John Grisham - The Last Juror

I walked to my office, where Margaret and Wiley were sipping fresh coffee and waiting for me. We were too stunned to engage in intelligent conversation. The entire town was muted.

I eventually made some phone calls, found who I wanted, and around noon left the office. As I drove around the square, I saw Mr. Dex Pratt, who owned the local glass company and ran an ad in the Times every week, on the balcony at Lucien’s, already removing the French doors and replacing panes. I was sure Lucien was home by then, already hitting the sauce on his porch, from where he could see the dome and the cupola of the courthouse.

Whitfield was three hours to the south. I wasn’t sure if I would make it that far, because at any moment I was likely to turn right, head west, cross the river at Greenville or Vicksburg, and be somewhere deep in Texas by dusk. Or take a left, head east, and find a very late dinner somewhere close to Atlanta.

What madness. How did such a pleasant little town end up in such a nightmare? I just wanted out.

I was near Jackson before I came out of my trance.

The state mental hospital was twenty miles east of Jackson on an interstate highway. I bluffed my way through the guardhouse, using the name of a doctor I’d located fishing around with the phone.

Dr. Vero was very busy, and I read magazines for an hour outside his office. When I informed the girl at the desk that I was not leaving, and that I would follow him home if necessary, he somehow found the time to squeeze me in.

Vero had long hair and a grayish beard. His accent was clearly upper midwest. Two diplomas on his wall tracked him through Northwestern and Johns Hopkins, though in the dingy light of his debris-strewn office I couldn’t read the details.

I told him what had happened that morning in Clanton. After my narrative he said, “I can’t talk about Mr. Hooten. As I explained on the phone, we have a doctor-patient privilege.”

“Had. Not have.”

“It survives, Mr. Traynor. It’s still alive, and I’m afraid I can’t discuss this patient.”

I’d been around Harry Rex long enough to know that you never took no for an answer. I launched into a long and detailed account of the Padgitt case, from the trial to the parole to the last month and the tension in Clanton. I told the story of seeing Hank Hooten late one Sunday night in the Calico Ridge Independent Church, and how no one seemed to know anything about him during the last years of his life.

My angle was that the town needed to know what made him snap. How sick was he? Why was he released? There were many questions, and before “we” could put the tragic episode behind “us,” then “we” needed the truth. I caught myself pleading for information.

“How much will you print?” he asked, breaking the ice.

“I’ll print what you tell me to print. And if something’s off-limits, just say so.”

“Let’s take a walk.”

On a concrete bench, in a small shaded courtyard, we sipped coffee from paper cups. “This is what you can print,” Vero began. “Mr. Hooten was admitted here in January 1971. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic, confined here, treated here, and released in October 1976.”

“Who diagnosed him?” I asked.

“We now go off the record. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“This must be confidential, Mr. Traynor. I must have your word on this.”

I put away my pen and notepad and said, “I swear on the Bible that this will not be printed.”

He hesitated for a long time, took several sips of his coffee, and for a moment I thought he might clam up and ask me to leave. Then he relaxed a little, and said, “I treated Mr. Hooten initially. His family had a history of schizophrenia. His mother and possibly his grandmother suffered from it. Quite often genetics play a role in the disease. He was institutionalized while he was in college, and remarkably, managed to finish law school. After his second divorce, he moved to Clanton in the mid-sixties, looking for a place to start over. Another divorce followed. He adored women, but could not survive in a relationship. He was quite enamored with Rhoda Kassellaw and claimed he asked her to marry him repeatedly. I’m sure the young lady was somewhat wary of him. Her murder was very traumatic. And when the jury refused to send her killer to death, he, shall I say, slipped over the edge.”

“Thank you for using layman’s terms,” I said. I remembered the diagnosis around town — “slap-ass crazy.”

“He heard voices, the principal one being that of Miss Kassellaw. Her two small children also talked to him. They begged him to protect her, to save her. They described the horror of watching their mother get raped and murdered in her own bed, and they blamed Mr. Hooten for not saving her. Her killer, Mr. Padgitt, also tormented him with taunts from prison. On many occasions I watched by closed circuit as Mr. Hooten screamed at Danny Padgitt from his room here.”

“Did he mention the jurors?”

“Oh yes, all the time. He knew that three of them — Mr. Fargarson, Mr. Teale, and Mrs. Root — had refused to bring back a death penalty. He would scream their names in the middle of the night.”

“That’s amazing. The jurors vowed to never discuss their deliberations. We didn’t know how they voted until a month ago.”

“Well, he was the assistant prosecutor.”

“Yes, he was.” I vividly remembered Hank Hooten sitting beside Ernie Gaddis at the trial, never saying a word, looking bored and detached from the proceedings. “Did he express a desire to seek revenge?”

A sip of coffee, another pause as he debated whether to answer. “Yes. He hated them. He wanted them dead, along with Mr. Padgitt.”

“Then why was he released?”

“I can’t talk about his release, Mr. Traynor. I wasn’t here at the time, and there might be some liability on the part of this institution.”

“You weren’t here?”

“I left for two years to teach in Chicago. When I returned eighteen months ago, Mr. Hooten was gone.”

“But you’ve reviewed his file.”

“Yes, and his condition improved dramatically while I was away. The doctors found the right mix of antipsychotic drugs and his symptoms diminished substantially. He was released to a community treatment program in Tupelo, and from there he sort of fell off our radar. Needless to say, Mr. Traynor, the treatment of the mentally ill is not a priority in this state, nor in many others. We are grossly understaffed and underfunded.”

“Would you have released him?”

“I cannot answer that. At this point, Mr. Traynor, I think I’ve said enough.”

I thanked him for his time, for his candor, and once again promised to protect his confidence. He asked for a copy of whatever I printed.

I stopped at a fast-food place in Jackson for a cheeseburger. At a pay phone I called the office, half-wondering if I’d missed more shootings. Margaret was relieved to hear my voice.

“You must come home, Willie, and quickly,” she said.

“Why?”

“Callie Ruffin has had a stroke. She’s in the hospital.”

“Is it serious?”

“I’m afraid so.”

A county bond issue in 1977 had paid for a handsome renovation to our hospital. At one end of the main floor there was a modern, though quite dark, chapel where I’d once sat with Margaret and her family as her mother passed away. It was there that I found the Ruffins, all eight children, all twenty-one grandchildren, and every spouse but Leon’s wife. Reverend Thurston Small was there, along with a sizable contingent from the church. Esau was upstairs in the intensive care unit, waiting outside Miss Callie’s room.

Sam told me that she had awakened from a nap with a sharp pain in her left arm, then numbness in her leg, and before long she was mumbling incoherently. An ambulance rushed her to the hospital. The doctor was certain it was initially a stroke, one that precipitated a mild heart attack. She was being heavily medicated and monitored. The last report from the doctor had been around 8 P.M.; her condition was described as “serious but stable.”