The Scribe (14 page)

“You'll make me proud,” Vernon said.

“One time I didn't.”

“It still pains me to think about that shitty mess.”

“Not your fault.”

“Tell me, Thomas, was the greater good served by you taking the fall for that whore? Was Mamie O'Donnell worth it?”

“No,” Canby said as he settled into the steam and water. “Turns out she wasn't.”

H
E
'
D HAD SOME WARNING
, of course, from the editions of the
Constitution
he had read recounting the opening days of the trial, from the breathless accounts of Grady and his stringers; he should have known to expect a circus. But what he and Vernon found as they descended from the hansom was beyond
the scale of any trial he'd yet seen: a pandemonium of crackers, carpetbaggers, goober-grabbers, sharps, and dandies moiled and hustled across the lawn of the Fulton County Courthouse hawking wares and bartering for seats inside. There was even a redheaded boy of ten or eleven selling sandwiches so that those lined up for the best positions in the gallery would not have to give up a coveted seat for noontime recess. As if all of them had come here to celebrate, collectively, their own private hatreds. Early in the week the papers had begun calling it the trial of the century, but now the crowd and the energy seemed to have doubled themselves. All gathered this morning for the double bill of testimony from Fortus Campbell and Thomas Canby.

Canby and Vernon had not walked a dozen paces from the hansom when a rawboned man detached himself from the crowd and pressed his red face close to Canby's.

“You gone put that jewboy away today, ain't you?”

Vernon stepped between the two men. “Back away from my deputy,” he said.

The man raised his callused hand and backed up a half step. “Don't mean no harm, Chief,” he said. “But it was my sister-in-law's cousin that Jew raped and murdered.”

“I know your kin, Malcolm. Thomas is going to do the right thing.”

“I hope so. I surely do.” The man shuffled away, the heels of his brogans dragging, and took a seat on a wagon bed pulled to the courthouse square's curb. A half dozen men who shared his raw features made way for him to sit, the gaggle of them perched all over the wagon. None spoke when he rejoined
them, but a stream of tobacco juice shot into the dust near one wagon wheel.

Inside, they had just taken their seats when the gavel began to rap to commence the day's proceedings, and in short order Fortus Campbell had been sworn in and seated in the witness box. As though relishing his position higher than all but the judge, he scanned the crowd of white faces below him haughtily. Canby watched him a moment, then turned to get a better view of Leon Greenberg where he sat at the defense table. The man's bespectacled eyes seemed to be trying to bore through Campbell.

The prosecutor rose with a sheaf of papers in his hand. He wore French cuffs and a silk bow tie and his hair was slicked back against his skull, his face as clean-shaven as Canby's. Vernon leaned in close to Canby's ear. “Solicitor General Franklin Denton,” he said. “I hear he has ambitions for the mayor's office.”

“Will he have the
Constitution
's endorsement?”

“If he can close this case before the exposition is over, no doubt he will.”

“And Judge Reinhardt, is he still active with the Ring?”

Vernon only stared straight ahead. His eyes narrowed as he watched Denton walk to the witness stand, studying the papers in his hand.

“Fortus Campbell, you work in what capacity at the Georgia Pencil Company?”

“As janitor.”

“Is it typical for you to be in the factory on a Saturday afternoon?”

“Saturday and Sunday are my busiest days.”

“Doing what, exactly?”

“Sweeping up shavings, oiling machinery. Getting things ready for Monday start of work.”

“And what was unusual about Saturday, the eighth of October?”

“Greenberg was acting funny.”

“
Mister
Greenberg,” the judge said.

Campbell nodded slowly. “Mister Greenberg was acting funny.”

“Funny in what way?”

“Nervous-like. From the time we both come in about seven till he went upstairs to his office. Told me he'd stomp on the floor if he needed me. He ain't never done that before.”

“And you were working on the ground floor?”

“Right. Sweeping up, burning trash in the furnace.”

“And you told the police you saw Mary Flanagan enter the factory and go upstairs at what time?”

“Bout noon.”

“And after that?”

“Heard a scream.”

“And you did what?”

“Well, I dozed off. I'd just had my lunch. That furnace room gets warm. I took my break.”

Denton shuffled his papers. “And sometime later you were awakened?”

“Heard Mister Greenberg stomping on the floor. Went upstairs and saw Mary on the floor of his office, kind of crumpled-up, like. He was acting funny for sure, then. Gave
me a hundred dollars out of the cashbox and had me set down and write that note they found.”

“He dictated the note to you?”

“That's right—dictated it.”

“Let's be certain we have these events straight for the record,” Denton said. He turned to face the jury. “Mister Greenberg was the only person on the second floor of the factory that Saturday. You saw Mary Flanagan go up the stairs alive, then later that day saw her dead in Mister Greenberg's office. At his feet.”

“That's right.”

“Nothing further, Your Honor.”

As Denton sat down, Greenberg's lawyer rose from behind the defense table. He was a thin, pallid man who moved with the bearing of one aggrieved.

“Proceed, Mister Loehman.”

Loehman let a long moment of silence play out, staring at Campbell, before he spoke. “Is it common to hear screams in the pencil factory?”

“Not unless someone get something caught in the machines.”

“Let me specify: Is it common on a Saturday, when the machines are down, to hear a scream?”

“Nope.”

“No,
sir
,” the judge corrected.

“Nossir.”

“And yet on this Saturday, you heard a scream and did what?”

“Dozed off, like I said.”

“In a nearly empty factory, near midday on a Saturday, you heard a girl scream and then drifted off to sleep?”

“Like I said.”

“So you said. Unbelievable.” Loehman looked at the men in the jury box for a long moment. Then he walked back to his table, studied the papers there, and selected one. “Mister Campbell, you are well acquainted with the Atlanta Police Department, are you not?”

Campbell shifted in his seat.

“I will help you with your recollection. In the past eight years, four indictments on petty larceny, three convictions. One conviction for assault. You have been in and out of the chain gang several times. As has your father, no less. It seems crime runs in the family. If Mister Greenberg has committed any wrong in what we are discussing today, I submit it was in taking you into his employ from the first.”

Campbell sat silent.

“And yet you expect the jury to take you at your word above that of an honest businessman?”

“Wasn't honest what he done to Mary. I seen it.”

“Your Honor?” Loehman asked.

“Only answer the questions put to you, boy. Nothing extra.”

“Yessir.”

“Mister Campbell, no money was discovered missing from the cashbox. The factory's ledgers balance perfectly. The Atlanta police will confirm this. And you admit the note was written by you, in your own hand. Further, it was you who found Miss Flanagan's body. Why is it, Mister Campbell, that it is not you on trial for your life here?”

“Objection. The defense is grandstanding.”

“Sustained. Save that for your summation, Mister Loehman.”

“I will do that, Your Honor. Most certainly, I will. Just one
more question, Mister Campbell. Why in God's name would a man like Leon Greenberg do something like this?”

“I do not know, Mister Loehman,” Campbell said. “But I don't understand none of you peoples.”

The silence that followed was so entire that Canby could hear Loehman sigh.

“The defense believes Mister Campbell's character and credibility render his testimony entirely suspect, Your Honor. We have no further questions for this witness.”

“Rebuttal?”

Denton looked over to the jury box, surveyed the men seated there, and nodded to himself as though satisfied with what he saw. “None, Your Honor.”

“Thirty-minute recess, then. When we resume, the next witness will take the stand. Mister Campbell,” the judge said, “I am relieved to excuse you.”

“I
TELL YOU
, Greenberg is not the man.” Canby was entering his second hour on the stand, beginning to understand how the suspects must feel being sweated down at the station: it seemed that with every ebb in his energy, Denton gained the more resolve.

“Are you, sir, attempting to testify for the defense?”

“I'd like to get at the truth.”

“Your Honor,” Denton said, “the prosecution requests permission to treat Detective Canby as an adverse witness.”

The judge raised an eyebrow. “To what end?”

“That I might impeach him, Your Honor.”

The judge leaned back in his chair, his brow furrowed. “On what grounds?”

“I believe that Mister Canby, for whatever reasons of his own, intends to subvert the reasonable prosecution of this case.”

“Objection!” Loehman cried, rising. Judge Reinhardt held out a hand to him and Loehman slowly sat back in his chair. The judge's heavy-lidded eyes left him and moved to study Denton, then Canby. Slowly, he lowered his hand and nodded at the prosecutor.

“Proceed, Mister Denton.”

“Thank you, Your Honor. Mister Canby, Chief Thompson has confided to me that you were brought back to Atlanta for your expertise, is that correct?”

“And at the request of the Ring.”

Denton seemed to subdue his smirk with some effort. “Surely you know the Ring has not been extant for years. Again I ask: You were engaged for your expertise, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Then let us enumerate the progress that was made with that expertise. No killer was apprehended on your watch. Two additional victims were claimed—one your own deputy from Ringgold, and the other a child of tender years whose innocence was ripped savagely from her and upon whom depravities were performed of such a nature they cannot be discussed in open court. This, Detective, is the résumé you present before this court.”

“Regardless of what I've done or haven't, Greenberg is not the murderer.”

For answer Denton turned his back to the witness stand and
walked swiftly to the prosecutor's table, held a hand out to an assistant, who placed a file on his outstretched palm. He flipped through the pages, glancing up now and again at Canby.

“When did you first begin in the employ of the city of Atlanta, Mister Canby—originally, I mean?”

“January 1866.”

“After you mustered out of the army?”

“That is correct.”

“Which army was that?”

“The Union army, Second Division, Seventeenth Corps,” Canby said. He could hear, in the jury box, a chair leg grate against the floorboards.

Denton seemed surprised at the answer. “You fought for the Union?”

“I enlisted when the siege ended.”

“The Second Division? Was that not General Sherman's own command?”

“It was.”

“Hardly the action of a patriotic Atlantan.”

Canby took a deep breath. “My father died during the siege. He was killed during the shelling. I had a score to settle.”

“With General William Tecumseh Sherman?”

“The shelling killed my father. Sherman ordered it done. I intended to take an eye for an eye.”

Denton waved the pages of the file in the air, the long arc of his arm pantomiming exasperation. “You intended to
kill
General Sherman?”

“If I could, yes. I was fourteen years old. He'd killed my father. I still see a kind of sense to it.”

Again Denton rattled his papers, but Canby saw that two of the jurors were nodding. The shadow of a grin was visible on one of the men's faces, beneath his beard. Perhaps one whose house had been razed by Sherman. Canby looked out over the spectators and saw that Robert Billingsley had slipped in among those standing at the back of the courtroom. Saw that on the older man's face, too, was the trace of a smile.

The judge lifted his gavel, then, seeming to think better of using it, leaned forward and gave Denton a baleful glance. “May we, Mister Denton,” he said in a careful cadence, “expedite this process?”

“Of course, Your Honor. For the record, Mister Canby, you were appointed in 1866 by the Reconstruction government of the United States to a newly constituted police force of the city of Atlanta. You served as patrolman, then night inspector, and finally rose to the rank of detective in 1875. Correct?”

“Yes.”

Denton flipped a page in his file. “And the record states that in March 1877 you were dismissed from the force on charges of embezzlement, graft, and improper commerce with a woman known to the city of Atlanta as a prostitute.”

Canby had to wait as the gavel pounded, and the grumbling from the gallery abated, before he could answer.

“That's what the record says. But it's not true. I've known Mamie O'Donnell since we were children. It was a loan.”

“A loan? No doubt that is what I'd call it if I found myself in such a compromised position.” He cut his eyes to the jury box and added, “Which of course I would not.”

“Vernon Thompson can tell you it's not true.”

“Really? Because the papers I have before me bear Chief Thompson's signature. All of them do.”