That Night at the Palace

by Watson, L. D.

  Across the hall gossiping with the County Clerk’s secretary again, no doubt.

  “Assemble the staff in my office immediately.”

  “Roosevelt isn’t in yet, Mr. Cockwright.”

  Roosevelt was Roosevelt Primrose, the youngest of Nathaniel’s two deputy D.A’s. Primrose was a decent young lawyer with a lot of promise despite having the handicap of acquiring his law degree from Southern Methodist University. What the young man lacked in legal knowledge he made up for in appearance and attitude. Although short, he wore impeccable-looking suits despite their being off-the-rack from such places as Sears and Roebuck’s or Montgomery Ward’s. How in the world the kid managed to look that dapper in a mail-order suit was beyond Nathaniel’s understanding, but when the boy walked into a courtroom, he looked like a lawyer who knew he was going to win his case. Unfortunately it didn’t seem to bother him in the least that his secretary regularly called him by his given name in spite of the fact that he was a board certified, licensed attorney in the state of Texas.

  “Has Mr. Primrose called in?”

  “No, sir. I suspect that he just overslept.”

  “Well, assemble the staff as soon as he gets here. Oh, and get David Roberson at The Jacksonville Statesman on the phone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Cockwright picked up the paper again, angry at the fact that his junior assistant C.A. was already nearly five minutes late for work. Nathaniel was not at all happy with his two deputies. One was young, inexperienced but so organized and well prepared that he sometimes won his cases because he wrote such a good brief. The other was old, grouchy, and often looked like he had slept in his suits. The only good thing about Deputy C.A. Mason Coleman was that he was a walking encyclopedia of legal knowledge without which Cockwright would sometimes be completely lost. But that’s the reason to have a staff. A single person can’t be expected to know how to do everything. Together, as annoying as his staff might be at times, they made a decent team. Coleman handled the legalities, Primrose wrote up the briefs, and Nathaniel managed.

  Nathaniel’s intercom buzzed, and the attorney pressed the lever.

  “I have Mr. Roberson on the line, sir.”

  She calls the reporter “Mr.”

  He pressed the lever on his new speakerphone, not bothering with the handset.

  “Mr. Roberson. This is County Attorney Nathaniel Cockwright.”

  “Yes. Hello, sir.”

  “I was just looking at your article on the killing of this young high school student down in Elza. Your headline says that it was a “brutal” murder. Exactly what was so brutal about it?”

  “I take it you haven’t spoken to anyone down there yet?”

  Nathaniel clenched his teeth. Of course he hadn’t talked to anyone. No one there had bothered to call him.

  “No, your article is the first I’ve heard about it.”

  “Well, I have to tell you, it was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen. From all accounts this was a nice kid that everybody in town liked. Someone bashed his head in with a tire iron, or at least they think it was a tire iron. They hit him so hard that a big section of his skull was caved in. Then they dumped him off the side of a bridge, still alive, I think. and an alligator chewed on him a few. The Ranger told me that he died before he was tossed off the bridge but one of the deputies claimed that the kid fought off the gater for several hours before he died. Just an awful scene all the way around. ”

  Nathaniel cringed at the thought of how painful that must have been but then realized this was the case he’d been waiting for his entire career.

  “Why wasn’t any of this in your article?”

  “You mean the gator?”

  “Well, that and the head bashing.”

  “I talked it over with my editor, and we decided that the bloody stuff wasn’t necessary. I mean, his family is going to read that article. Their kid was murdered; they don’t need to know that he died quite so horribly, do they? Besides, Ranger McKinney was there, and he made it real clear that the kid died from the head wound and didn’t want anything about the gator getting out.”

  Nathaniel’s rage was building.

  “This is an important story,” Nathan began angrily. “We have a vicious killer on the streets, and the people of Cherokee County need to know about it. I don’t care what some damn Ranger says. It’s your job to report that story.”

  “I’m pretty sure they arrested the guy after I went to press. He apparently had threatened to kill the kid a few hours earlier. I’m about to go down there for a follow-up story.”

  Nathaniel looked at his watch.

  “I’ll be there at about ten with sheriff’s deputies to take that murderer back here to Rusk. You be there and get the story. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to have a photographer along. And tomorrow morning I want you to print the whole story about how that kid died. In fact, you should do a side story all about this kid. You said yourself he was well-liked. Son, this is the biggest story of your life. It’s certainly the biggest story that ever happened in this county, and you’re sittin’ on it.”

  “First of all, Nate,”

  “The name is Mr. Cockwright.”

  “Mr. Cockwright, I’m not sure if my editor will want me to run that, and we don’t even have a photographer, and, quite frankly, I don’t want to lock horns with Brewster McKinney.”

  Nathaniel closed his eyes. This idiot, back-woods journalist was beginning to give him a headache.

  “What is the big deal about this McKinney? A Ranger is nothin’ more than a glorified street cop.”

  Nathanial heard laughing over the phone.

  “Mr. Cockwright, Brewster McKinney is not a street cop. He’s just about the last of the old-school shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later Rangers. He’s worked a million cases and has been in more shootouts than Wyatt Earp. He learned under the likes of Frank Hamer and Eli Bradford. He practically threatened to feed me to a gator if I ran that story, and I’m pretty sure he meant it.”

  The C.A.’s blood was boiling.

  Nathaniel looked at his watch. “Listen, I’ll be in Elza at ten o’clock. You be there and have a camera. And tomorrow I want to read the full story - every gruesome detail. I want the people in this county to know what kind of bloody killer we captured. You let me worry about this cowboy. If your editor objects, you tell him to call me. One other thing - if I don’t see that full story along with a background story on what a good kid this was, you had better hightail it out of this county because if you get so much as a speeding ticket, I’ll see to it that you do two months on the road crew.”

  Nathaniel clicked off the phone and grinned.

  That fool’s probably wetting his pants.

  A moment later Anita knocked at his door and opened it without waiting to be invited.

  “The staff is ready, sir.”

  He simply shook his head at the incompetent disrespect.

  “Bring them in.”

  Within minutes, seated in a semicircle around his desk, were his two deputies Primrose and Coleman and his legal assistant Vivian Yates. Vivian was the one bright spot on his staff. She was trained at Gaston Avenue School of Business in Dallas and as a result was one excellent researcher. Her only professional flaw was that she had the tendency to call everyone “hun,” and that included her boss and on at least one occasion, Judge Buckner. Cockwright had been trying to break her of the habit for at least five years with no luck what so ever.

  “Now that we’re all here,” Nathaniel began, with a glare at Primrose, who completely missed the insinuation, “I’m sure all of you have heard about the murder.”

  Primrose and Coleman glanced at each other and then looked back at Nathaniel. Vivian sat staring at the C.A. with her notepad and pencil in hand; she clearly had no more knowledge about any murder than the two deputies, but the facts of the case were of no interest
to her. Her only purpose was research. The attorneys did the rest.

  “Clearly, I’m the only person around here that reads the newspapers. There was a young man murdered down in Elza Saturday night. I haven’t spoken to the police chief yet, but I intend to go down there later.”

  “Elza?” Primrose interrupted.

  “Yes, Elza,” Nathaniel, replied with another glare at his junior deputy. “As I was saying, I don’t know much about the case just yet, but I believe…”

  “Nathaniel, I-,” Primrose interrupted again but was immediately cut off.

  “I’ll take questions, in a few minutes, Primrose. I’m going down there to talk to the chief. I understand that he’s made an arrest.”

  “Nathaniel, the Elza chief is here. I just saw his new prowler out front.”

  “What?”

  “I just saw the new prowler with “Elza Police” printed on the side door. It has to be him. I’m pretty sure that’s still a one-man department down there. He’s probably dropping off his murderer with the sheriff. If we hurry we can probably catch ‘im before he leaves.”

  Nathaniel leapt to his feet and rushed out the door. As he passed through the outer office he ordered Anita, “Call downstairs to the Sheriff’s office. Tell him that I’m coming down. If the Elza Chief is there, tell them not to let him leave.”

  Vivian just sat there while Primrose and Coleman looked at each other, “Should we go?” Primrose finally asked.

  “I’m not runnin’ down those stairs after some cop. You can if you want.”

  Primrose thought for a moment and then got up and trotted after the C.A.

  The sheriff’s office was in the basement of the large Cherokee County Courthouse building, and Cockwright’s office was on the third floor. This meant the C.A. had to run down three flights of stairs, across the atrium and down one more flight of stairs before reaching the sheriff. Cockwright prided himself on his appearance. A man of his position absolutely had to look as professional as possible, so his suits came straight from Neiman Marcus in Dallas and his spit-polished shoes came from Milton S. Florsheim in Chicago. Granted, the suits and shoes were expensive, but being the C.A. required a professional demeanor, especially a C.A. who would soon be governor.

  Sheriff Jonas Cadwalder had been a large man when he played football for the Sam Houston State University Bearkats, but in the thirty years since his playing days Jonas Cadwalder had gained weight significantly, to the tune of two hundred plus pounds. With a six-foot five-inch frame that tipped the scales at well over four hundred pounds, the sheriff was a very large and intimidating gentleman. At the farm where at any given moment a half-dozen or so prisoners were doing as much as a year or two on the county road work detail, Cadwalder was more often than not referred to as Sheriff Fat-walder, though understandably not in his presence or in earshot of one of the bulls.

  Cadwalder was sloppy on his best day and the complete opposite of Nathaniel Cockwright. For starters, to Nathaniel’s disdain, the Sheriff of Cherokee County Texas had never, on any occasion that the C.A. could recall, worn a tie. Secondly, as far back as Nathaniel could remember, he couldn’t think of a single time he’d seen the man without a food stain of some sort on his shirt. But then what could one expect from a hillbilly version of Sidney Greenstreet?

  It was bad enough that the county Sheriff had a less-than-professional personal appearance, but more annoying was the fact that the man showed absolutely no respect to the office of County Attorney.

  Cadwalder didn’t see his appearance as a problem. The fact was, he dealt with the vermin of Cherokee county on a daily basis and saw no reason to put on a clean shirt every morning only to spill coffee on it right before he drove a hot, sweaty squad car out to the farm to check on the inmates. If it displeased that “thinks he’s too good for Cherokee County” County Attorney, then all the better.

  So a few minutes earlier when his girl, Beverly,took a call from that clown of a C.A.’s girl ordering him to keep the Elza police chief in his office, Cadwalder didn’t budge. Sheriff Cadwalder didn’t take orders from anyone save Judge Buckner, and he had a tendency to ignore those, too. More importantly, Cadwalder didn’t like that prissy little C.A., and he liked the C.A.’s two prissier little assistants even less. So since the Elza police chief had already walked out of his office not ten seconds prior to his receiving the call from that pinstriped circus clown upstairs, Cadwalder wasn’t about to get himself out of his chair and go running after the man. If the C.A. wanted to talk to Jefferson Hightower, he could go running after the Chief himself.

  Two minutes later when Cherokee County County Attorney Nathaniel Elbridge Cockwrght barged into his office demanding to see Chief Hightower, Cadwalder showed no interest in getting out of his chair except to refill his coffee cup. C.A. Cockwright, naturally, was not particularly impressed with the sheriff’s department’s nonchalant attitude toward obeying orders from the County Attorney’s office. That dissatisfaction would have probably escalated into a world class shouting match had it not been for Cockwright’s urgent desire to speak to Chief Hightower, and thus the C.A. rushed out the door as soon as he learned that the Chief was at that moment up on the second floor in Judge Buckner’s courtroom with a prisoner who, according the C.A., should have been handed over to his office and then the sheriff’s office.

  It was a shame that Sheriff Cadwalder didn’t know exactly why Cockwright, whom he couldn’t help but think of as Cockfight, needed to see the Chief until it was too late. Irritating that prissy little C.A. was one of the few pleasures of his job, and he had missed a golden opportunity.

  County Attorney Cockwright was furious and out of breath when he, followed by Primrose, burst into Judge Buckner’s courtroom after climbing back up two flights of stairs. He knew that it was ill mannered and unprofessional of him to do so, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d wasted enough time already. Had that fat slug of a sheriff told him that Chief Hightower was up there instead of stammering around arguing with him, he might not have had to barge in while the Judge was arraigning the prisoner. There were times, Cockwright suspected, that the grossly obese sheriff did these things on purpose just to irritate him.

  Of course, had the dumb bumpkin of a police chief done his job right in the first place, Cockwright would not have to barge into the judge’s court. Minor cases that were uncontested naturally didn’t require the C.A. office’s involvement. These cases, usually traffic violations or drunken and disorderly behavior, were presented before the judge. Judge Buckner would then issue some punishment and they would be handed over to the Sheriff to either pay a fine or go to the county farm. But this idiot Police Chief from Elza had a major murder on his hands. Even if this murderer made a complete confession, it was still the C.A.’s job to handle the arraignment. This melon-headed cop was treating a murderer as if he was dealing with another drunken hobo.

  A case like this had enormous implications to public safety and had to be handled with the public in mind. Frankly, the press should be there so that the public could rest assured that this killer was off the streets. Furthermore, the citizens needed to see their duly elected officials performing their jobs.

  The problem with being a C.A. in a place like Cherokee County was dealing with these small town police departments. People like this chief had no legal education and therefore had no understanding of proper jurisprudence. A few of these hillbillies had little more than a grade school education and were hired simply because their brother-in-law happened to get elected mayor.

  Proper or not, Nathaniel made a grand show of marching into the courtroom even though, besides the judge and the chief, the only people in the court were the bailiff, the clerk, and the murderer. The chief, fool that he was, was standing in front of Judge Buckner’s desk with his hand on the murderer’s arm. He didn’t even have handcuffs on the man.

  “Your Honor,” Nathaniel began, “I must interrupt this proceeding. I ins
ist that my department take over the processing of this case immediately.”

  Jefferson looked over his shoulder in dismay at the County Attorney as he was rapidly approaching the bench.

  “And why would that be?” Judge Buckner asked nonchalantly.

  “Your Honor, surely you will agree that a case like this one cannot be handled the same way you would some drunken brawler.”

  Judge Buckner looked down at the notes handed to him by the clerk moments before and then, with a smirk, asked Nathaniel, “And why not?”

  “This man, allegedly, committed a major crime, your Honor. We owe it to the public to handle this case with the utmost care. I’m sure that the last thing we want is for a case of this magnitude to get overruled on some technicality.”

  “Well we certainly don’t want that,” the Judge retorted. Judge Bucker had been on the bench in Cherokee County for almost fifty years. In those years he’d seen a lot of C.A.’s come and go but none as irritating as Nathaniel Cockwright. Cockwright treated the office of County Attorney as an inconvenience he was forced to endure until he got elected to the job that he seemed to think he deserved. This performance was a perfect example of what Buckner thought of as Cockwright’s incompetence. Had he bothered to step into the clerk’s office before storming into the courtroom, he would know that this was a drunk and disorderly case and not a murder. Buckner had read the same article in The Jacksonville Statesman as Cockwright, but unlike Cockwright, the judge finished the article. Had Cockwright done so he would know that the Texas Rangers had sent one of their best men down to investigate the murder in Elza. And if Cockwright was half the County Attorney that he thought he was, he would know that the Rangers never march into court without consulting the C.A.’s office. The reason the Rangers were so well respected was that they only presented cases that were sure to get a conviction.

  “So you will agree that I need to take over this arraignment immediately.”

  “This is not an arraignment, Mr. Cockwright. Mr. Stoker here has foregone his right to a jury trial, and I am about to present his sentence.”