14.
From the low country, Ruby turned her car back toward Hammock County, to the courthouse in Pickleweed. The courthouse had
been hewn of the same white limestone as the police vaults. It sparkled in the hot summer sun. On the police car license plates
outside were so many peaches. Ruby thought about the irony of that as she made her way through the metal detectors, up to
the fourth floor where the district attorney waited.
“I’ve explained it before, in depositions,” District Attorney Jerrod Tinsley said.
He was a big, fleshy man who looked like he didn’t miss his share at supper. He had a rough-and-tumble laugh, but Ruby watched
the eyes of his clerks. You could tell a lot about a man by how his clerks acted in his presence.
“I’d still like to walk through what happened, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“Well, all right.” He looked annoyed, checked his watch.
Ruby followed him down the carpeted hall.
“This was the conference room where we used to staff the cases.” He opened the door to a shadowy storage room. File boxes
were stacked in the corners. He caught her eye. “We pulled the place apart looking for those exhibit boxes, trust me.”
He gently closed the door.
“From here,” he said, “the evidence would be taken to the service elevator. We got hand trucks for the heavier exhibit boxes.” He pushed the elevator button, and they rode down a floor. They were in a courthouse hall. “This is where the trial was held. Courtroom 32B.”
She rose to her tippy-toes to look in the courtroom window. “Would the boxes be there?” She pointed to where a prosecutor
was giving his closing argument to a bored-looking jury.
“Yes. Like I said, I explained all this before.” His patience was beginning to wear thin. “At the end of the trial, the exhibit
boxes go back on the hand truck, and back up the elevator. They would be stored in the conference room until police took them
to the vaults. We have no idea what happened to them in this case.”
“You were the prosecutor on the case.”
His blue eyes went hazy. “Yes.”
“Do you remember bringing the boxes back up?”
“I’ve answered this before. I don’t remember. We were very busy that day. Lots of trials, and this courtroom was full. Lots
of media, too, people asking questions outside the courtroom.”
It sounded like he wanted her to believe that someone snuck into the courtroom and stole several boxes of evidence. But Ruby
knew that even ten years before, they had guards on the front door. No one could have just walked out with a bunch of exhibit
boxes. This had to have been an inside job. He knew it, and so did she.
“Let’s pretend we have the boxes now,” she said.
They walked back to the elevator. She pushed the button this time. They rode up with the imaginary trial exhibit boxes from
Mitchell’s case. The power of her imagination was so strong, the district attorney could see the trial boxes on the hand truck
she pushed in her mind.
She wheeled them back down the carpeted hall, seeing the way the hand truck would mark the rugs. He opened the door again, and she stepped inside.
“Who had access to this room that day?”
“Everyone that works here.”
“Did that include all police called as witnesses that day?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to see the dockets for those trials.”
“The clerks can help you,” he said, and marched away.
Ruby took the printed dockets to the café on the first floor of the courthouse, ordered a coffee and a bagel, and started
reading.
There had been six child custody hearings and eight divorces in the Pickleweed Courthouse on that day. Five minor felonies,
all for identity theft. A rash of misdemeanors, mostly for disturbing the peace. One case of felony animal neglect.
And one aggravated murder, which was Mitchell’s trial.
The dockets listed all witnesses called, including the police. Ruby knew that previous defense teams had dug deep into the
officers who had interrogated Mitchell—there was brutality going back for years. The defense’s findings had not moved an inch
on this case. Everyone knew that the officers had beaten the confession out of Mitchell. That was a no-brainer. In a case
like this, it wasn’t enough to find evidence of police brutality, because a lot of the public, especially in a place like
this, thought, So what if they beat a guilty man? Or So what if they beat a Black man, or a Mexican—we got enough of those. Next.
What Ruby had to find was a reason for the brutality, or the missing evidence, and that reason only mattered if it led to the real killer.
The dirty little secret of false convictions was how they allowed the guilty to walk free.
Ruby knew who her enemies were, and they were not the police, who suffered no consequences for convicting an innocent man.
They were the guilty still walking free.
Twelve police officers had been called that day.
She looked them up on her laptop. All were local law enforcement, like the cops who had beaten Mitchell. They had been promoted
into other stations. One beamed at her from his photo, his medals shining.
But one of the officers called to court that day was different: an animal control officer, testifying in the animal neglect
case.
She ran his name.
A somber face greeted her: a Black man, too.
Officer Alonzo Pettibone.
Perfect, she thought.
That night, she drove to Atlanta. She found Terrence in a noisy bar, a glass of dark whiskey in his hand. He was surrounded
by others from the capital unit, all celebrating a rare victory. They had just won a trial for a man facing death if convicted,
and that man would walk out of jail in a few days and become real again, in the Georgia mist.
She crowded in next to Terrence, accepted the offer of a drink. The gin and tonic tasted like juniper berries.
“Got good news?” he yelled in her ear. The music was thumping above them, and some members of his unit were leaving the bar
to dance on the tiny dance floor.
“Not really!” she yelled back.
“I hired you as a last resort. I know you can’t work miracles!” he shouted. She could feel the warmth of his breath on her
cheek. She looked up into his eyes and thought, huh. He turned to watch the dancers. She was getting used to the noise now
and seemed to hear better.
Terrence finished his drink and set the glass on the bar, and she watched as he joined his friends and colleagues, shaking off all the heartbreak and stress in the heat and beauty of the moment.
They looked so beautiful there, dancing.
All of them—all sizes, all colors. Their bodies pulsed with the music, and she felt both sad and relieved.
It was a joy to watch them, and feel the same music they felt, coming up through her toes.
In a bit, she joined them.
She awoke in the cloud-soft comfort of white quilts, and for a moment wondered where she was. She was used to strange ceilings,
and this one was painted white. Then she turned her head, and saw with relief that she was alone.
The night came back to her. Terrence had invited her back to his place for a few hours’ sleep before the next day began. And
thankfully, that was all she had done.
“You awake?”
His polite voice came from outside her door. She was in his guest room.
“Yes,” she said.
After a quick shower, she joined Terrence in his kitchen. Atlanta was oddly quiet so early in the morning. “I don’t hear cicadas
here,” she said, toweling her hair.
“Not enough old trees,” he said, pouring coffee into a travel mug. “Or any trees.” He capped the mug.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I’m all right.”
This thing that hadn’t happened hung between them.
She remembered him asking, and her saying no.
Lovemaking for her was a portal into another world—it was a delicate thing.
She didn’t think she could handle another disastrous affair, and almost all her relationships had been that way.
It was like she was on one plane and men on another.
For them, maybe, sex was ordinary. Like going to the gym.
For her, it was complicated. She had come from sex. And look what had happened.
“Time to get going,” he said.
He picked up his battered briefcase.
“Of course,” she said, and that was that.