Blind Judgement g-5

by Grif Stockley

  loss that she has suffered, if it hasn’t before, comes home to the jury. Pausing repeatedly during her testimony to wipe her face with a fistful of tissue, she describes how unusual it was for her husband not to call her or not to answer the phone on Darla’s afternoon to volunteer at the school. I look back at Tommy and Connie at the back of the courtroom. Connie has hidden her face in her hands as her mother testifies.

  For the first time since I’ve been involved in this case, it seems to be about a man’s death, and not my own ego. I look over my shoulder again and see Tommy put his arm around his sister.

  Mercifully, Butterfield lets Mrs. Ting off the stand as soon as he establishes the time when she went into the plant and found her husband’s body.

  Both Dick and I decline to cross-examine her, an action I assure Class would hurt more than help.

  Butterfield moves through his case smoothly, and by the afternoon he puts on his last witness, Darla Tate, who, in contrast to Class, has beefed up in the last three months. Already a big woman, Darla now looks like she could start as defensive tackle for her sons’ high school team; yet there is still something touching about the way she has tried to get herself dolled up for her testimony. In fact, from the shoulders up, she looks like she has made up for one of those sexy glamour shots that try to make ordinary women into, if not movie stars, at least queens for an afternoon. As my secretary Julia says, Darla has her hair “bouffed up” and is wearing enough makeup to get stuck in if it rains. Gold ball earrings the size of plums hang from her ears, her dress is the color of faded summer grass. Never has a woman tried to look more feminine, I

  suppose, and failed. Despite the testimony that Butterfield will elicit from her, she can help Class even as she hurts him, and I hope the women on the jury listen to her even as they mentally pick her apart.

  As expected, she talks about the operation of the plant. Had I been Butterfield, I would have called her as one of my first witnesses, but perhaps it makes sense to call her last since she can provide a motive for Class even if the jury chooses to believe that Paul had nothing to do with Willie’s death. She begins to recite her story that she overheard Class talking about “having gotten the money” while she was in the bathroom but readily admits she doesn’t have any idea to whom he was speaking. Butterfield asks if she is sure it was Bledsoe’s voice, and she says emphatically that she is “absolutely certain.”

  In the moment that I see her biceps tense, it occurs to me that Darla has spent a considerable amount of energy pointing me in the wrong direction in this case. First Harrison, the meat inspector, then Jorge Arrazola, and finally Muddy Jessup. Yet she told me right off that she didn’t think Class was capable of murdering Willie. Were these supposed to be wild-goose chases? I had rejected the idea of Darla’s being a suspect because she had an alibi and, besides, I couldn’t imagine a woman taking a knife and slitting her employer’s throat. But as I look at her right arm, and see that it may well be as strong as my own, or at least strong enough to slice the carotid artery of an old, unsuspecting man, I have to wonder-why not Darla? She says she was at her sons’ private school between two and four, and I know she signed in at the principal’s office before two and signed out at 4:30, but what was she actually doing all that time? My mind races to remember.

  Something about helping to do paperwork in the office. Her story checked out.

  About a month ago I talked to the office secretary who said that Darla was there the entire time that afternoon. I remember her because she was a thin, intense, almost hyper woman who insisted that I go outside with her while she smoked.

  Darla, she said, answered the phone and did paperwork. Bonner has also talked to her, according to the file, and everything he has done has checked out, including this conversation. And what would have been her motive? She practically claimed to be in love with Willie. But maybe she wasn’t. All I can do now is fish and hope I don’t make her too suspicious. Class nudges me, and I look up at the judge.

  “Mr. Page?” Johnson asks, for the second time.

  “Do you wish to examine this witness?”

  “Yes, your honor.” As I get to my feet, Darla gives me a shy smile as if we are old friends, and I start off by asking her if she remembers telling me that she didn’t think Class was the type to have murdered Willie.

  “Class was a good employee,” she volunteers.

  “I didn’t think he would do such a thing. Willie liked him because he was a real hard worker. And Class had said to me that Willie was a good boss.

  That’s why I was surprised.” “In fact, I believe you said Mr. Ting

  always treated you very well as an employee.”

  If Darla is becoming wary, I can’t tell it.

  Immediately, she responds, “I think I told you I was sick almost all one winter, but he told me not to worry about it.”

  “And right up to his death,” I say, casually, “you enjoyed a good working relationship with him, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did,” Darla says.

  “If he thought you worked hard, he’d help out if you needed it. And I appreciated that.”

  “In fact, Mrs. Tate,” I say, in as low-key a manner as possible, “over the last couple of months you’ve suggested that I investigate two or three other individuals for the murder of Willie Ting, including an individual whom you were pretty sure was stealing money from the plant.” “He was,” Darla says, firmly.

  “I showed you.”

  “Yes, you did,” I say and smile. I pause and pretend I’m looking through my notes.

  “Now, let’s go back to the day of the murder,” I murmur.

  “If the person who murdered Mr. Ting was a worker in the plant, he or she would have known that Tuesday was your day to volunteer in the

  schools?”

  “It wasn’t a secret,” Darla acknowledges.

  “I had been doing it for six months. Willie didn’t even dock my salary.”

  “And once you left in the afternoon,” I say, “you were gone for the day, isn’t that correct?”

  “I stay until Mr. Edwards the principal leaves,” Darla says, “and that’s never before four.”

  If I am onto something, it is probably much too late to prove it.

  “And, of course, the day of the murder you followed your normal routine and were at the school the entire time, and whoever murdered Mr. Ting, assuming they were aware you volunteered at the school, could have counted on that, isn’t that so?”

  “I think so,” Darla says. “like I say, I didn’t hide it.”

  I ask if some of the workers’ voices at the plant sound alike.

  “Class and I started the same day five years ago,” she says, “and I’ve talked to him at least once a week. So I’m positive it was him.”

  I sit down, saying that I would like to recall Darla so she won’t be released as a witness. While Dick cross-examines Darla, I turn my head and try to get a glimpse of Connie and Tommy to see if either of them heard anything Darla said they didn’t like. Though it is difficult to

  see her, for an instant I catch sight of Connie, and think I see a puzzled look on her face.

  Now that the prosecution’s case is at an end, the court recesses, and we go back into Johnson’s chambers to go through the routine of asking that the charges against our clients be dismissed.

  I make my motion for the record, knowing there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this case dismissed. Then I listen to Dick eloquently argue that Butterfield has put on no evidence against Paul.

  Oddly enough, this is only the second time I have been back in the judge’s chambers, which are mostly bare, since his main office is in Helena. Johnson is quieter and much more passive than I thought he would be, which is the kind of judge lawyers like since he lets you try your case and doesn’t take over the questioning.

  No Judge Ito, he has been so unobtrusive that at times I have hardly noticed him.

  While Butterfield makes his response to our mot
ions for dismissal, I muse about Darla Tate.

  I’d at least like to talk with Connie and Tommy to see what they think of her.

  When Butterfield is finished, Johnson leans back in his chair and looks straight at him.

  “I’m very tempted to grant Mr. Dickerson’s motion for a directed verdict

  and dismiss the charges against his client,” he says in a witheringly cold voice.

  “I find barely sufficient evidence that would allow a jury in good faith to find he had anything to do with the murder of Willieting. All the prosecutor has really shown in this case is that the defendant had an ambiguous conversation with the victim in which he mentioned the fact that he would die someday.”

  Melvin Butterfield looks as if he has been slapped in the face. I was certain that Johnson was in Butterfield’s hip pocket. As usual, my assumptions about Bear Creek have been totally false.

  We go back out into the courtroom, and Johnson, glancing at the clock on the wall, announces that since it’s nearly five o’clock, the court will be in recess for the rest of the day. As soon as his gavel comes down, he leaves the bench and the courtroom quickly empties. I tell Class that I will be out later to go over his testimony. His only hope now is his credibility. For all I have accomplished, he should have defended himself and saved seven thousand dollars. As the deputy leads Class away, he hangs his head. I haven’t given him any reason to do much else.

  From my room at the Bear Creek Inn, I call the Ting residence, and as I hoped, I get Connie and ask, “What has your mother ever said about Darla Tate? Could she have been stealing from the plant?”

  Without any hesitation, Connie says, “Mother’s said that from time to time workers stole meat. She’s never never said anything about Darla, but I’ll ask her again.”

  I tell Connie that I am guessing Darla knew that sooner or later Eddie was going to uncover some major shortages and Darla was trying to blame everything on Muddy Jessup, who, as it turned out, was running too small a scam to account for the losses.

  “I know this is a long shot,” I plead, “but would you ask Eddie to go back to the plant tonight and check the books to see if he can tell whether Darla was cooking the books before your father died? If she was, I think there is a good chance she killed him because he was about to find out she was stealing from him.

  My guess is that the plant was making so much money he didn’t know how much he was losing.”

  There is a long pause, and I rack my brain trying to think of something to say that will make her help me. It is obvious that I am grasping at straws, but I have been so blinded in this case by my own prejudices that I have begun to use my head only in the last twenty-four hours.

  Before I can say more, she replies, “Can’t she prove she was at the school all that time?”

  I think of Mary Kiley, the wiry, nervous woman I talked with outside the school door. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had stuck two cigarettes in her mouth at once.

  “Maybe, but if it’s like any office I’ve been around, by the middle of the afternoon people get up and do a lot of visiting. Maybe her alibi wasn’t there with her the whole time.”

  “I know what you’re going to do, Gideon,” Connie says, her voice cold.

  “You want to get just enough evidence to have the jury doubt your client is guilty. He’ll go free and nobody will be charged.”

  I stare at the ugly green wall across from me.

  For once, I don’t lie.

  “That’s possible,” I admit, “but at least you won’t have convicted an innocent man.”

  For a moment Connie does not say anything.

  Then she says harshly into my ear, “Have you got any other theories?”

  One. My assumptions have been wrong so far but I better ask it.

  “Is there a possibility Darla was in love with your father and got rejected by him?”

  Connie laughs sarcastically.

  “I’ll ask my mother that, too.”

  I hang up and retrieve the now dog-eared file Butterfield gave me and thumb through the statements taken by Bonner until I find the name of Mary Kiley. I read it twice and then decide to go out to her house instead of calling her. In five minutes I pull up at a small frame house on Casey Street only two blocks from the housing project where my

  distant black relative Mayola Washington presumably still lives. I wonder why I haven’t gone by to see her. However, all we have in common is guilt, and I have enough of that.

  A child, perhaps ten, her hair in pigtails, comes to the door and regarding me gravely through the screen, yells, “Mama, there’s a man out here!”

  Within seconds Mary Kiley appears and seeing my face, opens the screen.

  Though thin as a ballet dancer, she looks okay in a pair of red shorts and a white T-shirt advertising Graceland.

  “Go on and watch TV, Maggie!” she says, shooing her daughter away from her.

  “May I talk to you a minute, Mrs. Kiley?” I ask, awkwardly, since she isn’t inviting me in.

  “It’s about the trial.”

  Her lips pucker briefly.

  “I didn’t think you were here to ask me for a date Without waiting for my, reaction, she says, “Let me get my cigarettes.”

  Presumably, there is no Mr. Kiley. I stand on her stoop and think about Angela. In the last week I have tried hard to block her out of my mind until the trial is over. Was she using me or not? Paul may not be a murderer, but he is a son of a bitch. And yet Angela admitted she was

  attracted to him. Betrayed Dwight. Do I believe she slept with him to make sure they got a loan? I don’t know.

  Mrs. Kiley pushes open the screen with a kind of nervous energy that makes me glad I don’t have to be around her all the time.

  “Let’s go around to the backyard,” she instructs me.

  “I’d take you through the house to get there, but it looks terrible, and I don’t want you talking about me.”

  “I don’t think the judge would find the condition of your house particularly relevant,” I say, walking fast to keep up with her.

  “You’ve got a cute kid.” “Yeah, I know,” she says over her shoulder.

  “She’s so innocent it takes your breath away sometimes.”

  Away from the school, Mary Kiley seems like a different person, but then most people are when they’re not at work. A month ago she was guarded and didn’t speak unless asked a question.

  We sit in two blue and white plastic webbed folding chairs and she lights up an unfiltered Camel with obvious pleasure.

  “I love these damn things,” she says, after taking a long drag.

  “I hope I die with one in my mouth.”

  I laugh, and she asks, “Isn’t this the second day of the trial?”

  I say it is and tell her I came by to check a couple of things she told me before about Darlatate.

  “Can you really swear that she was not out of your sight the whole time she was at the school that afternoon?”

  Mrs. Kiley blows smoke into the air in the direction of a brown picnic table a few feet to our left. I can see ants crawling on it from where I’m sitting.

  “So you think she did it, huh?”

  “She might have,” I say, and summarize briefly why I am suspicious. I conclude by saying, “I never considered it a real possibility before, because I didn’t think a woman would be coldblooded enough to sneak up behind a man and slit his throat.”

  Mary Kiley narrows her eyes at me as if I couldn’t possibly be so naive.

  “Have you got the statement I gave to Bonner?” she asks.

  I reach into my briefcase and find the page and hand it to her. While she reads, I notice her daughter has come to the back door screen and is staring out at us. She wants to come out but doesn’t want to incur her mother’s wrath. I wave at her and she waves back. She has her mother’s dark eyes and small mouth. I hope she doesn’t smoke. Mrs. Kiley looks up at me and says, “No, I couldn’t swear she was there the whole time.

>   When that prissy sheriff we got came out the first time and questioned

  me, it pissed me off. I didn’t like him coming out to the school.

  Hell, that’s why it was built. See, when volunteers are there in the office, it gives me an opportunity to check the halls and the bathrooms and the gym to see if anything is going on. A student who’s got study hall that period stays in the principal’s office and answers the phone when he teaches his two higher math classes. He doesn’t have time to blow his nose most days.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this when I talked to you a month ago?” I ask, trying to keep the irritation I am feeling out of my voice.

  Mrs. Kiley flips a cigarette under her picnic table.

  “Because I thought it was ridiculous for him to think it was her, and you seemed like you were just kind of going through the motions, anyway.

  Besides, everybody said that black man who cut meat in the plant did it. But thinking about it now, I realize that I probably wasn’t around as much as I made it sound. I could have been gone as long as thirty minutes. It was the only break I got.”

  Going through the motions, that’s what I’ve been doing. I ask, “Have you seen Darla lately?” “She called me a couple of weeks ago,” Mary Kiley says, lighting up another cigarette, “and said she had been subpoenaed to testify She asked if I had been. I guess that’s what made me a little curious.”

  I look toward the screen but don’t see her daughter.

  “Would you be willing to testify to what you’ve told me if the judge lets you?”

  Mrs. Kiley stretches unselfconsciously, thrusting her small breasts against Elvis’s guitar.

  “I guess,” she says, her face deadpan, “this means we’ll be losing a volunteer.”

  I race out to Brickeys and give Class a pep talk.

  “You can convince that jury you didn’t do this,” I encourage him. He is back in his orange jumpsuit and looks at me through the glass, wanting, I think, to believe me.

  “Don’t look down; don’t mumble. When Butterfield questions you, make sure you understand what he is asking. You can say that you don’t understand him…”