

Once Class leaves, I motion for him to come forward, and we shake hands by the counsel table as if he were a rich corporate client chatting with his high-priced legal counsel during a civil trial.

“How’s it going?” Tommy asks softly, his slight accent more pronounced now that we are face to face.

I know he means the trial, and suddenly I have an impulse to tell him how wrong I’ve probably been about everything I’ve thought and remembered about Bear Creek, including our friendship which, now that I force myself to think about it, was as superficial as most male bonding is. Like myself. Tommy has been operating out of denial, but instead of thinking that people were worse than they were, he has mis remembered them as better, more caring. I reply bluntly, “I honestly don’t know who killed your father. I don’t know that anyone will ever know the truth either except the person or persons who did it.”

Incredibly, he seems surprised, as if by giving the plant employees the

green light to talk to me, the answer would become obvious.

“Do you think Paul was involved?” he whispers.

I look over at the other table, now empty. If Paul wanted to shake hands with Tommy and say how sorry he was, he isn’t going to risk doing it in public since he and Dick are already making their way out of the courtroom.

“I don’t know, Tommy. I swear to God I really don’t know who killed your father.” As if I have said something profound, he nods and walks away, presumably to find his sister and mother. A few moments later, depressed, I leave, too, and check into the Bear Creek Inn to prepare for tomorrow. Betty, dressed in red shorts and a T-shirt advertising her business, asks, “Not going too good, huh?”

I try to smile but fail.

“It’s going okay,” I lie.

Betty places the key to number nine in my hand and presses her palm flat against mine.

“It’s got to be tough representing a nigger. He’s probably scared to death and not much help.”

Glad Betty isn’t on the jury, I ignore her comment and ask if she knows if Charlie’s Pizza delivers. Right now I don’t have the energy to find out. She replies that people will do anything for money, and says she’ll call up a kid to run get me whatever I want. I tell her fine and carry

my bag into my room, wondering if the case is, after all, that simple.

When Class is brought into the courtroom the next morning thirty minutes before the trial starts up again, I watch for signs that he will tell me to try to make a deal with Butterfield. He looks terrible, and I ask him after the deputy moves off, “Did you get any sleep?”

He rubs his face.

“Not much,” he says.

“I’ve been thinking about my chances.” His bloodshot eyes blink rapidly in the glare of the courtroom.

How does anyone stand to live in a steel cage, whether they are guilty or not?

“It’s going to come down to a matter of your credibility. Class,” I say, trying to cut him off.

“If they believe you, you’ll walk out of here a free man.” As I say this, I realize I’m putting on his shoulders the entire responsibility for his acquittal.

“Are you gonna argue that the old lady could have done it?” he says.

“She says she found his body.”

“Depending on how she looks and acts,” I hedge, “but it might piss off the jury. If all they see is a sick old woman who can hardly lift a fly

swatter, it’ll insult their intelligence, and they might take it out on you.” I can’t tell him I promised not to make this argument.

“What’re you gonna do, then?” he asks, a plaintive tone in his voice.

“Just say it was the Mexican?”

I watch as the deputies open the doors to allow spectators into the courtroom.

“I’ll do more than that,” I whisper.

“But that’ll be part of it.”

“He couldn’t speak hardly a word of English,” Class says, shaking his head.

“He didn’t seem like the type who could have done it.”

“He could have known a lot more English than he let on,” I explain.

“All we need is to get them thinking he might have done it. We don’t have to prove he did.”

Class sees Latrice and gives her a little wave.

She has convinced him to trust me. The corners of his mouth turn up in a brief smile, and for an instant I am permitted to see what his face must have been like before he was charged. If I don’t get him off, I hope he doesn’t hate her. I know he will hate me.

Woodrow Bonner climbs back into the witness chair and smiles at me. I waste no time in asking him about Jorge Arrazola, not caring how much he repeats himself from yesterday. By the end of this trial I want the jury to have the name burned into their brains. Bonner has no choice but to admit that he has continued to look for him right up until the trial.

“I would have liked to talk to him,” Bonner says, in response to one of my questions, “just as a matter of routine investigative work, but I don’t consider him a suspect.”

I come around to the side of the podium and bellow, “You’re telling this jury that this man is not a suspect because he was in this country illegally and might have been afraid he’d be found out?”

Bonner is sitting ramrod straight and his metal badge positively gleams.

“My guess is that he was afraid and that’s why he took off,” he says casually, “but that’s not why I don’t consider him a suspect.”

“Well, tell the jury why not,” I say sarcastically, not remembering anything in his notes or files that would make me afraid to ask this question.

“Well, you see, Mr. Page, Jorge Arrazola was left-handed,” Bonner says, “and you heard what Dr. Miller testified about the knife wound.”

What in the hell have I been doing the last three months? I’ve been so busy trying to get Paul I’ve gone brain-dead.

“You’re saying it’s not possible he used his right hand?” I bluster, trying to pretend I’ve known this fact all along.

“That’s a question,” his voice dry, “you might want to ask Dr. Miller.”

I could move to strike his answer as being unresponsive, but I don’t want to hear his new one, nor do I want to recall Dr. Miller. I can feel my cheeks burning.

“Your conclusion,” I ask hurriedly, “that there were no other suspects depends, in part, on the truthfulness or correctness of answers given to you by individuals who claim to vouch for the whereabouts of the other plant workers, isn’t that so?”

Bonner has to answer that it does, and hopefully it appears that I am preparing the jury for some gigantic revelation down the line, but, in fact, I have nothing to present later but a few minor and irrelevant inconsistencies, if I choose.

I get Bonner to admit that he cannot offer any direct evidence of a cash payment or a promise of any kind from Paul Taylor to Class. Given the other evidence in the case, this hardly seems to matter, but it is all I have. Butterfield will argue that Class could have been hired by Paul or someone else.

Before I sit down, I decide to test the waters, and ask about Mrs. Ting.

“Though Doris Ting discovered her husband’s body,” I say, “you quickly eliminated her as a suspect, didn’t you?”

Bonner says that for a number of reasons he doesn’t consider the victim’s wife a possibility and tells the jury that her frail condition, her reaction (she was in shock and had to be sedated), and the lack of any physical evidence tying her to the murder ruled her out.

In a few minutes I sit down by Class and watch Dick get to his feet and walk to the podium. I hope Class doesn’t lean over and ask me if I am getting paid by Butterfield to help him. This is one of the most humiliating moments of my career as a lawyer. Any more of this, and I’ll need to go back to social work.

Dick goes after Bonner hard and gets him to admit how little evidence other than the tape the prosecution has against Paul. Bonner is so candid that I begin to suspect he wants the jury to understand that had he been the prosecutor, he wouldn’t have charged Paul unless he had gotten Class to make a deal first. Doubtless, like anyone else, Bonner resents being hung out to dry, and I wish I had been a fly on the wall in his office once it became apparent to him Class wasn’t going to implicate Paul. I watch Paul’s face as Dick cross-examines Bonner, and wonder again if, despite everything, he is responsible for this murder.

Angela’s comment that first day I stopped by her house that Paul could be “ruthless” has stayed with me. In spite of the fact that he isn’t as bad as I wanted to make him out to be, I don’t trust him and never will.

Though there is no need to put Doris Ting on the stand, Butterfield does it anyway. She looks older than the last time I saw her as she hobbles into the witness chair, and I wonder if Connie even bothered to ask her to try to remember something that would help us. She begins to sob as soon as Butterfield asks her to identify herself for the record, and the

loss that she has suffered, if it hasn’t before, comes home to the jury. Pausing repeatedly during her testimony to wipe her face with a fistful of tissue, she describes how unusual it was for her husband not to call her or not to answer the phone on Darla’s afternoon to volunteer at the school. I look back at Tommy and Connie at the back of the courtroom. Connie has hidden her face in her hands as her mother testifies.

For the first time since I’ve been involved in this case, it seems to be about a man’s death, and not my own ego. I look over my shoulder again and see Tommy put his arm around his sister.

Mercifully, Butterfield lets Mrs. Ting off the stand as soon as he establishes the time when she went into the plant and found her husband’s body.

Both Dick and I decline to cross-examine her, an action I assure Class would hurt more than help.

Butterfield moves through his case smoothly, and by the afternoon he puts on his last witness, Darla Tate, who, in contrast to Class, has beefed up in the last three months. Already a big woman, Darla now looks like she could start as defensive tackle for her sons’ high school team; yet there is still something touching about the way she has tried to get herself dolled up for her testimony. In fact, from the shoulders up, she looks like she has made up for one of those sexy glamour shots that try to make ordinary women into, if not movie stars, at least queens for an afternoon. As my secretary Julia says, Darla has her hair “bouffed up” and is wearing enough makeup to get stuck in if it rains. Gold ball earrings the size of plums hang from her ears, her dress is the color of faded summer grass. Never has a woman tried to look more feminine, I

suppose, and failed. Despite the testimony that Butterfield will elicit from her, she can help Class even as she hurts him, and I hope the women on the jury listen to her even as they mentally pick her apart.

As expected, she talks about the operation of the plant. Had I been Butterfield, I would have called her as one of my first witnesses, but perhaps it makes sense to call her last since she can provide a motive for Class even if the jury chooses to believe that Paul had nothing to do with Willie’s death. She begins to recite her story that she overheard Class talking about “having gotten the money” while she was in the bathroom but readily admits she doesn’t have any idea to whom he was speaking. Butterfield asks if she is sure it was Bledsoe’s voice, and she says emphatically that she is “absolutely certain.”