A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance #3) - John Grisham Page 0,182

August, but only in passing. He had more important matters on his mind.

“Bring in the jury,” Noose said.

They filed in, dressed for the day in short-sleeve shirts and cotton dresses. As they took their seats, a bailiff handed each a funeral fan—a decorative piece of cardboard glued to a stick—as if flapping it back and forth in front of their noses would bring relief from the stifling heat. Many of the spectators were already waving them.

Noose said, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I apologize for the loss of power, and the heat, but the show must go on. I will allow the attorneys to remove their jackets, but keep the ties please. Mr. Brigance.”

Jake stood and smiled as he turned the podium to face the jury. With his jacket still on, he began with “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m allowed at this time to make a few remarks about what I hope to prove in the defense of Drew Gamble. Now, I am not going to risk losing credibility with you by suggesting that there might be questions about who shot Stuart Kofer. It’s pretty clear. Mr. Lowell Dyer, our fine district attorney, did a masterful job yesterday proving the State’s case. Now, it’s up to the defense to tell you the rest of the story. And there is so much more to the story.

“What we will attempt to do is describe the nightmare that Josie Gamble and her two children were living.” With a clenched fist he tapped the podium in rhythm as he said, “It was a living hell.” He paused for a second, then tapped out “They are lucky to be alive.”

A little too dramatic, Harry Rex thought.

Not nearly loud enough, Lucien said to himself.

“About a year ago, Josie and Stuart met in a bar, which was fitting for both of them. Josie had spent plenty of time in bars and honky-tonks, as had Stuart, and it should be no surprise that that’s where they met. Josie told him she lived in Memphis and was visiting a friend, one who did not happen to be in the bar. She was alone. It was a lie. Josie and her two children were living in a borrowed camper on the property of a distant relative who had told them to leave. They had no place to go. A romance of sorts quickly ensued, with Josie in hot pursuit once she learned that Stuart owned his own home. And he was a deputy in Ford County, a man with a good paycheck. She’s a cute girl, likes tight jeans and other clothing that might be considered suggestive, and Stuart was smitten. You’ll meet her in a minute. She’s our first witness, the mother of the defendant.

“With Josie pushing hard, Stuart invited her to move in. He didn’t want her kids because, by his own admission, he wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. But it was a package deal. For the first time in two years, the Gambles had a real roof over their heads. For about a month things were okay, tense, but survivable, then Stuart began complaining about how much the arrangement was costing him. The kids ate too much, he said. Josie was working two jobs, at minimum wage, that’s all she’s ever earned, and trying her best to support the family.

“Then the beatings started, and violence became a way of life. Now, you’ve heard a lot about Stuart and what kind of person he was when sober. Mercifully, that was most of the time. He never missed a day of work, never showed up drunk. Sheriff Walls said he was a good deputy and really enjoyed law enforcement. When he wasn’t drinking. But once on the bottle, he became a vile, vicious, violent man. He loved the honky-tonks, the nightlife, hard drinking with his buddies, and he was a brawler, loved a good fistfight, liked to shoot dice. Almost every Friday and Saturday night after work he hit the bars and would come home drunk. Sometimes he was aggressive and looking for trouble, other times he just went to bed and passed out. Josie and her kids learned to leave him alone and hide in their rooms, praying there would be no trouble.

“But there was trouble, and plenty of it. The kids begged their mother to leave, but there was no place to go, nowhere to run. As the violence grew worse, she begged him to get help, to cut back on the drinking,