No Truth Left to Tell

by Michael McAuliffe

  Rush and Dawson both were now standing on their toes and leaning in toward the judge.

  “There’s no reason to declare a mistrial,” Rush responded.

  “But—”

  “What, Mr. Dawson?” asked the judge.

  “You know my view,” he said, backing down.

  Battle joined the debate. “Judge, let’s call the foreperson in and hear the specifics before you consider anything else.”

  “I think that’s right,” the judge said. “Jim, please bring in Ms. Carter—just her—not the other jurors.”

  They waited for the court security officer to come back with the foreperson. When they arrived, the judge forged ahead.

  “Ms. Carter, we have your note. Can you be more specific for us about what you consider inappropriate comments?”

  Carter was slight in all measurements and leaned in when she spoke, as if her words needed protection even at the bench. “I’m not looking for trouble, but it ain’t right what’s bein’ said. I can’t let it pass. We tried to tell the man he can’t say his mind in a way that offends most everybody in the room.”

  “Ma’am, what are you referring to?” Rush asked.

  “Mr. Sales,” replied the foreperson before anyone could stop her from naming the problem. “He keeps on sayin’ he don’t like these people. It’s prejudice, I reckon.”

  “What makes you say that?” Battle asked.

  “He said it was no accident the detective was black.”

  The conversation stopped. No lawyer dared ask a follow-up question without a clear signal from the judge.

  “Thank you, Ms. Carter. Please go back to the jury room, but don’t discuss this with anyone else,” the judge finally said.

  The judge asked the security officer to escort Carter and get Sales. The foreperson had to walk close to Daniels, given the path to the door, but they didn’t look at each other. Within minutes, the officer returned with Sales.

  “Sir, do you think you can be impartial in judging this matter?” the judge asked.

  “How so?” Sales asked back.

  “Can you set aside your personal feelings or views and make a decision based just on the evidence presented and the law as I instruct you?”

  “What’d that woman tell you? They’re angry for me speak’n my mind. I got rights same as them.”

  “Who’s them?” Rush asked without thinking.

  “The coloreds and the Jews.”

  All three lawyers gulped. The judge winced. The abstract became concrete in an instant. Daniels couldn’t hear the exchange because he’d remained in his seat at his lawyer’s urging.

  The judge didn’t wait on the lawyers. “Mr. Sales, please stand over there for a moment.” The judge pointed to a spot near the spectator rows and away from the defendant.

  “Any motions?” she asked.

  “Mistrial, Judge. Mistrial,” Dawson said.

  Battle silently assessed the damage and developed options. “It’s unfortunate, but fixable.”

  “No way,” said the defense counsel. “The government wants the jury stacked against my client.”

  “That’s not true,” Rush replied. “He’s oozing prejudice. We just want a fair jury.”

  Fortunately for the government, Battle had a plan. “Judge, there’s an answer for this. Excuse the juror and start over with the alternate if he can be located. It avoids a mistrial. We don’t know anything about how the other jurors are evaluating the evidence, and we don’t know anything about the alternate.”

  “I renew my motion for a mistrial,” Dawson said.

  “Judge, you’re making sure whatever the decision is, it has some integrity,” Battle added.

  “No irony in moving for a mistrial for getting rid of a racist juror?” Rush asked.

  “You making a point?” Dawson shot back.

  “Mr. Rush, let’s keep this cordial,” the judge admonished.

  “Sorry.”

  Battle again had convinced the judge, who—after considering the situation—summoned the juror back from his exile.

  “Mr. Sales, I’m going to excuse you from further jury service in this case. This officer will go with you to get your personal items.”

  “What’d I do?”

  “It would be best if you didn’t continue deliberating on the case,” the judge said. “Jim, take Mr. Sales back to the jury room and escort him out of the courthouse.”

  “It ain’t right bein’ kicked off. Lots of people in this town are gonna feel the same.”

  “That may be, but we do things differently in this court than the town.”

  “Your court’s part of the town,” the juror said, “not the other way ’round.”

  “Jim.” The judge motioned to the security officer with subtle but visible urgency to take the juror away.

  As the dismissed juror walked by Daniels’s table, he raised his left arm slightly and separated his fingers so Daniels could recognize the universal Klan greeting. Daniels stood up like he was going to embrace the man, but the officer interrupted and led the juror by the arm out of the room. The lawyers had moved on to discussing how to find the alternate juror, so they didn’t see the secret greeting. Mercer saw the juror gesture with his arm, but it happened so fast he doubted his own eyes.

  Once the alternate juror—located and enlisted back to service—arrived at the courthouse, the judge gathered the original eleven jurors and the new juror together and sent them back to the locked room to start deliberations over again from the beginning. She also ordered more food and sodas to be delivered to them.

  “We’re adjourned until we hear something more,” the judge said as she left.

  The defendant wandered over to his wife in the back. He took the secret about the Klan greeting with him.

  “This isn’t good,” Rush said to Mercer and Battle.

  “Damn,” Mercer said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “All it takes is one,” Battle responded, “but I think we just dodged a bullet.”

  The courtroom emptied by seven p.m., leaving only the lawyers, Mercer, Daniels with his wife, and a perplexed reporter in the far back, to wait.

  “There’s a reason it’s not a quick verdict,” protested Mercer. “This is a sorry excuse of a place.”

  “Not over yet,” Battle interjected.

  “Look at him,” Rush said. “Daniels is thinking he’s gonna beat this. Goddamn smug face.”

  “Didn’t you just hear me?” Battle asked in mock exasperation. “Rinse, repeat.”

  “So they must not have believed the detective,” Rush said, looking and sounding worried.

  “It’s not about believing,” Battle responded. “It’s Lynwood, where most things get left unsaid. We didn’t strike Sales when we picked the jury. If he’d kept his mouth shut, then we’d have had a real problem.”

  “And Nettie Wynn—who wouldn’t like her?” Mercer asked, continuing his and Rush’s litany-of-woe approach to the waiting process. “Why are they taking so long?”

  “I can’t think of a good reason,” Rush said, “but I’m not in there deliberating.”

  “If this goes south, we got a whole new Frank Daniels to deal with,” Mercer said. “This isn’t about crosses; it’s about what happens after the crosses.”

  “Guys, hit pause, please. Wait until there’s something to bitch and moan about before bitchin’ and moanin’.”

  “Guilty, guilty, guilty,” Rush started repeating to himself.

  “What are you doing?” Mercer asked.

  “Invoking the power of suggestion—”

  “I might have to join in on that.” Mercer appeared to be warming up to Rush—just a little—likely a result of the shared strain of the trial.

  “Jesus, you two are like boys in junior high school.”

  . . .

  At a quarter past eight, the deputy clerk informed counsel the jury had reached a verdict.

  “What do you think?” Mercer asked.

  Rush, chastened by Ba
ttle’s little boys comment, ceded the question to Battle.

  “Don’t know,” Battle said. “If we missed another closet bigot on the jury, we’re gonna have a long day tomorrow. If not, we’ll be lucky, and right now luck’s just fine by me.”

  “See if the jurors look at Daniels when they come in,” Rush said. “They’ll avoid him if it’s a conviction.”

  “All rise,” announced the clerk as the judge emerged yet again from the paneled wall.

  “OK, folks. I have a note from the jury stating it’s reached a verdict. Let’s bring them in to take it.”

  Rush flinched when he caught a button-nosed juror looking at Daniels. Once the jurors were seated, everyone else in the courtroom followed. The jurors’ faces were like unused jar labels, all white and empty. Rush didn’t know what to think now.

  “Have you reached a verdict?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” answered Ms. Carter, whose face had become drawn and pale, from the front row.

  “Please give the verdict form to the clerk, so it can be published.”

  The clerk took the form, showed it to the judge, and then read it aloud to the mostly empty room.

  Dawson motioned for Daniels to stand up with him. His client growled at being told what to do.

  “On the first count of the indictment, alleging a violation of the Fair Housing Act, by burning a cross in the front yard of Nettie Wynn’s residence, the jury finds—”

  The judge interrupted. “Counsel, have your client stand before the jury for judgment.”

  Daniels got out of his chair.

  The clerk started over. “On the first count of the indictment, alleging a violation of the Fair Housing Act, by burning a cross in the front yard of Nettie Wynn’s residence, the jury finds the defendant—guilty.”

  Rush patted Battle’s hand under the table with one finger.

  The clerk read aloud the remaining counts—all guilty. With each additional count, Rush added one more finger to his idiosyncratic and predictably private gesture. Superstition followed prosecutors everywhere.

  The defendant looked as if he was about to spit at the jurors, but he turned to his wife, who was at the back of the room, and nodded.

  Rush rose from his chair.

  “Judge, the government moves to have Mr. Daniels remanded pending sentencing.”

  Daniels shot out of his seat. The deputy marshals moved in several feet. Rush overheard Daniels tell his lawyer that he had something to say on the courthouse steps.

  “Your Honor, there’s nothing to suggest Mr. Daniels can’t remain on bond.” Dawson didn’t throw the argument at the judge so much as toss it in her direction and then abandon it.

  Mercer tugged at Battle’s sleeve, and she, in turn, reached for Rush’s arm.

  Before anyone could argue the point, the judge weighed in. “The jury’s rendered a guilty verdict in a crime of violence, so the presumption is to remand.”

  “Yes, Judge, that’s the law,” Rush said.

  “Your Honor, my client—”

  The judge cut them both off and ordered the defendant be taken into custody immediately. She set the sentencing date and adjourned the proceedings. The deputy marshals handcuffed Daniels and led him through a side door—not the ones used by the judge or the jury. His face was no longer white but had turned an angry crimson.

  Battle and Rush hugged each other, and they pulled in Mercer for a final squeeze.

  The verdict made the late evening broadcast news and was the top-of-the-fold story for the state’s largest daily a day later:

  STATE KLAN HEAD CONVICTED OF HATE CRIMES

  IN SOUTHERN TOWN WITH A HISTORY

  24

  A RIGHTEOUS CAUSE

  “It’s great to have a trial with actual victims, not just taking down defendants for dealing and stealing,” Battle said while slumped in a chair, a glass of bourbon in one hand and a slender cigarette in the other. Battle had picked the place, a new downtown draw that served small plates for big prices, at least by Lynwood standards.

  “We thought this was going to be shootin’ at the side of the barn, but it wasn’t close to that.” Mercer emptied his beer mug for the second time. “Rush here was so enthusiastic early on that he flew down to meet a Klansman and politely ask him to admit his guilt.”

  “That’s total bullshit,” Rush protested, but the playful grimace belied the words. “If I remember correctly, you and that sidekick of yours convinced me to go to some godforsaken empty field. A place I might add where no one would find us if we had met an untimely end.”

  “Nothing was gonna happen,” Mercer assured Battle about the long-past meeting. “Probably.”

  “That’s the problem! The titan guy played us. He wasn’t going to give us anything.”

  “How about now?” Battle asked.

  “With Daniels a convicted felon, maybe the others will start talking,” Mercer said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  “They’ll get scared that Daniels will flip on them.”

  “That ain’t gonna happen,” Rush said. “Daniels won’t ever flip. He’s too much of a bad-ass in his own head, and flipping is all about weakness.”

  “Don’t matter if he does or not. It’s what the other Klansmen think might happen.”

  “So who knows,” Battle added.

  “Another round for the winning team, please,” Rush ordered. In what seemed like seconds, the server placed three new glasses—beer, bourbon, and a shot of tequila—on the low circular table. “To a righteous cause!” Rush said.

  Glasses clinked, and another round was requested and delivered. Battle was pleased to see her new partners enjoying the moment. Mercer eventually begged off to get home to his mostly sleeping family, leaving Battle and Rush to figure out the next move. A deputy US marshal remained off in a corner chair nursing a soda.

  “How’d you get to the Civil Rights Division anyhow?” Battle asked, thinking—but not saying—how odd the question was coming from a southern black woman to a very white Irish guy.

  “The cases are important and interesting.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The usual offerings of hate, human misery, and corruption,” Rush replied. “You’ve got to grab on to the country’s underbelly, and you’re not allowed to even blink.”

  “You stop violent racists,” Battle said. “That’s a great gig. I just got a taste of it.”

  “I know,” Rush agreed, but without his usual boyish grin. “I became a prosecutor to help victims. Can we make a difference for someone else? That’s the real unanswered question, isn’t it?”

  “Something doesn’t add up,” Battle observed, her usual reticence to go beyond small talk vanquished by alcohol and the high of a trial victory. “You connected with the victims, that’s obvious, but it’s not clear to me why. I saw how you treated Nettie Wynn—deferential, even warm. That caught me by surprise. Hell, I’m still stumped.”

  “For hate crimes, it’s all about the victims, right? Mrs. Wynn’s the quiet hero in all this. She’s rare—she faces adversity and injustice without it poisoning her own soul.”

  Rush rested his head on the back of the low chair, raising up only occasionally to take a sip of candor. It was a tentative, awkward intimacy, apt to vanish with any errant gesture or remark.

  “But the police cases are completely different,” Rush continued. “That’s where you get tested.”

  “I work with the local cops in most of my taskforce narc cases. Some I’d follow into the fire; others I’d like to push in.”

  “Cops sure as hell don’t like being challenged, do they?”

  “I’ve talked to Lee about the local RAID unit. Things don’t add up. Evidence goes missing, officers unavailable for trial, and lots of rumors.”

  “Rumors of what?”

  “Skimming dope and cash.”

  “We investigate those as civil rights cases, but they’re the bastard children. You’re usually having to pursue them on principle alone.”
r />   “That’s perfect for you. You like going it alone on principle—”

  “Taking a stand and being all alone are different.”

  Battle thought that Rush must be like that for a lot of folks. They wanted to reach out to him, but for reasons that they couldn’t explain, they stayed away. It was as if Rush had an invisible protective perimeter drawn around him.

  “Maybe it’s time to allow for the possibility that you’re not all by yourself, or shouldn’t be anyway.”

  “I hate to break the news, but we’re all alone, just sometimes it’s around other people.”

  The waitress approached the table, but after a quick look, she spun around like she didn’t want to interrupt.

  “Lee told me you’re some kind of mountain climber from Colorado.”

  “I grew up there and always have loved the outdoors. I got the wanderlust young and followed it through climbing—the San Juan mountains, Alaska, the Andes, even the Himalayas.”

  “Climb any mountain I’d know of ?”

  “Denali?”

  “Sure. That’s McKinley to us flatlanders. You get all the way?”

  “You mean summit? Yes, I did.”

  “Did you gain any deep insights up in those mountains?” Battle asked. Mountaineering seemed to her like an exotic undertaking, not something a black girl of the South would know a lot about, but it was yet another aspect of Rush that mystified her.

  “Only that they don’t judge. They just exist. Mountains are missing a moral code.”

  “Like Daniels’s missing fingers!” Battle delivered the surprise punch line with an alcohol-infused giggle.

  “I’m still looking for what’s beneath the truth of the mountains,” Rush said, evidently still trying to answer her previous question. “Whether there’s any wisdom up there.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  “I don’t think it’s the time—”

  “Come on.”

  Rush hesitated, then said: “Daniels and I are alike, just not the way you’d ever guess.”

  “Now that requires some explaining.”

  Rush’s chin was down on his chest as if he were contemplating a chess move. He bent over, loosened the laces on his left dress shoe, and slid it off. He smiled at Battle, who was struggling to understand his maneuver.