A Time for Mercy

13

Thursday lunch meant a quick visit to the school’s cafeteria where parents were invited to grab a tray and for two dollars dine on either grilled chicken tenders or spaghetti and meatballs. It was not one of Jake’s favorite meals of the week, but food was not important since he got to sit with Hanna and a gaggle of her fourth-grade girlfriends. As the weeks passed, and as they grew, he was dismayed to learn that they spent more time talking about boys. He was scheming of ways to put a stop to it but so far had thought of nothing. Carla usually dropped by for a quick chat, but her sixth graders were on a different schedule.

Mandy Baker’s mother, Helen, was an occasional guest and Jake knew the family, though they would never be close. They sat across from each other on the low stools and listened with amusement as the girls all talked at once. After a few moments the girls forgot their parents were there and ramped up the chatter. When they were thoroughly preoccupied, Helen said, “I just can’t believe that about Stuart Kofer, can you?”

“Such a tragedy,” Jake said as he chewed on some chicken. Helen’s husband’s family owned a string of self-service gas stations and were rumored to be doing well. They lived at the country club and Jake avoided most of the people out there. They put on airs and enjoyed looking down and he had no patience with them.

Helen did the lunch once a month, and Jake assumed she had chosen this day to say what she was about to say. So, when she said it, he was prepared. Leaning in a bit lower, she said, “I can’t believe you would represent a killer like that, Jake. I thought you were one of us.”

Or, he thought he was prepared. The “one of us” caught him off guard and instantly brought to mind several stinging and snappy retorts that would only make things worse. He let them pass and said, “Gotta have a lawyer, Helen. You can’t put the boy in the gas chamber if he doesn’t have a lawyer. Surely you understand that.”

“Oh, I guess. But there are so many lawyers around here. Why do you have to get involved?”

“Who would you choose, Helen?”

“Oh, I don’t know. What about some of those ACLU types in Memphis or even down in Jackson. You know, the real bleeding hearts. I can’t imagine doing that for a living, representing killers and child rapists and such.”

“How often do you read the Constitution?” he asked, a bit sharper than he had intended.

“Oh, come on, Jake. Don’t give me all that legal mess.”

“No, Helen, the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, says that a person accused of a serious crime must have a lawyer. And that’s the law of the land.”

“I suppose. I just don’t understand why you’re involved.”

Jake bit his tongue to keep from reminding her that neither she nor her husband nor anyone in their families had ever sought his advice or legal services. Why, then, was she now so concerned about his practice?

She was just a gossip who could now boast to her friends that she had bumped into Jake Brigance and dressed him down in public for representing such a despicable killer. She would no doubt expand the story, lunch on it for the next month, and gain the admiration of her friends.

Thankfully, Carla appeared and eased into the child’s chair next to Jake. She greeted Helen warmly and asked how her Aunt Euna was doing since her fall. The murder was instantly forgotten as the conversation moved to the upcoming fourth-grade talent show.

With her jaws wired together, Josie found it impossible to chew food, so her last lunch at the hospital was another chocolate milkshake through a straw. After which she was required to sit in a wheelchair as they rolled her out of the room and down the hallway. Eventually, she and Kiera and two orderlies exited through the front door and got into the car of Mrs. Carol Huff, who had volunteered to do the driving because she owned a four-door Pontiac. Pastor Charles McGarry and his wife, Meg, were there for the release, and they followed Mrs. Huff in their little import out of Tupelo and back to Ford County.

The Good Shepherd Bible Church had a narrow sanctuary that was pretty and timeless. Years after it was built, one of the many congregations added a two-story wing across the back, a less than handsome annex with classrooms for Sunday school upstairs and a small fellowship hall and kitchen on the first floor, next to the office where Pastor McGarry prepared his sermons and counseled his flock. He had decided that the church would offer the use of a classroom to Josie and Kiera as a short-term apartment, with access to the downstairs toilet and the kitchen. He and the deacons had met three times in extra sessions since Monday to try to find a place for the family, and a classroom in the back of the church was the best they could do. One member owned a rental home that might be available in a month or so, but that member also relied upon the income from it. A farmer had a barn/guesthouse but it needed some work. There was the offer of a camper, but McGarry waved it off. Josie and the kids had recently survived a year in one.

The church had no wealthy people, the type who owned multiple homes. Its members were retirees, small farmers, middle-class working folks who were doing well to scrape by themselves. Other than love and warm food, they had little to offer.

Josie and Kiera had no other place to go and no family to turn to. Leaving the area was out of the question because of Drew and his problems. Josie did not have a bank account and had been surviving on limited cash for several years. Kofer had demanded two hundred dollars a month for rent and food, and she had always been in arrears. The original arrangement had been based on plenty of sex and companionship in exchange for food and shelter, but the intimacy had not lasted long. She had no credit cards and no credit history. Her last paycheck from the car wash was for $51 and a convenience store owed her $40 more. She was not sure how to collect and not even sure if she still had the job there, though she was assuming the worst. At least two of her three part-time jobs were gone, and her doctor said she could not look for work for at least two weeks. There were relatives in south Mississippi and Louisiana but they had stopped taking her calls years earlier.

Charles showed them to their new quarters. The air was thick with the smell of freshly cut wood and new paint. Shelving had been installed above the bunk beds, and a portable television was on a bottom shelf. There was a rug on the floor and a fan in the window. The closet was filled with hand-me-down shirts, pants, jeans, blouses, and two jackets that the church had collected, cleaned, and pressed. There was a small refrigerator, already stocked with cold water and fruit juice. In a cheap chest of drawers there were new undergarments, socks, T-shirts, and pajamas.

Downstairs in the kitchen, Mrs. Huff showed them the larger refrigerator, filled with food and bottles of water and tea, all at their disposal. She showed them the coffeepot and filters. Charles gave Josie a key to the rear doors and invited her and Kiera to try to make themselves at home. The deacons had decided that two or three men would make the rounds each night and make sure they were safe. The ladies had put together a meal schedule for the next week. A retired schoolteacher named Mrs. Golden had volunteered to tutor Kiera in the church several hours a day until she caught up, and until they, whoever “they” might be, made the decision about her returning to school. Half the deacons thought she should return to the junior high in Clanton. The other half believed that would be too traumatic and that she should be homeschooled in the church. Josie had not yet been consulted.

Mrs. Golden used her contacts at the school to obtain a set of replacement textbooks for Kiera. The others had either been burned by Earl Kofer, as he claimed, or they were in the house and could not be retrieved. New ones would be required. Kiera was in the eighth grade, a year behind where she should be, and was still struggling to keep up with her classmates. Her teachers considered her bright, but with her chaotic family and unstable past she had missed too many days of school.

Drew was in the ninth grade, two years behind, and not gaining momentum. He loathed being the oldest kid in his class and often refused to reveal his real age. He didn’t realize his luck in arriving late to puberty and looking no older than the other boys. Mrs. Golden had gone to the high school and talked to the principal about Drew’s academic quandary. Obviously, he couldn’t take classes from the jail, nor did the school have a tutor on its payroll. Any efforts to intervene would take a court order. They decided to let the lawyers worry about that. Mrs. Golden did notice the principal’s reluctance in doing anything that might help the defendant.

As they were leaving the church, Charles and Meg promised to pick up Josie and Kiera at nine the following morning for the trip to town. They needed to fetch their car, and they were desperate to see Drew.

Josie and Kiera thanked everyone profusely and said goodbye. They walked to a picnic table next to the cemetery and sat on it. Once again their little family was separated and one step away from being homeless. But for the goodness of others, they would be hungry and sleeping in the car.

Jake was sitting at his desk, staring at a stack of pink phone messages that Portia and Bev had taken that morning. So far that week he had spent about eighteen hours working on behalf of Drew Gamble. He rarely billed by the hour because his clients were working people and indigent defendants who couldn’t pay, whatever the bill, but he, like almost all lawyers, had learned the necessity of tracking his time.

Not long after Jake began to work for Lucien, a lawyer across the square, a likable guy named Mack Stafford, represented a teenager who’d been injured in an auto accident. The case wasn’t complicated and Mack didn’t bother recording his hours since his contract gave him a contingency of one-third. The insurance company agreed to settle for $120,000, and Mack was all set to walk off with a fee of $40,000, a rarity not only in Ford County but anywhere throughout the rural South. However, since the client was a minor the settlement had to be approved by the chancery court. Chancellor Reuben Atlee asked Mack in open court to justify such a generous fee for a rather straightforward case. Mack did not have a record of his hours and failed miserably in convincing the judge that he deserved the money. They haggled for a while and Atlee finally gave Mack a week to reconstruct his time sheets and submit them. By then, though, he was suspicious of the lawyer. Mack claimed he charged clients $100 an hour and that he had invested four hundred hours in the case. Both numbers were on the high side. Atlee cut them both in half and awarded Mack $20,000. He was so incensed he appealed to the state supreme court and lost 9–0 because the court had ruled for decades that sitting chancellors have unfettered discretion in just about everything. Mack finally took the money and never spoke to Judge Atlee again.

Five years later, in perhaps the most legendary act of criminal and ethical misconduct by a member of the local bar, Mack stole half a million dollars from four clients and skipped town. To Jake’s knowledge, not a single person, including Mack’s ex-wife and two daughters, had ever heard a word from him. On really bad days, Jake, as well as most lawyers in town, dreamed of being Mack and roasting on a beach somewhere with a cold drink.

At any rate, the local bar swallowed the lesson whole and most lawyers kept up with their hours. In the Smallwood lawsuit, Jake had worked over a thousand hours in the fourteen months since Harry Rex landed the case and associated him. That was almost half his time and he anticipated being well compensated for it. Drew’s case, though, could possibly eat up huge chunks of time with little in the way of fees. Another reason to get rid of it.

The phone rang again and Jake waited for someone else to answer it. It was almost 5:00 p.m., and for a moment he thought of joining Lucien downstairs for a drink, but let it pass. Carla frowned on drinking, especially on weekdays. So his thoughts moved from hard alcohol back to Mack Stafford sipping rum drinks, studying bikinis, far away from bitching clients and cranky judges and, oh well, there you go again.

Through the intercom, Portia said, “Hey, Jake, it’s Dr. Rooker in Tupelo.”

“Thanks.” Jake tossed the phone slips onto his desk and picked up the receiver. “Hello, Dr. Rooker. Thanks again for seeing Drew today.”

“It’s my job, Mr. Brigance. Are you near your fax machine?”

“I can be.”

“Good, I’m sending over a letter I’ve addressed to Judge Noose and copies to you. Give it a look and if you agree, I’ll send it to him in a moment.”

“Sounds urgent.”

“In my opinion, it is.”

Jake hustled downstairs and found Portia standing at the fax machine. The letter read:

Dear Judge Noose:

At the request of Mr. Jake Brigance, this afternoon I met and examined Drew Allen Gamble, age 16. He was brought to my office in Tupelo, in handcuffs, and wearing what appeared to be a standard orange jump suit issued by the Ford County Jail. In other words, he was not properly clothed and this was not an ideal way to begin a consultation. Everything I witnessed when he arrived suggested to me that the child is being treated like an adult and is presumed to be guilty.

I observed a teenaged boy who is frightfully small for his age and could easily pass for a child several years younger. I did not, nor was I expected to, examine him physically, but I saw no signs of stage three or stage four pubescent developments.

I observed the following, all of which are highly unusual for a sixteen-year-old: (1) little growth and no muscular development; (2) no sign of any facial hair; (3) no sign of acne; (4) a childlike voice with no deepening.

For the first hour of our two-hour visit, Drew was uncooperative and said little. Mr. Brigance had briefed me on some of his background, and using this I was finally able to engage Drew in conversation that can only be described as intermittent and strained. He was unable to grasp even the simplest concepts, such as being placed in jail and not being able to leave whenever he wants. He says that at times he remembers events, at times he forgets those same happenings. He asked me at least three times if Stuart Kofer was really dead, but I did not answer him. He became irritable and on two occasions told, not asked, me to “Shut up.” He was never aggressive or angry and often cried when he couldn’t answer a question. Twice he said he wished he could die and admits that he often thinks of suicide.

I learned that Drew and his sister have been neglected, physically abused, psychologically abused, and subjected to domestic violence. I cannot say, and do not know, all of the people responsible for this. He was simply not that forthcoming. I strongly suspect there has been a lot of abuse and Drew, and more than likely his sister too, has suffered at the hands of several people.

The sudden and/or violent loss of a loved one can trigger traumatic stress in children. Drew and his sister had been abused by Mr. Kofer. They thought, with good reason, that he had killed their mother, and that he was about to harm them, again. This is more than sufficient to trigger traumatic stress.

Trauma in children can bring about a variety of responses, including wide swings in emotions, bouts of depression, anxiety, fear, inability to eat or sleep, nightmares, slow academic progress, and many other problems which I will detail in my full report.

If left untreated, Drew will only regress and the damage can become permanent. The last place for him right now is a jail built for adults.

I strongly recommend that Drew be sent immediately to the state mental hospital at Whitfield, where there is a secure facility for juveniles, for a thorough examination and long-term treatment.

I will finish my report and fax it to you in the morning.

An hour later, Jake was still at his desk, ignoring the phone and wanting to go home. Portia, Lucien, and part-time Bev had already left. He heard the familiar rattle of the fax machine downstairs, and, glancing at his watch, wondered who was still working at five minutes after six on a Thursday evening. He grabbed his jacket and briefcase, turned off his light, and went down to the fax machine. It was a single sheet of paper with the official heading: Circuit Court of Ford County Mississippi. Just under was the style of the case: State of Mississippi v. Drew Allen Gamble. There was no file number because there had been no official appearance by the defendant and no indictment. Someone, probably Judge Noose himself, had typed: “The Court does hereby direct the Sheriff of Ford County to transport the above named defendant to the state mental hospital with all possible speed, preferably on Friday, March 30, 1990, and there to surrender his person to Mr. Rupert Easley, Director of Security, until further orders of this court. So Ordered, Signed, Judge Omar Noose.”

Jake smiled at the outcome and placed the order on Portia’s desk. He had done his job and protected the best interests of his client. He could almost hear the courthouse gossip, the rumblings at the coffee shops, the cursing among the deputies.

He told himself he didn’t care anymore.