Juror #3 Read online

  Darrien Summers left the interview room without a backward look. As the door clicked shut behind him, I slammed the plastic telephone into its base. To the empty space, I announced:

  “I quit.”

  Chapter 5

  MY MAMA DIDN’T raise no quitter.

  I repeated the thought like a mantra the next morning as I rose from my sofa bed at the office, showered, and brushed my teeth. I pulled on jeans and a loose sweater. I was heading back to the jail for another shot with Darrien Summers, and I figured I might as well be comfortable. My courtroom suit hadn’t impressed my new client the previous afternoon.

  No quitter no quitter no quitter.

  If the sun had been shining, I might have headed straight for the jail. But it was gray and overcast, with a blustery wind. A cup of coffee would give me a lift, and I hadn’t had a drop that morning. The Maxwell House can at my office was empty.

  A diner sat on the south side of the square, around the corner from my office. As I hurried down the sidewalk, I checked out the exterior to make sure it was open for business.

  A neon sign sparkled in vintage glory, blinking an outline of a pan of eggs and bacon in yellow and hot pink. Above the blinking pan, SHORTY’S was spelled out in sparkling white bulbs.

  A brass bell hanging from the door jingled to announce my entry. I’d only frequented Shorty’s diner a few times since I’d moved to town. In the storage room behind my office, I had a microwave, a hot plate, and an ancient refrigerator; since I was counting pennies, I made do.

  I surveyed the booths, upholstered in bright orange vinyl, but since I was eating alone, I sidled up to the counter and sat on an old-fashioned bar stool.

  I swiveled on the stool like a schoolkid, taking in the surroundings. A waitress delivered a breakfast plate to a man down the counter from me: pigs in a blanket. Steam rose from the pancakes.

  Oh, Lord, have mercy.

  A man wearing a white apron walked up with a mug and a coffeepot. “Coffee, ma’am?”

  “Yes, please.”

  As he poured, I stared at the apron. Over his heart, in bold black stitches, it read SHORTY. I’d swear he was six foot four. I snorted.

  He pointed an accusatory finger. “Just what are you laughing at, ma’am?”

  “I beg pardon, I don’t mean to laugh. It’s your apron.”

  “It’s clean.” He brushed the front of it, looking down. “What about my apron?”

  “It says Shorty.”

  He stood tall: six foot four, for certain. Extending his hand, he said, “Yes ma’am, it sure does. Shorty Morgan, damn glad to meet you.”

  I shook his hand. He squeezed it just right: a friendly grip, not too tight. “I’m Ruby. Ruby Bozarth.”

  “Ruby from the Ben Franklin!”

  “Yep, that’s me.”

  “Well, then, this is a special pleasure. That old dime store was sitting vacant for too long. Just looking at it made me blue. Everybody was awful glad to see the lights turned back on in there.”

  I nodded, stealing another glance at the breakfast plate nearby.

  “Ruby, you’re giving Jeb’s pancakes and sausage links the eye. You want me to order them up for you?”

  I checked the prices on the menu. “Short stack, please. Butter and syrup.”

  He wrote “SS” on a pad and disappeared into the kitchen. I sipped my coffee and pondered the best way to approach Darrien Summers.

  Shorty was back in a New York minute, carrying a steaming plate of pancakes. A magazine sat on the counter near me, a copy of Foreign Affairs. He nudged it out of the way to make room for the syrup pitcher.

  As I poured syrup on my pancakes, he marked a page inside the magazine with a paper napkin and set it beside the coffee station.

  “So you’re doing some light reading this morning?” I said. The pancakes were making me feel sociable.

  Shorty smiled. “Just trying to keep abreast of what’s going on in the world.”

  I was curious about his reading choice, but my fellow customer at the counter interrupted. “Shorty! Your coffee’s weak this morning!”

  “Jeb, hush your mouth.” He grabbed the pot and refilled the man’s mug.

  “Just look there. Like a cup of weak tea.”

  Jeb swung around on his stool and called to a dark-haired man sitting alone in one of the orange booths. “Hey, Troy? How you like the coffee today?”

  The lone diner looked up from a newspaper he’d been studying. He looked to be older than me—maybe in his thirties. A port-wine stain birthmark covered one side of his face.

  The man with the newspaper said, “I didn’t order any coffee.”

  His tone was so chilly, I’d swear it lowered the temperature of the diner by ten degrees.

  Jeb turned to me. “How about yours, honey?”

  I sipped my coffee and said, “I like it.” It was true. I didn’t care for those hip coffee places where baristas gave you the caffeine shakes with a single cup.

  Shorty set the pot on its coil and smiled at me. To Jeb, he said, “Hear that? A satisfied customer. And she’s a lawyer, so she knows what she’s talking about.”

  Feeling a little self-conscious, I dug into the pancakes. As I mopped up syrup with my last bite, Shorty refilled my coffee and asked, “How’s the murder case going?”

  I almost dropped my fork. “How did you know?”

  “Oh, come on, now. We get the courthouse crowd at lunch and dinner. You were the main topic of conversation yesterday.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” I said under my breath.

  “Hey, you’re famous now. So how’s it going?”

  “No comment. Attorney-client privilege.” I gave him a wink. Because he was really pretty cute. I dug into my wallet and pulled out some bills to pay the check. As he rang it up on the cash register, Shorty said, “You going over to the jail today?”

  I nodded. My counter companion, Jeb, shook his head. “Sure better hope it goes better for you than yesterday.”

  Oh, my God. Rosedale was a goldfish bowl. Even the man with the port-wine mark was staring at me; his scrutiny made me uncomfortable. I kept my mouth shut, but I must not have been wearing a poker face, because Shorty called to me as I walked away. “Come back for lunch. Bet you’ll have a whole new attitude by noon.”

  “That right?” I said over my shoulder.

  “I can feel it. And I have great gut instincts.”

  I laughed at that. It sounded like something I used to say, before I was tripped up by my own misguided instincts. As the bell on the door jingled over my head, Shorty called out.

  “Lunch is on the house, Ruby. You’re good for business. See you at noon.”

  “See you at noon,” Jeb echoed.

  I looked over my shoulder to reply. The port-wine man was smiling. But not in what you’d call a friendly way.

  Chapter 6

  BACK IN THE interview room at the county jail, an overhead vent blasted hot air at me. I pushed the sleeves of my sweater up past my elbows.

  The door on the other side of the cubicle opened. I tensed, waiting to see Darrien Summers’s reaction to my reappearance. I withheld the toothy grin I had displayed on my first visit.

  They repeated the procedures from the day before. The jailer unlocked Darrien’s cuffs. Darrien sat down in the chair. I picked up the phone receiver.

  As he stared through the glass, I wished I could see what was going on in his head. Though I itched to break the silence, I was determined to make him speak first.

  He picked up and said, “Yesterday, we had fourteen days to do this. Now we’re down to thirteen.”

  In a guarded tone, I said, “That’s right.”

  “How can a woman who doesn’t know what she’s doing handle my defense?”

  I bristled, though the question was justified. “How do you know I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  Darrien smiled—a beautiful smile, though there was no humor in it. “You know what the inmates are calling you in lockup? Jailtime Ruby. S
ome of them are calling you Execution Ruby. Have you heard that?”

  The revelation made me want to wince, but I kept a dogged face. “Why’d you try to punch out your last lawyer?”

  His cynical expression slipped away, replaced by anger. “They brought me into court to see that dude—the public defender. I’d met him, what? Like, twice before? He says he’s got a deal for me, I’m going to plead guilty to capital murder, get life without parole.”

  I listened. Kept my mouth shut.

  Darrien gripped the receiver and edged closer to the glass panel. “I told him—like I’d told him before—I didn’t do it. He said he was trying to save my life.”

  At that, he paused.

  “Then what?” I asked.

  “He said it was a done deal. I’d plead or they’d convict me, give me the death penalty. Because of the pictures. The fucking pictures.” His voice cracked, and I was struck by how young he looked at that moment. Barely old enough to buy a six-pack of beer.

  “I lost it. I swung at him. I didn’t hurt him. If I’d wanted to hurt him, I could’ve. But I’m not like that.”

  I locked eyes with him as I spoke into the phone. “I don’t know what they call me at the jail, and I don’t give a shit. But here’s one thing I promise: I’d never advise a client of mine to plead to a crime he didn’t commit.”

  He breathed out. It sounded like a sigh.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. That’s a start.”

  I uncapped my pen. “I’ve got the prosecutor’s file; I know their point of view on the case. I need to hear from you. What happened that night?”

  He started at the beginning: the Mardi Gras ball, the masked country club members, the party that lingered on into the night. Jewel Shaw was there, wearing a glittery green mask with purple feathers. Though she ignored him in the early part of the evening, she started giving him the eye and flirting as the party dragged on.

  “You had a relationship with Jewel; I’m aware of that. I saw the pictures. How long had it been going on?”

  They had kept it secret, he told me. He would have been fired for certain, might have faced worse consequences. “Things haven’t changed all that much in Mississippi. You know that.”

  I nodded.

  “Me and Jewel, we got together whenever she felt like it. Almost always at the club. The first time, we were in the women’s restroom.”

  “When was that?”

  He stared off to the side as he tried to remember. “Six months ago, maybe? I’d been working at the club for a while, couple of months.”

  “Were your meetings always at the club?”

  “Sure. What were we going to do, walk into a movie together? In February, when it warmed up some, we started going to her daddy’s cabana by the pool. More private.” He grimaced, then said in a defensive tone, “It was casual. Just a woman having fun. I didn’t mind.”

  Oh, my Lord. There was in fact a sexual harassment angle to the tale, but I didn’t think I could sell it to a Mississippi jury.

  “So the relationship was casual—you mean, it was strictly physical? Not a romance?”

  “A romance? No, nothing like that. You don’t think she wanted to end up with me? Take me home to the family? That’s crazy.”

  “But it was her idea? For you to hook up?”

  “Always. I never pushed it. Shit—never.”

  I was still trying to get my head around their dynamic; they were a mismatched pair, for sure, by Mississippi standards. “So she wanted sex. Okay—what was in it for you?”

  He gave me a look of disbelief. “Have you seen what she looked like?”

  I had. In her lifetime, she was a 9.5, at least.

  “And she had that charm thing going on. You know.”

  I knew what he was talking about. I’d been taken in by the “charm thing,” too.

  I asked: “So how’d you end up in the cabana the night of the Mardi Gras ball?”

  “She texted me. I asked to go on break. Once I got into the cabana and saw her lying there, I thought maybe she was drunk.”

  “Was that a possibility?”

  “Oh, yeah. But then I got closer. And I saw the blood.”

  I made a note; the blood was an issue we would have to tackle. “There was blood on you: on your jacket, your face, your hands. How’d it get there?”

  “When I listened to her chest, I guess. I was flipped out. But I tried CPR. I tried to help her, I swear I did.”

  “And then security came to the cabana?”

  He whispered: “Shit.” Then he said, “Yeah. They surely did.”

  I skimmed the sheriff’s report again. “There’s no record of any statement from you. What did you say to the police? Or to security?”

  Darrien laughed, displaying the humorless smile again. “I’m a black man in Mississippi. I’ve got nothing to say to the police.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “Miranda v. Arizona.”

  I stared through the glass at him, surprised that he knew the “right to remain silent” case name.

  “So you’ve heard of the Miranda case.”

  “I’ve read it.”

  I sat back in my chair. “Really.”

  “Yeah, I wrote a paper on it at Arkansas State. I was a criminology major.” He paused before adding, “Before they took the scholarship away.”

  I pulled the mug shot of Darrien Summers from my file and studied his battered face. Holding the picture up against the pane of security glass, I asked, “Who did this to you?”

  His jaw twitched. “Owens, the club manager. At the club, when Owens and his security goons found me with Jewel’s body.”

  Observing my client through the glass, I was glad I’d slept on it, that I’d come back to give it another shot. Because I really did believe him.

  He was wearing jail scrubs. Since we were counting down to trial, I needed to address a practical concern. “When you go to court, I want you dressed like you’re going to church on Sunday. Who should I contact to get your clothes? You need a suit.”

  “My daddy lives here in town; he’s got my clothes and stuff. But I don’t have any kind of suit jacket, nothing like that. The only jacket I own is my white waiter’s coat.”

  I made a note of that. It wasn’t necessary to add that I knew where his waiter’s jacket could be found. It was in the evidence room of the sheriff’s office, covered in blood. State’s Exhibit 1.

  We talked a while longer; I wanted to know names of people who might testify for the defense. At length, the short jailer appeared to escort Darrien back to his cell. He shackled him and walked him through the door. I wrapped up my interview notes, jotting down some final thoughts. As I stood up, a tap on the glass startled me. I saw the jailer holding the phone receiver on the other side of the glass.

  I picked up, confused. “What?”

  The jailer’s voice drawled into my ear. “I went to high school with Jewel.”

  I backed away a step, even though the glass separated us. “That right?”

  “A lot of people around here set store by the Shaw family. Lot of people wonder why that boy should even get a trial.”

  I gave him my best tough-girl face. “Are you one of those people? Maybe I should let the sheriff know.”

  He hung up the phone and walked away with a nasty smirk. When I put the receiver in place, my hand was shaking. I hoped he didn’t see it.

  Chapter 7

  BACK AT MY office, I sat at my desk, picking at a loose strip of plywood on the desktop while I stared at my phone.

  I picked the phone up, dialed the Jackson area code. Put it down again.

  I’d sworn that I would never again dial Lee Greene’s number. But here I sat, preparing to push those numbers once again.

  If there was any other option, I’d gladly pursue it. But I had to provide a suit for my client to wear at trial. A man who faced a jury in his inmate garb sent a clear message: I’m guilty. Convict me. Send me up the river.

  My ex, Lee
Greene Jr., was a clotheshorse—a trait of which he was supremely proud. And he was tall, about the same height as Darrien Summers.

  I swallowed my pride and dialed. As I punched the numbers, it occurred to me that Lee might well refuse to talk to me.

  But he answered. When I heard the sound of Lee’s voice in my ear, my teeth clenched so hard it almost locked my jaw.

  He said, “Can it be? Is this really Ruby?”

  He was laughing. It rankled. I kept my cool and answered in a polite voice.

  “It’s me. How you doing, Lee?”

  “It’s really you. When I saw your number on the screen, I thought I was hallucinating. Because the last time I saw you, Ruby, you bitchslapped me. Threw a diamond at my head. Then you said you’d never speak to me again.”

  Pressing the phone to my ear, I held my tongue. The conversation wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped.

  “Do you recall that? Ruby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You said—this is a quote—‘I’ll never speak to you again.’”

  I waited to see whether he wanted to unload some more. After all, I was calling to beg a favor.

  “Ruby? You still there?”

  “Right here.”

  “Well, damn. This is a red-letter day. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  I bit the bullet. “Lee, you know you’re the best-dressed man in Mississippi.”

  Grease the pig.

  “That’s true,” he said, his voice dripping self-satisfaction.

  “And I’m over here in Williams County, doing a solo practice. I’ve got a case going to trial really soon. My client is a young man, and I’ve just got to get him into a suit. I wondered, you know—could I maybe use one of your castoffs? Something you don’t wear anymore?”

  Now the phone was silent on his end.

  I said, “It would be a real kindness on your part, Lee. An act of charity.” To lighten the tone, I added, “You’d be racking up points in heaven.”

  In a suspicious voice, he said, “What kind of clientele are you representing? What man can’t put clothes on his back? Oh, my God, don’t tell me—is this a criminal case?”