magazine.”
“You then placed her under arrest?
“Yes, sir.”
“No further questions.”
Defense counsel stood. His hair was white, his shoulders slightly stooped, but his voice was strong and confident. “Detective Fletcher, you said that the sheriff’s department had been told that Mrs. Triplett was running a meth lab. Was it her ex-boyfriend that told y’all that?”
“I wasn’t the one who spoke to the informant, sir, so I don’t know.”
“You do know, do you not, that he was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia the day before you went out to Mrs. Triplett’s house?”
“Objection,” said the DA. “Irrelevant.”
“Sustained,” I said.
“What was Mrs. Triplett’s behavior when you stopped her car? Was she defiant? Uncooperative?”
“No, sir. She was very cooperative.”
“You said you went up there to search her house. Did you in fact carry out that search?”
“We did.”
“What did you find?”
“We found four one-gallon jugs of antifreeze and three cans of lantern fuel in the garage and two brand-new Igloo coolers in the trunk of her car.”
“Those are items you might find in any garage in Lafayette County. What about all the essential items that go into furnishing a meth lab, Detective? Did you find a case of over-the-counter cold remedies in the house?”
“No, sir.”
“Plastic tubing? Clear glass containers? Excessive amounts of drain cleaners? Coffee filters stained red?”
“No, sir.”
“In short, all you found were jugs of antifreeze my client bought for her car because it has a leaky radiator and lantern fuel she keeps on hand for when the power goes out. Is that correct?”
“And the two new coolers,” the detective said doggedly.
We’re all educated these days on what it takes to cook up a batch of methamphetamine, and this woman might well have planned to start her own kitchen lab, a serious problem out here in these hills; but if she’d been at it before, the house would have smelled like the worst litterbox in the world and fumes would have so permeated curtains, carpets, and furniture that air fresheners and window fans would barely dent it. The point was moot though since Mrs. Triplett had not been charged with making meth. She was charged with concealing a weapon.
“Is it not a fact, Detective Fletcher, that when you first stopped Mrs. Triplett and looked through the open window, you actually saw her gun on the seat beside her in plain sight?”
“No, sir.”
“Didn’t the so-called concealment occur when she tried to extract her driver’s license from her pocketbook and inadvertently covered the gun with her pocketbook at that point?”
“No, sir. It was over the gun and the gun was pushed down in the crack of the seat so that only the edge of the handle was visible when I lifted the purse.”
“Sheriff Horton, two other officers of your department and an SBI agent were standing in Mrs. Triplett’s yard. Is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were any of them with you at the car when you found the gun?”
“Sheriff Horton came over when he saw her step out of the car, but I had already found the gun by the time he got there.”
“So none of your colleagues can corroborate your story?”
“No, sir, not really.”
“When did you officially place my client under arrest? As soon as you found the gun or after you
“Objection,” said the DA. “Irrelevant.”
“Overruled,” I said. “The witness will answer.”
“My colleagues were still searching the premises,” he said, which was probably technically truthful.
“And just for the record, was Mrs. Triplett’s gun properly registered and licensed?”
“Yessir.”
“No further questions.”
When Mrs. Triplett took the stand, she naturally testified to the same scenario her attorney had laid out: the gun was in plain view on the seat of the car until she unwittingly covered it with her pocketbook. “I never tried to hide it and I told him soon as he asked that I had it.” She looked up at me. “It’s a real rough neighborhood up there, ma’am. That’s why I keep my gun close at hand, right there beside me where anybody can see it and know I’m not
