“At this point, just my scared one.”
He looked at his legal pad and sighed. “You got any idea who he might’ve been stealing from?”
It was still just a guess, but I said, “You familiar with a Pete Dupree?”
He gave a big nod with his eyebrows raised. “Nothing I can get into right now, but yes indeed. Let’s just say he is on our radar.” He took a sip of coffee. “But back to Karl, what you got to tie the two of them together?”
“Well, that’s why I said this ain’t a silver bullet. Not yet, anyway.”
He wrote Pete’s name under the line on his pad, then shook his head. “Okay, the thing is, I got no trouble believing Karl was dealing. And I can see him thinking he’s putting one over on a bigger dealer and getting himself killed. You ask me who from our high school might do something that stupid, and he’d for sure be on my list. But I got no evidence tying any of that to the night he died.” He looked at me. “I mean, up in Charleston, would you have dropped charges based on this? Or even reduced? When you got a witness placing your guy near the scene, with a motive and a weapon in hand?”
He had me there, and he knew it, even if he didn’t enjoy it.
“I mean, I hear you,” he said. “And with the dealing, and the photos and narrowing down the time of death, I can see how you got a much better chance of convincing the jury that there’s reasonable doubt. But if I put that on one side of the scale, and the state’s evidence on the other…”
He shook his head, a little regretfully, I thought. I had the feeling if Jackson got convicted, this case might trouble him a long time. For whatever that was worth.
“When I look at it that way,” he said, “and I don’t know any better way to look at it, I think we just got to let the jury do their job.”
I’d arranged for Mazie and Terri to come to my office that evening, to prep Mazie for going on the witness stand, so I headed back there. I felt like things were so close with Ruiz. If I could get him any solid evidence, I’d have a shot at not putting the next thirty years of Jackson’s life in the hands of a dozen strangers. Jury selection was three weeks away.
As I drove, out of desperation I called Garrett Cardozo, my drug-prosecutor friend in Charleston. It went to voicemail, and I left a sociable hello, plus a quick message that there were some local drug issues I’d like to speak about. I thought about calling Tony Rosa, thinking that heroin bust might’ve given him some intel that could help, but I’d never had his cell number.
At the office, I sent Rosa an email and then started setting up Roy’s foyer like the courtroom. Tables for the prosecution and defense, a chair facing them to be the witness stand. When it was all set, I looked at my notes and psyched myself up to grill Mazie like I thought Ruiz might. A mother who had helpfully accompanied the cops to the police station when they were first investigating her son, without even asking them if she had to go with them at all, needed as much practice as she could get.
A few minutes later they arrived, dressed for court, as I’d instructed them: Terri in her pantsuit and Mazie in her dress. After showing them the setup and getting them some water, I told Mazie, “Okay, from here on out, forgive me, but I’m not going to act like a good host. I’m going to try and make this as realistic as I can.”
Mazie looked worried. Terri put her laptop on the table and sat up straight, just like in court.
A good prosecutor wouldn’t start by asking Mazie about the night Karl died. Ruiz didn’t need her to establish that there’d been a fight; he had the neighbors for that. He’d start with Karl’s abuse, to establish motive.
“Isn’t it true, Ms. Grant,” I said, “that Karl hardly ever paid child support?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“So you must have struggled a lot?”
“I did the best I could,” she said. “We never went hungry.”
“I’m sorry, could you answer the question?” I pushed her politely. Juries never liked to see you bully somebody’s nice mom, and Ruiz was no fool. “Didn’t Jackson see you struggling to get by, working double shifts as a waitress? Never able to spend the time with him that you wanted to?”
She ducked her head down for a second like she might cry.
“I’m sorry, could you answer?”
“Yes. He did.”
“And isn’t it true that when Jackson was fifteen, Karl beat him so bad he broke his arm? Put him in the hospital?”
She started crying. I passed her some Kleenex and exchanged looks with Terri. Ruiz was going to have no trouble establishing motive. Watching this pretty mother weep as she remembered years of suffering and abuse would probably make some of the jurors want to kill Karl themselves.
And I couldn’t tell her not to tell the truth, or not to cry. The jury had to see her as genuine from the get-go if I wanted them to believe what she said when it was my turn to ask the questions.
Between sobs, she said, “Leland, this is all my fault.” She grabbed more Kleenex. “My son wouldn’t be in jail if I’d left Karl sooner, if I hadn’t let him come around—”
Before I could answer, Terri said, “Mazie, you did the best you could. And better than a lot of women I’ve known who were in your shoes.”
She blew her nose. “I wanted my son to have a father.”
“Course you did,” Terri said. “All those boyfriends your mom
