Grass Roots (4 page)

Then he said, “You mind if we take a look at your van?” And I said no, and I gave him the keys.

That’s when he asked me to sign the paper.”

“Did he ask you to read it first?”

“Yeah. He said, “Oh, by the way, read this and sign it if what it says is true.” And it was, so I signed it.”

“All right, Thursday night. He asked you your whereabouts on Thursday night. How did you answer?” “I said I worked until nearly six.”

“Do you often work past five?”

“Sometimes, if we get a call, somebody’s heating or hot water or something is out. I had one of those.”

“Where was the call?”

“At Mr. Hunter’s house, the lawyer.”

“Elton Hunter?”

“Yeah. I’d been out there before, replaced the heat exchangers in his furnace last year.”

Will suppressed a laugh.

“Was Mr. Hunter there?”

“His wife made the call. He came home about the time I finished. He signed for the work.”

“Good. Then where did you go?”

“I went home.”

“In your van?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that your only car?”

“Yeah. Charlene was getting a ride home from work, so I went straight home.”

“Who’s Charlene?”

“She’s my girlfriend. Charlene Joiner. She lives with me.”

“What about the rest of your evening?”

“Well, I had a beer, and Charlene came in, I guess, a little after six.

She gets off at six. She brought a chicken home, and we ate that. Then we watched a video. Charlene brought that, too.”

“Where does Charlene work?”

“At the Magi Mart That’s a convenience store out on the La Grange highway. They have a video-rental thing, and they let her bring them home overnight. She takes them back the next morning.”

“What did you watch?”

“Beverly Hills Cop, with Eddie Murphy.”

“Then what?”

Larry looked embarrassed.

“Then we… well, we went to bed.”

“Did you make love?”

“Sir?”

“I’m not prying, Larry. This might be important later.”

“Yes, sir, we sure did. Charlene’s sort of…”

“Sort of what?”

“Well, sort of horny.”

“That night?”

“Every night.” Larry frowned a little.

“Are you sure this is important?”

“Yes.”

“Well, to tell you the truth, Charlene is horny all the time. I mean, she wants to do it anytime, day or night, wherever we can get away with it.”

“You mean, outside the house?”

“I mean anywhere. I had to stop taking her to the movies, at the movie theater. She’d be all over me. Now, we stay home and watch videos or go to the drive-in out on the highway. We were out there… let’s see, Wednesday night, and we ended up doing it on the floor of the van.

I’m lucky I’m in good shape, or she’d kill me.”

“So, on Thursday night, after the video, you and Charlene were… occupied with each other, for how long?”

“I don’t know. You kind of lose track of time, you know?”

“How long have you known Charlene?”

“About… let’s see, we met in June, over at Callaway Gardens, at the beach.”

“And when did she move in?”

“In June. The same day. She’s from Newnan, but she moved in with me and got the job at the Magi Man

“And it’s been like this with Charlene all the time, since June?”

“Yes, sir, all the time. I don’t reckon we’ve missed a day.”

“You didn’t leave the house again on Thursday night?

Didn’t drive the van again?”

“No, sir. After Charlene and I have been at it, well, I don’t feel much like doing anything but sleeping.”

“That’s it, then. That’s your whole Thursday night?”

“That’s it.”

“And you told the sheriff that?”

“Well, I didn’t tell him about Charlene and me. I mean, you said you couldn’t tell anybody what I told you. I reckon the sheriff would tell everybody.”

Will laughed in spite of himself.

“What else did the sheriff ask you?”

“He asked me if I knew Sarah Cole. I said, “Yeah, I fixed the furnace at that place she works.”

“

“When did you fix it?”

“It was Thursday afternoon.”

“Had you met her before?”

“No, sir. I went over there on a call, and I talked to a receptionist, I guess she was, and I fixed the furnace—it was just a bad thermostat, and I replaced it—and then this Sarah Cole came out of an office and signed the ticket and gave me a check.”

“And that was the first time you had seen her?”

“No, I guess I’d seen her around town, but I didn’t know her.”

“Ever spoken to her before?”

“No, sir.”

“When you spoke to her at her office, did you have any sort of disagreement or argument?” “No, sir. Well, she said she thought the thermostat was too expensive.

I told her it was the cheapest one we carry, and she was welcome to shop around, but she gave me the check. I don’t guess we spoke more than ten words.”

“Was anybody else present when you spoke to her?”

“The receptionist was there.”

“What else did the sheriff ask you?” “He asked me if I knew where the city dump was, and I said I did. He asked me if I was out at the city dump on Thursday night, and I said! “No, I told you, I was home with Charlene.”

“

“What else?”

“That was about it, I guess. He left me in the office with the deputy while he went to look at the van. I guess he was gone about twenty minutes, and I read a magazine.

Then he came back and told me I was under arrest for murder, and he showed me the warrant, and he read me my rights again, that time from a card. Then they made me empty my pockets, and they put me in a cell.”

“Did he tell you that you could make a phone call?”

“Oh, yeah. I called out to the Magi Mart a couple times, but the line was busy. Charlene is working today. I didn’t know who else to call. I could have called my boss, I guess, but I didn’t want him to know I was in jail. I said I didn’t know a lawyer and couldn’t afford one, and the sheriff said they’d get one for me.”

Will took the young man through his life story, making notes. Larry Moody was twenty-four; born and raised in La Grange, twenty miles away; finished high school, made Bs and Cs; father died when he was six, mother worked in a mill, died when he was nineteen; played center on the football team; went to work for Morgan & Morgan after high school, they taught him about furnaces and air conditioners;

had lived in Greenville, where his company had a branch, for just over a year.

“Good,” Will said.

“Now, there’s something I have to know, and I want you to tell me the absolute truth. Have you ever been in any kind of trouble? Have you ever been arrested? For anything? I’ll tell you right now, Larry, if you have, it’ll come out. You’d best tell me now. Have you ever been in trouble?”

Larry, for the first time, looked away from him.

“Yes, sir,” he said quietly.

“Tell me about it,” Will said, “and don’t leave anything out.”

“Well, when I was twenty, I had three speeding tickets in a row, over about four months. They took my license away from me, except for work.

After I got it back, I bought the van. The van is pretty slow.” “That’s it?” Will asked, afraid to be relieved.

“That’s all the trouble you were ever in?”

“Yes, sir, that’s it.”

“Was any of them a DUI? Were you drinking?”

“No, sir.”

Will took a deep breath and let it out.

“All right, if you think of anything else, you can tell me later. Now, I want you to give me the names and addresses of three or four people who you think might have a good opinion of you.”

Larry gave him the names of a high school teacher, his football coach, and his boss.

“Now, I want you to give me some names of people you don’t get along with, who dislike you.”

Larry looked puzzled, then stared at the ceiling for a moment.

“I can’t think of anybody,” he said finally.

“You don’t have any enemies at all?”

Larry shook his head.

“Not that I know of,” he said.

“Okay, Larry, if you say so. Do you go to church in Greenville? Do you have a minister?”

“No, sir. I’m not very religious, I guess.”

Will put his legal pad away.

“Now, here’s what’s going to happen next: you’re going to have to spend the weekend here; you’ll have a preliminary hearing on Monday morning, at ten. At that time. Judge Boggs will hear from the prosecution about their case, and he’ll decide if there’s a case to answer. The prosecution will present witnesses, but maybe not all they’ve got, and we’ll start to have an idea of what they think they’ve got on you. If the Judge decides they have a good-enough case, he’ll send your case to a grand jury, and if they think there’s enough evidence against you to warrant a trial, they’ll indict you, and then you’ll be tried.”

“How long will all this take?” Larry asked.

“Am I going to be stuck in here?”

“We can try for bail at the preliminary hearing. Do you have any property?”

“Just the van, and it won’t be paid up for another three years.”

“Do you own your house or apartment?”

“No, sir, I rent a house.”

“Do you know anybody who might put up some property?”

“Maybe my boss, Mr. Morgan. I wouldn’t want to ask him, though.”

“I’ll talk to him. He’ll need to know that you won’t be at work on Monday, anyway.”

Larry slapped his forehead.

“Geez, I forgot to tell you about the lineup. I just remembered.”

“The sheriff put you in a lineup?”

“Yeah, with four other guys.”

“Were they about your size and general description?”

“More or less. It’s funny, though. They made us stand with our faces to the wall.”

“You mean the witness was looking at your backs?”

“At first. After a couple of minutes, they told us to turn around.”

“Did you see the witness, the person who was looking at you?”

“No, there was a mirror. I guess there was somebody behind it, one of those two-way things.”

“That’s the way it’s usually done.” Will snapped his briefcase shut.

“Mr. Lee, how much trouble am I in?” Moody looked more than just worried now.

“I don’t know yet, Larry. We won’t know that until we hear more about the prosecution’s case. I’d better tell you what your options are. On Monday morning at the preliminary hearing, you’re going to have to enter a plea. That means you’ll plead either guilty or not guilty. If you plead not guilty and go to trial and are convicted of first-degree murder, then you might very well get the death penalty, but you might get life, depending on the circumstances.

“But”—Will leaned forward on his elbows—”you have the option of pleading guilty. If you are guilty. If you decide to do that, I can go to the prosecution and maybe make a deal, let you plead to a lesser charge, maybe voluntary manslaughter, depending on the circumstances.

In that case, you’d probably get a shorter sentence, be out in a few years. It boils down to this, Larry. Plead guilty and do, maybe, five to ten years in jail; or plead not guilty, in which case you might go free or you might die. You think about it over the weekend, and we’ll talk before your hearing on Monday. If you want me to, I can feel out the prosecutor and see what sort of a plea bargain might be available.

You can let me know what you want to do then.”

“Oh, I already know,” Larry said, sitting up.

“I want to plead not guilty.” “You’re sure,” Will said.

“I’m absolutely sure.”

“Fine.” Will rose.

“I’ve got to go now. Is there any thing I can do for you before Monday, besides call your boss?”

“Yes, sir. You can bring me some shaving stuff and a change of clothes from the house, and let Charlene know where I am.” He wrote down the address and gave Will directions.

“There’s a key under the flowerpot. And you could give Charlene the keys to the van, so she can use it.

She doesn’t have a car.”

“That may not be possible. The sheriff may hold the van as evidence, but I’ll try. Anything else?”

Moody looked away from him.

“Something’s bothering me,” he said.

“What is it?”

Moody turned to face him again.

“You never asked me if I murdered that woman.”

It was Will’s turn to look away.

“Well, Larry, that’s a question a lawyer sometimes doesn’t want to ask his client.”

“Well, you don’t have to ask, I’ll tell you,” Moody said.

Will held his breath. If this boy was guilty, he didn’t want to know it.

“I did not kill her,” Larry said with conviction.

“I swear to God, I didn’t. Everything I’ve told you today is the gospel truth.”

Will smiled.

“In that case, Larry,” he said with more certainty than he felt, “you don’t have anything to worry about.”

Larry grabbed Will’s hand and pumped it, smiling as though he had just been acquitted. will rapped on the glass partition that separated the sheriff’s office from the squad room.

“Morning, Clan. How you doing?”

Sheriff Cox lifted his head from the paperwork before him, got up and shook Will’s hand.

“Pretty fair. Will.

How’bout you?”

Will knew the sheriff as well as most lawyers in small counties knew sheriffs.

“Can’t complain. Course, I’m not too happy about you putting my innocent client in jail.”

The sheriff grinned.

“I reckon I can make it stick.”

“He’d like to have his van back for his girlfriend to use.

Can I have the keys?”

Cox shook his head.

“Nope, it’s impounded as evidence.”

“Can I have a look at it?”

“Nope. Investigation is still in progress.”

Will hadn’t expected to get to see the van.

“You’ll send me the crime lab report, though, won’t you?” He was entitled to see all the lab results.

“And the autopsy report on the victim?”

“Oh, sure. Don’t think I’ll have anything for you before the middle of next week, though. These folks take their time.”

“That’ll be okay. Listen, when you’re finished with the van, can Moody’s girl have it? No point in hanging on to it until the trial, is there?” “We’ll see,” the sheriff said cagily.