Pleasantville

by Attica Locke

  “It’s just the way this works,” he says to Rolly; “it’s his game to play, his life. He’s my client, man.”

  “Then counsel him, Counselor.”

  Hours later, just after midnight, the telephone on Jay’s bedside table rings, echoing throughout the house. Having just dozed off after a late-night conference at Neal’s house, Jay doesn’t pick up until the sixth ring. “You son of a bitch,” Reese Parker hisses in his ear, before hanging up, never bothering to identify herself, not that she needed to. He was expecting her call. Though Neal and Sam didn’t know it, Rolly either, Jay had actually filed a subpoena two full days ago for her to appear in Judge Caroline Keppler’s courtroom. He’d had his eye on this moment all along. He hangs up the phone and rolls back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 27

  Word of Reese Parker’s expected presence in the courtroom must have gotten out. The 181st District Court is more packed than it was on the morning of opening statements, with a few spectators waiting out in the hallway to see if they might get a spot, if someone faints maybe in the unusually hot courtroom, leaving an extra seat for the next person in line. Johnetta Paul is here; the county clerk, Wayne Duffie; and a few other names on next month’s ballot. There are reporters, of course; lawyers from neighboring courtrooms, come to watch; and the families on both sides. The entire Hathorne clan is in the front row of the gallery, behind Jay’s client. Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux sit somberly, staring straight ahead, as Nichols stands and announces, just as Jay had expected, “The state rests, Your Honor.” Keith Morehead, their spokesperson and ardent supporter, has been pushed to the other side of the courtroom because of the overcrowding. He is sitting today beside Ellie, who is behind her father, taking notes for her government class. She and the principal and Mr. Jensen worked out a deal: for a heaping dose of extra credit, Ellie will take notes and deliver a report to the class when the trial is over. She’s taken her role seriously, borrowing some authentic-looking steno pads from Lonnie. The pastor smiles at her, patting her on the leg for her good work. Jay can hear their whispers behind him. He looks at his client, seated beside him. It’s his last chance to change his mind. But Neal just nods. Behind him, Sam sits with his arms folded. He was not present last night when Jay showed up on Neal’s doorstep, when he’d asked him, point-blank, why he was interested in politics in the first place, what any of this meant to him if it wasn’t about protecting the work of men and women of his grandfather’s generation. “Any gratitude you owe Sam is for that, not for taking you in,” he said, alluding to the family secrets. “You have to do what you think is right.”

  And when Neal had grown quiet, chewing on his bottom lip, Jay said to him, stoking a buried rage, “You really think you would have been charged if Sandy Wolcott weren’t running for mayor, if Parker weren’t involved?”

  “Mr. Porter?” the judge says.

  After a perfunctory motion to dismiss the case for insufficient evidence, which Keppler denies, Jay is free to start. “The defense calls Reese Parker.”

  Nichols is on his feet too. “Your Honor, may we approach?”

  Keppler waves them both forward.

  There’s a low murmur rolling through the courtroom. Lonnie is watching the commotion from the last row of the gallery. At the bench, the D.A. makes clear his objection to this witness. “On what grounds, Mr. Nichols?”

  “Relevance, for one.”

  “The victim was working for Ms. Parker when she was assaulted,” Jay says. “I expect this witness to shed light on why she was in Pleasantville.”

  “Sounds relevant to me,” the judge says.

  Nichols looks stunned. “Based on what evidence?”

  “Well, let’s let the woman take the stand and find out.”

  “He’s trying to bring in stuff that has nothing to do with this trial.”

  “If she knows anything about the girl’s last hours, it does,” Keppler says.

  “He’s been picking at this for weeks now,” Nichols says. “Ms. Parker has repeatedly said she never hired Alicia Nowell, that the girl wasn’t one of hers.”

  “You know, for someone who claims he didn’t know this witness was going to be called, who claims he had little time to attempt to interview her, you sure do know a lot about the inner workings of your boss’s campaign,” Keppler says, eyeing him over the rims of her glasses. “Bring her in,” she says, before nodding to her clerk to find someone to come check on the heating system.

  Reese Parker dressed up for this.

  She pressed a suit, tamed her blond, overprocessed, almost white hair into a chic sweep off her face. She put on panty hose and pinned a demure brooch to her lapel, a small star, glistening stones in red, white, and blue: rubies, diamonds, and tiny sapphires. She raises her right hand, smiling through her oath. All the way up until she’s plopped her considerable heft into the swiveling witness chair, she never stops smiling. “Good morning, Mr. Porter,” she says, addressing him before he’s even looked up from his notes on the lectern.

  “Spell your name please,” he says.

  “R-E-E-S-E P-A-R-K-E-R.”

  “And where are you employed, Ms. Parker?”

  “I am currently doing some consulting work for the Wolcott for mayor campaign.” She glances at the jury, another smile for the ladies in the first row, as if she imagines she might as well try to pick up a few votes while she’s here.

  “For how long?”

  “The campaign hired me six months or so before the general election.”

  “And what are your duties with the campaign?”

  “I consult.”

  “On?”

  The smile again. “Well, I wouldn’t want to give away any trade secrets.”

  “Objection, Your Honor,” Jay says. “Witness is being unresponsive.”

  “Sustained,” Keppler says coolly.

  “You strategize, oversee media buys, raise funds, that sort of thing?”

  “Sure.”

  “Go over policy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Print campaign literature?”

  Here, Parker hesitates. “Something like that.”

  Jay notices she keeps looking over his shoulder toward someone in the back of the courtroom. Dabbing at his forehead, he turns slightly to scan the faces behind him, his eyes landing on Cynthia Maddox. She’s in a winter white pantsuit. Of everybody in the courtroom, she has the seat closest to the exit sign. She’s made no show of her presence, pointedly sitting herself behind the back of most of the reporters in the courtroom, watching the proceedings silently. The heat across his forehead spikes. “Ms. Parker, have you heard of an organization called America’s Tomorrow?”

  Parker blanches, her skin going nearly as white as her hair.

  Biting through another stiff smile, she says, “Yes, I’ve heard of it.”

  “Is it a political action committee?”

  “I believe so.”

  “You do any consulting work for them?”

  “Objection, relevance,” Nichols says.

  “Sustained.”

  Keppler shoots Jay a look from the bench.

  He’ll have to come at this a different way.

  Jay walks across the well between the lectern and the clerk’s desk, reaching into the box of evidentiary material for exhibit 37, the flyer. As he did with Detective Moore, he lays the flyer in front of the witness chair. It’s on his walk back to the lectern that he again catches sight of Keith Morehead. In the front row of the gallery, positioned just to the left of Neal, their faces are almost side by side, though Morehead is a few inches behind the defendant. Jay can’t believe he never noticed it before, the stark resemblance, the same nut brown skin and the hooded eyes. If he had to guess, he would put the difference in their heights at no more than an inch, and if either one of them was standing on a dark street corner, he might easily mistake one for the other.

  The heat spreads down the sides of his neck, across his damp chest.

  “Is there a question, Your Ho
nor?” Nichols says.

  Jay swings back around, stumbling slightly, flustered by a sudden, creeping suspicion. He leans against the lectern to steady himself, staring at his own handwritten words jumping across the legal pad in front of him.

  “Have you seen that flyer before, Ms. Parker?”

  Parker surprises him by answering, right off, “Yes.”

  “And that’s because you wrote it, isn’t that right?”

  “Objection, leading.”

  “Sustained.”

  Jay, out of the corner of his eye, watches Morehead next to his daughter.

  “Did you write that flyer, Ms. Parker?”

  Here Parker chuckles softly, at Mr. Porter’s innocent misunderstanding, her look to the jury says. “No, no,” she says. “I just, you know, during a campaign, stuff gets around. I’d heard these were circulating. I’d seen it.”

  “Are you telling this court, under oath, that you are not the author of this flyer connecting Axel Hathorne to a bayou development project that would, according to that sheet of paper, negatively affect the residents of Pleasantville?”

  Parker’s eyes narrow ever so slightly. “No.”

  “No, that’s not what you’re telling the court, or no, you didn’t write it?”

  “I didn’t write it.”

  “But you paid for it, right?”

  “Me?” Parker says, carving her answer with a scalpel. “No.”

  “That’s right. America’s Tomorrow paid for it.”

  “Objection, Your Honor. Is he testifying now?”

  “Sustained.”

  “Are you aware that the political action committee America’s Tomorrow wrote a check in the amount of three hundred and eleven dollars to print up eight hundred of these flyers?” When she doesn’t answer, he says, “Ms. Parker?”

  “Objection, Your Honor, lack of foundation.”

  “I have the invoice right here. I’m happy to move it into evidence.”

  “That’s usually how this works,” Keppler says.

  During the time it takes the clerk to stamp the back side of Jay’s copy of the Prince of Prints invoice and write the evidence number and case file ID on it, Parker has started to breathe more heavily. She is sitting too close to the microphone, and her ragged breath is amplified across the courtroom. Finally, Jay shoves the invoice in front of her. “Were you aware that the PAC, America’s Tomorrow, paid over three hundred dollars to have that flyer printed?”

  She smiles tightly. “That amount, no.”

  In the jury box, one of the men in the front row frowns. He’s not the only one who looks slightly confused. But to Jay, it’s as good as a confession. He’s ready to ask the question more directly. “Are you, at present, doing any consulting work for the political action committee America’s Tomorrow?”

  “Objection, relevance,” Nichols says. “We went over this, Your Honor.”

  “Overruled,” she says, peering over her glasses.

  Jay looks at Parker. “Answer the question.”

  She takes so long to say the word that when it finally comes, it is just an echo of what the courtroom has by now already guessed. “Yes,” she says flatly, pushing her chin out in defiance, shooting a cold look across the room at Jay.

  “And did you oversee the creation of this flyer?”

  “I didn’t write it if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  The courtroom falls silent for a few seconds.

  Overhead, Jay hears the clicking of the broken heating system.

  “Did you, Ms. Parker, participate in the creation and distribution of this flyer disparaging the intentions of mayoral candidate Axel Hathorne, who is an opponent of the woman whose campaign you’re working on right now?”

  “Can you define ‘participate’?”

  “Why don’t you?”

  Finally, Parker sighs.

  She’s grown huffy and impatient.

  This is stupid, she might as well be saying. “It was my idea,” she says, perfectly happy to take credit for the maneuver. At the state’s table, Nichols lowers his head. Neal turns and looks at his grandfather, behind him, as if he needs Sam to confirm that he actually just heard what he thinks he heard. Sam appears stunned. Parker is unrepentant. “I’ve done better, and I’ve done a hell of a lot worse. It’s politics.” She shrugs, as if this was the most elementary thing in the world and of absolutely no consequence. “I didn’t kill anybody,” she says, looking pointedly across the courtroom at the defendant.

  “Are you aware that the victim had one of those very flyers in her purse when she was killed?”

  Maxine Robicheaux has a hand on the bar in front of her, gripping the wood.

  Parker considers this for a second. “At the time she was killed, no.”

  It’s another equivocation, and everyone, from row one of the jury to Judge Keppler to Nichols himself, has grown tired of it. Jay actually turns to look behind him, to see if Bartolomo and the other reporters are taking good notes.

  And that’s when he sees the two empty seats in the front row.

  Directly behind him, to the left of the Hathornes, there’s a harrowingly hollow space where, just moments ago, two people were sitting: Keith Morehead and Elena Porter. He was about to ask Parker the next question, the answer to which had set this trial in motion: had Reese Parker hired Alicia Nowell to distribute those flyers in the neighborhood of Pleasantville? But he can’t get the words out, feels his throat choking on the rising bile of fear clogging up his speech, scrambling his thoughts. He thinks of Morehead putting his hand on Ellie’s knee, and feels ill. His back to the judge, the witness, he scans the courtroom from corner to corner looking for his daughter. When his eyes meet Lonnie’s in the back row of the gallery, she sees something in his face that makes her stand and intercept him by the doors. Behind him, the judge calls his name. He ignores her, ignores everyone. “Ellie,” he says to Lonnie. “Where’s Elena?”

  “She walked out.”

  “And Morehead?”

  “He was a few steps behind her,” she says. “What’s wrong?”

  But when the moment comes to put a name to his panic, he finds he can’t.

  He instantly starts to doubt himself, the madness of what he’s thinking.

  “Mr. Porter?” Judge Keppler says. “What’s going on here?”

  “I have to find her,” he says to Lon, to anyone within earshot.

  He glances at the judge. “I’m sorry,” he says, before shuffling out of the courtroom. She is standing at the bench now. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Mr. Porter? You’ll need to return to this courtroom immediately–”

  He hears nothing but the door swinging closed behind him.

  He’s already in the hallway, looking left, looking right.

  It’s quite empty, except for a few lawyers on the benches against the wall, and a young woman in white jeans and Keds talking on a pay phone.

  “Ellie!” He screams her name, not sure which way to run.

  He checks the ladies’ room first, kicking in stalls.

  By the time he’s back in the hallway, his voice is almost hoarse from screaming. When the door to the men’s room opens and Keith Morehead walks out, adjusting his belt, Jay flies at him, grabbing the man by his suit lapels and slamming him against the nearby wall. “Jay!” Lonnie is right behind him, running to what is fast becoming a scene. The bailiff from Keppler’s courtroom is in the hall too, her right hand hovering over the grip of the pistol on her belt. Others start spilling out from the courtroom, Gregg Bartolomo, Sam, and Vivian. “What did you do with her?” Jay says, slamming him against the wall again.

  “Hey!” the bailiff says, moving closer.

  Lonnie puts a hand on Jay’s back. “Calm down, Jay, just calm down.”

  “What did you do to them?” Hearing that word, that them, Lonnie steps back, staring at Morehead, her mind lighting on some meaning. “Where the hell is my daughter!” Jay screams. Morehead is so
spooked by Jay, by the brewing commotion in the hall, that he can’t quite speak. Stuttering his way toward a response, the beginning of a word that keeps tripping on his tongue, he keeps darting his eyes over Jay’s shoulder and down the polished floor of the hallway.

  Lonnie turns first, and then Jay, in time to see T. J. Cobb slipping through the door to the stairwell at the end of the hall, a flash of something red moving just ahead of him and then gone from sight. Red, Jay thinks, lights turning off one by one in each chamber of his brain as he races through it trying to remember what Ellie was wearing when they left the house this morning. Why, oh why can’t he remember what was just in front of his eyes only a few minutes ago?

  “Call the police,” he tells Lonnie. “Get Axel, and call the police.”

  He takes off running for the stairs.

  In the grayish light of the stairwell, he hears the footsteps below him, two sets, he’s sure of that. He calls his daughter’s name, over and over, and hears nothing but the tin echo of his own panic. They are just beyond his reach, it seems, just past the landing of every floor before he gets there, never in full sight.

  When he gets to the bottom, he barrels through the door, nearly tripping over his own feet as he stumbles into the crowd in the first-floor lobby. Jurors, cops, lawyers, translators, social workers, teary relatives, and nervous defendants out on bail, all moving in a reluctant swirl through the metal detectors. Jay grabs the arm of the nearest deputy on duty, causing the man to cuff Jay’s wrist with his own oversize hand, its force nearly crushing the bones. “A girl,” Jay says quickly. “Did you see a teenage girl, fifteen, black? She might have been wearing red.” It was red, he remembers now, a cardigan with a rosette above her heart. She’d dressed up for court. “There was a man with her, a black guy, really tall.” He doesn’t see either of them anywhere in the main lobby.