Dick didn’t run the risk of asking him if he got the loan, but struck him after conferring with Paul, who has been whispering in his ear all morning. Yet if whites or blacks on the jury harbor any buried resentments toward his wealth, no one has admitted it. Judge Johnson, far from tilting in favor of Butterfield, allowed both Dick and me latitude in our questioning of prospective jurors.
From the way Johnson has handled the proceedings and our pretrial motions, he seems pissed at Butterfield, as if a promise somewhere along the line has not been fulfilled. I glance up at the judge, and he has his nose stuck up in the air like a man avoiding a bad smell.
I look over at Dick, who is doodling on a pad as he listens to Butterfield. Knowing now he can’t trust me, Dick hasn’t spoken to me in a week except to call me to discuss the order of our opening statements. Having already decided to say as little as possible, I have agreed to go second.
If I were absolutely sure that Butterfield wouldn’t offer Class a new deal in the middle of the trial and equally certain that Class wouldn’t take it, I would have no qualms about telling the jury that Class was going to deny there had been a conspiracy between him and Paul, but at this point I’m going to play things as close to the vest as possible.
While Butterfield briefly explains what the testimony of the FBI chemist will involve, I allow myself to think of the look on Angela’s face while she was being sworn in and led off to the witness room. She had the sad, resigned expression of someone who knows her world is about to come crashing down on her head and knows there’s nothing she can do about it. She never even looked in my direction. How can I love a woman I don’t
fully trust? Easy. Just watching the back of her head while she raised her right hand to take the oath made me wonder if romantic love between two people is programmed into the genes just like eye color.
After finishing his summary of the case against Class, Butterfield then turns from the lectern and faces Paul, whom Dick has seated to his right so the jury can watch him.
“Now, the state doesn’t believe for a moment that Class Bledsoe acted alone, we believe Bledsoe was hired by Paul Taylor,” Butterfield says, pointing his finger at Paul, and his voice rising, “because he wanted to buy Southern Pride Meats from Willie Ting and got turned down because Mr. Ting didn’t want to sell his very profitable business to someone who wasn’t Chinese. And when Willie Ting refused for the second time, the defendant Paul Taylor threatened to kill him.” A silence of perhaps ten seconds elapses as Butterfield stares hard at Paul, finally turns back to the jury, and continues.
“How do we know Paul Taylor threatened to kill him? Well, the fact is, Mr. Ting was so frightened by Paul Taylor that he made a tape of the conversation, and you will hear it for yourselves. Now, those of us in the criminal justice system fervently wish that Mr. Ting had given us this tape as soon as the threat was made-because if he had, he just might be alive today.”
Butterfield’s voice drops as if he is truly experiencing regret. He looks down at his hands gripping the sides of the podium and resumes forcefully, “But that wasn’t his way. His widow, Mrs. Doris Ting, will tell you that her husband always preferred to keep a low profile in the community and spend his free time with his family.
He did tell her, however, that if anything happened to him she should tell her son Tommy about the tape. Well, after Mrs. Ting found her husband’s body in the plant that horrific afternoon, she, as instructed, told Tommy Ting, who lives in Washington, D.C.a about the tape, and he immediately called the sheriff, and as I have said, you will hear it in the course of the trial…”
Class, who has been provided a cheap black suit by Lattice that doesn’t take into account his recent weight loss, stirs restlessly beside me.
He knows as well as I do that the jury is eating this stuff up. What I fear is that even if the jury doesn’t think there is enough evidence to link Paul, Butterfield will have established a motive by the time he is finished. When Butterfield tells the jury that Darla Tate will testify she overheard Class talking to someone about money, it is clear he is laying the groundwork for his closing argument that even if the jury doesn’t convict Paul, it doesn’t mean they have to come back empty-handed.
As expected, Butterfield has a harder time talking about Paul’s involvement once he gets past the tape.
“You will learn that Paul Taylor employed Class Bledsoe for years as a delivery man at one of his stores …” he says, explaining the arrangement Paul had with Henry Oldham, who will testify that in August of last year, one month before the murder, Paul had told him he thought he should retire in another year.
Butterfield also tells the jury he will prove that Class has lied about
how many times he was seen talking to Paul, a discrepancy that I, and surely Dick, will attribute to nothing more than lapses in memory.
Even a jury made up entirely of former prosecutors would have to conclude that without Doss’s testimony, there is no compelling evidence that Paul hired him to murder Willie. As the evidence comes in against Class, the pressure will mount, and I won’t be entirely surprised if by this time tomorrow. Class will be wanting to sing a song I have heard once before.
I get up to make my opening argument, uncertain about the best place to begin. Butterfield has been talking close to an hour, and I don’t want to be up here nearly that long, but I want to do more than just wave to the jury and then sit down.
“The evidence will show, ladies and gentlemen,” I say, when I reach the podium, “that anyone working in Southern Pride Meats that day knew, or could easily have found out, where Class stored his knife on the kill floor every night. And the evidence will show that everyone in the plant knew or could easily have known that it was his habit to go straight home after work, fix himself lunch, drink a beer, and then take a nap.
Everyone in the plant knew or could easily have known that Lattice, his wife, was at that time working the day shift at the 7-Eleven in Bear Creek, because at the plant everybody knew everybody else’s business.
You see, ladies and gentlemen,” I say, coming around the lectern to the front of the jury rail, “the testimony will be that Class Bledsoe was the type of employee who never missed a day’s work and gave a hundred percent on the job he had held for the last five years. You’re going to
hear at least six plant employees say that Class Bledsoe genuinely respected Willie Ting as a boss, and Darla Tate, the plant secretary, will testify that Willie Ting thought Class Bledsoe was a model employee because he came to work every single day and did his job as well as it could be done. What the evidence is going to show is that Class Bledsoe,” I say, and turn and point to him, “was as predictable as a Timex watch. He did the same things, at the same time, in the same way every day for five years. The fact is, there will be no physical evidence at all linking him to Willie Ting.
Absolutely nothing! No hair or fiber, no trace of skin or fingernails, no bloody clothing. At the end of this trial there will be nothing that links Class Bledsoe to this murder except his knife, and everybody in the plant knew or could have known exactly where he kept it.”
I turn back to the jury and focus on Emma Parsons, an attractive black schoolteacher in her thirties, whom Class has said might be sympathetic to him.
“And every person who testifies in this trial will say they know Class either by reputation or personally as a family man who was as stable, reliable, and dependable as any man or woman in Bear Creek.”