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COURTROOMS ARE THE nation’s common denominator. They have the same feel wherever you go. North or South, rural or urban, it doesn’t matter. When you walk into a courtroom, you feel like something important is going to happen. It’s the one place where society seems to have a right to take itself seriously.
Not that they all look alike. This particular courtroom could be Findlay’s tribute to
Calvin is sitting at the defense table when I arrive, but he is not the focus of my attention. George Bush, Angelina Jolie, and Shaquille O’Neal could be dancing a naked hoedown on the table and I would barely notice, since in the far corner of the room, talking with three other people, is Laurie. She looks the same as always, which is disappointing. I had hoped she would have gained thirty pounds and had her face break out in pimples since I saw her on TV.
She doesn’t see me, so I pretend I don’t see her. I walk down toward Calvin, shake his hand, and try to get myself under control. He can tell something is going on. “You nervous?” he asks with some surprise.
I fake a laugh. “Yeah. I’ve never been in a courtroom before.”
He points toward the prosecution table. “That’s where the bad guys sit.”
I don’t want to look in Laurie’s direction, so I might as well make conversation. “Which one is the prosecutor?”
“Lester Chapman. He’s not here yet, the prick.”
“Let me guess… you don’t like him,” I say.
“He’s an okay lawyer, but he’s covered with about ten layers of bullcrap. He’s maybe five feet tall… without the bullcrap he’d be four foot three.” Calvin says this loud enough so that a woman at the prosecution table can clearly hear him, though she pretends not to.
He notices this as well, which prompts him to up the ante and the volume. He points to the woman. “That’s his assistant, Lila Mayberry. Word is that Lester and Lila are making sticky sheets. Course, I myself don’t believe it. I mean, look at her. Lila’s tall… she could eat watermelons off Lester’s head.”
At that moment a man who could only be Lester enters and walks to the prosecution table. Calvin was right: Lester is no more than five feet tall. “See what I mean?” Calvin says. “He spends his life looking up at the world.”
Lila takes Lester’s arm and talks softly to him, occasionally glancing at Calvin as she does so. My guess is, she is updating him on Calvin’s insulting monologue.
“Hello, Andy.”
I look up knowing exactly who I am going to see: Laurie. She has a smile on her face and her hand extended. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Hi,” I say, my crackling wit coming to the fore. I shake her hand, wishing mine weren’t already shaking on its own. “I just arrived last night.”
“Hello, Calvin,” she says, and he returns the hello.
“All rise,” says the bailiff, and Laurie quickly retreats from the table, lightly touching my arm as she does so. Calvin watches her go and then whispers to me, “I got a feeling there’s more going on here than meets the eye. You want to let me in on it?”
“No.”
Calvin is not the type to take “no” for an answer. “You’re here two days and you got something going on?” he asks. “I’ve been here since the Eisenhower administration and I can’t get arrested.”
“Calvin…” is my feeble attempt to get him to drop it.
He shakes his head in probably mock disgust. “You two-legged people really have it made.”
The bailiff, not privy to Calvin’s monologue, continues. “Findlay County Court is now in session, the Honorable Matthew Morrison presiding.”
Judge Morrison comes striding into the room and takes his seat at the bench. He is maybe sixty years old, a large imposing man who packs a good two hundred thirty pounds onto his six-foot-two-or three-inch frame. He could stand to lose ten or fifteen pounds, but not much more than that.
He instructs the bailiff to bring in the defendant, and moments later Jeremy Davidson is brought into the room and sits on Calvin’s left, while I’m on Calvin’s right. Jeremy is slightly shorter and thinner than his father, hardly the fearsome presence that one would think everyone is here to deal with. Calvin whispers an introduction, and Jeremy and I shake hands. His handshake is weak, and he is clearly petrified. It’s an appropriate feeling whether he is guilty or innocent; life as he knows it is over.
My initial reaction to Jeremy’s demeanor is to want to help him, though that reaction is more emotional than logical. Fear and worry in a defendant are not a sign of innocence; if he were guilty, he’d have just as much or even more reason to be afraid.
Judge Morrison then peers down at the assembled lawyers. When he looks at our table, he says, “I do believe there’s a face I don’t recognize.”
Calvin stands. “Andrew Carpenter, Your Honor. At this point he is a consultant to the defense.”
The judge nods, unimpressed. He must not watch a lot of cable TV. He then turns to Lester. “Talk to me,” he says, and Lester launches into a summation of the dire situation in which Jeremy Davidson finds himself.
Like courtrooms, arraignments are consistent everywhere. Nothing of real consequence ever happens, and no real news is made. Calvin does all the proper things: He has Jeremy plead not guilty and then asks for bail. The judge denies the request without a second thought, or even a first one. Bail in cases like this simply does not happen.
Judge Morrison asks Calvin if he plans to waive Jeremy’s right to a preliminary hearing, and Calvin says that he does not. That hearing will be to determine if the state has probable cause to try Jeremy for the murders. It is a very low threshold of proof for the prosecutor, and he will prevail, but it is still a smart move for Calvin to demand it. In the process he, or we if I take the case, will be able to get prosecution witnesses on the record, which will be helpful in cross-examination at the actual trial.
The preliminary hearing is set for ten days from now, and this session is adjourned. The courtroom quickly empties out, Laurie included. Calvin, Jeremy, and I move to an anteroom, with a guard planted outside the door in case the handcuffed Jeremy attempts an escape.
Jeremy looks shaken but comes right to the point. “My father says you’re the best.”
“He’s only repeating what he’s been told.”
“So you’re not the best?”
“Jeremy, I’m not here to talk about me. I’m here to talk about you.”
He sits back. “Okay… I’m sorry. What do you want to know?”
“When did you see Elizabeth and Sheryl last?”
He takes a deep breath. “I saw Liz the night she died. We met at the Crows Nest… it’s a bar out on Highway 57.”
“So it was a date?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No, she had already broken up with me. I got her to come out there just to… to ask her to come back.”
“But she said no?”
He nods. “She said no. She was only there maybe ten minutes. And I think her ex-boyfriend was waiting for her in the car.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I saw somebody in the driver’s seat, but it was pretty far away, and it was dark, so I couldn’t make out his face.”
“Could it have been Sheryl Hendricks?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I asked Liz straight out if this was about her old boyfriend. She said that in a way it was, but that there was more to it than that. Then she said they were running away; she seemed really upset.”
“What was the boyfriend’s name?”
“I don’t know. She never mentioned his name. She always told me that she was going to make decisions for herself and that their relationship was a thing of the past.” He shakes his head sadly. “And then I guess all of a
