AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Well, for some that would be the easy way out. But what does that have to do with my case?”
Reed looked at him quizzically. “Do you really have no clue as to the hurricane you’re walking right into?”
Jack sat back. “Maybe not.”
“Well, you sure as hell will. And sooner than you probably want.”
CHAPTER 13
TWO BOXES WERE CHECKED. NOW Jack headed on to the third—the crime scene, and for good reason. He had as much faith in the lawmen of Freeman County to conduct a fair and thorough investigation with a Black man standing accused of killing two white people as he did in medicine’s ability to make his sister whole again.
He drove toward the northwest part of the county, where the air held none of the stench of Tuxedo Boulevard, and the lifestyles of the privileged few were enviable, and emphatically cloistered.
Stately manors carved from the dirt hides of once far-flung tobacco plantations sat on substantial property and represented the monied class that always seemed to land on its feet. Jack glimpsed Black maids and nannies watching over their white wards in front yards, or else pushing them down the sidewalks in elegant perambulators passed down from generation to generation. White men with rakes, wheelbarrows, and pruning shears labored over immaculate landscapes. Jack knew Black men were routinely considered unpredictably dangerous and thus unwelcome here in any occupation, which consequently made Jerome’s presence stand out.
Compact Mercedes-Benzes and lengthy Cadillacs sat in pristine driveways. The quiet was broken when a lovely woman, her hair done up and her costly dress tailored to her slim figure, fired up a convertible to travel perhaps to a luncheon, or tennis.
There was a deputy sheriff looking hot and riled as he fended off reporters at the impressive gates leading up to the Randolphs’ home. Jack saw a news truck and a TV anchor he recognized confronting the deputy, while two other men, probably from the local papers, peppered the lawman, like pecking crows, with their own queries about the crime. A sulky-looking photographer stood by idly popping pictures of the scene.
A bored TV cameraman, his bulky machine dangling in front of him like a dormant mechanical arm, watched all of this while he listlessly smoked a cigarette.
When Jack pulled up, the deputy wheeled around to the Fiat, spoiling for a fight.
He bellowed hoarsely, “Now you just turn whatever the hell that thing is around and head right on outta here.”
Jack held up his bar card and official court document. “Jack Lee for the defense. I’m here to examine the crime scene.”
“You can’t do that,” said the deputy, barely looking at the card or paper, so intent was his angry focus.
“Go check with your boss. You don’t want this case dismissed because you wouldn’t let defense counsel exercise the accused’s constitutional rights, do you?”
That remark hit the target, just as Jack knew it would. The flustered deputy called in another lawman to guard the gate and then stormed to the house on foot.
The TV anchor and newspaper reporters swarmed the Fiat. Jack locked the door and rolled up the window. Although sweating, he stared placidly out the windshield while ignoring their shouts and poundings on the car’s metal.
The deputy came back a minute later and said, “Okay, you can go on up.”
Jack headed along the wide pea-gravel drive to the house. The lawn was bracketed by robust flower beds, and punctured by stands of mature oaks, pines, maples, and multitudes of dogwoods, the state tree. In the spring bloom, legend had it, the dogwood carried the blood of Jesus’ crucifixion wounds on each of its four white petals, representing the four sides of the cross. Jack had never believed that, even when he’d been a churchgoer.
Two sheriff’s cars were parked out in front. The cruisers faced each other like two rams about to duel. There was also a black sedan with official commonwealth plates. This captured Jack’s full attention, and now he knew that the decision on the prosecutor who would oppose him in court had been made. And with that revelation he felt his anxiety spiking.
He got out and looked around. The Randolph estate was two streets over from the Willow Oaks Country Club, which rivaled Richmond’s storied Country Club of Virginia in its pedigreed members’ list. It was all white and Gentiles only, and women were allowed when accompanied by their husbands. Other than that, all were welcome there.
“You look like you got a lot on your mind, son,” said the smiling man waiting for him at the front door.
He was tall and well-nourished, his skin thin as an onion’s, his head mostly bald on top, his age difficult to tell. His suit was coroner black and somber, but with a tie that was blood red.
Jack held out his hand. “I’m Jack Lee, counsel for Jerome Washington, Mr. Battle.”
“So I heard, so I heard,” said Battle, shaking Jack’s hand a bit too energetically. Up close the man’s aftershave got in Jack’s nostrils and made them twitch. Battle glanced at the black sedan. “Guess my official state license plate gave me away.”
“It did.”
Edmund Battle was the attorney general of Virginia, the third-ranking politician in all the commonwealth. A native of Richmond, he’d been a litigation partner in a suitably prestigious law firm and then became a circuit judge before throwing his hat in the ring for the AG slot, which he won by a country mile. And then, to add insult to injury to the same foe, he did it all over again four years later.
“Come on in, see what you need to see. There’s not much, I’ll warn you. Medical examiner has the bodies.” He shook his head. “So tragic.”
Jack walked in and looked around at an opulence one would have imagined being in a place such as this, but very little that was to his taste, and not much that dated after 1940.
