by Gerry Spence
The landlady, naked and screaming, threw herself in front of Billy’s lifeless body to ward off Lilly’s continued assault. The landlady ducked another wide wild punch, and with Lilly at her heels, she ran up the stairs to her bedroom, slammed the door shut, and turned the lock as Lilly beat at its splintering wood with the brass vase. The landlady called the police from her bedroom phone.
Within a few minutes, two officers arrived with their guns drawn.
“You’d better be careful,” the landlady screeched to the officers through her bedroom door. “That bitch out there is crazy.”
When Lilly saw the officers with their guns, she turned back to face them, as if injected with a magical elixir of tranquillity. She donned a girlish pout and a hard-to-reject innocent face. “I’m glad you came,” she said to the lead officer. She was still panting. “I would have killed her, too,” she added, pointing to the landlady, who had just inched out of her bedroom.
The first officer ran down the stairs to the apartment. He found Billy bleeding and seemingly dead, but, discovering a weak pulse, he radioed for an ambulance. “What went on here?” the first officer asked the landlady.
“I was down there checking out a noise on the furnace. I thought the rattle I heard come from their bedroom. I come into the bedroom just as she come home, and her husband was in bed, and she thought something was going on.”
“You lying bitch!” Lilly jumped up to renew her attack. The younger cop shoved her back down into the chair. Lilly screamed, “You were in bed with him, and naked. Naked! I suppose you usually do your housecleaning naked, and I suppose you were vacuuming under the blankets.”
“I don’t give a good Wyomin’ damn who’s doin’ who,” the first officer said. “You can’t brain people with heavy objects for screwing.”
* * *
Prosecutor Haskins Sewell charged Lilly in the Juvenile Court with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, both felonies. At her court hearing, Lilly was accompanied by both of her parents and seemed solid, smiling, and sane. She profusely apologized to the lead officer.
Judge Murray turned to Lilly. “You almost killed your husband, and then you’d be here on a murder charge.”
“What would you do if you came home and found Betsy in bed with one of your neighbors?”
“I’m not here to answer your questions, young lady,” the judge said, as if she were a stranger. “Do you realize the seriousness of the charges?”
“Well, sometimes people have to hurt people,” Lilly said. The sound of innocence arguing such violence surprised the judge.
“Where, young lady, have you ever heard such things?” the judge asked.
“My daddy was in the war, and he shot a lot of people.” Jim Mortensen looked down at his work-roughed hands. “My daddy says that sometimes you have to stop people to protect the family.”
“Violence is against the rules in every civilized society, Mr. Mortensen,” Judge Murray said.
James P. Mortensen had served in the Second World War as a paratrooper in the Eighty-second Airborne and landed in Normandy on D-day, June 6, 1944. He was a sergeant and “the point man,” the soldier up front, leading his squad in battle. He spoke straight from a straight mouth. He was handsome in the way outdoor men with hard histories are handsome.
Finally, the judge said, “Mr. Mortensen, fathers have a powerful influence over their children. You obviously have had considerable influence over your daughter. Perhaps we have the wrong person in court here this morning.” The judge aimed a raised eyebrow at Mortensen.
“You can send me to jail,” Mortensen said. “I’ll take the blame.”
At last, prosecutor Sewell spoke up. He’d been sitting at counsel table, open amusement leaking onto his bony gray face. “Isn’t it pretty obvious, Your Honor, that we have very little to work with here? This is the second time this juvenile has been before this court. She comes from a home that shows little respect for the law. I should think it a grave mistake to send her back to the likes of Mr. Mortensen.”
Judge Murray did not know what to do. He had always cared deeply for this girl. What good would come from incarcerating her? What would he have done had he caught someone in bed with Betsy and a baseball bat had been handy? At times, he thought the natural law was more in tune with justice than those cold strictures in bloodless, loveless, soulless legal books. He slammed his law book closed.
“I’m ready to render my decision,” Judge Murray said. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but he heard his own voice clearly speaking the words. He turned to Lilly. “If I see you in here one more time, young lady, you can’t imagine how tough I can be. You’re a fine young woman with good parents who love you. But you have to control your temper and live by the rules of society. Those rules, for your information, do not include assaulting anyone who angers you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Lilly’s words sounded sincere.
“Is that your position as well, Mr. Mortensen?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
Then the family walked out together, Lilly holding on to her father’s arm and clutching her mother’s hand.
With his upper lip curled, Haskins Sewell spoke in a loud whisper that was clearly audible to the judge. “Today it’s assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest. Tomorrow it will be murder. Then who will be responsible? You will, Your Honor.”
The judge made no response, but at the judge’s chamber door, Sewell stopped and faced the judge. “Frankly, Your Honor, I’ve considered impeachment. Your decision was both biased and irresponsible.” He waited at the door.
“Do what you have to do,” the judge said. “Just get the hell out of my chambers.”
Sewell left the room, but in the silence that followed, the judge knew Sewell was right.
CHAPTER 9
NEARLY TWENTY-FIVE YEARS had passed since Lilly caught Billy Banister in bed with the landlady and had smashed in his head as his reward. Haskins Sewell had seen it all too clearly: Although she did not succeed in killing Billy, it wasn’t for lack of trying. Lilly was capable of extreme violence, and those murderous chickens had now come home to roost: Lilly just had been arrested for the murder of her husband, Horace Adams III.
When Officer Hollister led her to the jail’s padded cell, the only accommodation the county maintained to house a woman prisoner, he slammed the door. He slammed the door on all prisoners. The sound sent an authoritative message.
The following morning, the portly deputy in charge, Arthur Huffsmith, hitched up the pants of his blue police uniform, lumbered to the cell, unlocked it, and pulled the door open. Lillian threw her hands up to shield her eyes against the light. Huffsmith led her to the phone for her one permitted call. It was, of course, to Timothy Coker. Huffsmith then led her back to the dark padded cell.
* * *
When Coker arrived, Sewell was already addressing the judge. “As I predicted, Your Honor, we’re all gathered together here with your little family because Lillian has killed her husband.”
“You haven’t forgotten have you, Mr. Sewell, that at this point in the case you can petition to disqualify me?”
“No, I haven’t forgotten, and if I detect bias in your rulings, I will do just that.”
Yes, Sewell was setting him up for impeachment. The judge knew he had no business in the case—knew it to the marrow of his bones. He was biased in Lillian’s favor. He should recuse himself. But he could not abandon Lillian. Sewell would employ every dirty trick in the book to send her to the chair. The judge could not trust the young woman to Sewell’s untender mercies.
Sewell had him trapped. If the judge stayed on, he might very well be charged with a serious violation of the canons of ethics. But he had no choice. He was risking his judgeship, his reputation, perhaps his freedom, but he had to stay on. If Lillian were guilty, well, he’d face it.
Yes, face it.
And what about Sewell’s threat of impeachment? The judge had no doubt that at some
point the bastard would file charges against him.
Well, he’d face that when it came, too.
* * *
When the bond issues had been settled, the sheriff finally authorized Deputy Huffsmith to transfer Lillian to the sheriff’s office, where Coker was waiting. She stumbled by Coker, again blinded by the light of day after her long stay in total darkness. Huffsmith helped her into a chair in the corner of the room. A couple of deputies sat at their desks, laughing, paying no attention to them. Phones were ringing.
“You must have had a damn hard night,” Coker said to Lillian in a soft voice.
“It was totally dark in there,” she said.
When a door slammed, Lillian jumped.
“You’re all right,” Coker said, patting her shoulder. “I’ll take you home.”
He led her to his old Chevy, opened the passenger door, and helped her get settled. They drove in silence.
Her face was ashen. Her mascara was smeared under her eyes. She stared, unseeing, at her feet. Finally, she said in a faraway voice, “I want you to know the truth.”
“Don’t tell me anything right now,” Coker said. “Let’s just talk about you.” At his first meeting with a client charged with a serious crime, Coker refused to discuss the facts. If a false story were to be offered, it was the client’s decision, not his, and it would be the client’s story that dictated his defense.
But what if his client went to the death house because the truth failed to convince the jury? If a lawyer faithfully followed all the canons of ethics, the result, too often, was injustice. The judge could not live with that.
“If they send me to prison, who’ll take care of my daughter, Tina?” Lillian asked.
Coker remained silent.
“I could never send her to my folks. They’re old, and my father doesn’t know how to deal with children.”
“He dealt with you.”
“Not really. My father locked me in a closet once,” Lillian said. “I wouldn’t do my homework, and he thought being locked in a closet would make homework seem like fun, but I’m still afraid of the dark. I always sleep with a night-light on. And that jail cell … my God.” She began to shake. She spoke as if no one were present to hear her. “He always thought he was doing right. He loved me, but he didn’t know how to deal with children.”
“You want me to plead you insane?” Coker’s remark was only half-serious.
“Sometimes I think I am insane. One night the man you love is dead, and you see the blood.…” She couldn’t say the rest. “And you’re shocked and sick with grief, and before you can unravel it all, you’re charged with his murder. That … is insane.”
“Sewell couldn’t wait to charge you; he has his agenda,” Coker said.
“I despise that man.”
“You may be shocked to learn that Sewell’s feelings for you are identical.”
“Why? I’ve never done anything to him.”
“Well, for one, the judge cares about you, and Sewell hates anybody the judge cares about.”
“He’s supposed to protect our rights. He’s the prosecutor.”
“He’s been waiting a lotta years to get to you. He thinks the judge should have sent you to the reformatory when you were a teenager. He thinks you’ve bamboozled the judge. The man is short on compassion, vindictive as hell, and long on memory.” The car groaned as he shifted gears for the hill leading to the Adams family’s residence, an old log ranch house that Horace Adams had purchased and restored.
“I don’t cast spells.”
“We have something in common, Lillian. It hasn’t been especially uplifting to spend half of my adult life in court against the likes of Sewell. More than once, I’ve thought I’d like to kill the bastard.”
She looked blankly up the road.
What is this woman feeling? Coker asked himself. When some murderers emerged from their psychic holes, they felt guilt. Others were racked with fear. Pathological killers often felt neither shock nor remorse. Nothing. What did an accused feel who’d been wrongly charged with murder? Some felt terror, some felt outrage, some thrashed against drowning in a sea of helplessness, and some gave up, surrendered, as if delivering their lives to the prosecutor would appease the gods and would leave them a small vestige of their former lives.
He glanced over at his passenger. Her eyes were focused on her hands. Guilty or innocent, she was entitled to a fair trial. If she’d murdered her husband, Sewell’s legal burden was to prove her guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
But what if she was innocent and he lost? The loss would grind him to pieces and never let up. And Sewell would wear that smirk on his face, as the sheriff slapped the cuffs on her, and then Sewell would say to Coker, “I been waiting for this a long, long time,” and Lillian would look back at Coker with her “Why didn’t you save me when you knew I was innocent?” eyes.
And if she were guilty and the jury turned her loose? That was Sewell’s problem, not his. He liked to say that the system had to lose a case now and then to keep it honest.
Lillian, twisting her wedding ring, asked, “Can’t you stop him?”
“Only a jury can stop him,” Coker said.
“Can’t the judge stop him? The judge knows I’m innocent.”
“How would the judge know?”
“My God,” she blurted. “He knows I’m innocent. He’s known me since I was a child. He loves me. I shouldn’t be putting him through this.”
Then they were silent, and Coker’s car bounced over the rocky, rutted road.
“If it takes money…” Lillian finally said.
“Money won’t help except to pay my fee,” he said with an apologetic smile. “But if it’s any comfort, Sewell has hated me longer than he’s hated you.”
“Should I hire a lawyer he doesn’t hate?”
“That’s up to you,” he said.
“I can’t think. It’s like I can’t wake up from a nightmare. And my husband is dead?”
“Yes, Horace Adams the Third is dead.”
“I loved him, but I must not have loved him enough.” She looked into her hands again. Suddenly, she grabbed at her purse, opened it, and began scratching around in it. “Oh God,” she said. “I am going crazy. I’m looking for a cigarette, and I haven’t smoked for ten years. Do you have a cigarette?”
“Don’t smoke,” he said.
“Jesus, I need a smoke.”
She gathered herself. “I didn’t understand Horace,” she said. “Sometimes he was innocent as a child, and sometimes he had a childlike wisdom. He was brilliant at times, and he was one of the strongest, most self-reliant men I’ve known. I felt safe with him. But he was losing his memory, and it worried him, and the doctors said he was in the first stages of some sort of senile dementia. But he wasn’t old enough for that. Even then he was a comfort to me. I don’t know if I can go on without him.”
Coker pulled up in front of the old log house Lillian called home. A couple of long-eared black-and-white springer spaniels came bounding out and were scratching at the car door for attention.
“I think it took courage for Horace to do what he did,” she said. She turned from Coker, as if showing tears were bad manners. “Once he said, ‘I have to value each day. I don’t have too many left. And I want to spend them all with you.’ I tried to laugh it off. ‘Oh, come now, darling, you’ll outlive me,’ I said. And he just looked away.”
Coker patted her hand like a kindly father. “Let’s talk about the judge. Should Judge Murray sit on this case, knowing what he knows about you?”
Silence.
“I mean, you’re like a member of his family.”
“Yes,” she said, “the judge cares about me. And I’d hate to become an emotional burden to him. He doesn’t deserve that. If it hadn’t been for him and Betsy, Sewell would have sent me off to the girls’ reformatory, and I’d have come out as spoiled goods.”
“It’ll cause the judge a shitpot full of trouble if he stays on the case,” Coker
said.
“The Murrays taught me to appreciate who I could be,” Lillian said. “Betsy taught me to speak the English language correctly. She was always after me, saying I couldn’t get anywhere in the world if I sounded like a hillbilly.” Searching for more words, she finally said, “I’m very tired. I feel beaten up. I can’t even cry.”
She seemed not to hear the spaniel’s whining.
“Betsy always talked about ‘a worthy life.’ They don’t teach anything about ‘worthy lives’ in school,” she said.
Coker tried to imagine how she would have looked at the moment she’d been insane enough to kill. The vision wouldn’t crystalize.
“No one except Betsy ever told me about ‘a worthy life.’ Then I met Horace, and that’s all he wanted to talk about.”
She started to open the car door.
“I love Betsy Murray,” she said. “And the judge is like the father I don’t have. The judge and Betsy were proud of me. That made a difference. All my father knows is the killing he learned in the war, and that’s killing him and my mother, too.”
She opened the car door, stepped out, and gave an automatic acknowledging pat to the spaniels. “I’d invite you in, but I have to go. Tina will be crazy with worry. The poor child’s been at Sylvia Huntley’s place all night. She’s my best friend.” Lillian took several cautious steps toward the house.
“Fine painter, Sylvia,” Coker said, getting out. “I’ll see you to the door.”
“I never became the fine painter that Betsy hoped for,” Lillian said as they walked. “Sometimes my paintings scared me. I saw things that other people didn’t see.” She stopped and turned to face Coker. “Can we win?”
“You never know what a jury will do,” Coker said. “I don’t know what facts Sewell thinks he has—or that he’ll make up. He has an insatiable need to punish. He can’t decide whom he wants to hurt the most, the judge, you, or me. And he has the memory of a pissed-off elephant.”