by Gerry Spence
CHAPTER 15
“I FED YOUR birds,” Betsy said as the judge opened the cabin door. She was setting the kitchen table for dinner. He shook the snow from his mackinaw and tossed it on the bench. He was greeted by an inviting smell of something toasting in the oven. The old dog, Horatio, named after Hamlet’s most trusted friend, came waggling up for his pat on the head and the judge’s scratching under the old dog’s collar. “I fed your dog, too,” she said.
She opened the oven door and pulled out the roast beef, his favorite. She wore her hair in long gray braids, like a Shoshone Indian woman, and sometimes she hung a beaded breastplate from her neck, one with the red Shoshone rose on a white-beaded background. “How did it go today up in your crazy house?” Same question she always asked. But her worried face exposed a woman asking for an answer she didn’t want to hear. She waited.
No answer.
“I should go to the trial,” she said. “But it’s like the doctor operating on your child. You should be there, but not in the operating room.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “And if I know you, about the time Sewell said anything against Lillian, you’d be all over him like a herd of cats on a sick rat, and I’d have to send my own wife to jail, and that’d give Sewell grounds to disqualify me. Then what?”
“Everybody thinks Lillian killed her husband,” Betsy said, pouring his coffee. “Judy Roberts told me she knows Haskins Sewell, and she says he’s an honest, churchgoing Christian man. And he wouldn’t charge Lillian if she wasn’t guilty.”
“He’d charge Jesus Christ if he thought it would get him an advantage,” the judge said.
“Judy Roberts told me she was called for jury duty.”
He tried to remember: Had Judy Roberts gotten on the jury while he was on one of his excursions?
“Did Judy Roberts get on the jury?” Betsy asked.
He didn’t answer, took a sip of his coffee, and hoped she wouldn’t ask again.
Concern captured her face, but she didn’t press him.
Then he heard himself saying, “Time changes people.”
“Not Lillian,” Betsy said. “Not in the important ways. Did time change us?”
“I suppose,” he said.
“No,” she said. “Time didn’t change us. I still feel the same about you. It’s not so crazy, but I still feel it,” she said.
“Have you ever thought of murdering someone?” the judge asked.
“Don’t be silly—except when you come home all silent and sullen because things went crazy in your crazy house.” She served the roast beef with its steaming gravy over the potatoes and carrots. “Judy Roberts says that everyone knows how violent Lillian Adams can be. I told her she didn’t know what she was talking about. I felt like shooting her. I probably would have if I’d had a gun.”
“We all have a little violence in us,” he said.
“We’re a civilized people, not savages still in the jungle. And Lillian has always been one of the best and the brightest.”
“Bright people commit murder.”
“You surely don’t think she’s guilty, do you?”
He didn’t answer.
She walked over to the judge and stooped down, her face up close to his face.
“You surely don’t believe she’s guilty, do you?” she asked again.
“Of course not.”
“I’ve seen inside that girl. We talked on our field trips. Nature has a way of opening doors to deep places in a person. You always said that yourself. She never cared about money. She had enough of her own.”
The judge nodded again.
“Can you save her?”
“Yes,” he said, but he looked away. He was supposed to be God in his courtroom. Surely God could save her.
He didn’t feel like even a demigod. He felt tired and powerless. Often the decisions a judge was required to make came hard. The law was hard—hard to discover, hidden as it was in the tomes of endless cases written by other judges, who wore their political ambitions under their robes. And the law, once discovered, was even often harder to apply.
He was alone. He had no one with whom to share his feelings, nor to discuss his damnable conflicts—not even Betsy. And she needed a strong man—one she could respect. What would she think if he came home and confessed, “Honey, I’m not what you think I am. I’m just a scared old man with extraordinary responsibility, and I’m not qualified to make the decisions I’m required to make”? Almighty God, the ultimate judge, must be very lonely, he thought.
Why couldn’t he leave Lillian’s fate to the jury? That was another cruel fiction sold to the people—about the collective wisdom of juries, and how they protected the people’s rights. The judge decided what evidence the jurors would hear. The judge decided what law would govern the case. The judge decided how he’d display his feelings toward the lawyers and the witnesses and thereby influenced the jurors. Claiming that a jury actually decided the outcome of a case was like arguing that schoolchildren ran the school. They occupied their seats in the classroom and followed the instructions of their teacher and recited what they were taught. Somehow, as powerless as he felt, he would find a way to use his power.
“Sewell knows Lillian’s not guilty,” Betsy said. “He’s the one committing the crime. And he wants your job.” She slammed the oven door shut. “He’s the one who ought to be shot. In the head.”
CHAPTER 16
“CALL YOUR NEXT witness, Mr. Prosecutor,” the judge ordered Haskins Sewell.
Momentarily, Dr. Roger Norton entered the courtroom. Norton’s gait was straight and steady, and he was absorbed in the business at hand. He brought to mind a banker attending a bothersome foreclosure. He lived in Idaho Falls. Absent a qualified pathologist in the county, he’d been appointed by the Teton County commissioners as the county coroner. He was a small man with stiff, squared shoulders, which gave the appearance of having been framed out by a careful carpenter. His hair, in a military-style crew cut, was graying at the temples. His flat belly reflected one who cared little for the most common pleasures.
The coroner raised his small white hand to be sworn. “Let me see the hands of a man,” the judge liked to say, “and often his soul will be revealed.” Yes, the coroner’s are hands that cut up dead bodies, the judge thought, soft, antiseptic, the nails trimmed to the quick. Then he examined his own wrinkle-laden hands covered with complicated blue veins.
Sewell had met with the coroner the night before in Sewell’s office. “Let’s go over your testimony one more time,” Sewell said. “Let’s make sure that Coker doesn’t cross you up again like he did the last time, when he got you to admit that the corpse could have been dead thirty-six hours, which made the defendant’s alibi stand up.”
“I only know what I know,” Dr. Norton had said in his lean way.
“And Coker always wants to play the ‘possibilities game,’ so remember, anything is possible. Tell Coker when he gets into his possibilities bullshit that it’s possible a herd of giraffes will come stampeding down Main Street today—that’s possible, but not probable.”
Once settled in the witness chair, Dr. Norton crossed his legs and slightly pulled up his left pant leg to release the pressure at the knee. He signaled to the prosecutor with a slight nod of his head that he was ready. Sewell’s first questions summarized Norton’s education and qualifications. Then without a change in pace or sound, Sewell said, “Tell the jurors how you became involved in this case.”
“I was summoned to the death scene by the sheriff and found Horace Adams the Third slumped over his desk, the top of which was covered with blood,” Norton replied. “Whatever items that had been on the desk at the time of death, Deputy Arthur Huffsmith had already gathered. He was appointed as custodian of the evidence by the sheriff. In short, the deceased suffered a bullet hole in his forehead, through and through.”
“Did you examine the body at the scene?” Sewell asked.
“No,” Dr. Norton replied. “I didn’t make a full
examination of the body until my autopsy at the mortuary. It was there that I first closely observed the entry wound.”
“What do you mean, ‘entry wound,’ Doctor?”
“I mean the murderer’s bullet entered the front—in the forehead.”
“Objection!” Coker hollered. “Objection!”
Judge Murray leaned over the bench toward Coker. “What is the problem, counsel? And please quiet down. You’re scaring the rats out of the basement.”
Laughter in the courtroom.
Coker glared at Sewell. “You ask what is the problem? This man”—he gestured toward the coroner—“has just told the jury this was murder, when it was suicide!”
“Your objection is sustained,” the judge ruled.
“That’s not enough, Your Honor.” Coker pointed his finger at Dr. Norton. “This same man has just jumped into the jury box with his prejudicial answer. He and the prosecutor probably planned it that way. I move for a mistrial.”
“I don’t see my witness in the jury box,” Sewell said. He shaded his eyes like a captain searching the horizon.
Another rumble of laughter rose from the audience.
Judge Murray hit his gavel. “Enough of this. I instruct the jury that this witness’s talk of murder was improper and invades the province of the jury.” He nodded at Sewell. “Proceed.”
“That’s not enough.” Coker was again addressing the judge. “This man”—he was still pointing at Dr. Norton—“has intentionally poisoned this jury. He’s a pathologist. He commands respect—”
“That’s because he tells the truth,” Sewell said, interrupting him.
“No, that’s because he shines his shoes and wears a clean white shirt to court; we call him ‘Doctor’ and Teton County pays his exorbitant fees. And, he says what Mr. Sewell has him primed to say.”
“I object to those gratuitous comments,” Sewell said, striding toward the bench.
“I object to your objections,” Coker replied.
“Do you gentlemen know what I’m seeing?” The judge looked out across the courtroom into the unseen distance.
“I couldn’t guess,” Sewell said.
“I seem to remember a small padded cell that’s waiting for lawyers who can’t abide by the rules of civility.”
Sewell shrugged his shoulders, as if the judge’s words prompted no meaning. He turned back to Dr. Norton. “So tell the jury what you observed at the scene.”
“I saw blood all over the tabletop and—”
“That’s redundant. We know there was blood there,” Coker objected.
“Sustained,” the judge ruled.
“How large an area did the blood cover?”
“Approximately two and a half square feet.”
“What did you observe with respect to the blood?”
“From the dim light of the chandelier, it was difficult for me to come to any conclusions at first glance.”
“By observing the blood, could you conclude how long Mr. Adams had been dead?”
“I can only say it was turning dry on the edges, where it had begun to coagulate. I couldn’t see the entry wound at that moment because the deceased was facedown, but I could see where the bullet exited the back of the head.”
“I object to all of this mention of blood again,” Coker said, pounding the air as if to strike Sewell, who stood more than fifteen feet to his left.
“May we proceed with as little blood as possible?” Judge Murray asked.
“Did you observe anything else?” Sewell asked.
“Yes, there was a wide smear of blood on the floor behind the desk.”
“On the floor? On the floor?”
“Yes, on the floor.”
“What do you make of that, Dr. Norton?”
“That calls for a conclusion,” Coker objected. “He’s trying to put his witness back in the jury box again.”
The judge was silent. How far should he enter into this brawl? His continuous ruling in favor of Coker made him uncomfortable. By forcing Coker to object, and after that to object again and again, Sewell was leading the jury to conclude that Coker was trying to hide something from them. But if Sewell had an honest case of murder, why would he be resorting to cheap tricks?
“Your objection is sustained, Mr. Coker,” the judge said.
Sewell turned back to Dr. Norton. “Did you perform an autopsy on this gentleman?”
“Yes.”
“Would you take us through the autopsy, please.”
“We don’t need to go through the autopsy,” Coker said, immersed in exasperation. “We admit the deceased died as a result of that head wound. This is the prosecutor’s continuous attempt to fill this courtroom with more blood and gore.”
“I am not responsible for the blood and gore,” Sewell snapped back, casting an accusing look at Lillian Adams.
“I’ll hear a question or two to see where you’re going with this,” the judge said.
“Tell us how you examined the brain,” Sewell asked.
“Well, using a bone saw, I cut the skull—”
Lillian let out a soft, high whine of deep agony.
“Just a minute,” Coker said. “It’s one thing to be charged with murder and yet another to endure a description of the mutilation performed on a loved one’s body by this coroner. This is a continued and obvious effort to further prejudice this jury.”
Sewell responded, “I want the jury to understand the care with which the coroner’s examination was made, to remove any doubt as to the authenticity of his opinions.”
“We have no quarrel with his opinion as to the cause of death,” Coker said.
Sewell turned to his witness. “Doctor, were there any other injuries observed other than the bullet hole through the brain?”
“None.”
“Any source of bleeding other than from the head wound?”
“No.”
“Do you have an opinion, based on reasonable medical certainty, as to whether the head wound you observed caused instantaneous death?”
“Death was instantaneous.”
“Well then, do you have an opinion as to how the deceased got from the floor to the chair?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And what is that opinion?”
“Objection!” It was Coker again. But before the judge could rule, the coroner burst out with it, “The body was moved by a person or persons unknown after he was shot and killed.”
Coker was charging to the bench.
“We will stand in recess until nine in the morning,” Judge Murray said.
CHAPTER 17
THE JUDGE CLOMPED into their cabin like an old horse weary in the harness. When he flopped into his chair, Horatio came sidling up for his pat on the head. The smell of fresh corn bread and chili filled the cabin. The judge liked to quip that Betsy’s chili gave him the strength of ten men, and she knew he needed the strength of ten to save Lillian, yes, and them, as well.
“Coker is getting his ass whipped,” the judge said. The moment he said it, he realized his thoughtless words would reopen Betsy’s wounds.
She pretended not to hear him. She ladled the chili into the bowls and topped it with crumbled bacon and shredded cheddar cheese.
“Eat this,” she said, joining him with a small bowl of her own. “You’ve always said that no one could beat you after eating my chili.” She tried to harness her fear.
He took another bite and looked away. “Don’t worry. It’s going to be all right,” the judge said.
Yes, he thought, Sewell had the jury wrapped up in a case dripping with blood—Horace Adams III with a hole through his head—and now it looked like he’d been dragged and put in the chair after he was shot.
“You have to stop Sewell,” Betsy said. “You know he makes up his cases.” She passed him the corn bread.
“Don’t worry. I’m still the judge.”
Absently, he buttered his corn bread. “Sewell will never get Lillian. Never. Trust me.” He’d never lied
to Betsy. But at times, small lies were gifts of kindness.
He ate without tasting. Silence set in. He knew he’d lost control of the lawyers. He had no power over the system. He felt like a warrior without a weapon. Suddenly, he got up, the chili half gone. “Have to let old Horatio out for a run.”
That night, restful sleep was stolen from the judge by the ghouls in his dreams. He saw the laughing faces of those sitting on the jury. He admonished them, but they continued to laugh. He threatened them with contempt, but they jeered at him, and some called him an old fool. He summoned the clerk, the man who never laughed. “What is all this insane laughter?” the judge asked his clerk, but the clerk didn’t answer. He only laughed.
From a distance, he heard the clerk muttering, “Life has no meaning.” How strange, the judge thought, that the clerk should make such a statement as if he’d been immersed in the literature of Kafka. As far as the judge knew the clerk had never read anything.
When the judge wakened in the morning, he was exhausted and confused. He was uncertain about what was real and what had been his nightmares. He stumbled out of bed, and it wasn’t until he’d brushed his teeth and examined his face in the mirror that he was able to put the nightmares aside and begin preparing for the day.
“Have you ever dreamed that people were laughing at you?” he asked Betsy as he sipped at his first cup of coffee.
“No. You’re probably worried that people are laughing at you because you had one of those spells. Don’t worry,” she reassured him. “We are all entitled to an occasional detour in our lives.”
“A detour,” she called it. Nobody would think his spell had been just a detour. He ate an extra egg for breakfast. Protein could help fight against those low blood sugar forays. But he hadn’t had any sugar on the day of his spell. Maybe it had been the bread in his sandwich.
When he entered the courtroom after his breakfast, he nodded good morning to the attorneys, the reporter, and the clerk, and after the jurors were seated, he furnished them with his practiced judicial smile. He turned to the clerk. “Where were we, Mr. Clerk, when we adjourned last evening?”