Grass Roots

by Stuart Woods

  “Isn’t the procedure to bring in a prosecutor from another county?” Elton Hunter asked.

  “That’s true,” the Judge replied, “but I’m damned if I want a prosecutor from the next circuit, or some greenhorn down from Atlanta, which is what they’d send us. So I asked the Governor to appoint a special prosecutor, and I told him I want to pick the man. Either of you fellows ever tried a murder?”

  “Once,” said Hunter.

  The Judge permitted himself a small smile. “That the fellow Higgins, that’s on death row now?”

  “Right,” Hunter said, embarrassed. “I tried to get him to plead; he wouldn’t.”

  “I remember,” the Judge said. “You did as well as anybody could have, under the circumstances.” He turned to Will.

  “Never,” Will said. “I guess I’ve defended in a couple of dozen criminal cases; biggest one was armed robbery.” He was thinking fast now. This case might be just the right thing to get him in the public eye. “White Man Charged with Sex Murder of Black Girl.” That would make the Atlanta papers day after day.

  “I’m satisfied with your abilities,” the Judge said. “Both of you.” He looked from Will to Hunter. “How about it, gentlemen?”

  “All right,” Hunter said immediately.

  “Who’s prosecuting and who’s defending?” Will asked. He didn’t want to defend.

  The Judge opened his desk drawer and produced a half-dollar. He flipped it, caught it, and slapped it down on his desk blotter, covering it with his hand.

  “Hang on,” Will said. “I’ll have to talk with the Senator about this.” He needed time to think before committing himself.

  “I told you,” the Judge said, “I already talked to him.” He smiled. “The Senator says you can have as much time as it takes.”

  Will sank back into his chair. Prosecute, he thought, I want to prosecute.

  “Heads, you prosecute, Elton,” the Judge said. “Tails, Will prosecutes.” He lifted his hand.

  Involuntarily, Will leaned forward to see. So did Elton Hunter.

  The Judge peered at the half-dollar. “Heads!” he cried, sweeping the coin back into his desk drawer and closing it.

  Will tried hard not to wince. Hunter was unable to suppress a broad smile.

  The Judge looked at them, his eyebrows up. “You’re in, then—both of you?”

  Hunter nodded eagerly.

  Will looked at the Judge. “You talked to the Senator?”

  “I did. I already told you.”

  “And he said I could take the time.”

  “He did. Now are you in, or have I been wasting my time?”

  “All right,” Will said resignedly, “I’m in.”

  “Good,” the Judge said, getting to his feet. “Now, I’ve got to get home and clean my shotguns. I’m going dove hunting tomorrow.”

  Will and Elton Hunter rose with him, and he shooed them toward the door like a pair of chicks. When they were in the hall, the Judge leaned against the doorjamb.

  “Go see your client, Will. I’ll hold a preliminary hearing Monday morning at ten.”

  “Yes, sir,” both lawyers said in unison.

  “One more thing,” the Judge said. “Now that you’re on this case, don’t either one of you ever come to me and ask out of it. You’re in this for the duration.” He walked back into his office and closed the door behind him.

  3

  Will stood in the little room and waited. The jail was new, but it was aging fast. Paint was already peeling from the windowless walls, and the asphalt-tile floors looked scuffed and worn. There were two doors in the room, one leading from the lockup, one from the outside world. There was some steel furniture, a table and four chairs, bolted to the floor.

  A muffled clang from somewhere else, then another, then the door opened. A deputy sheriff stepped into the room, followed by Larry Eugene Moody.

  “He’s all yours, Counselor,” the deputy said. “Take as long as you like; ring the bell, here, when you’re all finished.” He pointed to a button beside the door, then disappeared, locking the door behind him.

  “Hi,” the young man said uncertainly. He was five-eight or so, well built. His yellow-blond hair was well groomed, parted in the middle, not too long, blown-dry and neatly combed. A wispy attempt at a mustache adorned his upper lip. He was dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved polo shirt with an indecipherable emblem at the left breast. Larry Eugene Moody couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. He managed a small smile and stuck out a hand. “I’m Larry Moody,” he said.

  Will shook the hand. “My name is Will Lee, Larry,” he said. “The court has appointed me to represent you in this matter. Have a seat, and let’s talk.”

  “Boy, am I glad to see you!” Moody said, sliding into a chair. “I’ve been here since ten o’clock this morning, and I haven’t seen anybody but deputies and jailbirds. Can you get me out of here?”

  He looked worried and a little scared, Will thought. A proper reaction to being arrested. “I don’t know yet. First, let’s talk for a few minutes, then we’ll see where we stand.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Moody said earnestly.

  Will leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, watching Moody carefully for his reactions. “First of all, is it all right with you if I represent you? Do you have any objections to that?”

  “Sure, no. I mean, it’s okay with me.”

  “Good. Now, from now on, anything you say to me is in absolute confidence. I can never repeat anything you say to me without your permission, and nobody can legally require me to reveal any information I get from you. Do you understand that?”

  “You mean, like between somebody and a Catholic priest?”

  “Exactly like that. Even if you told me that you had committed a crime, I would be bound not to tell anyone else, and no one could force me to tell. If I did tell, you couldn’t be prosecuted for the crime on the evidence of my testimony.”

  “Okay, I understand.”

  “It’s important that you do, because I want you to feel that you can trust me, tell me anything you want to, without fear of being punished for it.”

  “I got it.”

  “And, Larry, it is very important that you tell me the truth. The dumbest thing you can do is to lie to your lawyer.”

  “No sweat; I’ll tell you the truth.”

  “Good.” Will reached into his jacket pocket and produced a paper. “This is a copy of a warrant for your arrest on a charge of murder in the first degree. Murder is when you willfully kill somebody. This warrant means the sheriff thinks you killed somebody. First degree means ‘with malice aforethought,’ that the sheriff thinks you knew what you were doing, that you meant to do it, that you had time to consider whether or not you should have done it. It also assumes that you are of legal age, that you have the capacity to know right from wrong, and that you were in your right mind at the time.”

  Moody nodded, looking intently at Will.

  “Now,” Will continued, “just because the sheriff swore out a warrant doesn’t mean you’re guilty of anything. Under our system of justice, you are presumed to be innocent, and before you can be found guilty of anything, the state has to prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Do you understand?”

  Larry nodded. “Sure, we had all that in high school, and you see it on TV all the time, but boy, I never thought somebody would be saying it to me.”

  “I understand how you feel,” Will said. “You have other rights, too. Has anybody, since you were arrested this morning, said anything to you about your rights?”

  “Yeah, the sheriff told me about my rights when I got to the jail.”

  “Did the sheriff or anybody else ask you to sign anything?”

  “Yeah, they asked me to sign a paper saying they had told me my rights.”

  “Did they ask you to do anything else?”

  “Oh, yeah, they asked if they could look at my van. There was something in the paper about that.
”

  “Did you give them permission to look at your van?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t mind.”

  Will took another piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Larry. “Is this a correct copy of what you signed?”

  Larry read the paper. “Yeah, that’s my signature.”

  “Okay, then.” Will got a legal pad from his briefcase. “Now, I want you to tell me everything that happened from the time you first saw the police—the sheriff or his deputies—this morning.”

  Moody leaned back and seemed to concentrate. “Well, I was just finishing my second cup of coffee …”

  “What time?”

  “Ten, maybe a little after. Then Kenny Eberhart rang the doorbell and said would I come down to the office and talk to the sheriff.”

  “Who’s Kenny Eberhart?”

  “He’s a deputy. I know him from around town.”

  “Did he say you were under arrest?”

  “No, he said it wouldn’t take long, could I just come on down to the office. Then he said would I mind bringing my car, because he had to make rounds and wouldn’t be able to bring me back. I thought it was kind of funny—when I was about halfway down here, I looked in the mirror and saw him about a block back, and I wondered if he was following me.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I got here, and I asked for the sheriff, and he took me in his office and sat me down. There was another deputy there, too, leaning against the wall. The sheriff was real friendly and all, and he asked me what I was doing on Thursday night.”

  “Did he tell you that you were under arrest at that time?”

  “No, but he did tell me about my rights.”

  “What did he tell you about your rights, and how did he do it?”

  “He said, ‘I just want to ask you some questions, Larry, and you know, you don’t have to answer them, and if you want a lawyer, you can have one.’ ”

  “Did he say that what you said could be used against you?”

  “Yeah, kind of as an afterthought. He said, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll use what you say against you, if I feel like it.’ He sort of made it a joke. Then he said, ‘You mind if we take a look at your van?’ And I said no, and I gave him the keys. That’s when he asked me to sign the paper.”

  “Did he ask you to read it first?”

  “Yeah. He said, ‘Oh, by the way, read this and sign it if what it says is true.’ And it was, so I signed it.”

  “All right, Thursday night. He asked you your whereabouts on Thursday night. How did you answer?”

  “I said I worked until nearly six.”

  “Do you often work past five?”

  “Sometimes, if we get a call, somebody’s heating or hot water or something is out. I had one of those.”

  “Where was the call?”

  “At Mr. Hunter’s house, the lawyer.”

  “Elton Hunter?”

  “Yeah. I’d been out there before, replaced the heat exchangers in his furnace last year.”

  Will suppressed a laugh. “Was Mr. Hunter there?”

  “His wife made the call. He came home about the time I finished. He signed for the work.”

  “Good. Then where did you go?”

  “I went home.”

  “In your van?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that your only car?”

  “Yeah. Charlene was getting a ride home from work, so I went straight home.”

  “Who’s Charlene?”

  “She’s my girlfriend. Charlene Joiner. She lives with me.”

  “What about the rest of your evening?”

  “Well, I had a beer, and Charlene came in, I guess, a little after six. She gets off at six. She brought a chicken home, and we ate that. Then we watched a video. Charlene brought that, too.”

  “Where does Charlene work?”

  “At the MagiMart. That’s a convenience store out on the La Grange highway. They have a video-rental thing, and they let her bring them home overnight. She takes them back the next morning.”

  “What did you watch?”

  “Beverly Hills Cop, with Eddie Murphy.”

  “Then what?”

  Larry looked embarrassed. “Then we … well, we went to bed.”

  “Did you make love?”

  “Sir?”

  “I’m not prying, Larry. This might be important later.”

  “Yes, sir, we sure did. Charlene’s sort of…”

  “Sort of what?”

  “Well, sort of horny.”

  “That night?”

  “Every night.” Larry frowned a little. “Are you sure this is important?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, Charlene is horny all the time. I mean, she wants to do it anytime, day or night, wherever we can get away with it.”

  “You mean, outside the house?”

  “I mean anywhere. I had to stop taking her to the movies, at the movie theater. She’d be all over me. Now we stay home and watch videos or go to the drive-in out on the highway. We were out there … let’s see, Wednesday night, and we ended up doing it on the floor of the van. I’m lucky I’m in good shape, or she’d kill me.”

  “So, on Thursday night, after the video, you and Charlene were … occupied with each other, for how long?”

  “I don’t know. You kind of lose track of time, you know?”

  “How long have you known Charlene?”

  “About… let’s see, we met in June, over at Callaway Gardens, at the beach.”

  “And when did she move in?”

  “In June. The same day. She’s from Newnan, but she moved in with me and got the job at the MagiMart.”

  “And it’s been like this with Charlene all the time, since June?”

  “Yes, sir, all the time. I don’t reckon we’ve missed a day.”

  “You didn’t leave the house again on Thursday night? Didn’t drive the van again?”

  “No, sir. After Charlene and I have been at it, well, I don’t feel much like doing anything but sleeping.”

  “That’s it, then. That’s your whole Thursday night?”

  “That’s it.”

  “And you told the sheriff that?”

  “Well, I didn’t tell him about Charlene and me. I mean, you said you couldn’t tell anybody what I told you. I reckon the sheriff would tell everybody.”

  Will laughed in spite of himself. “What else did the sheriff ask you?”

  “He asked me if I knew Sarah Cole. I said, ‘Yeah, I fixed the furnace at that place she works.’ ”

  “When did you fix it?”

  “It was Thursday afternoon.”

  “Had you met her before?”

  “No, sir. I went over there on a call, and I talked to a receptionist, I guess she was, and I fixed the furnace—it was just a bad thermostat, and I replaced it—and then this Sarah Cole came out of an office and signed the ticket and gave me a check.”

  “And that was the first time you had seen her?”

  “No, I guess I’d seen her around town, but I didn’t know her.”

  “Ever spoken to her before?”

  “No, sir.”

  “When you spoke to her at her office, did you have any sort of disagreement or argument?”

  “No, sir. Well, she said she thought the thermostat was too expensive. I told her it was the cheapest one we carry, and she was welcome to shop around, but she gave me the check. I don’t guess we spoke more than ten words.”

  “Was anybody else present when you spoke to her?”

  “The receptionist was there.”

  “What else did the sheriff ask you?”

  “He asked me if I knew where the city dump was, and I said I did. He asked me if I was out at the city dump on Thursday night, and I said, ‘No, I told you, I was home with Charlene.’ ”

  “What else?”

  “That was about it, I guess. He left me in the office with the deputy while he went to look at the van. I guess he was gone about twe
nty minutes, and I read a magazine. Then he came back and told me I was under arrest for murder, and he showed me the warrant, and he read me my rights again, that time from a card. Then they made me empty my pockets, and they put me in a cell.”

  “Did he tell you that you could make a phone call?”

  “Oh, yeah. I called out to the MagiMart a couple times, but the line was busy. Charlene is working today. I didn’t know who else to call. I could have called my boss, I guess, but I didn’t want him to know I was in jail. I said I didn’t know a lawyer and couldn’t afford one, and the sheriff said they’d get one for me.”

  Will took the young man through his life story, making notes. Larry Moody was twenty-four; born and raised in La Grange, twenty miles away; finished high school, made Bs and Cs; father died when he was six, mother worked in a mill, died when he was nineteen; played center on the football team; went to work for Morgan & Morgan after high school—they taught him about furnaces and air conditioners; had lived in Greenville, where his company had a branch, for just over a year.

  “Good,” Will said. “Now, there’s something I have to know, and I want you to tell me the absolute truth. Have you ever been in any kind of trouble? Have you ever been arrested? For anything? I’ll tell you right now, Larry, if you have, it’ll come out. You’d best tell me now. Have you ever been in trouble?”

  Larry, for the first time, looked away from him. “Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

  “Tell me about it,” Will said, “and don’t leave anything out.”

  “Well, when I was twenty, I had three speeding tickets in a row, over about four months. They took my license away from me, except for work. After I got it back, I bought the van. The van is pretty slow.”

  “That’s it?” Will asked, afraid to be relieved. “That’s all the trouble you were ever in?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s it.”

  “Was any of them a DUI? Were you drinking?”

  “No, sir.”

  Will took a deep breath and let it out. “All right, if you think of anything else, you can tell me later. Now, I want you to give me the names and addresses of three or four people who you think might have a good opinion of you.”