Ford County

by John Grisham

  For revenge, Raymond stole Coy’s patrol car and sold it to a chop shop in Memphis. He kept the police radio and mailed it back to Coy in an unmarked parcel. Raymond was arrested and would’ve been beaten but for the intervention of his court-appointed lawyer. There was no proof at all, nothing to link him to the crime except some well-founded suspicion. Two months later, after Raymond had been released, Coy bought his wife a new Chevrolet Impala. Raymond promptly stole it from a church parking lot during Wednesday night prayer meeting and sold it to a chop shop near Tupelo. By then, Coy was openly vowing to kill Raymond Graney.

  There were no witnesses to the actual killing, or at least none who would come forward. It happened late on a Friday night, on a gravel road not far from a double-wide trailer Raymond was sharing with his latest girlfriend. The prosecution’s theory was that Coy had parked his car and was approaching quietly on foot, alone, with the plan to confront Raymond and perhaps even arrest him. Coy was found after sunrise by some deer hunters. He’d been shot twice in the forehead by a high-powered rifle, and he was positioned in a slight dip in the gravel road, which allowed a large amount of blood to accumulate around his body. The crime scene photos caused two jurors to vomit.

  Raymond and his girl claimed to be away at a honky-tonk, but evidently they had been the only customers because no other alibi witnesses could be found. Ballistics traced the bullets to a stolen rifle fenced through one of Raymond’s longtime underworld associates, and though there was no proof that Raymond had ever owned, stolen, borrowed, or possessed the rifle, the suspicion was enough. The prosecutor convinced the jury that Raymond had motive—he hated Coy, and he was, after all, a convicted felon; he had opportunity—Coy was found near Raymond’s trailer, and there were no neighbors within miles; and he had the means—the alleged murder weapon was waved around the courtroom, complete with an army-issue scope that may have allowed the killer to see through the darkness, though there was no evidence the scope was actually attached to the rifle when it was used to kill Coy.

  Raymond’s alibi was weak. His girlfriend, too, had a criminal record and made a lousy witness. His court-appointed defense lawyer subpoenaed three people who were supposed to testify that they had heard Coy vow to kill Raymond Graney. All three faltered under the pressure of sitting in the witness chair and being glared at by the sheriff and at least ten of his uniformed deputies. It was a questionable defense strategy to begin with. If Raymond believed Coy was coming to kill him, then did he, Raymond, act in self-defense? Was Raymond admitting to the crime? No, he was not. He insisted he knew nothing about it and was dancing in a bar when someone else took care of Coy.

  In spite of the overwhelming public pressure to convict Raymond, the jury stayed out for two days before finally doing so.

  A year later, the Feds broke up a methamphetamine ring, and in the aftermath of a dozen hasty plea bargains it was learned that Deputy Coy Childers had been heavily involved in the drug-distribution syndicate. Two other murders, very similar in details, had taken place over in Marshall County, sixty miles away. Coy’s stellar reputation among the locals was badly tarnished. The gossip began to fester about who really killed him, though Raymond remained the favorite suspect.

  His conviction and death sentence were unanimously affirmed by the state’s supreme court. More appeals led to more affirmations, and now, eleven years later, the case was winding down.

  West of Batesville, the hills finally yielded to the flatlands, and the highway cut through fields thick with midsummer cotton and soybeans. Farmers on their green John Deeres poked along the highway as if it had been built for tractors and not automobiles. But the Graneys were in no hurry. The van moved on, past an idle cotton gin, abandoned shotgun shacks, new double-wide trailers with satellite dishes and big trucks parked at the doors, and an occasional fine home set back to keep the traffic away from the landowners. At the town of Marks, Leon turned south, and they moved deeper into the Delta.

  “I reckon Charlene’ll be there,” Inez said.

  “Most certainly,” Leon said.

  “She wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Butch said.

  Charlene was Coy’s widow, a long-suffering woman who had embraced the martyrdom of her husband with unusual enthusiasm. Over the years she had joined every victims’ group she could find, state and national. She threatened lawsuits against the newspaper and anybody else who questioned Coy’s integrity. She had written long letters to the editor demanding speedier justice for Raymond Graney. And she had missed not one court hearing along the way, even traveling as far as New Orleans when the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had the case.

  “She’s been prayin’ for this day,” Leon said.

  “Well, she better keep prayin’ ’cause Raymond said it ain’t gonna happen,” Inez said. “He promised me his lawyers are much better than the state’s lawyers and that they’re filin’ papers by the truckload.”

  Leon glanced at Butch, who made eye contact, then gazed at the cotton fields. They passed through the farm settlements of Vance, Tutwiler, and Rome as the sun was finally fading. Dusk brought the swarms of insects that hit the hood and windshield. They smoked with the windows down, and said little. The approach to Parchman always subdued the Graneys—Butch and Leon for obvious reasons, and Inez because it reminded her of her shortcomings as a mother. Parchman was an infamous prison, but it was also a farm, a plantation, that sprawled over eighteen thousand acres of rich black soil that had produced cotton and profits for the state for decades until the federal courts got involved and pretty much abolished slave labor. In another lawsuit, another federal court ended the segregated conditions. More litigation had made life slightly better, though violence was worse.

  For Leon, thirty months there turned him away from crime, and that was what the law-abiding citizens demanded of a prison. For Butch, his first sentence proved that he could survive another, and no car or truck was safe in Ford County. Highway 3 ran straight and flat, and there was little traffic. It was almost dark when the van passed the small green highway sign that simply said, Parchman. Ahead there were lights, activity, something unusual happening. To the right were the white stone front gates of the prison, and across the highway in a gravel lot a circus was under way. Death penalty protesters were busy. Some knelt in a circle and prayed. Some walked a tight formation with handmade posters supporting Ray Graney. Another group sang a hymn. Another knelt around a priest and held candles. Farther down the highway, a smaller group chanted pro-death slogans and tossed insults at the supporters of Graney. Uniformed deputies kept the peace. Television news crews were busy recording it all.

  eon stopped at the guardhouse, which was crawling with prison guards and anxious security personnel. A guard with a clipboard stepped to the driver’s door and said, “Your name?”

  “Graney, family of Mr. Raymond Graney. Leon, Butch, and our mother, Inez.”

  The guard wrote nothing, took a step back, managed to say, “Wait a minute,” then left them. Three guards stood directly in front of the van, at a barricade across the entry road.

  “He’s gone to get Fitch,” Butch said. “Wanna bet?”

  “No,” Leon replied.

  Fitch was an assistant warden of some variety, a career prison employee whose dead-end job was brightened only by an escape or an execution. In cowboy boots and fake Stetson, and with a large pistol on his hip, he swaggered around Parchman as if he owned it. Fitch had outlasted a dozen wardens and had survived that many lawsuits. As he approached the van, he said loudly, “Well, well, the Graney boys’re back where they belong. Here for a little furniture repair, boys? We have an old electric chair ya’ll can reupholster.” He laughed at his own humor, and there was more laughter behind him.

  “Evenin’, Mr. Fitch,” Leon said. “We have our mother with us.”

  “Evenin’, ma’am,” Fitch said as he glanced inside the van. Inez did not respond.

  “Where’d you get this van?” Fitch asked.

  “We borrowed it,” Leon answered. Butch stared str
aight ahead and refused to look at Fitch.

  “Borrowed my ass. When’s the last time you boys borrowed anything? I’m sure Mr. McBride is lookin’ for his van right now. Might give him a call.”

  “You do that, Fitch,” Leon said.

  “It’s Mr. Fitch to you.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Fitch unloaded a mouthful of spit. He nodded ahead as if he and he alone controlled the details. “I reckon you boys know where you’re goin’,” he said. “God knows you been here enough. Follow that car back to max security. They’ll do the search there.” He waved at the guards at the barricade. An opening was created, and they left Fitch without another word. For a few minutes, they followed an unmarked car filled with armed men. They passed one unit after another, each entirely separate, each encircled by chain link topped with razor wire. Butch gazed at the unit where he’d surrendered several years of his life. In a well-lit open area, the “playground,” as they called it, he saw the inevitable basketball game with shirtless men drenched in sweat, always one hard foul away from another mindless brawl. He saw the calmer ones sitting on picnic tables, waiting for the 10:00 p.m. bed check, waiting for the heat to break because the barracks air units seldom worked, especially in July.

  As usual, Leon glanced at his old unit but did not dwell on his time there. After so many years, he had been able to tuck away the emotional scars of physical abuse. The inmate population was 80 percent black, and Parchman was one of the few places in Mississippi where the whites did not make the rules.

  The maximum security unit was a 1950s-style flat-roofed building, one level, redbrick, much like countless elementary schools built back then. It, too, was wrapped in chain link and razor wire and watched by guards lounging in towers, though on this night everyone in uniform was awake and excited. Leon parked where he was directed, then he and Butch were thoroughly searched by a small battalion of unsmiling guards. Inez was lifted out, rolled to a makeshift checkpoint, and carefully inspected by two female guards. They were escorted inside the building, through a series of heavy doors, past more guards, and finally to a small room they had never seen before. The visitors’ room was elsewhere. Two guards stayed with them as they settled in. The room had a sofa, two folding chairs, a row of ancient file cabinets, and the look of an office that belonged to some trifling bureaucrat who’d been chased away for the night.

  The two prison guards weighed at least 250 pounds each, had twenty-four-inch necks and the obligatory shaved heads. After five awkward minutes in the room with the family, Butch had had enough. He took a few steps and challenged them with a bold “What, exactly, are you two doing in here?”

  “Following orders,” one said.

  “Whose orders?”

  “The warden’s.”

  “Do you realize how stupid you look? Here we are, the family of the condemned man, waiting to spend a few minutes with our brother, in this tiny shit hole of a room, with no windows, cinder-block walls, only one door, and you’re standing here guarding us as if we’re dangerous. Do you realize how stupid this is?”

  Both necks seemed to expand. Both faces turned scarlet. Had Butch been an inmate, he would have been beaten, but he wasn’t. He was a citizen, a former convict who hated every cop, trooper, guard, agent, and security type he’d ever seen. Every man in a uniform was his enemy.

  “Sir, please sit down,” one said coolly.

  “In case you idiots don’t realize it, you can guard this room from the other side of that door just as easily as you can from this side. I swear. It’s true. I know you probably haven’t been trained enough to realize this, but if you just walked through the door and parked your big asses on the other side, then ever’thang would still be secure and we’d have some privacy. We could talk to our little brother without worryin’ about you clowns eavesdroppin’.”

  “You’d better knock it off, pal.”

  “Go ahead, just step through the door, close it, stare at it, guard it. I know you boys can handle it. I know you can keep us safe in here.”

  Of course the guards didn’t move, and Butch eventually sat in a folding chair close to his mother. After a thirty-minute wait that seemed to last forever, the warden entered with his entourage and introduced himself. “The execution is still planned for one minute after midnight,” he said officially, as if he were discussing a routine meeting with his staff. “We’ve been told not to expect a last-minute call from the governor’s office.” There was no hint of compassion.

  Inez placed both hands over her face and began crying softly.

  He continued, “The lawyers are busy with all the last-minute stuff they always do, but our lawyers tell us a reprieve is unlikely.”

  Leon and Butch stared at the floor.

  “We relax the rules a little for these events. You’re free to stay in here as long as you like, and we’ll bring in Raymond shortly. I’m sorry it’s come down to this. If I can do anything, just let me know.”

  “Get those two jackasses outta here,” Butch said, pointing to the guards. “We’d like some privacy.”

  The warden hesitated, looked around the room, then said, “No problem.” He left and took the guards with him. Fifteen minutes later, the door opened again, and Raymond bounced in with a big smile and went straight for his mother. After a long hug and a few tears, he bear-hugged his brothers and told them things were moving in their favor. They pulled the chairs close to the sofa and sat in a small huddle, with Raymond clutching his mother’s hands.

  “We got these sumbitches on the run,” he said, still smiling, the picture of confidence. “My lawyers are filin’ a truckload of habeas corpus petitions as we speak, and they’re quite certain the U.S. Supreme Court will grant certiorari within the hour.”

  “What does that mean?” Inez asked.

  “Means the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case, and it’s an automatic delay. Means we’ll probably get a new trial in Ford County, though I’m not sure I want it there.”

  He was wearing prison whites, no socks, and a pair of cheap rubber sandals. And it was clear that Raymond was packing on the pounds. His cheeks were round and puffy. A spare tire hung over his belt. They had not seen him in almost six weeks, and his weight gain was noticeable. As usual, he prattled on about matters they did not understand and did not believe, at least as far as Butch and Leon were concerned. Raymond had been born with a vivid imagination, a quick tongue, and an innate inability to tell the truth.

  The boy could lie.

  “Got two dozen lawyers scramblin’ right now,” he said “State can’t keep up with ‘em.”

  “When do you hear somethin’ from the court?” Inez asked.

  “Any minute now. I got federal judges in Jackson, in New Orleans, and in Washington sittin’ by, just ready to kick the state’s ass.”