Dead Peasants

by Larry D. Thompson

  The judge leaned over his bench and used his most intimidating judicial stare as he spoke. “Mr. Bryant, are you suggesting that Mr. Leyton, a long time distinguished member of the bar in this county, is attempting to perpetrate a fraud on this court?”

  Jack had been before too many judges to ever be intimidated. “Nothing of the kind, Your Honor. He has a duty to somehow authenticate this signature, and he has failed to do so. If you grant his motion, I’m giving notice that the next stop with this case will be at the court of appeals.”

  The judge put down Jack’s reply and picked up Leyton’s motion. He looked at the signature page, then put the motion down and folded his hands. He stared at his bench for nearly a minute before he looked up. “Mr. Leyton, he may have a point here. Understand I could grant your motion, but I don’t like getting reversed.”

  “Your Honor…”

  “Wait, Mr.Leyton. I’m not through. There’s another signature on this document. Henry Simon signed it for Allison Southwest. Can’t you get an affidavit from him, confirming that he was there and saw Mr. Davis sign the document?”

  Leyton shook his head. “Judge, I’ve already checked into that. Mr. Simon died five years ago.”

  McDowell pursed his lips and then ruled. “I’m sorry, Mr. Leyton, but I have to deny your motion.”

  Leyton nodded at the judge and walked out of the courtroom. When he got to his pickup, his cell buzzed. It was Dwayne Allison.

  “I suppose you won our motion. Get me a certified copy of the judgment and I’ll fire it off to Euro Life. My insurance department had to notify them of this case, and they’re worried that they may have to pay for this death twice. I need to let them know we have it under control.”

  “Hold on, Dwayne. Judge McDowell denied our motion.”

  “What? That son of a bitch. I just had twenty of my employees contribute to his campaign. And, and you told me this was a sure thing,” Allison fumed. “What the hell kind of lawyer are you? I don’t pay you four hundred and fifty dollars an hour to lose. Maybe it’s time for me to find a lawyer who can win.”

  “Dwayne, calm down. First I didn’t say this was a sure thing. I said the odds were in our favor that we could win this motion. Bryant pointed out that no one had authenticated Davis’s signature and the judge bought into it.”

  “Dammit. You should have seen that coming.”

  “You’re right. I can only apologize, but I have a plan. I’m going to subpoena June Davis and get her to confirm that was her husband’s signature. Then, we’ll ask for a re-hearing.”

  “You do whatever you think is necessary,” Allison yelled. “I’ve already deposited that check.”

  51

  June was seated at the end of the table in the RV, dressed in her Sunday best. Jack was sitting at the other end with J.D. seated in what used to be the driver’s chair. Now, both it and the passenger seat were always swiveled around to face the back.

  “June, Mr. Leyton and the court reporter are going to be here in about half an hour. The court reporter will give you an oath to tell the truth. Mr. Leyton will take over and start asking you questions. He wants to try to prove that the signature on this employment agreement is that of your late husband.”

  June nodded her understanding.

  “Now I want you to tell the truth, but if you say it’s Willie’s signature, we’re going to lose the case. If there’s any doubt in your mind, it would be best for you to say you can’t identify it.”

  “I understand, Mr. Bryant,” June said with a slight twinkle in her eye. “I think I can handle Mr. Leyton.”

  Leyton and the court reporter arrived at the designated hour.

  “Jack, it would have been a lot more comfortable to have done this in one of our conference rooms.”

  “Maybe for you, but your fancy offices and big conference rooms might have intimidated my client. Ms. Court Reporter, if you’ll slide around the table to the middle, we’ll let Ace sit at the end. Ace, this is Ms. Davis.”

  Ace nodded at the witness.

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Leyton,” June said. “Mr. Bryant has told me what a fine lawyer you are.”

  She’s certainly not intimidated here, Leyton thought as he took his seat. Jack took the passenger seat while Leyton put his briefcase on the table, opened it and retrieved the employment agreement.

  “If you would, please swear the witness.”

  The court reporter turned to June and asked her to raise her right hand. “Do you swear that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do.”

  “Mrs. Davis, I intend to make this very short. First, let me extend my condolences for the loss of your husband.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Leyton. My family and I miss him. He was a fine, Christian man.” A tear rolled down her cheek, and Jack gave her a tissue to brush it away.

  “I’m handing you a document that I’ve had the court reporter mark as Exhibit A. It’s an employment agreement between your husband and Allison Southwest. Have you seen it before?”

  June straightened her shoulders and spoke in a strong, clear voice. “Mr. Bryant showed me a copy of it this morning. That’s the first time that I ever laid eyes on it. I can’t agree with your statement that it is an agreement between my Willie and Allison Southwest.”

  Leyton realized that while June Davis looked as if she could be blown over in a modest wind, she was not going to be an easy witness. He fumbled for his next question. “Maybe you didn’t have a good copy. Would you please take a look at the exhibit?”

  He handed the original to June who started reading at the top of the first page. It took her ten minutes to get to the second, and Leyton was becoming frustrated. “Mrs. Davis, perhaps if you just went to the last page, we could speed this up.”

  June looked up from the document. “Mr. Leyton, you asked me about this document and I understand this is important. So, if you please, just be quiet until I’ve read it all.”

  Leyton stared at the witness as she went back to her reading. “I’m going out for a smoke.”

  Jack chuckled as he watched Leyton leave the RV and light a cigarette in the parking lot. He paced until, at last, he threw the cigarette on the ground, stomped it out, and climbed into the RV where he found June reading the last page line by line, moving her index finger along as she said the words to herself. When she got to the signature line, she studied it and then turned the page upside down to look again. Last, she turned it sideways before putting it back on the table.

  “I have read the document, Mr. Leyton.”

  “Then, can you identify the signature on that document as that of your late husband, William Davis?”

  June looked at Jack and back to Leyton. “No, sir. I cannot.”

  What the hell? Leyton thought. “Mrs. Davis, would you explain why you cannot identify this as your husband’s signature?”

  “Glad to.” June smiled. “Of course, you didn’t know my Willie. He wasn’t much for reading and writing. He only went to the fourth grade. When he wasn’t working at the Cadillac place, he was tinkering with his car, fishing or playing dominos with his sons or his friends at Moe’s icehouse. I took care of the family finances and paid the bills. I expect that if you looked at our checking account going back twenty years, you wouldn’t find one check with his signature on it. On top of that, this agreement is thirty years old. No way I would remember what his signature looked like that long ago. So, Mr. Leyton, I don’t know who signed ‘William Davis’ to that agreement.”

  Leyton was fumbling again and already thinking of his call to Dwayne Allison after the deposition. “But, but, you would agree that it is possible this signature is Willie’s?”

  “I suppose anything is possible, Mr. Leyton.”

  Leyton announced that he had no more questions, grabbed his briefcase and left the RV. Jack watched with a smile as Leyton kicked the tire of his car before getting in.

  After the court repor
ter left, he told June that she had done a great job. He was certain that Leyton would not even re-urge his motion. Now they would be getting ready for trial.

  52

  The financial pressure had begun to encroach on Leyton and his law firm. He was sitting at his desk one afternoon two weeks after June Davis’s deposition, talking to an associate about a case where their client was a trucking company. The company’s eighteen wheeler had run over and killed a man and his two young children in a Toyota Prius, leaving his wife surviving with no family. They were discussing strategy to defend damages, and the associate was reporting on the results of an investigator who had spent two weeks tailing the widow when Leyton’s intercom buzzed.

  “Yes,” Leyton said as he blew out smoke and answered the phone. “Give me fifteen seconds and put him through.” He turned to the associate and asked him to come back later. When the associate shut the office door behind him, Leyton picked up the phone on the first ring. “Afternoon, Stephen. How are things in Manhattan?”

  Stephen was Stephen Morganson, the managing partner of the nationwide law firm. “Hot and humid, Ace. I just keep hoping those green sprouts the economists talk about would start growing. Meantime, I spend most of my time on the phone, chasing after a bunch of clients that seem to be getting further and further behind.”

  “I know what you’re calling about. It’s Allison Southwest, right?”

  “You got it. They used to be our best client in the Fort Worth office. Now it seems like we only get a payment every once in a while. What are you going to do about it? Do we need to just terminate them as a client and sue for our past due bills?”

  Ace took another deep drag on his cigarette before he spoke, knowing that Allison was his biggest client at one time and the primary reason he became senior partner in Fort Worth. As he exhaled the smoke he said, “No, we’re not there, yet. I’d say we should stick with them another few months. Allison may be turning the corner here before long.”

  Silence on the other end of the line. “You have four months. If there’s no improvement, we’ll be talking about Allison’s status and your status with the firm along with it.” Morganson clicked off the phone without another word.

  Leyton stared at the phone and then punched in the number to Allison’s private line. When Allison answered, he said, “Dwayne, Ace here. Just got off the phone with our managing partner in New York. He wants your bill brought current.”

  “Screw him and the horse he rode up on,” Allison replied. “I have bigger worries than paying lawyer bills.”

  “Dwayne, shut up and listen. I’m trying to do you a favor here. I have four months to get your legal affairs in order unless you start paying our bills. You’ve only got a few active lawsuits that aren’t covered by your liability insurance. One of them is June Davis. I’m going to ask Bruce to push it up toward the top of the docket. If the boys in New York fire you as a client in a few months, at least that one ought to be behind you. You okay with that?”

  “Sure,” Allison replied. “Just be one less thing to worry about.”

  That afternoon Leyton had an associate draft a motion for an expedited trial setting. Knowing the local rules required him to confer with Jack Bryant, he called his opposing lawyer. “Jack, I want to move this case along. You okay with a trial setting in about ninety days?”

  “Damn, Ace, you didn’t even have to waste a call. Of course I’m agreeable. And I’ve already figured out that you get almost anything you want in McDowell’s court. Like old Brer Rabbit said, ‘Please don’t throw me in that briar patch.’ Hell, make it a joint motion. I’m not even going to bother to show up for the hearing. Just tell McDowell, I’ll be ready to go. Let me know the trial date after the hearing.”

  53

  It took a few weeks, but Joe Sherrod kept his word. His summer intern sent a list of violent deaths in twenty-five surrounding counties and parts of two states in the past six months. No guns, no knives, just violent deaths with little rhyme or reason and, more importantly, no suspects. J.D. printed off three copies. They locked the RV, watched as the metal shades slid into place and clicked on the alarms, knowing the lights would come on at sunset. Jack called Colby and asked her to meet them at his house to evaluate the information. Colby, now driving Jack’s Bentley, was already at the kitchen table with a glass of iced tea in her hand when they parked in the garage and entered through the back door. Colby gave both of them a hug, saying, “Damn, J.D., hugging you is like hugging a block of granite. Your body fat must be about three percent.”

  J.D. nodded. “You’re pretty close. Any more and my forty time might be 4.7. Here’s your copy.”

  Jack grabbed bottles of water and handed one to J.D. “We asked and we received; only, I didn’t anticipate how violent our world is these days. There must be two hundred unresolved violent deaths, and that’s just in the last six months.”

  J.D. flipped to the last page. “Two hundred and fourteen, to be exact. What do you suggest?”

  “Let’s divide them up. I’ll take the first seventy-five. J.D., you get the next seventy-five. Colby, the rest are yours. We can make duplicate copies; so highlight and mark anything you find interesting. Put an “X” by any that you think couldn’t possibly have any connection to the attempts on Colby’s life.”

  The three assembled around the table and worked in silence, occasionally taking a sip of their drinks.

  “Here’s a ten year old boy that was hit on his bicycle. Closed head injury,” Colby said.

  Jack looked up. “I think for our purposes we can eliminate any kid under the age of, say, fifteen.”

  “How about bar fights?” J.D. asked. “I see several on my list, usually in the parking lot with the assailant getting away.”

  “They stay,” Jack said.

  “Drownings?” Colby asked.

  “For certain,” Jack replied.

  “Here’s a hit and run outside a pool hall in Breckenridge,” J.D. said.

  “Remember, Colby was close to a hit and run fatality,” Jack replied.

  “Here’s Willie Davis. Sure appears to be accidental,” Colby said.

  “Keep him on the list,” Jack instructed.

  After two hours, Jack rose to stretch his legs. “I’m about through with my list. How’re you coming?”

  “Done,” Colby said.

  “On my last,” J.D. added.

  Jack walked over to the old wooden barrel that contained his favorite canes. He picked out a shillelagh he had purchased several years before in Ireland. “This is made of blackthorn wood.” He turned it over in his hands. “I guarantee you I could put a knot in someone’s head with this.”

  “That’s interesting, Dad. In one of these parking lot fights, the cause of death was a blunt object, like a baseball bat. Maybe it was a shillelagh.”

  Jack nodded as he replaced the cane. “Give me a count.”

  “I have eighteen on my list that I think deserve further investigation,” Colby said.

  “Twenty-two, here,” J.D. said.

  “And I have twenty. That’s sixty total, and we’re not even sure where we’re going with this. J. D., I think you and I’ll start in the morning.”

  “Okay with me, Dad, but where do we begin?”

  “Let’s start with Willie. He’s the only one with a known connection to Colby and since I represent his wife, that’ll make it easy.”

  “But, Jack, aren’t you just wasting your time,” Colby said. “Everyone agrees that he fell crossing the creek, and hit his head.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but we’re starting in Denton in the morning.”

  54

  Jack was up early. He entered the kitchen, opened the back door and whistled for Killer. Killer’s job was to roam the fenced yard at night, growling a warning at any unusual sound. Once his night time chore was over, he was allowed the run of the house. Jack scratched his ears and thanked him for a good night’s service before refilling his bowl. After Killer had his breakfast, he knew Killer would find
one of several comfortable places to sleep until Colby was ready to go to work. When Colby left for work, he would lie on the carpeted floor of her office until it was time for her to keep an appointment. Trained as an attack dog, he knew his friends and understood the commands that would turn him into a vicious protector of his master.

  Jack put on the coffee and went to the front driveway to retrieve the Star Telegram. Never a breakfast eater, he settled down with the paper and coffee, starting with the sports section since he knew that J.D. would want it when he showed up. Five minutes later he heard J.D. coming down the stairs.

  “Morning, Dad. How you doing there, Killer? You keep us safe?” he said as he petted the dog.

  “Morning, Son. Grab your cereal, and let’s get on the road in about fifteen minutes,” Jack said, as he slid the sports section across the table.

  J.D. poured a large bowl of Cheerios and doused the cereal with sugar and milk.

  “Paper says you guys are starting volunteer workouts.”

  “Yeah, we start this evening. We’ve encouraged all of the players to make the workouts. Most of them have stayed around Fort Worth for the summer. No coaches allowed, but Samuel knows every play on offense, and one of our linebackers will handle the defense.” J.D. put the bowl to his mouth and gulped down the last of his cereal. Both men grabbed go-cups, filled them with coffee and were soon in Lucille on the way to Denton.

  Denton was thirty-five miles from downtown Fort Worth, straight up I-35W. Originally a sleepy college town, it was now just one more part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex that still tried to maintain its separate identity as home to North Texas State University and Texas Women’s University. The courthouse and the sheriff’s office were in the middle of town. Jack parked Lucille in a space reserved for officers and placed a cardboard card announcing it was the vehicle of a Tarrant County Reserve Deputy.