The Closing: A Whippoorwill Hollow novel (The Whippoorwill Hollow novels) (5 page)

Nate guessed that his attacker knocked him out to prevent him from talking to the derelict. The bum must know something about the case. Deatherage had lied to Nate when he said he didn’t know Updike, but his claims that the judge and others plotted against him appeared to be valid. Sleep didn’t come to Nate that night.

The next morning the wound over Nate’s ear was scabbed over and the swelling was down. He decided not to see a doctor about it. He drove to the town square to meet with George Maupin. Nate knew George well. George grew up in Bloxton, the son of a coal miner who couldn’t find work after the mine was closed. After his father drank himself to death when George was six years old, his family lived on welfare benefits and handouts. George put himself through college and law school at Jefferson State on student loans and earnings from part-time jobs.

Nate and George met in law school and became fast friends. They studied together, debated on the same team as moot court advocates, and walked down Jefferson State’s lawn side by side to receive their diplomas. They sat for the bar together and celebrated when they were admitted. They went into private practice about the same time, and George was elected commonwealth’s attorney shortly after Nate was.

A year after his election, George married Gracie Sandridge. The next summer when the couples vacationed together at Virginia Beach it was obvious that Gracie and Christine weren’t a good match. There was no animosity between them, they simply had nothing in common. Gracie was a farm girl who hadn’t gone to college. Christine had earned a doctorate. Christine’s passions were medieval literature and horseback riding; Gracie liked quilting bees and canning. Social interaction between Nate and George fell away as a result, but they’d stayed in touch on a professional level and maintained their friendship through three decades.

Defense counsel would not normally seek the assistance of a prosecutor in preparing a case for appeal, but Nate felt he could approach George. He only wanted to sound out George about Swiller, Judge Herring, and a few procedural issues.

The county offices were on the edge of the Bloxton town square in an old building with oak floors and cream-colored plaster walls. George met Nate at his office door on the second floor. George, a tall, bald, heavyset bear of a man, hugged Nate, held him at arm’s length, and stared at his scar. “They told me you busted your head in a car wreck, but I had no idea it was so serious.” He squinted. “What’s that knot over your ear? That looks like a fresh wound.”

“Someone knocked me out last night in the warehouse by the motel.”

George looked surprised and concerned. “You have a doctor take a look at it?”

“It’s not serious. I feel fine this morning.”

“Did you report the assault to the sheriff?”

“No.”

“Damn it, Nate, you know better than that. The longer you wait the less chance you have of recovering what they stole.”

“Whoever hit me didn’t steal anything.”

George shook his head. “There are some damned bad people in this county. I guess one of them hit you for the pure pleasure of it. You should report it to the sheriff.”

George led Nate into his office. An antique desk, a captain’s chair, and two barrel chairs sat in front of a wall adorned with paintings of Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Robert E. Lee. Bookcases with leatherbound volumes of Virginia statutes and case law lined a side wall, and a cabinet displaying a silver tray and crystal glasses stood on the opposite wall. A conference table sat in front of a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the town square. The sweet scents of pipe tobacco and bourbon lingered in the air. George led Nate to the table and they sat down across from one another. Nate gazed out the window. The rain had stopped and the sky had cleared. Across the square the Buck County courthouse gleamed in the sun.

“What were you doing in the warehouse in the middle of the night?” George said.

“I wanted to see the crime scene.”

“All sorts of drunks and vagrants crawl into that dark hole at night. You shouldn’t have gone there by yourself. What did you think you’d find? We gathered all the evidence about the Deatherage case a year ago. It’s in the court file.”

“I wanted to see the scene of the murder, but it was a mistake to go there alone at night. I guess I’m still feeling my way along as a defense counsel.”

“How did you get saddled with the Deatherage case in the first place?”

“I volunteered for court appointments to capital punishment cases. The chief justice called Judge Blackwell about the Deatherage case. Harry recommended me.”

“Old Harry Blackwell didn’t do you any favors. Deatherage is a stone-cold murderer, and if the communists on the Supreme Court keep their noses out of our business, he’ll pay for it with his life.”

“I guess it’s my job to keep that from happening.”

“It’s my job to make sure it does happen. You won’t gain anything by talking with me. We’re good friends, but I can’t help you with the appeal.”

“I understand, but Swiller didn’t keep a file on the case. It’s hard to understand a case working with nothing but the pleading clip. I hoped you’d be willing to answer some questions about uncontested matters, background information, and procedure and the like.”

“Fire away.”

“There’s almost nothing in the record about Darlene Updike. Who was she?”

“We don’t know much about her. She was a stranger in Bloxton. The sheriff’s men found a New York driver’s license on her body and tracked the address on it to her parents’ home in Albany. I talked with her father by phone. He said she left there a couple months before she was killed, but he didn’t know what she was doing in Bloxton.”

“Did you investigate her background?”

George looked out the window, avoiding Nate’s stare. “Randy Swiller made a motion in limine to exclude all evidence about Updike’s personal life. Judge Herring granted the motion on the grounds that the prejudicial impact outweighed the probative value. It wasn’t worth my time to flesh out her background. I couldn’t use it at trial.”

Nate was shocked. “There’s no record of any such motion in the pleadings.”

“Swiller made the motion orally in the judge’s chambers. The court reporter wasn’t there. Swiller sprang that motion on me after the arraignment and the judge granted it before I had a chance to say anything.”

“Why didn’t you object?”

“It doesn’t always pay to make objections in Eddy Herring’s courtroom.”

“The judge granted an unnoticed motion off the record without a full briefing and you didn’t object.”

“I opposed Randy in a host of cases, and he never made a motion in limine. The judge is a stickler for procedure, but he ran roughshod over the rules on that motion. The whole thing threw me off balance. Later, when I had time to think, I decided to let it go. The case against Deatherage was open and shut. I didn’t need Updike’s background to convict him. I thought the judge understood the strength of my case and granted Randy’s motion so Deatherage wouldn’t have any basis for an appeal. It didn’t seem to matter to the outcome of the case. The jury found Deatherage guilty. He was sentenced to death.”

“So you didn’t investigate Updike’s background.”

“My resources are limited and Albany is a long way off. Besides, no investigation was warranted after the judge granted Randy’s motion.”

Nate was puzzled by George’s concession of the issue. He was an aggressive litigator. Docility was out of character for him, but Nate decided not to press the point. “Tell me about Swiller. No one in town seems to have known him.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. He moved here from Charlottesville a few years back. Buck County doesn’t warm up to strangers easily, and Randy wasn’t sociable.”

“I understand Swiller represented four capital defendants in Buck County.”

George was quiet. Then he said, “Swiller had five capital cases.”

“Carol Ergenbright told me there were four appeals from Swiller’s trials.”

“Swiller represented Creighton Long. There was no appeal in that case.”

“Creighton Long, the serial killer?”

Nate had heard about the Long case. Four or five years earlier, the case experienced a brief period of notoriety due to the brutality of Long’s crimes. It received statewide media coverage for a few days and then dropped out of the news after Long was convicted. “Long was executed,” Nate said.

“Damned straight. Creighton Long was the best argument for the death penalty I ever saw. He murdered five little boys. Tortured and sodomized them before he killed them. He worked on them with a pair of pliers, for pity’s sake.”

“How did Swiller get within a country mile of a high profile case like that?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Be straight with me, George. I read the record of the Deatherage case. I saw Swiller’s handiwork. Deatherage would have fared better if he represented himself.”

George shrugged. “Swiller did the best he could with a hard case.”

“If that was Swiller’s best, he wasn’t fit to handle criminal misdemeanors, much less capital cases.”

“Swiller was no genius, but I’ve seen worse lawyers.”

“Name one.”

George didn’t respond, and he seemed uncomfortable.

Nate decided to move on again. He knew from his review of the record that Deatherage was first charged with crimes in Buck County General District Court. District Court Judge Tobias Gwathmey was responsible for appointing Swiller to represent Deatherage and he would have been similarly responsible for appointing counsel for the other Buck County capital defendants. Nate said, “What sort of procedure does Judge Gwathmey follow to select lawyers to represent indigent defendants?”

George looked out the window. “In capital cases, Toby takes his cues from Judge Herring.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Most district court judges check with the chief judge of their circuit before they appoint a lawyer to represent a defendant in a capital case. Toby Gwathmey is no exception. Eddy Herring is the chief judge of our circuit. He told Toby to appoint Randy Swiller to those capital cases and Toby did what Eddy said.”

“Why in hell would Judge Herring want Gwathmey to appoint a lawyer as bad as Swiller to represent all the capital defendants in Buck County?”

“There are no rich clients in Buck County to pay the big fees that attract the cream of the crop. There are only a few lawyers in Bloxton, and none of them would give F. Lee Bailey a run for his money. I’ll grant you, it’s curious that Randy was appointed to all the capital cases in the county, but the judge didn’t have much to choose from.”

Nate could see that George was growing more uncomfortable with each question he asked. He worried that George might shut down if he didn’t shift to a less contentious subject. “What’s Judge Herring like?” he asked.

“He’s like every judge. He puts the black robe on in the morning and he thinks he’s God until he takes it off at supper time.”

“Is he as smart as I’ve heard?”

“He finished law school at the top of his class. He practiced law in Richmond and made a fortune speculating in real estate. He got elected as a judge in this circuit twenty years ago, and he became the circuit’s chief judge in 1960. He owns half of Buck County. He’s nobody’s fool.”

“People wonder why Judge Herring came here to take the bench,” Nate said. “They say he could have been elected to a circuit judgeship in Henrico County. I don’t mean to be rude, George, but we both know the Henrico County judgeship is a lot more influential than the Buck County seat.”

“Eddy grew up in Bloxton, like I did. People here respect a local boy who makes good. Respect means a lot to Eddy. He’s the biggest fish in this small pond. He’s decided every significant criminal and civil matter here for twenty years, and he’s touched the lives of everybody in the county. Nobody makes a move without his say-so. Eddy calls the shots in this county, and he likes it that way.”

“Does he call the shots for you?”

“I’m the commonwealth’s attorney. I’ve got some clout, but Eddy’s the only circuit court judge in the county. He could make my life miserable if he wanted to.”

“I understand.”

“I hope you do, Nate. It would be a mistake to accuse Judge Herring of wrongdoing unless you have solid proof, and you don’t. Even if Eddy convinced Judge Gwathmey to appoint Swiller to represent all the murdering bastards in the county in an effort to grease the skids on their pathway to hell, that’s not illegal. It’s not even grounds for appeal. There are no bullets in your gun, Nate, so don’t point it at Eddy. He’s the king of Buck County, and you know what they say. Don’t take aim at the king unless you’re certain you’ll kill him.”

Nate considered this. He had watched George confront and defeat every economic hardship in his difficult life. Until that moment Nate had considered George to be fearless, but it was clear he was afraid of Judge Herring.

“Thanks for the advice,” Nate said. “I’ll be careful.”

George’s bloodshot eyes looked bone-tired. “How about a drink?”

Nate struggled with the question. “No thanks. I’m on the wagon.”

“Well, I need one.” George lumbered across the room to the cabinet. “The sight of a good man like you defending a son of a bitch like Deatherage jangles my nerves.” George carried a bottle of bourbon and two glasses back to the table and sat down. He poured himself a drink and held the bottle out to Nate. “Sure you don’t want a taste?”

Nate looked away from the bottle. “No thanks.”

George took a sip of whiskey and blew out a long breath. “I never got the straight scoop, Nate. Why did you resign?”

Nate didn’t answer.

“Come on, Nate. You spent your whole career putting bad people where they belong. You never hinted to me you might hang up your spurs. I had to read about your resignation in the newspaper. I haven’t heard a word from you in more than a year. Now you waltz in here and grill me about the Deatherage case. You owe an old friend an explanation. Why did you resign?”

“I set up an innocent man.”

“The gossips told me that much, but nobody seems to know the details. Exactly what did you do to the man?”

George was one of the few people Nate trusted with ugly truths. “A man was killed in Selk County. Sheriff Grundy arrested a man who worked with the victim.” Nate hesitated and looked at the whiskey bottle. “I was confident he was the murderer. I wrote out a confession. The man had limited mental ability. I convinced him to sign it with his mark before the district court appointed counsel for him. The judge eventually appointed a kid fresh out of law school as defense counsel. I sprang the confession on him and used it to bully him into agreeing to a guilty plea to a lesser offense. Judge Blackwell knew the defendant’s lawyer hadn’t protected him, and he refused to accept the plea.”