“You don’t understand.”
“Angela! How divine for you! She’s probably hornier than a March hare.”
Madder, I think she means, but this isn’t the time to correct her.
Jessie has gotten down from the couch and stands beside Amy. I slap my leg for her to come to me.
“Here, girl.” In response, she pushes her muzzle against Amy’s hand.
“Look, I’m going to take Jessie to live with me until this summer when Sarah comes home,” Amy announces.
“You’re obviously going to be too busy to take care of her. I’ll give her back then, I promise. She and I can commiserate together.”
“Don’t act like this!” I plead.
“I don’t even know her.”
“You will.”
I rub my face as if to shake myself awake from a nightmare. Will I ever know Angela? Not like I know Amy.
“Don’t leave!” I plead, as Amy reaches for Jessie’s leash on the floor beside her.
“You’re not supposed to have pets in your apartment.”
I should say that I love her, but I’m not sure I do.
“They don’t care,” Amy says, probably realizing I missed my cue deliberately.
“Other people have pets. The couple on the first floor do.”
This is ridiculous. She doesn’t need a dog.
Still, it would be a help. I will be traveling so much to Bear Creek I really won’t have time to take care of an animal. My pragmatism at this moment appalls me. I get to my feet.
“You have to promise me that as soon as you realize this isn’t working out, you’ll bring her back.”
Amy clips Jessie’s leash to her collar.
“I promise,” she says, “but you’ll need to remember I’m pretty slow at figuring things out.”
I am, too. And what I need is time. Part of me wants to take Amy into my arms and swear everything will be fine, but I can’t do that.
“Let me get her dog food,” I say, and go out to the garage to get it.
But when I return my dog and girlfriend are gone. Sick at heart, I open a beer and wash the dishes, wishing I had lied. Amy has been the best thing in my life for a long time. Still, I feel a distant odd sense of relief.
At precisely three o’clock Monday, with me standing by his side and his wife and twenty onlookers in the spectator section. Class Bledsoe enters his formal plea of not guilty. After he sits down, Dick Dickerson comes forward (Paul had his arraignment last week), and Judge Johnson, over both our objections, sets the trial for the week of May 26. I complain that I won’t have enough time to prepare my client’s defense in a case like this, but Judge Johnson looks at me with a bemused air. Since he was just elected last year, he has no discernible track record. In private practice in Helena until he was elected, according to Dick, Johnson was by himself and like most small town practitioners, took everything that walked in the door. When I protest, he gives me a withering look.
“You don’t have the burden of proving your case, Mr. Page, do you, sir?” he says, with excessive courtesy.
“Doesn’t the prosecutor have the burden of proving his case, and you merely have to show reasonable doubt?”
I ignore his sarcasm and argue, “Of course, your honor, but the prosecution has worked on this case for six months. I’d like to have at least that long.”
Beside me, Dick tells Johnson he has a heavy trial schedule in the next two months, and adds, “Judge, in order to do an adequate job of investigating this case, we’ll have to track down everyone who was in the plant that day. It is my understanding not every one of the workers is still there.”
Johnson, a small, gray-haired man in his fifties who seems entirely
comfortable being the first black judge in the Delta, shrugs.
“I would imagine Mr. Butterfield has whatever information there is available on the whereabouts of each worker in his file, which he is obligated to turn over to you. Since I have been judge in this district, I have observed that it is his practice to make his file available to the defense without a motion having to be filed. Do you anticipate problems in this regard?”
“Well, I don’t know, your honor …” Dick begins, but the judge cuts him off.
“If you have problems locating witnesses, then you may file a motion closer to trial, but I warn you that I will not grant a continuance unless counsel has shown appropriate diligence and has shown he has complied with the criminal rules of procedure.” He consults his calendar, sets what is known as an omnibus hearing for April 4 to hear any motions that may be pending at that time, and abruptly calls the next case.
As Dick and I walk out of the courtroom, which has all the charm of a bus station with its lime green seats, it is hard not to wonder if we were being picked on because we are white.
There is no reason to schedule a trial with so many witnesses this quickly. I whisper to Dick, “Did you know he was going to be like this?”
Dick doesn’t reply until we are out of the courthouse.
When we are coming down the steps, he mutters, “He and Butterfield are
old friends from Helena. Whatever he can do for him, he will. In civil cases he’s reasonable most of the time. But if Butterfield ever makes it big in politics, which could easily happen now with all the whites pulling out, Johnson’s chances of making it to the federal judiciary go way up. This area of the state has always been neglected when it comes to receiving our fair share of judgeships.”
I realize that Dick is talking about himself.
Despite his reputation, he has never had much political pull. He invites me over to his office across the street, but I tell him that I will have to call him later in the week. I have to drive back tonight to Blackwell County to get ready for a two-day child custody trial that I thought was going to be settled but has blown up over the weekend, and before I head back I promised Bledsoe I would come see him. With his practice primarily civil litigation, Dick understands settlements coming apart at the last moment, and says for me to call him when I get that behind me. As he crosses the square to go back to his office, I realize that he is still convinced that we are allies in this case, which is fine with me. After today’s hearing, I suppose in some ways we are.
At the detention center Class is not at all depressed with the judge’s decision to set the trial the last week in May.
“I jus’ want to get it over with,” he says, emphatically.
“I’m sick of this place.”
As bad as the old jail may have been, I doubt if it had this much security. Here, separated as we are, Bledsoe can’t even shake hands with
me, much less hug his wife. It is hard not to like this guy. As he tells me how much he has begun to miss Lattice, I think of a statistic I’ve read and wonder if it can possibly be true: a million black males locked up all over the United States. It is a mind-boggling number. Is this the only way blacks and whites can live together in this country?
I wonder how many of them are innocent.
Other than Willie’s blood on his knife, there is no physical evidence linking Class to the murder. If he had the money, I would hire a forensic expert to tell the jury why there were no hair, flesh, or clothing fibers found under Willie’s fingernails.
The only bloody footprints leading away from the spot where he died were Doris Ting’s, apparently made when she discovered the body. I’d also like to get an investigator to do a thorough background check on each of the individuals who worked at the plant. One of them could easily have something in his or her past that could be useful to us.
Here, as in too much of life, you get what you pay for and no more.
We talk at length about the events of the day of the murder, which occurred on a Tuesday, September 21, but it is painfully obvious that Class has no memories of that afternoon that can help him. Though I don’t know if it will cut any ice with Butterfield at this point, I urge him to consider taking a polygraph, but he is disturbingly adamant on the subject.