“Can’t bring that in,” he said. “I can’t put a live animal through this here machine.”
I held the bag out. “You want to take a look? I can’t leave him in the car. It’s almost 90 degrees.”
He peered at the sleeping Yorkie. “I take it that ain’t no kind of service dog,” he said. “He your emotional support animal?”
“Course not,” I said. I was getting a little annoyed.
“Well, then,” he said in triumph, “you can’t bring him in.”
There was no convincing him. I stepped aside to text Mazie. She came out of the waiting room to babysit Squatter, and the way she fussed over him made me glad I’d brought her the distraction. I pointed out the pockets with his treats and his leash, explained that I’d be incommunicado for a while because the cops would take my phone before letting me talk to Jackson, and left them to it.
I knew the cops wouldn’t let me see Jackson unless I called myself his lawyer, so I did. They said he’d been booked on suspicion of murder. One of them walked me to the interview room. Through the window I could see him looking like what he was: a sullen teenage kid who’d clearly got on the wrong side of somebody. The cop unlocked the door. Jackson looked up, part defiant, part scared. He was still in his street clothes, about as filthy as you’d expect someone who’d been sleeping in a shed to be. When I sat down at the table, I realized he stank. I also made a mental note to never let him pick his own clothes for court. His black T-shirt had a picture on it of bodies hanging in some sort of dungeon, and it said “Supreme Carnage” in letters made of bones.
The cop left, locking the door behind him.
Jackson still had his hackles up, but I could tell he was relieved to see me.
“How you doing?” I asked. “They treating you okay?”
“Not exactly. Look how hard they cuffed me.” He held up his wrists. They were bruised.
That wouldn’t get him anywhere, but I sympathized. Sitting down across from him, I asked, “You tell them anything?”
“I told them to go fuck themselves,” he said. “Told them I wished I killed Karl, but I didn’t.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “Son, you got the right to remain silent, and that’s a right you ought to exercise. No more smart remarks, okay?”
“What are you,” he said. “My lawyer?”
“Well, they’ll tell you about getting a public defender tomorrow, in your Summary Court appearance. But I guess I am for now, if you want.”
He crossed his arms, cocked his head at me, and said, “I guess you got some experience. Maybe you’ll do.” His pose made me remember how I’d been at his age: a know-nothing kid trying manhood on for size, and picking the most awkward kind. Manhood of the defiant jackass variety, demanding respect that hadn’t been earned yet.
I decided to give it to him, to put him at ease. I smiled and said, “Well, I hope I satisfy. Let’s pretend I don’t know anything. Start from the beginning. What happened the night Karl died?”
“Aw, who the hell cares?” He shook his head, looking at the ceiling like he was mad at it, like this was all just a waste of time. He reminded me so much of Noah right then that I had to fight the urge to shake him by the shoulders and then give him a hug.
I said, “You got the chance to set the record straight.”
“Yeah?” he said. “He was a drunk, and he fell off a boat. He lived and he died. So what?”
“I’m not asking because I care about Karl,” I said. “I’m asking because nobody’s heard your story yet, and I want to make sure they do.”
“They ain’t gonna care.”
“Making them care is my job. All you got to do is tell me what happened.”
He sighed and looked at the door we both knew was locked.
Then he said, “The stupid thing is, that day started out good.”
“Oh yeah? How so?”
“I got a raise,” he said. “At the hardware store. Ten cents an hour. It ain’t much, but I never got a raise before. And it came with a gift card and some cookies that Cyrus’s wife baked for me.”
Cyrus was his boss. “That was mighty nice of her,” I said. “What kind?”
“Butter pecan.”
“Damn. I bet they were good.”
He nodded. “I ate a couple at work. Brought the rest home for my mom. I left them on the table and took a shower.” He stopped, shaking his head. “You ever had that happen, where one minute everything’s fine, but next thing you know, it’s all gone to shit?”
I nodded. “That what happened?”
“Soon as I turned off the water,” he said, “I heard them yelling. I know what he sounds like when he’s drunk. Or sounded like. I barely dried off, just got dressed and went in. The cookies were all over the floor, and he was in her face, and—” A flash of pain crossed his face. “And he was touching her. He was all over her, and she was about crawling across the counter to get away.”
The mental image disturbed me too, but not nearly as much as it did him. His eyes were wide and blank, like he couldn’t stop seeing it.
“So what happened next?”
“I pulled him off her. And he took a swing at me, but he was drunk. It didn’t even land.”
“Was he saying anything?”
“Aw, just hollering that she owed him fifty bucks. Something about how he bought her a tank of gas. He ran around the counter and got ahold of her again. I pulled him off and shoved him outside. You know she don’t have fifty bucks to spare. She’s still paying off the hospital for the time he broke my arm, when I was sixteen.”
I shook my head. “That’s a damn shame. I’m sorry you had to deal with him.”
“I’m sorry she did. She shouldn’t have to work double shifts all the time just because he’s a drunk. If he wants to spend money on drink, he should’ve sold that Mustang he was going around in. I saw him driving around with some woman.”
To get him back on track, I asked, “So, what exactly happened after you got Karl out the door?”
“Well, he didn’t leave. I didn’t want him driving drunk and killing nobody, so I went after him to say I could drive him wherever he was going. He was just setting on the porch swing yelling at me to bring him a beer. Said he didn’t need a ride, he’d walked from the marina and now he was thirsty.”
I felt like punching Karl myself, so I wasn’t surprised Jackson did. I asked, “You give him a drink?”
“Told him the hose was round the side of the house,” he said. “And he could drag his thirsty ass over and get it.” While I was laughing, he added, “That’s what made him turn on me.”
“That how you got the black eye?”
“No.” He was shaking his head, eyes blank again, like he was reliving it. “He, uh, he told me I should ask my mom about something. About the night they was at the Broke Spoke together.”
That was the local strip club.
“He said my mom got so drunk she crawled up on stage and showed her tits to half the men in town. And he said it wasn’t the first time most of them had seen them, neither. I just lost it. I popped him right in the face, dragged him off the porch swing and kicked him down the steps.”
I didn’t like the way this was going. I said, “Oh. Uh, you’re saying you hit him first?”
“Yeah. First, and second, and a couple more times after that.” He looked proud.
This was not what Mazie had said. I wondered if he’d told her that Karl had struck the first blow or if she’d embroidered that detail herself.
To avoid leading him, I asked, “Okay, so then what happened?”
“He hit me back. We fought until Mom came out, and then he ran off.”
“And then what’d you do?”
“I don’t know. Listened to music, probably.” He shrugged like the rest of that evening had totally slipped his mind.
“Okay. Uh, am I correct in thinking you went out again?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Not right away. A little later. I went… Look, is this confidenti
al?”
“Absolutely.”
“I went looking for him. I was going to have a come-to-Jesus with him, to warn him off. I went to the marina, but his boat was gone.”
“About what time was that, would you say?”
“I don’t know. Ten? I just kept walking after that. Down to the beach, because it’s relaxing, you know, the waves. And I slept on the beach. End of story.”
“Okay,” I said. “Well…” My crisis voice was back, slow and soothing. I doubted he’d slept on the beach. This time of year it was full of partying tourists and regularly patrolled by the boys in blue, so it didn’t seem likely. I shifted in my chair and leaned toward him, my forearms on the table. “Jackson, I want you to know you can tell me anything. I’m duty bound to keep your secrets. And the more you tell me, the better chance I have of helping straighten this out.”
He looked at his hands, shaking his head. “I didn’t kill him,” he said. “When can I go home?”
Judges didn’t normally grant bail to murder suspects. That had always made sense to me. But telling him was not easy.
He didn’t take it well. He swore, stood up, and tossed his chair over.
I didn’t blame him. I still hadn’t seen any evidence that he’d killed Karl, and to my mind, even if he had, it could well be manslaughter on account of the provocation. Maybe even involuntary manslaughter, depending on what went down. But the cops were calling it murder.
“After the bond hearing,” I said, “you do get another shot. Your lawyer can request a probable cause hearing, which would be ten days later. Then they get to cross-examine the lead detective, and if the judge thinks they don’t have probable cause for a murder charge, it’ll get knocked down to some lesser charge that the judge could grant bail on.”
“What’s the point? My mom can’t bail me out anyway.”
“Well, I’d still like to see the charge reduced.”
“Yeah? And I’d like a blow job and a trip to Disneyland, but I ain’t getting those anytime soon either.” He turned his back and crossed his arms. To the wall he said, “Even when he’s dead, my dad can’t stop ruining my life.”
I decided right then to step up where Karl had not. Somebody had to fight for this kid, not just at a bail hearing but all the way through trial. And an appeal, if that’s what it took.
I made a mental note to find out when they were taking him to court tomorrow and be there to offer my services.
Stepping up might cost me what little I had left, but I knew Noah would forgive me for that far sooner than he’d forgive me for leaving his friend at the mercy of the criminal injustice system.
I told Jackson that, and we shook on it.
When I left and got my phone back from the cops, I saw texts from Noah and Mazie looking for updates, and one from her saying she was driving Squatter back to my place. I answered, suggesting I bring pizza we could share while I told them the plan.
By the time Mazie left that night, I was exhausted but too revved up about Jackson’s case to sleep. Insomnia won. I flipped on the TV. The local news mentioned Jackson’s arrest and then moved on to the arson from a couple of weeks earlier: the ice cream shop on the beach had burned, and now a friend of the owners had started a GoFundMe for repairs. I stared at the ceiling wondering if maybe I should start a GoFundMe: Help impoverished local lawyer defend an unpopular murder suspect! The whole situation was so appalling that I started laughing.
The news moved on to the opioid crisis—someone in town had overdosed, the second in as many weeks—and finished on an upbeat note, with Henry Carrell in full campaign mode: holding a baby, attending church, striding across a construction site in pinstripes and a yellow hard hat. He’d always known how to win folks over. Even back in high school, he’d been class president. I fell asleep thinking I should’ve watched him and taken notes.
9
Friday, June 28, Afternoon
The beach was crowded, like it always was this time of year, but even so it was hard to beat the salt tang in the air and the long view. Mazie’s lunch shift was over, and she was on her way. I’d suggested a beach walk, thinking it might help clear her head. Jackson was still in jail, and whichever side you were on, it was always hard getting families to understand that criminal proceedings are marathons, not sprints.
I saw her parking and went around back of some tourists’ volleyball game to go meet her. I was still six or eight yards away when she slammed her door and yelled, “You found out yet when I can visit?”
“Hang on just a second,” I said. When I got up close, I reminded her that we needed to talk a little quieter. “We got to pull ourselves together,” I said. “For his sake.”
In a frantic whisper, she said, “Leland, I can’t stand this! They’re still saying he can’t see nobody but you until he’s through reception and evaluation, which the Lord only knows when that’ll be done. And even then, I still got to fill out some form and wait to get approved. My God, I am his mother.”
“C’mon,” I said. I took her elbow and led her onto the sand. Down the beach a ways, I could see the burned-out husk of the old ice cream shop. “Look at that,” I said. “Now if that ain’t a damn shame.”
“I don’t care about that old place,” she said. “I’d burn the whole town down to get him home.”
“Look, we’re in it for the long haul. You got to brace yourself for the fact that if he doesn’t get bail, he’s looking at six or even twelve months in jail, waiting for trial.”
“Oh God,” she said. She broke away from me and ran down to the water’s edge. To the unfurling waves, she yelled, “Lord, don’t do this! I can’t do this!”
When I caught up to her, I said, “You can do it, Mazie. You’ve got to, for Jackson. And listen. He’s been holding up pretty dang well, considering. I’ll be seeing him again shortly, so if you got a message to pass on, you just tell me.”
She didn’t look at me. Watching the waves come in, she said, “Leland, I am so grateful for everything you’re doing. But as a father you have to know that nothing is going to be right for me until he walks out of there a free man.”
“I do understand that,” I said. “Listen, you want a coffee? Or something to eat?”
“I ain’t hungry,” she said. “And besides, I got an interview up in Awendaw in a half hour. It’s a nicer place; the tips should be better. I need to work more. I need money so I can help him.”
“Well, best of luck with that,” I said.
I walked her back to her car, then got myself a hot dog and watched the seagulls fighting over scraps.
Then it was time to head over to the jail. I’d gotten some initial discovery from the solicitor’s office, and perhaps more importantly, I’d heard from Terri what the local cops were saying about the evidence against Jackson. His arrest report showed his conversation with the cops had been longer than the majestic “Fuck you” he’d mentioned when we spoke. The story he’d told them was consistent with what he’d told me, though—that he’d spent the night on the beach—so it didn’t worry me.
What did worry me was Terri’s intel. The word on the force was that Detective Blount had not only seen Jackson near the marina, he’d seen him carrying a crowbar and then trying to hide it when he spotted Blount’s truck. That seemed not just bad news for Jackson, but awfully specific, considering the autopsy report wasn’t due back for another few weeks. If Blount said he’d seen Jackson with a crowbar and then the autopsy came back saying Karl’s injuries were consistent with being hit by exactly that, we were going to have a problem.
I needed to get Jackson’s side of the story. And I wanted to drill down more into his sleeping-on-the-beach story. I’d been going to that beach since I was a kid, and I couldn’t think of a spot on it where a person could sleep without being in full view of anybody who was there—which was normally a lot of people this time of year. It also occurred to me I should check the tide tables for that night.
As I was resigning myself to the fact there were no
shaded parking spots near the jail, my phone rang. I was in the habit of answering whether I recognized the number or not, since you never knew where a tip or a new client was going to come from. This was neither. Aaron Ruiz was calling from the county solicitor’s office. As we said hi, I eased into a spot in the blazing sun and rolled up the window. Despite the lack of AC, I couldn’t risk letting some passerby overhear the conversation.
Ruiz said, “I’m just calling as a professional courtesy. I got the short straw on that murder case, so I guess you and I will be seeing a lot of each other, and I wanted to start out on a good foot.”
“Well, thanks,” I said. I could feel the sweat gathering on the back of my neck.
“You got a tough row to hoe,” he said. “And it’s way too early to talk about any kind of plea, but I did want you to know I favor them when it’s appropriate.”
“Good to know,” I said. “Thanks. But I’m actually confident in our case. And I know you got to do whatever case you get assigned to, but I don’t envy you.”
He chuckled. He knew what I meant. “Yeah, the tragedies are easier,” he said. “The pillars of the community, the innocent kids—if it keeps me up at night, it’ll keep the jury up too.”
“Exactly,” I said, wiping the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. “I imagine you been sleeping well.”
“Well, but a man is dead here.”
“And a kid’s in jail. A kid you can’t even place at the scene.” I was fishing to see what he had.
“About that kid,” he said. “He just your client, or is it Benton & Hearst we’re dealing with?”
“Oh, just me. I’m of counsel for Roy, but I maintain my own practice.” I liked the fact he’d pivoted to a different subject and his voice had stayed light. It was a good sign.
“Well, good for you,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it. “Good for you. I know you and the kid’s mom go way back, but still, it’s a lot of work for what they pay you.”
Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1) Page 6