by Jay Brandon
“The last year or so only one girl,” Hines said respectfully.
“Yes, but before this year, had you seen him with other girls, a variety of girls?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say a variety, but two or three.”
“How would they act?”
“Oh, all different ways. Sometimes happy, sometimes quiet You know: kids.”
“I object to this, Your Honor.” Mike Arriendez stood looking as if his patience had run out “Where is this leading?”
“Give me two more questions and I’ll show you,” Jordan answered.
“Overruled,” Judge Waverly said quickly, waving them both to silence, then motioned for Jordan to continue.
“Did you ever see Kevin having an argument with one of his girl friends?”
“I guess you could say that,” the Pizza Hut owner said judiciously.
“Did you ever see him hit her?”
Dale Hines was terribly uncomfortable. His discomfort translated into anger. “Not in my place,” he said, pointing a stem finger. “ ’F he’d ever tried something like that inside my place, he would’ve been through the door and down on his face so fast he wouldn’t’ve known what happened.” Hines shifted and the anger died, leaving him uncomfortable again. “But once,” he went on more slowly, “Kevin was having an argument with this girl, and it was getting bad enough that I was about to go over, when the girl suddenly jumped up and ran out And Kevin ran out after her, and like I said, it had been pretty bad, so I kept watching them. I saw Kevin catch up to the girl in the parking lot and grab her arm, and when she yelled at him again, he slapped her.”
Silence held the courtroom when Hines’s voice died. Hines seemed to feel guilty about the silence; he hastened to cover it
“It was only one slap. I was heading for the door, but before I got there, the girl took off in her car, so I just let it go.”
Hines shook his head, seeing the scene again in a new light, one that gave his face a regretful frown.
“Thank you, Mr. Hines. I pass the witness.”
Mike Arriendez only asked one question. “Was it Jenny Fecklewhite you saw Kevin slap, Mr. Hines?”
“No, not Jenny.”
When he was dismissed, Hines shuffled slowly up the courtroom aisle and found a place in the audience. Jordan watched him and saw that Swin Wainwright was still staring at him, the tightness of his face holding back an obvious plea, one Wainwright was too proud to make openly.
“Do you have another witness, Mr. Marshall?”
Jordan turned his attention to the judge. “Yes, sir. The defense calls Wayne Orkney.”
Judge Waverly made the oath sound very solemn, like an initiation rite into a secret society. “Do you swear that your testimony will be the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
Wayne’s uplifted arm looked very skinny. When he lowered it, his white cuff dropped three inches out of the sleeve of his black suit. Jordan realized that Wayne, thin to begin with, had lost weight even during the short time Jordan had known him. His neck seemed to have grown longer. His jail haircut looked like it had been administered with the aid of a bowl. Wayne was clean-shaven and nervous and looked very young, the youngest person in the courtroom.
“You know the day I’m going to ask you about, Wayne.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The last day you saw Kevin. When did you first see him that day, Wayne?”
“That morning. He come by the gas station.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about him?”
“He was real agitated.” Wayne almost chuckled, but it passed quickly. “And he’d had at least one drink already. I could smell it. He said he was trying to get his courage up.”
“Why?”
“I object to hearsay,” the prosecutor said.
Jordan started to answer, “It’s not offered for the truth, your—” but Judge Waverly quickly overruled the objection. The judge was turned toward Wayne, listening closely.
“Go ahead, Wayne.”
“He said he was going to ask Jenny to marry him.” Jordan felt sure he’d been the only other person in the courtroom in possession of this news, but the silence held— a strained, listening silence.
“What did the two of you do?”
“We went to the Pizza Hut for lunch, so we could talk.” “Did you congratulate your friend on his decision?”
“No, I tried to talk him out of it.”
In his peripheral vision, Jordan detected a couple of approving nods.
“Why?”
“I thought it was a bad idea.”
“Did you talk Kevin out of it?”
“No.” Wayne shook his head. “He had his mind made up.”
“Were he and Jenny so much in love?” Jordan asked.
“It was more like a test That’s why Kevin wanted to ask her to get married. He was scared. Jenny didn’t treat him the way she used to. Kevin had started getting crazy about her.” “Crazy in love?”
“No, sir, just crazy.”
“What do you mean? What would he do?”
“Follow her around.” Wayne was rubbing his hand, the enlarged knuckles. He sniffed, a raw sound, and cleared his throat. Jordan could feel his client’s physical discomfort. “He got me to go with him a few times. We’d sneak around after her, see where she went after school or whether she was really baby-sitting or had cheerleader practice like she’d told Kevin.”
“Did you ever see her with someone else, some boy or man besides Kevin?”
“Yes.”
Wayne glanced to the side. Jordan also looked at Judge Waverly. The judge looked intently miserable, not like a man ashamed, like a man in pain. But his pain wasn’t distracting him; he was studying Wayne as if he would kill him in open court if he found out Wayne was lying.
“How did Kevin react to that?” Jordan asked.
“That’s what I mean about going crazy. Seeing her with somebody else just drove him bug-eyed. One time he just spun around in the street like a top. He wanted to do something so bad and couldn’t think what to do.”
“Now back to that day in July,” Jordan said. He sensed relief that he hadn’t pursued the topic of the identity of the man Jenny had been seen with, but the relief wasn’t the judge’s. Judge Waverly was still watching Wayne with utter absorption. “Were you wearing your ring?”
“Yes, sir. I always wore it.”
“Did something happen that day with regard to your ring?”
“Yes, sir, Kevin asked me for it.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t have one, and he wanted to give Jenny one when he asked her to marry him.”
“But he hadn’t bought her one?”
“No, sir.”
The implications of that seemed clear, Kevin’s impulsiveness or his uncertainty of his beloved’s response to his marriage proposal. Jordan let the jury worry it out on their own.
“Did you give him your ring, Wayne?”
“Yes, sir.”
“That ring beside you on the bench marked as a defense exhibit?”
Wayne glanced at it apprehensively. “Yes, sir.”
“Did Kevin put it on?”
“Yes. He acted a little nervous—ever’body knew about Kevin and rings—but he kept it on and laughed and said it was a good fit. That’s when I was sure he’d been drinking.”
“What happened next?”
“Kevin left to go meet Jenny.”
“What did you do, Wayne?”
“Just sat there for a while.” But Wayne had had an uneasy feeling. He described it for the jury and the judge, who seemed to be accepting his story. They had the faces of children listening to a good storyteller—or of adults finally getting the inside story.
“I knew Jenny wouldn’t tell him yes. I didn’t think Kevin even expected her to. It was just a—a challenge he was giving her. I sat there trying to think what he’d do when she said no. Because the
way he’d been—Kevin’d broken up with girls before, it never seemed to mean much to him one way or the other. But he’d never gone followin’ one around before. He’d never asked one to marry him. I was afraid.”
“Didn’t you think there was a chance she’d accept his proposal?”
“Jenny marry Kevin? No, sir, I didn’t give that much thought.” Even now Wayne looked surprised at the suggestion.
“So what did you do?”
“I left, and I started back to work, but when I got there, I couldn’t get out of my truck. I couldn’t just work all afternoon and wait to hear what’d happened. So I drove out to the park.”
“You knew where Kevin was meeting Jenny?”
Wayne nodded. “On the way, I saw Kevin in his truck coming back. He just flew right by me.”
“Do you think he’d seen you?”
“He couldn’t have missed me. He sure knew my truck. That made me even more scared, that Kevin wouldn’t stop. I kept thinkin’—hopin’—he was just embarrassed, but that’s not what I really thought. I drove a lot faster then.”
“You knew Kevin and Jenny’s spot in the park, the place where they liked to meet?”
“Oh, their spot,” Wayne said scornfully. “It wasn’t just their spot, it was ever’body’s spot Yeah, I knew it. When I got there, I saw Jenny’s car.”
“What did that make you think, Wayne?”
“I don’t remember.” Wayne’s voice was quiet, but it didn’t lack force. It sounded as if it took great strength to force his voice through his throat. He sat stiffly, hands clenched. His dress clothes made him look even more out of place, as if what he were describing had changed him forever. “I don’t remember thinking anything from then on. I just crept up through the bushes and I saw her. Laid out flat with a little line of blood running down from the comer of her mouth. Not moving. I could see from ten feet away she was dead.”
“How were her hands, Wayne?”
“Her hands?” Wayne’s wet eyes glazed over again as he consulted his memory picture again. “They were folded on her chest.”
“Then what did you do?” Jordan’s voice was quiet, too. He hardly felt the need to speak at all. From Wayne’s look, the story had played out in his head again and again in the last two months to the exclusion of any other life. It would have continued unspooling now with or without Jordan’s help.
“I drove back into town.”
“Fast?”
“Fast?” Wayne asked, baffled. “I don’t know, I just knew I had to get there as fast as I could. I drove down Main, and I saw Kevin. I guess I stopped the truck, because the next thing I remember is hitting him.”
“Did you yell something, Wayne?”
“I—I guess I did. I believe those people, but I don’t remember anything except needing to get my hands on Kevin.”
“Did you intend to kill him?”
“No, sir. I mean, I didn’t have any intention except to hurt him.”
“Why did you hit him?”
“I was so damn’ mad. I knew he’d killed Jenny. I knew when she told him no, Kevin’d get mad and whine and try to talk her into it until she got tired of him, and when she tried to leave, he’d stop her—”
“Objection,” said the district attorney. “This is all speculation.”
Judge Waverly waved the objection away before Jordan could even rise. Waverly was engrossed in the story, leaning toward Wayne as if the judge, too, could see it happening as Wayne spoke. He motioned for Wayne to continue. Wayne looked at him, embarrassed by the eye contact, and hurried on.
“And I knew he’d hit her, because that’s what Kevin always did when he didn’t know what else to do, and that would just make Jenny crazy.”
Because she was the golden girl, no one dared lift a hand to her. The judge nodded. There were other knowing looks in the courtroom.
“And when she fought back, he’d hit her again. When I got to the park, I could see that’s what had happened. And I just snapped. I wanted to hurt Kevin—”
Because Wayne was the same way, when something went wrong, he didn’t know what to do except hit.
“It was just so damn’ unfair. It shouldn’t’ve been Jenny, it should’ve ... Not her. And I was mad at myself, too, because I knew what was going to happen, and I didn’t get there in time to stop it.”
“Wayne, you got arrested. Why didn’t you tell the police why you’d beaten Kevin?”
“I didn’t want to get him in trouble.” Because Kevin had still been alive, and he was still Wayne’s friend.
Jordan felt again like an intruder in the town. He felt like the invisible man. His questions were insignificant. Everyone was watching Wayne with sympathetic looks or angry looks or dumbfounded looks. But everyone else in the courtroom appearing even now, removed by time and distance, part of the story. Even Laura had lost her robotic pose and was turned to watch the witness or maybe the judge. Jordan realized again that he would never know her, not completely.
It was the judge who drew most of his attention. Jordan’s case wasn’t aimed primarily at the jury, it was aimed at Judge Waverly. The judge looked like a man who had taken the brunt of the attack.
“I pass the witness,” Jordan said.
“Wayne, do you mean to say you didn’t know how hard you were hitting Kevin?” Mike Arriendez asked aggressively, but he seemed to have lost his steam even before he reached the end of the question.
“I meant to hit him hard, sir. I just didn’t know how bad it would hurt him.”
“And you would have the jury believe you didn’t intend to kill him even though that’s what you shouted?”
“Like I said, I don’t ...”
Jordan tried hard to pay attention to the questions and Wayne’s answers, but he had lost steam, too. When his turn came again, he only had one question to ask: “When you helped lift Kevin into the ambulance and rode with him to the hospital, Wayne, did he look like someone who was dying?”
“No, sir. He spoke to me. He told me it was okay.”
The prosecutor followed up with a last question or two demonstrating Wayne’s lack of diagnostic training. Jordan was watching the judge, whose gaze had left the witness and crossed the courtroom. When there was silence, the judge’s eyes descended to Jordan’s expectantly. Jordan had a hard time remembering what he was supposed to do. He looked at his notes, at his client on the stand, and across the front of the courtroom. That was where his gaze lingered longest, until with sudden decision he spoke up.
“The defense rests,” he said.
13
Your Honor, the State hasn’t proven a case of murder.” The defense had, Jordan thought ironically; only he’d proven it against someone other than the defendant. “The defense has certainly carried its burden of showing that the defendant did what he did as a result of sudden passion rising from adequate cause. That’s voluntary manslaughter, not murder. The State did nothing to refute the sudden passion or the adequate cause. Even the State’s witnesses testified that Wayne looked and acted like someone who couldn’t control his actions. His very act of attacking the deceased in front of so many witnesses proves that.”
It was beautiful to use the strength of the prosecution’s case against them. But Mike Arriendez didn’t look worried as he and Jordan stood in front of the judge’s bench beside Laura in the otherwise empty courtroom, arguing about what instructions should be given to the jury.
“As for adequate cause,” Jordan continued, “Wayne testified why he did what he did, and no one has disputed what he saw, and certainly no one has claimed that what he discovered in Pleasant Grove Park wasn’t adequate to inspire sudden rage.”
As he argued, Jordan felt as if he and the judge were in collusion. If one person in Green Hills felt that Wayne’s beating of Kevin was justified by what Wayne had seen in the park, it was the judge.
But Arriendez argued confidently that the State had presented a case of murder that should go to the jury. “Intent can be found i
n the methodicalness of the beating,” he said among other things. And his confidence was demonstrated by how shaken he looked when Judge Waverly hesitated over his ruling.
It was with an apologetic sigh that the judge finally raised his head to say; “I agree with the defense. That’s exactly how I would find if I were the trier of fact.” His voice gained strength as he continued. “But I am not. The State has arguably presented evidence of murder to the jury, and the decision should be left to that jury.”
The judge suddenly regained a measure of his old fierceness as he shot glares at both lawyers, expecting further argument But Mike Arriendez was satisfied with the decision, though he looked puzzled. And Jordan just stared back at the judge, asking nothing more. His face, in fact, appeared to offer help rather than request it
Judge Waverly abruptly rose and turned away. “Arguments in ten minutes,” his disembodied voice drifted back. The district attorney hurried away to begin preparing. Jordan just stood.
Laura looked up at him. What was in her face? Sadness: The tragedy that had played out in the courtroom hadn’t left her unaffected. Her expression was also compounded with something as she looked at Jordan. Not love, he couldn’t convince himself of that, but certainly concern. She took his hand. The concern deepened.
“You’re shaking,” she said.
His heart was beating him, making his whole body tremble, but he hadn’t known it until Laura told him. He was thinking of her. He wanted to hold her, but he was afraid. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She leaned her head briefly against his arm. “It’ll be over soon,” she assured him.
“Wayne knew what was going to happen. It didn’t take a genius. After what we heard in this courtroom, any of us could have predicted the same thing. But especially Wayne, who knew Kevin better than anyone. Who’d watched him over the course of weeks, turning crazy over a girl, acting ways Kevin had never acted before. Skulking around after her, learning things that made him even crazier. Haven’t we all seen people possessed by that kind of emotion? We call it love, but it’s something more. Something worse.
“Kevin was afraid of losing Jenny, and he could only think of one more way to hold her. He was going to propose marriage. Not, Wayne thought, because Kevin expected her to say yes or even because he really wanted to marry Jenny Fecklewhite, but only as a way of testing to see whether she loved him. So Wayne sat in that Pizza Hut and thought about what would happen when Jenny said no.