4.
After leaving the prison, Ruby drove into the Appalachian foothills. The gas station from Mitchell’s case had long since been
torn down. The country road was now full of potholes. A newer highway had come in and put the place out of business.
All that was left was a concrete foundation pad with oil stains. The stains were like a set of eyes, looking up at the heavens.
She followed their gaze to a muddy sky. The air was so slick with humidity, she could feel it on her skin. It dripped from
the leaves.
The woods crackled with cicadas, and the trees looked very dark. Not far away ran one of the many small, deep creeks of the
area. The pools were dark from the resinous leaves. She knew there would be no Perry Mason moment on this case, even if she
found brand-new evidence, and that was unlikely, after all the tree-shaking of appeals.
Ruby knew what it was like to experience injustice. She knew what it was like to feel—to know—that the world did not care.
For decades, this had been the driving force behind her work, a desperate hunt for a sense of justice that would finally feel
like home. How elusive it had been.
On that deadly night ten years before, Mitchell Brown had been out drinking.
He had recently moved from Oregon, where he had been working at a sports shoe manufacturing plant.
The company had a factory in Union City, Georgia, and they’d asked Mitchell, one of their best employees, to move down and be a manager there.
He was proud of the promotion, and on the night of the murder, he had gone to a neighborhood bar to celebrate.
It should be said that the population of Union City was largely Black.
An hour after leaving the bar, Mitchell was driving, lost, down a country road outside a town called Pickleweed, in Hammock
County. He was unaware that he had crossed one of the many invisible lines of the country. In the early 1900s, every single
African American resident of Hammock County had been driven out, following several lynchings. The towns had remained nearly
all-white ever since, despite the Civil Rights Movement. By the time Mitchell appeared, there were only 29 African Americans
in a population of 75,739 residents.
He stopped at the only light on the road.
Stumbling, Mitchell made his way inside the gas station. Betty Dubois was at the counter. She was an older woman with a cap
of crisp white curls. She still wore the same Maybelline blue eye shadow she had worn in high school. Betty owned the gas
station, along with a nearby farmhouse. Her clerk had quit, and she was doing doubles. Good help was hard to find in the area.
A few hours later, the floor was covered in blood. Her body was never found.
Mitchell was discovered sleeping in the front seat of his truck outside. He was awakened by the Pickleweed police, who had
been summoned when a teenager had pulled up to the gas station the next morning to put air in his bike tires. Mitchell had
rubbed the sleep from his eyes to find two white officers pointing guns in his face.
At first, Mitchell claimed not to remember a thing. It was a blackout, he would later say—his first, and only. He regretted
drinking so much and apologized profusely for driving drunk. He was only twenty-two. He wanted another chance.
The officers took him to the nearby station and started working on him.
Two weeks later, he was a piece of tenderized meat, and his confession was allowed in court.
His exhausted public defender was not permitted to postpone the trial, and Mitchell was soon convicted by an all-white jury, while people outside marched for his death.
If that had been all it was, there was a chance, even in this unjust nation, that his case could have been overturned on appeal.
But there was other evidence. A bloody handprint had been found on the side of his truck. Photos were taken of the print,
but the truck itself was long gone. Mitchell was said to have had blood on his clothing as well. The police lab technician
testified that the blood came from the victim, but the clothing and lab reports and photo of the handprint were later lost,
or stolen. Accounts of just what had happened to the evidence varied. At any rate, none of it existed anymore.
In his—most likely forced—confession, Mitchell said he recalled dragging Betty into the woods but had blacked out after that.
Police combed the woods, and dredged the nearby creek. They brought in bloodhounds, but they found no trace of Betty.
Georgia was pocked with rivers and streams, deep holes where the water made caves, and old mines with forbidden entries. There
were plenty of places to hide a corpse.
It was very quiet on the abandoned road. Ruby felt her stomach tighten. She didn’t have much time.
The next morning, she met Mitchell’s attorney in a café near the capital defender’s office in downtown Atlanta. He was a tall,
slender Black man wearing a Morehouse pin.
“I’m not sure an investigator is what you need now,” she said.
“What do I need?” The café was warm and cozy, with bright green booths and small tables.
“A miracle.”
He smiled wryly, but there was no pleasure in it. He had ordered a breakfast sandwich, and she followed suit. The crowd was
young and diverse. In Oregon, where she had started her career, most of the diversity was in the cities.
Ruby tackled her sandwich. It was tasty, but she lost her appetite at the beginning of every case. He glanced at her, thinking
she had an incomplete air about her. Her clothing looked like an afterthought; her pale face was drawn.
All the same, there was a warmth to her. She was the calm eye of the storm.
“I heard about you,” he said. “You exonerated Earnest Washington in Oregon, right? Didn’t he serve like twenty-five years
on death row?”
“Seventeen on death row,” she said. “Twenty-five total in custody.”
“See? Winning a case like that is why I want you.”
“I had two years to work up that case,” she said, setting down her sandwich and picking up her coffee. “You’ve given me two
weeks. There’s nothing a decent death row investigator can do in two weeks—besides cover ground that’s already been covered.”
“I’m desperate,” he said, and she saw that he was.
“You say Mitchell is innocent,” she said, delicately blowing on her coffee. “But there is evidence. Or there was evidence.”
She waited to hear what he had to say. By the time they reached the capital unit, most attorneys had lost the shine of naivete,
and no longer believed their clients were innocent just because they said they were. But some became zealots, and in a way
this was worse, because they refused to believe that the state might be right.
“He’s got reasonable doubt,” the attorney said.
“The confession was coerced and the alleged evidence lost. What actually happened that night? I don’t know.
Client didn’t have a record. No reason to think he’d attack some innocent person.
No weapon was ever found. No body, as you know. He should have been offered a deal.”
“So you don’t know if he’s really innocent.”
“No one does.”
Ruby looked down. It was hard for her to say no to a case when a person’s life was on the line. There was no way to know who
was innocent and who was not until the investigation was complete. The problem was, some investigations didn’t end. At least
not before the life of the client ended.
“I’ll do it,” she said, “because the client wants me to. But I still think I’ll be the last one to hold the ball.”
“I’ll hold it with you.”
She carried her leftovers in a white paper bag, and he held the door for her. He would go back to his office, she knew, and
work some of his many cases. Mitchell Brown was a cog in the wheel for the state, a piece of machinery that had gotten jammed
on the way out. He might be real to his defenders, but he was also real to the family of the victim, and to his own family.
Which reminded her of next steps.
“Where to?” the attorney asked, curious.
“Where I always start. The beginning.”