of the doubt if he tries to lie on the witness stand. I will not let him lie to protect Olivia. If I were on the jury, I’d be mulling over at least two possibilities. If Andy testifies under oath the affair is still going on, I’d be asking myself whether she is still screwing him because she still loves him, or she is manipulating him so he won’t turn on her. At least now, if I judge this correctly, the case will turn on Andy’s credibility and not Olivia’s.
Bristling with the dignity that only rejection can give a person, Yettie makes the kind of witness lawyers drool over in their sleep. She is wearing a beige knit suit that seems enameled upon her chocolate frame, and her strange, speckled yellow eyes seem to burn with the pleasure of the knowledge that at long last some chickens are coming home to roost. The men on the jury have to be wondering what in hell would possess a black man to kiss off this voluptuous and obviously passionate young woman for a milky bread stick like Olivia-unless, it was, of course, a fortune and a chance to get into a white woman’s pants. Tearfully, she acknowledges she was in love with Andy, and you can see the female jurors loving her for admitting it and loving her for eavesdropping outside his office. That son of a bitch, we’ll punish him if for nothing else than breaking this girl’s heart. Sure, she spied on him, but we wouldn’t have cared if she’d set up a hidden camera and microphone under their beds.
Yet despite the visual impact Yettie has on the jury-indeed on all of us except perhaps Andy her testimony re ally adds nothing, since Olivia has admitted at least part of it just minutes before. And she doesn’t say the one additional thing that could hurt Olivia (and by extension Andy), and that is her comment to me in her office that Olivia said on more than one occasion that she thought Pam would be better off dead. If she went to Jill with what she had overheard, why didn’t she volunteer this as well? Why didn’t Jill ask her what else she had heard Olivia say? Perhaps Yettie believes that those comments could have been made by anyone with a self-abusive child, and that it wouldn’t, after all is said and done, be fair to mention. I don’t know the answer, but now is not the time to find out. Unwilling to give Jill a second bite at this juicy plum, I say, “I have no questions of this witness. Your Honor.”
Jill has sandwiched Leon Robinson between Yettie and her other witnesses. As he struts to the witness stand, I feel my heart kick into overdrive. My tongue goes to my false tooth, on which I will be paying for the next six months. My body was sore for three days. If Leon has told Jill that his friends and I got acquainted that night in the parking lot, I haven’t heard it.
Judging by the way Leon is sashaying to the front of the courtroom, someone must have told him he is the star witness in this case. In his red cowboy shirt with its requisite whorls, buttoned-down pockets, and fancy stitching and new, starched Lee jeans that slide down over brown cowboy boots that gleam with a military spit shine, Leon, his pompadour waved even higher on his head than at the probably cause hearing, looks cocky instead of nervous. Surely, like Olivia, he must be pretending confidence he can’t be feeling. Unless Leon has had a vastly different life from most Arkansans, he hasn’t appeared before this many people since the night he graduated from high school.
Jill has him well rehearsed, however, and he testifies in an arresting country voice that for the first time has a little twang in it, like George Jones singing, “I stopped lovin’ her today.”
After reviewing his length of employment (three years, not a record, but unusual given the turnover at the Blackwell County HDC) and training, Jill asks him to describe what happened when Pam was electrocuted.
I follow his testimony in the transcript from the probable cause hearing. He repeats it almost verbatim.
“If Dr. Chapman had of jus’ told me how bad it was really gonna hurt, I’d of known to holt her a lot tighter,” he says earnestly.
“I didn’t want to hurt her by squeezin’ too hard. I liked Pam a lot.”
He gets through his testimony this time without tears, though, as last time, his voice becomes hoarse with emotion.
Jill has left me as little as possible. As I stand up to crossexamine him, Leon shoots me a look of pure hatred, which I interpret as fear. We are on my turf now.
“How much do you weigh, Leon?” I ask as if we are old friends comparing diets.
“About one-seventy,” he says, his voice sullen.
“How old are you?”
Not understanding where I’m going, he volunteers, “I’ll be twenty-five in October.”
“Would you say you’re in pretty good shape?”
Too macho to admit he doesn’t lift more than a pool stick and a can of beer when he finishes his shift, he says in his George Jones voice, “I’m all right.”
“Despite being a hundred-and-seventy-pound, twenty-four year old in good condition, you couldn’t hold on to Pam’s hands when she pulled away?”
Leon’s lower lip puffs out as if a bee had stung it.
“I said every way I know how,” he huffs, “I would have kept aholt of her if I had been told she was gonna kick like a mule.”
Leon’s whining cuts through the room like a power saw being revved up. I ask, “How long have you known Dr.
Chapman?”
He is wary now, but he has no choice about answering my questions.
“It hadn’t been a year, I guess.”
“Would you say you and he were friends?” I ask, turning as I finish to look back over my shoulder. In the courtroom I have noticed a couple of men whose knuckles look familiar.
Unable to restrain a dry chuckle, Leon looks into the audience.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“But you don’t have anything against him?”
No genius, Leon has started going on smell. He sniffs, “He don’ give me no trouble, an’ I don’t give him any.”
I am in no hurry.
“So you know of no reason why you wouldn’t try to do exactly what he said when it came to holding on to Pam.”
I can’t resist looking at Jill. She is on the edge of her seat and she knows something is coming.
“Have you ever heard of a group that has the reputation of hating African-Americans and goes by the name of the Trackers?”
Jill shoots out of her chair like a Roman candle. “I object, Your Honor. This isn’t relevant.”
Judge Tamower looks at Jill and then at me. I’d rather not have to telegraph it all to Leon, though right now the question is like a neon sign blinking on and off. “Of course it is. Your Honor,” I say.
“Every one of the jury answered this question This isn’t precisely true, but it’s close.
The judge, bless her liberal heart, helps me out.
“I’ll allow it. Answer the question, Mr. Robinson.”
Thinking he’s about to be trapped, Leon says nonchalantly, “Sure, I heard of it.”
I have been waiting to ask this question for weeks, and I don’t waste any time.
“Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Trackers, Leon?”
On her feet again, Jill says, “I object again. Your Honor!”
her voice anxious for the first time all day.
“I have no idea how Mr. Robinson is going to answer, but all Mr. Page is trying to accomplish is to prejudice this jury.”
“On the contrary. Your Honor,” I say, “if Mr. Robinson let go of Pam when she was shocked because he hates black people and he thought in a moment of anger she would attack Dr. Chapman, the jury, in deciding what my client’s own state of mind was, should be allowed to take this into ac count. ” Shaking her head angrily, Jill says, “That’s guilt by association, Your Honor. Just because Mr. Robinson may have been in some kind of club doesn’t prove he did anything.”
“The Trackers is not just some kind of club, Your Honor. It’s…”
Cutting me off. Judge Tamower says, “Sit down, Mr.
Page. You’re not testifying. Answer the question, Mr. Robinson
I plop down, trying not to look too relieved, thinking this entire case (unless Andy is lying) is about guilt by association.
Leon, righteously indignant, yelps, “I’ve never joined them or nothin’ like them.”
