Джон Гришэм - A Time for Mercy

Mrs. Whitaker added, “Drew’s teacher said the class was doing pen-pal letters to boys and girls in orphanages and Drew said he’d been there once, to an orphanage, and he wasn’t ashamed to talk about it. Seems like he’s more outgoing than his sister.”

“Any family around here?” Jake asked.

Both ladies shook their heads. No. Mrs. Huff said, “And I’m not sure how or why she took up with that Kofer fellow. He had a bad reputation in the area.”

“For what?” Portia asked.

“Well, there were a lot of rumors about the guy, down our way. Even though he was a deputy, he had a darker side.”

Jake was keen to pursue the dark side when a doctor walked in. The ladies proudly introduced him to the family’s lawyer and his paralegal. As in most hospitals, the presence of a lawyer chilled the conversation with the doctor. He assured them the patient was doing fine, still in pain, but getting restless. Once the swelling was under control, they would do the surgery to reset the broken bones in her cheek and jaw.

“Can she talk?” Jake asked.

“A little. She struggles but she wants to talk.”

“Could we see her?”

“Sure, just don’t overdo it, okay?”

Jake and Portia hurried from the room as Mrs. Whitaker and Mrs. Huff were pointing the doctor toward the latest casseroles and talking about lunch. It was 10:20.

The deputy on hall duty was Lyman Price, probably the oldest member of Ozzie’s force and the one least able to stalk drug dealers and chase down criminals. When he wasn’t pushing papers around his desk at the jail, he worked the courtrooms keeping order in the court. Killing hours outside a hospital room was another perfect job for old Lyman.

He greeted Jake with his usual gruffness, with no hint of an edge because of the Kofer business.

Jake knocked on the door as he opened it and smiled at Kiera, who was sitting in a chair, reading a teen magazine. Josie was on her back but propped up and alert. Jake introduced himself and Portia, and said hello to Kiera, who put down the magazine and stood near her mother’s feet.

Jake said they would just be there for a moment, but he had met with Drew the night before and promised him that he would see his mother and make sure she was okay. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it and through the gauze mumbled something like “How is he?”

“He’s okay. We’re on our way back to the jail to see him now.”

Kiera had moved closer and was sitting on the edge of the bed. Her eyes were moist and she wiped her cheeks, and Jake was struck by the fact that she was much taller than her brother, though two years younger. Drew could pass for a little boy far away from puberty. Kiera was physically mature for her age.

“How long in jail?” Josie asked.

“A long time, Josie. There’s no way to get him out for weeks or months. He’ll be charged with murder and face a trial and that’ll take a lot of time.”

Kiera leaned forward with a tissue and wiped her mother’s cheeks, then wiped her own. There was a long silent pause as a monitor beeped and nurses laughed in the hallway. Jake flinched first and was suddenly eager to leave. He clutched Josie’s hand, leaned down and said, “I’ll be back. Right now we’re going to check on Drew.”

She tried to nod but the pain hit and she grimaced. Backing away, Jake handed Kiera a business card and whispered, “There’s my number.” At the door he turned around for a last glance and saw the two clutching each other in a tight embrace, both crying, both terrified of the unknowns.

It was a heartbreaking image that he would never forget. Two little people facing nothing but fear and the wrath of the system, a mother and daughter who’d done nothing wrong but were suffering mightily. They had no voice, no one to protect them. No one but Jake. A voice told him that they, along with Drew, would be a part of his life for years to come.

—

THE CHIEF PROSECUTOR for the Twenty-second Judicial District—Polk, Ford, Tyler, Milburn, and Van Buren counties—was the district attorney, Lowell Dyer, from the even smaller town of Gretna, forty miles north of Clanton. Three years earlier, Dyer had challenged the great Rufus Buckley, the three-term D.A. who many believed would one day become governor, or at least try. With as much ceremony, publicity, grandstanding, and outright hotdogging as the state had ever seen, Buckley had prosecuted Carl Lee Hailey five years earlier and begged the jury for death. Jake convinced them otherwise and handed Buckley his greatest defeat. The voters then gave him another one, and he limped back to his hometown of Smithfield and opened a small office. Jake and virtually every other lawyer in the district had quietly supported Lowell Dyer, who had proven to be a steady hand at a rather dull job.

Monday morning was anything but dull. Dyer had taken a call late Sunday night from Judge Noose, and the two had discussed the Kofer case. Ozzie called early Monday morning, and by 9:00 a.m. Dyer was meeting with his assistant, D. R. Musgrove, to consider their options. From the outset, there was little doubt that the State wanted to push for a capital murder indictment and seek the death penalty. A man of the law had been murdered in his own bed, by his own gun, in cold blood. The killer had confessed and was in custody and, though only sixteen, he was certainly old enough to know right from wrong and appreciate the nature of his actions. In Dyer’s world, the Good Book taught an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, vengeance is mine saith the Lord. Or something like that. The exact wording from the Bible was really not that important, because capital punishment was still favored by an overwhelming majority of the population, especially those concerned enough to vote. Polls and public opinion surveys were of no consequence in the rural South, because the issue had long since been settled and public sentiment had not changed. Indeed, when Dyer ran for office he said several times on the stump that the problem with the gas chamber was that it was not being used enough. This had really pleased the crowds, or at least the white ones. In black churches, he had avoided the issue altogether.

The law currently considered murder to be exempt from youth court jurisdiction if the accused was at least thirteen years old. A twelve-year-old could not be prosecuted in circuit court, the tribunal for all criminal prosecutions. No other state had such a low threshold. In most, the defendant had to be at least sixteen to be tried as an adult. Up north, a few states had bumped the age up to eighteen, but not in the South.

Though the gravity of the moment throttled his enthusiasm, Lowell was secretly delighted to have such an important case. In his three years, he had not indicted anyone for capital murder, and as a prosecutor who saw himself getting tougher and tougher, he had grown frustrated with such a bland docket. If not for the production and peddling of drugs, and the gambling sting run by the Feds with local help, he’d have little to do. He had tried a drunk in Polk County for vehicular homicide and put him away for twenty years. He had won two bank robberies in Milburn County, same defendant, but the guy had escaped and was still on the lam. Probably still robbing banks.

Before the Kofer killing, Lowell was spending his time on a joint task force of prosecutors trying to fight the cocaine plague.

But with the Kofer killing, Lowell Dyer was suddenly the man in the middle. Unlike his predecessor, Rufus Buckley, who would have already called at least two press conferences, Lowell avoided the reporters Monday morning and went about his business. He spoke to Ozzie again, and Noose, and he placed a call to Jake Brigance but got voicemail. Out of respect, he called Earl Kofer and passed along his sympathies while promising a full measure of justice. He sent his investigator to Clanton to start digging.