“They have a great tree farm up in Tallahassee. I want to buy some trees and stick them in the pickup and take them home.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of shipping? You order the trees, have them shipped, and we drive to Tallahassee in comfort.”
“It’s not that easy. I like to see the trees and get a feel for them before I buy them. And I like the idea of transporting them myself.”
Henry just looked at him. “When did you become Chauncey Gardener?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve always liked to garden.”
“Yeah, and I always liked to play the violin, only I never had one. Your gardener quit last year. That’s when you started this stuff.”
“Okay. And I found I liked it. It’s soothing. It calms me. Do you have problems with that, Mister Macho Man?”
“No. Whatever floats your boat is fine with me, honey. The only thing I have problems with is this damn truck. What are we going to Tallahassee for anyway? I mean, what am I going for?”
“Ben wants to talk to us.”
“Us? Ben has never talked to me in my life except to say hello a few times. Do you know what it’s about?”
“I have no idea. I assume it’s a case.”
Ben Chapman was the executive director of Exoneration, the anti–death penalty advocacy group where both Jack and Henry donated their services, Jack as a lawyer and Henry as his investigator.
“Does he normally ask you to come talk to him personally about a case?” Henry asked.
“Never. It’s usually done by telephone, mail, or e-mail.”
“Then this must be something very unusual. What the hell does he want to talk to me about—how to investigate?”
“I have no idea, Henry. I have no idea.”
They found out soon enough. Their appointment was the next morning, Monday, at nine sharp. Ben Chapman was waiting for them. He was a mid-sized portly man, mid- to late-fifties, with a shaved head, a short gray beard, and a deep voice. Chapman was an attorney like Jack, but that’s where the similarity ended. He’d been a transactional lawyer with a tax background and had made his considerable fortune from acquisitions of all kinds, often taking a piece of a deal that he put together as his fee. After he’d been retired for a couple of years and bored stiff, he looked for a challenge to sink his teeth in. A Texas death penalty case he’d read about, in which a man had been executed for killing his wife and children and was later determined to be innocent, got him interested in the process. Then he started reading about other injustices, mostly across the South, and he was hooked. Unlike Jack, Chapman couldn’t offer his legal services since he had no experience in the courtroom, so he offered his considerable organizational skills. Before long, he was running Exoneration.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said in that booming voice of his. “Have you had any coffee?”
“We did. We just had breakfast,” Jack replied.
“Well, come on in then.” Chapman led them into his office, where they sat down in the two chairs in front of his desk.
“Are your accommodations okay?” He had set them up in a luxury hotel.
“Very nice, thank you,” Jack said.
“Good, let’s get to it then.” He handed them both a one-page document. “This is a very brief summary of the case of Thomas Felton. Have either of you heard of him?”
“I have,” Jack said. “He was the serial killer in Oakville about ten years ago.”
“Correct, although he was never convicted of being a serial killer. He was convicted of a double homicide.”
“But as I recall,” Jack continued, “the murder weapon had been identified from a previous murder.”
“That’s almost correct,” Chapman said. “Actually, there was an attempted murder, and the young lady who survived identified the weapon. She was subsequently killed, by the way.”
“So I take it,” Jack said, “that you want Henry and me to get involved in Mr. Felton’s case.”
“Precisely. The death warrant has been signed. His execution is scheduled for March fourteenth, and our office has been assigned to represent him in any post-conviction relief. The chief judge of Apache County has appointed Circuit Judge Andrew Holbrook to hear any post-conviction motions, and he’s set a status conference for the thirty-first of this month. That’s two weeks from now. We need to look at the case and decide if we want to file anything at that time. The judge, if he is going to set an evidentiary hearing, has to do