by Gerry Spence
Suddenly, Helen Griggsley said in a voice that was faintly romantic, “If he loved her like everybody says, he would have written something like, ‘Darling, I love you. It’s better this way,’ or something loving. Like Mr. Widdoss said, somebody else wrote that note for sure.”
“He did say he loved her. It’s right there in black and white in his journal,” William Carter said.
“It ain’t easy to write lovey-dovey stuff,” Witherspoon said. “I been married forty-two years, and me and my wife are pretty close. She can pull a calf as good as any hand I ever had. And she can shoot a coyote from a couple hundred yards with open iron sights, and put up the rhubarb for them pies she makes, and when it comes to our anniversary, I can’t ever figure out what to say except to tell her…” And he started to tear up.
The jurors waited.
Witherspoon finally began again, this time with a holler. “But that doesn’t make me a killer on account of I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve. And if a guy’s about to shoot his own head off, he might have trouble thinking about something sweet to write.”
“I agree with you there,” Mary Lou Livingston said. “You can’t tell anything about what a man thinks, especially if he’s in the mood to kill. And if this was a suicide, well, he was in the mood to kill.”
“Maybe he was going to kill his wife, and she shot him in self-defense,” Josephine Heller, the unemployed art teacher, said. “Maybe she wrestled him for the gun or something. I’m not necessarily voting that way, but maybe…”
“I never thought of that,” Mary Lou Livingston said.
“She never claimed it was self-defense. She said he shot himself,” Margaret Reed Smith said. “She said it in open court.”
Witherspoon spoke up again. “Well, one thing: All along she was trying to protect her daughter. I don’t know how you mothers can forget that. Even an old cow will lay it all down for her calf. Especially an Angus cow. But I will grant you, them Herefords—”
Tom Mosley interrupted. “Well, Deputy Huffsmith said the note wasn’t there when he got to the scene. And he was the first there.”
Helen Griggsley said, “I know Mr. Sewell, and I’m sure he had nothing to do with forging a note.”
“Those churchgoin’ kind are the first to lie,” Witherspoon said. “If they weren’t such thieves and liars, they wouldn’t have to go to church so often to get forgiven.”
“That is the most horrible thing I have ever heard said. Mr. Sewell should sue you for slander,” Helen Griggsley told him.
“That is Sewell’s privilege,” Witherspoon said. “They tell me that truth is a defense to slander.”
“I haven’t said much to this point, but I’m under oath,” said William Carter. “So I’d better come out with it.” He was looking at Helen Griggsley. “I happen to know you had a house party for Sewell when he ran the last time.”
“And how would you know anything about my personal life?” Helen Griggsley asked.
“You probably don’t remember,” Carter said, “but you’d been raising hell because your car wasn’t working, and I came by your house when your party was going on. I saw Sewell there with my own eyes.”
“I never get into politics,” Helen Griggsley said. “It was a church affair. Covered-dish supper. Mr. Sewell’s a member of my church. Any member of the church could come.”
Finally, Smithson said to Helen Griggsley, “I’m a little surprised about this party thing with Sewell. I think we should ask the judge about it. After all, I am the foreman, and it’s my responsibility to see that our deliberations are not tainted in any way.”
“You can do whatever you like,” she said. “I’ve done nothing wrong. And I am perfectly willing to discuss this case as if I had never met Mr. Sewell. In fact, I hardly know him.”
Witherspoon said, “That suicide note came popping up just in time to make a case for Sewell. He had the journal, too, and plenty of time to phony up old Adams’s handwriting.”
“I think she killed her husband because he was molesting her daughter,” Helen Griggsley said.
“There was nothing in the evidence about that,” Smithson said. “You are making that up.”
“Well, she couldn’t admit she killed him for that reason,” Helen Griggsley said. “After all, it might be the right thing to do, but the law doesn’t permit us mothers to protect our daughters, and nowadays the law doesn’t protect our daughters, either. So what’s a mother supposed to do?”
“That girl, Tina, is nuts, and tough,” Witherspoon said. “But I say her mother was lying to protect her.”
“Yeah, and I never trusted that handwriting expert,” Tom Mosley said. “Nobody’s handwriting is the same all the time. Sometimes I’m in a hurry. Sometimes I got a different pen.”
Silence took over. Finally, Amos Rogers said, “Judge Little told us the Adams lady doesn’t have to prove anything. It’s Sewell’s job to do the proving. Old Sewell was just raising questions he should have answered. And he didn’t. How come? He could have put the sheriff on the stand to contradict Huffsmith when he said he and the sheriff dragged Adams across the floor and that’s where the bloody drag marks came from. And he didn’t.”
William Carter said, “There’s a lot of doubt here. I think she may have been covering for her daughter, and I can forgive a mother for doing that. Might even be the right thing to do if you’re a mother. I think the law of mothers trumps the law, period!”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to say all along,” Josephine Heller said.
“Well, I knew Tina before I went to the bank. I was teaching chemistry at the high school,” Smithson said. “She threatened once to shove a hot test tube up the rear end of Clint Black, our left tackle on the football team, and he backed off. She probably could have.”
“There we go again,” Mosley said to Smithson. “Coker asked you if you knew any members of the Adams family, and you said no.”
“Well, Tina is not a member of that family.”
“I have a stepson, and he is a member of my family,” Mosley said.
“Maybe we should take another ballot,” Smithson suggested. “It’s getting late.”
The vote was nine for acquittal and three for conviction.
“I say we go have dinner on the county and come back with a full stomach,” Witherspoon said. “I always say that important decisions should never be made on an empty stomach.”
They ate at one long table in the back of the Emery Hotel’s dining room, where the Rotary Club met every Tuesday at noon. Witherspoon ordered a whiskey and water.
Helen Griggsley spoke up. “It is not proper for a juror to drink on the job.”
“Who said so?” Witherspoon asked. “I never heard nothing in the judge’s instructions that said a man couldn’t have a drink before dinner, and I been having a drink of good whiskey before supper for thirty years. It’s good for your heart.” He lifted his shot glass up as if to make a toast.
“In that case, I’ll have a glass of red wine,” Harmony Biernstein said.
“I will, too,” Smithson said, and after that everyone except Josephine Heller and Helen Griggsley ordered wine.
They talked about how cattle prices had gone to hell, and about the mountain-climbing guide who fell to his death on the Grand Teton and took a tourist down with him, which inspired Witherspoon to order another shot of whiskey.
Carter wanted to take after the Republicans, and Witherspoon wanted to criticize “them lily-livered liberals that hang around Washington making out with each other like a bunch of hot steers,” but Smithson said that politics was a forbidden topic.
Witherspoon hollered to the waitress for the dessert menu. When he read the menu, his lips moved. “Is that peach pie hot?”
“Yeah,” the waitress said. “At least it was this morning.”
“Give me a piece of that, honey,” he said with a good-natured wink. “And some vanilla ice cream on top.”
* * *
Back in the jury room, Smith
son started the discussion anew. “Now I’ve been thinking. And that is dangerous.” He gave his fellow jurors a wink and a smile. “Now, justice is to do the right thing. And I’ve been thinking that old Adams was losing it. He must have wanted to die. He would have been a terrible burden on his wife and on everyone else. And losing your mind is a terrible thing. I know. My father didn’t know who he was or where he was when he finally died.” He looked down when he spoke of his father.
Then Smithson went on. “The facts do not always define justice. And the law doesn’t, either. It was not just that my father lived about ten years too long and near broke my mother and all us kids. It was horrible. I don’t know if Lillian Adams killed her husband or not. She might have. But I am thinking that maybe he killed himself to save her the misery of living with a man who is slobbering and raving and lost like my father was. Adams knew he was slipping bad. His journal said so. I am beginning to think he killed himself out of mercy for her, which, as I see it, was the right reason.”
Helen Griggsley answered him. “If he killed himself, she probably talked him into it, and that makes her as guilty as if she killed him.”
“I know,” Smithson said. He gave her his kindest banker look. “But don’t you have a reasonable doubt about this? I mean, she could have killed him. Her daughter could have killed him. He could have killed himself. She could have talked him into killing himself. The note could have been forged. She could have forged it. Sewell could have forged it. A ‘could have’ case is a reasonable-doubt case.”
“I do not think there is any doubt, much less a reasonable one,” Helen Griggsley replied. “One way or another, that woman is guilty of murder.”
Witherspoon piped up. “Now maybe she did kill her husband. But I’ll tell you one thing: If a man has a good horse, and the horse gets old and can’t make it no more, a decent man don’t let the horse die a little at a time until the coyotes eat him alive.”
Smithson said, “Now, Mr. Witherspoon, we are not going to get into a debate about euthanasia.”
“I suppose that’s one of your fancy words for mercy killing,” Witherspoon said. “But if the lady shot the old boy to put him out of his misery, I, for one, am not about to send her off for the rest of her life to a bunch of hot cows in some woman’s prison, or, worse, let them lock her in a gas chamber. Takes brass balls to do a mercy killing.”
Smithson said, “Sewell didn’t prove that Tina didn’t kill him. The girl said she did kill him. Remember?”
“I didn’t believe the girl,” Helen Griggsley said. “She wasn’t that crazy, if she was crazy at all. Her mother is one vicious woman. You could see it the way she looked at Mr. Sewell, who I know is an honorable—”
“But he didn’t prove that the girl didn’t kill him and—”
Tom Mosley interrupted Smithson. “Well, the blood’s been bothering me. The sheriff and Sewell had to know that the bloody marks on the floor were from them dragging the body out. They were there. They lied to us.”
“That Sewell is a great guy all right,” Witherspoon said. “But if God had wanted him to actually convict Lillian Adams, he would have given Sewell a better hand to play.”
Suddenly, Helen Griggsley asked, “What happened to the Cracker Jack box and the toy cigar? Why would that Cracker Jack box and toy cigar just happen to be there on the desk when Huffsmith found him, but we haven’t heard of that since?”
“Yeah, why didn’t Sewell tell us about the Cracker Jack box?” Amos Rogers asked. “It had been in Adams’s safe, and only he knew the combination. So he knew what he was doing that day, or he couldn’t have opened the safe, that’s for sure.”
“Yes, and the Cracker Jack box and toy cigar were all he had of his mother, which goes to show you he was talking to his mama before he shot himself,” Witherspoon said.
“A mother’s love coming through in a Cracker Jack box and a toy cigar,” Helen Griggsley said in a tiny child’s voice. “Oh, dear Lord!”
Foreman Smithson said, “Maybe we should take another vote.”
And on the next ballot, the jury returned its unanimous verdict, acquitting Lillian Adams.
CHAPTER 50
JUDGE JOHN MURRAY felt that light, airy, uplifting feeling in the heart area when Lillian walked free. Too often he’d seen juries’ verdicts ricochet from the facts like a bullet bouncing off case-hardened steel. Too often prejudice, rather than the law and the facts, captured the case. But this verdict was spot-on.
He took in a breath of life as if he’d never breathed before. Moreover, there was a personal reason that he and Betsy could celebrate: The “evil bastard,” as Betsy called Sewell, had been exposed. He’d hidden Adams’s journal, and he must have forged the suicide note, or knew who did. He should be prosecuted. Maybe he’d at least lose his license to practice law.
The judge traveled to Hardy Tillman’s garage to help him drink up the last of the brew stored in his refrigerator. Hardy had a head start on him and greeted the judge with a pat on the back and his hoarse laugh. “One thing you got to say: Letting the cat out of the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back. Old Sewell should have knowed that.”
They toasted the jury, and they toasted Coker, and after that Hardy toasted “the pretty ass of Lillian Adams that just got saved.”
For reasons not clear to the judge, Sewell dropped the charges against Hardy and the judge for the ass-kicking Sewell got from Hardy. Maybe public sentiment reigned. Some of the townsfolk were saying they wished they’d have been the ones giving the son of a bitch an ass-kicking. Hardy was becoming a local hero.
The judge raised his bottle to salute his old friend.
“Old Jacobs from the paper called me and asked me if I had any statement to make,” Hardy said.
“And…”
“I tells him, ‘I ain’t got nothing to say except I kicked old Sewell’s bony butt in self-defense.’ And he says, ‘Is that all you got to say?’ and I says, ‘Yeah, a closed mouth gathers no foot.’” Hardy began to laugh again, and he laughed until his laughter turned into fits of coughing.
They downed a couple more beers, and after all the hilarity, the two old men discovered they had nothing more to say. A rare embarrassment settled in.
The judge knew the jury’s verdict in Lillian’s case didn’t acquit him. He’d lied. Worse, he’d lied again, because he’d never told Betsy that he’d lied. The judge struggled to get up out of his chair, but Hardy opened another round. “I’ll say one thing, Judge”—Hardy lifted his bottle—“and one thing only: You are a sly old bastard.”
The judge frowned his “What are you talking about?” frown and took a long draw on the bottle.
“They had you cold and you squeezed out of it. You didn’t even have to say ‘I don’t remember.’”
“So who’s saying that besides you?” the judge asked.
“Everybody. They all know with yer hearing aid on ya can hear a pin drop on a pile a shit.”
“She was too close to me for me to hear,” the judge said. He had no choice but to lie again.
“Right,” Hardy said, smiling his disbelief. “I wish she’d have got that close to me—within ten inches!” Then he added, “Ten and a half if it’s early of a morning.”
“I have to go home and feed my birds,” the judge finally said.
* * *
Twenty-seven days following the acquittal of Lillian Adams, Haskins Sewell charged Judge John Murray with two counts of perjury. The judge was charged in Count I with having lied under oath when he told the jury he hadn’t heard Lillian Adams say “I killed Horace because—” and in Count II, that he lied again when he claimed his hearing aids failed him.
On the same day, Undersheriff Bromley arrested the judge at his cabin and confiscated his hearing aids as evidence. Betsy, frantic, called Timothy Coker, and Coker, in turn, petitioned Judge Little, who immediately ordered the release of Judge Murray “on his own recognizance,” after which Coker traveled out to the judge’s cabin for a conference.
Judge Murray nodded silently to Coker. Betsy was pale and silent. Coker took the judge’s chair by the fire.
“He will never make this stick,” Coker said. “Not in a lifetime.”
The judge was wearing his old hearing aids, which Betsy had stuffed in the bottom drawer of their bureau, along with a ring of old keys and a pair of scratched sunglasses.
“Sewell knows he can’t make those charges stick,” Coker said. “What you hear and what you can’t is like what you remember and what you can’t—it can’t be proven. Besides, he can’t prove that your batteries weren’t dead. There will always be doubt, and Sewell knows it.”
“He’ll never give up,” the judge said.
“It’s part of his scheme to finally take over your judgeship,” Coker said. “You’re supposed to file for reelection pretty soon. He comes out with these groundless charges before it’s time for you to file. Win or lose this case, he thinks the people won’t vote for a judge under indictment.”
Betsy was squeezing her hands together, her knuckles white.
Coker continued: “This is also a clever way for him to explain why he lost the Adams case. He’ll argue that Lillian admitted the killing to you and that you lied. Otherwise, he would have convicted her. He’ll claim that Lillian got off on your perjured testimony.”
“I should kill the evil bastard,” Betsy said. “And I will. I swear I will.”
“Don’t waste your time thinking thoughts like that, Betsy,” Coker said. He offered a small, sad smile. “I’ll take care of Sewell. Don’t worry.”
Then Betsy walked out of the room.
* * *
Up to the last hour, the judge and Betsy had worried over his filing for reelection. “I don’t want to be judge anymore,” he said. “I’ve had enough of it, and I’m not as sharp as I used to be. I have those spells, you know, and I’d like to do something different with what little of my life remains.”
“Like what?” Betsy asked. “You’re as sharp as you ever were. And if you don’t file, people will think you’re guilty, and that rotten rat bastard will take over the county, and none of us will be safe anymore.”
