Out Of Time (7 page)

“The call was from the judge at her trial,” she said reluctantly.

“Judge Peyton Tillman?” I almost shouted I was so surprised.

“Former Judge Tillman,” she reminded me. “He’s not on the bench anymore. He’s a private citizen now. One with some problems. A lot of problems. I really don’t think we have enough time to waste taking him seriously. I think his call was motivated by something other than reality.”

“Like what?” I demanded.

“He’s not like you or me,” she explained. “I don’t want to presume as to what your character is like, but I have a feeling that you do what you have to do to get the job done, and then you move on. Am I right?”

I shrugged. Sad to say, she was right.

“Peyton isn’t like that. He can’t let the case go. Gail is the only person he ever helped send to death row and he’s never forgiven himself. After he returned to private life, he began calling me late at night and saying that a miscarriage of justice had occurred. Evidence didn’t match up.” She was silent. “At first I believed him, but when he failed to give me details, I realized that maybe he was drunk or his conscience just couldn’t take it.”

“Or maybe he’s telling the truth?” I suggested.

She shook her head. “He’s gone off the deep end. He’s calling because he wants me to say that I forgive him.” She looked up at me, her sharp eyes sad. “And, to tell you the truth, I can’t.”

“What does he say when you ask for details?” I persisted. Maybe I was grasping at straws, but since no one was offering me a line, I had nothing else to grab onto.

“Crazy stuff. Like how he’s not done gathering proof yet and that he can’t tell me anyway because I’m part of the ‘system.’ He’s become paranoid. He sounds like one of those conspiracy freaks.”

“I can’t blame him,” I said. “He got a raw deal during the last election.”

Brenda shrugged. “That’s the way it works. Judges are supposed to be bi-partisan and they don’t run on a party ticket, but you better believe it’s party money that gets them there. The Democrats were running scared long before he lost that election. He came under heavy-duty pressure during Gail’s trial to leave the door open for the death penalty. In return, the Democrats were supposed to support him all the way in the next election.”

“But they didn’t,” I said. “They left him out to dry.”

She nodded. “He traded away my sister’s life and got nothing in return. So it’s no wonder that he started drinking pretty bad after the trial, and when he got those two DUIs, everybody ran for the hills. That’s politics.”

“That’s people,” I said.

We were both quiet for a moment.

“I know what you probably think of me,” she finally said. “You think I should be doing more to help my sister. I have been helping, you must understand, as much as I can, when I can keep it private and unconnected to this job. But if it looks like I’m abusing my power as a prosecutor, I could lose everything. Our family has lost enough as it is. The rest of us have to go on, including me.”

“I do understand,” I said, resigned to finding—or not finding—a new lead on my own. I rose and shook her hand. Her grip was firm and confident, the shake of an athlete. “You’re a runner?” I asked.

She smiled and nodded. “The only two-pack-a-day runner in the state. I’m trying to quit.”

“Running or smoking?” I asked.

“Smoking.” She gave a rueful smile. “I don’t think I can ever afford to stop running.”

I walked back to my office, thinking about Gail’s sister and what a long way she had come from the farmlands of North Carolina. I admired her intelligence and respected her drive, but at the same time, it reminded me of how many years of my own I had wasted by making bad choices and foolish friends. I could easily have been Brenda. And I could just as easily have been Gail. Instead, I found myself somewhere in between.

One man’s crackpot is another man’s salvation. Which is why—despite Brenda’s skepticism—I headed for Peyton Tillman’s law offices that afternoon after stopping to refresh myself with a plate of chopped-pork barbecue and hush puppies first. His office was located in an old Victorian house along a stretch of Hillsborough Street that had somehow escaped renovation. It was the first in a row of four dilapidated buildings. One end of the wide front porch sagged forlornly toward a scruffy lawn, and the upstairs floors were obviously deserted. It appeared that Peyton Tillman, Esq. and a massage therapist who also offered acupuncture and hypnotherapy were the house’s only remaining occupants. Either Peyton Tillman had fallen on hard times or he was in the process of dropping out of the establishment that had screwed him.

I liked Peyton Tillman the moment I saw him. He had a sleepy hound-dog face: all wrinkled with heavy jowls, a disappointed mouth, long nose and sad brown eyes. The emotion sat on top of his skin, as if he had lost the mask the rest of us wear. He was in his early fifties but still had a full head of brown hair that curled just above the frayed collar of a worn white-cotton shirt. The shirt was custom-fit and displayed his initials embroidered in deep blue on the breast pocket. He wore no jacket, and his tie was slung carelessly over one shoulder like an aviator’s scarf.

He had an intense look of concentration on his face that did not change even when he charged into the outer room of his office at the sound of my entrance and crashed into a trash can at the side of his secretary’s desk. The commotion made little difference to his employee: her soft snores continued to fill the outer room with a gentle rhythm as her boss careened past. No wonder she was snoozing. She was at least eighty-five years old and dressed in a rose-colored faux Chanel suit trimmed in white piping from the 1950s. Her silver hair was permed in tight curls against her skull, and a pair of rhinestone glasses hung from a pink cord around her neck. An upper plate dangled loosely beneath her pink lips and I watched, fascinated, as the false teeth wobbled with each prim breath.

“Oops,” my host said, righting the wastebasket and shoveling a stack of discarded paper back inside it. Was this the same man rumored to be such a Romeo with the coeds? He seemed more like the type to get his tie caught in his pants zipper. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Who are you? Are you sure you have the right office?”

No, I wasn’t sure. But not in the way he meant it. “I’m a private investigator looking into Gail Honeycutt’s murder conviction,” I whispered back. “I have to talk to you. I’m not leaving until I do.” I tried to look determined, as if I might attach myself and a ball and chain to his sleeping secretary if he refused.

He looked me over intently, and I must have passed his initial muster. “Let’s talk back in my office so we don’t wake Miss Rollins,” he said in a hushed voice. “She had a bad night. Her husband is very sick.”

I tiptoed past his sleeping sentinel into a shabby-looking room, wondering what her official job title might be and how I could get hired as one. Director of Employee Stress Reduction? Head Goof-off? I’d be goohis? I’d bd at either.

His office was a lot like the exterior of the house. Once elegant; now shabby. Echoes of the building’s former glory were evident only in the faded flocked wallpaper and crumbling fireplace.

“Have a seat,” Tillman said, removing a stack of brown folders from an ancient wingback chair. He blew the dust off the cushion and wiped the back with a handkerchief before he would let me sit down. “I don’t get a lot of visitors,” he explained. “I do most of my work out of the office. Many of my clients are elderly and have difficulty getting around.”

A lawyer who made house calls? I wondered if he did windows, too.

“Oh,” I murmured politely, settling into a mound of decaying velvet that smelled of mildew and old wine. “You’ve gone back into private practice?”

“That’s right.” He sat behind a massive oak desk, parking his feet on one edge of it and sending a stack of folders tumbling to the floor. “I primarily practice family and real- estate law these days. Trusts and estates. Medicaid planning. Mostly to help out my elderly neighbors. I’m semiretired, I guess you could say. I work just enough to keep me busy.”

He straightened his tie as if suddenly remembering he was currently engaged in business, then glanced at his watch. “I apologize, but I do have an appointment in half an hour, so I can’t give you much time. How can I help?”

He didn’t seem like a fruitcake to me. Maybe a little addled, but who among us isn’t? “As you know, Gail is scheduled to be put to death in a month,” I said.

He didn’t answer. Only the small throbbing of a vein in his forehead gave away his distress.

“I thought maybe you could help me,” I explained quickly when he remained silent. “I’ve been hired by the family as a last-ditch effort to try and clear her. But I can’t seem to find a shovel.”

He stared at me even more intently. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being sized up for a cooking pot. “Brenda Polk told you about my calls, didn’t she?” he said abruptly. “She thinks I’m nuts and told you about it. But you want to make sure I’ve been certified before you write me off. Is that it?”

I blinked. I had not been prepared for a frontal assault. I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I lied. “Not exactly,” I began.

“I don’t believe you,” he interrupted quickly. “Tell me the truth or you’re out of here.”

“Okay,” I admitted, taking a deep breath. “Brenda Polk thinks you’re nuts and I want to make sure you’ve been certified before I write you off.”

He nodded in satisfaction. “In that case, we’re done. I don’t have time for crap like that these days.”

“Who does have the time for Gail Honeycutt?” I asked, thinking of my hurried appointment with the D. A. earlier that morning. “It seems that everyone is running out of time on this case. Including me. But no one is running out faster than Gail.” I glared at him, irritated. “Well, in one month, Gail’s going to be dead and then the rest of us will have all the time in the world.”

His feet fell abruptly from the desk. He leaned forward in his swivel chair. “I stand corrected,” he apologized as he scrutinized my face and somewhat unorthodox attire. I prefer to wear sheath dresses circa 1964, when I can find them, and that morning I had paired my favorite purple number with some lime-green sandals. Listen, I’d been in a hurry and how many of us own a pair of purple shoes that we would wear in public?

I waited while he checked me out, determined not to crumple under the pressure. He wasn’t being rude, I decided. He had simply discarded the veneer of elaborate manners that disguises the curiosity of well-bred southerners. Either that, or he also had no time for such niceties these days.

“I can tell a lot about a person just by looking at them,” he finally said, leaning back in his chair with a sigh. “That’s one thing I learned on the bench.”

A short silence followed this pronouncement. I considered commiserating with him on the loss of his judgeship but discarded the notion as obvious pandering. I didn’t think he was the type who responded well to butt licking.

“Judge Tillman, if you have any information on the Honeycutt case,” I tried instead, “I am begging you to share it with me. Please. I agreed to take the case because I’m a sucker for the underdog. Or maybe I’m just a sucker. I knew that the clock would be ticking the entire time, but let me tell you, it’s harder than I imagined hearing that clock tick away the hours. I don’t have a single lead and I have got to start somewhere.”

Another long moment of silence dragged by before he spoke. “I might know something that could help,” he finally said. He stared out the window. “It wouldn’t do you much good without collaboration.”

“Maybe you could tell me what it is,” I suggested. “And I could find the collaboration for you? I am, after all, a trained investigator.” Okay, I was fibbing about the “trained” part, but I still hoped to slip it by the human lie detector sitting before me.

“It’s not that easy.” Tillman stared intently at me again, and I saw a spwidd I sawark of some long-forgotten passion flare in his eyes. Here was a man trying to convince himself that an intangible like justice didn’t matter. I knew the look only too well. I saw it in my mirror every time I fell in and out of love. If you can’t hold it, you can’t break it. Bullshit. That attitude never worked. He knew it, too.

“Do you think she’s innocent?” I asked. “Can we start there?”

“Yes, she’s innocent. Probably.” He looked down at the clutter in front of him, not seeing the folders or the papers waiting to be signed. “I’ve saved many a guilty man from lethal injection,” he added. “And the one time I gave in, I ended up sending an innocent woman to her death. There’s a lesson in that for me, I suppose.”

“Who did you give in to?” I asked. “Does this have anything to do with the evidence you have on Gail’s case?”

“Not in the way you think.” He had a deep voice that was softened by a rich southern accent honed to a purr by expensive prep schools and college. The dissipated drawl, I called it. “I gave in to political pressure, not blackmail. I did think she was guilty at the time, but not any longer.”

“Can’t you tell me more than that?” I asked, frustrated. “Just point me in the right direction. Gail’s grandmother is the one that hired me and there’s something about that old lady. I just can’t let her down.”

“I remember the grandmother well,” he said unexpectedly. “She always sat in the second row at the far right of the bench. Never missed a day of the trial.” He nodded thoughtfully, sized me up once more and seemed to reach a decision. “It’s complicated,” he began. “The work I have put into the case, privately you understand, has led me in an unexpected direction. This direction is a complex one, and I cannot make my accusations idly. In fact, you would do well to keep my involvement completely confidential. As I am sure you understand, my credibility is severely impaired around here.”

“Only with some people,” I protested.

“Nonetheless, anything I say is likely to be taken less than seriously.” He held up a hand when I started to disagree. “Please, I am well aware of where I stand in the public eye. People think I’m a fool, a drunk and a philanderer. I am none of these things. What I really am is another matter.”

“I want to help you,” I interrupted firmly. If he got started on self-analysis, I’d be there until the end of the month and Gail would be a goner.

“I believe you do.” He stared at me again. “You’re an outsider and, in this particular case, that’s good. But if I let you in on what I know, you must promise that you will listen to me when it comes to what is needed in terms of collaboration. And you must take steps to protect yourself because you will be in danger. nd in danIs that understood?”

Jesus, I thought. Who was he talking about? The governor? Naw, couldn’t be. North Carolina’s current governor wasn’t independent enough to be involved. Rumor had it that he couldn’t shake the piss off his pecker without permission from his wife.

“I can listen,” I promised.

“Good. Be at my house at ten o’clock tonight. Here’s my card. My home address is on the back. I’m meeting a friend earlier in the evening, but I can see you at ten. Bring your bathing suit.”

“Pardon me?” I said.

“Bring your bathing suit. I have an old injury and I spend an hour each evening in my hot tub, undergoing hydrotherapy. If we want to talk, the hot tub is as good a place as any. We won’t be overheard.”

“The hot tub?” He was losing me. Or, perhaps, he had lost it entirely.

“Ten o’clock,” he repeated. “The hot tub is on a deck in my backyard.” He opened a briefcase and swept a stack of papers inside. “Don’t worry, I’m not crazy. I’m just careful. Our conversation can’t be bugged if we’re in the hot tub. You’ll understand more by tonight. But for now you must excuse me. I have an appointment a few blocks away and I can’t be late. My client is very excitable and a recent widow. It’s not good for her to become upset.” He slipped on a tan jacket and straightened his cuffs carefully until they peeped from beneath his sleeves. “Forgive me for being so mysterious. It’s necessary under the circumstances.”

With that, he walked out of his office, leaving me surrounded by mountains of papers and presumably confidential files. My imagination exploded. I considered searching every scrap for some clue to his new evidence. Maybe I should check his side drawers for half-emptied bottles of bourbon while I was at it, just to get a clue as to his reliability.

Unfortunately, the slumbering Mrs. Rollins had awakened and arrived to put the kibosh on my rummaging plans. She caught me, quite literally, with my hand in the cookie jar.

“I baked those especially for Peyton,” she informed me icily. “Did he invite you to partake?”

I shook my head guiltily and shut the side desk drawer where I had discovered a Tupperware container of chocolate-chip cookies.

“I thought not.” She glared at me, and I could feel my face start to flush. There’s something about a stern old lady that strikes terror into my heart. I felt as though my soul was being X-rayed.

=“Tahomlor=“black”>
“Peyton is such a lovely boy,” she said grimly, standing in the doorway like a ghost of school teachers past. Which, as it turns out, she was.

“I taught him in the fourth grade, you know,” she informed me. “Political science. They called it current events back then. He was the best and the brightest. It’s such a shame.”