by Ronald Kelly
"What I am saying, Sheriff, is that you wrongfully arrested my clients, James Hanson and Claude Darnell, without any physical evidence, without any confession other than the hazy mutterings of an intoxicated mind. Did you not, in fact, find the opportunity to jail these two men and use them as scapegoats in an irresistible chance of closing the whole grisly case and making yourself look good to your fellow constituents? It being only a few months until the county election, the idea must have seemed like a godsend to save your own hide!"
"Objection!" called Willard Shaw, rising from his table. "Your Honor, I must object strongly to the insinuations that Mr. Branchworth is making. Sheriff White has been a respectable citizen and exemplary law officer in Bedloe County for nearly two decades. For the defender to even allude to Taylor White in such light is nothing more than pure slander!"
Judge Mullen agreed. "Objection sustained." He directed a baleful look at the public defender. "You will kindly refrain from any further remarks of a libelous nature, Mr. Branchworth."
The attorney took the scolding with a grain of salt. After all, he had accomplished what he had set out to do. The murmur of the spectators and the thoughtful expressions that crossed the faces of the jurors told him that he had successfully planted the first seeds of doubt in the backs of their minds.
Chapter Twenty-Four
"Mr. Biggs, did you go to the Bloody Bucket on the night of September twenty-sixth?"
"Yes, I did," replied Clay. He sat on the witness stand, work-calloused hands clasped idly in his lap. He looked out of place there, like some actor who had been miscast in a stage play. Neither the dark Sunday suit, shiny patent leather shoes, nor any amount of Wildroot Creme Oil could conceal the rural homeliness of the man. He could very well have approached the stand decked out in Duckhead overalls and a red flannel shirt, and no one there would have thought any less of him.
"What were your intentions that night?" continued Willard Shaw.
Clay cast his eyes nervously around the crowded courtroom. "Well, I reckon I was out to kill Bully Hanson."
An excited murmur spread like wildfire across the gallery. Judge Mullen quickly put a lid on it, striking sharply upon the bench top with his gavel. "I will have order in this court," he stated gravely. The conversation ebbed back into silence.
The prosecutor went on. "Why would you take such drastic action? Everyone I've talked to has made you out to be a fine, level-headed family man, not one who would go off half-cocked."
"I had a strong suspicion that Hanson and Darnell were the men who killed my boy Johnny."
Shaw absently scratched his cowlick. "And did you confront Bully Hanson with your suspicions?"
"Not right off," admitted Clay. "First I had to get it straight in my head that they really did it. I went to Bully's truck and searched for some shred of evidence that might link them to the killing."
"And did you find anything?"
"I did. A guitar pick that belonged to my son."
The district attorney took the tortoiseshell pick from the evidence and held it aloft. "Is this the item you discovered? A guitar pick with the initials J.B. scratched on one side?"
"It is. I found it on the floorboard of Bully's truck."
"Objection!" called A.J. Branchworth from the table where Claude and Bully sat. "The evidence in question was obtained by illegal search. Furthermore, it was obtained by a civilian acting on a whim of utter desperation and not by a law officer with the proper warrant to conduct a legitimate search of my client's vehicle. I ask that this particular piece of evidence be stricken from the record."
The judge was reluctant to give in to the attorney's demand, but he knew his grievance rang true. "I'm afraid he's right, Mr. Shaw," Mullen pointed out. "Bailiff, please remove item Number Four from the list of evidence."
Willard Shaw was disheartened by the exclusion of the guitar pick, but did not let it show. He went on, business as usual. "What happened then?"
"Bully found me rooting around in his truck. He was pretty liquored up, and he pulled a sawed-off shotgun from under the seat."
"Did he discharge the shotgun?"
"Yes . . . once. He blew out the side window of his own truck trying to shoot me."
"What happened after that?"
"Bully lost hold of his gun, and we went at it, tooth and nail, for a while. After just about getting the tar whomped outta me, I finally got Bully backed up against his truck. He found his shotgun and was on the verge of shooting me when the sheriff showed up."
"Mr. Biggs, did Bully Hanson say anything to you when he had that gun pointed at your head?"
Clay's hangdog face grew sullen with dark emotion. "Yes. He admitted to killing my son at Harvey Brewer's place."
"Your witness, Mr. Branchworth," offered Shaw, this time with less enthusiasm than before. He was beginning to dread the defender's cross-examination of his star witnesses. Branchworth was like a turkey buzzard, circling his prey until a weak spot appeared in their testimony, one that might take away from the prosecution's case and give more substance to his own.
A.J. Branchworth approached the stand with a polite smile on his face, a smile that Clay could see right through. "Mr. Biggs, when you confronted Mr. Hanson, did you not also have a firearm in your possession?"
Clay could not lie. "I did."
"And did you not fire two shots at him, whereas he only fired once?"
"The muzzle was aimed upward when we were wrestling. It fired twice into the air."
Branchworth shook his head solemnly, as if he were about to scold a naughty child. "Mr. Biggs, in my opinion those are not the actions of a man in his right frame of mind. If you suspected Mr. Hanson of this crime, why did you not go to Sheriff White with your suspicions? Why did you chose to take the law into your own hands?"
Clay stumbled over his words, suddenly angered by the questions fired at him. "Well, I had to be sure before I did anything like that. I had to be certain that what I'd been told was true."
A new light sparked in the lawyer's eyes. "Did you say that someone told you? Well, please tell us all exactly who told you that Mr. Hanson and Mr. Darnell had killed those three boys."
Clay knew then that he had made a bad mistake. He clammed up, reluctant to reply. "I'd just as soon not say."
Lawyer Branchworth planted his fists on his narrow hips. "Need I remind you that you are under oath, Mr. Biggs?"
Clay knew that he was jeopardizing the validity of his own testimony, but there was nothing else he could say. He was caught between a rock and a hard place. "It was my daughter who told me. My youngest daughter."
The attorney's eyes widened incredulously. "Your daughter? Are you saying that you went out to that roadhouse with the intention of killing a man, simply because a child told you to?"
"She didn't tell me to!" gritted Clay. "She just had a feeling that Bully and Claude were the ones who done it, and I believed her."
"She had a feeling?" roared Branchworth. He looked as if he would have burst out laughing if he could have gotten away with it. "Exactly what does that mean ... she had a feeling?"
Clay felt cold anger well up inside him. "My daughter, Cindy Ann, has the gift of second sight."
More excited talk from the spectators. More banging of the gavel and threats to clear the courtroom from the judge.
A.J. Branchworth strutted around the witness stand like a bantam rooster. The fire of pure meanness sparkled in his muddy brown eyes. "What are you trying to tell us, Mr. Biggs?" he asked loudly. "That your daughter is something of a soothsayer? A fortune teller of sorts?"
"Nah, it ain't like that. She just has feelings. She sees things that other folks don't have the gift to see."
"Sees things?" bellowed Branchworth. He relished the fool he was making Clay out to be. "Do you mean she sees things that aren't really there? Hallucinations perhaps?"
"No, that ain't what I meant...." Clay sputtered.
"Isn't it true that your daughter, Cynthia Ann, was in a Nashville ho
spital with typhoid for nearly six months? Could it be that she might have suffered some irreparable damage during that long illness? Perhaps she is really a little touched in the head; could that be a possibility, Mr. Biggs?"
"Objection, your Honor!" bellowed Willard Shaw, standing in protest.
But the public defender was on a roll. He totally ignored the prosecutor's motion. "Do you usually make a habit of believing everything your daughter tells you? I think not. I believe the grief over your son's death has impaired your own stable judgment."
Clay could only stare at him in shocked silence. The spectators of the gallery reacted similarly.
A.J. Branchworth was about to launch into another barrage of character assault, when a strange feeling overcame him. He broke out into a fit of sweating, perspiration coursing down his forehead and the nape of his neck. Blood pounded dully in his temples. He felt as if he were strangling, as if his breathing were somehow constricted. He tugged at the knot of his tie, but it only seemed to tighten even more.
Leave my daddy alone.
The voice seemed to resound from somewhere inside his head, not from any external source. He whirled and swept his eyes across the gathering of spectators. A sea of puzzled faces regarded him. They all stared at him as if he had suddenly gone mad. He was turning back when he caught a glimpse of a small red-haired child sitting in the front pew. She glared at him venomously. He quickly turned back to the witness before him.
"Perhaps, Mr. Biggs, it is you who are suffering from a mental breakdown," he rasped, his voice suddenly hoarse. "Maybe the death of your son and the troubles you've been having finding work have finally caught up with you and—"
I said to . . . leave . . . him . . . ALONE!
Branchworth's eyes nearly bulged from their sockets. The starched white collar of his dress shirt was constricting, tightening little by little against the lump of his windpipe. It seemed to be shrinking, much like a strip of wet rawhide does when exposed to a blazing sun.
Judge Mullen regarded the attorney with raised eyebrows. "Counselor, do you have any further questions for this witness?"
The tension around his throat was so great that he could hardly speak. "No, your Honor. That is all."
Abruptly, the paralyzing constriction eased, returning his breath to normal. For a moment, he had felt as if his throat would be crushed like a field mouse trapped in the tightening coils of a king snake.
A wall clock in the outer hallway struck the hour of noon, prompting Judge Mullen to call an hour lunch break. As the courtroom began to empty, Branchworth slumped into his chair. A palsy of shaking trembled through his nimble hands as he shuffled a stack of legal papers and stuck them into his briefcase.
"What did you stop for?" asked Bully before being escorted back to his cell. "You had him right where you wanted him and you just let him slip away!"
The lawyer did not answer. He watched as the Biggs family left the courtroom. Cindy Ann flashed an innocent, girlish smile that made his blood run cold. He sat there quietly for the next hour, a look of bewilderment on his ashen face, and tried to regain his faltering composure.
Chapter Twenty-Five
"Mind if I join you folks?" Willard Shaw approached the Biggs family at the base of the courthouse steps, his dark brown jacket draped over one arm. He held a brown paper bag in one hand.
"We'd be pleased for the company," invited Clayburn. Maudie was handing out ham sandwiches to the members of her brood. She reached to the bottom of the pail and found a spare. "You're more than welcome to share our lunch, Mr. Shaw."
"No thank you, dear lady." The lawyer smiled graciously. "I brought my own." He swept aside the shriveled husks of a few dead leaves and sat down. He dumped the contents of his sack onto the flat of the step: a shiny red apple and a bologna sandwich wrapped in waxed paper.
Noticing a couple of boys playing nearby, Shaw called them over. "Why don't you fine fellows run across the street to the store and bring us all a Coca-Cola." He dug a fifty-cent piece from his vest pocket and flipped it to them. "And buy a couple for yourselves, too."
"Gee, thanks a lot, mister!" They grinned in unison, then headed off for Flander's Grocery.
"You needn't do that," said Clay.
Shaw flashed his Will Roger's smile. "My treat. I insist."
It was not long until the boys returned with seven frosty bottles of pop. They commenced eating, the bright noonday sun warming the concrete beneath them, taking a little of the chill from the brisk, October breeze.
"I kinda feel bad about what happened up there on the witness stand," apologized Clay after a few moments of awkward silence.
"Well, don't," assured the prosecutor. "I've known A.J. Branchworth for years, and he has a mean streak in him a mile wide. Hates to lose a case more than any man I've ever known. He has an uncanny knack for turning a man's testimony inside out. Believe me, he could have done far more damage than he did. Just can't figure out why he backed off when he did."
Cindy hid a mischievous grin behind the crust of her sandwich.
"So you still think we've got a good chance of winning this case?"
Shaw nodded. "Branchworth didn't do that much damage. Besides, my next witness will be Harvey Brewer. If anything makes this trial, it'll be his testimony."
They ate in silence for a while, a rural farming family and a big city lawyer enjoying a simple meal. When Willard Shaw finished his sandwich, he started on the apple. He sat quietly on his step, studying the members of Clay Biggs' fine family. His attention, however, lingered on the red-haired child who sat between her mother and father. There was no question about it. There was something different about her. Shaw could tell that just by looking at her.
"Mr. Biggs, what you said on the stand today about your girl Cindy ... is it true?" he inquired, not knowing whether he was stepping out of line in asking. "Does she really have the gift of second sight?"
Clay's blue eyes hardened in defensiveness, then softened just as quickly. "Yes, sir, what I said was true." He watched the city slicker carefully, trying to detect some trace of skepticism in his face. He found none.
"Must be pretty scary to you sometimes, young lady," Shaw said sympathetically. "Knowing about things you don't understand."
Cindy nodded shyly. You couldn't know just how scary it can be, she thought.
"So you believe in such things?" asked Maudie with interest.
"Indeed I do, ma'am," assured the prosecuting attorney. "I believe there are a good many things in this world that are beyond man's comprehension. Powers of the mind may seem bewildering and unnatural to some folks, but they are little to scoff at compared to other phenomena. Why, take the Bell Witch up in Adams, Tennessee for instance. Back in the early 1800's, the John Bell family was supposedly terrorized by a spirit from out of nowhere. It disrupted the Bell household, torturing the elder Bell and his daughter Betsy to no end. It vowed to drive John Bell to his death and prevent Betsy from marrying her childhood beau, and over the course of many years, it did just that. Then it bid farewell to Mrs. Bell — Luce as it referred to her—and to the Bell sons and stopped its persistent haunting for seven years. It reappeared later on, but without the activity it had exhibited before, and then vanished from the lives of the Bell family forever.
"Plenty of God-fearing folks in Robertson County claim that the spirit still dwells in the cave on the Bell property, raising all kinds of ruckus. A good friend of mine, a college professor by trade, once spent a night in the Bell Witch cave. He went up there with all manner of scientific equipment, intending to disprove the existence of such an entity. Well, the following morning, those of the Bell descendants who still lived on the farm went down to the cave to see why the professor had not come to the house for breakfast. They found him crouched in a far corner of the barren cave, gibbering like an idiot. His eyes were wild and his hair was snow white, where it had been pitch black the day before. His equipment had been smashed against the walls of the cave, thrown there by some great force. H
e has spent the remainder of his days in an asylum for the insane, talking nonsense about a great pounding upon the walls and mocking voices surrounding him from all sides. I can't say for sure whether there are indeed such beings as spirits and demons, but I will say this; something up there in that cave turned an educated man into a babbling lunatic in the span of a single night."
The Biggs children giggled nervously and shivered in spite of themselves, as most youngsters do when told an especially creepy ghost story.
The big clock above the double doors struck one. They were about to file back inside with the other spectators when Sheriff White's patrol car pulled up at the curb. Taylor had left immediately after his degrading cross-examination, partly to get away from the questioning eyes of the townspeople, but most surely to pick up Harvey Brewer.
As the constable and the star witness approached the courthouse steps, they all noticed how haggard and unwell Harvey appeared that afternoon. The elderly man was dressed in a dark suit and bow tie, but other than the crispness of his attire, he frankly looked like death warmed over. His wrinkled skin held none of the robust color it usually did. The skin of his face hung like pale parchment ravaged by time. His rheumy eyes had an unhealthy yellow cast to them, and they held an emotion beyond that of simple fear. The man was utterly terrified; that was clear for everyone to see.
"Are you feeling all right today, Mr. Brewer?" Shaw asked, not liking the way the man looked.
"Well enough, I reckon," Harvey replied curtly. There was a tremble in the man's voice. Something had him spooked.
The sheriff noted everyone's puzzled faces and turned to the elderly man. "Harvey, why don't you go on in and have a seat. I'll be in directly."
"You won't be long, will you?" There was something akin to panic in Brewer's ancient eyes.
"I'll be right in, I promise."
When the old man had crept up the courthouse steps and disappeared through the double doors, Clay turned to his friend with concern in his voice. "Harvey looks pretty shaken today."