Time's Witness (48 page)

He gave each row a stern gaze to be sure they’d gotten the message. “Ladies and gentlemen. The State can and will prove during the course of this trial that on the night in question, George Hall did willfully and with malice aforethought pursue Police Officer Robert Pym, Jr. with a deadly weapon—and a thirty-eight–caliber Smith and Wesson revolver is a
very
deadly weapon. That he did so with the deliberate intention of firing this revolver at Officer Pym. That he did in fact deliberately shoot and did in fact deliberately
kill
Officer Pym. That he killed him after a clear opportunity maturely and meaningfully to reflect on what he was doing. This was no accident. This was not negligence, or diminished capacity, or irresistible impulse. This was cool-headed, cold-hearted murder.”

Bazemore turned and shook a scornful finger at Isaac Rosethorn who was making a great show of scribbling away on a pad as if he were refuting every word out of the D.A.'s mouth (he was probably writing a letter). “The defense here,” sneered Bazemore, “will try to persuade you that Officer Pym ‘provoked’ George Hall. And no doubt Mr. Rose…thorn here is also going to try to tell you that Officer Pym was no shining knight, but a corrupt man, a cruel man, even a criminal.”

Isaac stood up, leaned to the jury, and shook his head yes in a broad pantomime of eagerness. Several of them smiled. Bazemore whipped around at the defense table, where Isaac quickly dropped his pencil and pretended to be picking it up.

“Even so!” The D.A. did a snappy about-face, and stared down the jury. “Even so! Even if Bobby Pym was an
awful
man, even if he flew into a heat of passion that night and behaved in an inflammatory way toward the defendant, remember, ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Pym is not on trial here. Bobby Pym is dead. He's dead because George Hall murdered him. Because George Hall
chose
to follow him outside Smoke's Bar, and
chose
to shoot him down in cold blood. He made a
choice.
” Bazemore paused, contemplatively. He had the jury listening hard, and knew it. His voice hoarsened with honesty. “We all get provoked sometimes.” He looked with sorrow at the older black man on the front row of the jury. “We’ve all been treated badly, maybe been treated with the most painful
unfairness, at some time or other in our lives.” Head shaking, his voice lifted. “But we
don’t
all turn to
murder
as our answer. We don’t all choose the ways of the
jungle
, the ways of an animal, the ways—”

I left Mitch in full stride, walked outside, and headed down Main Street. He had another good twenty minutes to go on his murder one speech. They wouldn’t get to my testimony in the hour left before Hilliardson adjourned for the day. When the D.A. wound down, Isaac would ask to defer the defense's opening statement until after the State rested its case. He always asked to defer. Then Bazemore would begin calling his standard groundwork witnesses that always bored everybody: Coroner—yes, Pym died of a gunshot wound to the head, etc., etc.; U.H. surgeon—yes, I removed a bullet from Pym's skull etc. etc.; ballistics—yes, the bullet taken from Pym's skull was fired from the revolver registered to Pym. Is this the gun? Yes, it is. The State would like to place it in evidence as Exhibit A. And so on until the prosecution had made it inescapably clear that there was a body; the body had been shot; the body had been shot with Exhibit A. By whom, and whatever for, came later.

Outside, it was one of those clean, breezy, blue late April days that gives spring its great reputation. The sky bright, the air sweet-smelling, the leaves a sharp new green, it was one of those days that made even Hillston look
planned.
Every little spot of civic earth left uncemented was wildly sending up gaudy red and orange tulips, whole pink hedges of azalea and rhododendron, buttery yellow walls of jessamine vines. I pulled off my tweed jacket, rolled up my shirt sleeves, took in a deep breath of North Carolina at its best, and started the first walk I’d taken downtown in a long time. I was back on the beat, you might say, checking out my city. It was something I’d done regularly in the first months after I’d been appointed chief of HPD, when I was restructuring the department.

Back then, I’d been just what
Newsweek
reported: “Indefatigable.” I’d drive around in the middle of the night posting notices on different shop fronts and in isolated areas (“A robbery is now in progress at this store”; “A rape is now in progress in this alley”). Officers were supposed to call in to headquarters as soon as they spotted one of these simulation notices. I got complaints about “playing games,” but my game did put a stop to the old-style tour of
duty favored by cops like Winston Russell; the kind where you wile away the hours snoozing in the patrol car, or strolling the safer streets, cadging free drinks, meals, and sex from civilians. I’d also drive around in the middle of the day, spot-checking whether officers were where they were supposed to be; or I’d follow radio calls to see how quickly a squad car responded, or how quickly the backup arrived if an officer asked for one, particularly a female officer, because Nancy White had consistently complained about “macho pigs” being slow to respond when she radioed for assistance. And she was right; they were stalling. I fired one of them, and scared another one (Purley Newsome) into at least a façade of fair play. Yep, I was a holy terror in those early months. A lot of people didn’t like me. A lot still don’t. But not many of those still work at HPD.

On my walk, I saw Officer Brenda Moore at an intersection, kindly giving directions to a driver with Arizona plates. I saw Officer Titus Baker checking the lock on a ladies’ dress shop that was closed for renovations while being transformed into “Banana Republic, Arriving Here Soon.” Everybody on the streets today looked cheerful, friendly, and law-abiding, like they were extras in the opening scene of some 1950s movie, just before the innocent people of Happytown, U.S.A., look up and see monster-sized cockroaches from outer space crawling over the tops of their nicest buildings.

At the corner of Main and Cadmean streets, next to an elegant wine store, Hillstonians sat on green slatted chairs under sidewalk umbrellas, enjoying capucchinos and Italian ice creams. The new green-and-white awning said GIORGIO’S. Three years ago, there’d been metal stools crammed along a plastic lunch counter, and outside a plywood sign saying GEORGIE’S PIZZA. Upscale everywhere—the Song of the New South.

Somebody called to me as I walked past.

It was Father Paul Madison, who wore his black collar, seated next to Lee Haver Brookside, who wore a light rose silk dress with a loose dark rose jacket. Seeing her when I was
expecting
to was jolt enough on the heart and knees; coming across her like this, before I could get my system prepared, was more like having a live power line drop out of the blue and land on your neck. Like old Patsy
Cline said, “You walk by, and I fall to pieces.” Of course, it didn’t show; that's the amazing thing about the heart—it can carry on like a maniac, while the rest of you is politely shaking hands.

Lee's purse and shoes went with the rose jacket, and I’m sure none of them had been bought anywhere near Hillston, even at its boutique best. It wasn’t that she looked like she didn’t belong in Hillston, because she always looked like she belonged wherever she was. But she could have just as easily been sitting in a café in Milan, or Paris, or one of the other places where I’d imagined running into her in the past, when I’d walked by handsome restaurants, hearing foreign laughter inside.

“Hello there,” she said now, and let go of my hand.

I hadn’t seen Lee for the past two weeks. For one of them, she’d gone to visit her stepsister in Palm Beach. Then four days ago, she hadn’t shown up for what was supposed to have been our first night in “our own place.” In March I’d read an ad in the paper for a “waterfront retreat, a steal at $79,900. Privacy, and a great view.” It turned out to be on the unfashionable tip of Pine Hills Lake, where nobody much went, and where it wasn’t easy to go, since the access road looked like no one had touched it since the Shocco Indians left town. The house was an old, brown-shingled three-room cabin with a boarded-up stone fireplace, an ugly dropped ceiling, tacky pineboard walls, and a rickety open porch built out over the water's edge. No insulation, no electricity, no phone. I loved it. I bought it—for $71,500—some C.D.s down, and the rest on that thirty-year easy monthly payment plan. Lee loved the house too, and whenever we’d take a drive now, we’d bring it a present. Some Sundays I went there alone and worked on ripping out the fake ceiling and paneling. But then the first time we’d arranged to stay the whole night there together, she hadn’t come. There’d been a message on my machine back at River Rise when I gave up at five A.M. and drove home. “Cuddy, I’m sorry. Andy didn’t leave! He's downstairs. They canceled all flights to New York. A blizzard. I’m
sorry.
I love you. Bye. Dammit!”

“Join us, Cuddy,” said Paul Madison in high spirits. God knows what charitable scheme he’d been hitting Lee up for now. Equipment for the daycare center? New cutlery for the soup
kitchen? Maybe a dozen doctors for his Cadmean Convalescent Home? “No, no, come on. Sit down. How
are
you? Have some coffee.” The two of them had sipped their way through their minuscule espressos, and were waiting for refills. I said I was in a rush. Lee smiled at me, and I sat down.

Giorgio's young waiter passed by looking like the Philip Morris bellhop. I told him, “
Scusi. Vorrei una tazza grande di caffè americano
,
prego.
” Scowling, he looked to the priest for help.

Paul said, “The Rio Grande belongs to Americans?”

Lee smiled at me.

I said, “Y’all carry American coffee in great big cups, then bring me one.” He slouched off. “How have you been, Lee, nice to see you again. Looks like spring is definitely claiming the territory.”

She said, “Nice to see
you
, Cuddy. It's been a while. Have you seen Edwina Sunderland lately? I’ve been so busy with the campaign and…”

We kept this gibberish up for five minutes, each trying not to look at the other. Then Paul talked about Bubba Percy's exposé of the House of Lords. Lee said Andy was disgusted to think such a racist club could have existed into the ’70s at Haver University. I said, what made them think it wasn’t still holding secret meetings in some frat house right now? The breeze fluttered the silk sleeves of her blouse, and the loosened gold hair at the nape of her neck. Her finger traced circles around the dark blue rim of the espresso cup.

“Cuddy, you’re a damn recluse. I’ve missed you,” said Paul, completely unaware that in “three's a crowd,” he was “three.” “You were even skipping basketball games, and that just isn’t you. He's a wild man on the court, Lee.”

“Is he?” smiled Lee. “He always looks so…calm.” Her calf brushed slowly against my trouser leg.

“Cuddy calm?” Paul laughed. “He's tense as a bridge cable, always has been.”

“Really?” smiled Lee.

I finished my coffee, and made myself stand up. “Look, y’all, I’m already late. Nice to see you again, Lee. Paul, take it easy.” I turned back. “Oh. Gilchrist come home?”

Paul shook his shock of pale curls. “No. I’ve been asking around. Pete Zaslo said he hadn’t seen Billy since he called me to come get him the last time he passed out at the Silver Comet.”

“Well, I told you and Isaac to let me lock him up until the trial.”

With a sad sigh, Paul tugged at his collar. “Billy said he’d go crazy if you did. He promised me he’d stay sober. He was doing so
great.
”

“Ah well, promises.” I said good-bye again, put down a dollar fifty for my American coffee, and left.

I hadn’t wanted to mention to Lee that my appointment was just around the corner, in the nice glass-fronted first floor of an office building on Haver Avenue. The glass front was covered with those Carolina blue posters with Lee's husband's picture on them, and all the way across the top of the glass ran a red-white-and-blue banner that said, DEMOCRATIC HEADQUARTERS. BROOKSIDE FOR GOVERNOR. Inside, there were at least a dozen desks with phones and computers. Young men and young women sat at the desks, staring at their screens or talking on their phones or stuffing envelopes. The whole back wall was covered with a multipanel photo-mural of Andy photographs. Andy amazingly poised in air, about to catch a football, with a hapless moil of pursuers in the mud below. Andy grinning from the cockpit of an F-4C Phantom fighter plane. Andy solemn in military dress at the White House receiving the Medal of Honor. Andy intense in an Aran Island sweater, at a work session at Camp David with a lot of faces everybody would recognize. Andy energetic in a hard-hat, shooting the breeze with construction workers while watching the new Haver University Medical Research Center go up. Andy aglow in shirt sleeves and tie, leaning down from an outdoors platform, shaking the eagerly upstretched hands of quite a press of admiring voters, two-thirds of them women. Andy noble in a suit, receiving a standing ovation from blacks of all ages after the Cooper Hall speech.

I said to the pretty girl at the first desk, “Looks like you’ve got the whole spectrum covered—touchdown for the right, Coop Hall for the left.”

She looked up from a book about herbal health and smiled the way you would at someone speaking Swahili at you with a friendly
expression. I didn’t bother to translate for her. She put her finger in her book and said, “Can I help you?”

“You sure may. Jack Molina's expecting me. He here?”

She pointed at a hallway. “Back there, out through the double doors, down the hall, then take a right. One-o-one. I think Andy's with him.”

She didn’t even ask for my name. I could have had enough gelignite under my jacket to blow 101 back through the hall and into that photo-mural. Yeah, like Molina said, “Good security.”

Andy wasn’t, however, back there. From the other side of the closed door to 101 came two extremely angry voices. One I knew belonged to Jack Molina; the other one I deduced pretty quickly belonged to his wife, Debbie. She was saying, or trying to say between sobs, “I don’t care. At this point, I don’t care!”