Butterfield produces the tape for Bonner to identify and is allowed to introduce it into evidence.
Though this moment has been long anticipated, it is something of an anticlimax when Bonner plays it for the jury. Perhaps I have heard it too many times by now, and while the members of the jury all seem interested, some raise their eyebrows when it is finished as if they are wondering what the fuss has been all about.
Bonner tells the jury that he investigated every employee’s whereabouts between two and four and that the only suspect is Class Bledsoe. By the time he describes what he has done, it is five o’clock, and we are through for the day. The spectators, about equally divided between
blacks and whites, clear the courtroom rapidly. Outside, it is a perfect spring day and anybody in his right mind wants to get outside.
The tension has risen each hour, and everyone seems eager to get away from each other. Before he is led off to be taken back to Brickeys, Class whispers, “It looks bad, don’t it?”
I glance across at Butterfield, who smiles as Woodrow Bonner says something to him.
“The first part of any criminal trial is always the worst.”
“They’ll let Taylor go,” Class says, his voice doleful, “but not me.”
Tonight will be the hardest time for Class to keep from changing his mind and telling me to try to make a deal with Butterfield, who can’t be feeling too good about his chances of getting a conviction against Paul. Anybody who wasn’t impressed by Dick’s opening statement had to have been asleep, and I didn’t see any eyes closed.
“Tomorrow I’ll get to cross-examine Bonner,” I say.
“It’ll be better,” I promise.
A hopeless expression on his face. Class shrugs as Amos Broadstreet, Bonner’s elderly black deputy, who weighs at least three hundred pounds, comes over to the table to handcuff him and put him in leg chains. He has gotten to like Class and has waited an extra moment to pick him up.
I look behind me and see Tommy Ting behind the spectator railing waiting
to speak to me. Connie had told me he wouldn’t be getting into Bear Creek until late last night, and though I got a glimpse of him in the courtroom, this is the first time I have had a good look at him. He is wearing a tailored olive-colored suit that must have cost him a thousand dollars and is easily the best-dressed man in the room. His face is fleshier but still recognizable, his cheeks pushed up in a smile I remember after thirty years. His hair is much longer, of course. Boys in eastern Arkansas in the early sixties didn’t know what long hair was or if we did, we didn’t care. Now, Tommy’s salt-and-pepper hair comes to his collar in the back, making him look even more Asian than I remembered.
Once Class leaves, I motion for him to come forward, and we shake hands by the counsel table as if he were a rich corporate client chatting with his high-priced legal counsel during a civil trial.
“How’s it going?” Tommy asks softly, his slight accent more pronounced now that we are face to face.
I know he means the trial, and suddenly I have an impulse to tell him how wrong I’ve probably been about everything I’ve thought and remembered about Bear Creek, including our friendship which, now that I force myself to think about it, was as superficial as most male bonding is. Like myself. Tommy has been operating out of denial, but instead of thinking that people were worse than they were, he has mis remembered them as better, more caring. I reply bluntly, “I honestly don’t know who killed your father. I don’t know that anyone will ever know the truth either except the person or persons who did it.”
Incredibly, he seems surprised, as if by giving the plant employees the
green light to talk to me, the answer would become obvious.
“Do you think Paul was involved?” he whispers.
I look over at the other table, now empty. If Paul wanted to shake hands with Tommy and say how sorry he was, he isn’t going to risk doing it in public since he and Dick are already making their way out of the courtroom.
“I don’t know, Tommy. I swear to God I really don’t know who killed your father.” As if I have said something profound, he nods and walks away, presumably to find his sister and mother. A few moments later, depressed, I leave, too, and check into the Bear Creek Inn to prepare for tomorrow. Betty, dressed in red shorts and a T-shirt advertising her business, asks, “Not going too good, huh?”
I try to smile but fail.
“It’s going okay,” I lie.
Betty places the key to number nine in my hand and presses her palm flat against mine.
“It’s got to be tough representing a nigger. He’s probably scared to death and not much help.”
Glad Betty isn’t on the jury, I ignore her comment and ask if she knows if Charlie’s Pizza delivers. Right now I don’t have the energy to find out. She replies that people will do anything for money, and says she’ll call up a kid to run get me whatever I want. I tell her fine and carry
my bag into my room, wondering if the case is, after all, that simple.
When Class is brought into the courtroom the next morning thirty minutes before the trial starts up again, I watch for signs that he will tell me to try to make a deal with Butterfield. He looks terrible, and I ask him after the deputy moves off, “Did you get any sleep?”
He rubs his face.
“Not much,” he says.
“I’ve been thinking about my chances.” His bloodshot eyes blink rapidly in the glare of the courtroom.
How does anyone stand to live in a steel cage, whether they are guilty or not?
“It’s going to come down to a matter of your credibility. Class,” I say, trying to cut him off.
“If they believe you, you’ll walk out of here a free man.” As I say this, I realize I’m putting on his shoulders the entire responsibility for his acquittal.
“Are you gonna argue that the old lady could have done it?” he says.
“She says she found his body.”
“Depending on how she looks and acts,” I hedge, “but it might piss off the jury. If all they see is a sick old woman who can hardly lift a fly
swatter, it’ll insult their intelligence, and they might take it out on you.” I can’t tell him I promised not to make this argument.
“What’re you gonna do, then?” he asks, a plaintive tone in his voice.
“Just say it was the Mexican?”
I watch as the deputies open the doors to allow spectators into the courtroom.
“I’ll do more than that,” I whisper.
“But that’ll be part of it.”
“He couldn’t speak hardly a word of English,” Class says, shaking his head.
“He didn’t seem like the type who could have done it.”
“He could have known a lot more English than he let on,” I explain.
“All we need is to get them thinking he might have done it. We don’t have to prove he did.”
Class sees Latrice and gives her a little wave.
She has convinced him to trust me. The corners of his mouth turn up in a brief smile, and for an instant I am permitted to see what his face must have been like before he was charged. If I don’t get him off, I hope he doesn’t hate her. I know he will hate me.
Woodrow Bonner climbs back into the witness chair and smiles at me. I waste no time in asking him about Jorge Arrazola, not caring how much he repeats himself from yesterday. By the end of this trial I want the jury to have the name burned into their brains. Bonner has no choice but to admit that he has continued to look for him right up until the trial.
“I would have liked to talk to him,” Bonner says, in response to one of my questions, “just as a matter of routine investigative work, but I don’t consider him a suspect.”
I come around to the side of the podium and bellow, “You’re telling this jury that this man is not a suspect because he was in this country illegally and might have been afraid he’d be found out?”
Bonner is sitting ramrod straight and his metal badge positively gleams.