“Do you want to stay here today or go to your office?” Mac asked David.
“My office. My answering machine is on, but I’d rather be there. I don’t want to miss my million-dollar case.”
“I know. I’m still waiting for that call myself.”
After David left, Judy turned to Mac. “Do you want me to tell you how to improve your dictation?”
Mac scowled. “No, just be glad I’m not calling you into my office every five minutes to take shorthand.”
At ten o’clock, a man who had suffered a broken leg in an automobile accident, called Mac. The other driver had run a stop sign and caused the wreck, so there was no question of liability. It would not be a complicated case. Mac prepared to schedule the man for a quick appointment but suddenly changed his mind.
“I’m involved in a murder case right now, but I can refer you to another lawyer.”
“Who is it?”
“David Moreland. I’m sure he will do a good job.” Mac gave him David’s number.
“I’ll call him right now.”
Two hours later, Judy brought David’s memo into Mac’s office. “The boy has a brain, doesn’t he?” she said.
“Why?”
“He didn’t see your summary of the case?”
“No, I had it in my briefcase. I wanted him to take a fresh look.”
“He mentioned almost everything you did and added a few other items that made some sense to me.”
Mac read the synopsis and called David.
“Thorough job on the memo,” Mac said. “But are you sure you think a polygraph exam is a good idea?”
“It would be nonstipulated so it wouldn’t be admissible at trial, but if it goes our way, we could show it to the State and ask them to back off the death penalty.”
“I’ve had some bad experiences with polygraphs in the past, but I think you’re probably right.”
“Do you know an examiner you trust?”
“No.”
“I could try to locate someone.”
“I’ll ask Vicki to work on it. I have another job for you.”
“What is it?”
“You know that the trial will have two parts: a guilt-or-innocence phase and a sentencing phase.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll have a chance to put up additional evidence if the defendant is found guilty.”
“Correct. I want you to start developing a plan for the sentencing phase of the trial.” There was a long silence on the other end. “Are you still there?” Mac asked.
“Yes,” David said. “You’re not going to ask me to handle the death penalty phase, are you?”
“We’re working together. Remember—you don’t run from challenges.”
“Did I say that?”
“It was in your closing argument when you were trying to convince me to bring you into the case.”
“Yes, but—”
“Relax. I’m just asking you to do the bulk of the preparation. Call lawyers who have handled death penalty cases and ask them questions, read articles, collect good ideas.”
“Yes, sir,” David said.
“That’s it. We’ll see what develops.”
“Oh, I had something else to mention to you,” David said. “I’m meeting with a prospective client this afternoon. He was hurt in a car wreck and has a good claim. After I interview him, I’d like to discuss the case with you.”
“I’ll be glad to help.” Mac rewarded himself with an internal pat on the back. “We’ll talk after you meet with him.”
Mac dialed the district attorney’s office.
“Bert, you really laid one on me Friday when Whetstone asked for the death penalty.”
“Joe Whetstone believes he can make it happen.”
“What’s your role going to be?”
“Joe and his staff will try the case, but any plea negotiations will go through my office.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Do you want to talk about a plea?”
Mac decided it wouldn’t hurt to find out the D.A.’s perspective. “What did you have in mind?”
“If your client wants to fold his tents and plead guilty prior to trial I would recommend life without parole. Do you want me to put that in a letter to you?”
“Not now.”
“Think about it and let me know soon. Closer to trial, there may not be an offer on the table.”
“What if Thomason passed a polygraph test?”
“That depends. Do you want me to set one up with the GBI examiner?”
“Is there a private examiner you trust?”
“Not really. If Thomason passed a nonstipulated test, it wouldn’t make the charges go away, but it might affect a plea offer.”
When he hung up, Mac said to Vicki, “It may not do any good, but let’s set up a polygraph exam with someone who has good credentials. You know, former police examiner, twenty years’ experience.”
“What’s my budget?”
“Since it won’t be used at trial, I have to pay for this out of my pocket.”
Vicki raised her eyebrows. “So, money is no problem?”
“I didn’t say that. Do your best to find someone good and reasonable,” Mac said. “We need someone willing to travel to Dennison Springs. I can’t check Pete out of the jail, swing by McDonald’s for a cheeseburger, and drop him off at the polygraph examiner’s office for a few hours.”
Ray Morrison’s truck steadily zigzagged up a dirt road until he saw the large poplar tree that the owner of the bait-and-tackle store told him marked the entrance to Rodney McFarland’s driveway. Sure enough, just past the tree, a narrow gravel road angled sharply up the mountain on the left. At this elevation some of the leaves had already fallen from the trees, and the rest were in a full explosion of color. Mr. McFarland obviously preferred his mornings brisk and his neighbors distant. Ray began honking his horn as soon as he started up the drive. Mountain people didn’t like to be surprised by a stranger’s approach, and the last thing Ray wanted was a nearsighted old man pointing a shotgun in his direction.
Ray pulled to a stop in front of a faded, gray, single-story wooden cabin. The newest structure on the property was a freshly painted outhouse with a half-moon cut in the door. A hand pump for water stood in the front yard.
A skinny, white-haired man with a scruffy beard opened a screen door and stepped to the edge of the front porch.
“Howdy,” Ray called as soon as he got out.
“You from the government?” the old man asked with a slight quiver in his voice.
“No, sir. Are you Mr. Rodney McFarland?”
“I be.”
“My name is Ray Morrison. I’m doing some investigation about the night your truck was run off the road near Dennison Springs. I was wondering if I could talk to you a minute.”
“Well, I guess if you drove all the way up here to see me, it wouldn’t be right of me to send you on your way without having a talk.”
“Do you still have the truck?”
“I wouldn’t trade her for a brand-new one.”
“Could I see it?”
“I reckon you could if you come on around to the side of the house.”
The old man came down the steps with surprising speed and led Ray around the corner of the house. Under a large oak tree was a truck covered with a brown plastic tarpaulin.
“Here she is,” Mr. McFarland said, pulling off the cover to reveal a 1968 white Ford pickup in very good condition. The front bumper was slightly bent on the passenger side of the vehicle.
“Nice truck,” Ray said sincerely.
“She’s my baby.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Bought it new off the lot in Blue Ridge.”
“Would you mind telling me how it was damaged?”
“Nope.”
The old man reached in his back pocket and pulled out a foil pouch of chewing tobacco. He deposited a generous wad in the right side of his mouth. Ray figured the story would
n’t really get going until Mr. McFarland was ready to start spitting.
“Well, it was in the summer, you know. Either Friday or Saturday night. I’d gotten word late in the evening that my granddaughter was fixin’ to have her baby, and I wanted to be there at the hospital if I could make it in time. She had a boy, my first great-grandson. Guess what they named him?”
“Rodney?”
“That’s a good guess. Rodney Keith Hornbuckle is the little fella’s name. My granddaughter married a Hornbuckle. You might know them. They live on the north side of Echota County.”
“I know a Leroy Hornbuckle.”
Mr. McFarland slapped his leg. “That’s her husband’s uncle. How do you know Leroy?”
“Just met him once or twice. What happened next?”
“Oh yeah. It was already dark when I left out of here. I was making good time. You know, that truck will do sixty-five on a straight stretch of road without any vibration in the front end.”
“I can tell you have good tires on it.”
“I never buy foreign tires. I buy American. Everything on this hill was made in the U.S.A. except my radio. I bought a General Electric thinking it was made in Pennsylvania or someplace like that, but when I got it home it said, ‘Made in Taiwan’ on the bottom.”
“You were making good time to see your granddaughter.”
“I’m gettin’ to that. I came over the mountain about midnight. There was no traffic on the road when these two cars came around the corner.” “Two cars?” Ray asked.
“Yeah, a yellow one and a dark purple one.”
“Purple?”
“Here, let me show you.”
Mr. McFarland went to the rear of the truck on the driver’s side of the vehicle.
“Here is where he nicked me.”
Ray leaned over and rubbed a narrow twelve-inch streak of dark paint. “Was it burgundy?”
“That’s it. Help me remember that. Ask me that color again before you leave. Burgundy. It was a burgundy four-door. Can’t tell you if it was a Lincoln, Cadillac, Buick, or what. But it was a big one.”
“Tell me again what happened.”
“These two cars, the yellow and the, uh, burgundy one was tearing up that road like they owned both lanes. The yellow one almost hit me, and I was aheading for the ditch when the other one must have barely sideswiped me.”
“Did you tell the police about the burgundy car?”
“No, I didn’t know it had hit me until I looked the truck over real good the next day. It was the yellow car that ran me off the road. I told the police about it, and I heard later the girl driving it went off the side of the mountain and was killed. I was mad at first, but when I found out about the girl I felt sorry for her family.”
“Could you see who was driving the yellow car?”
“I couldn’t tell about either car. I guess they had their bright lights on. It happened pretty quick.”
“It always does. Has the insurance company settled with you?”
“Are you kidding? I’m still waiting for one of those adjustment fellows to come up and look at my truck.”
“Could I take some pictures?” Ray asked. He doubted any insurance adjuster would go to the trouble of locating Mr. McFarland.
“Sure.”
Ray took shots of the bumper and the streak along the side. “I’d like to scrape off a little of the burgundy paint and see if I can find the car that hit you.”
“Would you do that?”
“It’s pretty important.”
“That would be right nice of you.”
Ray carefully shaved several flecks of the paint into an empty pill bottle. Showing it to Mr. McFarland, he said, “You saw me put the pieces of paint into the bottle, didn’t you, Mr. McFarland?”
“I reckon I did. I’m close enough to spit on your shoe.”
“Thanks for not doing that.”
As they walked across the front yard, Mr. McFarland grabbed Ray’s arm. “Do you want a drink of water before you leave?”
“Yeah, I’m kind of thirsty.”
The old man picked up a battered tin cup from the top of a tree stump, grabbed the handle of the pump, and after a few vigorous strokes, filled the cup.
“Here, you go first,” he said handing the cup to Ray who, making sure there wasn’t anything alive or dead in the bottom, took a long cool drink.
“Good water,” he said.
“Better than any city water,” the old man refilled the cup, spit, and took a swallow himself.
“Thanks, Mr. McFarland. I’ll be in touch.”
“Come back anytime. I don’t stray far from home.”
“Oh.” Ray stopped at his car door. “Tell me that color?”
A toothless smile split the old man’s face. “Burgundy. I can’t say I didn’t learn something today. Burgundy. That’s a fancy word.” Mr. McFarland hopped up on his porch and waved good-bye.
Several hours later, Ray put the pill bottle on the edge of Mac’s desk.
“You don’t think he picked up the scrape in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly grocery store?” Mac asked.
“The old guy probably never goes to the grocery store. There are enough squirrels and rabbits on his hilltop to satisfy his taste for meat. The truck was in mint condition. I believe he knows where his four-wheeled baby suffered every dent and ding.”
“You believed him?”
“Mac, we shared water out of the same tin cup from the pump in his front yard. We are almost kinfolk.”
Mac chuckled. “I’ll see if the forensic lab Vicki contacted in Atlanta can do an analysis on the paint sample.”
“Let me know,” Ray said. “And if Mr. McFarland is right, I sure would like to talk to the driver of a certain burgundy car.”
12
Am I my brother’s keeper?
GENESIS 4:9 (KJV)
Alex Hightower turned forty-four on Labor Day following Angela’s death. He and his wife, Sarah, lived exactly eight-tenths of a mile from the governor’s mansion in the exclusive area of northwest Atlanta known as Buckhead. Whether the Hightowers’ home or the governor’s residence had more square feet of heated living space had never been definitely settled. However, the governor lived four to eight years in the state-owned residence; the Hightower family had occupied their Buckhead mansion for more than forty years.
The first eighteen years of his life, Alex had been the only child who ran up and down the long halls of the Hightower residence, climbed the old trees in the large wooded area on the estate called “The Forest,” or drove one of his father’s antique sports cars down the long driveway to West Paces Ferry Road. Then Cecil and Maureen Hightower were surprised by an unexpected pregnancy. Spencer Hitchcock Hightower arrived nine months later.
Spencer bore the distinguishing marks of all the Hightower males: reddish-brown hair, fair skin, and a sharp, analytical mind. But from the beginning, Cecil viewed his second son as an intrusion, a complicating factor in the elder Hightower’s efforts to ensure an orderly transfer of power from one generation to another. Spencer’s existence spoiled his plans, and when the new arrival proved to be a cranky, difficult baby and a demanding toddler, Cecil shut him out of his life as much as possible. To compensate, Maureen pampered Spencer, and by the time he celebrated his fifth birthday, the younger Hightower was an incorrigible brat.
When he was old enough for school, Spencer’s attitude and conduct led to his dismissal from one learning institution after another, until his parents gave up on outside education and hired private tutors to teach him at home.
Alex graduated from Westminster Schools shortly after Spencer’s birth and left Atlanta to attend college at Dartmouth. After receiving a degree in finance and economics from Dartmouth, Alex worked for two years with First Illinois Corporation in Chicago, where he met and married Sarah Smithton, the youngest daughter of the admiral-in-command of the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. A year later, Cecil summoned the newlyweds to Atlanta, and Alex began the process
of assuming control of Hightower & Co. Initially, the young couple opted not to buy a house but purchased a Buckhead condominium for six thousand dollars cash and set up housekeeping. A big house would come later.
Maureen Hightower died of cancer when Spencer was in his early teens. Afterward, Cecil and his younger son lived in opposite ends of the big house and by mutual agreement kept away from each other as much as possible. When Spencer finally graduated from a local community college, his father bought him a house in a nearby Buckhead neighborhood, more for Cecil’s peace and quiet than as a reward to his son. Spencer didn’t want to work, and with his father’s money, he didn’t have to. Every penny of the “income” he received by serving as a token member of the boards of directors for several Hightower & Co. subsidiaries fueled a self-centered, hedonistic lifestyle. The real family power had been vested in Alex, and after Cecil’s death, Alex moved into the family mansion and assumed day-to-day control of the Hightower holdings. Left to themselves, the two brothers maintained an uneasy truce occasionally broken by open conflict and harsh words.
Cecil established long-term trusts for both sons in his last will and testament, and even at age forty-four, Alex only had absolute control over half the corpus of his portion of the estate. Spencer’s trust restricted access to any significant funds until he reached age thirty, and at twenty-six, he had four more years to wait before tapping into the main vein of his inheritance. In the interim, Alex served as cotrustee of Spencer’s affairs with Dr. Lewis Newborn, a psychiatrist and family friend who, for years, had been the only person able to communicate effectively with Spencer. To relieve himself of the pressure of dealing with Spencer, Alex let Dr. Newborn oversee Spencer on a month-to-month basis; Alex reviewed the accounts at the end of the year.
From his desk, Alex had a panoramic vista of the Atlanta skyline that swept across the windows of his large corner office on the thirty-sixth floor. One sign of wealth and power was the ability to summon people into his presence, and in obedience to a phone call the day before, Joe Whetstone waited outside for his audience with Mr. Hightower.
“You may go in now,” an expensively dressed receptionist said.
Joe opened the heavy, wooden door. Alex looked up from his desk and motioned for Joe to sit down. “Bring me up to date,” he said curtly.
The Trial Page 10
