The Devil Amongst the Lawyers (34 page)

“What happened after the quarreling?”

Junius Ryan took a deep breath and glanced down at Erma Morton, seated at the defense table. Then he clenched his jaw and looked away as he answered. “Well, then I did hear Pollock Morton’s voice. He started hollering, ‘Oh lordy.’ He said it over and over, and every time he said it, he would say some other words after it, but he spoke too low for me to make out what he was saying.”

“When he said oh lordy, was he hollering very loud?”

“Loud enough for it to be heard for two, three hundred yards, I’d judge. It went on for about eight minutes.”

“Well, Mr. Ryan, what were you doing while all this was going on?”

“At first I just put down my book and lay there listening to those mournful calls. Then I got up, and I hunted around for my kimono and my house slippers. When I got them on, I went out into the hall, down the stairs, and out to the sidewalk. I walked along it over to the Mortons’ building.”

Carl scribbled a few perfunctory notes, but he knew that he would have no trouble remembering Junius Ryan’s testimony.

“I was in front of the post office side of the building when I saw the Mortons’ front door open a crack. When Erma Morton saw it was me, she came out on the porch and said, ‘There’s no fire here. You need not be a-coming.’ Well, I looked into the house, and saw the rooms were all lit up, and I took a step or two toward the porch, and she said again, ‘Go back. If we want you, we will send for you.’ I answered that I thought I might be of some assistance. I have a little drugstore, and so I had first aid material. I thought I might be able to help. But she stood there blocking the doorway, and she said a second time, ‘Go away. If we need you or anything you’ve got, we will send for you.’ So I stood there for a moment or two, and then reluctantly I turned and went back home.”

Carl felt a chill run up his spine. He didn’t see how the defense could defuse this testimony.

The prosecutor was asking if Ryan heard any noise inside the house while he stood outside talking to Erma.

“I could hear a noise in that back room where Pollock Morton was. Not his voice anymore. He had quit saying oh lordy, but I heard some kind of a shuffling noise. And I did not see Pollock Morton’s wife.”

“Did you see Pollock Morton?”

“I did not see Pollock Morton.”

“And then you went home?”

“I did. I went back to my bed and started to read again, and then I heard a radio playing over at the Mortons’ house.”

“Did you hear Pollock Morton’s voice anymore?”

“No. I heard noise. Shuffling, sounded like. And that radio, playing loud.”

Carl doodled an Atwater Kent radio on the margin of his notes. Despite what he had heard, Junius Ryan had not called the police. It would never have occurred to him that someone in the house was
dying. He thought he had interrupted a domestic dispute, and since the first commandment of the hills is, “Mind your own business,” he went home, thinking his duty done.

Carl tried to think of some innocent explanation for playing a radio in the wee hours of the morning, when a family member has just been heard crying out in distress. Nothing plausible occurred to him.

“How long did the radio play, Mr. Ryan?”

“Five, maybe ten minutes. Then it cut off completely. And I went back to my book, but I couldn’t get my mind on the reading, because I was still thinking about what might have happened next door.”

“So you tried to read and didn’t make much headway at it. Then what?”

“Well, about twenty-five minutes passed. Thereabouts. And then Erma Morton’s little sister came knocking on our door. That’s Sarah Beth, who is nine years old. She was out of breath, and yelling that her daddy was dying and would I come over. So I put on my robe and slippers again, and I followed her around to the lattice porch at the back of the house. It’s maybe ten feet wide. The girl went on back inside, but Erma Morton and her mother were there on the porch, standing next to a meat block.”

Carl sketched a smooth-planed tree stump, wondering if he should elaborate on “meat block” for his readers. He thought not. Most of them would either have such an item at home or they would have seen one.

“Did you see Pollock Morton?”

“Yes. The little girl, Sarah Beth, told me that her daddy had fallen against the meat block and hit his head. He was laying right in the doorway, with his feet and legs inside the kitchen and the rest of him sprawled out on the porch, about three feet to one side of that meat block.”

“How was Mr. Morton lying?”

“On his back with his arms thrown wide. And I could hear the
death rattle in his throat, and I stood watching him for a minute, trying to figure out what I could do for him. I started trying to give him physical respiration, and he was growing weaker, but just then Dr. Ogburn arrived and took hold of his wrist to check his pulse. So I started looking on his head to see where he had struck it. But it was dark there on the porch, and I couldn’t find it.”

“What were Mrs. Morton and the defendant doing while this was going on?”

“Well, they were standing there hollering for us to do something. Then they left the porch and I said to Dr. Ogburn—”

The judge looked suddenly alert. “We object. Do not tell what you said to the doctor.”

The prosecutor said, “But, your honor, isn’t that conversation part of the
res gestae?
”

The judge addressed his reply to Junius Ryan. “Tell what you saw and did, and not what conversation passed between you and Dr. Ogburn.”

Carl made a note to ask somebody why the judge was making objections. He thought the lawyers did that, but the old gentleman on the bench seemed determined to keep a tight rein on the proceedings personally. He craned his neck to look at Erma Morton seated at the defense table. She was whispering to her attorney, but he did not think she seemed particularly moved by the witness’s account of her father’s dying moments. He made a note of it.

Junius Ryan took a moment to collect his thoughts, and then plowed back into his recital of the circumstances of Pollock Morton’s death. “Well, he was losing consciousness, but I revived him, but then he faded out again, and I couldn’t bring him back so much this time. He just kept getting weaker, and I stayed there with him until he died.”

“How long was that?”

“About fifteen minutes.”

“What time of night did all this begin?”

“Ten minutes past one. I looked at my bedroom clock.”

“And what time was it when Pollock Morton died?”

“Two-thirty.”

“And did you make any inquiries to the family about how the deceased came by his injuries?”

Again the judge interrupted. “We object to that question. Now if he posed the question in the presence of Erma, I’ll allow it. But not otherwise.”

The attorney nodded, and tried again. “Did you ask Mrs. Morton or Sarah Beth Morton how Pollock Morton fell or what caused him to do so?”

“I did not.”

“Well, you previously mentioned that you were told that he fell against this wooden butcher block. Did you look it over?”

“Yes, I did. Soon after Mr. Morton passed away.”

“And did you find any blood or hair on the meat block, or any sign that he had hit his head anywhere on it?”

“I found no such signs. But Erma said several times that he had fallen on it.”

“Did she explain how it happened?”

“No. But Mrs. Morton said that her husband was drunk, and that she had tried to get him into bed, but could not, and that he had started to go out of the house when he fell.”

“Was that the whole of her explanation?”

“That was it.”

“What about the racket you heard? Did they have an explanation for that?”

“I didn’t ask.”

“While you were there, Mr. Ryan, did you look around the house for any signs of blood?”

“I saw bloodstains on the floor of the kitchen and outside on the porch where he died.”

“Did you see his clothing anywhere?”

“No, sir. There was no sign of his shirt.”

“How long were you in the residence?”

“Well, about fifteen minutes up until he died, and another half an hour after that. I helped them lay him out.”

“Well, did you see a butcher knife anywhere around?”

“Not that I recall. But there was a coal axe. I mean, one of those short-handled axes that miners use. Mr. Morton was a miner, you know.”

This remark set off an audible reaction in the courtroom. A glare from the judge made the murmuring subside, and he nodded for the attorney to continue questioning the witness.

“Where did you see the axe?”

“On the porch, just after daybreak. It was lying about eight feet from where his body had been.”

“And did you find an axe or a hammer on the premises?”

“No. I hunted for one, but I didn’t find an axe or a hammer.”

“Mr. Morton was a miner. Did he also do carpentry work?”

“Well, he did. He was building a house for himself, and I know that he owned a hatchet.”

“And you searched the house for it?”

“Yes, in a cursory fashion, but I did not find it.”

“How close is the Morton house to the Pound River?”

“Right on the riverbank. The back of the house can’t be more than two feet from the water.”

The attorney nodded, turned to face the jury, and repeated thoughtfully, “Two feet from the water.”

Carl looked at his watch. Nearly noon. He had to get to Norton to meet Nora’s train. As if in answer to prayer, the judge adjourned the court for the lunch recess, and Carl slipped through the milling crowd and sprinted for the stairs.

There is no sign now of that famous pine.

—
MATSUO BASH

It doesn’t matter what we think, Shade. Trials are just opinion polls limited to twelve respondents.” In the hotel dining room, Rose Hanelon stirred her bowl of vegetable soup warily, bringing up little bits of potato or okra and studying them without favor. She had refused to consider crumbling a piece of cornbread into the mix as Shade had just done.

“Henry picks up his soup bowl and drinks from it, like they do in Japan,” she told him. “So you see what comes of trying to follow local customs in dining.”

Court was in recess for the lunch break, and the reporters had repaired to the hotel to discuss the morning testimony over a hot meal. Shade had sat in on the morning session, in order to gauge from the trial proceedings whose photograph he needed to take to augment the stories. The witness Junius Ryan was the obvious choice, but that gentleman had left the courtroom in the amiable company of some sheriff’s deputies, and he had staunchly refused to pose for a portrait in the hallway outside. Shade was thus forestalled but not deterred. After lunch he would go back to the courthouse and lurk in the hall until he caught Ryan either entering the courtroom or leaving it. The resulting photo of the witness would not be as well-crafted or as flattering as a posed shot would have been, but Shade didn’t think the reporters wanted Junius Ryan to look good anyhow.

He said, “Luster Swann has left town.”

Henry and Rose exchanged wary glances. Then Rose said lightly, “I knew I hadn’t seen him lurking around the courthouse. Did they ride him out on a rail for making advances to some local barmaid?”

“No. I ran into him at the train station yesterday. Said he’d had enough of this place, and he was going to cover the trial from Abingdon.”

Henry looked thoughtful. “How does he propose to file his stories, then?”

“Well, he says he has seen all he needs to, and that someone from here will keep him up to date by telephone.” Shade paused for a moment, waiting for them to condemn Swann’s behavior, but they only shrugged and went on eating.

After a few moments, Shade set down his roast pork sandwich and looked thoughtfully at Rose, who was wiping her butter-greased fingers on her napkin. “I realize that the jurors are the only people entitled to an opinion, like you said, but you have to admit that Mr. Ryan made things look pretty black for your damsel in distress.”

“How so?”

“Well, all that arguing that Ryan the neighbor claimed he overheard made me wonder what really happened that night. And he said he didn’t see any blood on the meat block. He also claimed that the dead man’s hatchet was missing. It made me think twice about the Morton women’s story.”