Redress of Grievances

by Brenda Adcock

  Riley took a seat next to Lassiter, but continued to glare at Wayne.

  "Mrs. Taggart has no alibi for any of the nights in question," the ADA resumed.

  "Innocent people seldom need to recall their whereabouts. Do you know where you were on any of those nights, Mr. Lassiter?" Harriett asked.

  "As I'm sure you know, this has been an ongoing investigation by the police department."

  "And I know they hadn't been able to come up with anyone as a suspect until they tripped over Sharon Taggart, who had absolutely no reason to commit any of these crimes. Unless you can come up with something more substantial in the way of evidence that links Sharon Taggart to them, I'm going to petition the court for a dismissal of the charges against her."

  "The ballistics testimony alone will be sufficient to put her in prison."

  "Perhaps, but you won't be able to make a case for anything more than voluntary manslaughter."

  "Sharon Taggart wasn't some damn kid out taking potshots at street lights, Ms. Markham," Riley said, leaning forward. "She wanted to cause the deaths of those people. She planned those crimes and carried them out, which is called premeditation and malice aforethought. Her motive is irrelevant. She just had a damn good time doing it."

  Harriett slipped her pad back into her briefcase and snapped it shut. "You'll be getting a copy of my petition to the judge this afternoon." She stood and turned to leave, as Wayne opened the door.

  "You know, it's hard to believe you'd have the guts to come back to Dallas for this case," Riley sneered.

  "Why is that, Detective Riley?" she asked as she turned to face him. "Sharon Taggart needs a defense attorney, and I happen to be a damned good one."

  Chapter Fifteen

  EARLY MONDAY MORNING, Wayne strolled out of his hotel's restaurant with the taste of coffee and maple syrup lingering in his mouth and a smile on his lips. He hadn't felt the least bit guilty about ordering the Texas T-bone steak and eggs with a side order of a small stack of pancakes for breakfast, especially since they would be charged to Harriett's client. Before she left for Austin, they had compiled a list of individuals for him to begin interviewing. Chewing on the remains of his toothpick, he unlocked the driver's door of his sagebrush green Chevy Tahoe and slid comfortably behind the wheel. Glancing at the clock on the dash, he estimated that it would take him about twenty-five minutes to make it to Highland Park High School. Plenty of time.

  Highland Park High School was located on Emerson Avenue, a few blocks from the Dallas North Tollway. As he swung his vehicle into a visitor's parking area in front of the two-story red brick building, he vaguely remembered his own days in high school. The ten-room county high school he had attended bore little resemblance to the structure in front of him. The spacious grounds were well tended, and everything looked tidy. The school obviously sat in the middle of a solid, upper echelon property tax zone. As he climbed the steps toward the front doors, he secretly made book with himself that everyone he met would be wearing a jacket and tie.

  A sign in the front entry welcomed him to the home of the Scots and directed him to the main office. Unlike most of the downtown high schools he had been to over the years, the hallways were relatively quiet except for the sound of morning announcements pouring from the overhead intercom speakers. He pulled open the door to the office and held it for two female teachers as they exited. Teachers sure hadn't looked like that when he was a student, he thought with a smile. If they had, he might have taken more interest in going every day rather than finding something else more entertaining to do, most of which had gotten him in trouble. Still, stealing a glance at the teachers as they moved gracefully down the hallway, his thoughts were interrupted.

  "May I help you, sir?" a woman asked slightly louder than necessary.

  Turning his head away from the view he had been enjoying, he was disappointed to see a gray-haired woman with pinched lips staring at him. Women who looked like her had made education decidedly distasteful for him.

  Placing his meaty hands on the counter, he said, "Yeah. I would like to speak to Mr. Benevidez."

  "Do you have an appointment?"

  "No I don't." Wayne reached in his pocket and drew out a business card, dropping it unceremoniously on the counter.

  "May I ask what this is in reference to, Mr...Graham?" the receptionist asked as she picked up the card and readjusted her glasses to read it.

  "Sharon Taggart," he answered bluntly.

  "Mrs. Taggart isn't here any longer."

  "That's why I'm here. I'm an investigator for Mrs. Taggart's attorney. Is Benevidez in or not?"

  "We have cooperated completely with the authorities and already told them everything we knew."

  "I'm sure you have, dear, but you haven't told me yet," Wayne smiled benignly.

  "If you'll have a seat," she said nodding toward a row of comfortable looking chairs, "I'll see if Mr. Benevidez is available."

  "Thanks."

  Wayne glanced at the clock hanging on the wall just inside the office doors and sat down. The chairs were not as comfortable as they had looked, and he readjusted his jacket and pulled up his pant legs slightly before reaching for the latest edition of the PTA News. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the receptionist speak to someone softly on the telephone, all the while casting furtive looks in his direction. Almost ten minutes passed before a distinguished looking Hispanic gentleman in his late forties came into the office and glanced around. The receptionist's eyes led him to Wayne.

  The man was well-dressed in charcoal gray slacks with a white dress shirt and navy blue tie, all of which accented his slightly graying black hair and mustache. Extending his hand, the man smiled as he approached Wayne.

  "Mr. Graham? Michael Benevidez. How can I assist you?"

  Standing as he shook Benevidez's hand, Wayne said, "I appreciate you taking the time to speak to me. I won't take up much of your time."

  "Sharon is one of my best teachers, and I will do anything I can to help. Why don't we go to my office?"

  A few minutes later, Benevidez sat behind his desk and leaned back, steepling his hands in front of his face, resting his index fingers against his lower lip. Wayne pulled an old notebook and a pen out of his coat pocket and flipped it open.

  "Before we begin, Mr. Graham, can you tell me how Sharon is?"

  "About as good as anyone would be in her predicament, I guess," Wayne shrugged before he began asking questions. "What did Mrs. Taggart teach?"

  "Social Studies, but primarily our Advanced Government classes, and I think, one or two sections of World Civilization."

  "Overall, was she a pretty good teacher?"

  "Superior," Benevidez beamed. "In her second year on the faculty, she was chosen as our Teacher of the Year. The students love her style and were very successful. She got along well with parents and other faculty members and volunteered to assist students with projects for their other classes as well as her own. She was the faculty sponsor for three or four extracurricular activities as well. Some people teach to make a living, but Sharon truly seemed to have a calling for working with teenagers, even the ones no one else wanted."

  Wayne laughed, "I can't imagine there would be very many of those in this school."

  "You would be surprised, Mr. Graham. Every school, no matter how large or small, or how affluent, has its own little group of troubled students."

  "You said she sponsored some activities. Which ones were those?"

  "Let's see," Benevidez thought. "I'm sure she was a class sponsor for one of the grade levels. Might have been the junior class because I know she worked on organizing the prom one year. And it seems like she was the sponsor for the Think Tank and Young Lawyers."

  "Think Tank? What's that?"

  "It's an academic competition between area high schools. Sort of similar to the Jeopardy television game."

  "They any good?" Wayne smiled.

  "Very good, and we have the trophies to prove it, especially the Young Lawyers. They
were second in the State competition a couple of years ago, and Sharon was confident they would make it to the national competition in the next year or two."

  "Did you have many opportunities to interact with Mrs. Taggart?"

  "Many times. I found her to be cooperative and always with the best interests of the students and the school in mind. There were times we disagreed, naturally, but we were able to reach a satisfactory resolution most of the time."

  "What types of disagreements?"

  "Nothing huge, and mostly it involved a problem with another teacher whom she didn't think was effectively teaching. But that was something that only started fairly recently."

  "Did it lead to other problems?"

  "I really don't want to say anything bad about Sharon."

  "If you don't, I'm sure someone else will, Mr. Benevidez. It would be better for her attorney to know about any personal conflicts now, so that they aren't a surprise later if they should come up at the trial."

  Benevidez thought for a minute before continuing. "About a year or a year and a half ago, Sharon was involved in a verbal altercation with another faculty member, Mrs. Sanderson. I had to separate them and counsel both of them."

  "What started the argument?"

  "Sharon had a student who was having difficulty in Mrs. Sanderson's class. As I understand it, Sharon went to her room to see if she could help. Apparently Mrs. Sanderson told Sharon that she didn't need any help. She had been teaching for nearly twenty years and didn't need teaching lessons from a younger teacher. Sharon said something else to her and left the room. Just before the bell for the next class, apparently Mrs. Sanderson went to Sharon's room and told her, in front of students, that she would teach her class any damn way she wanted to and that Sharon could go to hell. Sharon called her an incompetent hack, and well, the discussion disintegrated from there. Although they did take the argument into the hall, there was a little shoving involved and another teacher came to get me."

  "Did you take any action against either woman?"

  "I sent them both home for the remainder of the day to cool off." Chuckling slightly, Benevidez smiled. "Although I did sort of have to agree that Mrs. Sanderson wasn't the best teacher on our faculty, Sharon admitted she hadn't handled it in the best way and formally apologized to Mrs. Sanderson as well as the class. In fact, she used the whole incident as a lesson in how not to handle a disagreement."

  "Were there any other incidents like that?"

  "Never, and I really just chalked it up to the fact that Sharon had only recently given birth to her daughter and was simply under stress."

  "If possible, I'd like to have a look at Mrs. Taggart's classroom," Wayne said.

  "I think there's a class in there this period, but if you can wait until it's over, the room should be empty for the next period. It was Sharon's conference period."

  "Who is teaching her classes now?"

  "The district sent a permanent substitute who had credentials in the same subject areas. So far he seems to be working out fine. However, I'm sure the students miss Sharon."

  "I'm sure," Wayne said as he pushed himself out of the chair and stretched his back.

  "You're more than welcome to wait in the lounge area if you want. There's a coffeemaker, but I can't guarantee how good the coffee is."

  FORTY MINUTES LATER, Wayne trudged up a flight of stairs to Sharon's second floor classroom. Closing the door behind him, he looked around at the thirty desks, which were aligned in a semi-circle facing the front dry erase board. The walls were decorated with posters depicting political and historical figures. A map of the world that was painted directly on the wall covered the back wall of the room. Portions of it were filled in, and string lines led from various regions of the world to newspaper and magazine articles concerning world events. Although he had never seen it before in a classroom, there were curtains on all the windows and the whole room had a homey feel to it.

  Sharon's desk was situated in the front corner of the room, opposite the door. Two tan file cabinets and a large bookcase sat behind the desk in easy reach of anyone seated there. Pulling out his notebook again, Wayne perused the materials on the bookshelf and made notes to himself. The books appeared to be arranged by subject and were equally divided between American politics and World History. One file cabinet was devoted to curriculum materials while the second was filled with file folders with students' names on each one. Going through the file drawers, he continued making notes as he pulled out a few folders, hoping he would be able to make copies of the material in each.

  "Excuse me," a man's voice boomed. "Do you have permission to be in here?"

  Turning his head toward the classroom door, Wayne saw a large muscular man filling the entrance, his hands on his hips.

  "Sure do. From Mr. Benevidez."

  "May I see your visitor's badge?" the forty-ish man asked.

  Pulling himself up to his full height, Wayne estimated that they were about the same height and weight, although their weight was distributed a little differently. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the bright yellow plastic clip-on pass.

  "Sorry, sir, but we try to keep our eyes open for strangers on campus," the man said as his defensive posture relaxed somewhat.

  "No problem," Wayne nodded. "And who might you be?"

  "I'm Dylan Fields. My room is across the hall. I just happened to glance in and see you in here."

  "Do you know Sharon Taggart?"

  "Of course."

  "My name is Wayne Graham, and I work for her attorney. If you have a couple of minutes, I'd like to ask you a couple of questions."

  "Sure, I guess it'll be okay. How is Sharon? I sure miss having her in here to talk to."

  "Why is that?"

  "She and I used to have a weekly bull session. You know, bitchin' about the kids and some of our colleagues."

  "Were you here when she had her disagreement with Mrs. Sanderson?"

  Throwing his head back, Fields laughed. "Hell, yeah! If I hadn't stopped Sharon she would have cold cocked that old biddy."

  "Do you know what they argued about?"

  "I think it was about some student they had in common. Sharon always picked these loser kids and tried to help them. Sort of like taking in strays, you know."

  "Ever know her to lose her temper like that any other time?"

  "Nah. It was just one of those things. No one was too sad to see Sanderson retire the next year. She was pretty burned out."

  "This school have a Xerox machine?"

  "There's one down the hall in the teacher's workroom. I can give you my code to access it."

  AFTER LUNCH, WAYNE loaded a box of copies and other materials into his Tahoe and backed out of the school parking lot. He had interviewed two or three teachers, who had all agreed that Sharon was a more than competent teacher and that Mrs. Sanderson had been a bitch. If Harriett needed character witnesses, there were plenty of them available at Highland Park High School. Entering the southbound lanes of the Dallas Tollway, the traffic was light as he made his way back into the downtown area, and the offices of the Dallas Times-Herald. Harriett had given him the name of a friend of Sharon's who was a reporter for the daily paper. Other than this one woman, it appeared that Sharon Taggart wasn't eaten up with personal friends. A brief phone call earlier had led to him being granted a brief appointment with Louise Harmon who had agreed to squeeze him in between stories.

  When he stepped up to the reception desk of the Dallas Times-Herald, he still wasn't certain what he hoped Louise Harmon could tell him. She would probably turn out to be another character witness.

  After fifteen minutes of cooling his heels in the lobby, he saw a middle-aged woman walking down a glass enclosed hallway, while apparently engaging in an animated discussion with an older man who kept trying vainly to control his frizzy head of hair by mashing it down with his hand as he talked. A moment later, she approached the desk in the lobby, holding a sheaf of papers. She was a tall woman with a round fac
e framed by short dark hair. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and her shirt was tucked neatly into her khaki slacks.

  "There's a gentleman here to see you, Lou," the receptionist said, pointing in Wayne's direction as he stood and readjusted his waistband.

  "Mr. Graham? I'm incredibly busy this morning, so I may have to cut our conversation short if I'm called away."

  "I just need a few minutes. Let me buy you a cup of coffee."

  "I can give you about fifteen minutes," Lou said as she glanced at her wristwatch and then put her pencil behind her ear. "Deadlines, you know."

  Wayne followed her through a security door and down a hallway to a large break room. He poured two Styrofoam cups of coffee and joined her at a table near a window that overlooked the newspaper loading docks.

  "Okay, what do you need to know?" Lou asked as she grabbed her cup and tested how hot the contents were. For someone who was supposedly Sharon Taggart's best friend, Wayne hadn't expected Lou Harmon to be so brusque.

  "You're Sharon's best friend, aren't you?"

  Lou shrugged. "I'm the only one who kept in touch with her after she married Frank I guess, if that's what you mean."

  "How did you two meet?"

  "What's the difference? I can't see how that would be of any help to Sharon now. It was years ago."

  "Humor me," Wayne said flatly. "It's my fifteen minutes. Besides, if you don't answer my questions now, her attorney will have to subpoena you, and I can pretty much guarantee that will take you away from work longer than I will."

  Sighing into her cup, Lou finally said, "Sharon worked here one summer as a junior reporter when I was the city editor. I had to review anything she wrote. For a college kid, she was pretty good and took criticism well."

  "What kind of stuff did she write?"

  "Oh, hell, we stick the summer intern types with the crap no one else wants, so it could have been just about anything. You know, obits, garden parties, movie reviews, those space killer things." Pausing to take a bigger drink, Lou seemed to be thinking about something. When she set her cup down, she smiled. "She really liked the movie reviews when she got assigned to them. Told me once she had been in her university's theater group and had won some acting award. She wanted to major in theater, but Clarissa disapproved of actors and such. The reviews let her fantasize a little."