the occasion was right. She soon agreed, though, and when she hit the first notes of “The Old Rugged Cross,” the weeping intensified.
Outside, under the trees, a man approached a group of smokers and announced, “They got Pete Banning in jail. Got his gun too.” This was met with acceptance, commented on, then passed along until the news entered the sanctuary, where it spread from pew to pew.
Pete Banning, arrested for the murder of their preacher.
* * *
—
When it became obvious that the suspect indeed had nothing to say, Sheriff Gridley led him through a door and into a narrow hallway with little light. Iron bars lined both sides. There were three cells on the right, three on the left, each about the size of a walk-in closet. There were no windows and the jail felt like a damp, dark dungeon, a place where men were forgotten and time went unnoticed. And, evidently, a place where everyone smoked. Gridley stuck a large key into a door, pulled it open, and nodded for the suspect to step inside. A cheap cot was at the far wall, and there was nothing else in the way of furnishings.
Gridley said, “Not much room, I’m afraid, Pete, but then it is a jail, after all.”
Pete stepped inside, glanced around, and said, “I’ve seen worse.” He stepped to the cot and sat on it.
“Bathroom’s down the hall,” Gridley said. “If you need to use it, just yell.”
Pete was staring at the floor. He shrugged, said nothing. Gridley slammed the door and returned to his office. Pete stretched out and consumed the full length of his cot. He was two inches over six feet; the cot was not quite that long. The cell was musty and cold and he picked up a folded blanket, one that was practically threadbare and would be of little use at night. He didn’t care. Captivity was nothing new, and he had survived conditions that now, four years later, were still hard to imagine.
* * *
—
When John Wilbanks returned less than an hour later, he and the sheriff argued briefly over where, exactly, the attorney-client conference would take place. There was no designated room for such important meetings. The lawyers usually walked into the cell block and huddled with their clients with a row of bars between them, and with every other prisoner straining to eavesdrop. Occasionally, a lawyer would catch his client outside in the rec yard and give advice through chain link. Most often, though, the lawyers did not bother to visit their clients at the jail. They waited until they were hauled into court and chatted with them there.
But John Wilbanks considered himself to be superior to every other lawyer in Ford County, if not the entire state, and his new criminal client was certainly a cut above the rest of Gridley’s prisoners. Their status warranted a proper place to meet, and the sheriff’s office would work just fine. Gridley finally acquiesced—few people won arguments with John Wilbanks, who, by the way, had always supported the sheriff at election time—and after some mumbling and cussing and a few benign rules left to fetch Pete. He brought him in with no handcuffs and said they could chat for half an hour.
When they were alone, Wilbanks began with “Okay, Pete, let’s talk about the crime. If you did it, tell me you did it. If you didn’t do it, then tell me who did.”
“I have nothing to say,” Pete said and lit a cigarette.
“That’s not good enough.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Interesting. Do you plan to cooperate with your defense lawyer?”
A shrug, a puff, nothing more.
Wilbanks offered a professional smile and said, “Okay, here’s the scenario. In a day or two they’ll take you over to the courtroom for an initial appearance before Judge Oswalt. I assume you’ll plead not guilty, then they’ll bring you back here. In a month or so, the grand jury will meet and indict you for murder, first degree. I would guess that by February or March, Oswalt will be ready for a trial, which I’m ready to handle, if that’s what you want.”
“John, you’ve always been my lawyer.”
“Good. Then you have to cooperate.”
“Cooperate?”
“Yes, Pete, cooperate. On the surface, this appears to be cold-blooded murder. Give me something to work with, Pete. Surely you had a motive.”
“It’s between me and Dexter Bell.”
“No, it’s now between you and the State of Mississippi, which, like all states, takes a dim view of cold-blooded murder.”