“Except that when we subpoena you for deposition, you’ll have to tell us what you plan to say at the trial.”
“Who says?”
“That’s the law, Mr. Jackson. That’s what protects the innocent in this country.”
“Your man ain’t innocent,” Jackson said. “I seen him and I heard him. He’s the one killed her, all right.”
“In any case, can you tell me now what you think you saw or heard that night?”
“It ain’t what I think, Mr. Hope. It’s what I know.”
“And what’s that, exactly?”
“If you’re gonna get all this later in a deposition, why do you need it now?”
“Mr. Jackson, we’re spending more time arguing about talking than we’d be spending if we just plain talked.”
“Well, I suppose we are,” he said.
“So? Can I stop pulling teeth? I’m a lawyer by trade, not a dentist.”
Jackson smiled.
“Okay,” he said. “What do you want to know?”
“I want to know what you saw and heard on the night of the sixteenth. First, tell me what time this was.”
“Along around ten o’clock.”
“Where were you?”
“Anchored just off the beach.”
“On Whisper Key?”
“Yep. Heard the redfish were working in the shallows. Dropped the hook and put two lines over the side.”
“What kind of night was it?”
“Full moon, if you’re thinking I couldn’t see to the beach. Check the newspapers. They’ll tell you it was a full moon that night.”
“How far off were you anchored?”
“Just past the shallows. Maybe twenty feet from shore. No more’n that.”
“And you say you could see the beach clearly?”
“Clear as I’m seein you right this minute.”
“What exactly did you see, Mr. Jackson?”
“Black man and a white woman come runnin up the beach. The woman was naked.”
“What did she look like?”
“Long black hair, skin as pale as the moonlight.”
“And the man?”
“Big and husky. And black. Blackest nigger I ever seen in my life.”
I made a mental note to ask Luther Jackson, when we took his deposition, to discourse a bit on his attitudes about “niggers.” I also made a note to check with Morrie Bloom about the various shades of brown on the faces of the five policemen who’d been in the lineup with Harper; were any of them as black as he was? Or had Jackson made his identification based solely on how black Harper was?
“Did you see the man’s face?” I asked.
“I seen it, all right.”
“From twenty feet away?”
“My eyes are fine, Mr. Hope. If I can spot a school of fish three hundred yards off the bow, I can sure as hell see a man’s face from twenty feet offshore.”
“What kind of hair did he have?” I asked.
“Same as Harper’s.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“Couldn’t see his eyes. Most niggers have brown eyes, same as Harper’s.”
“When you say a big man...”
“Like Harper.”
“How tall would you say?”
“Like Harper.”
“How much did he weigh, would you guess?”
“Same as Harper.”
“Then there’s no question in your mind that the man you saw on the beach was George Harper.”
“None a’tall.”
“And you say you saw him at ten o’clock or thereabouts?”
“Around then. Him and the woman both. Was the woman first caught my eye, naked the way she was. Hard to see niggers in the dark, you know,” he said, and chuckled. I said nothing, but I made another mental note to ask him again, when we took his deposition, all about how difficult it was to see “niggers” in the dark.
“Did they just walk onto the beach, or what?” I said.
“Came runnin up the beach. Woman ahead of him, Harper following her.”
“Was she carrying anything?”
“Nothing that I saw.”
“No handbag, nothing like that?”
“Naked,” Jackson said, and nodded. “Big tits shining in the moonlight.”
I remembered that the police had found Michelle’s handbag in the sand, had in fact been able to make positive identification from the driver’s license in her wallet. It was the handbag that had led Morrie to believe she’d gone out onto the beach voluntarily. Had she dropped her bag on the sand near the pavilion before running from her murderer?
“How about him? Was he carrying anything?”
“Who? Harper?”
“The man you saw running after her.”
“Nope. Nothin I could see.”
“How long had you been out on the water before you saw these people, Mr. Jackson?”
“Couple of hours. Left here around six-thirty, figure it took me forty minutes to get to Whisper. Let’s say I was there, anchored there with my lines in the water, since from about seven-thirty on.”
“That would make it two and a half hours.”
“Like I said, a coupla hours.”
“Was the tide high or low?”
“High. Couldn’t a been sittin only twenty feet offshore with my draft if the tide had been low. Check with the papers, you don’t believe me. High tide, full moon.”
“What were you doing during those two and a half hours?”
“Fishing. What d’you think I was doin? That’s what I am, is a fisherman.”
“Catch anything?”
“Yep. Not as many as I hoped, but I pulled in a few.”
“What’d you do when you weren’t pulling in fish?”
“Had a few beers, whiled away the time. Fisherman gets used to being alone out on the water.”
“How many beers?”
“Just a few. If you’re thinkin I was drunk, Mr. Hope, forget it. Ain’t a fisherman in all Calusa can drink me under the table.”
“How many beers did you have, actually?”
“Drank me a coupla six-packs.”
“Twelve beers?”
“More or less.”
“Which was it, Mr. Jackson. More or less?”
“Maybe broke out another six-pack, started on that. Ain’t much to do out on the water when they ain’t bitin.”
“So you drank something between twelve and eighteen beers in the two and a half hours before you saw the man and the woman on the beach.”
“Which don’t mean I was drunk.”
“Nobody says you were. Did you see a fire on the beach?”
“Nope. Didn’t see no fire.”
“But you did see the man and the woman struggling.”
“Yep. Grabbed her by the arm, yanked her off her feet. Started slapping her, seemed like, I couldn’t see too clear when they were rolling around there in the sand. But I could hear the slaps, and I heard him yelling her name, too.”
“What name did you hear?”
“Michelle.”
“What else did you hear?”
“Called her a no-good whore. Said she always was a whore, said a whore wasn’t to be trusted.”
“You heard all that from the boat?”
“Yep. Wind was carrying from the east, you check the papers. Wind from the east, high tide, full moon.”
“What did the woman say?”
“Nothing. Just kept whimpering while he was hitting her.”
“Then what?”
“Dragged her off.”
“Dragged her through the sand?”
“Yep. By the hands, it looked like. Her hands were together, he was draggin her by the hands.”
“What’d you do?”