by Jay Brandon
“Mr. Marshall?”
Jordan turned to his client “Wayne, have you ever been convicted of a felony?”
“No, sir. One DWI and a public intox—”
“No prior convictions relevant to this sentencing,” Jordan interrupted. “And the court has our sworn application for probation, stating the same thing. Just one more question. Did you mean to kill Kevin, Wayne?”
“Never, never. If I could take it back I’da done it a thousand times by now. I swear to God, I never meant to hurt him that bad.”
“And the jury so found by their verdict,” Jordan said to the judge.
“I understand the meaning of the jury’s verdict, Mr. Marshall. Do you have any more evidence to present?”
“Just one other thing. How old are you, Wayne?”
“I turned twenty yesterday.”
Jordan almost laughed, a bitter chuckle. Instead he said, “The defense rests, Your Honor.”
“Argument?” Judge Waverly asked blandly.
Jordan said immediately, “Your Honor, there’s only one living person left from this whole tragic episode, and you have his life in your hands. Prison would set Wayne on a course that would ensure that his life would be wasted, too. That would be the final tragedy. What he needs is supervision, Your Honor, as this boy makes the difficult transition to adulthood.”
Jordan thought he should say more, in a normal case he would have, but he also understood the negligible effect his words would have on the man before him. Jordan shrugged and subsided.
“From the State?” Judge Waverly asked quietly.
“The jury has found this was only a case of aggravated assault, but it was the worst possible example of an aggravated assault, resulting in prolonged hospitalization and eventually the victim’s death.” Arriendez glared at Jordan, defying him to contradict. Jordan didn’t respond at all. He was watching the judge.
“The victim was the defendant’s best friend,” Arriendez continued. “The defendant has a history of alcohol abuse, but there’s no evidence alcohol was involved in this offense. His only defense was that he flew into an uncontrollable rage. That doesn’t bode well for the citizens of this community if Mr. Orkney is allowed to remain free among us. The offense was the worst possible—”
The DA suddenly looked up at his judge and saw that his words were having no effect. Like Jordan, the prosecutor wound down abruptly, with much of his thoughts left unsaid. “It calls for the maximum sentence of ten years,” he concluded simply.
Judge Waverly hadn’t let either lawyer catch his eye. It didn’t appear to be deliberate evasion, he simply wasn’t paying attention to them; he was listening to an argument inside his head. That argument seemed to have concluded. The judge tapped the gavel lightly and with no more deliberation said, “Wayne Orkney, the jury having found you guilty of aggravated assault I sentence you to serve a term of ten years’ imprisonment”
Jordan was shocked. He felt himself suddenly surrounded by an aura of cold electricity. His hair felt as if it were standing on end.
“Now let us consider the application for probation,” Judge Waverly continued, his voice a strange mix of sternness and detachment. “Wayne, if I send you to prison, you’ll be out in a year or two, but your life will never be the same. You will forever be an ex-convict. Besides certain loss of rights and difficulties in finding employment you’ll find that prison is a stigma you can never shake. And as your attorney said, it will alter the whole course of your life.
“On the other hand, granting you probation might put this whole community at risk, as the district attorney has said. I would be a fool to take that risk, wouldn’t I?”
Under the judge’s words and gaze, Wayne had emerged both from the weight of the trial and from his endless self-study. He spoke up earnestly. “I know I’ll never hurt anybody again, Judge. I don’t think I could touch anybody. I—” He held up a hand and it was trembling. “Sometimes I think about cutting them off,” he said softly.
“Probation doesn’t mean walking free,” Judge Waverly continued. “It means community service, it means reporting to a probation officer very regularly, it means reforming your habits, it means never getting arrested again for anything. It would last ten long years. When it’s over, you won’t be a boy of twenty any more, you’ll be a man—or you will have broken your covenant with me and then you will go to prison, even if you don’t make a mistake until the last day of your probationary term. Can you live up to those conditions, Wayne?”
Wayne looked shaken, but not as he usually had since Jordan had known him, when Wayne had been driven inward by his pain. Judge Waverly’s lecture had had the effect of shaking Wayne back out into the world again.
And the idea of aging to thirty was probably more of a threat in the boy’s mind than prison was.
“Yes, sir, Your Honor. I won’t ever be no trouble to nobody again.”
“That’s exactly right, Wayne. Or you’ll answer to me. I grant the application for probation. The sentence of ten years’ confinement is suspended.”
Jordan routinely clapped his client on the back in congratulations, but his attention was still centered on the judge. Judge Waverly finally returned his stare. His expression was one of unpleading interrogation; Jordan took it to mean the judge was asking if he and Jordan had formed a covenant as well.
“Thank you, Your Honor. May we be dismissed?”
“You all are.” As was his habit, the judge disappeared quickly, seeming to vanish into the blackness of his robe.
“I told you it was a probation case,” Jordan said to Mike Arriendez as they turned. “Why’d you put us through all this grief?”
The DA made a gun of his thumb and forefinger and pointed it at Jordan. “Next time,” he said.
Jordan snorted. “Be a cold day on the highway before you see me in this building again.”
The Orkneys were upon him. Mrs. Orkney detached herself from her son long enough to give Jordan a quick, wet hug, then they were huddled into themselves again and he let them go.
There were milling crowds in the courtroom, people standing but not moving to leave, like people discussing an interesting play. Jordan had no inclination to pass among them. Instead he finally gave in to the tug in the opposite direction. He turned to Laura.
Her chair was empty. She was gone as suddenly as her judge.
Jordan followed what must have been her path back into the court offices. But when he passed through the short hall and opened the office door, it was into nightmare. Deputy Delmore stood there, inches from Jordan’s face, hat and sunglasses restored to their proper places, and gunbelt heavy on his hip. Delmore thrust a finger into Jordan’s chest.
“You called me a murderer, you son of a bitch.”
Jordan didn’t answer. The door into the courtroom was behind him, closed. He didn’t dare turn his back on Delmore.
“I live in this town,” the deputy continued, advancing on him. “I’m not just some arrogant son of a bitch out-of-town bastard passing through, dropping insinuations like birdshit. I’ve got a name in this town. People respect me. I won’t have ’em lookin’ sly at me, wondering what I did, just because some smartass lawyer—”
“What do you want me to do, issue a retraction?”
Delmore had him pinned against the door. He grabbed Jordan’s arm, squeezing so hard Jordan could feel his arm bruising even beneath the protection of his suit coat and shirt. “I want to take your head off,” Delmore almost shouted.
Jordan could taste the deputy’s breath, sour with undigested hamburger and beer and hatred.
“You take your hand off me or you’re gonna need some new sunglasses,” Jordan said.
Delmore grinned evilly. He did remove his hand, but only to draw it back into a fist. Jordan shoved him away and Delmore’s hand fell to his gun belt instead.
“Tommy!”
Laura had appeared in the far doorway. Delmore didn’t turn to her, but it was clear he recogniz
ed her voice, maybe aided by her use of an old nickname.
“Back off, T. J. Nobody thinks you killed that boy. Unless you start acting like a crazy person now.”
Still staring at Jordan, Delmore said relentlessly, “He’s gonna apologize, or he’s gonna—”
“He doesn’t have anything to apologize for, T. J. He was just doing his job. Why don’t you go do yours? Before you get fired from it for conduct unbecoming an officer—or excessive nitwittery on duty.”
“Shut up, Laura.”
“Say that to my face, Tommy.”
Delmore hesitated. He managed to make the turn toward her, but his eyes barely raked her. He slammed his fist against the nearby wall. There were two doors out of the passageway: Laura stood in one doorway and Jordan was blocking the other. The deputy chose Jordan. He stalked past him. “Watch it!” he said loudly to someone and slammed the door behind him.
Laura was looking at Jordan appraisingly as if nothing had just happened, but when she spoke, it was about Delmore.
“How many of our local law enforcement officers am I going to have to rescue you from?”
“I don’t know. How many ex-boy friends have you got?”
“Don’t be insulting.” There was a lightness to her words but not in her tone or her face. Her next sentence revealed why. “I guess you’re on your way out of town now.”
“Laura,” he said reproachfully, coming close to her.
“Well, I was hoping you’d stop by on your way out.” But she was looking at him so strangely, as if Jordan had again become the stranger he’d been when she’d first seen him, but a stranger who stirred dreamlike memories of intimacy. Jordan wasn’t smiling either. “Let’s go now,” he said.
She didn’t ask where he wanted to go. On the way to her house he told her about his encounter with Swin Wainwright. “Hell of a thing when you can’t even win a trial and feel completely good about it afterward.”
“This was a win?” Laura teased. “I thought I heard the jury say guilty.”
“Darling, in a defense lawyer’s book, this was a major, major victory.”
They both grew quiet and somber as they crossed her front porch. The house felt different, more formal. Jordan wondered if Laura felt the change, too, if she was responsible for it
He brought up the case again. It gave the illusion of safe ground. “In a way Wayne got the harshest sentence he could have. The judge was right. The way parole is now he wouldn’t have spent much time in prison. But he’ll be under Judge Waverly’s thumb for ten years.”
Laura was pensive. She stood by the sofa in her living room, one hand touching the sofa’s back, her head bowed. Jordan, still close to her front door, thought maybe she was expending a little thought on him, on the fact that there was nothing to keep Jordan in Green Hills now that the trial was ended. But he knew he wasn’t the only thing on her mind. There was no reason for Laura to stay here either. Not any more.
“The judge won’t ever revoke Wayne, though.”
“Why not?” Laura asked, looking up.
“I don’t think the judge will want to reopen the case.” Waverly would brood over it though, many a long night. What had been touched on but not revealed in court threw a wholly new light over the judge’s whole life.
“But you don’t have to be here to see it,” Jordan told Laura. “There’s nothing to hold you in Green Hills now that Jenny’s not here.”
Laura began crying, one welling tear diving down her cheek. She didn’t turn away from him.
“I called Midland and I called Chicago,” Jordan said. “I talked to a lot of people, a lot of clerks and recordkeepers. Jenny wasn’t Joan Fecklewhite’s wild sister’s daughter. She was yours. You left town to have her and you stayed away too long, until her father had to insist you come back. And you couldn’t keep the baby, not in this little town, so the judge found a family to raise her. He already knew the Fecklewhites because he’d represented Ed and investigated them, I guess, and thought they’d do.”
Laura didn’t speak, so he went on, studying her face. “After I realized it, God, I could see her face in yours. I’m surprised nobody else’s seen it over the years. But gossip had already solved that little mystery to everyone’s satisfaction. Did you start that rumor yourself about Joan Fecklewhite’s sister? It wouldn’t have taken much of a hint to the right person.”
“What gave you this idea?” Laura asked. Her voice didn’t go with her wet cheek. Her voice was strong. Just hearing it, a listener wouldn’t have guessed how she was holding herself as if she were freezing to death.
“I kept working on the assumption you were lying to me, but after a while I thought what if you were telling the truth about Jenny not being the judge’s girl friend? ‘People are so stupid,’ you said. That sentence was just ripped out of you, you couldn’t put up with the nastiness the idea implied about Jenny. But you couldn’t deny how the judge took an extraordinary interest in her. How he practically took over her life, displacing her own father. Her adopted father. Judge Waverly couldn’t keep out of her life, could he? She was his only child.”
Jordan’s realization had explained everything else. That Laura had left town right after working for Judge Waverly during high school, and he had paid for her further education. And at about the same time she came back, a baby girl was adopted by the Fecklewhites, a girl who transcended her origins and in whom both Laura and the judge took an abiding interest. And it explained why Laura could never bring herself to leave Green Hills. She couldn’t go away and not see her daughter grow up. It explained Judge Waverly’s confession about finding a quick, bright girl and reaching out for her: not Jenny—Laura, who became Jenny’s mother.
“Did you ever tell her? Did she know you were her mother?”
Laura’s arms were still wrapped around herself. “She just knew I cared about her. I wanted to hear what was happening to her. I’d track her down to hear about her life, and sometimes she’d come to find me.” Proudly. “Because we were friends. It was better than being mother and daughter—I guess. She’d tell me things she wouldn’t tell her mother. She knew I loved her because of who she was, not what she was.”
Another tear washed her cheek, but Laura still looked rigid. The discipline of a lifetime of keeping her strongest feelings hidden had become part of her. But now the discipline was making her immobile.
“It’s amazing you could have kept a secret like that in this town,” Jordan said.
And horrible. He couldn’t imagine Laura’s life. To have spent years close to her only daughter but unable to touch her, to tuck her in bed at night. To be unable to take open pride in her and have her mother’s love acknowledged.
“You don’t even have a picture of her,” Jordan said wonderingly.
“Picture?” A sob broke from Laura. It was a sound so alien to her it could have come from outside. But that one cry utterly remade Laura. She lost any trace of composure and rigidity. She flew across the room.
“I have pictures!” she shouted, openly crying now, wracked by crying, shoulders shaking, but somehow energized by it, too. Across the room, she tore open the doors of one of the cabinets beneath her bookcases. The cabinet was deeper than Jordan had suspected. Laura pushed aside some junk—frames, vases, fake ferns—that acted as concealment for a good-sized cardboard box, probably two feet long on each side. Laura pulled the box into the light. It was sealed with tape, but the tape was curling up at the ends, obviously pulled up and pressed down again several times. Now Laura broke the tapes, tore open the top of the box, and spilled out its contents.
“My God,” Jordan said.
They were all photos of Jenny. Eight-by-tens, wallet-size school pictures, Polaroid snapshots. The photos weren’t laid down in chronological layers within the box. Some baby pictures were near the top. Jordan knelt and touched one of the pictures, separating it from the others. The photo, not very clear, apparently taken by someone operating a cheap camera with which he was not familia
r, showed a very young Laura wearing a blouse not even stylish more than fifteen years ago when the picture was taken. She was holding a tiny baby, no more than two months old. And beaming.
Looking at the picture, Jordan realized he had never seen Laura smile. What he had taken for smiles weren’t even bitter shadows of the grin this eighteen-year-old girl was showing the world, this dazzlement of delight and pride and love.
Laura was holding another picture, one she hadn’t had to sort through the pile to find. It had been on top. Jordan looked over her shoulder and saw a Jenny fifteen or sixteen years old, almost as old as she’d ever gotten, smiling at the camera, wearing almost that same smile, the one Laura had displayed in Chicago years earlier. The later picture had been taken outdoors. In the background were trees, a banner of some kind, people strolling. Standing close beside Jenny was Laura almost as Jordan knew her. Jenny had her arm around Laura. It looked spontaneous, as if Jenny had hugged Laura just as the picture was being taken. Laura’s arms were just beginning to unfold and so was her face, being startled into another smile. But still wearing that awareness of other people around.
“I’d say to people, ‘Take our picture,’ Casually, like I’d just thought of it. I always had my camera with me. In my desk at the courthouse, in my purse at county fairs or livestock shows or picnics. I had to take a dozen pictures of other people to get one of Jenny. People thought it was my hobby.” Laura was crying steadily. Only her hand holding the picture didn’t shake. She couldn’t risk crumpling the picture. It had been obtained at too great a risk. It was irreplaceable.
“But some of these others,” Jordan said. “School pictures and studio photographs—”
“I paid Joan to make copies for me. Joan knew, of course. I was the one who handed Jenny over to her. The judge wanted to do it, so they wouldn’t know about me, but I said no, I want her to know. I put that baby into her arms and I said, ‘If you—If she ever—’ and Joan just hugged me and said, ‘Honey, I know.’
“I was always there for her,” Laura said loudly. “Whenever Jenny needed me. Even when she didn’t know she did. One day Joan called me at the courthouse and said Jenny’s about to talk. I ran out of that courthouse, I don’t know if they got another court reporter or had to stop the hearing, I didn’t care, if anybody’d tried to stop me, I would have run them down. I was at their house almost before Joan hung up the phone. The baby came right to me. Back then she still remembered me. I held her and Joan said, ‘Say it, baby. Say it, Jenny.’ ”
