Wall of Silence

by Dorey Whittaker

  As Scott walked behind his wife and mother, feelings of rage would not quiet down, but he knew Susan needed him to stay calm. That was what he had promised her before this trial began, but he had no way of knowing how hard that was going to be. He just had to find the strength to hold himself together, for Susan’s sake.

  Chapter 33

  Tuesday morning started with the phone ringing. Scott reached over to pick it up before it woke the children. Susan sat up, wondering who could be calling at this time of morning. She watched Scott’s face, looking for some clue as he answered the person on the other end of the line.

  “All right, that’s not a problem. I’ll be sure to tell her. That’s fine, we’ll meet you there at eight o’clock. Goodbye.” As Scott hung up, he turned to Susan and said. “That was Duncan. I guess he was up half the night working on his strategy and has decided not to put you on the stand today. He said he’ll meet us at the courthouse at eight o’clock and explain everything, but he wanted to tell you as early as possible so you wouldn’t be worrying about getting up on the stand today.”

  Puzzled by this turn of events, Susan asked, “Why doesn’t Mr. Duncan want me to testify? What could have happened that would make him not want to use me?”

  Susan rushed around the house getting everything ready so they could be extra early to court. She was concerned something might have happened, since she had been feeling as if Duncan was not being totally honest with her. Several times during the past three days, he and Lisa would be huddled together talking, and when she walked up, they would stop. Lisa seemed distracted and worried, but Susan had just written that off due to all the testimony she had heard.

  Scott and Susan were sitting in the large conference room when Duncan walked in looking very tired. He set his papers down and poured himself a cup of coffee before sitting down across from Susan.

  “All right. I know you must be wondering why I would change the game plan when we’re in the home stretch. Well, last night I went over everything that has happened in the courtroom so far. I tried to study it from the jury’s position, and I think it would be a mistake to put you in front of them right now.”

  Seeing Susan about to protest, Duncan lifted his hand to stop her and continued. “Well … that is not altogether true. I intend to keep ‘little Susan’ in front of that jury. The visual picture Mrs. Reiner painted yesterday was so powerful, I want that jury to be thinking of that five-year-old, not the lovely grown-up woman sitting across from me right now.”

  This was not the only reason, but this was the only one he was free to discuss right now. He had been up for days, trying to digest some new information that had just landed in his lap that Saturday afternoon. Before he put anyone else on that stand, he wanted to be sure where this defense was going. There would be no time to retrace any missteps later on.

  “Susan, today Officer Bailey will tell the jury about ‘little eight-year-old Susan,’ as well as give the jury a profound look at Charles Miller. Therefore, I have decided the best thing you can do for your sister is not to get on the stand.”

  Understanding she had not had the time to think about the wisdom of this move like Mr. Duncan had, and also because she trusted him, she simply nodded in agreement.

  They talked about how they thought the trial was going and asked Mr. Duncan his opinion.

  “Even though I feel sure the jury is on our side, you never pull your punches. You hit them with everything you have until the contest is over.”

  He looked over at Susan, who had so wanted a positive, confident response, and said, “Don’t mind me. I’m just one of those over-cautious lawyers who refuses to count the votes ahead of time. Everything is going as planned, so please don’t worry. I talked to Officer Bailey early this morning, and he’s ready and willing to testify, so let’s get out there and do what needs to be done.”

  He gave her a big smile, hoping her concerns were answered. As Mr. Duncan, Scott, and Susan entered the courtroom, they noticed that everyone was in their seats—everyone except Bill Thomas. Slipping into their seats, Scott leaned over to his mother and asked, “Where’s Dad?”

  Caroline leaned over and whispered, “Mrs. Randal called very early this morning. There is some kind of crisis in Atlanta. He hopes to have it cleared up today so he can be back here tomorrow. He told me to tell you not to worry.”

  Scott gave his mother a reassuring smile. He knew how much his mother wanted his father there and how much Bill wanted to be there. It must have been something pretty important to make him miss today.

  A few minutes later, Marjorie Miller walked into the courtroom and took a seat in the very back row. She sat there staring at the back of her daughter Susan, sitting smack in the middle of the Thomas clan. You would think she would feel some kind of relief, knowing her daughter had not only survived that horrible childhood experience but was obviously loved by these people, but you would be wrong. These people represented everything she had come to hate. After all, they were the haves, and she was one of the have-nots! She knew they never had to fight for what they got, like she did. Yet they had the nerve to look down their noses at her. They were all alike, and her daughter had become one of them. Marjorie Miller was so blinded by her hate that she had long since lost the ability to think rationally about anything. So much so that even while Mrs. Reiner was on the witness stand, all Marjorie Miller could focus on was how no one seemed to care that she was the one who had been beaten. Their behavior just proved to her sick mind that she was right. Sitting in that courtroom, she was blind to the fact that she had failed miserably as a mother, but everyone else there saw it.

  When the court was called to order, Judge Kirkley asked Mr. Duncan to call his next witness. “The defense calls Mr. Kerry Bailey to the stand.”

  As Mr. Bailey came in and took his seat in the witness box, Susan kept her eyes on him. He was somewhere in his early sixties, slightly heavy and balding. He had a pleasant manner about him, and after the clerk swore him in, his eyes began moving among the rows, as if looking for someone, but before he could find what he was looking for, Mr. Duncan began his questioning.

  “Mr. Bailey, can you please tell the court your occupation?”

  “Yes, sir. I am retired from the Atlanta Police Department.”

  “Mr. Bailey, how long did you work for the Atlanta Police Department?”

  “Twenty years, sir.”

  “How long have you been retired from the department, Mr. Bailey?”

  “For eleven years this September, sir.”

  “So, if you’ve been retired for eleven years and you were employed by them for twenty years, then you were employed with the Atlanta Police Department between the years 1953 through 1973; would that be correct, Mr. Bailey?”

  “No, sir. I was hired on in September 1954, right after being discharged from the US Marine Corps. I retired in September 1974. Eleven years ago.”

  Duncan knew it was important for the jury to have all this pieced together, before they heard Bailey’s story. Duncan didn’t want them sitting in their seat trying to do the math in their heads, missing the very reason he was telling the story.

  “So, Mr. Bailey, how long did you serve in the Marines?”

  “I served six years in the Marine Corp, from 1948 to 1954.”

  “So, if you served in the Marines in the early fifties, Mr. Bailey, you must have seen some service time in South Korea. Is that right?”

  “Yes, sir; one very hard year, sir.”

  Gordon had heard about all he wanted to hear of this witness’s interesting past. “Your Honor, I can’t possibly see how Mr. Bailey’s military record, no matter how honorable, has any bearing on this case.”

  Spinning around quickly to address his response to Gordon’s argument, Duncan fired back, “Your Honor, I feel it’s important the jury understand the scope of this witness’s experience in order to put his testimony in its proper perspective. I promise I will be brief, Your Honor.”

  Judge Kirkley understood
the dance that was going on in his courtroom. Attorneys love to interrupt each other’s train of thought, even if it results only in a quick ruling. However, Judge Kirkley also understood something Prosecutor Gordon was not yet privy to. Something that the judge felt gave him cause to allow Mr. Duncan some latitude in questioning this witness. But latitude or not, he needed to keep control of his courtroom. “Mr. Duncan, hurry it along.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. Mr. Bailey, the reason you’re sitting in that witness box is because your name appears on one of the Atlanta Police reports having to do with the Charles Miller family. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir. I was the arresting officer in that case.”

  “Now, since there were five different police reports, for five different incidents, will you please tell this court which of these incidents you were personally involved in?”

  “Yes, sir. I arrested Mr. Charles Miller for attempted murder in 1961.”

  “Mr. Bailey, I understand that you have been provided, and have reviewed, a copy of the police file regarding that incident. Is this true?”

  “Yes, sir, I have reviewed the file.”

  Jumping to his feet, Gordon protested, “Your Honor, Mr. Miller is not on trial here. Wasting the court’s time reviewing a twenty-five-year-old case is outrageous.”

  “Your Honor, this testimony goes to the core of Mr. Miller’s character and his violent history. If I might remind the court, the prosecution felt it necessary to spend an entire day going over his fourteen-year-old conviction for assault on my client.”

  Judge Kirkley thought, ‘Touché, Mr. Duncan, I wondered why you didn’t put up a fierce argument when Gordon took that approach. You must play chess well.’

  Gordon was determined to win this. “But, Your Honor, that was allowed because it went to motive.”

  Duncan smiled and confidently replied, “That is correct, Your Honor! Just as this goes to motive. I intend to show this court the type of man Chuck Miller was. What kind of father, husband, and person he was.”

  The judge pondered his dilemma for a moment, knowing he had ruled on the prosecution’s side to allow the first testimony. “I’m going to allow it. But Mr. Duncan, I suggest you keep to the straight and narrow here.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Gordon retook his seat, and Duncan picked up the stack of police reports, having them marked exhibit ten. For the next two hours, Duncan produced photos and medical reports. He knew the court would be breaking for lunch in a few minutes, and he didn’t want to be in the middle of this witness’s testimony when lunch was called. Once all the reports and photos had been discussed and passed among the jury, Judge Kirkley called the morning session to a close. It had been a good morning, but the afternoon was going to get even better. Duncan knew the impact of Bailey’s testimony, and he couldn’t wait to get into it.

  At two o’clock sharp, the court was called to order and Officer Bailey was reminded he was still under oath. Duncan watched the jury as Bailey took his seat. They obviously liked this retired policeman. As Duncan perused this jury, he happily thought, Sometimes, for some inexplicable reason, a witness bonds with a jury. Some witnesses can tell the truth the whole day long and a jury will sit there stone-faced, simply disliking him, and almost resenting his very presence in the courtroom. Then there are witnesses, like Bailey here, who have no vested interest in this case except the truth. But it’s more than that. They like him and trust him.

  Duncan again smiled as he walked over and stood in front of the jury box. Giving the prosecutor a long, deliberate stare, he thought, Gordon, you’d better take a good, hard look at this jury. You try to step on this witness’s toes and they’ll turn on you.

  Turning his attention to his witness, Duncan said, “Now, Mr. Bailey, this morning we reviewed a stack of police reports from Atlanta, Georgia, from the 1960s. Many of these happened more than twenty years ago. Having served a total of twenty years on the Atlanta Police Department and then being retired for the past eleven years, wouldn’t you find it hard to separate one case of spousal battery from another over the years? What, if anything, can you tell this court that would lead us to believe you are not simply extracting facts recorded in that file and somehow blending those facts with hundreds of other domestic violence calls you had over the years?”

  Kerry Bailey sat up very straight in his seat, turned his gaze to the jury, and spoke directly to them. “Every officer, on every force, has one case that stands out in his memory. This was my case. I remember every single detail as if it were yesterday.”

  “Mr. Bailey, what was so special about this case that it caused you to remember the details so vividly?” Duncan stood back and allowed Bailey to talk, knowing Gordon would be a fool to interrupt.

  Turning directly to the jury, Kerry Bailey began. “Well, it started out like any one of a dozen domestic calls we would get every week. Some neighbor calls in, saying the people next door are really going at it. You’d be surprised at how many of these calls we get over the course of a year, so when you’ve responded to hundreds of these calls—some really nothing and some pretty bad—you tend to approach them with a wait-and-see attitude. You can’t go riding in like a cowboy acting like you’re there to save the town. You have to be skeptical of everyone. Maybe the husband is abusive. Maybe the wife is just trying to get even for something. Maybe the neighbor has it in for him. All of those are real possibilities, and they have all been true in one case or another.

  “That night, my partner and I got the call around eight-twenty and headed over to check it out. As we pulled up to the house, I can’t even describe to you the sounds that greeted us. I got to the door first while my partner immediately got on the radio and asked for assistance from the closest available unit. I pounded on the front door twice, trying to get the attention of the people inside. Most of the time, simply having us show up gets their attention and they stop, not wanting us to see them in action. When they didn’t respond to the second blow on the door, my partner and I broke it in and entered. We could hear the fight going on down the back hallway, so we both pulled our guns, yelled that we were the police, and ordered them to stop, but he didn’t. We quickly made our way down the hall as the second police car pulled up and joined us.

  “It’s hard to describe exactly what we saw, the way it really was. Even with all four of us screaming at Charles Miller to stop, he didn’t hear us. He had Marjorie Miller on her stomach with her head pulled back until it almost touched her buttocks, and he was slamming his fist as hard as he could into her face and throat. At the same time he was kicking her in the abdomen so hard that her body lifted off the floor.

  “Because Mr. Miller did not have a weapon, we immediately put our guns away and tackled him. As we tackled him, he finally turned his eyes toward us, and I can tell you I have never seen a face like that before. His eyes were pure fire, and even as all four of us were trying to hold him down to get the cuffs on him, he was still trying to kick his wife. As soon as we had the cuffs on him, my partner ran for the phone and requested an ambulance. We didn’t think it was going to be necessary though. She looked gone to all of us. You couldn’t even make out her face. The two other officers continued trying to control Charles Miller, who because they had moved him out of kicking range, began spitting at Mrs. Miller and the officers.

  “My partner returned to the bedroom and waited with Mrs. Miller until the ambulance arrived while I went around the house making sure everything was secure. I stepped out the front door to catch a breath of fresh air when a neighbor lady yelled over, ‘What happened to the little girl?’

  “Suddenly, I had the sickest feeling in the pit of my stomach. All I could think of was, Oh God, was there a baby in that house!

  “I ran back in and started searching, sort of like the fire department has to do when a house is on fire. Little children hide when in fear. I headed for the second bedroom, which I had peeked into during the quick check. I knew it was a child’s room, so I walked over
to the closet and carefully opened it.”

  He was obviously struggling to keep control of his emotions having to tell this story again. At this point, Kerry Bailey sat back in his seat, took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then continued. “I opened that closet door and looked into the most haunted face I have ever seen. Huddled in the back corner of that closet was an eight-year-old little girl. She didn’t even look up when I first opened the door, probably afraid to see who was standing there. I remember saying, ‘It’s all right, honey, you can come out,’ but she didn’t move. Finally, her little face came up, and she looked at me with eyes that have haunted me ever since. There was only one other time in my whole life that I ever saw a look like that, and that was in Korea.”

  As Bailey kept talking to the jury, Duncan slipped a quick glance at the prosecutor. Gordon was studying the jury’s response, and he knew they were mesmerized. He desperately wanted to object to this testimony. It was powerful, and the jury was following every word Bailey was saying. Gordon desperately wanted to object but feared the jury’s reaction. This was untouchable testimony, and Gordon couldn’t do a thing to stop it.

  Duncan smiled while Bailey continued.

  Looking at the eldest gentleman in the jury, Bailey went on. “Our unit had been out working an area that was heavily entrenched with North Koreans. We had been having to blast mortars and wait them out because they were dug in so well. One by one we began picking them off, but it still took almost a week of constant shelling. Finally, we felt sure we had secured the area, and my buddy and I were ordered to go lift a barricade cover off one of the pits the North Koreans had dug.

  “As my buddy lifted the cover, we both jumped back. There sat a young North Korean. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen years old, and he had that same look in his eyes that little girl had. That boy apparently had gotten himself trapped in there without his gun or any food and had sat in that hole for several days just waiting for us to come kill him. He had sat there hearing the sound of the mortars exploding all around him and the sound of other North Koreans screaming in pain.