Blind Judgement g-5

by Grif Stockley

  “More than a dozen people could have framed me,” he says, his voice choking into a whisper.

  “Aren’t you gonna show that in court?”

  I nod.

  “I’ll do my best. Class, but there’s a big difference between telling a jury you might have been framed and proving that you actually were.

  Juries hear alibis all the time, and frankly one of the weakest and most ineffective is that a suspect was framed, unless there’s some real evidence to support it. So far, I haven’t been able to find any, or anyone or anything that proves you were home between two and four that

  afternoon. We still have a couple of months before the trial, and something may turn up, but things don’t look good.”

  Class sighs heavily.

  “What about Vie Worthy?”

  “I still haven’t talked to him,” I admit, “but you know as well as I do that Willie wouldn’t have let him within five yards of him if he had shown up at the plant. Whoever killed him was somebody he knew and at least halfway trusted.”

  His despair changes to anger, “You think it was me!” Admittedly, my faith in him was stronger three weeks ago, but I say, “Personally, I don’t think it was you, but you know as well as I do, it’s not what I think but what the jury thinks, and so far all the evidence is going to show is that the only fingerprints on the knife that killed Willie were yours, and you’re the only worker in the plant who can’t show you didn’t have an opportunity to kill Willie. Now that may change, but that’s the way it is now.”

  Class shakes me by asking, “If I plead guilty, will you give some of the money back we paid you? Latrice can’t support her and the baby on what she gets from that store.”

  I shake my head. I can’t let him make a decision based on money.

  “If you take this deal, and, in fact, it’s only a recommendation by the prosecutor, you have to tell the judge you’re pleading guilty because you are guilty, not just saying you are.” As soon ?s I recite this

  familiar phrase, “pleading guilty because you are guilty,” I realize how hypocritical the criminal law is. The judge is essentially telling a defendant he must stand trial if he believes he is innocent. But what innocent person in his right mind would risk a trial where the penalty could be death and the evidence appears overwhelming?

  Class, clearly puzzled, scratches his head. I have confused him. He asks, “Can’t I plead guilty, no matter what?”

  “You’re not supposed to, because you are lying to the court if you say you’re guilty when you’re not. On the other hand, I don’t see how justice is served if an innocent man can’t avoid a death sentence by pleading guilty and getting a reduced sentence. In other words, I’m telling you, if I were in a situation where I was innocent and was offered a reduced sentence but was pretty certain I’d get the death penalty if I went to trial, I’d say I was guilty.”

  He looks down at his feet.

  “And you think I’ll be convicted?” Butterfield is testing me by making this early offer. It’s a smart move, but he doesn’t know how smart.

  “It’s too early to say.

  There may be evidence by the time we get to the trial that exonerates you.”

  “But it’s my decision, isn’t it?” Class asks.

  “Yeah, it’s your decision,” I say.

  “I’ll think about it,” Class says, dismissing me.

  I drive back to Blackwell County, resisting the urge to call Angela.

  She wants to go slow. I can do that.

  Saturday afternoon spring is definitely in the air.

  It has made it all the way to 78 this afternoon.

  Even as unobservant as I am, I notice the trees beginning to bud and some daffodils blooming in the yards on Orchard Lane. Bear Creek before the mosquitoes arrive can be a nice place. As a kid here, my memory seems stuck in the sweltering summers of the Delta.

  In Angela’s yard there is a for sale sign. I wonder how much her house is worth. With so many others leaving, undoubtedly not as much as she wants. Angela greets me at the door with a warm smile. She is wearing a pair of shorts and a sleeveless blouse and nothing on her feet.

  “Well, you look comfortable,” she says, giving me the once over. I am wearing a pair of jeans and a pullover short-sleeved shirt that Sarah gave me for Christmas.

  And you look sexy, I think, but don’t say. I glance over my shoulder across the street. The house is dark, but Mrs. Petty must be in there somewhere peering out at us. As gorgeous as today is, I would have thought she would have been outside puttering in the flower bed around her house.

  “Do you think Mrs. Petty approves of you entertaining in short pants?”

  The smile on Angela’s face disappears.

  “She died in her sleep while I was in Atlanta. Her sister found her. I wasn’t here to go to her funeral.”

  I try not to stare at Angela’s legs. They look great.

  “She probably died of boredom,” I comment, “because you weren’t here for her to spy on.”

  Angela laughs.

  “You’re terrible. We’re all snoops here. You know that.”

  I turn my head away and stare at the sign in her yard.

  “Bad timing, wasn’t it? Now her house goes on the market at the same time.” Angela says dryly, “I can tell you’re really broken up over this.”

  Death. It’s seldom convenient.

  “You don’t seem all that upset either,” I observe.

  “She had a long life,” Angela says.

  “Not everybody does.”

  Since it is too pleasant to stay inside, we end up in her backyard drinking margaritas. I must have passed some test for Angela to show me off this way. In the next hour before it grows dark from the small brick patio she waves casually to her neighbors on both sides. I don’t know them, though doubtless with a couple of phone calls they can find out who I am if they don’t already know. Whatever the reason, Angela seems more relaxed. She admits to feeling better now that she’s made the decision to leave Bear Creek.

  “When the house sells, I’m going to move. I thought the boys would be angry, but they weren’t.”

  “They’re probably relieved,” I say, licking salt from the rim of the glass.

  “Farming sounds like hard work. Where are you moving?” I ask, not having anticipated this decision so quickly.

  Angela picks at a spot on the arm of the deck chair.

  “Maybe Atlanta, maybe Memphis. The problem is, I haven’t seen a lot of job ads for farmers’ wives.”

  So that is why she went to visit her old college roommate.

  “Have you thought about Little Rock?” I ask, trying to see her eyes for a clue to what she is thinking.

  “Now that your boys are in college, you don’t have to worry about the

  schools. It’s the center of the state. Granted, there are bad areas, but there are plenty of safe neighborhoods, too. You could easily get a job as a bookkeeper.”

  She looks up at me, her face solemn as an owl’s.

  “I have thought about it,” she says.

  “But I don’t want you to think I’m chasing you, Gideon.”

  I laugh at the thought.

  “If our relationship so far is your idea of a chase, I figure I’m safe until the turn of the century.”

  Instead of smiling, her eyes fill with tears.

  “I’m so scared. I know it’s stupid, but I’ve lived here thirty years.

  It hasn’t been easy, but we made it.

  Now, all I do is lie awake thinking: What if I can’t sell the house?

  What if Cecil and Nancy can’t even pay me the first year? Who wants to hire a fifty-year-old woman from the Arkansas Delta who never held a job in her life?”

  I reach over and pat her right hand, which has a death grip on her chair.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I say, not understanding until this moment how little self-confidence Angela has had. Maybe for good reason. Her life with Dwight wasn’t a bowl of cherries, and
as good as she looks, most employers would rather have a perky twenty-two year-old who is already a whiz with spreadsheets than a widow trying to support two kids in college.

  Over a delicious dinner of pasta and salad, Angela pumps me about the case. I tell her what I’ve been doing the last week, but feel I shouldn’t reveal to her that Butterfield has offered Class a deal. It is not that I don’t trust her, but even I have my limits of violating client confidentiality.

  She sips from a glass of the California zinfandel I brought along and then asks, her voice wistful, “Isn’t there a chance that the case against Paul could be dropped? If they don’t have any evidence other than the tape?”

  I eye my empty glass and decide against another one.

  “I have no idea,” I say cautiously, but as usual made slightly irritable by her concern for Paul.

  “Why do you care so much?”

  “Even if he is found innocent, his family will be tarred by this for the rest of their lives,” Angela says passionately.

  “I may be leaving here soon, but some people won’t. It isn’t right!”

  Again, she breaks into tears, and this time I am allowed to lead her into her sons’ bedroom. She turns on a light between the twin beds and turns to me, her face mostly in shadow.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I ask, wondering if she will be upset tomorrow.

  For an answer, she kisses me and pulls me down on the bed on top of her. For once, we do not talk about Bear Creek or the lawsuit. Sober, I leave about eleven and make the two-hour drive back to Blackwell County. Even though Mrs. Petty is dead, her ghost may be watching.

  Wednesday morning Class finally tells me he has decided to reject Butterfield’s offer.

  “I don’t want to do that now,” he says vaguely, rubbing his eyes as he stares at me through the glass. He has been complaining he can’t sleep more than a couple of hours a night.

  My reaction is mixed, to say the least. I’d love to get Paul, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if my client perjured himself.

  “Even if Butterfield tells me this is the only offer he will make, I don’t necessarily believe it,” I say.

  “It depends on how bad he wants to get Paul Taylor If he does, he’ll call me right before the trial.”

  Bledsoe leans back in his chair and folds his arms. He wants me to get

  out of here and get to work.

  Twenty minutes later at the courthouse in Bear Creek, Butterfield takes my news calmly.

  “I’ll just have to manage without him,” he says, the tone of his voice as amiable as ever.

  I hem and haw around, but I can’t get him to give me any indication that this rejection closes the door permanently. Pokerfaced, Butterfield stands and shakes my hand, dismissing me.

  “It’ll be an interesting trial. Did you hear what happened in Helena yesterday?”

  I nod, feeling a little weak. Butterfield got a first-degree murder charge to stick against a black woman accused of murdering her husband.

  Usually, that kind of charge is knocked way down by the time the jury comes back.

  “It sounds like you did a good job.”

  “I get lucky every now and then,” he says, escorting me out of his office. If he is upset, I can’t tell it.

  I head over to Dickerson’s office and find him alone behind a computer modifying jury instructions for a civil trial beginning next week in Blytheville, in the northeast corner of the state. I wonder if he has ever come to his office without wearing a tie. Dick is definitely from

  the old school, which holds that an attorney’s name in bold type in the yellow pages is a betrayal of the ideals of the profession.

  “I wanted to let you know that Class turned down a deal to testify against Paul,” I say, sitting down in a comfortable chair across from his desk.

  “He still insists he’s not guilty and that Paul never approached him about anything.”

  Dickerson leans back in his chair and flexes his fingers like a concert pianist about to rip into the Warsaw Concerto.

  “Of course he did,” he says.

  “Butterfield has absolutely nothing on Paul except one tape of him and Willie that one time.

  It’s an abomination that Paul was ever charged. I knew this is what the legal system would come to with them in charge.”

  I study Dick’s diploma from Columbia. Beside it is proof that he took his undergraduate degree from Washington and Lee. It is hard not to be impressed. Dick can probably lecture for a week without notes on the history of Southern efforts to block integration.

  “When you get some time after this trial,” I say, watching his fingers fly over the keys, “I’ll go over with you what I’ve found so far.

  Paul’s not hurt any, but I can’t say I’ve found anything to help Class.”

  Dick gives me a distracted smile.

  “I appreciate it, Gideon. I know you’re busy, too. Call me next week and we’ll get together. I know you’re doing all the work right now.”

  “It’s all right,” I assure him.

  “I’ve enjoyed being back over here.”

  “I hear you’re seeing Miss. Angela,” he says, glancing at me and smiling.

  “She’s struggled like a lot of people over here, and I’m sorry she’s selling her house. It’s people like her we can’t afford to lose.”

  I admit that we have gone out a time or two, but as I have with John, I minimize the relationship.

  Dick is both too polite to say more and anxious to get back to work, so I let him. As I walk back to the parking lot at the courthouse where I left the Blazer, I marvel at Dick’s capacity for self-delusion. What does he expect to happen over here? Does he think whites will suddenly stop moving out and come to terms with the black political domination that is sure to come in every area? Two members of the city council are white; the county judge, Terry Keith, is white, but unless there is some kind of major turnaround about to take place, the handwriting is on the wall. And what would he think of my relationship with Angela thus far? Dick sees himself as honorably old-fashioned and surely would be shocked if he knew that Angela had taken me to her brother-in-law’s bed with a

  fistful of rubbers in her purse.

  During the rest of April I have occasion to see Dick several times as I plow through the list of plant workers and check and double-check their alibis. Some, despite Eddie Ting’s entreaties, have no interest in talking to me or, when they have, express the view that Class is guilty. Whatever their views or attitudes, time after time their alibis check out. Though his schedule is busier than my own, as the trial approaches, Dick, when he can, begins to take an active role in the investigation.

  But between us, we uncover very little that suggests that Woodrow Bonner has not done a thorough job in meticulously documenting the whereabouts of each worker in the plant the day of the murder. So long as Bledsoe continues to stick to his story, Dick has little to worry about.

  As we continue to meet together on a weekly basis to compare notes, he seems mainly interested in keeping tabs on what I am doing, and for good reason. If I can’t come up with another suspect and Class testifies as expected, Paul has nothing to worry about.

  What keeps the month of April from seeming like a complete waste of time is my steadily growing relationship with Angela. Though I do not spend a night at her house and am wearing out myself and the Blazer commuting, I see her two and sometimes three times a week and have taken to stopping at Bear Creek’s one supermarket, where occasionally I see Alvaro Ruiz in the meat department setting out cuts of beef and pork.

  One rainy, unforgettable Saturday we drive to Memphis and spend almost the entire day in a motel. Depending on her mood, she can be aggressive, and I glimpse the passionate girl I knew thirty years ago and

  experienced that bizarre afternoon in her brother-in-law’s bed.

  Other times she becomes moody and depressed, which I relate to Dwight’s death and her fears about the future. Though sh
e has had no offers on the house, she has begun to work on it, and more than once has come to her door with eggshell-white paint on her face and hands. Having gotten a full-price offer from a middle-class black couple on my house (with no fixing up) after it had been listed for only a week, I am sympathetic to her plight but have no suggestions about how to move it.

  Bear Creek is hardly a seller’s market.

  I have met her boys, who have been home for a weekend. Although neither is as mature as Sarah, they seem like good kids and both are closer to her than I would have thought. I caught Brad wiping away a tear as he hugged Angela when they were going back to school a couple of Sundays ago. Distressed by their mother’s plans to sell the farm and further disrupt their lives by moving, they have begun to privately pressure her to stay in Bear Creek. Like many Delta-raised children, their manners are so good they can get on your nerves. Accordingly, both boys have been polite and courteous to me but are naturally suspicious since lately I seem to be at their mother’s house every time they call. At first, Angela maintained the fiction that I was “just an old friend” but has begun to admit that we are going out.

  Since the Blazer is over here all the time, they could easily discover the truth simply by asking the neighbors how their mother is doing. The Saturday night they were home, Angela instructed me to show them Sarah’s picture, and they were suitably impressed. I guess they figure that if I have a daughter that beautiful I can’t be too bad.

  Angela has encouraged them to look for summer jobs in Jonesboro since if she gets an offer she could close on the house within a matter of weeks.

  Having so much time to think during the long two-hour drives back and forth, I have begun to admit to myself that I am falling in love with her.

  Despite a certain amount of baggage, she seems to be getting used to the idea that I am serious about her. She has let me know that I nearly blew it by kissing her that first day, and I realize now how unsettling it was for her. Would I act differently if I had the chance to do it over again? I tell myself that I would, but hardly from the purest of motives. There is an undeniable sexual attraction between us, something that time hasn’t dimmed.