Court of Lies

by Gerry Spence

  “You ate before you cut up the corpse?”

  A whimper of shock escaped Lillian Adams.

  “Objection!” Sewell cried.

  “Sustained,” the judge ruled in a tired voice before Sewell could state his grounds.

  “Do you always eat before you cut up a corpse?” Coker asked. He turned to Sewell, inviting his objection.

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained,” Judge Murray ruled. “You seem not to understand my rulings this morning, Mr. Coker. Should I invite the sheriff to take you on a small trip to you know where?”

  “That won’t be necessary, Your Honor. I misunderstood your ruling. I thought you ruled that I couldn’t ask Dr. Norton if he ate before he cut up the corpse on the day in question. I was asking a totally different question: I wanted to know if he always ate before he cut up a corpse.”

  “You know better than to play games with me, counsel,” the judge said. “The objection is sustained. Proceed if you have any proper questions remaining.”

  Coker continued, “So, Dr. Norton, if the time of death was one o’clock in the morning, as you guessed it to be, it was eleven hours after death that you finally got around to taking a blood sample, or twelve hours or more if he died at midnight or before?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did you do with the sample?”

  “I sent it to the lab for analysis.”

  “Yes, of course, but when did the lab get it?” Coker began shuffling through a carelessly arranged stack of papers. “It says here the lab didn’t get the sample until five that evening. I suppose you kept the sample in the refrigerator during all that time?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Is there a refrigerator in the autopsy room?”

  “I don’t remember one.”

  “How many times have you done an autopsy in that room?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Hundreds?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “But you can’t remember if there’s a refrigerator in the autopsy room?”

  No answer.

  “You certainly didn’t take the blood upstairs to the mortician’s living quarters and ask his wife to put it in her refrigerator along with the hamburger and pumpkin pie, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I take it that this blood sample lay around for five more hours before the lab got it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Well, something you do know: You know that putrefaction and microbiological fermentation can result in the production of alcohol.”

  “That’s what they say. I never studied that.”

  “If the deceased died as you guess, at one o’clock that morning, and the blood sample you finally took at noon was left unrefrigerated until it was received by the lab, a total of about sixteen hours elapsed after you claim he died but before the lab received the blood?”

  “If you say so.”

  “And you know that the level of alcohol that can be produced from drawn blood that stands around for a long time before it is tested can be quite high.”

  “I don’t know how high.”

  Coker looked over at the jury. The jurors seemed confused. “That simply means blood can ferment and produce alcohol, the same as grape juice can ferment and produce alcohol, isn’t that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean that if you, Dr. Norton, had had a couple of glasses of wine and you were picked up for speeding and your blood sample was taken, what would you say if you learned that the sample sat around for sixteen hours before it was tested for blood alcohol, and you threw a point two BAL, which meant that you were so drunk that you were nearly passed out while driving?”

  “I don’t drink,” the coroner said.

  “And you are sworn here to tell the truth, isn’t that true?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the deceased may have been sober as the judge at the time of his death, isn’t that also true?”

  “I only know what the lab reported as to his blood-alcohol level. I do know they found a near-empty bottle of scotch on the desk where he’d been sitting.”

  “And you don’t know whether he, one, drank any scotch, or, two, if he did, whether the bottle was mostly empty when he first drank from it—that’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he said with an indifferent shrug of his shoulders.

  Lillian Adams coughed. Coker leaned down and she whispered in his ear. “I see,” Coker said aloud. He turned back to the witness. “Haven’t you yet discovered that Mr. Adams despised scotch?”

  “That would not be in the realm of my expertise,” the coroner replied.

  CHAPTER 18

  AS USUAL, THE judge stopped at Hardy Tillman’s station for their evening get-together. “I seen you in court today. You ain’t enjoying this case a’tall like you used to.” Hardy popped a couple bottles of Horace Adams, “a Whore-ass Adams,” the wiseacres liked to call the beer.

  “Here’s to poor old Horace the Third,” Hardy said. “One thing I know for sure: Lillian didn’t kill the guy. She might have got pissed and whipped his ass, but a shot through the head—no way!”

  “Coker was all over the place today,” the judge said. “I couldn’t figure out where he was going with his cross-exam on Adams’s blood-alcohol level.”

  “Coker was trying to show that the old boy was sober when he was shot,” Hardy said. “The way Sewell’s got it, Lillian walked up to a drunk man and shot him while he was passed out, or damn near.”

  “I would have argued that Adams was intending to kill himself,” the judge said, “that it took a lot of bottle courage to do it, that he drank damn near a fifth of scotch to get his courage up, and, drunk, he finally pulled the trigger. That makes more sense.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” Hardy said. “If I was old Coker, I’d be telling the jury that you couldn’t believe a damn thing Sewell told them, that Sewell tried to pawn off a sober man as drunk so he could claim that Lillian shot a drunk man who couldn’t protect himself—and that Sewell’s whole damn case is a made-up pile a shit.”

  “Don’t know why I missed that,” the judge said. He looked tired. “Supposedly, Adams wrote that suicide note,” the judge said, reaching into his shirt pocket and extracting a slip of paper. “I copied it. I wanted to give it some thought. Does this sound like a man, drunk or sober, who’s about to shoot himself in the head?” He read the note aloud to Hardy:

  Thanks for the good ride, Darling. I’m getting out before the roof caves in. This is total proof of my love for you.

  Love, always,

  Horace Quincy Adams III

  “‘Good ride’?” Hardy asked. “Maybe a drunk cowboy would have said ‘good ride.’ But old Adams never was on a horse in his life. And roofs don’t cave in for them eastern guys. They live in them stone houses with them tile roofs and all. No, that don’t sound like something old Adams would have wrote.” Hardy took a long double swig on his beer. “Besides, I hear that old Adams was losing it pretty good. I had an uncle that was like that. Hope it don’t run in the family.”

  “And would a man about to shoot himself in the head sign his name Horace Quincy Adams the Third?” the judge asked. “Wouldn’t he just sign it, Horace?”

  “You got something there,” Hardy said. “On the other hand, suicide is a pretty formal thing, don’t you think? Cause of death and all got to be made clear so nobody else gets blamed for it. I wouldn’t want to sign my name just Hardy. I’d want to put my full moniker out there—Hardy Raymond Tillman—so it looked plumb legal.”

  “I wouldn’t have let that supposed suicide note go to the jury, but both parties agreed to it, so I had no choice,” the judge said. “Sewell probably wants the jury to see it so that down the line he can prove it’s a forgery. He’s going to blame Lillian for writing it. And Coker wants it in because he thinks it’s a forgery, too, and that Sewell is responsible for putting fake evidence to the jury. That’s how I’ve got it figured
.” The judge shoved the copy of the note back in his shirt pocket.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” Hardy said. “You’d better watch out for that Sewell. The rumor’s floating around that he’s going to run for judge again. He’s been wanting that job for as long as I can remember. His term as DA is up this year, and you’ll be up for reelection, too.”

  Judge Murray took another draw on his Horace.

  “The guy figures you’re an easy mark,” Hardy said. “Some out there are saying you shoulda retired a couple years ago. And watch out for that sumbitch Sewell. He’s got more balls than a blind lion trainer.”

  The judge got up and walked toward the door. Hardy followed. “I have to go feed Horatio. Betsy’s probably already cooking supper.”

  “And some are saying, including me, that you and Betsy ought to give up living like a bunch of hermits out there in the woods. You ought to come into town, get yourself a nice little cabin or something, and get civilized.” He laughed and patted the judge’s back.

  “We want to live out there,” the judge said. “I like the birds. I like the wild geese on the river. She’s got her studio in the back of the cabin. She’s—”

  “Oh hell,” Hardy said. “Wrong again.” Then he gave a laugh that sounded like the braying of a musical mule.

  * * *

  That evening, the judge told Betsy how Hardy had mentioned that people were saying the judge was too old and should retire.

  “Well,” she said, “Hardy always claims a good story needs a little embellishment.”

  “Yes, but a man has to pay attention to what people are saying. Sewell is waiting for me to make the first mistake.”

  “You give Sewell too much credit,” she said. “You’re the judge. You’re the one with the power. If he gets out of hand, you can throw him in jail.”

  “No,” the judge said, “he’s the only person in the county who can do me in. He can charge me with any crime he and the sheriff decide to make up. I’ve seen them do it more than once. And even if the jury acquitted me, the people would say I got off because I had a smart lawyer.”

  “Who would you get to defend you against that lying, rotten weasel?”

  He didn’t wait to think about it. “Tim Coker, of course.”

  “It will all be all right,” Betsy suddenly said. “I’m having one of my ‘all-right feelings,’ and they’ve always been right. They started when I married you.”

  She walked to a small room on the far side of the cabin. She lifted a canvas off the easel and started to the kitchen with it. She set the painting on a kitchen chair and stepped back to inspect it. Then she said, “I agree. Sewell is a danger to us. But he’s always been, and we’ve made it this far.” Betsy stared at the painting as if, in the full light, she were seeing it for the first time.

  “Do you remember when I painted this?” she asked. It was a small painting with a bright but disappearing horizon, like the work of the great nineteenth-century English painter J. M. W. Turner, “the painter of light.” Instead of sailing ships embattled against a sky exploding in fire, Betsy had painted the lily pond where they’d first met. A tall man and a small woman were silhouetted against the calm waters, also turned to fire. Their shadows covered the full width of the pond and disappeared into the dark bank across the way. He looked at the painting for a long time.

  “This must be us,” he finally said.

  She offered a small, tender smile.

  “It has to be us,” he said. He turned and walked to the window.

  CHAPTER 19

  LILLIAN AND HORACE had been out for a stroll on their way to lunch when they came upon an old woman pushing a baby carriage filled with junk and a worn, filthy sleeping bag. She stopped at a garbage can and began sorting through its contents.

  “If you want to help somebody,” Lillian said to him, “there’s the kind that need help.”

  “They made bad choices,” he said, his voice void of pity.

  “Just as your mother made a bad choice?” She caught herself. “I’m sorry. I wish I hadn’t said that.”

  He looked at Lillian and then away. “She married my father. She didn’t have to.”

  She saw the pain in his face. “What do we ever really know about the person we marry? Once the ‘I dos’ are said and the clothes of romance are shed, Lord knows what we’ll find underneath.”

  “I’ve made bad choices,” he said. “You take the leap, like a blind bee smelling the honey. And then the law gets involved where it doesn’t really have any business.”

  “The law?”

  “Yes. After you’re married, the law sneaks in and whispers in your new wife’s ear, ‘You have legal rights now, honey. You can screw him without screwing him.’”

  “Right,” she said. “Or after the ‘I dos’ are said, he can claim he has the right to screw her anytime he wants because she is his wife, and it’s her wifely duty to give it to him whenever his little dick gets hard.”

  They were watching the old street woman furiously digging in the garbage. Her hair looked like a discarded mop. Her mouth was open. She had no teeth.

  Horace turned away. “For Christ sakes, what are we doing? I can’t stand to watch that,” he said.

  Lillian saw the repulsion on his face. “We’re all on the same mission,” she said.

  “We’re not on her mission.”

  “Yes,” Lillian replied. A softness took over her voice. “She’s looking for something to eat. And we’re on our way to lunch at the best restaurant in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, as good as that might be.

  “When it came to choosing a father, your father made a very wise choice,” Lillian said. “He chose a father who’d already established a successful brewery. And you were really good at choosing a father, too.”

  Horace’s eyes were locked on the old woman.

  Lillian nodded toward her. “She’s safe. She has nothing that anyone wants.”

  Suddenly, Horace said, “That’s my mother.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  CHAPTER 20

  DR. NORTON, THE county coroner, was still on the stand, and Timothy Coker, like a terrier after a cornered rat, continued his cross-examination.

  “So you say that Horace Adams the Third was in rigor mortis by the time he arrived at the mortuary?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what is rigor mortis?”

  “It is muscular stiffening following death.”

  Yes, the judge thought, rigor mortis is that morbid phenomenon that leads the vulgar to refer to the dead as “stiffs.” Rigor mortis is life’s last protest against death.

  “What causes rigor mortis?” Coker asked.

  “Who knows?” Norton said, his words shaded with boredom. Then, as if anticipating Coker’s next question, he said, “The condition results from a chemical change in muscle protein, the precise nature of which is unknown.”

  “Another guess, I suppose,” Coker said. He glanced at the jury for reassurance. The woman in the middle of the front row nodded, but only slightly.

  The judge looked down at Lillian Adams. If she killed her husband, she might have had just cause. But law did not permit the killing of even a helpless, screaming person in the last torturous throes of death begging to be killed.

  The species is nourished on killing, craves killing, and is entertained by killing in books, at the movies, and on television. And as jurors, they are joined together as a legally sanctioned mob of twelve to kill.

  We’re a nation of killers, the judge thought. We send young men off to wars and put medals on their chests for killing other human beings not much different from themselves. We’ve perfected killing. With a single bomb dropped on a city, we can kill every man, woman, and child, every puppy dog, canary, and goldfish.

  “Was Mr. Adams in rigor mortis when you arrived?” Coker asked Dr. Norton in a near whisper.

  “Yes. We had to pry him from his chair, and he was taken to the morgue frozen in that position.”

  Lil
lian Adams stifled another gasp.

  The judge looked down at her again. He thought that in ways her agony enhanced her beauty. He looked quickly away. He tried not to see her as his child, but as just another defendant at the dock, but the image would not come.

  Coker moved behind her and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. “What did that condition—namely, rigor mortis—mean to you?”

  “It meant that Mr. Adams had been dead about the time I’ve testified to—about four hours,” Dr. Norton replied.

  “Have you made any study about how long after death it takes a corpse to freeze into rigor mortis?”

  “No. I’ve made no studies myself.”

  “Can you name a single study that you’ve read on this question?”

  “No, not offhand.”

  Coker let surprise take over his face. “Doctor, you’re saying you can’t name a single study in the entire world that supports your conclusion that the deceased had been dead only four hours?”

  “Not offhand.”

  “How about with two hands?” The lady in the front row covered her mouth to hide an escaping smile.

  Sewell cried, “This sarcasm is uncalled for!”

  “Really?” Coker responded before the judge had fully awakened to the latest squabble between counsel. “Well, when did you last read any study anywhere of any kind on this subject, Dr. Norton?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Norton said.

  “You’ve just been guessing again, haven’t you, Doctor?”

  “No, this is an opinion based on—”

  “He is still browbeating the witness,” Sewell objected.

  “Move along, Mr. Coker,” the judge said.

  “All right, I will move along. Are you aware of the study conducted by Niderkorn, who examined one hundred and thirteen bodies and found that rigor mortis did not set in on twenty of the bodies until six hours after death”—he was reading from a large textbook—“that eleven did not go into rigor mortis until seven hours, that seven did not go into rigor mortis until eight hours, and several more did not go into rigor mortis until thirteen hours after death. Are you aware of that standard study, sir?”