Why this is allowed as testimony in a capital murder case is thoroughly inconceivable. It is ridiculous and borders on stupidity. Assuming there is a conviction, all of this crap will be reviewed in about two years by a dispassionate appellate court two hundred miles away. Those judges, only slightly more intelligent than Kaufman but anything is an improvement, will take a dim view of this redneck preacher telling his trumped-up story about an altercation that supposedly took place some thirteen months before the murders.

I object. Overruled. I object, angrily. I’m overruled, angrily.

Huver, though, is desperate to keep Satan involved in his theory of the case. Judge Kaufman opened the gates days ago and anything is welcome. However, he’ll slam them as soon as I start calling witnesses. We’ll be lucky to get a hundred words into the record.

The preacher has an unpaid tax bill in another state. He doesn’t know I’ve found it, and thus we’ll have some fun on cross-examination. Not that it will matter; it will not. This jury is done. Gardy is a monster who deserves to go to hell. Their job is to speed him along.

He leans over long enough to whisper, “Mr. Rudd, I swear I’ve never been to church.”

I nod and smile because this is all I can do. A defense lawyer cannot always believe his clients, but when Gardy says he’s never been to church, I believe him.

The preacher has a temper and I soon stoke it. I use the unpaid tax bill to really irritate him, and once he’s pissed he stays that way. I lead him into arguments over the inerrancy of scripture, the Trinity, the apocalypse, speaking in tongues, playing with snakes, drinking poison, and the pervasiveness of satanic cults in the Milo area. Huver yells objections and Kaufman sustains them. At one point the preacher, pious and red-faced, closes his eyes and raises both hands as high as possible. Instinctively, I freeze and cower and look at the ceiling as if a lightning bolt is coming. Later, he calls me an atheist and says I’m going to hell.

“So you have the authority to send folks to hell?” I fire back.

“God tells me you’re going to hell.”

“Then put Him on the loudspeaker so we can all hear.”

Two jurors actually chuckle at this. Kaufman has had enough. He raps the gavel and calls for lunch. We’ve wasted the morning with this sanctimonious little prick and his bogus testimony, but he’s not the first local to wedge himself into the trial. The town is filled with wannabe heroes.

4.

Lunch is always a treat. Since it’s not safe to leave the courthouse, actually the courtroom itself, Gardy and I eat a sandwich by ourselves at the defense table. It’s the same box lunch fed to the jurors. They bring in sixteen of them, mix them up, draw ours at random, and take the rest to the jury room. This was my idea because I prefer not to be poisoned. Gardy has no clue; he’s just hungry. He says the food at the jail is what you’d expect and he doesn’t trust the guards. He eats nothing there, and since he’s surviving only on lunch, I asked Judge Kaufman if the county could perhaps double up and give the boy two rubber chicken sandwiches, with extra chips and another pickle. In other words, two box lunches instead of one. Denied.

So Gardy gets half of my sandwich and all of my kosher dill. If I weren’t starving, he could have the entire box of crap.

Partner comes and goes throughout the day. He’s afraid to leave our van in one spot due to the high probability of slashed tires and cracked windows. He also has a few responsibilities, one of which is to meet occasionally with the Bishop.

In these cases where I’m called into a combat zone, into a small town that has already closed ranks and is ready to kill one of its own for some heinous crime, it takes a while to find a contact. This contact is always another lawyer, a local who also defends criminals and butts heads weekly with the police and prosecutors. This contact reaches out eventually, quietly, afraid of being exposed as a traitor. He knows the truth, or something close to it. He knows the players, the bad actors, and the occasional good one. Since his survival depends on getting along with the cops and court clerks and assistant prosecutors, he knows the system.

In Gardy’s case, my deep-throated pal is Jimmy Bressup. We call him the Bishop. I’ve never met him. He works through Partner and they meet in strange places. Partner says he’s about sixty with long, thinning gray hair, bad clothes, a loud, foul mouth, an abrasive nature, and a weakness for the bottle. “An older version of me?” I asked. “Not quite,” came the wise reply. For all his bluster and big talk, the Bishop is afraid of getting too close to Gardy’s lawyers.

The Bishop says Huver and his gang know by now they’ve got the wrong guy but have too much invested to stop and admit their mistakes. He says there have been whispers from day one about the real killer.

5.

It’s Friday and everyone in the courtroom is exhausted. I spend an hour haranguing a pimply, stupid little brat who claims he was at the same church service when Gardy called forth the demons and disrupted things. Honestly, I’ve seen the worst of bogus courtroom evidence, but I’ve never seen anything as bad as this. In addition to being false, it is wholly irrelevant. No other prosecutor would bother with it. No other judge would admit it. Kaufman finally announces an adjournment for the weekend.

Gardy and I meet in the holding room, where he changes into his jail uniform while I offer banalities about having a good weekend. I give him ten bucks for the vending machines. He says tomorrow his mother will bring him lemon cookies, his favorite. Sometimes the guards pass them through; sometimes they keep them for their own nourishment. One never knows. The guards average three hundred pounds each, so I guess they need the stolen calories. I tell Gardy to take a shower over the weekend and wash his hair.

He says, “Mr. Rudd, if I find a razor, I’m gone.” With an index finger, he does a slashing motion against his wrist.

“Don’t say that, Gardy.” He’s said it before and he means it. The kid has nothing to live for and he’s smart enough to see what’s coming. Hell, a blind man could see it. We shake hands and I hurry down the back steps. Partner and the deputies meet me at the rear door and shove me into our vehicle. Another safe exit.

Outside Milo, I begin to nod and soon fall asleep. Ten minutes later, my phone vibrates and I answer it. We follow the state trooper back to our motel, where we grab our luggage and check out. Soon we are alone and headed for the City.

“Did you see the Bishop?” I ask Partner.

“Oh yes. It’s Friday, and I think he starts drinking around noon on Friday. But beer only, he’s quick to point out. So I bought a six-pack and we drove around. The joint is a real dive, out east, just beyond the city limits. He says Peeley is a regular.”

“So you’ve had a few beers already? Should I be driving?”

“Only one, boss. I sipped it until it was warm. The Bishop, on the other hand, took his cold. Three of them.”

“And we believe this guy?”

“I’m just doing my job. On the one hand, he has credibility because he’s lived here all his life and knows everyone. On the other, he’s so full of crap you want to dismiss everything he says.”

“We’ll see.” I close my eyes and try to nap. Sleep is virtually impossible in the midst of a capital murder trial, and I’ve learned to grab it whenever possible. I’ve stolen ten minutes on a hard bench in an empty courtroom during lunch, just as I’ve paced back and forth in a dingy motel room at three in the morning. I often black out in mid-sentence when Partner drives and the van hums along.