Running Out of Road

by Daniel Friedman

  The rest of my search of the house was less productive. Chester had removed every sign of his habitation before he fled. And I still had no idea how to find him.

  TRANSCRIPT: AMERICAN JUSTICE

  CHESTER MARCH: I want to be clear, I didn’t kill that woman. I had, admittedly, been involved in a dispute with her over rent. I was past due to pay her, and I was living in her house. I needed my cousins to give me some money so I could cover my debt, but they were recalcitrant. She floated me for a couple of weeks, but then she started to get frustrated.

  When I was out of the house, she decided to rifle my things looking for money or valuables, so she climbed the stairs to try to search my room. Unfortunately, the reason she was renting out the second floor of her house in the first place was that she wasn’t getting around so well. She must have fallen on the way back down. And that’s how I found her when I returned to the house. Stone cold, crumpled on the floor at the bottom of the staircase.

  Surely you can understand my panic at finding her this way. Given my history with the local authorities, I was terrified to report the accident and so I decided to try to get rid of the body. I can admit that what I did was wrong. Desecration of a corpse is a crime. But it is not a crime that carries the death penalty, and it is not a crime I should have spent thirty-five years in solitary over.

  CARLOS WATKINS (NARRATION): I want to believe Chester when he tells me he’s innocent. I want to believe that the charming old man who tells me funny stories about things that happen in prison is really a victim of systemic abuses. But is he lying to me? And am I broadcasting his lies on the radio? After my encounter with William Schatz aired, a lot of you e-mailed to reiterate your support for this program and to tell me you thought that the way he treated me was racist and way out of line. But was he right about Chester? Am I being manipulated by a psychopath?

  I decided to talk to Professor Heffernan about my concerns.

  CARLOS WATKINS: Have you been listening to American Justice?

  ED HEFFERNAN: Yes, I heard all about your euphoric visit to Interstate Bar-B-Que in Memphis.

  WATKINS: (LAUGHTER) I’m sorry about that, Professor.

  HEFFERNAN: I forgive you, Carlos. That experience is part of my larger point, you see, that these unethical systems are so deeply embedded in our society that they’re almost unavoidable. You’re right that it’s hard not to eat barbecue in Memphis! Living by ethical principles is difficult, and systemic factors will constantly undermine your attempts to do so. But when you get back to Nashville, I can recommend some excellent vegan restaurants.

  WATKINS: I wanted to ask what you thought of my encounter with William Schatz.

  HEFFERNAN: That must have been a very difficult experience for you.

  WATKINS: But was he right? Is Chester lying to me?

  HEFFERNAN: There is an organization called the Innocence Project—actually an affiliated group of organizations called the Innocence Network—that works to exonerate the wrongfully convicted using new or overlooked forensic evidence. I admire their work and support their goal, but my project is a different one. We discussed this distinction when you first asked if you could cover my appeals on behalf of Chester March, and I believe you understand it, because I have heard you talk about it on American Justice.

  WATKINS: Right. This isn’t about what Chester did. It’s about what has been done to him.

  HEFFERNAN: It’s about what has been done to him and about the horrible thing that will be done to him if our appeals are unsuccessful. Chester is about to be murdered by the state of Tennessee. He is terrified, and he is desperate. Will a person in his predicament lie? Will they equivocate? Will they manipulate? Of course they will.

  I have no doubt that my clients often lie to me. They have been mistreated and abused their whole lives, and they don’t know how to trust or how to be trustworthy. The criminal defense lawyers who are trying to help them look and talk just like the prosecutors who are trying to put them away. They don’t feel safe. They aren’t safe. And so they try to defend themselves as best they can. And sometimes their defensiveness can seem incriminating or confusing or counterproductive because they don’t know how to act in these contexts. But they can’t help themselves, any more than you could help yourself at the barbecue restaurant, because they are operating within systems.

  The only lawyers who get to represent exclusively innocent clients are Ally McBeal and Daredevil. Those of us who practice in the real world know that being a criminal defense lawyer means standing on the side of people who may have done bad things. And people who may have done bad things need and deserve to be protected from the excesses of powerful and often brutal systems.

  It’s my view that the process that convicted Chester March was irreparably flawed and insufficient to resolve the question of his guilt or innocence. So when you air his claims and his narrative, that’s just his side of the story, and obviously those facts are disputed by Detective Schatz, and by Schatz’s grandson and by the state. And, at this late date, it is difficult or impossible to figure out which set of facts is true. But considering that Chester March was denied a fair trial, I don’t think airing his narrative is the wrong thing to do, even if his version of the facts is unconfirmed.

  But I do not need to know whether Chester March is innocent to know that he should not be killed by lethal injection. An eighty-year-old man shouldn’t be injected with drugs when we don’t understand how those drugs will interact with his physiology. Nobody should be given a lethal injection when we don’t know whether death from potassium poisoning is torturous. That’s what I’m fighting for.

  WATKINS (NARRATION): I agree with everything Heffernan said, but here’s what I find disquieting: William Schatz said that if I asked Heffernan whether he thought Chester was innocent, Heffernan would avoid giving me a straight answer by pivoting from the question of Chester’s guilt back to generalized objections to capital punishment.

  And that’s exactly what he did.

  21

  I checked local DMV records for a car fitting the description of the Chevrolet Impala that Clifton had described. There was no such car registered in Chester’s name in the state of Tennessee. I phoned in a request for records from San Francisco, to see if he had registered one in California. That was a pointless formality; it would take days at least, and probably weeks, for someone to get back to me with the license number, and by then, it would be too late to use any information they provided. If I didn’t catch him soon, he would leave town. And they’d only be able to give me a license number if Chester had registered the car in his own name in California. It was possible he’d bought the car from somebody and it still had that person’s plates on it.

  I could contact every person in Memphis who had registered a car matching the description Clifton had given me and find out if any of them might have sold a car to Chester, but, once again, doing that would take a lot of precious time, and the effort would only bear fruit if Chester had bought the car from someone local.

  Getting the license number would mean that the all-points bulletin would be more likely to flush him out, but every way I knew to try to find it was uncertain to do anything except occupy my time. I decided to hope somebody would spot the car without the plate number while I pursued other options. I had dispatch radio the APB out for a ’60s-vintage metallic blue two-door Chevy Impala, possibly with California plates. I didn’t have much faith that I’d catch him this way. There were too many blue Chevys for officers to pay attention to.

  The best lead I had was Chester’s relatives. Clifton said Chester mentioned visiting family. Chester had two first cousins, brothers named Forrest and Lee. Maybe they’d know how to find him. They operated a business concern in downtown Memphis called March Mercantile Partners. I called down there, and a secretary told me that Forrest March was available to speak with me.

  March Mercantile had a medium-size suite on a high floor of a downtown skyscraper, with views overlooking the river. Forrest March’
s secretary met me at the elevator. She was a pretty white girl in her mid-twenties. She told me her name, and I immediately forgot it.

  I took a look around the place. It seemed prosperous. I counted eight office doors around the perimeter of a central bullpen where a dozen secretaries and clerks were occupied doing what were, as far as I could tell, legitimate business activities.

  The secretary escorted me toward Forrest’s corner office and asked me if I needed coffee. I declined. She knocked on his door, and told him that a policeman had arrived. Without waiting for him to invite me in, I pushed past her.

  His space was large, and everything in it looked expensive. Two of the walls were floor-to-ceiling picture windows, a third was lined with bookshelves containing a full set of World Book encyclopedias that had never had their spines cracked but seemed to have been frequently dusted. The fourth wall contained a fireplace, which was a gratuitous thing to have in a centrally heated office. It was clearly a gas-burning fireplace with fake logs, since there was no chimney, but its mere presence communicated that this was a man who had accumulated so much wealth that he had run out of non-absurd things to spend it on.

  Forrest March was not a man to bother with pleasantries or formalities. He looked me over as if he was appraising me, and then he asked, “How much?”

  “I beg your pardon?” I replied. If Forrest March thought he could buy me, he’d better have been prepared to pay a hell of a lot more than it cost to put a fireplace in a thirtieth-floor office.

  He lit a cigar. I wanted one, too, but he didn’t offer to share. I stuffed two sticks of Juicy Fruit into my cheek, instead. “You’re here about my cousin Chester, right?” he said. “Well, what’s the damage? What will it take to make this go away?”

  “Sir, are you trying to bribe me?” I asked.

  His eyes narrowed. “Are you not a deputy from the sheriff’s office?”

  “I am a detective from the Memphis Police Department.”

  “And you’re looking to collect on a debt my cousin owes, or a judgment or something. I’ll square it for him, if it’s a reasonable amount. How much do you need?”

  I chewed my gum, and I took the measure of Forrest March. He was a few years younger than me, maybe late forties, with his hair combed back from his receding hairline and held in place with something that made it look wet. He was heavyset and jowly, but in a way that seemed formidable rather than sloppy. He wore a three-piece suit, expensively tailored. He had his jacket and his vest on, even though he was sitting at his desk, and I did not get the impression that he’d donned the garments for my benefit; rather, he struck me as the sort who would wear his jacket all day.

  I remembered Chester’s imperious, emotionless gaze. Forrest wasn’t as cool; he was sizing me up. Even though he was clearly making every effort to exude power, there was a nervousness to him. Chester had presented himself as a Southern dandy, and Forrest was presenting himself as a successful businessman, but in both cases, the appearance was affected. Forrest and Chester March were nothing but white Delta trash who had got their hands on some money and were putting on airs. The only difference was that Forrest was afraid of being exposed, and Chester wasn’t, because Chester was a psychopath.

  I decided to treat Forrest like the important man he wanted to be—at least at first. If I needed to scare him, I could let my mask drop and show him that I could see what he really was. And if push came to shove, I would show him what I really was.

  “I think you may have misunderstood me, sir,” I said. “I’m not here after money. I need to speak to Chester. Can you tell me where to find him?”

  Forrest tapped his cigar against the side of a large stone ashtray on his desk. His hand shook a little. He was nervous. “I’m sorry. He came in here a couple of weeks ago, telling me he needed money to pay his rent. I thought maybe you were here about that.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Not exactly. It’s just important that I find Chester and talk to him, so I can straighten things out.”

  “It was clear he was in trouble, but I didn’t know what kind of trouble he was in. He’s had a history with alcohol. Maybe with drugs. We thought it was gambling, or maybe a woman. I’m a charitable Christian, but giving a man the means to further indulge his vices is like giving him rope to hang himself with, so we turned him away. He inherited a lot of money from his father, and Lee and I have no idea what happened to that.”

  Either Forrest didn’t know where Chester was, or he didn’t want to tell me. Maybe he knew exactly who I was and what I’d done to his cousin. Maybe he didn’t know anything at all. I needed to figure him out before I decided if I needed to squeeze him. I slid into one of the heavy leather chairs opposite his desk. The chairs were big, and the desk was big, and the office was big. But this guy wasn’t big enough to be safe from me. “Why don’t you tell me what you know about Chester, and what he’s been up to,” I suggested.

  Forrest shrugged. “Not much to tell, really. We hadn’t seen him in years before he showed up a couple of months ago. His father was our father’s brother, but those two didn’t really get along. The family business in my grandfather’s day was growing cotton on our farmland and selling it to textile producers up North. My father and my uncle inherited the company, but they could never agree on how to run it. My uncle thought our fortune was tied to the land. We’d made our living from the Mississippi soil for generations, and he felt there was value in preserving that legacy. My old man didn’t want to be a farmer. To him, cotton was a commodity, and the money was to be made in shipping and selling the product, which we could import from India and China. Even after you factor in the cost of moving it across the ocean, their cotton is cheaper than ours, and the quality is indistinguishable. We haven’t been able to match their labor costs for the last hundred years, if you take my meaning.”

  “Yeah, I follow you,” I said. “You used to be allowed to own black people, and now you can’t anymore, and that’s been a challenge for your business.”

  He frowned. Apparently, he disapproved of my phrasing. “Not a challenge. A change. And an opportunity. Domestic cotton costs more than Chinese or Indian cotton, so there’s no reason to be in the business of producing domestic cotton, and no need for capital investment in land or machinery or an agricultural workforce. My uncle never saw things that way, though. He had a romantic attachment to the land, so he and my father eventually split the business. My uncle took the farmland, and my dad took over shipping and sales. They both prospered, I suppose, but they were glad to be rid of each other. Lee and I were boys when that happened, and we rarely saw that side of the family after the schism.”

  “And what about Chester?” I asked.

  “Well, that’s the point,” Forrest said. “He was on that side of the family, and we rarely saw him. He married a woman around 1950. Strong-willed, that one. She abandoned my cousin and ran off with another man. I think Chester took to drinking after she left. He was in a car accident, and he got hurt pretty bad. Lee and I would have gone to see him in the hospital, but our uncle had taken charge of the situation, and he made it clear that Chester didn’t want visitors. We didn’t think this was terribly unusual. Like I said, we hadn’t been close since we were kids. I didn’t even go to Chester’s wedding.”

  “Were you in Korea?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “You could get a deferment if you were a newlywed, so I got hitched to stay out of the draft.”

  “I see.”

  “Anyway, after Chester’s accident, his father sent him to someplace in the desert to recuperate and to dry out, and he stayed out West after that. When my uncle died, Chester sold off the agricultural properties, which Lee and I thought was a smart move. No future in farming cotton in Mississippi. I don’t know what he did with the proceeds of that sale or why he is broke now. Like I said, I am not close with my cousin. And the reason I’m telling you all this is to make it clear that the business Chester inherited hadn’t been connected to March Mercantile for decades, since
my father and my uncle split up their concern. This belongs to me and to my brother. Chester doesn’t own any of it, and neither Lee nor I nor this business entity in which Lee and I are partners bears responsibility for any of his liabilities. We can involve lawyers if we have to, but I hope you’ll take my word that there’s no money for you here, excepting any sums I may willingly give over in the spirit of Christian generosity.”

  I reached into my mouth with my thumb and forefinger, and pulled out my big, sticky wad of chewing gum. Then, while maintaining eye contact with Forrest March, I leaned forward so that the red leather upholstery of my chair squeaked beneath me, and I stuck the gum to the underside of his antique desk. “Mr. March, I am a police detective,” I said. “I am not looking for money. I am not collecting a debt. I need to find Chester and talk to him. All I need from you is any information you have pertaining to his whereabouts.” I leaned back in the chair, unwrapped two fresh sticks of Juicy Fruit, and began chewing them loudly, with my mouth open. I rolled the foil wrappers into little balls, and I threw them on the floor.

  “We didn’t give him the money he asked for,” Forrest said. “I don’t know where he is.”

  “How about Lee? Can I talk to him?”

  Forrest shook his head. “He’s not in the office. I haven’t seen him today. And if that concludes our business, I think you had better go.”