Grif Stockley - Probable Cause

“Sorry about the bench,” I tell him needlessly, sitting down. Some guys look rumpled in a brand-new tailored thousand-dollar suit: Chapman, on the other hand, is the type who can look good in a prison outfit. In his early thirties, I estimate, a decade younger than myself. Chapman has a lean, muscular body with no stomach (he’ll have one when he’s my age), a neat, carefully trimmed goatee, and reading glasses pushed down low on the end of his nose, all of which combine to make him look like a young Ed Bradley from “60 Minutes.” The resemblance ends there. My potential client has none of the world-weariness of Ed, who is beginning to look as if he has crossed too many time zones. De spite his apparent youth, and despite this setting. Chapman has the dignity of a much older man. Sitting erect next to me on the bench, he says quietly, “Aren’t you the lawyer who over a year ago got off with a light sentence the man who murdered the state senator?”

I watch the cell bars in the window across from us as a pair of black hands grips them. From here I cannot see a face, but the fingers wrapped around the metal look feminine. In front of our bench the place is a zoo, with prisoners and their keepers passing back and forth, making it hard to hear.

“Yeah, that was mine when I was at the public defender’s,” I whisper, pleased that the Anderson case still has some mileage. It was a famous case at the time, getting me my job at Mays amp; Burton. Hart Anderson was perhaps on his way to becoming governor of Arkansas when he was shot down in his own home by a man who was being treated for mental illness by Andersen’s wife. The plea bargain I worked out for my client, a delivery man for a food-catering service, was, under the circumstances, almost a case of blackmail, but this is not the time to be modest.

“Tell me briefly what happened, so I can get a bond hearing and get you out of here.”

Chapman, also watching the same pair of hands, says softly against my ear, “It’s pretty complicated. Did you read about the girl at the Human Development Center who was electrocuted a couple of weeks ago?”

“Yes,” I say instantly. I can’t let go of the contrast to my daughter: Sarah, whose Colombian mother, now dead, was a product of a sublime mix of Indian, Spanish, and Negro blood, is stunningly beautiful, with curly coal-colored hair.

My daughter, an almost spooky replica of her mother, is Rosa’s exact height, five feet four, and has the same lush figure. The child at the Blackwell County Human Development Center, severely retarded (I can only imagine what she looked like), had mutilated herself by constantly hitting her face. My recollection of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette article was that her death involved an attempt to stop the self-mutilation. I am not particularly religious (although I was raised a Catholic and got through a Catholic boarding school), but I remember offering up a prayer of gratitude for my daughter’s wholeness.

“Wasn’t that an accident?” I ask, still watching the hands on the bars. Prom time to time I can see a woman’s chin.

“Of course it was!” Chapman says emphatically, his voice a boom box in the narrow hall.

“But I’ve been charged with manslaughter.”

I lean my head back against the wall, trying to recall the maximum length of sentence. Fifteen years. Shit! Well, that will show you do-gooders. Must be some kind of crusade from the new prosecutor, Jill Marymount, the first woman ever to hold the office in Blackwell County.

“Do you know why?” I ask, my question as innocent as a first-grader’s.

The digits on each side of a middle finger which is now sticking out between the bars of the window peel back, and a hoarse voice cries: “Sit on this, mothafuckers!”

Crinkling his brow in apparent distaste. Chapman seems, behind his glasses and beard, truly offended. I doubt if he has ever been in jail. He appears much too disapproving.

“That woman ought to be in the state hospital,” he observes.

“Can’t we talk about this later?” he asks, his deep voice as plaintive as a farmer’s prayer to end a drought.

For the first time, the full face of the female prisoner comes into view behind the bars. She appears insane, her white hair shooting in all directions, and I recall that prisoners who are obviously ill are kept closer to the jailers’ cage in the front.

“Of course,” I say and stand. What do I expect to get from this man right now?

“Have you got some way to make bond?”

As Chapman rises, the old woman pleads, “Get my black ass outa here, white boy! I can’t stand it any longer!”

I look at my watch, wondering if I can get a bond hearing this afternoon. Chapman, his voice anxious but assertive, says, “And I can pay your fee, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I shrug, pretending nonchalance, but no words have sounded sweeter today. Yet if he works for the state, he can’t be too loaded. Maybe he’s on contract.

“I’ll see if I can get a hearing this afternoon.”

Chapman releases so much air in a sigh he seems almost to shrink.

“I’d appreciate that.”

As I turn to leave, he grabs at my sleeve.

“Do you have a card?”

I suppress a groan, knowing I must get this over with, before I waste any time on this case. I look him in the eye, hoping I’ll know how to put this.

“This is my last day at Mays amp; Burton,” I say, trying to sound casual.

“I’m in private practice as of this moment.”

Against the background noise. Chapman studies me for a long moment. Fuck those bastards. He’s my client, I think, wondering what else I should say to convince him to stay with me. Finally, he says, “Good. You’ll have plenty of time to work on my case.”

For the first time all day, I smile. “That’s one way to look at it,” I say, virtually admitting that I was fired. Yet, as I go upstairs, I feel confident. He wanted me, not Mays amp; Burton. It’s a good feeling.

Upstairs I look for the municipal court prosecutor to deter mine the possibility of a bond hearing this afternoon. A bailiff advises me he is winding up a trial and should be available in half an hour, and I walk across the street to the county courthouse and take the world’s slowest elevator to the third floor.

The Blackwell County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has undergone a major change since my entry into private practice. About six months ago, Phil Harper, who had been the head PA during my brief legal career (I didn’t go to law school until the ripe old age of thirty-seven), accepted an appointment to fill an unexpected vacancy on the Arkansas Court of Appeals, and a woman from his staff was appointed to fill his place. A woman for this traditionally male job initially seemed a dubious selection, but the choice has proved astute in these days of voter sensitivity to family is sues. Jill Mary mount has turned the office into a crusade against domestic violence, a favorite concern of the media, since the Supreme Court struck down a statute giving civil courts broad powers to punish husbands who abused their wives.

I know Jill only slightly. While I was at the PD’s Office, she was assigned to juvenile court. Outer Mongolia for an ambitious assistant prosecuting attorney with political aspirations. After Phil finally allowed her to begin handling felonies, she quickly made her reputation with a string of highly publicized child-abuse prosecutions. And when he resigned, Jill, only two years ago virtually unknown, became the obvious choice to break the male stranglehold on the position of prosecutor.

However, it is not to Jill Marymount’s office that I go.

“Is Amy Gilchrist in?” I ask the receptionist at the prosecutor’s office. Of fifteen assistant prosecuting attorneys in the office, Amy is the one I know best. While I was making my own modest reputation as a public defender in the case that has brought me Andy Chapman as a client, I learned to trust Amy, who seemed to be Phil Harper’s favorite. If I approach her now before the case heats up, she can tell me what the political climate is like inside Jill’s shop. Specific information about Chapman’s charge can wait a few minutes. I want to get some idea of how much this case means to Jill Marymount. I think Amy will tell me, if she can.