Grass Roots Page 4

  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 anything 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.

  4

  Will rapped on the glass partition that separated the sheriff’s office from the squad room. “Morning, Dan. 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.

  Will left the jail, got into his car, and followed Larry Moody’s directions to his house. It turned out to be a shell home, one of those bought as nothing more than four walls and a roof, then finished by the owner. The little place sat on a lot bare of grass, separated from the road by a deep drainage ditch. Will pulled his car onto the wide shoulder of the road, got out and crossed a crude footbridge over the ditch. He found the flowerpot, which contained the remnants of some dead plant, and the key, and let himself into the house.

  There was a surprising amount of furniture, most of it inexpensive and new-looking, packed into the small living room. There was a stacked stereo system in a rack against the wall, next to a large color television set and an expensive videotape recorder. The tiny dining room was given over to an elaborate weightlifting system. Judging from the amount of stuff in the house, and guessing at what the income of a furnace repairman must be, Will could see why Larry Moody couldn’t afford a lawyer. He must be in hock up to his ears, what with all this stuff and the van.

  Will stood for a moment, taking it all in. He was about to move toward the bedroom to collect Larry’s gear, when the front door suddenly opened, and he found himself facing a young woman.

  She stood stock-still, staring at him, s
urprised.

  Will was struck by how pretty—almost beautiful—she was. Her hair was even blonder than Larry’s, and he thought it must be her own color; her eyes were large and vividly blue; her nose was slight; and her lips were full and wide. She was no more than five feet four, but so well proportioned that she seemed taller. She was the first to speak.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her brow wrinkling. Her speech was firm and broadly accented, much like her boyfriend’s.

  “My name is Will Lee. I’m a lawyer, representing Larry Moody. I’m sorry if I startled you; Larry asked me to come here and pick up some things for him.” He stopped talking for a moment, but she didn’t speak. They stood, looking at each other. “You must be Charlene Joiner,” he said finally.

  “Yes,” she said. “Somebody came in the store a few minutes ago and said they’d heard Larry was in some kind of trouble. I got a ride home.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid he is. I’ve just come from the jail; the court has appointed me to represent him.” He stopped, unwilling to break the news to her.

  “Well,” she said, her voice rising slightly, “are you going to tell me what’s happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” Will stammered. “Look, you’d better come sit down for a minute.”

  She sat next to him on the sofa, facing him, clear-eyed, expressionless, as he told her about the charges against Larry. When he had finished, she stood up and shrugged off the parka she had been wearing. Beneath it was a yellow nylon smock with the MagiMart logo emblazoned upon it. “That’s crazy,” she said. “Larry wouldn’t kill anybody. What the hell is going on?” She unzipped the smock and threw it at a chair. When she turned back toward him she was wearing only a thin T-shirt, the bottom of which missed meeting her low-cut jeans by a good six inches, leaving an expanse of silky, lightly browned skin.

  Will was slightly rocked by the sight. Her breasts were full, and the nipples were hard, thrust lightly against the T-shirt. “Well, uh, we won’t know much more about the case until Monday morning, when the preliminary hearing will be held. I’d like you to come to that.” He tried to keep his breathing slow and steady.

  “Sure I will,” she said, sitting next to him on the sofa again.

  Involuntarily, he inched away from her. “As long as I’m here, I need to ask you some questions,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Whatever will help Larry.”

  “I should tell you that anything you say to me will be in confidence and can’t be used against Larry. Our conversation is privileged.”

  “Right,” she said, moving her tongue over her lower lip, in a motion that seemed astonishingly sensual to Will.

  He coughed into his fist and made an effort to compose himself. This girl’s presence was having the most unsettling effect on him. He crossed his legs and realized that he was becoming tumescent. He coughed again, then began questioning her about her movements on Thursday night.

  Her account of the evening matched Larry’s in every respect, except she said they had eaten ribs, instead of chicken. She did not, however, share Larry’s initial reticence in describing the later part of their evening. “After the movie,” she said, “we fucked.” She wrinkled her brow as if trying to be precise. “Two or three times.”

  Will nodded and swallowed. “I don’t want you to think I’m prying,” he said, “but is that something you and Larry do a lot of?”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Fucking? Oh, yeah. We like it. We’re good together.” She looked at him and smiled. “Why, Counselor, I’m embarrassing you.”

  “Not at all,” Will lied. “Ah, is there anything else you want to know about Larry’s case?”

  She questioned him briskly about the charges against Larry and what might happen to him. There was none of the deference that Larry had shown; she addressed Will as an equal, and her questions were intelligent and to the point. She seemed somehow older, more mature than Larry.

  When he had answered her, Will stood. “Well, I’d better get going. If you’ll put together a couple of changes of clothes and some shaving gear for Larry, I’ll drop them off at the jail.”

  “I’ll take it myself. I want to see him.”

  Will glanced at his watch. “It’s after visiting hours, I’m afraid. You can go by tomorrow, though, between two and five.”

  She disappeared into a bedroom, came back with a packed nylon duffel, and handed it to him.

  “They’ll search it,” Will said to her. “If there’s anything in here you don’t want them to see …”

  “No,” she said, then stuck out her hand. “Thank you, Will, for what you’re doing for Larry. Can I call you Will?”

  “Sure,” he said, taking her hand. It was warm and soft; her fingers were long and her grip firm. “The sheriff is holding Larry’s van for the moment. I may be able to get it released late next week. Larry wanted you to be able to use it. Call me if you have any other questions; I’m in the Delano phone book—the office is Lee and Lee. Home is W. H. Lee the Fourth.”

  She frowned, not letting go of his hand. “Is your father Billy Lee? The one who was governor?”

  “That’s right.” He took his hand back and put it in his pocket. It was damp.

  “Goodbye,” she said.

  Will left the house and got into his car with the duffel. “Jesus Christ!” he said aloud to himself. “No wonder Larry wants to get out of jail!” He drove off toward the square, trying not to think about Charlene Joiner.

  5

  Will entertained himself by driving back-country to the family farm, testing his memory on the network of little roads, most of them without signposts. Twenty minutes later, he turned onto the Raleigh road, and a moment later, the main house came into view. It was on the site where his great-great-grandfather had built, but the original frame farmhouse had burned in the 1930s.

  His father had returned in 1945 from service in the Army Air Corps, flying bombers out of England, and had brought back with him an Anglo-Irish bride. Patricia Worth-Newenam Lee had carried with her the original drawings of her Georgian family home in County Cork, and she had overseen the construction of a more than reasonable facsimile in the Southern countryside, built of brick, rather than the stone of the Irish house. The house was of a comfortable size, not quite grand, and it seemed as much at home on the red clay of Georgia as the original had on the green fields of Ireland.

  Will turned into the semicircular driveway, and, instead of continuing to the front door, went straight on toward a grove of trees on a little lake a couple of hundred yards behind the house. As he passed the house, a dog—a golden Labrador retriever—leapt from the back porch and tore after the car. Will slowed until the dog caught up with him, then laughed as the handsome animal raced alongside the car toward the trees.

  Will turned into a well-kept dirt track through the trees and came to his own house, a small, neat, angular cottage of stone and cedar. He had built it, with the help of two farmhands, the year he had joined his father in the law practice, when he was twenty-five. It sat in the copse, elevated a few feet from the ten-acre lake that his mother had designed and had constructed during the 1950s. Now the lake looked as though it had always been there.

  He got out of the car and was nearly knocked down by the flying dog. “Hey, Fred! How are you, old sport?” He knelt and let the animal lick his face and, gradually, calmed him. He got the luggage out of the back of the Wagoneer and gave Fred a briefcase to carry. The dog pranced about, proud of himself, and tried to bark, in spite of the handle in his mouth.

  Will trotted up the steps to the porch with the rest of his luggage, went into the house, and dumped everything on the bed. Fred came and put the briefcase carefully on the bed, too. “What a good boy!” He scratched the dog behind the ears and sniffed the air; Marie, half of the black couple who took care of his parents, had left something good in the house. He wandered through the book-cluttered living room to the kitchen, found a plate of fresh chocolate-chip cookies, helped himself, then went back to the b
edroom, munching, and unpacked. After a hot shower, he threw himself on the bed and dozed fitfully, stirring now and then to glimpse the sun sink into the lake.

  When he woke, he got into some clothes. The main house was run his mother’s way, and that meant a jacket and tie at dinner. Under a rising moon, with Fred running ahead, he walked through the trees and over the grassy expanse that separated the cottage from the main house. It was chilly, but not cold, an improvement over Washington, he thought.

  He entered the house and immediately ran into his father’s younger sister, Eloise, coming out of the kitchen. They embraced warmly.

  “You’ve lost some weight,” Ellie said. She had been widowed in World War II and had never remarried, still operating the ladies’ clothing store that her mother had started when Will’s grandfather had died. Now in her early seventies, she lived alone in Delano, but often came to dinner.

  “I’ve needed to.” Will laughed. “Anyway, they’ll put it back on me over Christmas, and if I know you, you’ll help.”

  Patricia Lee met her son at the library door and hugged him. At seventy, she was still a beautiful woman—tall, slender, and erect, though her auburn hair had mostly faded to white. She stood back and held Will’s face in her hands. “You look tired,” she said. “But then you always do when you come home from Washington.” Her accent had softened a bit over the past forty years, but there was still a distinct west British edge to it. When she was joking or angry, she lapsed into a County Cork brogue.

  Will’s father, Billy Lee, turned from his work at the cocktail cabinet concealed behind rows of leather book spines. “Hello, there, boy!” he half shouted. He came and embraced his son. Billy Lee was in his late seventies now, and in spite of a heart attack a year before, he looked and sounded ten years younger. His thick hair had gone entirely white, and Will reflected, not for the first time, that his father looked much more the part of senator than did Benjamin Carr. “Can I interest you in some bourbon whiskey?” he asked.