A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance #3) - John Grisham Page 0,63

Dyer was hearing the noise from down the road in Ford County. He took three calls at home Sunday afternoon, all from strangers who claimed they voted for him, and listened to their complaints about what was happening in the Gamble case. After the third, he unplugged his phone. The one at the office had a number that was advertised in every directory in the Twenty-second District, and evidently it rang all weekend. When his secretary reached for it early Monday morning she saw that there were over twenty calls and the mailbox was full. On an average weekend there were half a dozen. Zero was not unusual.

Over coffee, she and Lowell and the assistant D.A., D. R. Musgrove, listened to the messages. Some of the callers gave their names and addresses, others were more timid and seemed to think they were doing something wrong by calling the district attorney. A few hotheads used profanity, did not give their names, and implied that if the judicial system continued to go haywire they just might have to fix it themselves.

But it was unanimous—the kid was out of jail and pretending to be crazy and his damned lawyer was once again pulling a fast one. Please, Mr. Dyer, do something! Do your job!

Lowell had never had a case that attracted so much interest, and he swung into action. He called Judge Noose, who was at home “reading briefs” as he always claimed to be doing when he wasn’t in court, and they agreed it was a good idea to call a special meeting of the grand jury to deal with the case. As the district attorney, Lowell controlled every aspect of “his” grand jury and needed no one’s approval to call it into session. But given the sensational nature of the Gamble case, he wanted to keep the presiding judge apprised. During their brief conversation Noose said something about a “long weekend” around his house, and Lowell suspected his phone had been ringing too.

He sounded uncertain, even troubled, and when it was time for the conversation to end, Noose prolonged it by saying, “Say, Lowell, let’s go off the record here and talk in the graveyard.”

A pause as if it was Lowell’s turn to respond. “Sure, Judge.”

“Well, I’m having a devil of a time finding another lawyer to defend this boy. Nobody in the district wants the case. Pete Habbeshaw over in Oxford has three capital cases right now and just can’t take on another. Rudy Thomas in Tupelo is undergoing chemo. I even had a chat with Joe Frank Jones in Jackson, and he gave me a flat no. I can’t force the case on anyone outside of my jurisdiction, as you know, so all I could do was lean on these guys and I got nowhere. You have any ideas? You know our lawyers well.”

Lowell indeed knew them well and wouldn’t hire a single one of them if his neck were on the block. There were some fine lawyers in the district but most avoided trial work, especially of the indigent criminal variety. To stall and divert, Lowell asked, “Not sure, Judge. Who did the last capital case in the district?”

The last capital case in the Twenty-second had been three years earlier in Milburn County, in the town of Temple. The prosecutor had been Rufus Buckley, who was still smarting from his momentous loss in the Carl Lee Hailey case. He won an easy verdict because the facts had been so horrible: A twenty-year-old drug addict murdered both of his grandparents for eighty-five dollars to buy more crack. He was now on death row at Parchman. Noose had presided and had not been impressed with the local defense lawyer he had dragged into the case.

“That won’t work,” he said. “That boy, what’s his name, Gordy Wilson, wasn’t very good and I hear he’s pretty much closed shop. Who would you hire, Lowell, if you were facing these charges? Who would you hire in the Twenty-second?”

For obvious selfish reasons, Lowell wanted a pushover sitting at the defense table, but he knew that was unlikely and unwise. A weak or incompetent defense lawyer would only screw up the case and give the appeals courts plenty to chew on for the next decade.

He replied, “I’d probably go with Jake.”

Without hesitation, Noose said, “So would I. But let’s not tell him about this conversation.”

“Of course not.” Lowell got on well with Jake and did not want any friction. If Jake somehow learned