by Jay Brandon
“We don’t know who left with the ring. We know they left at different times but not where they each went next. We only have the defendant’s word that Kevin went to Pleasant Grove Park first. It’s just as likely that Wayne Orkney sat there in indecision for a few minutes, then realized he could beat his friend to the punch. It’s just as likely that he raced ahead to the park to meet Jenny himself.
“And then?” Arriendez said more softly, trying to withdraw his own influence from the scene he was painting. “Then the story is exactly the same as the defense’s, except with two characters switched. It could just as easily have been Wayne who had the fatal confrontation with Jenny. Wayne who declared his love for her and was rejected. Wayne who responded brutally, as we know he was prone to do. Exactiy the same logical progression of events, but with this defendant as the one who struck down Jenny Fecklewhite and realized she was dead and panicked. He raced away from the scene but on the way passed Kevin’s truck going the other way. He knew what Kevin would find, he knew what he’d done.
“Imagine the defendant staring in horror at the blood- covered ring on his hand and tearing it off. Could anyone have looked at this wound”—Arriendez held up Jenny’s autopsy photo again; this time the jurors stared at it with more penetrating interest—“and not seen what he’d done with that ring?
“But then—he came up with a plan. The defendant waited. Waited until his friend, the only witness to the murder Wayne had committed, made his dazed way back into town, probably trying to decide what he should do. And that’s when Wayne screeched to a stop in front of him and leaped out and struck Kevin down before he could recover himself, before he could say anything to anyone, and hit him again and again. The defendant had to destroy Kevin; he had to stop his tongue. And he was safe to do it in front of witnesses, because he’d already decided what he was going to do: blame Jenny’s murder on his best friend and then stop Kevin from ever being able to deny it”
Jordan was sitting stunned at Arriendez’s brilliance in turning all Jordan’s own evidence and theories against him. As the DA talked, his scenario seemed as plausible as the one Jordan had described, especially with the evidence of Wayne’s blush—his face’s plain admission of love.
But there was one thing wrong with the prosecutor’s theory. Jordan couldn’t quite put his finger on it—and it wouldn’t matter if he did, because he wouldn’t get to present it to the jury. He’d already had his one opportunity to speak. It was gone, leaving the prosecutor free to destroy him unrefuted.
“After Wayne was pulled off his friend, there was one part of the act left to perform. Then he had to look stunned. He had to sob and say he hadn’t known what he was doing. He had to act remorseful and hover over his friend as if to do all he could for him and finally climb into the ambulance to accompany him to the hospital. Not out of tender concern for his friend,” Arriendez said with sudden harshness, “but for the opportunity to take that fatal ring, the one Wayne knew incriminated him in Jenny’s murder and to slip it onto his friend’s finger to incriminate Kevin instead. It was the defendant’s last betrayal of his friend. Doesn’t that make more sense to you than that Kevin, who hated rings, who was terrified of them, put one on on that fatal day?”
Well, maybe, Jordan thought, still looking for the flaw in the DA’s theory. His eyes were down, flicking back and forth on the table. He didn’t know anything that would refute Arriendez’s surprise case.
“And now I am going to say to you what he predicted I would say,” Mike Arriendez continued with confident authority. “It doesn’t matter. In this room, today, it doesn’t matter which of them killed Jenny Fecklewhite. Even if you accept the defense’s theory, you see what it reveals about the defendant. About his secret love for the poor deceased. If he acted from finding her dead, that love was his motive. Not simple rage. Not so overwhelming that he didn’t know what he was doing. He had time to think on his way back into town. He had time to track his friend down, he had time to calm down and back away, but he didn’t. He had time to plan what he committed in front of all these witnesses, which was cold-blooded murder.”
Jordan knew an exit line when he heard one. He knew a powerful closing argument as well; he felt completely battered by this one. He glanced at his client in a sort of farewell and suddenly saw what was wrong with the district attorney’s theory.
“Thank you,” Mike Arriendez said to the jury, and walked briskly to his chair. And Jordan did the one thing he could to refute the prosecutor’s argument. He pushed back his chair creakingly, scraping the metal-tipped legs loudly across the floor. He pushed back as if he would rise, but that wasn’t his intention. He only wanted to draw the jury’s attention, as he did; Jordan had pushed himself back so as not to block their vision, so that when he turned to look at his client, Wayne Orkney was the most prominent person in the courtroom, and all the jurors turned their attention on him.
Wayne didn’t notice. He sat there with a small frown on his face. Grief had returned to his expression, but it was compounded now not with embarrassment over the revelation of his feeling for Jenny. That emotion had been replaced by puzzlement. Wayne’s lips were moving slightly and his hands were touching each other in distraction as he tried to follow what Mike Arriendez had just explained to the jury and the audience in the courtroom. Wayne didn’t look guilty, he looked confused. He didn’t get it.
Don’t you see? Jordan wanted to shout. A smart lawyer could work out that plot with Wayne portrayed as the cunning double murderer, but Wayne couldn’t! He wasn’t smart enough to have thought that fast. It seemed perfectly obvious to Jordan.
But the jurors were rising. Judge Waverly had instructed them to begin their deliberations. Jordan stood and pulled Wayne to his feet as well. The defense lawyer was hoping the jurors would glance back at his best exhibit, his befuddled client, but the jurors were concentrating on falling into line and not tripping as they made their way out of the box. The door closed behind them.
Jordan and Mike Arriendez turned to each other. Neither spoke for a moment. They just regarded each other as if they hadn’t known each other until now.
“That was a hell of a piece of work,” Jordan finally said.
Arriendez didn’t smile. “I was up all night thinking of it. And I shouldn’t have had to do any thinking at all in this case. It was an absolute lay-down until you put on your evidence.”
They didn’t shake hands. They only nodded and turned away, Jordan to his client. Spontaneously, he put his arm around him. Wayne didn’t respond to the touch.
“How could he say I killed them both?” he asked bewilderedly.
“He was only telling the jury what the evidence might show. Nobody can ever know what really happened. We don’t know enough.”
That was everything Jordan had learned about trials, but as distilled wisdom it wasn’t much, and it was no comfort at all.
“Why don’t we get your parents up here to sit with you for a while? There’s no telling how long the jury’ll be out, but maybe your guard will be kind enough—”
Jordan almost bumped into the iron-faced deputy in the amber glasses as he turned. Jordan still felt a strange mix of emotions: at once removed from all humanity, yet able to see people more clearly, enough so that he could see there were so many facets to people he had already categorized and dismissed that he could barely hope to understand any of them. The feeling made him restrained in everything he did.
He didn’t glare at the deputy or look around for other authority to back him up. “Would that be all right with you, sir?” he asked. “If Wayne has a few minutes alone with his parents?”
The deputy glanced up the aisle, at Mr. and Mrs. Orkney drawing close, threading through the lingering spectator traffic going the other direction. “Hello, Charlotte,” the deputy said, and Mrs. Orkney responded casually, “Hi, Jim. How’s your mama and them?”
The deputy turned back to Jordan. “Okay with me,” he said.
Jordan, taken aback, offered a concession of his own. “You could handcuff him to the chair if you want.”
The deputy snorted softly. With amiable contempt he said, “What’s he gonna do, grab a car and flee to Mexico?” He walked away casually.
His feeling of inability to understand anything reinforced, Jordan accepted Mr. Orkney’s congratulations. “I wouldn’t convict him of anything after that.”
“I would,” Charlotte Orkney said. Then she thawed. “But maybe not of much,” she said, and shook Jordan’s hand.
“I’ll leave y’all alone.” Jordan looked past them. The front of the courtroom had emptied almost as quickly as the jury box, except for Laura. She sat still poised as if testimony might resume at any moment. Jordan caught her eye. She didn’t smile at him. Her expression was abstracted; she might have still been lost in the arguments. Jordan couldn’t imagine what his own expression was like. He yearned toward her, but it seemed impossible to disentangle himself from the remains of the case.
Laura suddenly rose and walked out to join the other court staff in their hidden offices.
Jordan went to find a quiet place. He still had work to do. But his path out of the courtroom was not clear. Swin Wainwright stood there looking menacing, not because of his expression, but simply from the curve of his posture, the strength and competence of his sinewy arms. His eyes smoldered beneath their heavy brows. Jordan tried to brush by him with a nod, but Wainwright put out the hand with the missing finger and stopped him.
“You had to have a bad guy, didn’t you?” he said. “And it couldn’t be poor little Wayne because he was your client, so it had to be my boy. You had to make Kevin look as bad as possible, not just a murderer, but a stupid, dim-witted murderer.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wainwright, but the facts—”
“There ain’t any facts here! Not in this goddamned place. There’s only what you lawyers say.” His fist was clenched. Swin Wainwright could only find strength in anger. But he couldn’t sustain it. His voice threatened to break as he pointed a finger in Jordan’s face. “I want you to remember this. The funeral’s over a long time ago. What you said here’s probably the last public words anybody’llever say about Kevin. This is how people’ll remember him. He doesn’t even have a real memory any more.”
The threat of violence had passed. Swin Wainwright stalked out like a man leaving a place for the last time. Jordan just stood, holding his briefcase, feeling the few remaining eyes in the courtroom on him.
You couldn’t move in this place without stepping on toes. “I didn’t know him,” Jordan said loudly, then more softly, “I don’t know anybody.”
And he walked out to look for a phone.
14
It seemed a very short time later that Jordan was startled by Emilio’s opening the door. Jordan sat at the table in the cramped conference room/law library across the hall from the courtroom, the old-fashioned heavy black phone close to his hand. His stare into space was interrupted by the door’s opening.
“They’re back,” the bailiff said.
“Back? Who?” Not the jury. Jordan found his watch. They’d barely been out an hour. “How do they look?” he asked.
“Not happy,” Emilio said quietly and left.
God, he hadn’t even kept them out long. Defense lawyers have to find victories wherever they can, sometimes in nothing more than confusing jurors enough to keep them arguing for a few hours before coming back with their guilty verdict. Jordan hadn’t even managed that
He hadn’t taken any time to prepare his client for the verdict and the punishment phase to follow. He hadn’t even prepared himself. Jordan hurried up the courtroom aisle shrugging his jacket straight and trying to recollect himself. As usual, the grapevine was working without breakdown; the spectator seats were already half-refilled, and people were still filing in. He saw Mrs. McElroy in her usual seat and also near the front Chris Cavaletti, the teacher. He reflected that Swin Wainwright had been right: This trial was the final public ceremony for both Kevin Wainwright and Jenny and, in a stranger way, for Wayne.
Wayne didn’t seem to have moved. His parents were still with him. Mrs. Orkney’s face was both wet and red. “Stay,” Jordan said as the Orkneys started to rise and move back. He pulled up a chair on Wayne’s other side, put his arm around him, and began instructing him.
“All rise.”
Judge Waverly glanced at the civilians at the defense table, but his face didn’t even flicker with disapproval. “Be seated, please. Let’s have the jury in.”
The judge glanced out, back down, then swiveled his chair to stare over the heads of the jurors shuffling into their seats. Jordan looked at Laura poised below her judge. She too was gazing out into space, her customary courtroom blankness of face looking somehow abstracted rather than officious. Or maybe he was just reading too much into everyone.
The jurors were still settling into their seats when Judge Waverly’s voice calmed the room. “Do you have a verdict, Mr. Foreman?”
“Yes, sir. Yes, Your Honor,” said a thin, deeply tanned man in the front corner of the jury box, a surveyor for the highway department, Jordan remembered.
Mike Arriendez, Jordan, and Wayne stood. Wayne’s parents kept their seats, but Mrs. Orkney held onto her son’s hand. Mr. Orkney’s arm encircled his wife’s shoulders as if there were a current running through the three of them.
Judge Waverly only lifted a hand, relinquishing stage center to the surveyor-foreman, who, without consulting the slip of paper held in one of his clasped hands, stood straight and delivered his verdict to the judge: “We find the defendant guilty, Your Honor—of aggravated assault.”
The murmuring soon began, the voices behind him rising to the level of ordinary street conversation, but the moment that extended itself for Jordan was the long few seconds of silence that preceded the murmuring. There were no immediate wails of disappointment, no cry of triumph. The verdict was one calculated to induce thought. People still stood in a listening posture as if there would be more from the jury. Mike Arriendez’s face was caught between a smile and a frown. The three Orkneys showed a family resemblance in identical open mouths. Even Laura Stefone had given up her usual blankness for thoughtful blinking.
And Judge Waverly, in minute, unconscious acquiescence, nodded.
Jordan suddenly leaned close to his client’s ear as the wave of spectator noise finally broke over them. As he whispered, Jordan kept his eye on the judge. Wayne looked in the same direction and finally nodded.
Judge Waverly looked like a broken man. He had barely moved, but his face had suddenly begun a rapid descent into old age. Jordan knew what was killing the judge. It was Judge Waverly’s poorly kept secret relationship with Jenny that had gotten her killed. Because Kevin, poor dumb cluck, had found out about the other man in his girl friend’s life and had gotten jealous. That was what had led, with the help of misunderstanding and stupidity and terrible bad luck, to Jenny’s death. And Judge Waverly had loved the girl. That was perfectly clear to Jordan as if now he could read everyone in Green Hills.
“Your Honor,” Jordan said suddenly, his voice cutting through the clamor, “the defense would like to withdraw its request that the jury assess punishment.”
Judge Waverly blinked. He didn’t regain his old ferocity, but he was back to business. “State?” he asked.
Mike Arriendez, still trying to absorb the verdict, had only moments to mull this new dilemma. His consent was required for the defendant at this point to change his mind about whether the judge or jury would decide his punishment. But it wasn’t a decision that required much thought on the part of the prosecutor. Arriendez was in many ways a prisoner of the court. His judge was the only judge the DA faced, almost daily. To deny his consent to this request would be to publicly announce that Arriendez didn’t trust Judge Waverly. Arriendez would never make such an announcement—until, perhaps, he was ready to run for judge himself.
“The State agrees,”
he said.
The judge turned to the jurors. “This jury has done admirable work. This court appreciates both your thoughtfulness and your swiftness. You are dismissed. Go on with your lives.”
A little surprised by their dismissal, the jurors made their slow way out of the box and through the front of the courtroom, stopping to whisper to each other, to nod to court personnel. One almost-elderly man, veins knotted from a lifetime of hard work in the fields, stopped to clap the district attorney on the shoulder. “One fine speech, Miguelito. But nobody believed Wayne’s as smart as you. He couldn’t’ve come up with that plan. Certainly not that fast.”
The man departed. Jordan muttered, loudly enough for the prosecutor to hear, “Hometown juries. They’re great.” He was chiding himself as well. His last courtroom tactic had been a waste of theatrics. The jurors knew the players in the drama. They hadn’t needed a last, riveting glance at the defendant.
Courtroom decorum was breached with civilians inside the bar and the spectators’ discussions continuing. Judge Waverly didn’t attempt to restore impeccable order, but he didn’t dismiss the proceedings either. “Now?” he said unreadably.
Jordan had the familiar feeling of being caught unprepared. This time, though, he sensed he was on an equal footing with the prosecutor. “Now would be fine, Your Honor.”
“Fine,” Arriendez echoed. The judge motioned them forward, Wayne accompanying. Jordan’s hand moved as if quite naturally to rest on Laura’s shoulder. He stopped himself but stood close to her.
“You have evidence to present on punishment?” Judge Waverly asked the prosecutor.
“Only the evidence of the offense itself, Your Honor. Other than that, the State rests on punishment”