Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause

by Grif Stockley

  I watch the cell bars in the window across from us as a pair of black hands grips them. From here I cannot see a face, but the fingers wrapped around the metal look feminine. In front of our bench the place is a zoo, with prisoners and their keepers passing back and forth, making it hard to hear.

  “Yeah, that was mine when I was at the public defender’s,” I whisper, pleased that the Anderson case still has some mileage. It was a famous case at the time, getting me my job at Mays & Burton. Hart Anderson was perhaps on his way to becoming governor of Arkansas when he was shot down in his own home by a man who was being treated for mental illness by Andersen’s wife. The plea bargain I worked out for my client, a delivery man for a food-catering service, was, under the circumstances, almost a case of blackmail, but this is not the time to be modest.

  “Tell me briefly what happened, so I can get a bond hearing and get you out of here.”

  Chapman, also watching the same pair of hands, says softly against my ear, “It’s pretty complicated. Did you read about the girl at the Human Development Center who was electrocuted a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Yes,” I say instantly. I can’t let go of the contrast to my daughter: Sarah, whose Colombian mother, now dead, was a product of a sublime mix of Indian, Spanish, and Negro blood, is stunningly beautiful, with curly coal-colored hair.

  My daughter, an almost spooky replica of her mother, is Rosa’s exact height, five feet four, and has the same lush figure. The child at the Blackwell County Human Development Center, severely retarded (I can only imagine what she looked like), had mutilated herself by constantly hitting her face. My recollection of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article was that her death involved an attempt to stop the self-mutilation. I am not particularly religious (although I was raised a Catholic and got through a Catholic boarding school), but I remember offering up a prayer of gratitude for my daughter’s wholeness.

  “Wasn’t that an accident?” I ask, still watching the hands on the bars. Prom time to time I can see a woman’s chin.

  “Of course it was!” Chapman says emphatically, his voice a boom box in the narrow hall.

  “But I’ve been charged with manslaughter.”

  I lean my head back against the wall, trying to recall the maximum length of sentence. Fifteen years. Shit! Well, that will show you do-gooders. Must be some kind of crusade from the new prosecutor, Jill Marymount, the first woman ever to hold the office in Blackwell County.

  “Do you know why?” I ask, my question as innocent as a first-grader’s.

  The digits on each side of a middle finger which is now sticking out between the bars of the window peel back, and a hoarse voice cries: “Sit on this, mothafuckers!”

  Crinkling his brow in apparent distaste. Chapman seems, behind his glasses and beard, truly offended. I doubt if he has ever been in jail. He appears much too disapproving.

  “That woman ought to be in the state hospital,” he observes.

  “Can’t we talk about this later?” he asks, his deep voice as plaintive as a farmer’s prayer to end a drought.

  For the first time, the full face of the female prisoner comes into view behind the bars. She appears insane, her white hair shooting in all directions, and I recall that prisoners who are obviously ill are kept closer to the jailers’ cage in the front.

  “Of course,” I say and stand. What do I expect to get from this man right now?

  “Have you got some way to make bond?”

  As Chapman rises, the old woman pleads, “Get my black ass outa here, white boy! I can’t stand it any longer!”

  I look at my watch, wondering if I can get a bond hearing this afternoon. Chapman, his voice anxious but assertive, says, “And I can pay your fee, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  I shrug, pretending nonchalance, but no words have sounded sweeter today. Yet if he works for the state, he can’t be too loaded. Maybe he’s on contract.

  “I’ll see if I can get a hearing this afternoon.”

  Chapman releases so much air in a sigh he seems almost to shrink.

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  As I turn to leave, he grabs at my sleeve.

  “Do you have a card?”

  I suppress a groan, knowing I must get this over with, before I waste any time on this case. I look him in the eye, hoping I’ll know how to put this.

  “This is my last day at Mays & Burton,” I say, trying to sound casual.

  “I’m in private practice as of this moment.”

  Against the background noise. Chapman studies me for a long moment. Fuck those bastards. He’s my client, I think, wondering what else I should say to convince him to stay with me. Finally, he says, “Good. You’ll have plenty of time to work on my case.”

  For the first time all day, I smile. “That’s one way to look at it,” I say, virtually admitting that I was fired. Yet, as I go upstairs, I feel confident. He wanted me, not Mays & Burton. It’s a good feeling.

  upstairs i look for the municipal court prosecutor to deter mine the possibility of a bond hearing this afternoon. A bailiff advises me he is winding up a trial and should be available in half an hour, and I walk across the street to the county courthouse and take the world’s slowest elevator to the third floor.

  The Blackwell County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has undergone a major change since my entry into private practice. About six months ago, Phil Harper, who had been the head PA during my brief legal career (I didn’t go to law school until the ripe old age of thirty-seven), accepted an appointment to fill an unexpected vacancy on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and a woman from his staff was appointed to fill his place. A woman for this traditionally male job initially seemed a dubious selection, but the choice has proved astute in these days of voter sensitivity to family is sues. Jill Mary mount has turned the office into a crusade against domestic violence, a favorite concern of the media, since the Supreme Court struck down a statute giving civil courts broad powers to punish husbands who abused their wives.

  I know Jill only slightly. While I was at the PD’s Office, she was assigned to juvenile court. Outer Mongolia for an ambitious assistant prosecuting attorney with political aspirations. After Phil finally allowed her to begin handling felonies, she quickly made her reputation with a string of highly publicized child-abuse prosecutions. And when he resigned, Jill, only two years ago virtually unknown, became the obvious choice to break the male stranglehold on the position of prosecutor.

  However, it is not to Jill Marymount’s office that I go.

  “Is Amy Gilchrist in?” I ask the receptionist at the prosecutor’s office. Of fifteen assistant prosecuting attorneys in the office, Amy is the one I know best. While I was making my own modest reputation as a public defender in the case that has brought me Andy Chapman as a client, I learned to trust Amy, who seemed to be Phil Harper’s favorite. If I approach her now before the case heats up, she can tell me what the political climate is like inside Jill’s shop. Specific information about Chapman’s charge can wait a few minutes. I want to get some idea of how much this case means to Jill Marymount. I think Amy will tell me, if she can.

  “You can go back to her office, Mr. Page,” the receptionist tells me.

  “She just walked in.”

  Flattered to be remembered by a woman I now see infrequently, I smile and make my way back to Amy’s office and find her returning a stack of law books to the shelves that line the hallway.

  “Gideon!” she exclaims and gives me a quick smile, her eyes as mischievous as ever.

  “How’s the ambulance-chasing business?”

  Some women make you glad to be alive. Amy is one of them. Dressed in royal blue from head to toe, Amy’s firm, compact presence radiates a soothing cheerfulness. Despite an occasional flare up in the courtroom when I was going against her regularly at the Public Defender’s office, we re main good friends.

  “As of today, it’s a one-man act,” I say, following her into her office and shutting the door behi
nd me. Her office is filled, as usual, with pictures of her parents and five older sisters, and now, obviously, some nieces and nephews. No photograph of Mr. Right. Still in her late twenties, she has plenty of time. Briefly, I explain my situation, sounding, I hope, more cheerful than I feel.

  “So have you come to apply for a job?” Amy asks, tilting back in her chair that always seems to swallow her.

  The question takes me by surprise. I have never considered working this side of the street. Why not? It is not a point of honor, or is it? I do not think of myself as a crusader for the proverbial “little guy” (whoever that is), but that is always the side where I end up. I lean forward and rest my arms against her desk.

  “I’m going to defend Andrew Chapman.”

  Amy nods, now understanding the purpose of my visit.

  “Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

  This is the opening I wanted. I want to find out whether it is the police or the prosecutor who is driving this case.

  “Why?” I scoff, pretending indignation I don’t feel.

  “It was obviously an accident.”

  Amy’s normally elfin face is expressionless.

  “Gideon,” she says carefully, “I’m not in Jill’s inner circle anymore.”

  Surprised, I ask, “Why the hell not? I figured you’d be chief deputy, as good as you are.”

  Without warning and for the second time today, a woman bursts into tears in front of me.

  “Gideon,” she sobs, “I’m three months pregnant.”

  I try not to gawk at her. Pregnant? I look more pregnant than she does. I study the photographs on her desk while she grabs a tissue. Stupidly, I ask, “Are you positive?”

  Ignoring my idiocy, she bobs her chin.

  “Jill is just rigid on the subject of children. She’d like to fire me, but since she can’t, she wants me to take maternity leave and have it.

  I’m thinking of an abortion.”

  I look at the picture other father, wondering if he knows.

  What if Sarah brought me this news?

  “This is tough,” I say, hedging. What do I think? I don’t know.

  “Have you told your family?” I ask, hoping she isn’t looking for my advice.

  “It’d kill them,” she says, honking loudly into a dry tis sue, “unless I decide to have it. But even then Mother and Daddy would never feel the same about me.”

  Her parents, if I remember right, are hard-core Baptists.

  I stare at the picture of them on their fortieth wedding anniversary and see guilt being uncorked by the gallon as they toast each other with glasses of presumably fake champagne.

  “If you need to talk,” I say, hoping to leave the subject, “call me at home. I don’t have an office yet.” I want to help, but I don’t know what to say.

  Taking my cue, Amy murmurs,”

  “Poor Gideon. You’ve got your own problems.”

  I nod, hoping to make her feel better, but I’d take mine any day I stick to my script.

  “What is Jill running for?”

  Despite her tears, Amy manages a characteristic smirk.

  “If you repeat this, I’ll burn your house down, okay?”

  I crook my right elbow at ninety degrees on her desk and hold my palm flat and stiff in imitation of a witness who takes his television lawyer shows seriously.

  “I swear.”

  Amy leans across her desk, and though I have closed the door, whispers, “The gossip I hear is that she is gearing up to run for attorney general in two years. Personally, I think she wants to be the first woman elected governor in the state.”

  I lean back, feeling consternation at the never-ending political ambition of lawyers. Why do we feel we are called to positions of leadership merely because some of us become highly skilled at rationalizing decisions and actions of others?

  My question was sarcastic, intended to probe for a less obvious motive.

  “Isn’t her children’s crusade enough? I mean, my God, how many retarded people vote? Am I missing something?”

  “Gideon,” Amy says, her round blue eyes serious, “she’s totally sincere about all of this. Have you heard one of her speeches?” When I shake my head, Amy’s voice rises as she folds her hands in front of her and begins to imitate her boss.

  “Every hour of each day thousands of children are being exploited in Arkansas. Not only are children the poorest population group, they are the most physically and emotionally abused segment in society; they’re being provided an ever worsening education; they’re hooked into alcohol and drugs;

  their inheritance, the environment and natural resources, are being wasted instead of conserved.” Amy’s voice returns to its natural pitch. “Her audiences eat it up. Children cut across class and race. It’s powerful stuff.”

  I try to picture -Till Mary mount in front of the local Kiwanis Club and fail, but then I don’t have much imagination when it comes to politics. Jill is a tall brunette in her mid-thirties, striking rather than pretty, who reminds me of a high school English teacher. She scolds and shames juries more than persuades them, but I can’t argue with her record. Below a certain age, child-abuse cases are almost impossible to link to a specific perpetrator.

  “I’ll take your word for it. She sounds like a nag to me.”

  Amy, never modest in my presence, reaches inside her white blouse and painstakingly makes an adjustment.

  “She’s got her statistics down cold, and she’s so intense, people hang on every word she says.”

  I study my lap. Amy isn’t far from whipping off her bra so she can get at it better.

  “What’s politics got to do with charging with manslaughter a psychologist who did his best to keep a child from battering herself to death?”

  Finally giving up or satisfied (her expression holds no clue), Amy says, “Jill, I’m sure, in her own mind, honestly believes there is no connection. She sees the child who died as simply one more example of the way children are exploited in this country. It wasn’t the child who agreed to try electric skin shock it was her mother. What adult would voluntarily let herself be zapped with a cattle prod to stop self-destructive behavior? One of her arguments is that, for example, smoking kills thousands of adults each year, but they don’t go to psychologists for shock treatments to quit.

  Of course, she holds your client responsible, because a mother in that situation is at her wit’s end and is at the mercy of the psychologist, who isn’t a real doctor anyway.”

  So Chapman isn’t a psychiatrist but a psychologist. Amy is coming on a little strong: surely Chapman didn’t use a cattle prod. She is telling me more than she probably should, but I do not discourage her. Yet this may be already part of Jill’s after-dinner speech. I murmur, “So this fits right into her children’s-rights theme, huh?”

  Amy wags a finger at me.

  “Jill doesn’t mention children’s rights in her talks. Remember, they can’t vote. She simply says that these are our children whom we make into victims, sometimes by our neglect and sometimes by our deliberate actions. Who can argue with her?”

  “She sounds like she has the makings of a first-class demagogue,” I say, hoping I can egg Amy on to more insights.

  Know thy enemy.

  “She’s not, really,” Amy says earnestly.

  “Her friends say that she’s been saying the same things privately for years.

  Now she’s got a public forum and wants to see if she can take the opportunity to make some changes she believes in.”

  As Amy talks, I find myself wondering who the father is.

  Probably one of the assistant prosecutors. There are some real pretty boys over here now.

  “Do you know who’s going to try the case?”

  I know her answer before she can say it.

  “Jill.”

  “Who will assist her?”

  Amy spreads her hands.

  “Why don’t you ask up front?”

  I stand up, taking the hint. It
won’t help Amy if anyone thinks she has been talking about the case to me. I reassure her.

  “Mum’s the word,” I say, pretending to zip my mouth.

  Amy laughs.

  “You act so silly to be such a good lawyer.”

  I smile, pleased at the compliment. Were I certain of my ability, I would not need to be reassured. I have lost confidence in myself in the last hour, and for good reason. If I am so good, why was I fired?

  At the front desk the receptionist calls around for me and finds out that an attorney by the name of Kerr Bowman can see me for a few minutes. She gives me directions, and I head down to the opposite end of the hall from Amy’s office.

  I do not know Mr. Bowman, but my first impression is that I have not missed much. Though he is at least fifteen years my junior, Bowman greets me as if I were a long-lost fraternity brother. He is the kind of attorney who is always onstage, no matter how small the audience. The only thing I like about him is his tie, which has alternating navy and green stripes. He is young and cocky, with so much blond hair he probably has to dry it with an industrial-strength fan.

  Somewhere along the line a professor must have told this kid he would make a great trial attorney and he believed it. I look behind him and see on his wall a diploma from the University of Texas. That accounts for some of it. Fortunately, today he is on a short leash. He pretends not to have a copy of the arrest warrant, telling me that “Bobba” Stewart, the prosecutor over in municipal court, will be delighted to make me a copy.

  “We’ll get one when the case is filed in circuit court after the probable cause hearing,” Kerr says.

  I try not to roll my eyes. Kerr probably drafted it. I can’t say much without implicating Amy, so I play dumb, an easy role for me most of the time.

  “I assume, since I’m talking to you, that you’ll be handling it once it gets to circuit court.”

  Kerr fingers his tie.

  “Jill and I will be working together.”

  I can’t resist a smile. Once the case hits the papers, he’ll be lucky if she sends him out to have a subpoena served.