Court of Lies

by Gerry Spence

  After his father died, Horace, then thirty-seven, took over the brewery. He’d been working at various jobs there, from laborer on up to his latest job, in marketing. As his first official act as head of the company, he tore everything out of the old man’s office and sent it to the dump. He hired a decorator, who brought in the painters and had the walls painted in bright, living colors. “I want this room gone. There are going to be new times for the Horace Adams Brewing Company and new times for the workers, as well.”

  Horace and Lillian retreated from their day’s work to her cabin in Jackson Hole. She dumped a log into the small fireplace, retrieved a bottle of Cabernet from the top shelf of her cupboard, popped the cork, and poured them each a glass. They were quiet for a time, content in the warmth of the room, the fire snapping and the wine good.

  Finally, Horace broke the silence. “I have—what do they call it?—certain peculiarities.”

  “Like what?” she asked. “Is this confession time?”

  He looked down at the top of one hand, then the other, embarrassed. “The preachers would laugh if they heard the head of a brewery say he wanted to live a worthy life. They’d say, ‘Go set that evil place of yours on fire, or turn it into a home for street urchins. That would be doing good.’”

  “What’s a worthy life?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ll die before I can answer that question.”

  “That’s why the rich write a check to provide a new wing to some hospital. That’s worthy. And they get a tax write-off, and the new wing is named after them,” she said.

  Finally, Horace said, “I didn’t want to run the business.”

  “What did you want to do?”

  “I wanted to be a chef—I wanted to cook.”

  Horace started cooking, a “fancy dish,” as he called it. It turned out to be spaghetti and meatballs, but he insisted his spaghetti sauce was classic. He peeled an onion and, with the pizzazz of a celebrated chef, chopped it into small square chips, mashed the garlic with the chef’s knife, minced a carrot, slipped in a couple teaspoons of olive oil, some canned tomatoes and tomato paste, after which he added oregano, fresh basil, and, at last, a teaspoon of sugar, half a cup of red wine, and a pinch of crushed red pepper.

  He formed the meatballs like a kid creating small snowballs. He quickly tossed one to Lillian. “Think fast,” he said, and, to his surprise, she caught it and tossed it back.

  “Think fast,” she said, and they both laughed.

  “This will be good. Very good.”

  She walked over to the stove. He was still stirring the sauce, and she kissed him dearly.

  “I been thinking of the workers,” he said. “Maybe doing ‘good’ is when everyone makes a profit, including the workers.”

  “Your father would have disowned you as a filthy Commie.”

  “And good is when you make a great marinara brimming with joy and meatballs.”

  CHAPTER 12

  COKER’S DEFENSE WAS founded on his belief that whether or not Lillian killed Horace Adams III, she was entitled to a fair trial, and it was Coker’s job to see that she got it. He’d lay it all down to save her and, beyond pure perjury, he’d set no boundaries.

  Few would understand that at times even a judge must be brave. Judge Murray’s time had arrived. His vow of fidelity to the law and his oath of neutrality were the commands of his office, but they were at odds with his unequivocal promises to save Lillian. He knew he must create a record in the trial that would be scrutinized by the “pesky, peering, peeping appellate judges,” as he liked to call them. With them, the revered, so-called appearance of justice would be the test. Things had to look right on the record.

  The law itself was tilted toward conviction. The judge knew that if he didn’t intervene from time to time, and at the right time, and carefully, Lillian would go down.

  But what if she were innocent? She could be facing the gas chamber. She wouldn’t be the first innocent person who’d died gasping inside that chamber from hell, and at this point, execution appeared to be the most probable outcome.

  * * *

  Days before the trial, there’d been the usual talk among the townsfolk. During coffee time at Hungry Jake’s grocery store, Herman Sikora, the horseshoer, said, “She probably wouldn’t give him what he wanted. She is one piece, if you know what I mean, and he probably said, ‘Well, up yers, then, and the horse you rode in on,’ and she said, ‘Well, up yours,’ and pulled out her gun, and whambo! She’s a multimillionaire, just like that, and he’s a poor dead sumbitch. Would you shoot the old bastard for a couple hundred mil?”

  “Don’t ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies,” Bill Wimpenny said. He and his wife had just sold their ranch and were planning to tour “the good old US of A.” “But I’ll tell you one thing: She damn near killed her first husband. Killing’s in her blood.”

  “Sure be a waste of good pussy to send her off to them lezzies that’ll be waiting fer her in the pen,” Sikora said. “I hear that even the guards there are queer. They got me called for jury duty on Monday.”

  “Aren’t you the lucky one?” Harmon Watson said. He was the foreman of the telephone company’s line crew. “Who’s she got for her mouthpiece?”

  “I seen by the paper that old Coker is representing her,” Sikora said.

  “He’d dance a hula dance with a rattlesnake if you offered him a dime. I hear he got that guy off who works for the Bar Double X ranch. He was charged with screwing his own daughter. Jesus save us! His own daughter!” Sikora exclaimed.

  “Yeah, well, if you’re guilty, you’d better get old Coker to represent you. I’ll say that much.” It was Wimpenny again.

  “Well, if you wasn’t guilty, who would you get to represent you?”

  “Coker,” Wimpenny said.

  The Jackson Hole Post called Lillian “the Queen of the Hill, who looked down from her antique log home on high.” The townsfolk wanted to see the queen wiggle and squirm on the witness stand, hear her counterfeit excuses, see Sewell cut her to ribbons, see her beg for mercy, see her get her comeuppance, and some wanted to see Coker’s latest tricks. This would be an honest-to-God murder trial like in the movies, and it was happening in their own little burg of Jackson.

  CHAPTER 13

  JUDGE JOHN MURRAY walked to the bench as sure and straight as his old legs permitted. The clerk ordered the audience to rise, the customary acknowledgment of respect for the law as personified in His Honor, the judge. In response, the judge donned his standard judicial mask. It was not a face to take to a dinner party.

  The judge was unaccustomed to feeling fear in his own courtroom. The accused on trial were often terrified. And at times the lawyers themselves were soaked in fear, especially as they awaited the jury’s verdict. He hoped his attempt at a stern, implacable demeanor would grant him some protection. He banged his gavel harder than usual and gazed out at the audience.

  The clerk, Benjamin Breslin, announced the case: “State of Wyoming v. Lillian Mortensen Adams.” Breslin was a man who exposed no known sins, nor did he advertise any virtues. He was chiefly without a palpable persona. “Is the state ready?” Breslin asked like a sleepy preacher at a funeral.

  “More than ready!” Sewell replied in his near-soprano voice, which prevailed when his adrenaline was running high.

  “Is the defense ready?” Breslin asked.

  “The defense is as ready as we can be considering the refusal of the state to fulfill its discovery obligations.” Coker believed Sewell, as usual, was hiding evidence, which the law required him to reveal before trial.

  Coker’s eyes locked on each prospective juror as the juror was called and walked to his or her assigned seat. “We can lie with our words, but we can’t lie about how our lives have formed us,” Coker claimed. The jurors would expose themselves by the sounds of their voices, how they carried themselves, their facial expressions, their body language, and how they dressed—often more reliable clues as to who t
he jurors were than what the jurors said.

  Coker wanted jurors who strode to the box with a dutiful, painful resolve, who didn’t want to serve on a jury. A prospective juror who was eager to serve was a juror equally eager to judge, and too often such judgments were retaliatory—that is to say, the juror was ready to even things up for the bad luck, the bad parents, or the bad decisions the juror had suffered. Or the juror had simply been born with an overload of mean genes.

  The clerk spun the jury drum, a six-inch-diameter canister on a spindle. He reached in, withdrew a slip of paper containing the name of a prospective juror, opened the folded paper, and announced the name: “Margaret Reed Smith.”

  The Smith woman was a plump grandmother type in her early sixties with a broad motherly face, and she let out a small, surprised gasp when her name was called—as if she’d just won in bingo. She wore a long multiflowered silk dress with a purple collar, and a matching belt. She walked in quick, proper steps, with her thighs squeezed tightly together.

  The clerk drew the name Harvey Bottomsley. A scrawny middle-aged man in a pink T-shirt and faded blue jeans hurried to the jury box. He was a reclusive artist who still lived with his mother. His paintings weren’t in demand, but he hadn’t given up. He looked at the Smith woman for reassurance.

  William Witherspoon, a tall, well-built cowboy in his fifties, was called. He clomped to the jury box with bowed legs and turned-over heels on his scuffed, never polished cowboy boots. His sun brown face was heavily wrinkled. His forehead was white, having been protected from the sun by his hat.

  Then Mary Lou Livingston’s name was drawn. A waitress in the Buckhorn Coffee Shop, she had a hip-swinging walk, which earned a lot of attention as she poured coffee and served breakfast, and she’d learned how to convert the propositions dumped on her every morning into decent tips. She had kids at home to feed. She gave the cowboy in the jury box a friendly wink as she took her seat next to him.

  The clerk called George Hardesty, a plumber, who strode to the jury box with heavy feet. He was wearing his wrinkled Sunday suit absent a tie, but his denim shirt was buttoned to the top. He kept twisting his head back and forth in response to the tightness around his neck. Coker knew those jokes about the hot housewife who was always calling the plumber to fix something. Hardesty didn’t fit the mold. He took his seat next to the waitress and gave a small nod of recognition.

  Tom Mosley’s name was drawn. He was fat, bald, middle-aged, and dour. He owned the Best Bargain Pawn Shop. He watched where he put each foot, making sure no hidden impediment threatened. He sat down stiffly next to the plumber.

  When the clerk called Louise Greenwood, she hollered, “I can’t serve on this jury. I have kids at home and nobody to care for them. I gotta go.”

  The judge said, “Stop right there.”

  She stopped.

  “You are excused,” Judge Murray said. “For us to insist that mothers leave their children unattended to serve on a jury would make us accomplices to the crime of child neglect. My respects.” He hit his gavel to underscore his decree.

  Next called was Helen Griggsley, a piano teacher. She was tall, stately, and wearing a modest navy blue dress. No jewelry. She bore a resemblance to George Washington on the one-dollar bill. She wore her gray hair in his style, as well. She walked with resolute steps in black low-heeled shoes. She favored the community with her students’ annual recital in the basement of the Methodist church, an event that was usually attended only by parents and grandparents trapped behind the high fence of duty.

  Henry Harris, a car salesman, was called. He approached the jury box with a leisurely stroll to emphasize his cool. He nodded at Tom Mosley, the pawnbroker. He wore a leather jacket over a blue cotton shirt open at the neck. His tinted glasses obscured his eyes. He looked the jury panel over, as if to identify the easy mark, and took his seat.

  Melvin Myorga, a man approaching his late sixties, plowed gardens in the summer and did snow removal in the winter. When the clerk called his name, he got up with some effort, and walked bent over. He fought his discomfort with a small lurch to the right after each step. He wore a newly pressed and starched pair of bib overalls. He took his seat in the jury box as if entering enemy territory.

  Norman Etsomovich, of middle age, the local roofer, wore his work clothes—blue jeans and a blue jean jacket. He prided himself that he’d been on the roofs of nearly every householder in Jackson Hole and from that vantage point knew more about the secret carryings-on of the townsfolk than even the local priest. He walked with all due care—a man who needed to be sure of his footing. He nodded to Myorga as he sat down. Myorga gave a reluctant nod back.

  James P. Smithson was the vice president of the local bank. He was blond, youngish, and a man on his way up. He was already a leader in the local Chamber of Commerce. Part of his job was to paste a good public image on his bank. He displayed a pliable face, one that molded itself in ways that were either marginally attractive or slightly offensive. He wore a blue suit with a white shirt and a red checkered tie. He walked with authority, his toes pointed straight ahead, but he lifted his right leg slightly with each step, suggesting his need to accommodate the heavy burden he carried below the pockets.

  Harmony Biernstein was the twelfth juror drawn by the clerk. Biernstein was in the real estate business. She wore her blond hair bunched up high in a schoolteacher’s bun. She was decked out in a dark burgundy business suit, along with black shoes with medium-high heels. She shot the judge her standard business smile when her name was called, and walked with eager steps to the jury box.

  With the first twelve prospective jurors seated, the judge nodded to Sewell. “You may examine the jurors, counsel.”

  Sewell wasted no time. “Ever been in court before?” he asked Henry Harris, the car salesman.

  “Once for no license plates. I was using our dealer plates on my private car and got caught.” He tried to laugh aside his confession.

  “Ever know Lillian Adams or anybody who does?”

  “Yeah. I know her daddy. He’s a hardworking man, and a guy who never took nothing from nobody.”

  “Ever hear anything about her?”

  “A guy hears a lot of stuff in a town like this.”

  “What have you heard?”

  The other prospective jurors leaned forward to catch Harris’s answer.

  “Your Honor,” Coker interjected, “may this juror accompany counsel and Your Honor to your chambers?”

  In chambers and with the court reporter alongside, Coker erupted. “Did you see what Sewell just tried, Your Honor? He wanted to poison the whole panel against my client by asking what Mr. Harris had heard about Lillian Adams.”

  “What did you hear about Lillian Adams, Mr. Harris?” the judge asked.

  “I heard she was one tough little lady. I heard she could put you to the mat and bust you up pretty good.” The juror laughed. “Something like that.”

  “I ask that the juror be excused,” Coker said.

  “Are you challenging for cause?” the judge asked.

  “Yes.”

  “On what grounds?” the judge asked. “I’ve known tough women who could bust you up pretty good who were good citizens.” Betsy, for one, he thought.

  “Could you follow the court’s instructions,” Sewell asked, “and not permit this mere hearsay to affect your decision in this case?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Well, how do you go about wiping things out of your mind?” Coker asked Harris. “Do you have a magic brain eraser or something?”

  The juror shrugged his shoulders without answering.

  “You think she might be a violent type, right?” Coker asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “I ask that this juror be excused,” Coker repeated, and sat down.

  “I’m going to excuse the juror,” the judge said and gave the juror his standard judicial smile, along with thanks for his service.

  As the day progressed, prospective jurors were examine
d and cross-examined on every issue the lawyers could imagine—the movies they’d watched, the books they’d read, their attitude about the sheriff, the prosecutor, and the defense counsel, what they thought about reasonable doubt and the presumption of innocence. They were even asked to identify the bumper stickers on their vehicles.

  Norman Etsomovich, the roofer, said, “I know a lot of things about a lot of people, and I get along with all of them.” Melvin Myorga agreed.

  Harmony Biernstein, the Realtor, said it was the slow time of the year for her and she could sit. But she knew Lillian Adams “from a distance.”

  “What do you mean, ‘from a distance’?” Coker asked. “I know you ‘from a distance.’”

  “Really!” She laughed. “Did we have a good time?” The courtroom laughed.

  “We’re both members of the Chamber of Commerce,” Coker said.

  “You should come to our meetings,” she responded with a measure of impudent humor.

  “I would, but they’re too boring,” Coker said.

  “That’s why you should come,” she replied. “You’d liven things up.”

  “You ever do business with Mrs. Adams?”

  “No. But I would like to.”

  “Do you know Mr. Sewell?”

  “Everybody knows him,” she said.

  “How did you come to know him?”

  “I can’t remember,” she said. “Long time ago. We were kids.”

  The banker, Smithson, said that his bank did business with Horace Adams III. “He was a good customer of ours.”

  Coker was on him. “So am I a good customer of yours. You haven’t bounced one of my checks for nearly six months.” Laughter from the audience. “If you were me, what would you do with a prospective juror like you?” Coker asked.

  “I would kick him off the jury.”

  “Why?”

  “He might be prejudiced in favor of Adams. None of his checks ever bounced.” He held back his smile.

  Coker turned to the judge. “I challenge Mr. Smithson based on his frank assessment of himself.”