Baby, Would I Lie?

41

Judge Quigley decided to end the court day with Warren’s announcement that the defense would rest, so the summations would be given by both sides on Wednesday, giving everybody one more night to think it over.

Then Wednesday arrived.

Fred Heffner, in his summation, quoted the lyrics of “My Ideal” — all of them. A little later, he quoted parts of it again. He talked about Ray’s car, found in front of Ray’s house, stained with Belle Hardwick’s blood. He talked about depravity. He talked about rootless show-business people. He talked about Belle Hardwick as a God-fearing working person with a history in this community, a person about whom no one had found one unkind thing to say. He talked about Belle Hardwick trying to fend off the unwanted advances of a brutal and no doubt drunken suitor. He talked about that suitor having the arrogance of fame, show-business fame, leading him to believe he could have whatever he wanted in this world, that he was too important to be denied and that, in any case, he could get away with anything. Heffner talked about that suitor’s increasing fury at Belle Hardwick’s refusal to give in to his lust, a fury that had at last turned murderous. He asked the ladies and gentlemen of the jury to consider just who that suitor might have been. Who else could it have been? Who else had the qualities of depravity, rootlessness, arrogance, social apathy, and disregard for convention that had led to the assault on Belle Hardwick and then her murder? “Ladies and gentlemen, you see him before you, seated at the defense table. If you see anyone else, in or out of this courtroom, anyone at all who might have been responsible for this depraved and wanton destruction of a young woman’s life, then that is reasonable doubt and you must find this fellow innocent. But if he is the only one you see, the only one who might have done it, the only one who could have done it, the only one whose failings of character made such an outcome even possible, then there is no reasonable doubt, is there? Of course, there isn’t. Raymond Jones is a murderer, a foul, foul murderer, and it is your duty, your privilege and your duty, to see that he is put away in such a fashion that he will never never never be in a position to wantonly attack anyone else’s daughter. Your daughter. Or mine.”

Heffner, finished, moved toward the prosecution table, and Ray called out to him on his way by, “If Belle Hardwick was a saint, I’m the Pope.”

Heffner gave Ray a small gratified smile and went on to his seat as the jury box turned into an iceberg, from which twenty-eight horrified eyes stared at Ray Jones. And Warren Thurbridge, with the longest and most heartfelt sigh of his career, rose and approached the iceberg. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he said into the cold gale-wind force of their disapproval, “Belle Hardwick is not on trial here today. Her trials are over, poor lady. Ray Jones is on trial here, and I am in the unhappy position of being his defense attorney.”

Warren sighed again. He had at least diverted the jury’s attention from Ray to himself. He said, “My client, as you may have noticed, is an idiot. He has these moments of seeming rationality, when you almost think you can depend on him to have at least some small sense of self-preservation, but then he does it again. Foot-in-mouth disease.”

No one laughed; no one even smiled — not that he’d expected much jollity out here. He said, “After his last outburst, Ray apologized to the court, and to you, ladies and gentlemen. He described himself as ‘weak,’ and I guess that must be accurate. Ray is an artist, as you know, a singer and a songwriter, as well as a businessman operating his own theater over in Branson. The businessman side of him makes him sensible at times, but I’m afraid the artistic side is what you might call dominant in Ray Jones’s personality.”

Warren walked away from the jury to gaze down gloomily upon his client, who scowled back, not liking to be called an idiot, and liking even less to be called somebody who was an idiot because he was an artist. Warren didn’t much care what expression was on Ray’s face. He looked at it a while, then looked back at the jury and said, “If you’re looking for a fool, I have one for you right here. If you’re looking for a loudmouth, here he is. If you’re looking for a self-destructive buffoon, I’ve got the guy. But.”

Warren left Ray and moved again toward the jury. “But,” he said. “If you’re looking for a killer, look again. I don’t know who killed Belle Hardwick, and neither do you and neither do the police and neither does my friend Fred Heffner. The evidence they have against Ray doesn’t exist. A car with the keys in it. You could have taken that car. The victim knew Ray Jones. The victim knew hundreds of people. Where are the eyewitnesses? Where are the people who saw Belle Hardwick and Ray Jones get into that car together? Nowhere, and believe me, the police searched for an eyewitness to that event, and they came up with nobody, because Ray Jones and Belle Hardwick did not get into that car together that night.”

Warren went over to the witness box and leaned on the rail there. Gesturing at the empty witness chair, he said, “Where are the experts to testify as to the blood found in Ray’s house, or on his clothing? You didn’t see such experts. Do you think that means no such experts were employed by the state in their efforts to pin this terrible crime on Ray Jones? Of course, those experts were there. They went over Ray’s house with the latest scientific equipment. They took his clothing away to their laboratories. They used sniffer dogs on his property, looking for evidence Ray might have buried. And what did they find?”

Warren turned and looked at the empty witness chair. He appeared to be listening. Then he turned back to the jury, spread his hands wide, and shrugged. “Nothing. Believe me, ladies and gentlemen, if the state’s experts had found anything at all to bolster their miserable case against Ray Jones, they would have been in this chair, testifying under oath. Their absence testifies, too. It testifies to Ray Jones’s innocence.”

Warren moved away from the witness chair. “An idiot,” he told the jury, “but an innocent idiot. So why did the police and the prosecutors and the whole mighty array of law enforcement press so exclusively on Ray Jones? Well, didn’t Mr. Heffner tell you why? Isn’t it because Ray Jones is a celebrity? Didn’t Mr. Heffner say so himself? Isn’t that why the hall out there is packed with reporters? Isn’t that why the television news all across this country shows Mr. Heffner’s face and Mr. Delray’s face every single night? If Belle Hardwick were murdered by some brutal anonymous drunk — and she was — where would be the television time for these gentlemen?”

Warren stopped his pacing and faced the jury flat-footed. “Ray Jones is not a murderer,” he said. “Ray Jones is a fool and a celebrity and an easy target for ambitious prosecutors, but don’t let yourselves be led astray. The prosecution has no case. If they had a case, they’d have showed it to you, and they didn’t. What did they show you? Eighteen-year-old song lyrics! Eighteen years old! That’s their case? Ladies and gentlemen, end this farce.”

Warren turned around and crossed to the defense table and took his seat, where Ray clapped him resoundingly on the back and announced, “That was terrific!”

Warren wheeled around, about to lose his patience for good and all, and found himself looking deep into the bright, innocent, mocking eyes of his unknowable client.

Innocent?