by Martin Clark
“Suppose you didn’t,” Adam said again. “Then you wouldn’t have a case, would you, Granger?”
“It would make things difficult,” he agreed.
“You couldn’t get past a motion to dismiss, could you?”
“It would be a challenge.” Hands smiled. “But he confessed. I’ve checked the forms. He signed off on Miranda and signed the confession. And he confessed at his own home. No coercion or anything.”
“Do you have the confession, Granger?” Adam asked.
Hands looked through his file and handed a typewritten statement across the table to Adam.
“The original one?” said Adam.
“The policeman has it. We sent you copies several weeks ago. You’re not going to stand there and tell me some chickenshit story about discovery, that you didn’t get the confession copy?”
“We got it, Granger.” Adam smiled. “Don’t get upset.”
“I’ve always been aboveboard with you, Adam.”
“I know. I’m not questioning your ethics. Would you get it from the cop?”
“Sure.” Hands walked to the door and summoned Greenfield. Evers noticed that the jurors were beginning to come in. Two older men were talking to each other, and a young woman wearing a sweat suit was reading a paperback book. Most of them looked uncomfortable.
Hands handed Adam the original confession. “Short and sweet,” he said.
“Look at the signature,” Adam said. “Read it.” Adam laid the paper on the table.
Hands put his finger underneath the signature and leaned forward. “It looks like ‘Purvis Wheeling’ or something. The writing isn’t too great.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, the defendant signed it in front of two officers.”
“You’ll agree that his name is ‘Pascal,’ not ‘Purvis.’”
“Maybe it says ‘Pascal.’” Hands picked up the confession and looked at it again, held it closer to his face. “Even if there’s some debate about it, he still signed it and admitted his guilt to the officers. It may be an interesting abstract problem, but we can get around it, I think. Is he going to deny signing it and deny talking to the police? He’ll lose that swearing contest. And the jury will probably be pissed if they figure he signed the wrong name to be cute. This will hurt him, Adam. You know that.”
“That’s not the end of the story.”
Hands put the confession down and drummed on the tabletop with his fingers. “What’s the rest?”
Adam set his briefcase on the table. Evers heard the hard plastic hit the wood and the case’s fasteners pop open; for some reason, it reminded him of customs in the Caribbean. Adam dropped a copy of a traffic warrant onto the table; the paper fluttered then cut a rapid zigzag before it landed. “Check it out.”
Hands looked at the warrant. “Mr. Wheeling has been convicted of DWI. Great. Impressive. You want concurrent time or something?”
“Check the date and time. It’s within a half an hour of the confession. I’ve got the two officers here to testify that he was so drunk he could barely stand. He was found guilty, his blood-alcohol content was way over the limit, and therein lies the problem. He was drunk when he confessed, and so drunk that he signed his father’s name to the confession. In fact, he was drinking when he signed it and spilled beer on the paper. There’s a stain on the lower left-hand side. If he’s drunk, he can’t effectively waive his Miranda rights, plus there’s the question of the accuracy and voluntariness of the statement. Last but not least, the confession has no detail. None.”
“Huh.” Hands folded the DWI conviction in half and slid it toward Adam’s briefcase. “You say these guys are here?”
“They’re subpoenaed. Officers Brown and Hancock.”
“I saw them listed but figured they were just character witnesses since you used their home addresses and didn’t let on that they were policemen. Especially since they were from up around where the defendant lives.”
“I can’t tell you everything, Granger.”
“You care if I talk to them?”
“No. There’s a guy from Duke Hospital, too. A Dr. Lane. He wasn’t subpoenaed. He’ll tell you that you can’t get a point-one-six in twenty minutes. Mr. Wheeling was drinking when he talked to Loggins and Greenfield.”
“They didn’t mention it,” Hands said. “Let me talk to these folks, and I’ll get back with you.”
“What do you think?” Evers asked after Hands had shut the door.
“Granger is usually reasonable,” Adam said. “We’ll have to see, I guess.”
“Excuse me,” Pascal said. “I’m going to wait outside. Maybe take a look at some of the jurors, see if any of them have long hair, tattoos … scars, needle tracks, tremors—just check things out. Let me know what happens.”
Evers got up and looked out the window. He saw a pickup stop at a light several blocks away. A man wearing a plaid shirt and carrying a paper sack got into the truck. Evers thought about Winston-Salem and his summer job at the factory, all the shift workers and their hardscrabble, simple happiness. Homer, Butch, Snake, Lula, Pumpkin, Myra and Maddog. There were Pucketts, O’Dells, Lawlesses, Branches and Gwynns. And they were all interchangeable in a certain way, mix and match, a Butch Lawless, a “Snake” Morris—they all had identical backgrounds, the same common clump of experiences and the same knockabout mentality that at its most creative aspired to memorizing the ingredients on the back of a soft drink can during a break from work. These were people who were unable to accomplish anything greater than an extra pack of Camels in their glove compartment, but they were happy, most of them. Numb and happy, bound up in routines and certainty so sure and lifeless that two hours to hunt alone in the woods on a Friday morning seemed like a blessing, and a trip to the fish house for fried seafood and hushpuppies once a month was a good part of life. Evers couldn’t recall the last time he’d been happy or could rely on anything at all. He and Pascal used to joke about the Plant People, and now he envied their bland days and easy moods.
Evers heard the door open behind him, but he didn’t turn around, just kept looking out the window and watched the truck drive away.
“So what do you think, Granger?” Adam sounded anxious, a hint of beggar in his tone.
“Not much I can do, Adam. Greenfield and Loggins say he was coherent and not drinking. Plus I’ve got Mrs. Wheeling’s family on me like a cheap suit. I give you something, they’ll write letters to the editor for months. As you well know, mine is an elected office.” Hands paused. “Best I could offer is twenty years on second degree.”
“Losing a murder trial isn’t going to help your standing in the election either,” said Adam. He sounded angry, but constrained. Evers still had not turned around.
“Twenty on second degree. That’s better than the worst that could happen.”
“Fuck this,” Pauletta said suddenly. “Let’s let the judge decide it. This is a waste of time.” She picked up her suit jacket and file and walked out of the room.
Evers walked out behind her and went to use a pay phone. He passed Pascal, seated by himself in the courtroom, and gave him a thumbs-down sign. Pascal shrugged and smiled.
Judge Moses Pendleton was not happy to have to make a difficult technical decision. He held the suppression hearing in his chambers and kept rubbing his forehead and looking at his watch. He released the jury until one that afternoon.
Adam called the two state policemen who had arrested Pascal to testify. Hands had taken some of the edge off their testimony, but they were generally effective. He introduced their field notes, which showed the arrest at 3:26 p.m., twenty-three minutes after the time on the confession. They conceded that Pascal was unaware of where he was, had trouble communicating and was very unsteady on his feet. Pendleton seemed most intrigued by the alcohol-stained confession with the wrong signature. “This isn’t even his name,” he said twice to Granger Hands.
Dr. Lane told the judge and lawyers that the body could “evacuate” or process ap
proximately one twelve-ounce beer or one mixed drink with two ounces of alcohol every hour. Each beer or mixed drink produced a blood alcohol content of .015 to .020, so that it would take, theoretically, sixteen to eighteen beers in half an hour to reach Pascal’s BAC reading. However, it was virtually impossible for the body to absorb that much alcohol so quickly. It was Dr. Lane’s expert medical opinion that Mr. Wheeling would have to have been drinking for at least an hour to ninety minutes prior to the test to produce such a high blood-alcohol content.
Loggins and Greenfield testified that Pascal was not drinking, was sober, coherent, and that he’d turned over an old, warm beer can sitting on the kitchen table along with a lot of other trash and debris. “He was absolutely normal, Judge,” Loggins insisted.
When the two detectives finished testifying, Pendleton stood up from behind his desk. “This is close, Lawyers. Of course, the test is what was his condition when he signed the waiver and gave the statement, not what his condition was half an hour later. The detectives who were there say he was fine, but the doctor from Duke says that with his BAC he would have been impaired. Signed the wrong name, too.” Pendleton repeated what everyone knew.
“But he signed it,” interrupted Hands.
“The defendant going to testify in rebuttal?” asked the judge.
“No sir,” answered Adam.
“Have you all talked about a plea?” Pendleton wondered.
“Yeah.”
“What did you offer, Granger?”
“Twenty years on second degree.”
Pendleton raised his voice. “Off the record, please.” He looked at the court reporter, and she stopped typing. “You can do better than that, Granger. This is right on the edge.”
“I have an unhappy family and the reputations of two very good policemen at stake. That’s the best I can do.”
“You’ve got an election coming up, and you’re going to make me call it. Don’t bullshit me, Granger.” Pendleton sounded mad. “I’ll be your whipping boy if you lose this one. We answer to the voters, too, you know.”
“Not for another two years, though.” Hands was calm. “Jesus, Judge, he admitted killing a woman. What do you want me to do?”
Pauletta stood up. “Judge Pendleton, if I could speak. We haven’t rested in rebuttal. Mr. Wampler is correct that we will not call the defendant, but we do have a witness in rebuttal, Dr. Rudy Williams. Perhaps this debate will be more appropriate after all the evidence is in. And perhaps the rebuttal evidence will give the court some additional factual assistance.” Adam turned and looked at Pauletta and Pascal. Evers was seated in a corner behind them all, staring at the floor.
“I’m sorry, Miss Qwai, I guess I was hasty. I didn’t mean to cut your case off.” Pendleton bit his lip. Evers thought of an exercise wheel and pine shavings.
Evers had rehearsed Rudy as well as he could over the phone, providing him with some simple facts and an easy story to recite. When the car doctor arrived, he had on his white physician’s jacket, a tie and a beeper. He looked perfect. They had to wait about twenty minutes after the other witnesses finished for him to make the trip from Norton, but Pendleton seemed glad to have the break.
Pauletta questioned Rudy from notes that Evers had given her.
“Your name?”
“Rudolph Astin Williams.”
“Your occupation, please?” Pauletta was wearing a dark business suit. She was poised and appeared confident, although she had only a general idea of what Rudy was going to say.
“I’m a physician.” Rudy gave his credentials and experience.
“Did you have occasion to see Pascal Wheeling on July twenty-sixth at two-thirty p.m.?”
Hands objected. “Leading. Miss Qwai is leading.”
“Sustained.”
“Did you see Pascal Wheeling on July twenty-sixth?” Pauletta repeated the first portion of her question.
“Yes.”
“About what time?”
“Between two and four in the afternoon.”
“Where did you see him?” she asked.
“At his trailer.”
“Why were you there?”
“Mr. Wheeling had been sick. He’d been drinking too much, plus he had a fairly bad viral infection. I wanted to check on him.”
“You make house calls, Doctor?” Pauletta preempted Hands’ attack on Rudy’s answer.
“Actually, I do. My work at the ER is not totally demanding, and we live in a small town. Also, I know Pascal and like him.”
“How do you remember the date?”
“I checked my notes. Also, I recall it was the same day he got a DWI. He asked me to testify at his DWI trial, and I refused. He wanted me to testify about the effects of his medication on his driving skills.” Rudy adjusted the beeper on his belt.
“Did you testify at that trial?”
“No. No, ma’am.”
“Why is that, Doctor?” Pauletta asked.
“I felt uncomfortable doing so. I work in the ER. I see every day what drinking on our highways can cause. And besides, his medication would not have contributed significantly to his physiological state at the time he was driving.”
“But he called you and asked you to testify for him?”
“Called me the very same night,” Rudy answered.
“And you told him what?” Pauletta asked.
“Well, to be blunt, I told him that when I had seen him he was drunk, and that the medicine I’d given him did not contribute in any way to his impairment.”
“What time did you see him?”
The room seemed especially quiet. The judge looked at Rudy.
“Like I said, in the afternoon. I can’t be positive.”
“You said earlier around two to four.” Pauletta was standing when she questioned Rudy. She took a step toward him after she spoke.
“Yeah. That’s a rough estimate, though. Could have been earlier, could have been later.” Rudy smiled. “You’re asking me to recall a fairly routine visit with one of many patients that occurred over two months ago.”
“I understand.” Pauletta hesitated. “And what was his condition when you saw Mr. Wheeling, the defendant?”
“Drunk and disoriented. He was seriously impaired. His eyes were red and glassy. He exhibited a strong odor of alcohol. His balance was poor, his coordination affected. His speech was slow and slurred on some words. He was febrile, congested and dehydrated.”
“Did he recognize you?”
“Yes. Certainly.”
“What did you do for him?” Pauletta gestured with one of her hands, raised it just a little and pressed four of her fingers together.
“Checked his blood pressure, took his temperature, reminded him to stay inside and rest, and told him that if he didn’t stop drinking, he would kill himself. Also, I got him some water and ice. I was concerned about the effects of both a fever and drinking in terms of his remaining hydrated.”
“Was there anyone else at the home?”
“No. Not that I’m aware of.”
“Did you see anyone when you left?”
“Two men were there, coming to the door. Two policemen.”
“How do you know who they were?”
“I asked. We talked for a moment or so.” Rudy smiled again.
“Do you recall their names?”
“Lord, no.”
“Did they say why they were there?” Pauletta asked.
“Just to see Pascal. I told them he was sick and drinking.”
“Did you tell them not to bother Mr. Wheeling?”
“Oh, no. No, ma’am. I didn’t know what they wanted, and I assumed it was none of my business. I did tell them that Pascal had been drinking.”
“Did you tell them he was drunk?”
“No, ma’am, I didn’t. Maybe I should have. I’m sure they found out as soon as they got inside.” Rudy’s watch beeped, and he pushed a button on its side to make it stop. “Sorry.”
“Did the officers go inside?”
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“I guess. I mean, I don’t know. I’m not sure exactly what this is about. There was no medical reason for them not to approach Mr. Wheeling, okay? He had a virus and was drunk. I told them that, basically, and left. There were no medical reasons for them not to talk to him. I left them alone, ma’am.” Rudy raised his voice and sat absolutely erect in his chair. “I know what these policemen have to deal with. I see it in the ER all the time. And I wasn’t going to tell them to leave Mr. Wheeling alone. It wasn’t my business. In fact, if anything, I thought seeing two officers might straighten him up a little.” Rudy shifted his weight and seemed agitated. He never looked at Evers, and Evers was glad of it.
Pauletta held up both hands. “Doctor, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest that you did anything wrong.”
“Well, it sounded like we were heading that way.”
“Just a few more items, sir.” Pauletta’s tone never changed.
“Okay.” Rudy relaxed.
“How would you characterize Mr. Wheeling’s mental capacity, clarity of thought and, most important, his competency when you saw him on this date?”
“He was intoxicated. Clinically speaking, his mental processes were significantly curtailed, and his competency, temporarily of course, was extremely questionable.”
“One final question, Doctor. Have you seen either of the policemen you saw on that day again?”
“No. Not until today.”
“Today?”
“Yes, ma’am. I saw one of them today sitting outside in court when I came through.”
“Could you describe him?”
“Nice-looking man, rugged, western-type clothes. He’s right outside.”
“How about the other officer outside, sitting with the man you described? Do you recognize him?”
“It could be the man who was with him at Mr. Wheeling’s, but I’m not certain. The one man stands out, but I’m not certain about whether or not I could identify the second man.”
“Thank you, Doctor.” Pauletta asked the judge to have Loggins step in, and Dr. Rudy confirmed that he was the policeman at Pascal’s. When the judge called the other policeman in, Rudy couldn’t say for sure whether he’d met Greenfield that day.