by Jay Brandon
“I wanted to warn you, Your Honor,” he croaked, swallowed, and went on, “I’ve investigated this case rather thoroughly, and some things have come to my attention that ordinarily I would just dismiss as none of my business. But where the information is relevant to the case I may have an obligation to introduce it into evidence.”
The judge sounded unintimidated. “What are you talking about, Mr. Marshall?”
“There’s a popularly held notion in some quarters, Your Honor, that there was a — a special relationship between you and the victim. The other victim, Jenny Fecklewhite.” Silence. The judge didn’t move. He still leaned back in his chair, looking vulnerable or confident. Jordan looked at Judge Waverly’s hand resting on the desk. The hand was spotted but strong, strong as the aging profile.
“I didn’t want to sandbag you, Judge, I didn’t want to spring it on you during trial. But it plays a part in what happened, and I have to — may have to bring it up. If you’d like, I could file a motion to recuse, we could still have the trial moved — ”
Judge Waverly shook his head. It seemed like a request for silence, and Jordan obliged. Suddenly he saw the judge’s posture for what it was: exhaustion. Secrets are heavy burdens. When the judge began speaking, his voice was soft with tiredness, too. He seemed to be talking to himself.
“I made an inappropriate marriage,” he said.
Jordan, while fascinated, suddenly didn’t want to be in the room.
“It didn’t seem so at the time,” Waverly continued. “Margaret was a beautiful, affectionate girl, and she so admired me she could hardly speak. I felt like a god when she listened to me talk about the law. This was years ago, I was young and full of myself, I thought that’s all a man wanted of a wife. But after a few years of that, I no longer felt adored, I felt — as if I lived alone.”
The judge sighed. He wasn’t looking at Jordan and might have been only dimly aware of his presence. But confession has momentum. The judge had waited a long time to unburden himself. He continued, animation suddenly making him sit up straighter.
“And then after what seems a long time, someone else comes along, and you realize this is the one. This is your other half, the one you should have waited for. A girl with spirit, not just admiration. Who can talk back, who’s bright and quick and lovely. It’s very hard — not to reach out for that.”
Caught in the uncomfortable oddity of hearing the judge confess his love for the dead girl, Jordan suddenly realized that this was why the judge had impulsively appointed him to defend Wayne Orkney: Because Jordan was a stranger, he wouldn’t care anything about the case, and if he did learn anything, he would take the knowledge away with him, Judge Waverly would never have to see him again.
The judge had wound down, he was now undoubtedly as embarrassed as Jordan. But he stood manfully and looked the defense lawyer in the face.
“So you do what you have to do, Mr. Marshall. I won’t recuse myself, and I won’t exclude any relevant evidence. You just... be careful, and remember the lives that are involved.”
“I will, Your Honor. Thank you.”
It was as Jordan watched Judge Waverly struggle to re-don his aloof authority that Jordan saw the older man’s humanity most clearly. Inappropriate marriage he could understand, and the futile attempt to hang onto youth or to relive it. In the moment before they left the office, Jordan felt perfect compassion for the judge.
It was a shame he had to destroy him.
It was Mike Arriendez who introduced the defensive evidence. Jordan winced when he heard it coming. It was just what he would have done when he was a prosecutor.
“What happened after you helped pull the defendant off Kevin Wainwright, Mr. Stimmons?”
“He just stood there, he wa’n’t no problem after that” Judging by appearance, Wayne Orkney couldn’t have given Hal Stimmons much of a problem. Stimmons was a black man in his late thirties, very heavy in his shoulders and upper arms, with legs that looked as if they would stand wherever he planted them, no matter what. He had a broad face, a quiet voice, and watchful eyes.
“Did Wayne say anything?” the prosecutor asked.
“He said something like, ‘Oh my God, did I hurt him?’ and he said Kevin’s name.”
“Did Kevin answer?”
“He couldn’t.”
“What did you men do next?”
“I said let’s not move him, we don’t know what’s happened to his back. So we just got a sheet and held it over ’im to keep the sun off, and one of the ladies gave him some water and we waited for the ambulance. It didn’t take long.”
“When the ambulance came,” Arriendez asked thoughtfully, “did you help lift Kevin into it?”
“Yes, sir. After they got him onto the board.”
“Did anyone else help?”
“He did.” Stimmons gestured with a broad, two-tone thumb.
“The defendant?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did Kevin say anything then?”
“I think so, but I couldn’t hear. He might’ve heard.” Stimmons looked at Wayne as if expecting him to join in.
“Did Wayne say anything, Mr. Stimmons?"
“He kept shakin’ his head, shakin’ it and shakin’ it, and saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ ”
There was the defensive theory of unintended harm, presented as neatly as Jordan could have wished, without his even having to call Wayne as a witness. But the reason a prosecutor puts on evidence like that—before the defense can offer it to the jury—is in order to destroy it. Mike Arriendez was nodding in apparent sympathy. He said, “Mr. Stimmons, have you ever known a man to do something he had every intention of doing and then be real sorry about it afterward?”
“Objection,” Jordan said, not caught unawares. “Your Honor, what may have happened in other instances is not relevant to this one. And this witness has not been qualified as an expert on the defendant’s state of mind or anyone else’s.”
“Your Honor,” Arriendez said smoothly, “the defense has already announced its intention of showing that the defendant didn’t intend to harm the deceased. How can I disprove that claim except by the testimony of people who saw how he behaved? I can’t reach into the defendant’s mind. And if experience of life isn’t relevant to this issue, what is?” Judge Waverly paid the two lawyers careful, if abstracted, attention. “Overruled,” he said.
“That means you can answer, Mr. Stimmons. Do you think just because a man is sorry afterward, that means he didn’t mean to do what he did?”
“No, sir. I’ve seen some people do some mighty ugly things, and you could tell by their faces that’s just what they wanted to do, and afterward cry like a baby over it. I’ve done it myself.”
“Did you see Wayne Orkney hitting Kevin Wainwright?”
“Yes, sir, some of it, before I could get across the street to stop him.”
“Did it look to you like Wayne knew what he was doing?”
“His eyes were burnin’,” Hal Stimmons said. “He wasn’t missing where he was aimin’ to hit either. Sure looked deliberate to me.”
“From the way he hit Kevin, should he have expected to hurt him?”
Hal Stimmons’s voice remained as mild as it had been. “ ’F I hit a man that hard that many times, I’d expect him to be dead afterward.”
“Your witness,” Arriendez said.
Like hell. Mild-mannered, trustworthy Hal Stimmons was a prosecution witness all the way. Jordan sat there wondering what use he could make of him.
“Did you see Kevin hit Wayne, Mr. Stimmons?”
“Naw, sir. Kevin was down and pretty much out of it by the time I come runnin’.”
“So you didn’t see whether Kevin hit Wayne earlier. You didn’t see what started the fight.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Jordan was struck by inspiration. “Was this the first time you ever saw Wayne Orkney and Kevin Wainwright fighting?” he asked.
“Oh, no
,” Hal Stimmons said immediately as if he’d been hoping for that question.
“You sound like a fight between Kevin and Wayne might’ve been a common occurrence. Was it?”
Stimmons shrugged. “I been seein’ those boys since they was little boys. Seems like they was always fightin’.”
“Kevin hitting Wayne and Wayne hitting Kevin? That’s how their fights went?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you take them very seriously?”
“Naw. Just boys fightin’, you know.”
Feeling much better about the witness, Jordan passed him. Mike Asriendez immediately asked, “Did you stop any of those other fights, Mr. Stimmons?”
“Naw.”
“Why not?”
Stimmons shrugged those heavy shoulders again. “Nobody gettin’ hurt too bad. Just regular fights, both of ’em givin’ as good as they was gettin’. No reason to interfere.”
“But you interfered in this one. Why?”
Hal Stimmons’s face darkened with memory. “This was somethin’ different. Kevin’s just down on the ground, not fightin’ back. And Wayne, he was hurtin’ him.”
Arriendez let the testimony sink in while he wrote an elaborate note to himself. “Pass the witness,” he finally said.
Damn, Jordan was thinking. Mike Arriendez was good: smooth, alert, always one step ahead of the defense so far. He could see the effect on the jurors’ faces of the prosecutor’s last short questioning. Here was big Hal Stimmons, a man used to violence, casual about it, who had been so appalled by this particular beating that he’d felt compelled to intervene.
All right, if it was bad, make it even worse. “How did Wayne look while he was hitting Kevin, Mr. Stimmons?”
“Like I say, his face was beet red. I thought he was cut at first, but it was just blood rushin’ to his face. He looked crazy. Looked like his head’d pop off his neck. And his eyes buggin’ out like a crazy man’s.”
“Was he shouting?”
Stimmons nodded. “Somethin’, but I couldn’t catch it. ‘Did you?’ I think was what he yelled once, but I couldn’t tell what he was talkin’ about. It was just crazy yellin’.” Jordan wrote a note of his own and shifted gears.
“Mr. Stimmons, do you know what happened in Pleasant Grove Park earlier that afternoon?”
Mike Arriendez was on his feet quickly. “I object to any hearsay.”
Judge Waverly looked at Jordan with an invisible shrug. The prosecutor was right. The judge turned to the witness. “Hal, if you know from your own experience what happened in the park, you can testify to it. But you can’t just repeat what you heard someone else say.”
At that Hal Stimmons turned back to the lawyers and said, “You mean about the other murder, I guess, but I don’t know anything about it except what I heard.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jordan said, frustrated. He had already won this round in chambers, when Judge Waverly had ruled that evidence of Jenny’s murder would be admitted. But the prosecutor wouldn’t let him seize the victory.
The day ended abruptly. Is it over? Jordan wanted to ask, like a boxer awakened long after the fight. Judge Waverly walked out without a glance back at the courtroom. Laura emulated him. Jordan’s only companion was the one beside him, whom he had almost forgotten.
“Need to confer?” sneered the deputy with the amber glasses. Jordan looked at his client Wayne looked back at him expectantly. “Wayne,” Jordan began earnestly but couldn’t think of anything to add. He turned his attention instead to the iron-faced deputy. With a beguiling smile Jordan said, “We do need a minute, please, if that’s not too inconvenient.”
The deputy retreated but only after a manly snarl. “Anything you want to ask me?” Jordan said.
“I’m not lookin’ too good, am I?” Wayne said quietly.
“Right now, Wayne, my strategy is to make you look as bad as possible. Everybody knows you beat up Kevin, we can’t refute that. What we have to show is that you were so mad you couldn’t control yourself. So Mr. Stimmons’s testimony actually helped us in that regard.” Difficult as that might have been for a layman — or anyone else, including the jury — to understand.
“So what’re you going for, insanity? Maybe I could help with that.”
Jordan instantly knew the voice of Wayne’s mom at his shoulder, though it had been weeks since he’d heard it.
“No, ma’am,” he said quietly. “Not insanity, voluntary manslaughter.” Into the silence he added with a trace of the whine he’d tried to keep out of his voice, “Which is a lot better than murder for Wayne.”
“Hmph,” Mrs. Orkney said, which Jordan recognized as a prelude to speech and interrupted.
“Will you excuse us for just a minute, Mr. and Mrs. Orkney? I’ll talk to you right after Wayne and I go over a couple of things.”
Mrs. Orkney repeated her syllable, and her husband led her away.
“Just one thing, Wayne. What were you screaming while you were hitting Kevin?”
Wayne didn’t even search his memory. “I don’t know. I didn’t know I was. Somethin’ about Jenny, I guess.”
“Good,” Jordan said. “Those are both good answers.” He signaled to the impatiently waiting deputy and joined Wayne’s parents at the back of the now-empty courtroom. “I wish you wouldn’t say things to discourage Wayne, Mrs. Orkney,” he began.
“You want to keep that job for yourself?” she snapped back. “If I was settin’ where Wayne is, this trial’d be depressing hell out of me.”
“Now, Ma,” Mr. Orkney said mildly.
“What?! You seen anything different from what I have? I don’t see this fellow here thowin’ his whole heart and soul and lungs and pancreas into his job. Looks to me like he’s just here to prop Wayne up so they can get a better shot at him.”
She was a head shorter than Jordan but outweighed him. He couldn’t have moved her out of his path if he’d tried. But that wasn’t why he felt compelled to answer her charges. He felt his face flushing as he tried to keep his voice level.
“We haven’t gotten our turn yet, Mrs. Orkney. The State’s case always looks good when the defense hasn’t put on its evidence.”
She stared Jordan straight in the eye and lowered her voice for the first time. "This good?” she said.
Laura answered his knock at her door immediately and stayed in the doorway, arms folded. “I’m not going to ask what you said to the judge,” she said.
Feeling the lostness of his cause, Jordan said, “I told him I might have to introduce evidence about him and Jenny.” He almost flinched, but Laura hadn’t moved. It was only her eyes flaring. “What about them?”
“I think you know,” Jordan said quietly. “Other people do, and they’re not as smart as you.” The compliment passed her as if he hadn’t spoken. Jordan continued. “Jenny and Judge Waverly were lovers.”
Laura looked stunned. But her blank expression turned quickly to even deeper anger. “People are so stupid!” she said. “People have to have drama, they have to make nasty stories out of, of —”
“You don’t believe it?”
“It’s not true,” she said icily. Her sincerity shook Jordan’s confidence in his theory.
“But some people believed it,” he said slowly. “That’s why it’s important”
“On what possible theory?” Laura asked harshly. “You’re not trying Jenny’s murder.”
“But the judge said I could get into it, remember? Because it goes to Wayne’s motive.” A pause. She still hadn’t moved. “Can we talk about this inside? Or at Barney’s? I could sure use a drink.”
She turned her head as if away from his touch. The long line of her neck struck him as peculiarly vulnerable and peculiarly strong. “No,” Laura said quietly, the anger gone from her voice, but the resolution still holding it firm. “I think we both need our rest tonight. Don’t you?”
Jordan nodded. He didn’t ask anything else because he didn’t want to make her decision more far-reaching th
an it was. She stayed in the doorway, he felt her watching him as he walked away.
“Oh good, we can get our exclusive interview,” Helen Evers said brightly. “What do you think of our local juries, Mr. Marshall?”
“They seem like fine, intelligent people. I trust them to do the right thing,” Jordan said by rote. “Ask me if I still think that after the verdict. Y’all’re working late.” He’d been surprised to see lights in the offices of the Green Hills Register as he’d driven by, and sudden inspiration, not a pleasant one, had brought him to a stop.
“We’re putting out a special trial edition,” said the editor and publisher, suddenly appearing from the back room as Jordan remembered her doing from his last appearance at the newspaper. Mrs. Swanson was actually wearing a green eyeshade and reading a long roll of paper without glancing at him.
“So we can use a couple of good snappy quotes,” Helen said brightly. “Do you want to give me some, or do you trust me to supply them?”
“In a little while, okay, Helen? Right now I need to talk to your mother.”
Mrs. Swanson looked at Jordan in surprise, and Helen turned the same expression on her mother. “I’m not a witness to anything,” the older woman said.
“I’m pretty sure you are,” Jordan said.
Still watching him, puzzlement turning suspicious, Mrs. Swanson said, “Helen, why don’t you go get us some sandwiches.”
“Are you kidding?” Helen said, but her mother cut her off without even a glance. The reporter gathered up her purse and went out with a glare at Jordan.
“To what am I a witness?” Mrs. Swanson asked, not offering Jordan a seat or entry behind the counter.
“You tell me. I’ve developed a theory about Judge Waverly and Jenny Fecklewhite. I want to know if it’s true.”
“We don’t have a gossip column, Mr. Marshall. Even if we did — ”
“I don’t want gossip, I want the truth, because I may have to put on evidence of their relationship in the trial, and I’m not going to do that unless I’m damned sure it’s true.”
Mrs. Swanson didn’t say anything. After a long moment’s study of Jordan’s expression she seated herself at the desk. Jordan came around the counter and sat in front of her. “Ask,” Mrs. Swanson said.