Local Rules

by Jay Brandon

  “Ed. Gordon. Hello, Mrs. Davies.” Mrs. Beaumont spoke to some of the grand jurors. Each she fixed with a steely eye. The reason for her presence was clear. She was watching them: they had better do what was ex­pected of them.

  But Kelsey walked away a few steps and saw what Alice Beaumont couldn’t see. As they saw her, each man or woman on the grand jury acknowledged the matri­arch. But as they passed out of her sight, their faces changed. It was those faces they presented to Kelsey when she followed them into the narrow grand jury room and shut the door behind her: skeptical faces. A few, particularly among the seven men, actively frowned at her. Mrs. Beaumont had had the opposite effect from what she’d wanted. She had stiffened the grand jurors’ resolve not to be sheep. Not to do as they were implicitly ordered by the woman who controlled the fate of their town.

  These were Billy Fletcher’s people. Not Alice Beau­mont’s, and certainly not Kelsey’s.

  “You are the grand jury. I’m coming in late, I didn’t hear your instructions. Did they tell you about how his­torically you’re the body of citizens who stand between someone accused of a crime and the power of the state?”

  One woman nodded. The grand jurors were casually arrayed around the room, only about half of them sitting at the long conference table. Two of the women and one of the men looked familiar to Kelsey; she hadn’t met them but she had seen them, in the town or during her evening at the country club. Solid citizens, they all looked like. The average age was about fifty, and she couldn’t tell from their hands or their faces which worked in offices and which had spent years in the farm fields. They all looked like hard workers. They looked like Billy Fletcher’s peers.

  “Well, I’m the power of the state,” Kelsey continued. She hoped to draw a chuckle, at least a few wry smiles. Make the grand jurors acknowledge that in this case the array of power was behind the suspect, not the prosecutor.

  But no one acknowledged her little joke. They stared at her grimly. The best she got was a look of quiet neu­trality, from a lady wearing a cotton print dress and a small hat. Her green sweater was draped over her shoul­ders, as if she were cold or as if she didn’t expect Kelsey’s presentation to detain her long.

  “My job as the prosecutor is to present to you the evidence I’ve been given in this case, to convince you that enough evidence exists to put my suspect to trial. Not to convince you of his guilt. Guilt isn’t an issue here. Your job is only to say whether I have probable cause— just enough evidence that you think I should have to go to trial and let a jury decide whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty. You’re not calling him a criminal just by issuing the indictment. You’re just saying the case should go to trial.”

  Kelsey spoke firmly and professionally. She wasn’t going to rely on emotion.

  “The cases I’m presenting to you are the murders of Ronald Blystone and Lorrie Blystone, and the kidnap­ping of their daughter Taylor. I’m going to ask you to indict Billy Fletcher for those crimes.”

  There was only a gentle stir. They all knew why they were there. Kelsey outlined the facts of the cases, facts with which the grand jurors must be as familiar as she was. Kelsey passed around pictures of the crime scene, of the bodies, the pool of blood. Some grand jurors stud­ied the pictures briefly, others only glanced at them, wincing. The lady in the green sweater didn’t do that much, just took each photo in turn and passed it on, without looking at any.

  “Shortly before the murders, Andrew Sims witnessed a very angry argument between Billy Fletcher and Ron­ald Blystone,” Kelsey continued, but was interrupted by a standing man who spoke to the room at large, not bothering to whisper:

  “Not safe to have an argument with anybody any­more. You’d better not say what you think in this town. Next thing you know somebody’ll be dead and you’ll be blamed for it.”

  “Would you rather I not tell you the evidence I have?” Kelsey asked, walking around the table toward the man, who stiffened and glared at her.

  “Hush, Norman,” one of the women at the table said softly. “Let her talk.”

  The admonition did not reassure Kelsey. It sounded to her as if the woman meant they should let the special prosecutor finish as quickly as possible so they could all do what they’d come to do.

  Kelsey told them about Billy Fletcher’s fingerprint on the murder weapon. In a grand jury proceeding she didn’t have to present live witnesses, she could simply describe the evidence she had. Kelsey was the only wit­ness the grand jury would hear. She tried to keep her voice level and detached, as if she had already made the judgment for them. But some of the things she chose to tell them were very brutal.

  “The baby crawled in her mother’s blood. Then some­one put the baby back in her crib. We know that from the bloodstains on the baby’s sheets. Then someone took the baby. I expect her little hands and gown were still bloody.”

  The room was dead still. The air was very close. The heat was on that morning in the courthouse, and in the little grand jury room the heat breathed in through the vent and had nowhere to escape.

  Some of the grand jurors frowned down at the table. A few frowned at Kelsey. She knew they didn’t like to hear about the baby. Hadn’t someone warned her that the kidnapping of the baby actually weakened her case against Billy Fletcher? Because while people might be convinced that he had killed Ronald and even Lorrie Blystone in the heat of passion, taking the baby was the act of a madman, and no one in Galilee could believe good old bluff Billy Fletcher capable of such an act.

  Kelsey might have been well-advised to lay off the baby. But today that was her trump card.

  “Yesterday morning I seized Billy Fletcher’s car and had it searched. An assistant medical examiner in Hous­ton examined the car and confirmed that what she found in the front passenger seat was traces of dried blood.”

  Now she did get gasps. Some of them looked shocked. All stared at Kelsey.

  “The baby’s blood?” one woman asked quietly.

  Kelsey shook her head. “I assume it’s Lorrie Bly- stone’s blood that the baby had on her hands and clothes.” A couple of people nodded, having followed her reasoning. “I don’t know yet, it will take a while for tests to determine whose blood it is. What I’m telling you this morning is that the man who argued with Ron­ald Blystone, whose job was threatened by Ronald and his wife, whose fingerprint is on the gun that killed both of them, who was the only one we know of in a position to take the baby—that that man has traces of blood in his car. Traces such as the baby would have left when he took her with him when he drove away.”

  Kelsey saw her words take effect. The man who had interrupted her looked down at the table, lips moving as he mumbled something inaudible. He had the look of a man trying to explain a puzzle. Others wore the same expression. A few simply looked horrified. “That’s my evidence,” Kelsey said. She closed her file and picked it up, ready to walk out. The law required her to leave while the grand jury voted. They could do what they wanted behind her back.

  Kelsey was proud of herself for the professional way she’d presented the case. She hadn’t raised her voice and she hadn’t argued. She hoped her quiet authority had convinced them.

  But she didn’t think so.

  It was a relief, though, to be finished. As she turned to go, Kelsey had the ugly thought that it would be okay if it did end here, if the grand jury did refuse to indict and she could go home, to tell people it had just been too tough a case, too much of a hometown boy for a suspect.

  Then she turned back to the grand jurors.

  “You may think you’ll be doing Billy Fletcher a favor if you refuse to indict him,” she said harshly. “But you took an oath not to do any favors for anybody. And I’m not sure you’d be doing Mr. Fletcher any good by not indicting him. Everyone’s going to know what I’ve dis­covered. And even if you no-bill Billy Fletcher, after his friends congratulate him and he goes back about his nor­mal business, everyone will remember for the rest of his life. Everyone will wonder. Won�
��t they? Imagine him in church someday ten years from now, passing around the collection plate, and someone nudges a new member and whispers. Someday somebody will even say it to his face: murderer. And the only thing Billy will be able to say in return is, I never got indicted. But everybody will know that had nothing to do with whether he did it or not.”

  “You’d better watch your—” the gruff standing man began, but Kelsey looked at him and he subsided. She swept her gaze around the table. Anybody else?

  “If you want to give Billy Fletcher his only chance to clear his name, 2 you want this thing thoroughly thrashed out to a conclusion that will satisfy everyone, issue the indictment.”

  Only a couple of them looked as if they found that convincing. Kelsey said the last thing she had to say.

  “If you give a damn about the truth— If you want to know about that blood— If you want to know where the baby is, issue the indictment.”

  She stood and looked at them all, but no more than five or six of the grand jurors met her eyes.

  Alice Beaumont was waiting for her when Kelsey came out of the grand jury room. “What did they de­cide?” she asked quickly.

  “They’re deciding now.” Kelsey felt tired. She needed to run again.

  “They’d better do the right thing,” Mrs. Beaumont said.

  Mrs. Beaumont was wearing a green dress, dark but with white highlights at the collar and wrists that saved the dress, and her, from drabness. She carried a black shawl, a mourning cloak she could put on or off. Mrs. Beaumont stood so erect that in her heels she was taller than Kelsey.

  Kelsey had the drained feeling that her time in Galilee was over. But there was still much she wanted to do here, and even more she wanted to understand, starting with Alice Beaumont herself. She was a woman who insisted on being in charge. Her life had been devoted to gaining dominance over her whole world. If people got hurt along the way, if bystanders like Kelsey had their lives changed, that hadn’t mattered to Alice Beau­mont. Why? What had she been after?

  Kelsey felt free enough, almost on the highway out of town, to ask her. “Mrs. Beaumont, did you ever have a plan?”

  The old lady looked at her, startled.

  “Everybody says what a great thing you did for the town, getting your husband to build the Smoothskins factory. And the way you’ve used the factory ever since to keep everybody in line— What did you want from it all? Was there some goal, or was it just beating down resistance just for exercise? What did you want?”

  Alice Beaumont peered at her as if trying to discern what Kelsey was asking. The woman’s eyes didn’t look as piercing as Kelsey remembered, they were the faded shade of bluebonnets in May, but Mrs. Beaumont squinted them as if trying to make her eyes see as sharply as ever. Then her voice came out angrily.

  “I wanted what anybody wants. Everybody. I just worked harder for it than most people are willing to. I wanted my children around me. I wanted family, babies crawling under the table. Playing in the yard, not having to worry. I wanted to sit on my porch and watch them...”

  Her voice softened and her lower lip began to trem­ble. “One baby, that’s all I had,” she sobbed. “One baby to watch grow up. To remember me. And he—”

  Kelsey put her arms out and Mrs. Beaumont lowered her head to Kelsey’s shoulder, but as soon as they touched, the older woman stiffened again. She drew back and her eyes went fierce. “What do I want?” She clenched her fist and said, “I want the respect I’ve earned. But they wouldn’t let me have any of that.” She glared at Kelsey. “Now I want what the law owes me: revenge. Or I’ll kill this town.”

  It was a death threat cold with sincerity and stony with the power to carry out the threat If Alice Beau­mont’s target had been a person instead of an entire town, she would have been arrested.

  Kelsey stared at her, somehow looking for a resem­blance to herself. In a way Mrs. Beaumont was an admi­rable woman, a role model. Young during an age when a woman could never seize her full potential, Alice Beaumont had learned through romance and ingenuity and finally brute force to control her life and every life around her. But in the end her power hadn’t even pro­tected her family. And she was counting on Kelsey to right that wrong.

  They heard the sound of rising voices from the grand jury room, but not what they were saying. The vote on Billy Fletcher’s indictment was not going smoothly. “At least I got to some of them,” Kelsey said.

  “I did,” Alice Beaumont corrected her.

  But Kelsey knew she herself was the one who’d won over some of the grand jurors. She’d seen it in the an­guish in their faces during her final short speech about the baby. She wanted to burst back into the room and say more.

  There was silence. It went on, the silence of justice fled. Kelsey was suddenly angry. She was walking toward the grand jury room door when it opened. The woman in the green sweater said, “Ms. Thatch, we’re ready for you.”

  And Kelsey was ready for them. You’ve disgraced this town, she was going to say. She wasn’t going to let any of them off. She had changed her mind. She wouldn’t let it die here. She would ask for another grand jury. She would find more evidence. She—

  “There,” said the tall man she’d clashed with before. He threw her papers down on the table, scowling, “There’s your damned indictment,” he said angrily.

  “All right,” Kelsey snapped. “If you won’t do your job—” But then she looked at the document before her and saw that it was signed. She also saw that the angry man throwing down the indictment was the foreman of the grand jury. He was the one who had signed the in­dictment: Norman Gray.

  “Thank you, Mr. Gray,” she said levelly. She looked around at all the faces. None of them looked happy. The lady in the green sweater, though, who had taken her seat at the table, had a certain look of satisfaction, and she gave Kelsey a nod of approval.

  “I’d like one more thing. I’d like you all to sign. Ev­eryone who voted to issue this indictment. I’d like you all to put your names to it”

  They didn’t like that suggestion, but none of them balked. It turned out to have been unanimous. Maybe some of them had voted out of fear of Alice Beau­mont, rather than Kelsey’s persuasiveness, but it didn’t matter. She had her indictment. Billy Fletcher was going to trial.

  Coming out of the courthouse, Kelsey turned in a slow half-circle. It was a habit she’d developed in Defiance County, perhaps the habit of a woman who had no one to watch her back. Today, though, she felt a proprietary interest in the town she saw arrayed before her. She was going to be here a while longer.

  She lifted her eyes to the horizon, the pine trees as always drawing her gaze. She hadn’t thought she was looking for anything in particular, until she saw it:

  Smoke rising.

  It had been days since she’d seen one of the thin col­umns of smoke. This one was just starting: a crinkle in the sky, a shimmering of the air, then the smoke. Thicker this time than she’d seen it before.

  Kelsey ran toward her car.

  Look for Defiance County Wherever Hardcover Books Are Sold

  June 1996

  THE COMPELLING COURTROOM DRAMA OF

  Jay Brandon

  ■FIRST-CLASS WRITING AND HIGH DRAMA ALL THE WAY.” —Associated Press

  TIGHT, HIGH-TENSION SUSPENSE... YOU WISH YOU COULD SPEED-READ BECAUSE YOU’RE IN SUCH A RUSH TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT."

  —Houston Chronicle

  DEADBOLT FADE THE HEAT PREDATOR'S WALTZ RULES OF EVIDENCE TRIPWIRE LOOSE AMONG THE LAMBS LOCAL RULES

  and look for

  DEFIANCE COUNTY

  All Available from Pocket Books

  613-04

  Coming soon in Hardcover

 

 

 
-moz-filter: grayscale(100%); -o-filter: grayscale(100%); -ms-filter: grayscale(100%); filter: grayscale(100%); " class="sharethis-inline-share-buttons">share