by Gerry Spence
Coker urged her on. “What did you do?”
“I planned to leave Tina with my father and mother until I got Horace settled. When I got home that night—well, you know what I found.” She began to weep. “Horace made his own decision.”
“What did you see when you got into the house?”
She didn’t answer.
Coker waited.
She was staring with wide, terrified eyes at Coker.
Finally, she said in ragged tones, “Tina was screaming when I came in the door. She had Horace’s pistol in her hand, the one he always kept on his nightstand, by his side of our bed.”
“Yes, and…”
“I took the pistol from her, and she kept screaming and pointing to the den. When I got to the door, she cried, ‘Don’t go in there, Mama.’”
“Yes, and then…”
“I hurried to the den, and there he was, slumped over on the desk in a pool of blood.”
She wept.
After a long pause, she said. “And I had the gun in my hand.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran over to the desk and lifted his head and saw the wound in his forehead.”
Coker waited.
Finally, she said, “I realized that I had the gun, and that my fingerprints and Tina’s were on it.”
“What did you do?”
“I called the police department.”
“And then?”
“I ran to the bathroom, took a towel, and wiped the gun clean of her prints and mine and put it back on the desk. Before the people from the sheriff’s office arrived, I told Tina not to talk to the police. To say nothing. Nothing. I made her repeat, ‘I will say nothing.’ I sent her to her bedroom.”
“Why?”
“I believed Tina killed her stepfather. She’d never accepted him. She tried to keep me from marrying him. She thought he was an agent of the devil. She was very attached to me. And very jealous of him.”
“Did your husband and Tina have words?”
“She was usually sullen around him.” Lillian continued to speak slowly, a decibel above a whisper, the jurors leaning forward. “But at times she would just fall into some awful place and begin calling him every rotten name she could think of. And the more she yelled at him, the more he was convinced she was his first wife. By then, Horace was mostly out of it. And so was Tina. That’s when I met with Sylvia at the drugstore.”
“You say you thought Tina killed your husband?”
“Yes. She was screaming that the witch killed himself. Later she claimed that she shot my husband. She thought he was a witch and was going to kill us both, and she had to kill him to save us.”
“Why did you try to convince me that you killed him?”
“I’m her mother. I wanted to save my child.” The woman in the front row unfolded her arms. “But you wouldn’t listen to me. Something about ethics—that if I admitted to you that I killed Horace, you couldn’t ethically put me on the stand to deny that I had.”
“I’m sorry,” Coker said, his voice sad. “I don’t make the rules.”
“Ethics! I thought that Tina killed Horace. She had her whole life ahead of her, and I had lived a good deal of mine. I was willing to go to trial for his murder.”
“But you heard Tina testify here?”
“Yes.”
“You heard her say that she killed your husband?”
“Yes. She was trying to protect me. She’s a very sick child.”
“When did you first realize that Tina hadn’t killed your husband?”
“Dr. Brady explained it to me, something called ‘transference.’ Tina wanted Horace dead. When she found him dead, she thought she’d killed him.”
“That is totally hearsay and so much psychojabber,” Sewell shouted. “I move that answer be stricken.”
“It may be stricken,” Judge Little ruled.
“After she came home yesterday on the leave that Judge Little granted her, we were able to talk about it for the first time,” Lillian continued. “She goes in and out of her delusions. With her testimony over, she seemed clear for a change. She found Horace dead in the den, saw the gun, and didn’t know why she picked it up. She said she didn’t remember picking it up. She didn’t remember anything after that.”
“That is hearsay, and should be stricken,” Sewell objected.
“I will admit it, not for the truth of the matter, but to provide a background for the testimony of this witness,” Judge Little ruled.
“What about the long smears of blood on the floor?”
“I never saw any. All the blood was on the desk.”
“How did you get gunshot residues on your hands?”
“I had the gun in my hand before I put it back on the desk.”
“How did you get blood under your nails?”
“I lifted Horace’s head off the desk. It was all bloody. I saw the bullet hole.” She was hanging on the edge of collapse.
“Do you want a recess?” Judge Little asked Coker.
“No, thank you, Your Honor. We need to get through this pain as quickly as possible.”
Lillian forced her words, as if they were stuck in her throat. “I washed my hands before the police arrived, but there were probably traces left under my nails. I felt very sick.”
“What about the suicide note. Did you write it?”
“No.”
“When you saw your husband slumped over on the desk, was there a note there?”
“No. If there’d been one, I would have seen it. I would have read it.”
“Who wrote the note?”
“You will have to ask that man over there.”
Coker said, “Let the record reveal that the witness was pointing at the prosecutor.”
“It may so reflect,” the judge ordered.
Coker turned to look at Sewell, as if waiting for his admission. Hearing nothing, he said, “Some other issues have arisen here, Mrs. Adams. Did you ever have a conversation with Deputy Huffsmith about this case?”
“No. He was the officer who let me into jail, but we never talked about this case or anything else.”
“Did you know that his home was being foreclosed by the bank?”
“No.”
“Did you ever talk with the banker, Mr. Abberly, about Mr. Huffsmith, his mortgage, or about any other thing?”
“No. I have not spoken to Mr. Abberly except on a social basis, and that was months ago—I believe at a dinner to raise money for disadvantaged children.”
“Did you talk to Judge Murray about Deputy Huffsmith’s foreclosure problem?”
“No. I didn’t know the deputy’s home was being foreclosed.”
“Why did you go to the jail to talk to the judge?”
“I wanted his advice—but he refused to see me.”
“I have no further questions,” Coker announced.
Sewell walked up to Lillian with fast, hard steps. “This is all very pretty, Mrs. Adams. It all fits together so very neatly.”
“Objection,” Coker said. “This is grossly insulting. He’s at least required to ask a question and to refrain from making his prejudicial speeches.”
“Ask a question, Mr. Sewell,” the judge ruled.
“I will ask a question. I take it that you tried to talk to Judge Murray because you wanted to use your obvious charms to curry favor in your case, isn’t that true?”
“No,” she said. “He was the only person left in the world whom I trusted and who would understand me.”
“You knew you could manipulate him, didn’t you, Mrs. Adams?”
“Manipulate?”
“Yes, manipulate. He’s an old man. But he is a man. You waited for him in his truck that night, and you kissed him.”
“It was just an impulse. I kissed him on the cheek like a daughter kisses her father. He was like a father to me.”
“Then he followed you home?”
“Yes. But only to tell me not to contact him again.”
“I suppose that when you embraced him in the jail’s visiting room that he didn’t embrace you back—that you were unable to arouse him in any way?”
Suddenly, her voice gathered life. “I consider that an insult to him and to me,” she said.
“So you want this jury to believe that you and he had nothing going on while you were being tried for murder?”
“Yes, there was nothing going on between us then or ever. I admired him. That was all.”
“That was all?”
“Yes. He is a wise and decent man. He is a father figure to me, so different from my own father, who is impetuous and always at war and ready to fight. He sits here in court every day and then goes home and drinks and shouts that they all should be shot, especially you.”
“When did you decide to testify in this case?”
“I needed the jury to know that you lied to them.”
“Really!” Sewell scoffed. “How thoughtful of you.”
“Yes, you tried to make it look like I paid off Deputy Huffsmith’s loan to the bank in exchange for his testimony that there was no suicide note and no blood on the floor when he arrived at the scene.”
“And, of course, you deny that you paid off his loan to the bank, don’t you?”
“Yes. I paid nothing to either the bank or the deputy, or to anyone else.”
“You told Judge Murray that you wanted to plead guilty, and that you killed your husband. That’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I didn’t want Tina to go through this nightmare of a trial, which you have now put her though. You should be horribly ashamed.”
“I have no further questions of this witness.” He sat down and left Lillian Adams staring out from the witness chair.
Coker rose and walked toward the jury. “I wish to read from the last page in Mr. Adams’s journal. It says—”
“Objection!” Sewell cried. “Counsel can’t testify.”
“It is the deceased, Mr. Adams, who is testifying, Mr. Sewell,” said Judge Little. “Overruled.”
Coker read the passage aloud.
This one last clear day before the horror sets in again and never leaves. You have been my life and it has been beautiful. Remember, darling, I have and always will love you.
Horace
Lillian began to say something, but tears interrupted. Finally, she said, “I have something more. It’s about the Cracker Jack box and the toy cigar.”
“How could that possibly be relevant?” Sewell interjected.
“We shall see,” Judge Little ruled.
“Horace’s mother left him at an early age,” Lillian said. “She gave him a box of Cracker Jacks that had a toy cigar in it. It was his most prized possession. He showed it to me once. When Horace wanted to talk to his mother, he took that box and toy cigar out from his safe. He sort of talked to his mother through the box and toy cigar, the only material things he had to remember her by. She died homeless. They found her body in the park.”
“Isn’t that interesting.” Sarcasm saturated Sewell’s words.
“Yes, it is interesting,” Lillian said. “He kept the box and toy cigar in his safe. To get to it, he had to remember the combination to the safe. He must have wanted to talk to his mother one last time before he ended his life. And, as you know, the combination to his safe was so complicated that your expert safe man couldn’t open it, and he had to drill it open.”
Sewell glared at Lillian.
“So, on the date of his death, Horace was able to recall that complicated combination?” Coker asked.
“Yes.”
“You wish to re-cross-examine on this issue, Mr. Sewell?” the judge asked.
“I think not,” Sewell said. “We’ve heard quite enough from this woman. We don’t need to endure more absurdities about Cracker Jack boxes and toy cigars.”
Timothy Coker turned to Sewell. “Mrs. Adams says I should ask you about the suicide note. So I will. Did you write it?”
“You will not address each other, counselors,” Judge Little said. “The court will stand in recess.”
Lillian patted Coker’s shoulder. “I think we won,” she whispered.
“Don’t be too sure. As long as the bastard’s alive, he can make up another pack of lies.”
Lillian nodded. “Yes, he can.”
Coker walked past Sewell’s table, and out of the side of his mouth, he said, “Don’t you think you should dismiss this stinking case before it destroys you?”
CHAPTER 48
JUDGE LITTLE LOOKED unassailably proper as he sat on his bench and read the instructions that every judge reads to every jury in every criminal case. He instructed the jurors about the presumption of innocence and the burden of proof that rested on the state, and that nebulous concept of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
What was reasonable? Judge Murray asked himself. That which was reasonable to one juror would likely be unreasonable to another. And every living soul, including himself, carried around his or her own junk pile of prejudices, most of which were unreasonable.
Judge Little instructed the jurors: “While motive may be relevant, it is not an element of the crime of murder, and proof of a motive is not necessary for a conviction. The prosecution is only required to prove that Lillian Adams intentionally killed her husband with what the law calls ‘malice aforethought’—meaning she had planned the killing and intended to kill him.” The judge turned to Sewell. “You may present your opening final argument.”
Sewell stood and stared at the jury. He began by pointing a finger at Lillian. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, she has an excuse for everything. She has an excuse for the blood under her nails. She has an excuse for the blood on her clothing. She has an excuse for the gunshot residues on her hands. And now her lawyer even claims that the forged suicide note had been forged by someone other than Lillian Adams. Well then, who forged it? We have proven Lillian Adams did it.
“And the bloody drag marks.” He lowered his eyes as if in prayer and moaned in mockery. “I’m sorry that such an individual as Arthur Huffsmith, a deputy with a previously unblemished record, should try to foist upon this jury the trickery of his photographs. Why did Deputy Huffsmith keep these photographs secret all of this time?
“Why is he part of this devilish conspiracy to cover a murder? Deputy Huffsmith’s house was mortgaged, and the mortgage was being foreclosed. Suddenly, the foreclosure proceedings ended, and Lillian Adams had nothing to do with that? She was a woman about to gain fifty million dollars if she was acquitted of the murder. Can we now understand why Deputy Huffsmith claims—and for the first time—that the suicide note was not present when he arrived at the scene?” He paced in front of the jury.
“We have a woman here who stands to gain fifty million dollars—fifty million—if we close our eyes to her vicious crime.” Sewell’s lips grew whiter and thinner and his eyes were squinted nearly shut in his effort to restrain his mounting fury. “We have here the base effrontery of Sylvia Huntley, who, under oath, refused to tell the jury the simple truth. Who are these agents of the devil!”
“Objection!” Coker cried. “Your Honor, I move once more for a mistrial. Yet again this prosecutor has stepped over the permissible boundaries of propriety when he refers to one of our citizens with such prejudicial language.”
“I’ll hear you in chambers, counsel,” Judge Little said, and called a recess.
In chambers, Coker in slow, carefully chosen words said, “Hopefully, we’re not returning to the Dark Ages. This prosecutor’s reference to ‘agents of the devil’ would be appropriate only in the infamous inquisitions of medieval times. The last we heard of ‘agents of the devil’ in this country was the infamous Salem witch trials, which left their shameful scars on the history of America.”
“Yes, I agree,” Judge Little said. “I will instruct the jury to disregard any reference to ‘agents of the devil’ as made by Mr. Sewell.”
“With all due respect,” Coker said, “how can th
e jury disregard such reference when you, Your Honor, will be republishing those forbidden words when you tell them to disregard the prosecutor’s words ‘agents of the devil’?”
Judge Little examined his desktop, as if the answer would be revealed there. Without saying more, he ordered the parties to return to the courtroom. He spoke to the jury in a stern judicial voice. “Ladies and gentlemen, any reference to that certain entity of evil in any form or in any connection is forbidden in this case. You will not make reference to it, discuss it in any way, and you will abolish it from your minds. Mr. Sewell, I admonish you for this misconduct, and warn you that any further violations of this kind will be dealt with severely by the court. Do you understand?”
“How, Your Honor, does one abolish something from one’s mind without bringing it to mind in order to abolish it?” Coker asked.
After another long pause, Judge Little said, “I will further advise the jury that they may take Mr. Sewell’s improper remarks concerning a certain entity of evil as evidence of a weak case. Your motion, Mr. Coker, for a mistrial is overruled.”
“The devil made you do it,” Coker said with unclothed sarcasm.
Little instructed Sewell to continue, “being cautious to stay totally within the bounds of a proper final argument.”
Sewell looked up at the judge, nodded, and, acting as if the judge’s instructions were of little consequence, began anew by saying, “Sylvia Huntley did not tell the truth. Deputy Huffsmith did not tell the truth. The girl, Tina Ford, did not tell the truth. This defendant did not tell the truth, and, I am loath to say, Judge Murray, held in jail as a material witness, conveniently hid the truth with the clever device of his faulty hearing aid. Oh, how clever!” he hissed. “What a feast of lies we have endured!
“Truth is calling to you. Listen!” Sewell waited as if Truth were plainly audible. “It is a clarion call for justice. Bring justice back to Teton County. Let all within the sound of my voice know that justice is ours only if we discover it, have the courage to demand it, and embrace it. Otherwise, we live on the borders of hell.”
