Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1)

by Peter Kirkland

  As I walked to my car, I found myself thinking that Jackson’s hiding his jacket and lying about his whereabouts on the night Karl died might be encouraging signs, in a way. He may not have considered the consequences before committing arson, but even after what had to be a bad night’s sleep—a filthy bait shack could not have been restful—he’d had the sense to know he might get in trouble, so he’d done what he could to hide the evidence. Then he hid it some more by lying all summer about where he’d slept. If he’d told anyone where he’d really spent that night, the cops would’ve searched the place and found the jacket. And with no time of death for Karl, that would’ve just added an arson charge on top of the murder.

  With my lawyer hat on, I had to disapprove of hiding evidence. But in my father hat, looking at a teenage boy, I at least preferred some ability to anticipate consequences over a total disregard for them. It meant he had the capacity to steer back onto the straight and narrow. If I could get him out of jail, he might be able to make himself a pretty good life.

  On the way to Broad Street, my phone rang. It was a blocked number. As a prosecutor, I always took blocked calls; tipsters and witnesses sometimes liked to hide their tracks.

  “Hello, Leland Munroe speaking.”

  For a second, silence. Then a woman’s voice: “Mr. Munroe? This is—you saw me at the restaurant.”

  Kitty. Katie. “Yes, hello!” I said. I took her cue and didn’t say her name back. “Up in Charleston! Good to hear from you.”

  “I don’t want you in there again.”

  “I hear you. I was never going to make a scene or do anything to get you in trouble.”

  “It’s not about that. I just mean, Dunk warned me I wasn’t safe in Basking Rock, so you can forget about me coming back there, or seeing you, or ever getting up on any witness stand.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. Dunk had told her to leave? That was more than interesting. To keep the flow going, I reassured her, “Most of the witnesses I talk to never set foot in court. They just help me get a step or two closer to the truth.”

  “Okay.” I could hear her breathing. After a second, she said, “He wouldn’t want to see his boy spend his life in jail. And nothing I say can hurt him now. So it won’t matter to him if I tell you he was selling something—he used to say fencing, like, fencing stolen goods, but I never seen no goods. It’s not like he had TVs sitting around in boxes.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Well, that’s real good to know. I’m doing my best to get that boy out of jail, and that helps.”

  “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “He’s still in there? Don’t people get out on bail?”

  “They don’t usually grant bail for murder charges.”

  “But I can’t believe he even—I mean, I always thought he was a little scared of his daddy. I don’t mean in a bad way, maybe more just respectful. I mean, angry too, but that’s teenagers, ain’t it.”

  “It sure is.” I sighed. “Yeah, I don’t think he did it either. That’s why I’m his lawyer.” I got to Broad Street and swung around the block instead of parking. I wasn’t about to interrupt this conversation.

  “Well, I’m sure his daddy would appreciate that.”

  “I hope so. Hey, can I ask you, did you ever know his daddy to do heroin?”

  “Oh my goodness, no. I dated a user once. Never again.”

  “What I’m trying to figure out,” I said, going around another corner, “is why there was heroin on his boat. I don’t know if you heard, but they found some.”

  After a second, she said, “Well, like I said, he told me he was dealing in stolen goods. That’s what he called them, but I never saw anything, so them goods must’ve been small. Oh, and he was cocky about it, like he was getting something over on someone.”

  “Uh-huh. I hear what you’re saying.”

  “Oh,” she said. I heard something urgent in her voice. “I got to go,” she said, and hung up.

  I swore at my phone. Then I imagined my phone telling me I was an ingrate, because she’d already told me so much.

  I swung around another corner, parked, and got out. Broad Street was two blocks long and derelict. Three boarded-up stores stood in a row, with wild grass and weeds between them that reached past my knees. I went around behind, to the tumbledown shack. Most of the paint was gone, and the door was unlatched. I knew that didn’t mean I could legally go in. I also knew that I had to see the jacket myself before I could let anyone else know it existed. The last thing I needed was a pocket full of drugs, or a bloodstain, or no jacket at all, nothing to show Jackson had ever been there.

  I glanced around, then stepped inside. The smell of mold hit me, and something else, a filth that made me think of rats. It was dark. I switched on my phone light. There were a few pallets lying around, like Jackson had said. I didn’t see a jacket. There was an old trash can lid under one pallet, so I carefully lifted both items up.

  And there it was, a light-blue denim jacket. It had black burn marks on one arm, and all over it were little holes that mice might’ve chewed. I set the pallet and trash lid carefully against the wall and spread the jacket out. The pockets were empty—another sign of forethought on Jackson’s part, maybe—and aside from the burn marks, there was nothing else on it. Not a drop of anybody’s blood.

  I did not want this kid to spend another day in jail. I did not want to plead him down and see him stuck there for a year. He didn’t deserve it. He was telling the truth.

  30

  Thursday, November 21, Afternoon

  Thanksgiving was coming. I hoped the theme of the holiday, plus the prospect of enjoying a great spread at home with his kids, had put Ruiz in a charitable mood. I was driving over to talk with him. I’d told him today worked best for me, without explaining that the reason it worked best was that it was the only time he’d suggested when his boss wouldn’t be available. I wanted Ruiz’s candid take on the case, not what he felt comfortable saying in front of Ludlow.

  I parked near the coffee shop, got his latte and my regular, and walked over to his office. He said hi like I was a friend, thanked me for the drink, and said, “Want a cookie? My wife made them. They’re cinnamon, but those ones have powdered sugar too.”

  Two Tupperwares were sitting on his windowsill, about half-full of thick, diamond-shaped cookies. I took a brown one and sat down. He got a white one—or another white one, I supposed, since there were already specks of what looked like powdered sugar next to his keyboard.

  “Good timing,” he said, raising his coffee cup.

  I raised mine back. “And happy Thanksgiving.”

  We chatted a bit. His holiday plans, which included fourteen visiting relatives, chorizo in the stuffing, and a couple of dishes his wife was preparing from plants she’d grown in their yard, sounded like the Mex-American version of a Hallmark movie. Mine just sounded sad: Noah and me eating rotisserie chicken, with pie out of a box for dessert. I’d invited Mazie, but she’d already signed up for double shifts that day. She’d said, “It keeps my mind off things.”

  It didn’t make for a fun anecdote, so I moved on to business.

  “I’m not here with the silver bullet that breaks the whole case wide open,” I said. “But I want to give you a heads-up about where this is going and see what you think.” For a little suspense, I paused to sip my coffee. “Oh, and we got time of death narrowed down.” I told him about the photo and the Charleston wedding planner, who had relented and was willing to get on the stand.

  “Okay, hang on,” he said. He pulled open a drawer, got a legal pad, and started writing.

  I also mentioned the selfie of Jackson, but not the arson defense yet. I didn’t want to put the kid on the hook for a felony unless I was sure we would get something out of it.

  He finished scribbling and looked up.

  I set my cup on his desk and said, “That heroin on Karl’s boat got me thinking. Because, you know, the whole town knew Karl was a drunk, but I never heard word one about him using hard drugs or having dr
uggie friends. Drunks hang out with drunks, and he was no exception.”

  Ruiz was nodding. We were both immersed in the same small-town gossip. As long as we’d lived here, it had kept us informed as to who had what problems.

  “So I asked around,” I said. “I’ve got a lot of free time, as a consequence of starting out in my new line of work. I’ve talked to folks all over town, gone up to Charleston, dug through everything I could. And I keep hearing the same story: that Karl had started selling drugs.”

  “That how he managed to afford the Mustang?”

  “Yeah, exactly.” I was glad that hadn’t escaped his attention. “And that car has disappeared off the face of the earth. You know he paid cash for it?”

  Ruiz laughed and took a bite of his cookie. “These people, my God,” he said, shaking his head. “I mean, a bright red sports car that you can’t possibly afford. You know how hard my job would be if criminals were smart? If they even tried to be discreet?”

  I laughed. “I had a case five or six years ago where, I swear to you, when I had the victim on the stand and asked him if the man who’d robbed his store was in the courtroom—”

  He started cracking up. “No! Don’t tell me! Did the defendant—”

  “He raised his goddamn hand!”

  He shot backward in his chair, laughing so hard I could see his molars. When he sat straight up again, he said, “My God. It don’t happen often enough, but sometimes I love this job.”

  “Yeah, I’m with you on that.”

  He sighed, quieting down, and scribbled something on his legal pad. “Okay, so, Mustang bought in cash. You got a witness for that?”

  “Local business owner. We can get his records of the transaction too.”

  Ruiz took a sip of his coffee. “Okay. For the drug dealing, you got witnesses?”

  “One who I had to track down. Scared to testify. And another who will testify.” I meant Mazie and her story of Karl being suddenly flush with cash.

  “Okay, so…” He drew a line across his pad halfway down the page, wrote Mazie’s name above it, and something else below it. A note about my scared witness, most likely.

  “The other thing,” I said, “is that he was screwing somebody over. It seems he was stealing drugs from someone else—skimming off the top, maybe, and selling on the side.”

  He nodded and said, “There ain’t no shortage of crooks dumb enough to do things like that. They mostly end up shot. You got a witness for that?”

  “At this point, just my scared one.”

  He looked at his legal pad and sighed. “You got any idea who he might’ve been stealing from?”

  It was still just a guess, but I said, “You familiar with a Pete Dupree?”

  He gave a big nod with his eyebrows raised. “Nothing I can get into right now, but yes indeed. Let’s just say he is on our radar.” He took a sip of coffee. “But back to Karl, what you got to tie the two of them together?”

  “Well, that’s why I said this ain’t a silver bullet. Not yet, anyway.”

  He wrote Pete’s name under the line on his pad, then shook his head. “Okay, the thing is, I got no trouble believing Karl was dealing. And I can see him thinking he’s putting one over on a bigger dealer and getting himself killed. You ask me who from our high school might do something that stupid, and he’d for sure be on my list. But I got no evidence tying any of that to the night he died.” He looked at me. “I mean, up in Charleston, would you have dropped charges based on this? Or even reduced? When you got a witness placing your guy near the scene, with a motive and a weapon in hand?”

  He had me there, and he knew it, even if he didn’t enjoy it.

  “I mean, I hear you,” he said. “And with the dealing, and the photos and narrowing down the time of death, I can see how you got a much better chance of convincing the jury that there’s reasonable doubt. But if I put that on one side of the scale, and the state’s evidence on the other…”

  He shook his head, a little regretfully, I thought. I had the feeling if Jackson got convicted, this case might trouble him a long time. For whatever that was worth.

  “When I look at it that way,” he said, “and I don’t know any better way to look at it, I think we just got to let the jury do their job.”

  I’d arranged for Mazie and Terri to come to my office that evening, to prep Mazie for going on the witness stand, so I headed back there. I felt like things were so close with Ruiz. If I could get him any solid evidence, I’d have a shot at not putting the next thirty years of Jackson’s life in the hands of a dozen strangers. Jury selection was three weeks away.

  As I drove, out of desperation I called Garrett Cardozo, my drug-prosecutor friend in Charleston. It went to voicemail, and I left a sociable hello, plus a quick message that there were some local drug issues I’d like to speak about. I thought about calling Tony Rosa, thinking that heroin bust might’ve given him some intel that could help, but I’d never had his cell number.

  At the office, I sent Rosa an email and then started setting up Roy’s foyer like the courtroom. Tables for the prosecution and defense, a chair facing them to be the witness stand. When it was all set, I looked at my notes and psyched myself up to grill Mazie like I thought Ruiz might. A mother who had helpfully accompanied the cops to the police station when they were first investigating her son, without even asking them if she had to go with them at all, needed as much practice as she could get.

  A few minutes later they arrived, dressed for court, as I’d instructed them: Terri in her pantsuit and Mazie in her dress. After showing them the setup and getting them some water, I told Mazie, “Okay, from here on out, forgive me, but I’m not going to act like a good host. I’m going to try and make this as realistic as I can.”

  Mazie looked worried. Terri put her laptop on the table and sat up straight, just like in court.

  A good prosecutor wouldn’t start by asking Mazie about the night Karl died. Ruiz didn’t need her to establish that there’d been a fight; he had the neighbors for that. He’d start with Karl’s abuse, to establish motive.

  “Isn’t it true, Ms. Grant,” I said, “that Karl hardly ever paid child support?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “So you must have struggled a lot?”

  “I did the best I could,” she said. “We never went hungry.”

  “I’m sorry, could you answer the question?” I pushed her politely. Juries never liked to see you bully somebody’s nice mom, and Ruiz was no fool. “Didn’t Jackson see you struggling to get by, working double shifts as a waitress? Never able to spend the time with him that you wanted to?”

  She ducked her head down for a second like she might cry.

  “I’m sorry, could you answer?”

  “Yes. He did.”

  “And isn’t it true that when Jackson was fifteen, Karl beat him so bad he broke his arm? Put him in the hospital?”

  She started crying. I passed her some Kleenex and exchanged looks with Terri. Ruiz was going to have no trouble establishing motive. Watching this pretty mother weep as she remembered years of suffering and abuse would probably make some of the jurors want to kill Karl themselves.

  And I couldn’t tell her not to tell the truth, or not to cry. The jury had to see her as genuine from the get-go if I wanted them to believe what she said when it was my turn to ask the questions.

  Between sobs, she said, “Leland, this is all my fault.” She grabbed more Kleenex. “My son wouldn’t be in jail if I’d left Karl sooner, if I hadn’t let him come around—”

  Before I could answer, Terri said, “Mazie, you did the best you could. And better than a lot of women I’ve known who were in your shoes.”

  She blew her nose. “I wanted my son to have a father.”

  “Course you did,” Terri said. “All those boyfriends your mom had, and that stepdad, that’s not what you wanted for him.”

  Mazie looked at her and said, almost dreamily, “You remember that?”

  She nodded.
“Even Karl was better than that, wasn’t he.”

  After a long pause, during which she didn’t blink once, Mazie whispered, “Yeah.”

  “So you did better,” Terri said. “You got dealt a terrible hand, but you rose above that and did better by your son.”

  A light came on in Mazie’s eyes. Not a strong one, but a new one.

  What they were saying was news to me. All I recalled from high school was that Mazie and her stepdad at the time didn’t get along.

  “I’ve seen so many women,” Terri said, “dive into drink and drugs to forget things like what you’ve been through. I’ve seen women who love their children fall apart and lose them to the state. You never did that. You raised your boy up right, and you were strong.”

  Mazie had a look on her face that I’d never seen. It was like she was thinking, for the first time, that she might’ve accomplished something or might be worthwhile.

  “And you know your son is innocent,” Terri said. “You saw him walk out of your house in clean clothes, and you washed those same clothes yourself the next morning before your breakfast shift.”

  “Yes, I did,” Mazie said. Her chin was high. “He’d left his jacket somewhere, but he had on that same white T-shirt I gave him, and his light-colored jeans. I washed them on hot because there was not one drop of anything that could’ve been blood.”

  I’d seen mothers desperately begging a jury to believe their son was innocent. I’d seen mothers in denial claim that their son’s personality made him incapable of committing the crime. But I’d never seen one testify like Mazie. If she spoke like that on the witness stand, like God’s own truth was on her and she knew it from what she had seen, I thought that might give some jurors reasonable doubt all by itself.

  And it only took one juror to set Jackson free.

  31