The Last Trial (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers Book 3)

by Robert Bailey

  Two minutes later, she googled the name of the one person in the world who might be able to help her and Danny. The irony made her smile. In order to fulfill Jack’s dying wish, Barbara would have to rely on the man whom Jack blamed for his incarceration and financial demise. But as the results of her search filled the screen, her smile faded as she thought of the danger she was about to invite into her life.

  If she wasn’t careful, she could be ruined too.

  That is a risk I’m going to have to take. Then, focusing on the screen and swallowing hard, she wrote down the phone number for Thomas Jackson McMurtrie.

  35

  The morning after the preliminary hearing, Tom sat across from his client in the consultation room of the Tuscaloosa County Jail. The top button of his shirt was undone, and he had wrapped his suit coat around the back of the plastic chair. His back ached from the effort exerted at the hearing, and though he could hear the whir of the air-conditioning unit, he still felt hot in the small, stuffy room.

  “You didn’t sugarcoat it,” Wilma said. She was dressed in the green sweat pants of a pretrial detainee, which made her look younger than her thirty-eight years. Tom was again struck by the resemblance between this woman and the teenage girl he had first encountered on the top step of his office a month earlier. Wilma looked down at the chipped wooden table and fidgeted with her hands. “It was worse than I could have ever imagined.” She looked up from the table. “What happens next?”

  “The case gets bound over to the grand jury,” Tom said, hearing the fatigue in his voice. “The prosecution will put on the same song and dance they did today, and if the grand jury finds probable cause, which they will, an indictment will be handed down. The judge will then set a hearing date for your arraignment, where you will enter your plea of guilty or not guilty. Then the case will be set for trial.”

  “At least the judge seemed nice. Did you teach her when you were a law professor?”

  Tom nodded. “I did, but Leah Combs won’t be our judge going forward. In Alabama, a district judge like Leah typically handles the prelim, but a circuit court judge will preside over the trial.”

  “Who will we get then?”

  “There are three. Williams, Baird, and . . . Poe.” Tom almost winced at the possibility of Braxton Poe being assigned to this case.

  “Are they good?”

  “Pretty much.” He didn’t want to scare her by giving his true feelings on Poe, so he decided to shift gears. “Wilma, I expect the grand jury will hand down its indictment within the next thirty days and, since the prosecution already has its DNA and ballistics reports, I’m figuring this case will be tried by the end of the year.”

  She rubbed her arms and looked down at the table. “OK. Do you think we have a snowball in hell’s chance of winning?”

  Tom peered at her. “That depends.”

  Wilma looked at him and held out her palms. “On what?”

  “We haven’t talked much about the night of the murder.”

  “You haven’t asked.”

  “I know. I didn’t ask on purpose, because I wanted you to hear the state’s case against you first.”

  Wilma grimaced. “You think I’m guilty, don’t you?”

  “No,” Tom said, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he thought at this point. “It’s just a defense strategy.”

  “Whatever,” Wilma said, irritation creeping into her voice. “Well, are you asking now?”

  “Yes. I need you to tell me everything you did on May 7 and May 8.”

  Wilma looked down at the desk and began to rub her hands together. “May 7 was a Monday, right?”

  “Right.” Sensing that she was struggling with where to begin, Tom added, “Why don’t you start with how you ended up at the Oasis Bar & Grill the afternoon of May 8?”

  Wilma let out a breath and picked at her thumbnail. “I saw on the news that Jack had been released from prison. I had gone searching for work that morning and had come up empty again. Not much of a market for convicted prostitutes. Came home around noon and was going through my bills and realized I wasn’t going to be able to make the rent if I didn’t get a job soon. Then I saw the story about Jack getting out of prison, and I looked through the contacts in my phone. I still had his cell number saved—he had given me it before the trial in Henshaw. Like I’ve told you, he owed me a hundred thousand dollars. I took a shot of Jim Beam and made the call.” She smiled and looked down at the table. “You know what he said after I told him who I was?”

  “What?”

  “He said, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar, if I were given a thousand guesses as to who would be the first person to call me after getting out of the joint, I wouldn’t have guessed you.’”

  Tom smiled. She did a pretty good imitation. “What did you tell him?”

  “That he owed me a lot of money.”

  “How did he respond?”

  Wilma smirked. “How do you think? He laughed. Told me that he had filed bankruptcy and didn’t have a pot to piss in. Well, I just lost it. I told him that he was a son of a bitch who had cost me my whole family and that he owed me. I said some other things I don’t remember.” She shook her head. “A lot of cussing. I figured Jack had hung up, but I could still hear him breathing on the other end of the line. Then he surprised me.”

  “How so?” Tom asked.

  “He said he was sorry. That he had made a lot of mistakes and his biggest was the way he handled me during the trial in Henshaw. Then he said that he had an idea of how I might make some money and invited me to meet him at the Oasis for a drink.”

  “Did he say what he had in mind?”

  “Not over the phone. He said if I wanted to hear his proposition, I’d have to come see him at the bar.” Wilma gritted her teeth and glared down at the desk. “I told him to go to hell and hung up. Then I paced my apartment for thirty minutes second-guessing myself. I had been back in Tuscaloosa for three months and hadn’t sniffed a job. With my criminal record, I was worried I’d never get one, and the court wouldn’t let me have my girls back if I didn’t find employment.” She raised her eyes. “I was desperate. Finally, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to hear what Jack had to say. Before I could change my mind again, I grabbed my keys and drove to the Oasis.”

  “What happened?”

  “I got there and he acted like I was an old friend. He bought me a drink and told me how much he missed the trucking business and the drivers, like Dewey, who had made things run. That all he had ever wanted to do was work hard and make a dollar for it, but that the Feds didn’t want folks to make a living. It sounded like he was trying to justify his life or something, but I didn’t care.” She shook her head. “After I finished my drink, I asked him about his proposition.”

  “What was it?”

  “Sex. He said he’d pay me four hundred dollars for the real thing, and half for a blow job.”

  Now it was Tom who shook his head. “How did you react?”

  “You saw it all on the video. I was furious. I thought a man who had made the type of money that Jack had in his life might actually have an idea that would allow me to profit that didn’t involve me dropping my panties.” She scoffed. “But nope. The once all-powerful Jack Willistone hadn’t been laid since being sent to prison and was willing to pay me top dollar to let him wet his whistle. Can you believe that?”

  Unfortunately, Tom could. “Did you ever tell him you were going to kill him?”

  “I’m sure I did. Honestly, I can’t remember everything I said. I was blind mad.”

  “Do you remember anything Jack said?”

  She chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, I do. I followed him to his car, cussing him the whole way. Before he had quite made it to the 4Runner, he wheeled around and grabbed me by the waist. Before I knew what was happening, he was kissing me rough on the mouth. Then when I tried to break his hold, he let go and I fell backward on the gravel and scraped up my butt pretty good. When I looked up, he was hovering over me, laughing.”

&n
bsp; “Did he say anything?”

  “Yeah,” Wilma said. “He asked me if I had changed my mind yet.”

  “What did—?”

  “I climbed to my feet and spat on him.”

  Tom felt his pulse quicken. “On his cap?”

  “Right in his face. I suspect some got on his hat and collar.”

  That explains the saliva, Tom thought, jotting notes down on a yellow pad. “What happened next?”

  Wilma slapped her hands on the table. “You saw it today on that video. Toby came and dragged me back into the bar and I proceeded to get hammered.”

  “Based on Detective Richey’s testimony today at the hearing and the statement of Toby Dothard, you left the Oasis at approximately 6:30 p.m. Where did you go?”

  “The ABC store on McFarland for a pint of Smirnoff and then the Taco Casa drive-through.”

  Tom’s heart rate was beginning to pick up as they got closer to the time of the murder. “Then what?”

  “I drank most of the vodka and ate my food.”

  “And after that?”

  Wilma folded her hands and placed them under her chin, eyes down. She began to rock to and fro in her chair.

  Tom couldn’t tell if she was thinking or stalling. “What happened next, Wilma?”

  Her lower lip began to tremble, and when she finally looked up, Tom saw tears in his client’s eyes. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you,” Wilma said.

  “Can’t or won’t?” Tom asked, his voice firm.

  Wilma Newton wiped her eyes with the palms of both hands. Then, sitting up straight in the chair, she cleared her throat and crossed her arms. “Both.”

  36

  “So where does that leave us?” Bo asked after Tom relayed the substance of his conversation with Wilma. They were seated across from each other in the conference room. The Newton file covered almost every square inch of the table.

  “I’m going to keep trying,” Tom said. “She was very emotional, and she has a great distrust for lawyers and the law. Neither have been very kind to her in life.”

  “I can understand that, but how can she expect us to defend her if she won’t tell us what happened?”

  Tom peered at his friend. “There is no us, Bo. When I try this case, you’ll be a spectator.”

  “I was speaking figuratively. Any word from Rick?”

  Tom shook his head.

  “You can’t try this case by yourself, Professor. You’re gonna have to get him involved at some point. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Have you heard anything yet from your friend in Jasper?” Tom asked, ignoring Bo’s question.

  “I sent Rel another text this morning and left him a voice mail too. If I don’t hear anything by the end of the day, I’m going there tomorrow. Now”—Bo stood up from the table and glared at his former teacher—“let’s get back to my question. You know you can’t try this case by yourself, right?”

  Before Tom could respond, he was mercifully interrupted by the telephone intercom. “Professor?” the voice of the firm’s receptionist, Frankie Callahan, blared through.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s a Barbara Willistone on the line for you. She says it’s urgent.”

  Tom looked across the table at Bo, who raised his eyebrows. Then he walked toward the phone. “Put her through.”

  “Yes, sir,” Frankie said. She clicked off, and the phone began to ring.

  Tom grabbed the receiver. “This is Tom McMurtrie.”

  For several seconds, all Tom heard on the other end of the line was heavy breathing. “Hello? Mrs. Willis—”

  “I need to see you.” The woman’s voice was throaty, her words followed by several coughs.

  Tom held the phone away from his ear until the coughing stopped. Then, trying to think of an appropriate response, he went with simplicity. “Why?”

  “Because I know why Jack was murdered.”

  37

  Thirty minutes later, Tom pulled into the driveway of Barbara Willistone’s cottage on Queen City Avenue with Bo riding shotgun. “Give me the rundown again of what we know about her,” Tom said.

  After Barbara’s cryptic phone call, Tom had Bo review the witness statements from Jack’s ex-wife that were in the prosecution’s file.

  “Married Jack in 1970 and stayed hitched for thirty-four years. They had one child together—a son named Barton Daniel Willistone that goes by Danny. Kid is autistic and resides at an adult facility for autism in Birmingham. Worked primarily for Willistone Trucking Company as a receptionist and secretary until the divorce in 2004.”

  “How soon after the divorce did Jack marry Kat Calhoun?”

  Bo looked down at the timeline he had written on a pad. “Five and a half months.”

  “Hmm . . . And where was Barbara on the night of the murder?”

  “According to Detective Richey’s statement, she was home alone.”

  “So she has no alibi.”

  “Nothing corroborated.”

  “What about jobs since the divorce?”

  Bo again looked at his pad. “Belk in McFarland Mall. Works full-time in the women’s shoe department.”

  “Salary?”

  “It’s not on here, but it can’t be much. Thirty-five thousand a year I’d guess.”

  Tom cut the ignition. “Anything in there on how much a year that autism facility costs?”

  “No.” Bo gave him a curious look. “You thinking she’s a suspect? Would be kinda odd for her to call you out of the blue if she was the killer, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Tom agreed. “I’ve just spent so much time thinking about Bully Calhoun that I haven’t even considered Jack’s ex-wife.” As he grabbed the door handle, he turned to look at his friend. “You know, when we were defending you last year and going over the visitor’s list to the St. Clair prison, I always assumed that Barbara was Jack’s current wife. No other woman with the last name Willistone came to see him. Have you noticed that?”

  Bo nodded. “No record of Kat Willistone on the visitor’s log. Only Barbara.”

  “Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

  “It does.”

  “Did you see Barbara Willistone at the hearing yesterday? I only saw Kat.”

  “There was a stocky woman sitting on the back row opposite me with a man who looked to be in his thirties or forties next to her. They left the courtroom a couple of times, always together. I’m pretty sure that was her.”

  “So she would have heard all the evidence?”

  “Most of it,” Bo said. Then he chortled. “Professor, I could be wrong, but my gut tells me that the sun is about to finally shed its light on our vitamin D–deprived asses.”

  Tom climbed out of the Explorer. We are due a break, he thought as he trudged up the cobblestone walkway and rang the doorbell.

  When Barbara Willistone answered the door, Tom could see why she wanted their meeting to occur at home. The woman’s right eye was black and had swollen shut. Her lower lip was puffed out and the side of her forehead was tinted reddish purple. Her nose appeared unnaturally flat. Broken, Tom thought. What the hell happened to her?

  “Please come in,” she said, and ushered them both in the house. As Tom and Bo followed her through a den with an old box-style television set propped on an armoire, the smell of coffee hit Tom’s nostrils. Not fancy Starbucks java, but old-school Maxwell House or Folgers. The scent reminded him of the teacher’s lounge at the law school.

  Once they were seated around a circular table in the kitchen, Tom opened with the obvious. “Ms. Willistone, are you OK? You look like you’ve been—”

  “Run over by a bus,” Barbara interrupted, her throaty voice, like on the telephone, followed by a coughing fit. “Excuse me. I honestly wish that was it.”

  “What happened?” Bo asked, and Barbara turned her eyes to him.

  “You’re Mr. Haynes, aren’t you? The lawyer from Pulaski?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I watched your trial o
n C-SPAN last year. I’m glad you won.”

  “Me too,” Bo said. Then he nodded at Tom. “I had a pretty good lawyer.”

  Barbara moved her gaze to Tom and then abruptly stood up from the table. “Where are my manners? Can I fix y’all a cup of coffee?”

  They both accepted her offer. As she prepared three steaming mugs, she spoke with her back to the duo. “Professor McMurtrie, did you know that Jack blamed you for ruining his life?”

  “Yes. He so much as told me last year when I visited him at the prison.”

  Barbara turned and placed mugs of coffee in front of them. “I didn’t realize you had come to see him.”

  “Yes. You came to see him quite a bit yourself.”

  She gazed into her coffee cup. “I took Danny . . . our son, to visit. Danny is autistic.”

  “When was he diagnosed?” Tom asked.

  “Officially, not until he was four, but we knew something was wrong at eighteen months.”

  A solemn silence enveloped the small area. Tom and Bo had both been fortunate that none of their children and, for Tom, grandchildren had been born with any birth defects or had developed any serious conditions or disorders. Tom couldn’t imagine the strain that could put on a family. Still, his defensive coach at Alabama, Gene Stallings, had raised a child with Down syndrome, and he always said that he never had a bad day in his life afterwards because his son, Johnny, despite his condition, never complained about anything. Tom knew that not everyone could handle that situation with such grace and patience, and as he thought about what a ruthless man Jack Willistone had been, he realized that the woman sitting across from him had likely raised her son on her own.

  “Is Danny the only reason you visited Jack in prison?” Bo asked, and Tom winced at the forward nature of the question.

  “You are direct, aren’t you, Mr. Haynes?” Barbara asked. Then, not letting him respond, she said, “Yes. Though I admit that quality father-and-son time wasn’t the intent.”

  “What was?” Bo pressed.

  Barbara leaned forward and looked inside her purse, which she had set in the middle of the table. She pulled out a single sheet of paper and placed it in front of Bo. Tom scooted his chair closer to his friend so that he could read what appeared to be a letter. The right-hand edge of the paper had an orange smudge on it and there was a sour odor that Tom couldn’t place.