Testing His Patience

by Lyn Cote

  Her petite figure and tousled brown hair with blond highlights and big brown eyes still added up to an attractive woman but not to him. Not anymore. The I-was-just-being-a-fun-mom argument wasn’t without its charm, either. Under normal conditions, her behavior wouldn’t have been outrageous. But knowing her attitude toward school and the way her comments might egg Darby on…

  “Coreena,” Gil said in his sternest tone, “Darby is having problems getting settled down in first grade. He should have been there today, serving detention in the principal’s office for—”

  “Yeah, I know. The squirrel stunt.” She shrugged. “What’s the big deal over letting a squirrel in school? What is this, ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ or something?”

  The nursery rhyme reference took him a moment to connect with the topic at hand. He grimaced at being sidetracked. “If the squirrel had bitten someone, especially our son, your attitude would be really different.”

  “But it didn’t, so it’s a big deal over nothing.” Coreena perched on the arm of her couch, swinging one shapely tanned leg back and forth. “That old Mrs. Canney is past it if you ask me—”

  “No one asked you,” Gil snapped. “It is irresponsible for you to encourage Darby to disobey his teacher and principal. Do you want him to get labeled as a troublemaker? Do you think you’ll be doing him a favor?”

  “Who starched your boxers? Just because I have a sense of humor and Old Lady Canney doesn’t—”

  Gil’s temper flashed white-hot again. “You pull something like this again and I’m going to sue to end your visitation rights.”

  Coreena stood up, folding her arms in front of her. “I was good enough for you once, you know. That kid is ours, not just yours. I let you have full custody of him, as long as you stayed around here. I don’t care if you are the D.A., you’re not taking away my time with my son. Period.”

  “Is he going to stay much longer? I want to go get somethin’ to eat.” A tall, very muscular man walked out from the bedroom. He wore his dishwater-blond hair in a ponytail and the arms of his shirt had been ripped out. All the better to display his Harley tattoo on his upper right arm and skull and serpent on his left.

  Gil stared at him.

  “Oh, Gil, this is the new man in my life, Blaine Cody.”

  Gil automatically put out his hand.

  Blaine gripped it tight, tight enough to cause Gil discomfort. “Hear you’re the local D.A.” The man taunted Gil with a mocking grin. “D.A.’s and me don’t usually get along much.”

  The second day of the trial, Patience sat up straighter in her chair in the jury box as the district attorney called another witness to the stand. The man gave his name as Wade Bevin, who lived at the same address as Mrs. Perkins.

  “You have rented a room from Mrs. Perkins for over two years,” Gil Montgomery asked.

  “Yes, sir, almost three years.” The man shifted in his seat. Patience didn’t blame him. The witness chair was a hot seat even for innocent witnesses.

  “You are the person who discovered that Mrs. Perkins had been attacked?” Gil looked at a legal pad on the table before him.

  Patience’s sympathy stirred. How awful for this man to have seen his landlady like that.

  “Yeah,” Wade replied, glancing up at the judge, “I came home from a job—I do handyman work for several widows here in town—and I found Mrs. Perkins on the kitchen floor. A real shock.”

  “Did you see anyone fleeing the residence?” Darby’s dad asked.

  “No, whoever done it had left. Mrs. Perkins looked bad so I called 911 right off. At first, I thought she’d just fallen and hit her head, but then I seen that stuff in the livin’ room had been torn up.”

  Patience wondered how Darby was faring at school today. She wished for the thousandth time she was in her classroom and not this jury box.

  The rest of Bevin’s testimony was a repeat of what the sheriff had found when he arrived. Then Sprague asked a few minor questions and the witness stepped down.

  The D.A. called his next witness for the prosecution. Patience sized up Vincent Caruthers as he took the oath and then sat down. The man was portly and middle-aged, with a pencil-thin mustache, dressed in an obviously well-cut suit.

  “Mr. Caruthers,” Gil said, “please state your occupation for the court.”

  “I am an antique dealer. I own the Shop on the Square here in Rushton.”

  “Do you do appraisals?”

  “Yes.” The man fussed with his tie.

  “Did you ever do one for Mrs. Bertha Perkins?”

  “Yes.” Caruthers looked unhappy. “Her son called me and arranged for me to visit Mrs. Perkins at her home.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I found that she had several very expensive items.”

  “Was Mrs. Perkins interested in selling her possessions?” Gil stepped away from the prosecution table and walked toward the witness.

  “No. Her son tried to persuade her, but she wouldn’t agree.”

  Patience noted that the juror beside her was nodding as though agreeing with the antique dealer. But Patience couldn’t see anything negative about the man’s testimony.

  “That’s all the questions I have.” Gil turned and walked back to his associate.

  Sprague declined to ask any questions for the defense.

  Patience stifled a yawn behind her hand. For all the excitement Bunny’s friends had shown over the trial, Patience couldn’t come up with any real interest in this unhappy crime. No one looked really like a suspect to her.

  Two days later, Sprague began his defense of Dan Putnam. So far, the evidence—which had been purely circumstantial as far as Patience was concerned—had been straightforward.

  Now Sprague the white-haired attorney, called his first witness, Hank Drulow, to the stand.

  Patience wondered who this witness would be.

  “Mr. Drulow,” Sprague started, “you rent a room at Mrs. Perkins’s house?”

  “Yes, been there about six months.” The man didn’t meet Sprague’s eyes.

  “Was Mrs. Perkins aware that you have a criminal record?”

  The witness looked chagrined and didn’t respond.

  “Answer the question, Mr. Drulow,” the judge instructed.

  “That was a long time ago and I didn’t think she needed to know.” Drulow sounded angry. “I wasn’t intending on stealing anything if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “But you have served time for burglary?”

  “Yes, but that was over twenty years ago. I’ve been clean since.”

  Patience felt sorry for Drulow. Some stains never faded. She knew that firsthand.

  Sprague’s second witness was another man, a neighbor of Mrs. Perkins, Cal Fiskus, a bachelor in his thirties.

  “Yes,” Cal replied, “my hobby is collectibles and antiques.”

  “You have several times made Mrs. Perkins offers on many of her possessions?”

  “Yes, I have. That’s not against the law, is it?” Fiskus snapped.

  “No need to be hostile. Did Mrs. Perkins ever agree to sell you any items?”

  “Yes, a year ago—” the witness glanced at the jury “—she agreed to sell me her grandfather’s desk.”

  Patience thought Sprague was doing a good job of throwing suspicion onto others.

  “How much did you pay her?” Sprague asked.

  “No money ever changed hands.” Fiskus relaxed against the back of the chair. Was he trying to show that he wasn’t intimidated? “She backed out of the deal.”

  “So you went away disappointed?”

  “Yeah, but not disappointed enough to steal the desk. And it wasn’t stolen, was it?”

  Sprague concluded his interrogation of the witness and Patience thought he was doing an excellent job. Just because Dan had fought with his mother didn’t really tip the scale toward him, did it?

  A week after the jury had been selected, Patience sat in court, feeling sick with foreboding. Today the court
room windows had been opened wide because of the sultry October heat. Ceiling fans swished the heavy air. Perspiration dotted Patience’s upper lip and she blotted it with a tissue.

  Gil had just started his summation of the case against Dan Putnam.

  “Now, it has been testified to that Dan Putnam was having financial problems.” Gil surveyed the jury.

  Patience tried not to behave as if she noticed his marked tendency to look at her and then glance away as if he were committing a crime by noticing her. Cardboard paddle-type fans had been supplied them and she waved one at her face.

  “In fact,” Gil continued, “he has admitted that he is facing bankruptcy. He wanted his mother to loan him money or sell family heirlooms to help him get out of the financial bind he found himself in. A powerful motive.”

  Patience saw the woman juror beside her nodding and she clenched her hand around the wooden handle of the fan.

  “In fact, on the evening of the attack, the disagreement between Dan and his mother got to the point where neighbors overheard them on Mrs. Perkins’s back porch arguing loudly about money.” Gil paused, a dour expression lengthening his face.

  So what? Families fight all the time. This thought caught Patience up short. A throwback from the past. A past she wanted to forget, to live down.

  In contrast to the home she’d been raised in, there hadn’t been quarreling at Uncle Mike’s house. Just laughter and hugs. For some reason, Patience felt the tug of tears in the back of her throat. It must be having to sit in a courtroom again day after day. I hate this.

  “Dan Putnam was seen stomping out of the house and speeding away, obviously very angry.” Gil walked closer to the jury as if confiding in them.

  Anger doesn’t mean anything. Being mad isn’t a crime. She heard her own voice in the past screaming obscenities, cursing, and slamming the door as she ran from her mom’s house.

  “There was no evidence of forced entry.” Gil stood before the jury, a hand on the rail in front of Patience. “That means that either Mrs. Perkins let her attacker in or her attacker had a key of his own. Again, I suggest, this points to her son.”

  Patience glanced down at Gil’s capable-looking hand against the mellow oak. She drew in a sharp breath. Very weak argument, Mr. District Attorney. Mrs. Perkins has two men rooming in her house. They had keys, too. Besides, who locks their doors in Rushton before bedtime?

  “We don’t have the kind of community that suffers this type of crime,” Gil said. “The evidence tells us this wasn’t a crime perpetrated by a stranger. And from testimony accepted into evidence, Dan Putnam has been institutionalized twice in his life for bipolar disorder or manic-depression. At the very least, Dan Putnam’s mental state has been proven unsettled.”

  Gil paused, gazing with assurance at her and her fellow jurors—as if, no one could possibly disagree with him.

  Don’t count on that. Patience fanned her face more, idly reading the advertisement on it for the local funeral home.

  “The state believes that we have proved that Dan Putnam, unstable mentally and under great stress because of financial problems, broke under the pressure and struck out at his mother. Fortunately, Mrs. Perkins survived the attack. So I ask you to bring in a verdict of guilty on the charges of assault, battery and robbery for Daniel Putnam. Thank you.”

  Patience’s stomach churned with her reaction to Gil’s words. How could Gil think he’d proved his case? Flushing with irritation, she fanned harder.

  Sprague stood up and faced the judge. “My summation will be shorter than the district attorney’s. The police have not found one witness or one scintilla of hard evidence that Dan Putnam did anything that evening except have a loud argument with his mother. Yes, he has a history of mental illness, but he is on his medication and has never been deemed a danger to others. Yes, he has had some money problems. That also isn’t a crime. Yes, he argued with his mother. Who hasn’t?”

  Sprague stepped into the aisle and faced the jury. “The state’s case is just one string of innuendo and the barest circumstantial evidence. Dan Putnam wasn’t the only one who wanted his mother to sell her valuables or who had access to her and her valuables. The sheriff was confronted with a case where there wasn’t any hard evidence to convict anyone.

  “But because of public outcry, he had to come up with someone to prosecute. So he picked Mrs. Perkins’s son because everyone knows he tried to commit suicide thirty years ago, argued with his mother and left town. This trial has been a farce from the moment it began and I hope you will go to the jury room and let Dan Putnam, an innocent victim of small-town prejudice, go free. As he should. Thank you.”

  Patience felt her burden lighten. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

  The judge gave a few very sobering final instructions and dismissed the jury to the room for deliberation. Patience filed into the same room where she had waited a week ago while the rest of the jury had been chosen. She took a seat at a long polished maple table in the center of the room.

  The jury foreman looked down the length of the table and smiled. “This shouldn’t take long. Do you want to bother writing down our votes or just take a vote by a raise of hands?”

  “I think we should write the votes down the first time,” a gray-haired man said. “That’s more official.”

  No one made any comment to this. Just a flurry of glances and then everyone looked to the foreman.

  “Sure. Why not?” the foreman agreed affably. He passed out sheets he’d ripped one by one from a yellow legal pad along with cheap pens from a cup at the head of the table.

  Patience wrote her vote down, folded the sheet and passed it forward.

  The foreman received the papers and read them out one by one: “Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Guilty, Not Guilty, Guilty, Guilty.”

  Surprise and shock buzzed up and down the table.

  The foreman frowned at them. “What’s the deal? I thought we could wind this up in an hour.”

  Patience felt herself break out in a cold sweat. This can’t be happening. I can’t believe they all voted guilty. What are they thinking?

  Chapter Three

  Burnished copper sunshine poured through the window in the deliberation room. With agitated flicks of his wrist, the foreman sorted yet another round of ragged yellow ballots into two piles, one with many and the other with one lone vote. Fixing them all with a belligerent glare, he leaned over and braced both his hands on the table. “There is still one person, one holdout who won’t go along with the majority.”

  His frustration, anger really, glistened on his perspiration-slick face. “What’s the matter with one of you? We can’t get this over with until we come to an agreement. We’ve gone over all the evidence twice and voted seven times and it never changes. Eleven guiltys and one not guilty!”

  “Maybe we should tell the bailiff that we’re at an impasse.” The silver-haired man who’d earlier suggested the written ballots waved his hand as though doing a conjuring trick.

  Patience clenched one hand inside the other in her lap. So far the fact that she was the odd woman out hadn’t become apparent to her fellow jurors.

  All day, however, the pressure had mounted and mounted in the room. After the first ballot, the jury members had started glancing at each other with one question plain on their faces: “Who’s voting against the majority?” But now it had progressed to: “Who’s being an irritating thorn in our side?”

  Patience looked down at her hands again. “Why does it have to be so hot?” she murmured and pressed a tissue to her moist temples.

  “It’s you, isn’t it?” the plump woman next to Patience accused in a razor-sharp tone. “You’re the reason we’ve been sitting here hour after sweltering hour.”

  Patience stiffened. What she’d dreaded had come at last. What should she say? Could she speak anything but what she really thought?

  Across from Patience, a middle-aged woman who obviously used boxed tint on her too-bla
ck hair squinted at her. The woman had been sending suspicious glances at Patience for the past few hours. “That’s right.” Her tone full of innuendo, she said, “Everyone else looks angry. You look…frozen.” She pointed a finger at Patience. “You’re the holdout. Don’t try to deny it.”

  “Deny it?” Patience bristled at the thought that she would speak less than the truth. “Why should I?” Her own frustration spilled out. “What’s wrong with you people? We’ve gone over the evidence, but with what result? None of you get it.”

  “What don’t we get?” the foreman said through gritted teeth, deepening his pained voice. He stared down the length of the table, his face twisted in resentment.

  “It’s all circumstantial.” Patience rose from her chair. “The D.A. doesn’t have one piece of real proof against Dan Putnam—not a fingerprint, not a witness—”

  “The neighbors heard them arguing,” the silver-haired gentleman cut her off.

  “So what?” Patience reveled in finally being able to voice her opinion. Fervor flowed out within her words. “Haven’t any of you had a loud argument with a family member? I would think that if Dan Putnam were going to hurt his mother, he would have avoided calling attention to himself.”

  “Dan’s had mental problems!” the middle-aged woman blustered. “He doesn’t think like a normal person.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Patience’s reply snapped like razor-sharp teeth in the tense room. “Just because a person has a history of mental illness doesn’t mean they can’t reason. And if you are going to use his mental problems against him, then you can’t hold him responsible for his actions if his illness has so completely debilitated him.”

  Taut silence bound the table, froze all movement, all reaction, except for Patience’s. She stood even straighter and challenged them one by one with a fierce look.

  The other jurors avoided her eyes. A minute, two minutes, three minutes passed with the ticking of the antique wall clock with its swinging pendulum.