The Last Juror (7 page)

I marveled once again at the backwardness of Mississippi. I could see a criminal defendant, especially a black one, facing a jury and expecting a fair trial, wearing jail garb designed to be spotted from half a mile away. “Still fightin’ the War,” was a slogan I’d heard several times in Ford County. There was a frustrating
resistance to change, especially where crime and punishment were concerned.

______

A
round noon the following day I walked to the jail looking for Sheriff Coley. Under the pretext of asking him questions about the Kassellaw investigation, I planned to see as many of the inmates as possible. His secretary informed me, rather rudely, that he was in a meeting, and that was fine with me.

Two prisoners were cleaning the front offices. Outside, two more were pulling weeds from a flower bed. I walked around the block and behind the jail I saw a small open area with a basketball goal. Six prisoners were loitering under the shade of a small oak tree. On the east side of the jail I saw three prisoners standing in a window, behind bars, gazing down at me.

Thirteen inmates in all. Thirteen orange suits.

Wiley’s nephew was consulted about things around the jail. At first he was reluctant to talk, but he had a deep hatred of Sheriff Coley, and he thought he could trust me. He confirmed what Baggy had suspected—Danny Padgitt was living the good life in an air-conditioned cell and eating whatever he wanted. He dressed as he wished, played checkers with the Sheriff himself, and made phone calls all day long.

______

T
he next edition of the
Times
did much to solidify my reputation as a hard-charging, fearless, twenty-three-
year-old fool. On the front page was a huge photo of Danny Padgitt being led into the courthouse for his bail hearing. He was handcuffed and wore street clothes. He was also giving the camera one of his patented go-to-hell looks. Just above it was the massive headline: BAIL DENIED FOR DANNY PADGITT. The story was lengthy and detailed.

Alongside was another story, almost as long and much more scandalous. Quoting unnamed sources, I described at length the conditions of Mr. Padgitt’s incarceration. I mentioned every possible perk he was getting, including personal time with Sheriff Coley over the checkerboard. I talked about his food and diet, color television, unlimited phone use. Everything I could possibly verify. Then I compared this with how the other twenty-one inmates were living.

On page two, I ran an old black-and-white file photo of four defendants being led into the courthouse. Each, of course, was wearing the coveralls. Each had handcuffs and unruly hair. I blacked out their faces so, whoever they were, they would not suffer any more embarrassment. Their cases had long since been closed.

I’d placed another picture of Danny Padgitt as he was led into the courthouse next to the file photo. Except for the handcuffs, he could’ve been on his way to a party. The contrast was startling. The boy was being pampered by Sheriff Coley, who, so far, had refused to discuss the matter with me. Big mistake.

In the story, I detailed my efforts to chat with the Sheriff. My phone calls had not been returned. I’d gone
to the jail twice and he wouldn’t meet with me. I’d left a list of questions for him, which he chose to ignore. I painted the picture of an aggressive young reporter desperately searching for the truth and being stiff-armed by an elected official.

Since Lucien Wilbanks was one of the least popular men in Clanton, I included him in the fray. Using the phone, which I was quickly learning was a great equalizer, I called his office four times before he called me back. At first he had no comment about his client or the charges, but when I persisted with questions about his treatment at the jail he erupted. “I don’t run the damned jail, son!” he growled, and I could almost see his red eyes glowing at me. I quoted him on that.

“Have you interviewed your client at the jail?” I asked.

“Of course.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Don’t you have better things to report?”

“No sir. What was he wearing?”

“Well, he wasn’t naked.”

That was too good a quote to pass up, so I put it in bold print in a sidebar.

With a rapist/murderer, a corrupt Sheriff, and a radical lawyer on one side, and me standing alone on the other, I knew I couldn’t lose the fight. The response to the story was astounding. Baggy and Wiley reported that the cafés were buzzing with admiration for the fearless young editor of the paper. The Padgitts and Lucien had
been despised for a long time. Now it was time to get rid of Coley.

Margaret said we were swamped with phone calls from readers incensed with the soft treatment Danny was receiving. Wiley’s nephew reported that the jail was in chaos and Mackey Don was at war with his deputies. He was coddling a murderer—1971 was an election year. Folks were angry out there and they might all lose their jobs.

______

T
hose two weeks at the
Times
were crucial to its survival. The readers were hungry for details, and, through timing, dumb luck, and some guts, I gave them just what they wanted. The paper was suddenly alive; it was a force. It was trusted. The people wanted it to report with detail and without fear.

Baggy and Margaret told me that Spot would have never used the bloody pictures and challenged the Sheriff. But they were still quite timid. I can’t say that my brashness had in any way emboldened my staff. The
Times
was, and would be, a one-man show with a rather weak supporting staff.

Little did I care. I was telling the truth and damning the consequences. I was a local hero. Subscriptions jumped to almost three thousand. Ad revenue doubled. Not only was I shining a new light into the county, I was making money at the same time.

CHAPTER 7

T
he bomb was a rather basic incendiary device that, if detonated, would have quickly engulfed our printing room. There the fire would have been energized by various chemicals and no less than 110 gallons of printer’s ink, and would have raced quickly through the front offices. After a few minutes, with no sprinkler system and no alarms, who knows how much of the upper two floors could have been saved. Probably not much. It was very likely that the fire, if properly detonated in the early hours of Thursday morning, would’ve burned most of the four buildings in our row.

It was discovered sitting ominously, still intact, next to a pile of old papers in the printing room, by the village idiot. Or, I should say, one of the village idiots. Clanton had more than its share.

His name was Piston, and he, like the building and the ancient press and the untouched libraries upstairs
and down, came with the deal. Piston was not an official employee of the
Times,
but he nonetheless showed up every Friday to collect his $50 in cash. No checks. For this fee he sometimes swept the floors and occasionally rearranged the dirt on the front windows, and he hauled out the trash when someone complained. He kept no hours, came and went as he pleased, didn’t believe in knocking on doors when meetings were in progress, liked to use our phones and drink our coffee, and though he at first looked rather sinister—eyes wide apart and covered with thick glasses, oversized trucker’s cap pulled down low, scraggly beard, hideous buck teeth—he was harmless. He provided his janitorial services for several businesses around the square, and somehow survived. No one knew where he lived, or with whom, or how he got about town. The less we knew about Piston, the better.

Piston was in early Thursday morning—he’d had a key for decades—and said that he first heard something ticking. Upon closer examination he noticed three five-gallon plastic cans laced together with a wooden box sitting on the floor next to them. The ticking sound came from the box. Piston had been around the printing room for many years and occasionally helped Hardy on Tuesday nights when he ran the paper.

For most folks, panic would quickly follow curiosity, but for Piston it took a while. After poking around the cans to make sure that they were in fact filled with gasoline, and after determining that a series of dangerous-looking wires tied everything together, he walked to
Margaret’s office and called Hardy. He said the ticking was getting louder.

Hardy called the police, and around 9 A.M. I was awakened with the news.

Most of downtown was evacuated by the time I arrived. Piston was sitting on the hood of a car, by then thoroughly distraught at having survived such a close call. He was being attended by some acquaintances and an ambulance driver, and he seemed to be enjoying the attention.

Wiley Meek had photographed the bomb before the police removed the gasoline cans and placed them safely in the alley behind our building. “Woulda blown up half of downtown,” was Wiley’s uneducated evaluation of the bomb. He nervously darted around the scene, recording the excitement for future use.

The chief of police explained to me that the area was off limits because the wooden box had not been opened and whatever was in there was still ticking. “It might explode,” he said gravely, as if he was the first one smart enough to realize the danger. I doubted if he had much experience with bombs, but I went along. An official from the state crime lab was being rushed in. It was decided that the four buildings in our row would remain unoccupied until this expert finished his business.

A bomb in downtown Clanton! The news spread faster than the fire would have, and all work stopped. The county offices emptied, as well as the banks and stores and cafés, and before long large groups of spectators were crowded across the street, under the huge
oaks on the south side of the courthouse, a safe distance away. They gawked at our little building, obviously concerned and frightened but also waiting for some excitement. They’d never seen a bomb blast before.

The Clanton city police had been joined by the Sheriff’s deputies, and every uniform in the county was soon present, milling about on the sidewalks, doing absolutely nothing. Sheriff Coley and the police chief huddled and conferred and watched the throng across the street, then barked some orders here and there, but if any of their orders were followed it wasn’t noticeable. It was obvious to all that the city and county had no bomb drills.

Baggy needed a drink. It was too early for me. I followed him into the rear of the courthouse, up a narrow flight of stairs I’d not seen before, through a cramped hallway, then up another twenty steps to a small dirty room with a low ceiling. “Used to be the old jury room,” he said. “Then it was the law library.”

“What is it now?” I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

“The Bar Room. Get it? Bar? Lawyers? Booze?”

“Got it.” There was a card table with folding legs and a beaten look that indicated years of use. Around it were half a dozen mismatched chairs, all county hand-me-downs that had been passed from one county office to another and finally ditched in this dingy little room.

In one corner there was a small refrigerator with a padlock. Baggy, of course, had a key, and inside he found a bottle of bourbon. He poured a generous shot
into a paper cup and said, “Grab a chair.” We pulled two of them up to the window, and below was the scene we had just left. “Not a bad view, huh?” he said proudly.

“How often you come here?”

“Twice a week, maybe, sometimes more. We play poker every Tuesday and Thursday at noon.”

“Who’s in the club?”

“It’s a secret society.” He took a sip and smacked his lips as if he’d been in the desert for a month. A spider made its way down a thick web along the window. Dust was half an inch thick on the sills.

“I guess they’re losin’ their touch,” he said, gazing down at the excitement.

“They?” I was almost afraid to ask.

“The Padgitts.” He said this with a certain smugness, then allowed it to hang in the air for my benefit.

“You’re sure it’s the Padgitts?” I asked.

Baggy thought he knew everything, and he was right about half the time. He smirked and grunted, took another sip, then said, “They’ve been burnin’ buildings forever. It’s one of their scams—insurance fraud. They’ve made a bloody fortune off insurance companies.” A quick sip. “Odd, though, that they would use gasoline. Your more talented arsonists stay away from gasoline because it’s easily detected. You know that?”

“No.”

“True. A good fire marshal can smell gasoline within minutes after the blaze is out. Gasoline means arson. Arson means no insurance payoffs.” A sip. “Of course,
in this case, they probably wanted you to know it’s arson. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Nothing made sense at that moment. I was too confused to say much.

Baggy was content to do the talking. “Come to think of it, that’s probably the reason it wasn’t detonated. They wanted you to see it. If it went off, then the county wouldn’t have the
Times,
which might upset some folks. Might make some other folks happy.”

“Thanks.”

“Anyway, that explains it better. It was a subtle act of intimidation.”

“Subtle?”

“Yes, compared to what could’ve been. Believe me, those guys know how to burn buildings. You were lucky.”

I noticed how he had quickly disassociated himself from the paper. It was “I” who was lucky, not “we.”

The bourbon had found its way to the brain and was loosening the tongue. “About three years ago, maybe four, there was a large fire at one of their lumber mills, the one on Highway 401, just off the island. They never burn anything on the island because they don’t want the authorities snoopin’ around. Anyway, the insurance company smelled a rat, refused to pay, so Lucien Wilbanks filed this big lawsuit. It came to trial, in front of the Honorable Reed Loopus. I heard ever’ word of it.” A long, satisfying drink.

“Who won?”

He ignored me completely because the story was not
yet properly laid out. “It was a big fire. The boys from Clanton took off with all their trucks. The volunteers from Karaway took off, ever’ yokel with a siren went screamin’ off toward Padgitt Island. Nothin’ like a good fire around here to get the boys worked up. That and a bomb, I guess, but I can’t remember the last bomb.”