The Dreams of Ada (40 page)

“We’re gonna talk to Lurch,” Wyatt said.

“You think he’ll show?”

“He’s there now.”

Butner, who had dinner plans elsewhere, said, “I’ve got to see Mr. Lurch.”

They drove to Wyatt’s office. Jason Lurch was waiting in the conference room, with Richard Kerner.

Lurch was a tall, thin man with long dark hair that he was wearing in a ponytail, falling from under a cap. He had on blue jeans, a red T-shirt, cowboy boots that reached to his knees, that had scuffed, rounded toes. Lurch sat in a chair, Wyatt in another; the others were on a sofa across the room. Wyatt explained why they wanted to talk to him. At times Lurch grinned, showing a lot of teeth. There was something that seemed eerie, even evil, about the grin, the others would agree later. Kerner thought: he’s the kind of guy who would stab you in the back for a nickel.

Lurch admitted to being in the courtroom every day of the preliminary hearing. “I’ve known Tommy about ten years,” he said. “I wanted to see what kind of evidence they had against him.”

He confirmed that he had said to Miz Ward that he knew Tommy didn’t do it. “I don’t know who did it,” he said now. “I just know Tommy didn’t.”

Wyatt leaned forward in his chair. “I want to make this clear,” he said. “We don’t believe you had anything to do with it, either. We’ve come to believe that the incidents at J.P.’s and at McAnally’s were two separate incidents; that perhaps you had been at J.P.’s, and were remembered by Karen Wise, who recognized you at the preliminary. We don’t think you were involved. But if we could show that you were at J.P.’s that night, with someone else, and then left, that would help Tommy prove his innocence.”

Lurch told them that in April 1984 he was working at an auto repair shop in Ada; that he worked for the shop most of the day, was trusted by the owner, and had his own key; sometimes he would stay after closing, paint cars and trucks, to make extra money for himself.

The attorneys remained expressionless as the information registered: Lurch could easily have painted a truck without suspicion.

Lurch said he had a nephew, about twenty years old, who lived a block and a half from J.P.’s. “Lots of times we’d stop in there for a pack of cigarettes or a soda pop,” he said. “We were in there a whole lot. That girl”—he meant Karen Wise—“was always in there.”

“Is it possible you went in there the evening of April 28, 1984?” Wyatt asked.

“Yeah, it’s possible,” Lurch said. “I coulda been workin’, and gone over there to get some pop and stuff.”

Butner asked him to describe his nephew. “He’s shorter than me,” Lurch said. “A kind of slight build. He’s got sort of sandy blond hair, parted in the middle. About shoulder length.”

It was the exact description under the composite drawing that was supposed to be Tommy Ward. When asked, Lurch said he did not think his nephew looked like Tommy Ward.

The nephew, Ricky Brewer (name changed), worked for one of the Ada factories. He hadn’t seen him for a while, Lurch said. He said Ricky did have a pickup at the time. It was yellow, he said, and shiny, not primered, and had large wheels front and back. The tailgate was off at the time, he said, because it had gotten dented.

“You ever been in McAnally’s?” Wyatt asked.

“No, never,” Lurch said. “We always stopped by J.P.’s.”

The mood in the room was lightening. Wyatt seemed convinced that his theory was true: that there had been two different sets of people seen, two different trucks; that Karen Wise and Jack Paschall had seen Jason Lurch and perhaps his nephew; that it was mistaken identity. Despondent when court adjourned half an hour earlier, the lawyers now felt exhilarated.

“We want you to testify,” Wyatt said. “You’ve been subpoenaed. You’re under court order, so it’s not really a question of whether you want to.”

“An investigator from the D.A.’s office come out and talked to me Friday,” Lurch said. “He read me my rights first. He asked me about Ricky’s truck. That’s why I didn’t show up Sunday. He made it sound like maybe I was a suspect.”

“Did he give you a subpoena?” Butner asked.

“No.”

They asked if he had ever been convicted of a felony. Lurch said no. Wyatt emphasized how important his testimony could be to Tommy Ward. “You understand that Ward’s on trial for his life here? Your testimony could save a man’s life, who we believe is innocent.”

Lurch said he understood. “I’ll be there,” he said; though he would need transportation. They said Richard Kerner would pick him up.

Wyatt told Lurch he could be held as a material witness; he could be held in jail until it was time for him to testify. “We don’t want to do that,” Wyatt said. “We’re not threatening you. I just want you to understand how important it is that you show up.” If he did not show up, Wyatt pointed out, he could be arrested.

Lurch did not have a telephone where he lived. He said he checked in at the store nearby every few hours. They told him to call in to Wyatt’s office the following afternoon, and each morning and afternoon after that, till they knew when they would be calling him as a witness. They would arrange for Kerner to pick him up.

Lurch said he would do that.

The attorneys seemed reluctant to let him go; he was that important to their case.

George Butner remembered something else. He remembered that Jim Moyer, the other person who had recognized Lurch at the preliminaries, had placed him at McAnally’s, an hour before the disappearance. Lurch repeated that he did not go to McAnally’s: except perhaps in the afternoon sometimes, when his wife would stop by there for food; he never went in the evening, or with anyone else, he said.

There seemed no way around that just now.

“When you appear in court, could you dress just the way you are now?” Wyatt asked.

“I always dress this way,” Lurch said.

“Could you let your hair down, so it hangs to your shoulders?”

“I could do that,” Lurch murmured, as if reluctant.

Lurch had a small stubble goatee; he said sometimes he had it, sometimes he didn’t. Wyatt asked if he would shave it before coming to court. Lurch hesitated, then nodded he would.

Lurch and Richard Kerner left. There was little conversation in the car as the investigator drove him home. The mood, however, seemed friendly.

Butner went to his dinner near Wewoka. Wyatt, Austin, and Willett discussed the day’s events. Despite Lurch, Leo Austin was still pessimistic.

“Some of those jurors are ready to cut Tommy’s balls off right now,” he said. “And they haven’t even seen the bad tape yet. The best we can hope for is a hung jury. And then bail out of the case. And hope the family doesn’t have enough money to retain us again.”

“I wouldn’t belly up to the bar with this one again,” Wyatt said.

The lawyer was still convinced, however, that Tommy Ward was innocent. And he still had faith in his own ability: that somehow he would pull the case out of the fire, would win an acquittal.

Richard Kerner, arriving back at his Ada motel late after taking Lurch home, was disappointed. He dined on crackers from a vending machine. He wasn’t very hungry.

Until this evening, Kerner had been convinced that Tommy Ward was innocent. But now he didn’t know. Why, he wondered, would Lurch come to every day of the hearings, if he had not been involved? That showed an inordinate interest in the case. Perhaps, Kerner thought, Ward was letting Fontenot take the second rap because Lurch was bigger, and tougher; because Lurch had threatened him. Perhaps, he thought, the culprits were Jason Lurch and Tommy Ward.

DAY SEVEN

In the morning Dennis Smith resumed the stand. Wyatt asked him why he had held a picture of Denice Haraway in front of Tommy Ward during so much of the questioning on October 12. “In order for him to know who we were talking about,” the detective said. He described the October 18 questioning as a “low-key type of interrogation.”

Wyatt suggested that Odell Titsworth had been held in jail long after the police knew he was not involved, so he could be used to threaten the other two.

George Butner hammered again at the idea that all of the key elements in the confession tape had been planted in Ward’s mind on October 12. And he focused on Officer Holkum’s testimony, suggesting that Holkum had given the detectives a detailed description of what Denice Haraway had been wearing within a day or two after her disappearance. Smith said, “Apparently we didn’t” pay attention to what Holkum had seen that night; he said no detectives had interrogated Holkum until after October 18. Pressed, he admitted that this had not been good police procedure.

The detective was followed to the stand by Marty Ashley. Bill Peterson asked if he had raped and killed Denice Haraway.

“No, sir,” Ashley replied.

Peterson asked if Ashley had kissed her and driven away with her.

“No, sir,” Ashley said.

Watching, Dorothy Hogue of the Ada
News
thought: he looks a lot more like the composite than Fontenot does.

But that, she knew, did not mean he’d been involved.

In the afternoon, the state called Gordon Calhoun, a college student from Whittier, California, a sometime worker at Disneyland. At the time of the disappearance, Calhoun had been living in Ada, next door to Jannette Roberts. He was clean-cut and earnest-looking. He testified that on the night in question, he’d had a party at his apartment, but that Ward and Fontenot had not been there.

Calhoun said that in May, he and Fontenot “talked about the Haraway case. Karl mentioned he knew who did it. I didn’t believe him. I had no reason to believe him.”

He said Fontenot was the type of person who always said things that were not to be believed.

On cross-examination, Wyatt handed him Jannette Roberts’s Polaroid pictures. Calhoun was in one of them, with Fontenot, that was dated 4-16-84. He conceded that he was present in the picture.

Wyatt asked him to describe Karl’s hair in the picture, for the benefit of the jury.

“It is above his ears.”

“It’s above the collar, is it not?”

“Yes.”

Wyatt handed him the composite sketch that supposedly was Fontenot. “It does not compare,” Calhoun said. “Not with the long hair.”

Wyatt handed him the picture showing Jannette’s daughter, Jessica, and the Easter basket, hand-dated 4-22-84; and the one, dated the same, that appeared to show Jannette and Tommy. Wyatt asked him who the man on the couch was. Calhoun studied the snapshot closely. “It looks like Tommy Ward,” he said.

“Tommy’s hair was well up over his ears, wasn’t it?” the lawyer asked. “Cut short, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“If the dates are correct,” Wyatt said, “state’s exhibits one and two [the composite sketches] could not be Karl Allen Fontenot and Tommy Ward?”

“No.”

“Am I right?”

“You’re right.”

Calhoun looked around the courtroom uncertainly. The pictures had been a surprise to him and to the prosecutors.

Wyatt asked if the other picture did not contain “an unopened Easter basket,” and “a little kid standing next to it, kind of anticipating.”

“Yes,” Calhoun said.

On redirect, Peterson, examining the pictures, emphasized that the dates were handwritten, and that Calhoun did not know by whom. Calhoun stated that on April 28 he had seen Karl, and that he had long hair.

Wyatt asked him to turn over the pictures of Tommy, and of the child with the Easter basket, and to read off the last three digits of the code numbers.

Each was 554.

“They appear to have come from the same roll of film, don’t they?” Wyatt asked.

“Yes.”

The two pictures of Fontenot, hand-dated six days earlier, both bore the code 212—different from the Easter pictures.

“If the dates are correct,” George Butner asked, “these photographs are better evidence than your testimony, is that correct?”

“I suppose,” Calhoun said.

It was 4:55
P.M
. There was a brief recess. Tommy Ward, who had been praying to Jesus for deliverance, could not help wondering if his life was going to be saved by an Easter basket.

Others in the courtroom were wondering the same thing. The corridors were astir with conversation about this unexpected evidence. Gordon Calhoun was down in the district attorney’s office on the first floor.

When the recess ended, the state recalled Calhoun. Peterson showed him the pictures again. Calhoun said the clothes he was wearing in the picture of himself and Fontenot were the clothes he had worn on a fishing trip to Blue River on Memorial Day. He said the pictures were not taken on April 16, 1984, as they were dated.

The silence in the courtroom seemed almost to stir with relief.

The clothes were cutoff jeans and a T-shirt. Questioned by Wyatt, Calhoun said he wore a T-shirt almost every day, but that he wore the cutoff jeans only about once a month. Wyatt asked if he could have worn the jeans in April. Calhoun insisted the pictures had been taken on Memorial Day.

He admitted that he had talked to Bill Peterson for two or three minutes during the recess.

Like most of the witnesses, Calhoun was excused subject to possible recall. In his case it meant he could not yet go home to California.

The day’s testimony ended with Leonard Keith Martin, who’d been in the city jail in October 1984. As a trustee, he’d been sweeping the floor outside the cells, he said, when he heard Fontenot say: “I knew we’d get caught. I knew we’d get caught.”

Asked whom Karl was talking to, Martin said, “To nobody. There was nobody else there.”

Gordon Calhoun had seemed, to some observers, to be among the most believable witnesses to take the stand. He was neat and intelligent. He’d lived in Ada, attending ECU, for only a short time, and had no roots in the town. Now he lived out west. He appeared to have no personal stake in the outcome of the trial. He was the kind of witness a jury was likely to believe.

The state had called him to discredit one of Tommy Ward’s early stories—that he had been at a party at Calhoun’s apartment that night. Bill Peterson was being thorough, as was his custom. Don Wyatt had jumped at the opportunity to have the Polaroid pictures entered into evidence and verified during the testimony of a strong state’s witness.