Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1)

by Peter Kirkland

  I all but skidded into his office. He was leaning against his desk, ready to go, with a fat manila envelope in his hand. We nodded hello.

  “Thanks much,” I said, taking it. “I appreciate it.”

  He patted his pockets, checking he had everything. “Sorry I got to run,” he said. “My boy’s got a baseball game.”

  “Well, best of luck to him.”

  We were parked on opposite sides of the building, so we didn’t go out together. I was walking down the courthouse steps when I ran into Henry Carrell.

  “Oh, hey,” I said, wishing I weren’t sweating like a pig from my mad dash to Ruiz.

  “Leland! Good to see you! I was hoping you’d be at the fundraiser last week.”

  “Wish I could’ve made it,” I said. “I’m parked up this way, so—”

  “Oh, me too.” He was so tall I had to work to keep pace with him. “So, I got a pancake breakfast on Sunday, if you want to put in an appearance. Not a fundraiser, just a little social thing. There’s some people I think it’d be good for you to know.”

  “Well, thank you.” He sounded like he genuinely wanted to help me, though I wasn’t sure why. “Where’s it going to be?”

  “At church, of course. Victory Baptist.” We stopped at the corner, waiting on traffic.

  “Oh,” I said. “Sunday morning. Of course.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d set foot in a church. “Thanks much. I’ll come by.”

  He clapped me on the shoulder, smiling, and said, “It’ll be good to see you getting involved around here.” The light changed. As we headed across, he looked around like he was about to say something confidential, then added, more quietly, “You don’t need to keep such a low profile, Leland. Feeling ashamed is only natural, but you just don’t need to. Not many of us here know what went down in Charleston, and those of us that do aren’t judging you for it. That ain’t Christian. We’re all sinners.”

  I stepped up the next curb and kept going. “Thanks, Henry,” I said, wondering what the hell he knew and how he knew it. “That means a lot to me.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” he said. “This is my car.” He bleeped his keys at the Mercedes. “See you Sunday morning. Nine a.m.”

  I gave him a nod and walked back to my car. This wasn’t the time to worry about what he’d said. The envelope with the coroner’s report was heavy in my hand. I needed to find out how Karl Warton had died.

  14

  Friday, July 26, Evening

  At home, I waited until Noah went to play video games in his room before taking a look at the coroner’s report.

  I winced at the photos, but that wasn’t the worst part.

  I had to call Terri.

  “It’s not good,” I told her. I was in the kitchen, looking for chips or chocolate or something to distract me. “Let’s put it this way: I knew we were going to lose at the preliminary hearing. They have probable cause. But I didn’t know we were going to lose this bad.”

  “What’s it say?”

  I cracked open a Coke and went to the table. “Well, if I were prosecuting this, here’s what I’d say: ‘Shortly after the night Karl died, a police detective gave a statement about what he’d seen on the night of the murder. He said he saw Jackson walking toward the marina with a crowbar in his hand.’ And I’d let that sink in.” I looked out the window at the twilight sky, at nothing.

  “Okay…”

  “And then I’d say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when that officer spoke, he hadn’t seen the coroner’s report. It wasn’t done yet. But fully six weeks later, when it finally was done, it said the victim’s injuries were consistent with being beaten with a crowbar.’”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Yeah. And that’s not all of it. It was pretty violent. The coroner said there were so many blows he couldn’t count them.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh no. There goes manslaughter.”

  “Most likely, yeah. Hang on.” I went through the basement door and pulled it shut behind me to make sure Noah wouldn’t hear even if he stopped blowing away cartoon soldiers on his screen. “It’s hard to tell a jury my poor abused child of a client didn’t mean to kill his dad when he whacked him in the head three dozen times with a crowbar. Or however many.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “And for another complication,” I said, “they couldn’t narrow down a time of death.”

  “Had he eaten?”

  “Yeah, but they don’t know when, so knowing that the food in his stomach had been digesting for however many hours didn’t help pin down what time he died.”

  She sighed. “Any drugs? Alcohol?”

  “Just alcohol. But that can keep fermenting after death, and the samples weren’t great because of the decomposition, so they can’t say for sure how drunk he was.”

  I heard her moving around. I could tell she was thinking something through.

  On a hunch, I asked, “You find out anything on Blount?”

  “Not yet.” She paused. “But, okay. I’m wondering about this crowbar sighting. I mean, I spent eight years out on patrol. I’ve seen about every damn thing a person can have in their pocket or their hand. I’ve thought cell phones were guns. I once thought a bulge in some guy’s pocket might be drugs and it turned out to be, I swear as the Lord is my witness, a chipmunk.”

  I almost spat out my Coke. “A what? Was it alive?”

  “No!” She was laughing. So was I. “What kind of fool d’you think I am? Those critters never stop moving. If it’d been moving, I wouldn’t have thought it was drugs, would I.”

  “It’s good working with you, Terri,” I said. I was leaning against the stairway wall with my eyes closed. When a case was doomed, or when the facts were more horrifying than usual, a colleague who could crack a joke made it easier.

  “So keep working,” she said. “You see where I’m going with this? I want to know how Blount was so sure he saw a crowbar. I mean, that’s real specific.” I heard her clicking away at her keyboard.

  “Oh,” I said, getting it. “It’s nighttime, he’s driving, presumably at a normal speed. He passes some kid…”

  “And what’s a crowbar look like? I mean, from that distance, it could be a stick, a shadow...” The keyboard clicking stopped. “Okay, Leland, I just looked at the sunset times and weather that day. Depending exactly what time Blount says he saw him, it was either nautical twilight or astronomical twilight. Which is basically straight-up nighttime. Can you get away right now?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  “It’s nautical twilight for another half hour,” she said. “Then astronomical. And there’s no moon, same as on that night.”

  “I’ve got a crowbar in the basement,” I said. “I’ll see you there.”

  The last bit of road down to the marina still looked rural. When I’d left for college it was barely even paved, but when Henry Carrell’s charter company took off, they’d spiffed it up and added palmettos down either side. When I turned onto it and spotted Terri’s Jeep parked a hundred yards down, I saw it still didn’t have sidewalks. Part of it was lined with oaks that cast dark shadows from the few streetlights nearby. I’d have to ask Blount where exactly he’d seen whoever he saw.

  I parked, and we got out. While Terri’s dog trotted off to do his business, she leaned over her hood and messed with something. When she stood up, I saw she’d attached a little camera to her windshield wiper. “Well,” she said, looking down toward the marina with her hands on her hips, “we got about a quarter mile to cover. This could take a while.”

  It took almost an hour. I walked, holding the crowbar, while she drove past, filming. Sometimes I turned my head to see her Jeep pass; sometimes I didn’t. I walked out in the open and under oaks. After every shot, we’d confer through the passenger window about what she’d seen and what to try next.

  Afterward we swung by the McDonald’s drive-through off the highway before heading back to my house to look at her footage on my laptop. Her camera’s three-inch scree
n was too small to get a sense of what Blount could’ve seen.

  We sat at my kitchen table, divided a burger between our two dogs, and ate dinner while watching my shadowy figure walk past some palmettos. Terri had a pocket notebook in front of her, and she checked it after we watched each clip.

  “That camera’s good in low light,” she explained, “but I took notes in case my eyes were better.”

  We were deep at it, hashing our theories out while the dogs napped at our feet, when I heard Noah limping across the living room. When he saw us he looked surprised—and a little embarrassed, probably because he was dressed for bed in boxer shorts and an Anthrax T-shirt.

  I hit pause on the video and said, “Oh, Noah, this is Terri Washington. She’s the private investigator I hired for Jackson’s case.”

  “Evening, ma’am. I’m sorry; I should’ve got dressed. I heard voices but figured it was Jackson’s mom.”

  “Evening,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “For the record,” I told Terri, “Mazie doesn’t hang out here at midnight.”

  Noah said, “No, I just meant, who else do you ever see?” He went to the cabinet, steadying himself on the counter, and pulled out a box of cereal.

  I could tell Terri was trying hard not to laugh. She looked at me and whispered, “Harsh!”

  Noah dumped some cereal in a bowl and said, “What’s that you’re watching?”

  I said, “Oh, we went and reenacted something from the night Karl was killed. Just wanted to check what a witness could’ve seen at that time of night.”

  He looked—there wasn’t another word for it—scared. “There’s a witness?”

  “I’ll know more on Monday,” I said. “At the preliminary hearing I get to cross whoever they put on, so I’ll know a whole lot more about their evidence after that. But yeah, there is.”

  In disbelief, he said, “Someone who says he did it?”

  “No, as best I know they’ve got nobody saying they saw the actual crime.”

  He was looking past me, at the laptop screen. “Somebody saw him on the road there?” he asked.

  “I’ll see what exactly the witness says tomorrow.”

  He looked at the counter, shaking his head. It hadn’t really hit him before, I guessed, that his friend might not get out of this.

  When he’d taken his cereal back to his room, Terri said, “He’s taking it pretty hard, isn’t he.”

  I nodded. “All his friends back in Charleston left for college. Now they’re back after freshman year, but he ain’t seen them because he feels like they don’t have much in common anymore. Jackson’s pretty much all he’s got.”

  “That’s rough.”

  We got back to work. After watching it all, it seemed pretty clear that with so few streetlights and so many trees, there were only two spots on the road where Blount could’ve gotten a good enough look to identify both the crowbar and Jackson. Both of them would’ve required Jackson to look toward the car as it passed, but that seemed like a natural enough thing for a person walking down a road at night to do. Even so, Blount still wouldn’t have seen much unless he was going under twenty-five miles an hour.

  Terri said, “I guess you know what to ask Blount on Monday.”

  “Yeah. Thank you.”

  Her dog, asleep under the table, gave a muffled bark. She reached down to scratch him and said, “I’ll see if I can get Kitty’s cell number for you tomorrow. Meanwhile, it’s past time for me and Buster to get on home. He’s going to wake me up at six for a walk.”

  “Oh, man,” I said. “I’m glad my dog’s too old for that.”

  “I thought a puppy would make me feel young again,” she said. “Lesson learned.”

  I walked them to the door and stood on the porch until they were safely in her Jeep.

  15

  Sunday, July 28, Morning

  In the basement of Victory Baptist Church, I found myself standing in a prayer circle holding hands with true-believing local business leaders. The pancake breakfast had come with a side of ministry. Henry Carrell was opposite me, his eyes closed, listening closely to the preacher’s words. Two men down from him, with his eyes shut tight too, was Pat Ludlow. He ran the local solicitor’s office. As Ruiz’s boss, he had the last word on what crimes to charge Jackson with. I was starting to see the point of getting out in the community.

  “Oh Lord,” the preacher said, “we know that we are sinners. We turn from our sins again today.”

  “Yes, Jesus,” Henry said.

  My spirit did not move. I was distracted by Ludlow’s hair. It had a fluffy, blow-dried look that I associated less with prosecutors than with high-end car salesmen.

  “Take control, Lord,” said the preacher. “Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be.”

  “Please, Lord!” Henry looked up, his eyes still closed, his face contorted. He looked sincerely in pain. I knew you never could tell what was in a person’s heart, but it still surprised me. He had more money than any man needed, a marriage that by all accounts was solid, and three kids who all seemed to be doing well.

  Afterward, as I was walking to my car, I wondered if he’d invited me to Victory Baptist so I’d see him in that state. Was he just showing me he’d gotten right with the Lord? Or trying to tell me something else?

  It was a little strange to go from there to a meeting with a strip club waitress. Terri had come through with a cell number for Kitty, who’d agreed to talk to me as long as it happened somewhere else. Not Basking Rock, because Dunk—or anyone else who knew her from the Broke Spoke—might see her. Not where she lived, a few miles down the coast, because that town was even smaller and more gossipy than Basking Rock. We settled on a Starbucks in downtown Charleston. On a summer Sunday, I thought, only tourists would be around.

  I got there early so I could find a good corner seat. The place was half-full and loud with chatter, the hiss of milk steamers, and coffee being ground. I spotted Kitty as soon as she walked in: a big-haired brunette, skinny legs, stonewashed jeans.

  The first thing she said after hello was, “I want you to know right up-front that I was working at the Broke Spoke the night Karl died. There must’ve been sixty people there, and they got security cameras. So if there’s—I mean, I know you’re trying to keep that kid out of jail—but if this starts getting weird, I’ll just leave. Okay?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Ma’am, I am not looking at you that way at all. And you are free to go at any time. Matter of fact, that’s why I suggested we both drive, so you could do that.”

  Her hackles went down a bit.

  “Now, what can I get you?” I asked.

  When I came back with my coffee and her diet Frappuccino, her jittery nerves had a new outlet: she was folding a napkin into tiny pleats.

  “So, what I wanted to talk with you about,” I said, “was just some background on Karl. How well you knew him, if you knew of anybody he might’ve been in conflict with. That kind of thing.”

  She stopped folding and thought for a second. “I don’t know when exactly we got talking. Last summer? It was at the Broke Spoke. He used to drink with this trucker, Pete something. He was a good tipper. I just talked to him every time he came in. He figured out what section was mine and always sat there.” From her smile, it was a bittersweet memory.

  “And how’d you two end up getting together?”

  “I don’t normally date customers,” she said. “I just—in a place like that, you see how men are.” She shook her head, looking at nothing in the middle distance, like she’d seen about all she ever wanted to. Then she tossed her hair and continued, “But he was always talking about his kid. Like, he was proud when he graduated from high school, because Karl hadn’t. So I thought he was a good guy.”

  Something in her tone made me ask, “Thought? Do you still think so?”

  She glanced at me with a flash of anger. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Nobody deserves to die like that. You woul
dn’t do that to a rabid dog.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I said. I took a sip of my coffee to give her anger time to pass. When it had, I tried a different subject. “That other guy you mentioned, Pete? You know much about him? Any idea how well he knew Karl?”

  She shrugged. “They were drinking buddies. They shot the shit, you know. ’Scuse me.”

  I nodded to let her know that language was fine with me. “He from Basking Rock?”

  “No. I don’t know where, but he was a trucker. You know how it’s set up: families stopping at the truck stop to eat would never see the strip club, but if you go back by the truckers’ showers, there’s a door. It takes you across this little alley and you’re at the back door of the Broke Spoke.”

  I nodded like I knew. I didn’t. I’d never set foot in either place.

  “If you remember his name,” I said, “I’d like to look him up. Just, you know, cover all the bases.”

  She looked at me like she was trying to figure me out, and said, “Did that boy really not do it?”

  “Uh, ma’am, no, I don’t think he did.”

  “Wow,” she said. “I mean, everybody’s saying he did.”

  “I’ve heard the gossip,” I said.

  “Wow.”

  “Oh,” I said, “speaking of gossip, I’m real sorry to bother you about this, but is it true you’ve still got Karl’s Mustang?”

  She looked at the door. I thought she might bolt.

  “You’re not in trouble,” I said. “I’m just trying to figure things out.”

  She stirred her Frappuccino and look a long sip through the straw. I thought if she had wings, she would’ve hopped up like a sparrow to perch on the crown molding and dart out the door as soon as it opened.

  “If I tell you,” she said, “do I get immunity? Or something?”

  “Ma’am, I’m not trying to get you in trouble at all. Quite honestly, you could tell me you sold it for scrap, and I wouldn’t call the cops. I’d even put a good word in for you if anybody did get upset. I just want to understand what’s what.”