Evidence of Blood (18 page)

If the arguments for and against the death of Charles Overton had ever existed in a concentrated form, Kinley knew he was about to confront them as he drew the transcripts down from the vault shelf the next morning. Early in his work, he’d discovered the high drama which inevitably accompanied even the most mediocre of the closing arguments in capital cases. With so much at stake, the arena of the courtroom became a place of mythic struggle. The petty disputes which rang through the court day after day suddenly gave way to a form of solemn combat a Roman Emperor would have admired—fierce, dedicated, and at times, as Kinley had noted more often than he would have expected, strikingly poetic, as if ordinary voices had suddenly been made glorious and eloquent by the grave issue upon which they spoke: whether or not a human being should be put to death.

Kinley had learned enough about Thomas Warfield’s courtroom style by the time he opened the trial transcript to his closing argument to expect a fine performance. He was not disappointed.

For many pages, Warfield did what nearly all prosecutors found it necessary to do before making their final plunge into the lofty moral rhetoric with which their closing arguments would truly close. He had outlined his case again, massing one detail upon another, until the evidence stood before the jury like a great concrete finger pointing
directly toward the defendant. Then, and only then, had he taken flight.

It was good, Kinley thought as he turned the page, it was very good. It had everything a rural Southern courtroom would have needed in the winter of 1954. It had the high rhetoric and righteous fire that gave the whole argument a fierce Biblical grandeur. And, as Kinley realized, it must have swept over the jury like a mighty stream. In his mind, he could see the jurors nodding sagely as Warfield made his long stride back to the prosecution table, their eyes following him in awe and wonder before they finally slid distractedly over to where Horace Talbott now rose to address them.

Warfield had fully anticipated defense’s argument in the case, but that anticipation had not served to warn Talbott against making it. And in his closing remarks, Talbott addressed the issue as relentlessly as if he’d never heard Warfield raise it.

It had been short and sweet, Kinley thought after reading Talbott’s closing remarks, but he had done all that was left for him to do by that point in the trial. Before that point, however, one considerably more important was so obvious that Kinley felt no need to jot it down: Why had Charles Overton not testified?

He remembered the passivity with which Overton had faced his arrest, and he wondered if such passivity might have been the result of a shock he was never able to overcome, a state he’d entered as the handcuffs were snapped in place, and which he’d lingered in from then until the moment he’d shuffled across the floor of the execution, still moving, it seemed to Kinley, like a sacrificial lamb. He’d seen that happen before, a strange, eerie calm after the wave of annihilating violence had passed. He thought of Bundy still filing his meticulous briefs during the final, dwindling hours of his life; of the Birdman of Alcatraz poring over volumes of ornithology; of Mildred Haskell’s psychosexual texts, and last of Colin Bright, so peaceful
in his captivity, monkish and serene, his soft blue eyes entirely motionless as he’d offered Kinley his bit of worldly wisdom:
Be careful. You don’t always know who you are
.

He returned the transcripts to the box, then the box to its place on the top shelf. On the way out, he stopped at Mrs. Hunter’s desk at the entrance to the vault.

“I wanted to thank you for letting me look through the transcripts,” he said politely.

“Oh, no trouble,” Mrs. Hunter said. She drew a pair of glasses from her eyes and let them dangle from a black cord around her neck. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Not exactly,” Kinley told her, “but I made a start.”

Mrs. Hunter smiled. “You know, I didn’t know who you were at first.”

Kinley looked at her quizzically. “Who I was?”

Mrs. Hunter shook her head shyly. “I mean, if you were the Jackson Kinley they write about in the paper sometimes.”

Kinley nodded.

“Then Mr. Warfield told me, and I remembered seeing your picture from time to time,” Mrs. Hunter added. “He said you came down for Ray Tindall’s funeral.”

“That’s right.”

“Wonderful person, Ray was.”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful person,” Mrs. Hunter repeated idly.

“Did you know him very well?”

“Not really. He kept to himself.”

“Yeah, he did.”

“I think he was sort of close with Mr. Wade, though.”

“Mr. Wade?”

“He’s the Chief Investigator for the District Attorney’s Office,” Mrs. Hunter said. “Ben Wade.”

Kinley recognized the name immediately. “Ben Wade,” he said. “Is he the same Ben Wade who worked for Sheriff Maddox back in 1954?”

“Yeah, he was with the Sheriff’s Office back then,” Mrs. Hunter said.

“And he’s still around the courthouse?”

“Right upstairs,” Mrs. Hunter said.

Kinley smiled quietly. It was one of the pleasures of working the rural outback, he thought, the fact that everything was so inextricably connected.

Ben Wade was now over sixty years old, but the large, robust body Kinley remembered from the newspaper photographs he’d found in Ray’s file on the case was still very much in evidence. He sat behind a small wooden desk in a cramped office just down the hall from William Warfield’s far more spacious one, and the blank walls and worn carpet suggested that he had little use, and no money, for the more luxurious taste of the District Attorney.

“You’re Ben Wade, I believe?” Kinley said as he lingered at the open office door.

Wade’s head lifted, and Kinley saw the web of red veins that lined his nose, and the moist, heavy-lidded eyes that peered gently in his direction, giving the unmistakable suggestion that a bottle of Old Grand-Dad could probably be found in his desk drawer.

“I’m Ben Wade,” the man said. He leaned back slightly and drew in a long slow breath. He wore a white shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, and Kinley could see a faint, purplish tattoo just above the right elbow, a sprig of vine coiled around a motto of some kind, but which he could not make out from his place beside the door.

“What can I do for you?” Wade asked.

“My name is Jack Kinley,” Kinley began. “I was a friend of Ray Tindall’s.”

Wade nodded. “Good man, Ray. I liked working with him. I thought he might try to play the big shot, having been Sheriff before and all, but he didn’t.” He nodded
toward a second wooden desk which was in the opposite corner of the room. “That’s where he worked, in case you’re interested.”

Kinley’s eyes swept over to the desk. It was almost a duplicate of Wade’s, and just as marked by age and indifferent use, honed down to its function, the way Ray had often seemed honed down.

“Ray sort of kept to himself,” Wade said, “but we got along pretty well.”

Kinley returned his attention to Wade. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” he asked.

“Questions?” Wade said, surprised. “About what?”

“Just about Ray,” Kinley answered. “What he was doing the last few weeks of his life.”

“Sure, I got some time,” he said. “But I didn’t follow what Ray was doing all that close.”

Kinley walked further into the room and sat down at the small metal chair in front of Wade’s desk. “I’ve been reading the transcript of the Overton trial,” he said. “You remember it, back in 1954?”

Wade nodded, his face very still. “Yeah, I remember it,” he said. “We don’t have so many murder trials here in Sequoyah that you don’t remember them.”

“You must have been a young man when all that was going on,” Kinley said.

“I’d just turned thirty,” Wade said, “but I’d been around for a while by then.” His eyes narrowed somewhat. “How come you’re looking into that old case?”