“She’s maybe mad enough,” I said, “and maybe crazy enough. But the reality is, she’s not strong enough. I found that out today, when she came at me with a pair of pruning shears. Whoever killed Dr. Carter carried her body fifty yards up a hillside. No drag marks. A sixty-year-old woman couldn’t have done that. Hell, I’m not sure I could’ve done that. Gotta be a pretty strong man. Besides, there’s a surveillance video showing a man.”
He shook his head again. “I swear to you, on my son’s life, I didn’t kill Dr. Carter.”
“I believe you,” I said. “I think you’re an honest man. A decent man who got pushed past his breaking point. Can I ask you something else?” He nodded mutely. “Why that out-of-the-way trail in Prentice Cooper State Forest? That took some doing, and it must have been risky, too.”
An odd, sad smile flitted over his features for a moment. “Joey and I went camping down there. It was right before he…We hiked that trail, and saw that TVA place across the river gorge, and the next day, before we drove home to Knoxville, we went over there and toured the place. It was the last time and the last place I saw Joey really happy. Purely happy.”
“It won’t be easy,” I said, “but I think maybe you all can still be okay. I hope you’ll try.” I looked at Susan, who still seemed shell-shocked. “You two must love each other very much,” I added. “And you still need each other. And Joey still needs you both.”
We talked a few more minutes-lawyers and court proceedings; the nuts and bolts and cogs of the Rube Goldberg machine that was the legal system-and then Art and I left. As we reached the end of their sidewalk, I looked back. They were standing on the front porch, dark forms silhouetted in golden light, each with an arm around the other’s waist. Despite the hard row ahead of them, I envied them in that moment. They had one another.
Art and I did not speak on the drive back to KPD. He got out wordlessly and trudged to his car, looking ten years older and tireder than I’d ever seen him look. He might have thought the same about me if I’d been the one crossing the pavement beneath unforgiving sodium lights.
I grieved the whole way back to the cabin at Norris. For the first time since Jess’s death, I wasn’t grieving for her, or feeling sorry for myself. The horizon of my grief had broadened enough to take in others, and to allow me to recognize that my pain was far from unique, and far from the heaviest burden to be borne.
CHAPTER 40
MY CELLPHONE RANG AT seven the next morning; it took some groping to find it in the early morning darkness of the cabin. “Bill, it’s Burt. Listen, I got Owen Thomas’s report last night, and it’s great. Besides writing up the video analysis and e-mailing a movie highlighting the differences between your truck and the mystery truck-that’s what we’re calling it from now on-he also did some additional voice analysis that’s very interesting.”
“Interesting how?”
“Well, after he confirmed that it was not your voice on Jess’s voice mail, he downloaded a couple of TV news stories covering the creationist protest. One of the creationists-the lawyer who’s really pulling the strings-used a few of the same words in his interview as the guy on Jess’s voice mail. So Thomas was able to do some comparisons.”
“Jennings Bryan used profanity and death threats in his TV interview?”
“No, no; words like ‘the’ and ‘we.’ A few paired words-‘will wish’ and ‘had never,’ I think. Anyhow, it’s not enough to be conclusive, but based on the waveforms and the spacing between words and so on, he says there’s a strong possibility that it was Bryan who left those messages for Jess. So we’ll turn that over to the DA and Detective Evers, and push them to interrogate that guy. See if they’ll haul him in and make him repeat the messages verbatim, just like Thomas made you do. If he doesn’t, I’ll beat him over the head with that omission at trial-make the jury think the cops ignored other suspects in order to railroad you. Meantime, I might just go have a chat with Mr. Bryan, friendly-like, and see if I can persuade him to drop that lawsuit against you.”
“You mean blackmail him?”
“Heaven forbid!” he said. “We attorneys call such negotiations ‘alternative dispute resolution.’ Sounds far more ethical.”
“Can you also build the voice analysis into your motion to dismiss?”
“No, because it’s not the same as the video evidence. The prosecution isn’t claiming that it’s your voice in those messages, but they are claiming it’s your truck on the video. Don’t worry, the motion is plenty strong. As I said, I don’t expect it to be granted, but we can get a lot of mileage out of it. If you’re willing to help.”
“Help, how?” I could hear alarm bells ringing in the back of my mind.
“I’d like to take this evidence to the court of public opinion. Start rehabilitating your image before the trial starts; start planting those seeds of doubt right away. I’d like to hold a news conference and share the motion and the surveillance video and Thomas’s findings with the media.”
I’d witnessed Burt’s press conferences in numerous other trials, and always before, his flamboyant theatrics had struck me as unseemly. They still did. “Is that really necessary?”
“Is it necessary? No,” he said. “Is it helpful? Absolutely. So far, everything that has come out in the media has been released by the prosecution or the police. And so far, everything makes you look guilty as sin.” He had a point there, I had to admit. “This surveillance video-together with Thomas’s written report and his DVD highlighting key differences between your truck and this mystery truck in the video-will make everyone realize that you’re the victim of an elaborate setup.”
It sounded good, but I knew not everyone would react as Burt was predicting; some would react as I invariably did, dismissing the entire performance as grandstanding. “I don’t know, Burt.”
“Bill, you’re paying me-and paying me a lot-for the benefit of my experience and legal skill, right?”
“Right…”
“Every bit of experience and skill I have tells me this is a crucial step toward building a strong defense for you. A courtroom trial doesn’t occur in a vacuum. The judge, the prosecution, and I will all bend over backward to pretend that it does; to pretend we’ve got a jury completely untainted by news coverage. Truth is, that’s bullshit, and we all know it. Our side is way behind so far, Bill. We have to start getting some good licks in.”
I still didn’t like it, but it made sense. Just as Burt’s other ploys had made sense, I supposed, to his other clients. I recalled the old saying about not judging another man until you’d walked a mile in his moccasins; at the moment, it felt like I was running a marathon in some mighty stinky footwear, with something unpleasant squishing up between my toes. “Damn,” I said. “Okay, go ahead.”
“I think we need to take a couple more quick steps in your rehabilitation, too,” he said.
“What steps?” The word underscored that squishy feeling between my toes.
“You need to be with me at the press conference. Then you need to move back home. Come out of seclusion.”
“Come on, Burt,” I said. “There were cameras all over the death scene, and my house, and the booking facility, and my house again. How can you ask me to live in that kind of fishbowl?”
“There’ll be a big flurry of interest when we file this motion and release the video analysis,” he said, “but it’ll die down in twenty-four hours and things will stay quiet until the trial. You need to start acting like an innocent man again. Take a cue from Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Dick Cheney, and all those other Washington bigwigs. Even when they’re being accused of all manner of evil, they smile and wave for the cameras. And people think, ‘That nice man-he couldn’t have done those dreadful things!’”