Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement

by Grif Stockley

  Wearing a white dress that gives her a childlike quality, she has to repeat her name three times before the court reporter can get it down.

  By the time she sits down, all I have managed to establish is that she isn’t certain that Darla was at the school all afternoon.

  On direct examination, Eddie Ting’s testimony is straightforward enough, but as Butterfield begins to wind down, it is clear its usefulness is limited. Paul is motionless while Dick leans forward to hear better. Butterfield is like a giant stork flapping from behind the podium as he follows the timehonored tradition of calling attention to himself and away from the witness on cross-examination.

  His next-to-last question to Eddie is, “Isn’t it a fact that all you have discovered is some receipts for the purchase of hogs from Dixie Farms that appear to have been altered?” “Yes, sir,” Eddie says in a meek voice.

  Butterfield drapes himself over the podium.

  “And you can’t positively say who did it or why they did it, can you, Mr. Ting?”

  Eddie folds his arms across his chest as if he wishes he hadn’t ever made the decision to cross the Mississippi River to come to Arkansas.

  “No, sir.”

  Again Dick declines to cross-examine, and I let Eddie step down. The judge has already prevented him from speculating about why the receipts may have been doctored.

  “I’d like to recall Darla Tate, your honor,” I say, and while we wait for her to come from the witness room, I glance at Paul, but he is like a statue. I look behind the railing for Connie and Tommy. They must be thinking that they have been suckered again. I can’t quite see either of them, nor do I really want to.

  If Darla has a clue as to why she is being recalled, I can’t guess it from her expression. As she enters the courtroom, she is not smiling, but does not appear afraid either. Today she is wearing a loose, blousy tunic that conceals her biceps. I wish I could make her pull up her sleeves and show the jury her muscles. If Darla doesn’t turn out to be the murderer, I will feel like an idiot, not an uncommon emotion for me the last couple of weeks. My face grows hot again as I think how I have allowed myself to be manipulated in this case.

  “Just a couple of questions, Mrs. Tate I say, forcing a smile at her as she seats herself.

  She nods, now spreading a plastic grin on her own face. I would like to get her to answer before she figures out what is going on, but if she did kill Willie, she will be ready for me.

  “Mrs. Tate, I’m going to show you some documents which have been identified collectively as defendant’s exhibit one,” I say, approaching her.

  “Can you tell the jury what these are?”

  Darla squints hard at the sheaf of papers, but I notice her palm and fingers are steady as she takes them from me. She goes through them one

  by one and announces, “These are receipts from Dixie Farms for hogs.”

  “Would you look at these closely and tell me if any of the figures on the number of hogs purchased in each one appear to have been altered?”

  I have to admit that Darla is either innocent or a cool customer. As if this were a surprise, she says, “You know, they seem to be. For example, this five appears to have been a six, but it looks as if part of it was erased.”

  I pretend to study the pink copy bearing the Confederate logo of Dixie Farms.

  “Can you think of a reason why someone would alter these figures?”

  Butterfield springs out of his chair.

  “Objection, your honor. He’s asking her to speculate.”

  Johnson, who has gotten curious and is leaning over to his left to look at the receipts, says, “Overruled.”

  Tipped off that she doesn’t have to answer, Darla says blandly, “I don’t know why.”

  “Well, let me suggest a reason and see if you agree,” I say, taking the receipts from her and handing them to Johnson, who helps me out by peering at them.

  “If somebody wanted to steal some live hogs from the plant and conceal

  that fact, wouldn’t it help to make it appear that the actual number of hogs purchased was different than it truly was?”

  Darla doesn’t miss a beat.

  “All you’d have to do to check,” she says, shrugging, “is call the person who sold them to you and ask him what his copy says.”

  “But first you’d have to suspect something was wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  Darla shrugs.

  “I suppose so.”

  I go back to the podium, since Johnson is still going through the papers.

  “Where do you keep the receipts?”

  Darla shifts in her seat for the first time since she has been on the stand.

  “In a filing cabinet next to my desk.”

  “Is it kept locked?” I ask.

  “No, anybody could have access to the drawer.”

  I let that answer hang for a few seconds.

  “I just asked you if it was locked. Did you alter those receipts, Mrs. Tate?” Darla says, “Absolutely not.”

  “Your honor, may I come pick up the receipts and show them to the jury?”

  Johnson nods, and I come forward and hand them to Ira Kingston, a white man seated at the end. If he begins to yawn, I’m dead meat.

  I turn to Darla and ask, “Are you absolutely certain that you have an alibi for the time Mr. Ting was murdered?”

  Darla, indignant now or appearing to be, snaps, “I was at my sons’ school volunteering in the office.

  You can ask the school secretary, Mary Kiley.”

  I let Darla stew for a moment.

  “Did you murder Willie Ting because you were involved in some scheme,” I ask as dramatically as possible, “to steal meat from the plant and he had found out and was about to fire you?”

  “No, I did not!” Darla shouts at me, her bosom heaving under her dress.

  “But Mrs. Tate you did tell me and Eddie Ting a few weeks ago that you had been going through the books and found out that a meat salesman by the name of Muddy Jessup had been stealing from the plant by altering the price sheets?”

  “Yes, I did,” Darla says, her voice high.

  “And you suggested I try to find him, but when I did, it involved only a few hundred dollars, isn’t that a fact?”

  Darla purses her lips.

  “That’s all we could prove. It may have been more.”

  “Don’t you find it a little strange that you caught the changes in the price sheets but not the changes in the receipts from Dixie Farms?” “No,” she says, angrily, “it never occurred to me to check them.”

  Knowing I will have to accept whatever answer she gives me, I ask, trying to seem as confident as I can, “Mrs. Tate, do you recall telling me that your sons have worked for Paul Taylor during the last two summers?”

  For all Darla knows, they are waiting outside the courtroom to testify She blinks rapidly, and says, “Sure.”

  “Just one moment, your honor,” I say. Hoping the judge won’t stop me, I walk over to Butterfield’s table and with my back to her, nod as if I am getting an instruction. Melvin looks at me as if I am crazy.

  I come back to the podium and rumble with my papers for a moment before asking, “Now, your sons haven’t worked for him since the summertime, is that right?”

  Darla has begun ever so slightly to lean back against the witness chair as if she is bracing herself.

  “That’s correct.”

  My heart pounding, I act as if I am being coy with the next question and mumble it but speak loud enough for her and the jury to hear, “Do you know if they saw Mr. Taylor in January or February of this year?”

  Darla cocks her chin slightly, but just for the briefest of instants her eyes track to Paul’s table and then back to me. She is taking too long to answer, or I hope she is.

  “I have no idea.”

  I smile as if I know the answer and then look back over at Butterfield and nod. He frowns, but I can tell by his eyes that he knows what I am doing. I pause for as long as I dare and then b
ack to Darla and ask, “Mrs. Tate, did Mr. Taylor talk to you about murdering Willie Ting?”

  “No!” she answers, shrilly.

  “He did not!”

  I wheel around and make a show of looking at Dick, who is whispering urgently in Paul’s ear. I turn back to the judge and say that I have no more questions, and before Dick can get up, I point out that it is almost noon and ask the court to break for the noon recess.

  Johnson consults his own watch instead of the clock in the courtroom and says the court will be in recess until one. As soon as the bailiff opens the door that leads into his chambers, I walk quickly to the witness

  stand before Dick can get to Darla.

  “If you know what’s good for you,” I whisper into her left ear, “you’ll follow me right now out this courtroom and to my car out back, so we can talk.”

  Darla looks past me at Paul, who I know is watching her.

  “He’s gonna get off,” I continue saying, “and you’ll end up in jail.” Darla says nothing, and I head out the door, and go around back to the Blazer, which, like the other thirty or so vehicles sinking into the sweltering asphalt, is now directly in the sun. I climb in and roll down the windows, while the longest minute of my life passes, but I begin to breathe again as Darla comes around the corner. Her face is a mask, but I don’t give her time to bullshit me.

  “Bonner and Butterfield will be coming after you, Darla,” I say as soon as she shuts the door.

  “They’re not stupid, and you know it.

  You’ve got just enough time to make a deal with Butterfield, but you better do it now. Paul can’t be tried again if this case ends today, and you won’t have anything to bargain with.” She says nothing, but looks at me with pure hatred in her eyes.

  “It’s Paul who Butterfield wants, not you. He wants to run for office so bad he can taste it, and sending Paul to jail will put him on the map. But you could be the first woman executed in Arkansas if you don’t act immediately.”

  Following her gaze, I turn my head, and sure enough there is Paul, brazen as a whore, standing at the corner of the building waiting to talk to her.

  “Paul’s spent his life sneering at people like you, and if you let him, he’ll do it again.”

  Her temples already beginning to sweat in the heat, she brushes back a lock of wispy gray hair from her forehead. After a moment, she shrugs slightly, and I realize she isn’t going to say anything to me. I look back and see that Paul has disappeared.

  “Wait here, and I’ll go tell Butterfield you want to talk to him.”

  After a long moment, she raises a hand to wipe a tear out of the corner of her right eye. Until this moment, I wasn’t certain he was in on it.

  That is good enough for me. I sprint back into the courthouse to look for Butterfield, whom I find upstairs in his office behind his desk opening a sack lunch, the Arkansas criminal code open before him.

  Pushing the sack to one side, he smirks as if he is not at all surprised to see me. I sit down across from him and tell him that Darla is waiting to talk to him in the Blazer.

  Melvin looks past me at the closed door behind my chair.

  “So this case just comes down to good old-fashioned racism, after all, huh?”

  I stare at him. He must mean that Mary Kiley lied to the sheriff.

  “Call it what you want,” I say, “but it is obvious she resented the hell out of him and would have tried to protect Adolf Hitler if he had been out there.”

  As if he has all the time in the world. Butterfield tilts his chair back and asks, “Assuming you’re right, what was Tate’s motive?”

  “Money, probably,” I guess.

  “She didn’t say, nor has she admitted anything to me, but she was trying to raise two boys on a secretary’s salary.

  Taylor probably got to know how desperate she was through the boys. He somehow learned she was stealing from the plant and made her an offer she couldn’t refuse since Willie was about to find out. The timing for Paul was perfect.”

  The prosecutor rocks back and forth in his chair with his hands behind his head and thinks.

  “So your idea is, together this Tate woman and Taylor,” he muses, “picked the easiest and the dumbest nigger in the plant to frame?”

  I lean forward on my knees. Class is more decent than dumb, but I won’t argue the point.

  “And he picked the dumbest lawyer in the state to represent him,” I

  admit.

  “I’ve had my own agenda so long in this case I’ve been lucky to find the courthouse.”

  Butterfield abruptly stops rocking and says, “So I’ve heard.”

  For a long moment we sit staring at each other. Then, taking a small Sorry tape recorder from his desk, Butterfield stands up, his lanky frame uncurling as if it were made of rubber.

  “Hell,” he complains laconically, “I’m not gonna get any lunch.”

  After nervously gulping down a turkey sandwich and a Coke at a convenience store off the square, I wander around the courthouse hoping to spot Butterfield and Darla. They are not in the Blazer.

  His office door is shut, but I do not see a light coming from it. I should be sitting with Class, but we have gone over his story so many times that I can’t stay seated. So nervous he can barely speak. Class is going to make a terrible witness.

  He will sound guilty, and there is nothing I can do about it.

  I walk outside and stand on the front steps.

  Paul and Dick are nowhere to be seen either. I have looked for Angela, but she has probably walked home, a mere three blocks away, for lunch.

  I have not talked to her for the last week, and now, I wonder how all of

  this will affect her.

  What does she really know? Has she been lying to me all this time? Is she still in love with Paul? I have tried to put her out of my mind, but now it is impossible. What a mistake it was to become involved with her! Now I am hooked. Gloomily, I realize the case is out of my hands. I walk back inside, knowing that if he wants to, on closing argument, Butterfield can brush away the testimony of Eddie Ting and Mary Kiley in two minutes. Darla has admitted nothing, and unless she does. Class is headed for Cummins, and my anger and stupidity will have helped put him there.

  At five minutes after one, Melvin Butterfield is nowhere to be seen, and Judge Johnson, ready to resume the testimony, is fuming. The courtroom is packed to the gills, and I look over at Paul and Dick, who are sitting quietly, giving nothing away by their expressions. Just as the judge orders his bailiff to go look for the prosecutor, Melvin bursts through the side door and Johnson immediately holds him in contempt of court for being late and fines him fifty dollars.

  So distracted that he doesn’t seem to have heard him, Melvin fidgets with the buttons on his suit coat until Johnson asks him sarcastically if he is finally ready to proceed.

  Nervous for the first time since I’ve known him, Melvin announces, “Your honor, the state moves to dismiss all charges against the defendant Class Bledsoe!”

  I look over at Paul, who grips the table with both hands. In the courtroom, the blacks begin to yell and clap, and over the noise, Dick,

  his face red and angry, gets to his feet and demands a mistrial.

  Beside me. Class, a dazed look on his face, tugs at my sleeve.

  “Does this mean I’m free?”

  Johnson bangs his gavel repeatedly and says that the court is in recess and orders the lawyers back into his chambers. I tell Class it sounds like it to me and that I will be back in a few minutes.

  Inside Johnson’s chambers, the tension is thick enough to cut with a knife. Dick can hardly contain himself as we arrange ourselves around the judge’s table and wait for his court reporter to set up. If looks could kill, I’d be dead as a doornail.

  Yet I have done nothing unusual or improper except come to my senses.

  My guess is that Paul has been lying to him all this time, but I may never know the truth. Finally, the judge says formally to the prosecutor,
“What exactly is going on, Mr. Butterfield?”

  Melvin, his right hand inside his pocket presumably holding his tape recorder, tells the judge, “The state has credible evidence that Class Bledsoe was being framed by Darla Tate, who has agreed to testify against Mr. Taylor.”

  I would have loved to have heard that conversation.

  I can only assume that Darla knew that once the spotlight was going to be on her, the jig was up. Dick, his jaw working furiously, yelps, “The

  prosecution has already rested its case.”

  Butterfield, now suddenly relaxed, takes his hand out of his pocket and brings both palms together under his chin.

  “Any witness can change her story,” he says confidently, “on cross-examination.”

  I sit back and watch Johnson as he irritably drums his fingers on the table in front of him. No judge likes to declare a mistrial, but he knows he may be reversed if he doesn’t give Dick an opportunity to prepare a new defense.

  “I’ll grant a motion, Mr. Dickerson, for a mistrial.”

  Dick nods, but from the expression on his face, he knows Paul’s goose is cooked. When we walk back into the courtroom, I give Class a thumbs-up sign. For the first time since I can remember, a smile splits his face from ear to ear.

  After Johnson announces that he has granted a mistrial and that Class is no longer a defendant in the case, there is another outburst, but Johnson gavels the spectators into silence and explains that the charges against Paul are still outstanding.

  With his usual dignity, he thanks the jury for its service and allows it to leave the courtroom first.

  While they are filing out. Class touches my arm and whispers, “I didn’t think you knew what the hell you were doin’, but I guess you did.”

  I laugh, realizing how incredibly relieved I feel.

  “It took a while, didn’t it?” I kid him.

  As I get up to go explain to the Tings what has happened, I hope that Class will never understand how lucky he has been. Outside, in the hall, I find Tommy and Connie, who, as I expected, is enraged.