“Women fall for that kind of guy every time.”
I have to laugh, knowing Dan’s views on the human condition.
The truth is, between Andy and Morris, I’d take Morris every time. Morris lives out of his experience; his brother lives out of his head. As a behaviorist, Andy ought to know better. I smile at Kim, but I don’t go over to her yet. I am going to catch enough grief from the other journalists present when this is over. I will keep my end of the bargain, but I never screwed up the nerve to ask Andy to honor my commitment to Kim. A black female deputy comes through a side door, stopping my heart. Is the jury back? As she comes over, Clan says, “I figure thirty years. You saved him from the chair at least.”
I try to swallow but can’t manage any spit. Was it that bad? I guess so. I can’t imagine how Andy will stand even a year in jail.
Her uniform still starched and crisp at five o’clock in the afternoon, the deputy reads my anxiety and shakes her head.
Coming over to the table, she says, “The judge says to tell you the jury reports it thinks it can reach a verdict tonight.
They don’t want to fool with it this weekend.”
Fool with it? My mind seized on these words. What does that mean? I stand up.
“Did the jury foreman say that?” I ask.
She makes a face.
“No, I did.”
Clan chuckles at me, “Down, boy. You did all you could.”
As she leaves, the deputy frowns as if to say, bullshit. She’s right. You never do enough, and the mistakes you make may be the difference in the verdict. For all I know, the jury resents the hell out of what I tried to do to Leon. Sure, he was a member of the Trackers, but so what? As Jill said, he loved that little girl. He wouldn’t have let go of her intentionally.
“Mr. Page has tried to smear a man to save his client. A cheap lawyer’s trick playing on the racial fears of the community.
Well, Blackwell County is bigger than that. Stunts like that don’t work here….” As Jill was saying this to the jury, I look over at Andy. His chair was as far away as he could get it and still be at the same table. It was cheap. Now I wish I hadn’t done it. Still, knowing myself as I do, I’d probably do it again.
At seven Rainey appears in the middle of the main door to the hallway and motions me over. In the hall, bearing gifts from McDonald’s, is Sarah. The two together somehow make me more nervous than I already am. Maybe it is that Kim Keogh is lurking about. They could all have a nice chat about me: My dad was ready to bail out as soon as he heard you might have cancer. Your dad’s got a prostate as hard as a walnut; by the way, did he tell you he screwed me on the first and only date? Did you know that besides being a jerk your dad’s a first-class demagogue with the race issue?
I wolf down the hamburger and fries so I will not have to say anything.
“I told Sarah,” Rainey says dryly, “you’d be too nervous to eat.”
Perhaps smelling food, Clan comes outside.
“Ah, the longsuffering women in your life,” he says to me, winking at Sarah.
“Have some of Dad’s trench fries, Mr. Bailey,” Sarah says, recognizing him by my description.
Clan bows, simultaneously digging his fingers into the sack, which has enough salt in it to preserve a herd of cattle, and says, “A woman after my own heart.”
I make the introductions, wondering what they must all be thinking. They’ve heard enough about each other. After I’m finished, I say, “All we need to round out this group is my rat burner.” This gets a laugh from everybody. Confidentiality is not my long suit either. Rainey gives me a wan smile as if to say that I’m hopeless. For some reason it occurs to me that if she has a mastectomy, I will never have seen both her breasts, but that won’t be anything new. For the few minutes we were in bed together, we were as innocent as newborn kittens.
“Where’s Dr. Chapman?” Sarah asks. She is wearing a rare outfit, a dress. Rainey’s advice, I suppose. I note approvingly that it conceals her lush figure. Usually her clothes are too tight.
“He’s waiting in the courtroom,” I say, knowing she’s curious.
“It’s not a real good time to meet him.” I am worried, actually, about what he might say.
Clan, who is rubbing the salt from his fingers onto his pants, cracks, “It may be her last chance.”
While Clan takes Sarah into the courtroom to point out (quietly, I hope) which one is Morris-she has seen Andy’s picture in the paper or on TV a half-dozen times, Rainey takes me aside and tells me she thinks she got Charlene on a bus headed west without anyone following her.
“She said to tell you that no matter what happens, she isn’t sorry.”
I nod, thinking I wouldn’t have been so brave. What was her reinforcement? It surely can’t be a two-day bus trip to California. Maybe just the knowledge she stood up to Leon.
In her own way, Charlene is probably as stubborn as Andy.
It is at this moment we are told the jury is coming back in. I have a premonition this is going to be worse than I expected. I hope to hell Morris won’t try to cancel his check.
We hurry back into the courtroom and I motion to Andy to come forward. Jill come hurrying in, followed by Kerr, and I see the look of expectation on her face. She knows it is not a question of “if” but how long. After the jury went back, she admitted she doesn’t expect the death penalty-just life without parole. Despite his principles, Andy would kill himself.
Who could blame him?
It is a piece of conventional wisdom that if members of the jury look at your client and smile on their way back in to the jury box then you’ve won. It was my experience at the Public Defender’s that juries almost never smile, no matter what they’ve done, until the verdict is announced. No one is smiling now. The two African- Americans, at opposite ends of the first row, seem particularly dour to me, and I prepare for the worst. Beside me, Andy stiff as a mannequin, speaks voluntarily to me for almost the first time all day.
“They don’t look happy, do they?”
I feel nauseous, as a wave of indigestion rumbles through my lower intestines. It is all I can do to nod in agreement.
Judge Tamower, who now at the end of a long day and a long week looks exhausted, pats down curls that already seem limp (so much for that perm). “Has the jury reached a ver dict?”
The foreman, a slenderly built accountant in his mid-forties with a rim of fat around his middle, says, “We have. Your Honor.”
I look back over my shoulder at Sarah and Rainey. Twisting her hair in anxiety, Sarah doesn’t see me, but Rainey nods, a look of sympathy crossing her face. Wednesday she faces her own verdict. I hope I am more help to her than I have been to Andy.
As Judge Tamower silently reads the verdict form handed to her by the bailiff, I steel myself not to react if they have come back with the death penalty. I have been here before, but that time the man standing beside me. Harry Potter, who killed two convenience-store clerks deserved to die and, in fact, his appeals exhausted, was executed last week.
“To the charge of capital felony murder,” Judge Tamower reads, her voice solemn, but not without a note of satisfaction, “not guilty.” I watch the air go out of Andy’s chest.
We have exhaled simultaneously.
“To the lesser included charge of second degree murder, not guilty,” the judge says quickly.
Involuntarily, Andy clears his throat, but I am not terribly surprised, since they didn’t come back with capital felony murder. It is the manslaughter charge I am now worried about.
“To the lesser included charge of manslaughter,” the judge I reads, looking up at the jury, “not guilty.” With this, the small contingent of African-Americans begin clapping, only to be silenced by Judge Tamower’s quick gavel.
My heart has begun to race. Is it possible the jury will acquit Andy entirely? Again impassive, Andy stares straight ahead, as if he has not heard a word the judge has said.
“To the charge of negligent homicide,” the judge says, and looks directly at Andy, “guilty.”
I look at Andy, who blinks rapidly, but the maximum is only a year in the county jail. He could be out in four months.
