Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (13 page)

“The PEs have modified their position. They’re willing to let us take X rays, do a visual and cavity examination, and take tissue and fluid samples for analysis. But they still don’t want us cutting her open.”

“So, can you guys live with that?”

“Law’s pretty clear. In all cases of suspicious death, you have to do an autopsy. But,” she added, “Spellman’s taking it to the state Attorney General’s Office tomorrow morning for an opinion. The Pentecostal Enochians want to bargain for amnesty as well.”

“And in the meantime you all just sit there.”

“That’s about it. We found one of those little battery-powered pocket TVs in Dr. Henry’s office. We charged it up in the cooler, so at least we can watch the news.”

I laughed. “I can just imagine five people huddled around a three-inch pocket TV.”

Marsha laughed quietly. “I’ve seen so many episodes of
Cheers
, I’ve got the hots for Norm Peterson. C’mon, babe, I’m tired of talking about me. What’s going on in your life?”

“I met with Phil Anderson today over at the insurance company.”

“Yeah? What happened?”

I recounted the whole, frustrating story, then segued into Slim’s arrest.

“You going to get involved?” she asked.

“No. I’m too preoccupied. With you, with my cash situation. It’s just not a good time.”

“Can I give a little advice, darling?”

“Sure, of course.”

“You’re not going to do anything but drive yourself and me nuts, not to mention hacking off the entire Metro Nashville Police Department, if you persist in trying to figure out some way to be a hero in all this.”

“That’s not what I’m—”

“I know. I didn’t mean it like that. But there is
really
nothing you can do, Harry. We just have to sit tight. And there’s probably nothing you can do about the insurance money as well. So for the sake of your blood pressure and my nerves, why don’t you find something to take your mind off all this?”

There was a ripple of an audio static wave in the phone, and I knew her batteries were on the way out.

“I’ll give it some thought,” I said.

“You do that. In the meantime I’m going to make my last cup of herbal tea and stretch out on my office couch. If nothing else, the last few days have sure given me a chance to catch up on my paperwork.”

There was a pop in the phone, and the signal dropped
out for just a second, then came back. “Hey, listen,” I yelled into the phone, like that would do some good. “Call me tomorrow.”

“Goo—” Hiss, pop. Dial tone.

I hung up the phone and leaned back into the pillow. On the muted television, a silent anchorman’s image was replaced by footage taken at the police station earlier this evening. On the tape, Slim Gibson was standing before a magistrate, hands cuffed, head down, bathed in a corona of television lights.

What the hell, I thought. Maybe she’s right. I reached over and grabbed a notepad out of my shirt pocket and flipped to the last page, then dialed the number written on it.

“Ray?” I asked, when a voice answered. “What time did you say that hearing was?”

High-profile murders always seem to draw high-profile crowds. The highest-rated TV reporter in the city was jammed into the cramped hallway in front of the courtroom in the Criminal Justice Center as fans, hangers-on, spectators, musicians, cops, lawyers, and about fifty other people jostled for a spot.

Over the background din, I could hear her delivering her live remote from the courthouse for the morning news:

“Yes, Bob,” she said brightly, “the courthouse hallways are indeed packed as country-music fans, friends, family members, and onlookers struggle to get into the courtroom to see the man accused of murdering one of country music’s fastest-rising stars. The ex-husband of Rebecca Gibson, Randall J. Gibson, known as Slim, will stand before Judge Rosenthal and hear the preliminary case against him. The District Attorney’s Office has refused to comment on whether or not they will seek the death penalty against Rebecca Gibson’s ex, but we do expect them to seek to have him held without bond.”

At the words
death penalty
, all the hairs on the back of my neck got together, stood up, and did the Wave. Christ, I thought, I didn’t have any idea it was this grim. But then I settled down. The death penalty in this state is most often used as a weapon by prosecutors to scare the stew out of the accused, rendering him or her much more willing to negotiate when plea-bargaining
time rolls around. Besides, Tennessee is historically reluctant to actually execute people. We hand out the death penalty like traffic tickets, but when it comes to yanking that switch, we really aren’t like Texas or Florida, where they’ll fry your ass for spitting on the sidewalk. We take almost a perverse pride in having a huge death-row population, but no executions in over thirty years.

I worked my way through the hallway past the television cameras toward the general-sessions courtroom where preliminary hearings are held. I’d spent many a morning in this building as a newspaper reporter; sometimes it was packed, other times I was the only one in the spectators’ gallery.

This time, they were jammed in like a 1930s revival meeting. Inside the small courtroom, the benches held row upon row of human in every imaginable combination. Some wore suits, but most were dressed casually, many with the affectations of musicians. The walls were even lined with standing men and women. I looked around the courtroom, searching the faces for one I knew. To my left, eight or ten down, stood an exhausted-looking Ray.

“Excuse me, excuse me, oops, excuse me—” I muttered to dirty looks as I wove my way around the bodies and edged in next to him.

“You made it,” he said, relieved. Ray pulled at the skin on his face like a rubber mask.

“Parking’s hell out there,” I said. “I drove around for ten minutes looking for a meter, then gave up and went into the garage behind the Ben West Building. Hell, took me five minutes to find a slot in there.”

“This one’s going to be pretty popular.”

“Yeah. You get any sleep last night?”

“Not much.”

“Who’s going to be representing him?” I asked. “We called Roger. There wasn’t much else to do,” Ray said. He hung his head like it was a heavy burden.

“Jesus, Harry, this is bad. News said this morning they might be going after the death penalty.”

“Don’t panic, guy. There’s quite a walk between going after it and getting it.”

On benches in a special gallery to the judge’s right, a row of suited lawyers sat talking and fumbling through papers. I recognized three of them from the Public Defender’s Office. They were huddled over the rail, making deals with the assistant DAs, shuffling through a huge caseload as quickly as possible.

“Where’s Vaden?” I asked.

“Second row, over there.” Ray pointed. “Just sitting off by himself.”

Roger Vaden, I thought, had probably not seen the inside of a criminal courtroom since field trips in law school. He looked completely forlorn, lost, befuddled.

“This is
not
an encouraging sign,” I whispered.

“No shit.”

“This is just the preliminary hearing,” I said. “It’s boilerplate for now. F. Lee Bailey probably couldn’t get him off at this point.”

The door to the judge’s chambers bounced open and a flurry of black robe entered the room and took the stairs up to the judge’s bench two at a time. The court officer jumped out of his chair.

“All rise,” he shouted. There was a commotion of noise and movement as everybody stood up. “Hear ye, hear ye, all persons having business before this honorable court are instructed …” Blah blah blah. “… Judge Alvin Rosenthal presiding.” The court officer finished his spiel and sat down.

God, I thought, remembering my days in Boston as an undergraduate, only in the South would a good Jewish couple name their son Alvin.

Judge Rosenthal banged his gavel. “Before we get started, I want to address the spectators here. Now y’all listen. This is a courtroom, and the bench is going to conduct business with decorum and dignity. I want no
outbursts, no talking aloud, no interference with the business of this court in any fashion.

“And, sir—” Judge Rosenthal pointed to a man in the front row of the spectator’s gallery and lowered his voice half an octave. “If you don’t get that Co-cola out of my courtroom in about ten seconds, you’re going to spend the next two days as my guest in the county jail. Understood?”

Some poor sucker in a denim sport coat, hair draped across his shoulders, two earrings in his left ear, hopped up and scampered through the crowd with his hand wrapped tightly around a can of diet Coke. A young woman quickly slid into the seat he vacated.

“Now we’ve got a lot of business to conduct this morning, and we’re going to go through this docket quickly and in the order in which the cases are listed. Is the District Attorney’s Office ready?”

Two fresh young law-school graduates—one male, one female, both in pinstripes—stood up at the table to the judge’s left.

“We are, Your Honor,” the male half of the team announced.

“The officer will read the docket,” Judge Rosenthal ordered.

A suited, dark-eyed woman at a table next to the court reporter stood up from behind two stacks of file folders, each about two feet high. “Case number 02-4597-346J,” she rattled off. “Willie J. Smith, Willful Destruction of Private Property, Public Intoxication, Carrying a Weapon for the Purpose of Going Armed.”

“Who’s for the defendant?” the judge asked.

Another suit stood up from the gallery on the side. “Scott Webster, Your Honor, Public Defender’s Office.”

I turned to Ray. “This could go on for hours.”

“You mean they’re going to work all those folders in this morning?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered.

“He ain’t going to do Slim first?”

“The last time I saw a high-profile murder like this, the judge wouldn’t do the big case first because he didn’t want the news media to think they could push him around. Figured he’d make them wait all day. After about an hour, though, he got tired of the crowd and bumped the big case up to get rid of everybody.”

“Send in the defendant,” Judge Rosenthal said.

Two marshals, a couple of beefy black guys in cheap suits with badges hanging out of their front coat pockets, left the courtroom by way of a door next to the one leading into the judge’s chambers. A moment later they stepped back in with a rail-thin black teenager between them. He wore the orange jumpsuit provided to him by the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department. His head was shaved, and he looked completely in awe of the crowd and the commotion.

“Read the charges again,” the judge said.

The woman with the file folders spoke up and read the numbers and charges one more time in her machine-gun voice. The judge turned back to the assistant DAs, and their voices soon melded into an audio blur as I thought first of Marsha, then of Slim in jail, and finally of Rebecca Gibson’s sweet voice and how I’d never hear her sing again.

Up front, the judge was moving them through one after the other. A string of orange-suited prisoners—mostly black, mostly young, mostly up on petty charges, all defended by the PD—filed before the justice system to begin the process. I wondered if the judge or the prosecutor or, for that matter, the defense attorneys ever remembered one face or one name from another.

A couple of times, the background din from the spectator gallery drew a gavel bang from the bench, and yet another warning to clear the courtroom if things didn’t quiet down. Tension seemed to rise one small notch at a time as the long line of orange proceeded through the room. The observers sat, or in my case stood, for over
an hour. My legs were tired. My back hurt. And I was sleepy from the stuffy air and the heat of a room packed with bodies.

“How much longer?” Ray whispered.

“Beats me. As long as it takes.”

There was another murmur as someone in the crowd grew impatient and shuffled loudly out of the room. The judge watched the scene with an irritated look etched on his face as the woman assistant DA argued a case in front of him.

The attorneys sat down as the latest defendant was led out of the courtroom.

“Attorneys, approach the bench,” the judge ordered.

The DAs stood up, along with a few of the PDs, and walked up to the bench. Judge Rosenthal leaned over and whispered something to the gathered suits. One of the PDs shrugged, shook his head, then pointed to Roger Vaden, who still sat quietly on a bench in the corner.

“Sir.” Judge Rosenthal’s voice rose. “Who are you here to represent?”

“This is it,” I whispered. “The judge just got enough.”

Ray stiffened next to me. “You think so?”

“Just watch.”

Roger stood up, his six-feet-two, skinny frame clutching his briefcase nervously. “Defendant Randall Gibson, Your Honor.”

“Approach the bench, please, sir.”

Roger stepped around the railing and made his way through the maze of desks. Whispered consultations followed, then the judge rapped his gavel.

“Five-minute recess,” he announced as he stepped off the bench in a billow of black cloth.