br />"Our petition for a new trial will be turned down and all my exceptions will be quickly heaved out. If we're lucky, the court will invite me to present witnesses. If they give me the opportunity, I'll recall everybody that testified at the original trial, plus anyone else I can think of. At that point I'd call your junior high school chums as character witnesses, if I could find them."
"I quit school in the sixth grade," Lloyd said bleakly.
"After the Circuit Court turns us down, I'll petition to be heard by the Supreme Court. I expect to be turned down on the same day."
Devins stopped and lit a cigarette.
"Then what?" Lloyd asked.
"Then?" Devins asked, looking mildly surprised and exasperated at Lloyd's continuing stupidity. "Why, then you go on to Death Row at state prison and just enjoy all that good food until it's time to ride the lightning. It won't be long."
"They wouldn't really do it," Lloyd said. "You're just trying to scare me."
"Lloyd, the four states that have the Capital Crimes Circuit Court do it all the time. So far, forty men and women have been executed under the Markham guidelines. It costs the taxpayers a little extra for the added court, but not all that much, since they only work on a tiny percentage of first-degree murder cases. Also, the taxpayers really don't mind opening their pocketbooks for capital punishment. They like it."
Lloyd looked ready to throw up.
"Anyway," Devins said, "a DA will only try a defendant under Markham guidelines if he looks completely guilty. It isn't enough for the dog to have chicken feathers on his muzzle; you've got to catch him in the henhouse. Which is where they caught you."
Lloyd, who had been basking in the cheers from the boys in Maximum Security not fifteen minutes ago, now found himself staring down a paltry two or three weeks and into a black hole.
"You scared, Sylvester?" Devins asked in an almost kindly way.
Lloyd had to lick his lips before he could answer. "Christ yes, I'm scared. From what you say, I'm a dead man."
"I don't want you dead," Devins said, "just scared. If you go into that courtroom smirking and swaggering, they'll strap you in the chair and throw the switch. You'll be number forty-one under Markham. But if you listen to me, we might be able to squeak through. I don't say we will; I say we might."
"Go ahead."
"The thing we have to count on is the jury," Devins said. "Twelve ordinary shleps off the street. I'd like a jury filled with forty-two-year-old ladies who can still recite Winnie the Pooh by heart and have funerals for their pet birds in the back yard, that's what I'd like. Every jury is made very aware of Markham's consequences when they're empaneled. They're not bringing in a verdict of death that may or may not be implemented in six months or six years, long after they've forgotten it; the guy they're condemning in June is going to be pushing up daisies before the All-Star break."
"You've got a hell of a way of putting things."
Ignoring him, Devins went on: "In some cases, just that knowledge has caused juries to bring in verdicts of not guilty. It's one adverse result of Markham. In some cases, juries have let blatant murderers go just because they didn't want blood that fresh on their hands." He picked up a sheet of paper. "Although forty people have been executed under Markham, the death penalty has been asked for under Markham a total of seventy times. Of the thirty not executed, twenty-six were found 'not guilty' by the empaneled juries. Only four convictions were overturned by the Capital Crimes Circuit Courts, one in South Carolina, two in Florida, and one in Alabama."
"Never in Arizona?"
"Never. I told you. The Code of the West. Those five old men want your ass nailed to a board. If we don't get you off in front of a jury, you're through. I can offer you ninety-to-one on it."
"How many people have been found not guilty by regular court juries under that law in Arizona?"
"Two out of fourteen."
"Those are pretty crappy odds, too."
Devins smiled his wolfish smile. "I should point out," he said, "that one of those two was defended by yours truly. He was guilty as sin, Lloyd, just like you are. Judge Pechert raved at those ten women and two men for twenty minutes. I thought he was going to have apoplexy."
"If I was found not guilty, they couldn't try me again, could they?"
"Absolutely not."
"So it's one roll, double or nothing."
"Yes."
"Boy," Lloyd said, and wiped his forehead.
"As long as you understand the situation," Devins said, "and where we have to make our stand, we can get down to brass tacks."
"I understand it. I don't like it, though."
"You'd be nuts if you did." Devins folded his hands and leaned over them. "Now. You've told me and you've told the police that you, uh ..." He took a stapled sheaf of papers out of the stack by his briefcase and riffled through them. "Ah. Here we are. 'I never killed nobody. Poke did all the killing. Killing was his idea, not mine. Poke was crazy as a bedbug and I guess it is a blessing to the world that he has passed on.' "
"Yeah, that's right, so what?" Lloyd said defensively.
"Just this," Devins said cozily. "That implies you were scared of Poke Freeman. Were you scared of him?"
"Well, I wasn't exactly--"
"You were afraid for your life, in fact."
"I don't think it was--"
"Terrified. Believe it, Sylvester. You were shitting nickels."
Lloyd frowned at his lawyer. It was the frown of a lad who wants to be a good student but is having a serious problem grasping the lesson.
"Don't let me lead you, Lloyd," Devins said. "I don't want to do that. You might think I was suggesting that Poke was stoned almost all the time--"
"He was! We both was!"
"No. You weren't, but he was. And he got crazy when he got stoned--"
"Boy, you're not shitting." In the halls of Lloyd's memory, the ghost of Poke Freeman cried Whoop! Whoop! merrily and shot the woman in the Burrack general store.
"And he held a gun on you at several points in time--"
"No, he never--"
"Yes he did. You just forgot for a while. In fact, he once threatened to kill you if you didn't back his play."
"Well, I had a gun--"
"I believe," Devins said, eyeing him closely, "that if you search your memory, you'll remember Poke telling you that your gun was loaded with blanks. Do you remember that?"
"Now that you mention it--"
"And nobody was more surprised than you when it actually started firing real bullets, right?"
"Sure," Lloyd said. He nodded vigorously. "I bout damn near had a hemorrhage."
"And you were about to turn that gun on Poke Freeman when he was cut down, saving you the trouble."
Lloyd regarded his lawyer with dawning hope in his eyes.
"Mr. Devins," he said with great sincerity, "that's just the way the shit went down."
He was in the exercise yard later that morning, watching a softball game and mulling over everything Devins had told him, when a large inmate named Mathers came over and yanked him up by the collar. Mathers's head was shaved bald, a la Telly Savalas, and it gleamed benignly in the hot desert air.
"Now wait a minute," Lloyd said. "My lawyer counted every one of my teeth. Seventeen. So if you--"
"Yeah, that's what Shockley said," Mathers said. "So, he told me to--"
Mathers's knee came up squarely in Lloyd's crotch, and blinding pain exploded there, so excruciating that he could not even scream. He collapsed in a hunching, writhing pile, clutching his testicles, which felt crushed. The world was a reddish fog of agony.
After a while, who knew how long, he was able to look up. Mathers was still looking at him, and his bald head was still gleaming. The guards were pointedly looking elsewhere. Lloyd moaned and writhed, tears squirting out of his eyes, a redhot ball of lead in his belly.
"Nothing personal," Mathers said sincerely. "Just business, you understand. Myself, I hope you make out. That Markham law's a bitch."
He strode away and Lloyd saw the door-guard standing atop the ramp in the truck-loading bay on the other side of the exercise yard. His thumbs were hooked in his Sam Browne belt and he was grinning at Lloyd. When he saw he had Lloyd's complete, undivided attention, the door-guard shot him the bird with the middle fingers of both hands. Mathers strolled over to the wall, and the door-guard threw him a pack of Tareytons. Mathers put them in his breast pocket, sketched a salute, and walked away. Lloyd lay on the ground, his knees drawn up to his chest, hands clutching his cramping belly, and Devins's words echoed in his brain: It's a tough old world, Lloyd, it's a tough old world.
Right.
CHAPTER 25
Nick Andros pushed aside one of the curtains and looked out into the street. From here, on the second story of the late John Baker's house, you could see all of downtown Shoyo by looking left, and by looking right you could see Route 63 going out of town. Main Street was utterly deserted. The shades of the business establishments were drawn. A sick-looking dog sat in the middle of the road, head down, sides bellowsing, white foam dripping from its muzzle to the heat-shimmering pavement. In the gutter half a block down, another dog lay dead.
The woman behind him moaned in a low, guttural way, but Nick did not hear her. He closed the curtain, rubbed his eyes for a moment, and then went to the woman, who had awakened. Jane Baker was bundled up with blankets because she had been cold a couple of hours ago. Now sweat was streaming from her face and she had kicked off the blankets --he saw with embarrassment that she had sweated her thin nightgown into transparency in some places. But she was not seeing him, and at this point he doubted her seminakedness mattered. She was dying.
"Johnny, bring the basin. I think I'm going to throw up!" she cried.
He brought the basin out from under the bed and put it beside her, but she thrashed and knocked it onto the floor with a hollow bonging sound which he also couldn't hear. He picked it up and just held it, watching her.
"Johnny!" she screamed. "I can't find my sewing box! It isn't in the closet!"
He poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand and held it to her lips but she thrashed again and almost knocked it from his grasp. He set it back down where it would be in reach if she quieted.
He had never been so bitterly aware of his muteness as the last two days had made him. The Methodist minister, Braceman, had been with her on the twenty-third when Nick came over. He was Bible-reading with her in the living room, but he looked nervous and anxious to get away. Nick could guess why. Her fever had given her a rosy, girlish glow that went jarringly with her bereavement. Perhaps the minister had been afraid she was going to make a pass at him. More likely, though, he had been anxious to gather up his family and melt away over the fields. News travels fast in a small town, and others had already decided to get out of Shoyo.
Since the time Braceman had left the Baker living room some forty-eight hours ago, everything had turned into a waking nightmare. Mrs. Baker had gotten worse, so much worse that Nick had feared she would die before the sun went down.
Worse, he couldn't sit with her constantly. He had gone down to the truck-stop to get his three prisoners lunch, but Vince Hogan hadn't been able to eat. He was delirious. Mike Childress and Billy Warner wanted out, but Nick couldn't bring himself to do it. It wasn't fear; he didn't believe they would waste any time working him over to settle their grievance; they would want to make fast tracks away from Shoyo, like the others. But he had a responsibility. He had made a promise to a man who was now dead. Surely, sooner or later the State Patrol would get things in hand and come to take them away.
He found a .45 rolled up in its holster in the bottom drawer of Baker's desk, and after a few moments of debate he put it on. Looking down and seeing the woodgrip butt of the gun lying against his skinny hip had made him feel ridiculous--but its weight was comforting.
He had opened Vince's cell on the afternoon of the twenty-third and had put makeshift icepacks on the man's forehead, chest, and neck. Vince had opened his eyes and looked at Nick with such silent, miserable appeal that Nick wished he could say anything--as he wished it now, two days later, with Mrs. Baker--anything that would give the man a moment's comfort. Just You'll be okay or I think the fever's breaking would be enough.
All the time he was tending to Vince, Billy and Mike were yelling at him. While he was bent over the sick man they didn't matter, but he saw their scared faces every time he looked up, their lips forming words that all came down to the same thing: Please let us out. Nick was careful to keep away from them. He wasn't grown, but he was old enough to know that panic makes men dangerous.
That afternoon he had shuttled back and forth on nearly empty streets, always expecting to find Vince Hogan dead on one end or Jane Baker dead on the other. He looked for Dr. Soames's car but didn't see it. That afternoon a few of the shops had still been open, and the Texaco, but he became more and more convinced that the town was emptying out. People were taking paths through the woods, logging roads, maybe even wading up Shoyo Stream, which passed through Smackover and eventually came out in the town of Mount Holly. More would leave after dark, Nick thought.
The sun had just gone down when he arrived at the Baker house to find Jane moving shakily around the kitchen in her bathrobe, brewing tea. She looked at Nick gratefully when he came in, and he saw her fever was gone.
"I want to thank you for watching after me," she said calmly. "I feel ever so much better. Would you like a cup of tea?" And then she burst into tears.
He went to her, afraid she might faint and fall against the hot stove.
She held his arm to steady herself and laid her head against him, her hair a dark flood against the light blue robe.
"Johnny," she said in the darkening kitchen. "Oh, my poor Johnny."
If he could speak, Nick thought unhappily. But he could only hold her, and guide her across the kitchen to a chair by the table.
"The tea--"
He pointed to himself and then made her sit down.
"All right," she said. "I do feel better. Remarkably so. It's just that ... just ..." She put her hands over her face.
Nick made them hot tea and brought it to the table. They drank for a while without speaking. She held her cup in both hands, like a child. At last she put her cup down and said: "How many in town have this, Nick?"
"I don't know anymore," Nick wrote. "It's pretty bad."
"Have you seen the doctor?"
"Not since this morning."
"Am will wear himself out if he's not careful," she said. "He'll be careful, won't he, Nick? Not to wear himself out?"
Nick nodded and tried a smile.
"What about John's prisoners? Has the patrol come for them?"
"No," Nick wrote. "Hogan is very sick. I'm doing what I can. The others want me to let them out before Hogan can make them sick."
"Don't you let them out!" she said with some spirit. "I hope you're not thinking of it."
"No," Nick wrote, and after a moment he added: "You ought to go back to bed. You need rest."
She smiled at him, and when she moved her head Nick could see the dark smudges under the angles of her jaw--and he wondered uneasily if she was out of the woods yet.
"Yes. I'm going to sleep the clock right around. It seems wrong, somehow, to sleep with John dead ... I can hardly believe he is, you know. I keep stumbling over the idea like something I forgot to put away." He took her hand and squeezed it. She smiled wanly. "There may be something else to live for, in time. Have you gotten your prisoners their supper, Nick?"
Nick shook his head.
"You ought to. Why don't you take John's car?"
"I can't drive," Nick wrote, "but thank you. I'll just walk down to the truck-stop. It isn't far. & check on you in the morning, if that's all right."
"Yes," she said. "Fine."
He got up and pointed sternly at the teacup.
"Every drop," she promised.
He was going out the screen door when he felt her hesitant touch on his arm.
"John--" she said, stopped, and then forced herself to go on. "I hope they ... took him to the Curtis Mortuary. That's where John's folks and mine have always buried out of. Do you think they took him there all right?"
Nick nodded. The tears brimmed over her cheeks and she began to sob again.
When he left her that night he had gone directly to the truck-stop. A CLOSED sign hung crookedly in the window. He had gone around to the house trailer in back, but it was locked and dark. No one answered his knock. Under the circumstances he felt he was justified in a little breaking and entering; there would be enough in Sheriff Baker's petty cash box to pay any damages.
He hammered in the glass by the restaurant's lock and let himself in. The place was spooky even with all the lights on, the jukebox dark and dead, no one at the bumper-pool table or the video games, the booths empty, the stools unoccupied. The hood was over the grille.
Nick went out back and fried some hamburgers on the gas stove and put them in a sack. He added a bottle of milk and half an apple pie that stood under a plastic dome on the counter. Then he went back to the jail, after leaving a note on the counter explaining who had broken in and why.
Vince Hogan was dead. He lay on the floor of his cell amid a clutter of melting ice and wet towels. He had clawed at his neck at the end, as if he had been resisting an invisible strangler. The tips of his fingers were bloody. Flies were lighting on him and buzzing off. His neck was as black and swollen as an inner-tube some heedless child has pumped up to the point of bursting.
"Now will you let us out?" Mike Childress asked. "He's dead, ya fuckin mutie, are you satisfied? You feel revenged yet? Now he's got it, too." He pointed to Billy Warner.
Billy looked terrified. There were hectic red splotches on his neck and cheeks; the arm of his workshirt, with which he had repeatedly swiped at his nose, was stiff with snot. "That's a lie!" he chanted hysterically. "A lie, a lie, a fuckin lie! that's a l--" He began to sneeze suddenly, doubling over with the force of them, expelling a heavy spray of saliva and mucus.
"See?" Mike demanded. "Huh? Y'happy, ya fuckin mutie dimwit? Let me out! You can keep him if you want to, but not me. It's murder, that's all it is, cold-blooded murder!"
Nick shook his head, and Mike had a tantrum. He began to thr