The Last Juror (6 page)

Lucien Wilbanks couldn’t wait to stand up and start bickering. He was on his feet immediately. “We object to that, Your Honor. My client has no criminal record whatsoever, never been arrested before.”

Judge Loopus looked calmly over his reading glasses
and said, “Mr. Wilbanks, I do hope that is the first and last time you interrupt anyone in this proceeding. I suggest you sit down, and when the Court is ready to hear from you, then you will be so advised.” His words were icy, almost bitter, and I wondered how many times these two had tangled in this very courtroom.

Nothing bothered Lucien Wilbanks; his skin was as thick as rawhide.

Childers then gave us a bit of history. Eleven years earlier, in 1959, a certain Gerald Padgitt had been indicted for stealing cars over in Tupelo. It took a year to find a couple of deputies willing to enter Padgitt Island to serve a warrant, and though they survived, they were unsuccessful. Gerald Padgitt either fled the country or secluded himself somewhere on the island. “Wherever he is,” Childers said, “he’s never been arrested, never been found.”

“You ever hear of Gerald Padgitt?” I whispered to Baggy.

“Nope.”

“If this defendant is released on bail, Your Honor, we’ll never see him again. It’s that simple.” Childers sat down.

“Mr. Wilbanks,” His Honor said.

Lucien stood slowly and waved a hand at Childers. “As usual, the prosecutor is confused,” he began pleasantly. “Gerald Padgitt is not charged with these crimes. I don’t represent him and really don’t give a damn what happened to him.”

“Watch your language,” Loopus said.

“He’s not on trial here. This is about Danny Padgitt, a young man with no criminal record whatsoever.”

“Does your client own real estate in this county?” Loopus asked.

“No, he does not. He’s only twenty-four.”

“Let’s get to the bottom line, Mr. Wilbanks. I know his family owns considerable acreage. The only way I’ll grant bail is if it’s all pledged to secure his appearance for trial.”

“That’s outrageous,” Lucien growled.

“So are his alleged crimes.”

Lucien flung his legal pad onto the table. “Give me a minute to consult with the family.”

This caused quite a stir among the Padgitts. They huddled behind the defense table with Wilbanks and there was disagreement from the very start. It was almost funny watching these very wealthy crooks shake their heads and get mad at each other. Family fights are quick and bitter, especially when money is at stake, and every Padgitt present seemed to have a different opinion about which course to take. One could only imagine what it was like when they were dividing their loot.

Lucien sensed that an agreement was unlikely, and to avoid embarrassment he turned and addressed the Court. “That’s impossible, Your Honor,” he announced. “The Padgitt land is owned by at least forty people, most of them absent from this courtroom. What the Court is requiring is arbitrary and overly burdensome.”

“I’ll give you a few days to put it together,” Loopus said, obviously enjoying the discomfort he was causing.

“No sir. It’s just not fair. My client is entitled to a reasonable bail, same as any other defendant.”

“Then bail is denied until the preliminary hearing.”

“We waive the preliminary.”

“As you wish,” Loopus said, taking notes.

“And we request that the case be presented to the grand jury as soon as possible.”

“In due course, Mr. Wilbanks, same as all other cases.”

“Because we will move for a change of venue as soon as possible.” Lucien said this boldly, as if an important proclamation was needed.

“It’s a bit early for that, don’t you think?” Loopus said.

“It will be impossible for my client to get a fair trial in this county.” Wilbanks was gazing around the courtroom as he continued, almost ignoring the Judge, who, for the moment, seemed curious.

“An effort is already under way to indict, try, and convict my client before he has the chance to defend himself, and I think the Court should intervene immediately with a gag order.”

Lucien Wilbanks was the only one who needed gagging.

“Where are you going with this, Mr. Wilbanks?” Loopus asked.

“Have you seen the local paper, Your Honor?”

“Not lately.”

All eyes seemed to settle upon me, and once again my heart stopped dead still.

Wilbanks glared at me as he continued. “Front page stories, bloody photographs, unnamed sources, enough half-truths and innuendos to convict any innocent man!”

Baggy was inching away again, and I was very much alone.

Lucien stomped across the courtroom and tossed a copy up to the bench. “Take a look at this,” he growled. Loopus adjusted his reading glasses, pulled the
Times
up high, and sank back into his fine leather chair. He began reading, apparently in no particular hurry.

He was a slow reader. At some point my heart began functioning again, returning with the fury of a jack-hammer. And I noticed my collar was wet where it rested on the back of my neck. Loopus finished the front page and slowly opened it up. The courtroom was silent. Would he toss me into jail right there? Nod to a bailiff to slap handcuffs on me and drag me away? I wasn’t a lawyer. I’d just been threatened with a million-dollar lawsuit, by a man who’d certainly filed many, and now the Judge was reading my rather lurid accounts while the entire town waited for his verdict.

A lot of hard glances were coming my way, so I found it easier to scribble on my reporter’s pad, though I couldn’t read anything I was writing. I worked hard at keeping a straight face. What I really wanted to do was bolt from the courtroom and race back to Memphis.

Pages rattled, and His Honor was finally finished.
He leaned slightly forward to the microphone and uttered words that would instantly make my career. He said, “It’s very well written. Engaging, perhaps a bit macabre, but certainly nothing out of line.”

I kept scribbling, as if I hadn’t heard this. In a sudden, unforeseen, and rather harrowing skirmish, I had just prevailed over the Padgitts and Lucien Wilbanks. “Congratulations,” Baggy whispered.

Loopus refolded the newspaper and laid it down. He allowed Wilbanks to rant and rave for a few minutes about leaks from the cops, leaks from the prosecutor’s office, potential leaks from the grand jury room, all of them somehow coordinated by a conspiracy of unnamed people determined to treat his client unfairly. What he was really doing was performing for the Padgitts. He had lost his attempt to get bail, so he had to impress them with his zealousness.

Loopus bought none of it.

As we would soon learn, Lucien’s act had been nothing but a smokescreen. He had no intention of moving the case from Ford County.

CHAPTER 6

W
hen I bought the
Times,
its prehistoric building came with the deal. It had very little value. It was on the south side of the Clanton square, one of four decaying structures built wall to wall by someone in a hurry; long and narrow, three levels, with a basement that all employees feared and shied away from. There were several offices in the front, all with stained and threadbare carpet, peeling walls, the smell of last century’s pipe smoke forever fused to the ceilings.

In the rear, as far away as possible, was the printing press. Every Tuesday night, Hardy, our pressman, somehow coaxed the old letterpress to life and managed to produce yet another edition of our paper. His space was rank with the sharp odor of printer’s ink.

The room on the first floor was lined with bookshelves sagging under the weight of dusty tomes that had not been opened in decades; collections of history
and Shakespeare and Irish poetry and rows of badly outdated British encyclopedias. Spot thought such books would impress anyone who ventured in.

Standing in the front window, and looking through dingy panes of glass, across which someone had long ago painted the word “TIMES,” one could see the Ford County Courthouse and the bronze Confederate sentry guarding it. A plaque below his feet listed the names of the sixty-one county boys who died in the Great War, most at Shiloh.

The sentry could also be seen from my office, which was on the second floor. It, too, was lined with bookshelves holding Spot’s personal library, an eclectic collection that appeared to have been as neglected as the one downstairs. It would be years before I moved any of his books.

The office was spacious, cluttered, filled with useless artifacts and worthless files and adorned with fake portraits of Confederate generals. I loved the place. When Spot left he took nothing, and after a few months no one seemed to want any of his junk. So it remained where it was, neglected as always, virtually untouched by me, and slowly becoming my property. I boxed up his personal things—letters, bank statements, notes, postcards—and stored them in one of the many unused rooms down the hall where they continued to gather dust and slowly rot.

My office had two sets of French doors that opened to a small porch with a wrought-iron railing, and there was enough room out there for four people to sit in
wicker chairs and watch the square. Not that there was much to see, but it was a pleasant way to pass the time, especially with a drink.

Baggy was always ready for a drink. He brought a bottle of bourbon after dinner, and we assumed our positions in the rockers. The town was still buzzing over the bail hearing. It had been widely assumed that Danny Padgitt would be sprung as soon as Lucien Wilbanks and Mackey Don Coley could get matters arranged. Promises would be made, money would change hands, Sheriff Coley would somehow personally guarantee the boy’s appearance at trial. But Judge Loopus had other plans.

Baggy’s wife was a nurse. She worked the night shift in the emergency room at the hospital. He worked days, if his rather languid observations of the town could be considered labor. They rarely saw each other, which was evidently a good thing because they fought constantly. Their adult children had fled, leaving the two of them to wage their own little war. After a couple of drinks, Baggy always began the cutting remarks about his wife. He was fifty-two, looked at least seventy, and I suspected that the booze was the principal reason he was aging badly and fighting at home.

“We kicked their butts,” he said proudly. “Never before has a newspaper story been so clearly exonerated. Right there in open court.”

“What’s a gag order?” I asked. I was an ill-informed rookie, and everybody knew it. No sense in pretending I knew something when I didn’t.

“I’ve never seen one. I’ve heard of them, and I think they’re used by judges to shut up the lawyers and the litigants.”

“So they don’t apply to newspapers?”

“Never. Wilbanks was grandstanding, that’s all. The guy is a member of the ACLU, only one in Ford County. He understands the First Amendment. There’s no way a court can tell a newspaper not to print something. He was having a bad day, it was apparent his client was staying in jail, so he had to showboat. Typical maneuver by lawyers. They teach it in law school.”

“So you don’t think we’ll get sued?”

“Hell no. Look, first of all, there’s no lawsuit. We didn’t libel or defame anyone. Sure we got kinda loose with some of the facts, but it was all small stuff, and it was probably true anyway. Second, if Wilbanks had a lawsuit he would have to file it here, in Ford County. Same courthouse, same courtroom, same Judge. The Honorable Reed Loopus, who, this morning, read our stories and declared them to be just fine. The lawsuit was shot down before Wilbanks typed the first word. Brilliant.”

I certainly didn’t feel brilliant. I’d been worrying about the million dollars in damages and wondering where I might find such a sum. The bourbon was finally settling in and I relaxed. It was Thursday night in Clanton and few people were out. Every shop and store and office around the square was locked tight.

Baggy, as usual, had been relaxed for a long time. Margaret had whispered to me that he often had bourbon
for breakfast. He and a one-legged lawyer called Major liked to have a nip with their coffee. They would meet on the balcony outside Major’s office across the square and smoke and drink and argue law and politics while the courthouse came to life. Major lost a leg at Guadalcanal, according to his version of the Second War. His law practice was specialized to the point that he did nothing but type wills for the elderly. He typed them himself—had no need for a secretary. He worked about as hard as Baggy, and the two were often seen in the courtroom, half-soused, watching yet another trial.

“I guess Mackey Don’s got the boy in the suite,” Baggy said, his words starting to slur.

“The suite?” I asked.

“Yeah—have you seen the jail?”

“No.”

“It’s not fit for animals. No heat, no air, plumbing works about half the time. Filthy conditions. Rotten food. And that’s for the whites. The blacks are at the other end, all in one long cell. Their only toilet is a hole in the floor.”

“I think I’ll pass.”

“It’s an embarrassment to the county, but, sadly, it’s the same in most places around here. Anyway, there’s one little cell with air conditioning and carpet on the floor, one clean bed, color television, good food. It’s called the suite and Mackey Don puts his favorites there.”

I was mentally taking notes. To Baggy, it was business as usual. To me, a recent college attendee and
sometime journalism student, a real muckraking story was in the works. “You think Padgitt’s in the suite?”

“Probably. He came to court in his own clothes.”

“As opposed to?”

“Those orange jail coveralls everybody else wears. You haven’t seen them?”

Yes, I had seen them. I had been in court one time, a month or so earlier, and I suddenly recalled seeing two or three defendants sitting in the courtroom, waiting for a judge, all wearing different shades of faded orange coveralls. “Ford County Jail” was printed across the front and back of the shirts.

Baggy took a sip and expounded. “You see, for the preliminary hearings and such, the defendants, if they’re still in jail, always come to court dressed like prisoners. In the old days, Mackey Don would make them wear the coveralls even during their trials. Lucien Wilbanks got a guilty verdict reversed on the grounds that the jury was predisposed to convict since his client certainly looked guilty as hell in his orange jail suit. And he was right. Kinda hard to convince a jury you’re not guilty when you’re dressed like an inmate and wearing rubber shower shoes.”