Bootlegger’s Daughter

Reid looked over at the lawyers’ bench and he rolled his eyes at Ambrose and me.

Judge Byrd finished writing and looked up. “Well, get on with it, Miss Johnson,” he told Tracy, fussily.

Some judges enjoy bossing brand-new ADAs and it’s not always a male/female thing, although the two years I’d worked in the DA’s office, there’d been this one white-haired little bastard who rode me like a dog fly, never lighting, always just out of swatting distance.

Tracy quickly finished her examination of Trooper Sanderson, and Reid’s cross-examination explored the possibility that he and the arresting trooper might have maybe, “unintentionally of course,” denied his client permission to call his lawyer.

“No, sir,” said Sanderson, displaying a copy of the Alcohol Influence Report form he’d filled out earlier and which Gilchrist had signed. “We go right down the list and when we got to ‘Is there anyone you now wish to notify?’ he said ‘No.’ ”

“But hadn’t he earlier asked to call his lawyer?”

“Not to my knowledge, sir,” Sanderson said blandly.

Even though Reid is my mother’s first cousin, he’s four years younger than me. He’s got the Stephenson good looks, too: tall, blond, melting blue eyes. When he wants to, he can look like a Wall Street broker; most of the time though, he tries to act like a good old country lawyer. He leaned back in his swivel chair and wheedled around every way he knew, but Sanderson sat up straight in the witness box and wouldn’t admit that Gilchrist had been denied any of his constitutional rights.

“No further questions,” Reid finally said.

“State rests, Your Honor,” said Tracy.

The jury looked at Reid expectantly, but Judge Byrd motioned to the bailiff. “Head ’em out, Mr. Faircloth.”

Eight women, three of them black, and four men, one black, stood up and followed the elderly bailiff out through the right rear door. I was interested to see that the one black man was James Greene, formerly a deputy on the town police force and now head of his own small security service.

Why in God’s name, I wondered, had Reid left him on the jury? I could tell it was likely to be after lunch before the court would get to Luellen’s case, but a freezing rain was falling outside and there was nowhere else I needed to be right then, so I settled back on the bench.

When the door closed behind the last juror, Judge Byrd called for motions and Reid asked for dismissal for lack of evidence. I’d come in late, so I couldn’t tell if there was merit to what would be an automatic motion on Reid’s part, even had his client been falling-down drunk.

“Denied,” Byrd squeaked in his little high voice. “Will there be evidence for the defense?”

“Yes, Your Honor, there’ll be evidence.” Reid sat down and conferred with his client until the bailiff had finished bringing the jury back in.

Ambrose looked at his watch, sighed, and wandered out to the hall where other lawyers paused to exchange pleasantries as they passed from one courtroom to another, keeping check on how much longer it’d be before one of their cases was called. Earlier that morning in Courtroom #3, I’d pled two young men guilty to taking a deer illegally and got them off with a $150 fine and ninety days suspension of their hunting licenses. (“They were real respectful and cooperative,” the game warden testified.) And I’d helped an elderly grandmother avoid a fine for writing worthless checks on what she’d thought was still a joint account with her sailor grandson. (He’d gotten married in San Diego and had closed the account without telling her.) Nothing else was on my court schedule that day except Luellen Martin’s hearing.

While I sat there, her probation officer came in with a steaming white foam cup and sat down at the end of the bench beside me. The smell of hot chocolate mingled with the sweet floral perfume she wore. Either I’m getting older or probation officers are getting younger. I know they have to be twenty-one and college graduates, but in her blue print jersey with its broad, white, lace-edge collar, this one looked like a yuppie teenager. No wonder Luellen kept skipping her probation meetings.

“Call your first witness, Mr. Stephenson,” Judge Byrd directed.

Reid had only one, the defendant himself.

Gilchrist appeared to be in his midthirties, quite dark, close-clipped wiry hair, neatly dressed in a blue turtleneck sweater, a brown corduroy jacket, and blue jeans. A self-employed plumber who lives here in Dobbs, he told his story quietly and with no apparent emotion, almost as if he were describing something that had happened to a stranger.

But his eyes were wary.

On the Thursday in question, he said, he’d worked all day on some frozen pipes over in the next county. He’d had a bad cold all week and was ru

“I waited till after my three daughters had gone to bed because my wife and me, we don’t hold with drinking in front of the girls.”

At Reid’s prodding, Gilchrist indicated that he’d poured about two fingers of Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey into a pint Mason jar, then added honey and lemon juice. (Too bad he hadn’t bought George Dickie or Jim Beam, some brand name that didn’t carry such a load of drunken images.)

He’d sipped the toddy while watching the late-evening news and had then gone to bed. Two hours later, he’d been awakened by a phone call from his sister, who worked a night shift at a convenience store over in Widdington, about twenty miles away. Her car wouldn’t start and there was no one else she could call, so Gilchrist had hauled himself out of bed, sleep-drugged, stuffy head, low-grade fever and yes, a debatable quantity of that homemade toddy, and had driven over to pick her up. He’d taken her to her house out in the country about three miles from Dobbs and was on his way back to his own house when the trooper pulled him.

According to his testimony, he’d cooperated up to the point they tried to administer the Breathalyzer. “I walked the line, touched my nose and did all that stuff, but when they wanted me to blow on the tube, I said I wanted to call my lawyer and they said they’d get to that.”

He then described how Sanderson and the arresting officer, Davis, kept pressing him to take the test. When he refused and repeated his request to call a lawyer, they started filling out the Alcohol Influence Report. “That’s when I just quit talking and said whatever I thought they wanted me to say because I didn’t want to get them mad at me.”

It sounded logical. On the AIR form, the question about calling someone is down near the end. If Gilchrist had gone into a passive mode of answering yes or no according to what he thought the troopers wanted to hear, it was quite likely that he’d automatically answered no at that point.

Gilchrist’s testimony also disputed Sanderson’s version of filling out the report. According to him, Davis had read the questions and Sanderson had filled in the blanks. “They said I had that paper and was reading along with ’em, but they never gave it to me till they said I had to sign it, so I did.”

On cross-examination, Tracy tried to rattle Gilchrist about how many inches of Georgia Moon he’d actually poured into that Mason jar, but nothing got beneath the unemotional surface the black plumber had learned to present to white officialdom.

“I bought that bottle at the ABC store back before Christmas,” he said, quietly underlining the assertion that he was no habitual drinker. “It’s still got almost a third left in it.”

On redirect, Reid said, “How old are you, Mr. Gilchrist?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“How long you been driving?”

“Since I was sixteen.”

“Ever been arrested before?”

“No.”

“No speeding tickets, no DWIs?”

“No.”

“Defense rests, Your Honor.”

The jury was taken out again. Once more Reid asked Judge Byrd to dismiss and once more the motion was denied. Then Perry Byrd mechanically ran over the usual points he pla