“He registered it at my house,” she said, defensively. “That’s where it, like, lives.”
I nodded. “Uh-huh. Now, do you know why he did that?”
“To keep it away from his bitch ex. He owed a lot of back child support, and even though his boy was a legal adult by then, he thought she still might come after him for it. She’s not going to get it now, is she? He wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“Well, they were never married, so it certainly wouldn’t go to her automatically.”
“He would’ve wanted me to have it. He told me.” She looked like she might cry. “He wanted a lot of things for him and me.”
“Miss Ives,” I said, “I’m sure he did. But he was brought down before his time. Is there anyone you can think of that might’ve wanted to do that?”
“Yes. His ex. She called when he was at the Broke Spoke, two days before he died, and threatened him. She was screaming so loud I could hear it.”
“My goodness,” I said. “And do you recall what she was saying?”
“Just insults,” she said. “I heard a few when he held the phone away from his ear. The rest just all ran together.”
Driving home from Charleston, I wondered if what Kitty had said was true. By her own account she hadn’t heard any threats herself, so I figured Karl had told her that. It was hard to imagine Mazie having the energy or the time to harass Karl. She was already working two exhausting jobs at that point, but then again, exhaustion sometimes made people do crazy things. I made a mental note to check Karl’s cell phone records, once I got them from Ruiz, to see if Mazie had called him then.
At home, Noah was immersed in his video games. I took Squatter for a walk and then got down to prepping for Monday’s preliminary hearing. I knew we weren’t going to get the charges knocked down to manslaughter. This hearing was about nothing other than the evidence Ruiz had, and what he had pointed to murder: a violent beating, a kid with a grudge, a cop who said he’d seen him heading toward the scene with a weapon in his hand.
I was so absorbed in planning out my questions for Blount, and for everyone else I could think of who might be there, that I forgot to eat. Noah came out of his bedroom around nine o’clock, made his way to the kitchen, and put some water on to boil. He took a box of mac and cheese out of the cabinet and asked, “Want some?”
“Oh, sure. Thanks.”
He limped over, sat on the couch, and asked, “You gonna get him out tomorrow?”
I looked at him. He was only half joking.
“No,” I said. “They’ve got what they need to keep him in.”
“So what’s the point?” He sounded angry.
“Well, what I’m there for,” I said, “is to find out everything I can about the evidence they’ve got. I get to cross their witnesses. I get to lock down their testimony, so they can’t change it later to fit any new facts we might dig up.”
He thought about that for a second. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Whatever comes up that says Jackson didn’t do it or points to someone else.”
He closed his eyes and took a breath. “Dad,” he said, “I need to tell you something. But you got to promise not to get mad.”
“What is it?”
“I said you got to promise. If you flip out about this, I’ll just, I don’t know. I’ll leave. I’m not putting up with that.”
“I won’t get mad.”
He looked at me. Deciding whether he believed me, I thought. Then he pulled out his phone. “I’d bring this over,” he said, “but it’d be easier—”
I went to the couch and sat beside him. On his screen was a clumsy selfie—I could see part of his thumb over the lens—of him and Jackson laughing. Noah was holding a bong.
I took a deep breath. I was determined not to break the promise I’d just made. The sight of my kid doing drugs again, even pot, was straight-up terrifying given his history. And his mother’s.
I asked, “What’s the time stamp on that? And where was it?”
“Beachside Park,” he said, touching the photo to bring up the date. It said June 6, 10:48 p.m.
“What’s that on his shirt?” I asked. Jackson had on a white T-shirt with what looked like soot marks, as if he’d wiped his dirty hands off on it.
Noah sighed and looked down. “It’s from the, you know, the fire.”
“The ice cream stand?”
“Yeah. He smelled like smoke when he got to the park. You can’t see the beach from where we were, but I’d heard the sirens. He said he might’ve done something stupid, but he was smiling, like he was bragging.”
“You ask him what he meant?”
“Yeah, but he just shrugged it off. He did say something about practicing for Karl. He talked about those Viking funerals, you know, where they set a boat on fire and let it float away.”
“Funeral?” I asked. “He was talking about Karl and a funeral? Goddammit.”
“No, not like that. He’s into all this Viking metal—”
Something in my expression must’ve told him he was going to have to explain that. “It’s, like, heavy metal from Scandinavia. They sing about that kind of stuff, and he’s got a T-shirt with this flaming boat on it. That’s where he got the idea. He said he’d like to do that to Karl’s boat and then be there to see the look on Karl’s face when he found out.”
“Okay,” I said. “So just destroying Karl’s boat?” That would still be a crime, if he’d actually done it. But it wasn’t murder. “And the ice cream stand was practice?”
“I guess.”
I heard the water boiling in the kitchen. “You set here,” I said. “I’ll get it.” I went to dump the macaroni in. I didn’t have high hopes for what a jury would think of testimony that the defendant was talking about using the victim’s boat for a Viking funeral on the very night when, at some point in time that the coroner had not been able to narrow down, the victim died. Especially a jury around here, where one look at those T-shirts decorated with fire and skulls might set them worrying about Satan. I could see it now: Jury concludes local man killed in Satanic death ritual.
When I came back, Noah asked, “So, does that get him off?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I didn’t feel like sharing my view that such evidence might do more harm than good. “It doesn’t get him off tomorrow, anyway. The hearing’s all about their evidence, not Jackson’s defenses.”
“But, I mean, at some point,” he said, “they got to admit if he was setting a fire and smoking a bong, he wasn’t killing Karl.”
“Yeah, they might.”
“They might?”
I shrugged. “I’d have to present that evidence at trial. And that time stamp might be helpful, but we don’t know exactly when Karl was killed.”
“I got some texts too,” he said. “It’s not just that photo, for the time stamps. And his cell phone must know where he was when he texted me. But, Jesus, does he really have to rot in jail for—how far away is a trial?”
“Could be six-plus months, easily.”
“Oh, goddammit. I can’t believe an innocent person could be stuck in jail so long.” He let his head fall back against the couch. His eyes were closed.
I didn’t want to depress him by telling him how many innocent people ended up convicted. Or, for that matter, how much jail time Jackson might be looking at just for the arson.
I stirred the macaroni with a tablespoon, trying not to burn my fingers. Organizing the kitchen had not been my job when Elise was alive, and it was low on my list of priorities now.
From wherever she was, on some other plane or just inside my head, she nudged me. She wanted me to make sure he was okay.
I said, still stirring, “Now, I promised I wouldn’t get mad, and I’m keeping that promise. But I just want to know, how often are you using?”
He sat back up and glared at me. “I’m not using. That wasn’t even mine. Jackson brought it.”
He’d always been quick with an excuse. I
t was always someone else’s pills or some outside circumstance.
I rooted around the cabinets looking for a strainer. “Unless you want to end up like that boat,” I said, “drifting around St. Helena Island—or floating out to sea on fire, if Jackson had his way—there has to come a time when you take responsibility. No matter who brings stuff. Or what your friends want you to do.”
“I don’t just do what they want. You think he wanted me to tell you that?”
“I know he didn’t,” I said. “So, thank you. The more I know, the more I can do to help him.”
He let his head fall back on the couch again and said, “Whatever.”
16
Monday, July 29, Morning
Terri and I headed up the courthouse steps with Mazie between us, doing what we could to shield her from the local reporters and busybodies. Aaron Ruiz trotted past without so much as a hello. We caught up with him when he got stuck at the X-ray machine, unpacking his pockets and discussing the contents of his briefcase, but he only gave me a curt nod as he picked up his bag. I couldn’t think why he’d be out of sorts. Any prosecutor knew cases hardly ever got thrown out at this stage.
As I put my bag on the conveyor belt, Mazie gave a weak smile and attempted a joke. “Should I be worried about my parking tickets? I don’t want to walk out of here in handcuffs.”
I reassured her, and we went through. She’d insisted on coming, and I thought sitting through it would be good practice for her, for whenever the trial rolled around. I had warned her, though, that Jackson wasn’t going to be there; defendants didn’t normally come to these hearings, especially not when they were in jail and their transportation cost the state money.
Terri went into the courtroom to get situated at the defense table. Court reporters weren’t present at preliminary hearings, so she was going to be taking notes. The judge’s clerk was too—that was standard procedure—but I wanted a second set of ears, and one that knew what I was looking for.
In the hallway outside the courtroom, I took Mazie aside for a quick reminder. “You’re going to hear a lot of bad things about Jackson,” I said. “More than you’d ever hear at trial, since hearsay and whatnot are allowed at this type of hearing. So this is going to sound a lot worse than the real thing.”
She nodded, but it didn’t look like she was really listening.
“Leland,” she asked, so quietly I could barely hear, “are they going to make this a death penalty case? Do they want to kill my boy?”
“Oh, Mazie, no. Mazie, put that right out of your head. That’s for kidnappers and, you know, pedophiles and whatnot. For that, it’s got to be more than just a, uh, a regular murder.”
“Really?” She looked up at me, her pale eyes wide. “Even though Karl was his father? The Bible says it’s a sin not to honor your father and mother.”
“Well, that’s not the law,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
She took a deep breath and relaxed, but she still looked haunted. The dark circles under her eyes made me wonder how long it’d been since she’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
Ruiz made his case the way I expected him to, except for one thing: he had trial-worthy exhibits already prepared. Photos of Mazie’s shabby little house with clouds of bugs darkening the air behind it. Blown-up quotes from neighbors describing the worst things they saw or heard during the fight. A bird’s-eye view of the neighborhood, with blood-red arrows to show which way Karl must’ve gone back to the marina afterward. A map of the town to show that if Jackson was spotted on the street leading to the marina, there wasn’t anyplace else along that route for him to go.
Exhibits like that cost money and time. In Charleston, none of us ever prepared them this early. You didn’t need them to convince a judge you had probable cause, and it’d usually be wasted effort, since most cases got resolved with a plea before trial. I thought about Ruiz’s boss, who hadn’t authorized him to make a plea offer, and wondered what had that man so interested in this case.
Ruiz kicked off with a map on which Jackson’s mug shot was shown in various places around town, based on cell phone location data.
I stood up and objected. “Your Honor, we’ve had no showing on how reliable that data is or what it’s based on. If it’s just pinging one tower, for instance, instead of triangulating, it could be off by twenty miles.”
Judge Chambliss looked at me like I must be confused. “I’m not sure what you’re saying there, counsel. Just by way of example, I use my phone’s GPS to get directions when I’m driving, and it knows right where I am.”
Of course, I thought. He’s a small-town judge. He’s probably never tried a murder case, and in a lot of his cases, technology probably doesn’t even come up at all. I was going to need to explain more to him than I would to a judge in Charleston.
“Yes, Your Honor,” I said. “I know just what you mean. I use that myself. But that’s a different technology than what Mr. Ruiz is relying on here. GPS data comes from satellites, not cell phone towers. It’s a whole different thing.”
The judge looked at Ruiz. “Counsel, I know things are a little relaxed here, compared to at trial. But we got to have some standards. What type of data is this?”
“It’s cell-tower data, Your Honor. Triangulated, I believe, as Mr. Munroe indicated it ought to be. And it tracks just how you’d expect if Jackson went from his home down to the marina.”
“Your Honor,” I said, “even in Charleston, that kind of data was at best only accurate to within a few blocks, and there’s a lot more cell towers there than there are down here in Basking Rock. A few blocks here is the difference between the marina and the beach.”
“Okay,” he said. “Mr. Ruiz, unless you can trot an expert in here to show us why that’s reliable, I’m just going to consider that data neutral. So it doesn’t point one way or the other as far as telling us if he was or wasn’t there. What else you got for us, Mr. Ruiz?”
I said, “Thank you, Your Honor.” While Ruiz conferred with his second chair, I scribbled a note to myself to move to exclude that data at trial.
Ruiz then told the court he had some witnesses to present. The first was Karl’s brother Tim. Ruiz had apparently spruced him up; a suit would’ve been too much, but he was wearing a collared shirt that looked brand-new. He testified about the supposed Christmas dinner death threat. It looked like Ruiz was going to paint Jackson as a kid with a grudge and then use Detective Blount’s testimony to show Jackson had finally carried it out. Ruiz needed the grudge to help show it wasn’t manslaughter. A murder charge required malice aforethought.
When my turn came, I said, “Morning, Tim. You mind if I call you by your first name?”
He stared at me like he was noticing me for the first time and said, “I talked to you before!”
“Yessir. Uh, Your Honor, for the record, I spoke to the victim’s brothers as part of my investigation.”
Judge Chambliss said, “Uh-huh. Noted.”
Tim said, “I asked you about the insurance, and you never did get back to me.”
“I’m happy to address your concerns at a different time,” I said, “but for now, we got this whole courtroom full of people waiting to look into your brother’s death.”
“Jackson did it,” he said.
I heard Ruiz sigh.
Judge Chambliss said, “Mr. Warton, we’re not asking for your opinion on the ultimate issue here. I’m gonna ask you to just answer the questions put to you.”
If this was the Warton brother Ruiz chose to put on the stand, I thought, the other one must’ve been even harder to control.
“Okay,” I said, “so back to your name. There’s a number of Mr. Wartons in this case, so to keep things clear, could I just call you by your first name?”
“Everybody else does.”
“Thank you. Now, Tim, at this point I’m not questioning your recollection of what was said, but I do want to ask, was that the only time in your life you ever heard anybody say they wishe
d somebody was dead?”
He laughed. “Oh, hell no.” He glanced at the judge’s young clerk. “Sorry, ma’am. Heck no.”
I felt the mood in the courtroom lighten. I smiled as I said, “People say that a lot, ain’t that true?”
“Well, yeah. But—”
“And you’ve probably said it yourself, right?”
“Sure, but—”
“And did you then go out and murder anybody?”
“No, of course not.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Thank you, Tim. Now, getting back to that Christmas dinner, isn’t it true that Karl nearly died that night? From choking?”
“Yes, it is,” he said. “He turned blue and everything. I thought he was done for.”
“And isn’t it true that Jackson did the Heimlich maneuver on him?”
“The what?”
“The, uh, where you come up behind someone who’s choking and kind of punch them in the gut—”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, he did that.”
“So Jackson did the Heimlich maneuver to save his father. And did it work?”
“Yes, it did.”
“So isn’t it true, then, that—regardless of what he or anyone else may have said—Jackson, watching Karl about to die, chose to save his life?”
“Well, that one time, yes.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I have no further questions.”
As I walked back to my table, Ruiz would not meet my eye. In the front row, Mazie was smiling at me. I gave her a nod.
I sat down, wondering why Ruiz had put Tim on the stand. If he’d done any witness prep at all, I didn’t see how he could’ve not known the Heimlich maneuver story. Why would he put a witness up whose own testimony could blow a hole the size of a 747 in the prosecution’s allegation that Jackson wanted his father dead? I scribbled on my notes to call Tim to the stand myself if Ruiz didn’t put him on his trial witness list.
Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1) Page 11