by John Grisham
Jake hung up and thought about nothing else for an hour. It was the first lead in months, and such a weak one at that. The trial started in four days, and there was no way he could race off to Alaska and somehow verify the identity of a man who did not want to be identified; indeed, one who’d apparently spent the past thirty years changing identities.
He walked downstairs and found Lucien in the conference room studying index cards with the jurors’ names in bold letters. They were arranged neatly on the long table, alphabetized, all ninety-seven of them. They were rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most attractive. Many of them had not yet been rated because nothing was known of the jurors.
Jake replayed the conversation with Albert Murray. Lucien’s first response was, “We’re not telling Judge Atlee, not yet anyway. I know what you’re thinking-if Ancil’s alive and we might know where he is, then let’s scream for a continuance and buy some more time. That’s a bad idea, Jake.”
“I wasn’t thinking about that.”
“There’s a good chance the old boy might be locked up for the rest of his life. He couldn’t show up for a trial if he wanted to.”
“No, Lucien, I’m more concerned with verification. There’s no way to do it unless we go talk to him. Keep in mind he has a chunk of money on the line here. He might be more cooperative than we think.”
Lucien took a deep breath and began pacing around the table. Portia was too inexperienced, and she was also a young black female, not the type to pry secrets out of an old white man who was running from something, or everything. That left him, the only available member of the firm. He walked to the door and said, “I’ll go. Get me all the information you can.”
“Are you sure, Lucien?”
There was no response as he closed the front door behind himself. Jake’s only thought was, I hope he can stay sober.
Ozzie stopped by late Thursday afternoon for a quick visit. Harry Rex and Portia were in the war room poring over juror names and addresses. Jake was upstairs at his desk, on the phone, wasting time trying to track down a few more of Wade Lanier’s forty-five witnesses. So far the task had been frustrating.
“Wanna beer?” Harry Rex asked the sheriff. A fresh Bud Light sat nearby.
“I’m on duty and I don’t drink,” Ozzie replied. “I hope you’re not driving. I’d hate to see you busted for a DUI.”
“I’d just hire Jake to postpone it forever. You got some names?”
Ozzie handed him a sheet of paper and said, “A few. That Oscar Peltz guy we were talkin’ about yesterday, from down near Lake Village, well, he goes to the same church with the Roston family.” Portia picked up the card with “OSCAR PELTZ” written in a black marker across the top.
“I’d stay away from him,” Ozzie said.
Harry Rex looked at his notes and said, “We had him as a five anyway, not too attractive.”
“Mr. Raymond Griffis, lives down from Parker’s Country Store, south of here. What do you have on him?”
Portia picked up another card and said, “White male, age forty-one, works for a fencing contractor.” Harry Rex added, “Divorced, remarried, father died in a car wreck about five years ago.”
Ozzie said, “Stay away from him. I got a source says his brother was involved with the Klan three years ago during the Hailey trial. Don’t think the brother ever joined up, but he was a bit too close. They might be presentable on the surface, but could be a rough bunch.”
“I had him as a four,” Harry Rex said. “I thought you were going after all the black folks.”
“That’s a waste of time. All black folks get automatic tens in this trial.”
“How many are on the list, Portia?”
“Twenty-one, out of ninety-seven.”
“We’ll take ’em.”
“Where’s Lucien?” Ozzie asked.
“Jake ran him off. Any luck with Pernell Phillips? You thought Moss Junior might know him.”
“He’s Moss Junior’s wife’s third cousin, but they try to avoid family gatherings. Backwater Baptists. He wouldn’t get too many points from me.”
“Portia?”
“Let’s give him a three,” she said, with the authority of a veteran jury consultant.
“That’s the problem with this damn pool,” Harry Rex said. “Far too many threes and fours, not enough eights and nines. We’re gonna get clobbered.”
“Where’s Jake?” Ozzie asked.
“Upstairs, fighting the phone.”
Lucien drove to Memphis, flew to Chicago, and from there flew all night to Seattle. He drank on the flight but went to sleep before being excessive. He killed six hours in the Seattle airport, then caught a two-hour flight to Juneau on Alaska Air. He checked into a hotel downtown, called Jake, slept three hours, showered, even shaved, and dressed himself in an old black suit that hadn’t been worn in a decade. With the white shirt and paisley tie, he could pass himself off as a lawyer, which was exactly what he planned to do. With a battered briefcase in hand, he walked to the hospital. Twenty-two hours after leaving Clanton, he said hello to the detective and got the latest scoop over coffee.
The update revealed little. An infection was causing his brain to swell and Lonny was not in the mood to talk. His doctors wanted things quiet and the detective had not spoken to him that day. He showed Lucien the fake paperwork they found in the flophouse, along with the naval discharge. Lucien showed the detective two enlarged photos of Seth Hubbard. Maybe there was a vague resemblance, maybe not. It was a long shot. The detective called the owner of the bar and insisted he come to the hospital. Since he knew Lonny well, he could look at the photos. He did, and saw nothing.
After the owner left, and with little else to do, Lucien explained to the detective the purpose of his visit. They had been looking for Ancil for six months, but it had been a cold trail. His brother, the one in the photos, had left him some money in a will. Not a fortune, but certainly enough to scramble Lucien from Mississippi to Alaska overnight.
The detective had little interest in a lawsuit so far away. He was more concerned with the cocaine. No, he did not believe Lonny Clark was a drug dealer. They were about to crack a syndicate out of Vancouver, and they had a couple of informants. The buzz was that Lonny was simply hiding the stuff for a fee. Sure, he would serve some time, but time measured in months and not years. And no, he would not be allowed to travel back to Mississippi for any reason, if in fact his name was really Ancil Hubbard.
After the detective left, Lucien roamed around the hospital to familiarize himself with the maze of corridors and annexes and split-levels. He found Lonny’s room on the third floor and saw a man standing nearby, flipping through a magazine, trying to stay awake. He assumed he was an officer.
After dark, he returned to his hotel, called Jake for the update, and went to the bar.
It was either his fifth or sixth night in this damp, dark room with windows that never opened and somehow blocked out all light during the day. The nurses came and went, sometimes tapping softly on the door as they pushed it open, and other times appearing at his bedside without making a sound to warn him. He had tubes in both arms and monitors above his head. He’d been told he wouldn’t die, but after five or six days and nights with virtually no food but plenty of meds and too many doctors and nurses, he wouldn’t mind a prolonged blackout. His head pounded in pain and his lower back was cramping from the inactivity, and at times he wanted to rip off all the tubes and wires and bolt from the room. A digital clock gave the time as 11:10.
Could he leave? Was he free to walk out of the hospital? Or were the goons waiting just outside his door to take him away? No one would tell him. He had asked several of the friendlier nurses if someone was waiting, but all responses had been vague. Many things were vague. At times the television screen was clear, and then it would blur. There was a constant ringing in his ears that made him mumble. The doctors denied this. The nurses just gave him another pill. There were shadows at all hours of the night, observe
rs sneaking into his room. Maybe they were students looking at real patients; maybe they were just shadows that did not really exist. They changed his meds frequently to see how he would react. Try this one for the pain. This one for the blurred vision. This one for the shadows. This one is a blood thinner. This is an antibiotic. Dozens and dozens of pills, and at all hours of the day and night.
He dozed off again, and when he awoke it was 11:17. The room was pitch-black, the only light a red haze cast off from a monitor above his head, one he could not see.
The door opened silently, but no light entered from the dark hallway. But it wasn’t a nurse. A man, a stranger, walked straight to the side of the bed: gray hair, long hair, a black shirt, an old man he’d never seen before. His eyes were squinted and fierce, and as he leaned down even closer the smell of whiskey almost slapped Lonny in the face.
He said, “Ancil, what happened to Sylvester Rinds?”
Lonny’s heart froze as he stared in horror at the stranger, who gently placed a hand on his shoulder. The whiskey smell grew stronger. He repeated, “Ancil, what happened to Sylvester Rinds?”
Lonny tried to speak but words failed him. He blinked his eyes to refocus, but he was seeing clearly enough. The words were clear too, and the accent was unmistakable. The stranger was from the Deep South.
“What?” Lonny managed to whisper, almost in a gasp.
“What happened to Sylvester Rinds?” the stranger repeated, his laser-like eyes glowing down at Lonny.
There was a button on the bedstead that summoned a nurse. Lonny quickly punched it. The stranger withdrew, became a shadow again, then vanished from the room.
A nurse eventually arrived. She was one of his least favorites and didn’t like to be bothered. Lonny wanted to talk, to tell her about the stranger, but this gal was not a listener. She asked what he wanted, and he said he couldn’t go to sleep. She promised to check back later, the same promise as always.
He lay in the dark, frightened. Was he frightened because he’d been called by his real name? Because his past had caught up with him? Or was he frightened because he wasn’t sure he’d actually seen and heard the stranger? Was he finally losing his mind? Was the brain damage becoming permanent?
He faded away, drifting in and out of blackness, sleeping for only a moment or two before thinking of Sylvester.
37
Jake walked into the Coffee Shop at five minutes after seven on Saturday morning, and, as usual, the conversation lagged for a few seconds as he found a seat and swapped a few insults. The trial started in two days, and, according to Dell, the early morning chatter was dominated by rumors and endless opinions about the case. The subject was changed the moment Jake walked in each morning, and as soon as he left it was as if someone flipped a switch and Seth’s will was again front and center. Though her customers were all white, they seemed to be divided into several camps. There were strong opinions that a man in his right mind should be able to give away his property as he pleased, regardless of his family. Others argued he wasn’t in his right mind. Lettie had her share of detractors. She was widely believed to be a loose woman who took advantage of poor old Seth.
Jake stopped by at least once a week when the café was empty and got the lowdown from Dell. Of particular interest was a regular named Tug Whitehurst, a state meat inspector. His brother was on the jury list, though she was certain Tug had not mentioned this. He wasn’t much of a talker, but during one conversation he did side with Kerry Hull when Hull declared it was no one’s business how he left his estate. Hull was notoriously broke and in debt and everyone knew his estate would be a disaster, but this was allowed to pass without comment. At any rate, Dell thought Tug Whitehurst would be okay with Jake, but who knew about his brother?
At this point in the case, Jake was desperate for any information about the chosen ninety-seven.
He sat at a table with a couple of farmers and waited on his grits and toast. Bass fishing dominated the conversation, so Jake had little to offer. For at least the last three years, a great debate had raged in certain circles over whether the large-mouth bass population in Lake Chatulla was declining or increasing. Opinions were strong and loud and there appeared to be no room for compromise. Experts were plentiful. Just as the tide shifted in favor of a dwindling population, someone would land a trophy and the debate would fire up again. Jake was weary of the topic but now thankful for it nonetheless; it kept attention away from the Hubbard case.
As he was eating, Andy Furr asked, “Say, Jake, is the trial still a go for Monday?”
“It is.”
“So no chance of a postponement or anything like that?”
“I don’t see one. The prospective jurors will be there at nine and we should get started soon after. You coming?”
“Naw, gotta work. Ya’ll expectin’ a crowd?”
“You never know. Civil trials tend to be fairly dull. We may start off with some spectators, but I suspect they’ll disappear quickly.”
Dell topped off his coffee and said, “The place’ll be packed and you know it. We haven’t had this much excitement since the Hailey trial.”
“Oh, I forgot about that one,” Jake said and got a few laughs.
Bill West said he’d heard the FBI had just raided the offices of two supervisors down in Polk County, a notoriously corrupt place, and this ignited a round of condemnation from almost everyone but Jake and Dell. It also changed the subject, and for that Jake was grateful. At that moment, facing a long weekend at the office, all he wanted was breakfast.
Portia arrived around 9:00, and they had a coffee together on the balcony as the town came to life around them. She reported that she’d had an early breakfast with Lettie, who was nervous, even fragile, and terrified of the trial. Lettie was exhausted from the strain of living in a house packed with relatives, and of trying to work part-time, and of trying to ignore the fact that her husband was in jail for killing two boys. Add a pending divorce and a gut-wrenching will contest, and Lettie was understandably a wreck.
Portia admitted she was exhausted too. She was working long hours at the office and sleeping little. Jake was sympathetic, but only to a point. Litigation often required eighteen-hour days and lost weekends, and if Portia was serious about becoming a lawyer she needed a good dose of the pressure. In the past two weeks, they had pushed each other into memorizing all ninety-seven names on the jury list. If Jake said “R,” then Portia responded, “Six. Rady, Rakestraw, Reece, Riley, Robbins, and Robard.” If Portia said “W,” then Jake responded, “Three. Wampler, Whitehurst, Whitten.” Back and forth, the mental contests raged throughout each day.
Jury selection in Mississippi was normally a one-day ordeal, at most. Jake was continually fascinated by trials in other states where it took two weeks or a month to pick a jury. He could not fathom such a system; neither could Mississippi judges. They were dead serious about selecting fair and impartial panels; they just didn’t waste time.
Speed would be crucial. Quick decisions would be required. The lawyers on both sides would not have much time to think about names or to look them up in some batch of research. It was imperative that they know the names and quickly put them with faces. Jake was determined to know every single juror, and their ages, addresses, jobs, education, churches, as much info as they could gather.
Once the ninety-seven names were filed away, Portia was given the task of wading through the courthouse records. She spent hours in the deed books and land records searching for transactions over the past ten years. She combed the court dockets, looking for plaintiffs and defendants, winners and losers. Of the ninety-seven, sixteen had gone through a divorce in the past ten years. She wasn’t sure what that meant in the course of a trial over a will, but she had the knowledge anyway. One gentleman, a Mr. Eli Rady, had filed four lawsuits and lost them all. She checked the lien books and found dozens of claims for unpaid taxes, unpaid supplies, unpaid subcontractors. A few of their prospective jurors owed the county money for property taxes.
In the tax assessor’s office, she dug through property tax receipts and made a register of which jurors owned what make and model of vehicles. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of pickup trucks.
The work was tedious and often mind-numbing, but she never slowed down, never thought of quitting. After two weeks of living with these people, she was confident she knew them.
After coffee, they grudgingly went back to work. Jake began roughing out an outline for his opening statement. Portia returned to the conference room and to her ninety-seven new friends. At ten, Harry Rex finally rolled in with a sackful of greasy sausage biscuits straight from Claude’s. He handed one to Jake, insisted he take it, then slid across an envelope.
“It’s a check from your insurance company, Land Fire and Casualty, a bunch of crooked morons, so don’t ever buy another policy from them, understand? A hundred and thirty-five thousand bucks. Settlement in full. And not a dime of it siphoned off for attorney’s fees, so you owe me big-time, buddy.”
“Thanks. Since your fees are so cheap, get busy.”
“I’m really tired of this case, Jake. On Monday, I’m gonna help you pick the jury, then I’m outta there. I got my own cases to lose.”
“Fair enough. Just be there for the selection.” Jake knew Harry Rex would in fact miss little of the actual courtroom testimony, then he would park himself in the downstairs conference room each evening as they ate pizza and sandwiches and argued about what went wrong and what might happen the following day. He would second-guess every move Jake made; excoriate Wade Lanier with scathing criticism; curse the negative rulings made by Judge Atlee; offer unsolicited advice at every turn; maintain the constant gloom of losing an unwinnable case; and at times be so unbearable Jake would want to throw something at him. But he was seldom wrong. He knew the law and its intricacies. He read people like others read magazines. Without being obvious, he watched the jurors as they watched Jake. And his advice would be invaluable.