Between Black and White Page 9

“Do you know if Andy Walton ever visited him?”

  “Not off the top of my head,” Powell said. “But I’ll check after the verdict comes back in Arrington.” Powell had just finished up the two-week murder trial of a middle school teacher named Foster Arrington, who was accused of abducting, raping, and murdering one of his students. The trial had concluded earlier today, and all that was left was the reading of the verdict. The judge had dismissed the jury for the day, so Powell had readily accepted Rick’s offer of wings and beer.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “No problem. Even if Walton’s not on the visitor’s log, it’s probably time to make a visit to Springville. With Willistone in jail, JimBone needs someone else to bankroll him.”

  Powell put a buffalo wing in his mouth, and his sauce-stained lips curved into a shit-eating grin. Rick knew that grin well. “You’ve got a plan?” he asked, incapable of stopping his own smile.

  Powell raised his eyebrows, and his grin widened. “Don’t you think Jack Willistone is getting tired of prison food?”

  “A deal,” Rick said, nodding along with Powell. “You really think Jack Willistone might deal?”

  “I don’t have a clue,” Powell said, wiping wing sauce off his mouth, but the grin remained. “But when I get through with Arrington . . . I think it’s worth a road trip to the state pen.”

  15

  When Tom arrived at Bo’s office at 7:00 a.m. the next morning, he had a surprise waiting for him. Leaning against the front stoop and dressed in a rumpled coat and tie was none other than Ray Ray Pickalew.

  “Figured you’d get an early start,” Ray Ray said, curling his lips up into his patented Joker face.

  “I take it you’re in?” Tom asked, smiling at his old teammate.

  “I’m in,” Ray Ray said.

  “What made you change your mind?”

  Ray Ray shrugged. “Oh, I guess I . . . just had to pray on it.”

  “I didn’t realize you were the praying type, Ray Ray.”

  “Oh, I talk to God all the time,” Ray Ray said. “He just don’t listen.”

  Tom laughed and started to unlock the door, but Ray Ray put his hand up to stop him. “So, I’ve got some information that I think you’ll find helpful.” He sighed and wiped sweat from his forehead. “But first I need some breakfast.”

  Now that he was closer to him, Tom smelled the strong odor of whiskey. “Are you hungover?”

  “No,” Ray Ray said, beginning to walk across the street. “I’m still drunk.”

  A minute later they were sitting at a back table at the Bluebird Café, a favorite local breakfast spoon caddy-corner from Bo’s office and just two blocks from the courthouse square. The smells of bacon grease, coffee, and pancakes fueled the air, and Tom breathed them all in as he sipped from a mug of black coffee.

  “The body was moved,” Ray Ray said after the waitress had taken their orders.

  “What?” Tom asked, feeling his pulse quicken.

  “From the Sundowners Club, a little strip joint on the edge of town that Andy liked to visit. He was shot in the parking lot at the Sundowners with a twelve-gauge, and then his body was moved a quarter mile down 64 to Walton Farm. There is a dirt road entrance there that goes right past a small clearing.” Ray Ray paused and sipped his coffee. “This is the place where Bo’s daddy was lynched by the Klan in 1966. The area is surrounded by trees, and the killer hung Andy from the same tree limb where Bo’s father was hanged.”

  “How can someone get in the farm? There’s got to be security, right? A gate or something?” Tom fired off the questions, but something else that Ray Ray had said had begun to nag at the back of his mind. The name of the strip club . . .

  Ray Ray nodded. “Yeah, there’s a gate and also a surveillance camera.”

  Tom felt his heart beat even harder at the mention of a camera.

  “Cops found the camera lens smashed in,” Ray Ray continued, shaking his head. “The last thing on the tape is Bo’s ugly mug swinging a baseball bat at it.”

  Tom covered his face with his hands. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Exactly,” Ray Ray said.

  Tom turned the information over in his mind, remembering what Bo had said during their meeting at the jail. “Bo said he visited the clearing every year on the anniversary of his father’s death.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me,” Ray Ray said as the waitress set their food down on the table.

  When she was gone, Tom grabbed a piece of bacon and pointed it at Ray Ray. “But how could he get in if there was a gate and camera?”

  Ray Ray shrugged. “That I don’t know. I suspect he may have had some help from his cousin.”

  “Who?”

  “Bo’s cousin, Booker T., leases a lot of farmland in Giles and Lawrence Counties, including the Waltons’ property. If Bo wanted to get on Walton Farm without being seen, I bet Booker T. helped him.” He leaned back in his seat as the waitress refilled his coffee cup. Once she was gone, Ray Ray grimaced. “And I bet the General has been on him like stink on shit ever since Bo was arrested.”

  “If the body was moved from the strip club, it had to be taken by car, right?” Tom asked.

  “Probably,” Ray Ray said, shrugging. “But Bo is a very strong man. It’s conceivable he could have carried Andy a quarter of a mile.”

  “But to hang him and burn him?”

  “He could’ve set the gas and rope down at the clearing and gone back for Andy. The video of him breaking the camera lens was around eleven thirty. My source says Andy didn’t even leave the Sundowners until closing time, which is around one in the morning. So Bo was definitely at the clearing before the shooting.” Ray Ray put a healthy helping of eggs in his mouth and spoke with his mouth full. “I figure he probably got the code to the gate from Booker T., and after breaking the camera at eleven thirty drove through a couple hours later with Andy’s body in the car.”

  “You mean you think that is the prosecution’s theory?” Tom asked.

  “Of course.”

  “OK . . . so why would he have gone to the clearing earlier?”

  “To scout out the area and to break the surveillance camera.”

  Tom paused to eat some of his pancake, which was delicious, but stopped after several bites. He had lost his appetite. Ray Ray’s breakdown of how the prosecution would view the evidence made sense.

  And he knew it would also make sense to a jury.

  Despite the bad vibes he was feeling, Tom smiled at his friend. “How might I ask did you find out all of this so quickly?”

  The Joker grin was back. “The sheriff’s department is a volatile place, Tommy boy,” Ray Ray said, wolfing down the rest of his plate. “A lot of divorces. I got a pretty good settlement for one of the deputies a few years back, and he owed me one.”

  Tom shook his head and smiled. This was why he had wanted Ray Ray Pickalew on the team. “Good work, partner.”

  “There is a lot of work left to do,” Ray Ray said, his grin gone. “We obviously need to meet with Booker T. and find out everything he knows.”

  Tom nodded. “Did your source mention that Bo was at Kathy’s Tavern earlier in the night?”

  Ray Ray chuckled. “Yep. My guy said Bo told Andy he was going to give him an ‘eye for an eye’ in front of several eyewitnesses. Do you have the names?”

  Tom rattled them off, and Ray Ray said they should split up the interviews. “I’ve known Clete forever. Let me take him. Why don’t you go down to Kathy’s and talk with Cassie? Ms. Maggie is probably off-limits for now and—”

  “I’ve already interviewed George Curtis.” Tom paused. “By the way, you were right. He is a bit odd.”

  “He’s as queer as a football bat, if you ask me,” Ray Ray said. “But he’s too goddamn proud to come out of the closet. I think his problem is that he’s lived a lie his whole life.”

  Tom rubbed his chin, pondering that idea. Could be, he thought. But it didn’t feel right to him.

  “We also need to get ov
er to that strip joint and interview any of the employees who came into contact with Andy Walton on the night of the murder,” Tom said, and Ray Ray grinned again.

  “That sounds like a job for Ray Ray. I’m already acquainted with the talent there.”

  “Don’t enjoy it too much,” Tom said, but the thought that had nagged him earlier was back. “What is the name of that place again?”

  “The Sundowners Club. It’s a dive on the outskirts of Pulaski on Highway 64. It’s owned by a sorry son of a bitch named Larry Tucker, who I went to high school with back in the day. Been around since the early ’80s or so. I’m pretty sure Andy Walton bankrolled Larry’s operation. Andy and some other guy . . .” Ray Ray snapped his fingers. “Oh, who was that asshole? Made a fortune in long-haul trucking. Big SOB from your neck of the woods, Tom. You would know him if I said the name. Jack . . .” He snapped his fingers again. “Oh, shit, what’s his last name? Jack . . .”

  “Willistone,” Tom finished Ray Ray’s sentence, his blood going cold. “Jack Willistone.”

  16

  When they were back at Bo’s office, Ray Ray said he was going to walk over to the courthouse and poke around the clerk’s office. He knew everyone over there, and he might be able to get a feel for who the judge might be for Bo’s case. Ray Ray said the judge would make all the difference in deciding whether to challenge venue. “If we get Harold Page, we’re fucked and we need to seek a change of venue immediately. Page is an ornery old bastard who seems to hate everyone but Helen Lewis. But if we get Susan Connelly . . . then the choice is not so black and white. Susan is tough on crime, but she’s also fair and, most importantly, smart. Run that by Bo, but I think he’ll agree.”

  “Will do,” Tom said, still reeling from the information disclosed by Ray Ray at the Bluebird. The murder scene is the Sundowners Club . . .

  Tom and Rick’s star witness in the Willistone case last summer had been a stripper employed by the Sundowners Club named Wilma Newton, whose husband was the driver involved in the accident. She had agreed to testify against the company, saying that her husband was forced to speed by the driving schedule he was put on by Jack Willistone. It had been a great plan—the trucker’s widow sticking it to the company. Unfortunately, Jack got to Newton before the trial, and she did a 180 on the stand, testifying that her husband’s schedule was fine. Luckily, Bo had investigated the Sundowners in the days prior to trial and had learned that Jack Willistone and another man—his “henchman,” Bo had called him—had been meeting with Newton in the weeks leading up to trial. Bo’s investigation had given Tom the ammunition he needed to cross-examine Newton on the stand when she had changed her story.

  Jack Willistone was now presumably in prison somewhere. But the last time Tom or anyone else had seen his henchman was when he jumped off the Northport Bridge into the Black Warrior River. His body was never found.

  “What about the jury pool?” Tom finally asked, trying to stay focused. Venue was a huge consideration going forward. “With everyone knowing Bo’s history with Andy Walton in Giles County, shouldn’t we move for a change of venue regardless of which judge is appointed?”

  Ray Ray was shaking his head before Tom finished. “I think that would be an overreaction. By the time Helen is finished, whichever jury is selected is going to know Bo’s backstory, that he was threatening biblical revenge, and on the night of the murder was seen at the very clearing where both his father and Andy Walton were lynched. Revenge, revenge, revenge. The General will saturate the jury with her theme. Plus this case has already received national news coverage. I saw several stories on CNN over the weekend, all of which mentioned that Bo has claimed since he was five years old that the Ku Klux Klan lynched his father.” He paused. “The bottom line is that every jury pool in this state, if not the whole southern United States, has already been poisoned by Bo’s history.”

  “But the folks here know Bo. They’ve heard about his backstory their whole life.”

  Ray Ray shrugged. “They also know Andy Walton and his Klan history. I think it’s a wash. People here may not like Bo, but no one really liked Andy either. Again”—he held up his hands—“a wash.”

  “So it all comes down to the judge,” Tom said.

  “Yep. If we get Susan, we stay. If we get Page, we punt.” He paused again. “And pray.”

  After Ray Ray had left for the courthouse, Bo’s secretary, Ellie Michaels, came into the conference room with several documents under her arm. Ellie was a plump black woman in her late fifties who had served as Bo’s secretary, paralegal, and receptionist for the past twenty years. Last night, after his interview of George Curtis, Tom had met Ellie at Bo’s office to discuss the case.

  Ellie hadn’t hesitated when Tom had asked if she would stay on to help him and Rick with the trial. “I’ve been with Bo Haynes since he was a pup lawyer and had an Afro haircut. In the early days we were lean and times were tight.” She had laughed loud and hearty. “But these last ten years—lordy mercy, Professor. Every time Bo has won or settled a big case, he has given me a bonus off the top.” Wiping tears from her eyes, she had said, “I’ve sent all five of my children and two grandbabies to college off the money I’ve made working for Bo Haynes. I’d walk barefoot through glass for that man.”

  Unfortunately, Ellie knew nothing of relevance from the day of the murder. Yes, she knew that August 18 was the anniversary of Bo’s father’s death, and like every year on the anniversary Bo had been in a foul mood. She also knew about Bo’s split with Jazz, and that he was living at the office. “Such a shame, Professor. Those two are still so much in love.” She had grunted. “They’re just both too stubborn to realize it.”

  The office had been plundered by the sheriff’s department all weekend, but Ellie had not let them touch any of Bo’s case files without a court order. “I told ’em straight up no one’s going to be violating the attorney-client privilege on Ellie’s watch, and they shut up quick.” Tom had laughed and been genuinely relieved that Ellie was willing to stay on for the trial.

  Now she put the papers that would announce their entry into the fray in front of him side by side. All of the documents had the style of the case front and center: The State of Tennessee v. Bocephus Aurulius Haynes.

  “This is the notice of appearance for you, Mr. Drake and Mr. . . . Pickalew.” Ellie said the word “Pickalew” like she had a bad taste in her mouth.

  “I get the feeling you don’t like Ray Ray, Ellie.”

  She wrinkled up her nose. “One whiff of the man is enough to give a teetotaler like me a buzz.” She snorted. “I bet if you stuck him with a pick, you could fill up a barrel of whiskey.”

  Single-barrel Ray Ray, Tom thought, stifling a smile. “He’s good, though, Ellie.”

  “I won’t disagree with you on that. I just don’t like smelling him.” She pointed at the other two documents. “This is you and Mr. Drake’s motion for admission to the state of Tennessee pro hac vice.”

  “And this is the motion for an expedited preliminary hearing,” Ellie continued. “Mr. Pickalew has already signed everything, so you just need to sign for you and Mr. Drake.”

  Tom looked over the paperwork, feeling his heart rate quicken. There was no backing out now, he knew. He signed the documents and handed them to Ellie, who put them back under her arm. Then she smiled down at him.

  “What?” Tom asked.

  “Wide ass open.”

  Tom creased his eyebrows, not getting it.

  “It’s what Bo says every time a case is about to start moving.” Her voice began to tremble as she spoke. “He . . . always rubs . . . his hands together and says, ‘All right now, dog, you know what speed we’ve got to take it to now.’”

  Tom smiled as Ellie wiped her tears. “Wide ass open,” he said.

  17

  On the way to the jail, Tom called Rick.

  “The Sundowners Club? You have to be kidding?” Rick’s voice was hyper, and Tom could almost feel the kid’s energy from across the phon
e line.

  “I’m not,” Tom said. “Andy Walton was shot and killed at the Sundowners Club, and his body was moved to Walton Farm, where it was hanged from the same tree where Bo’s father was lynched in 1966.”

  “Then the body was set on fire.”

  “Yep.” Tom pulled into the jail and cut off the ignition. “Listen, Rick, I don’t have much time. I need to go over all this with Bo. Have you talked with Powell yet?”

  “Yeah, last night. Powell said Jack Willistone is incarcerated at the state penitentiary in Springville, serving out a three-year sentence. He also said that the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating Willistone’s henchman, whose name is—get this—James Robert ‘JimBone’ Wheeler. Anyway, Powell said he’d be glad to go with us to interview Jack, but he’s finishing up a two-week murder trial himself right now.”

  “Arrington?” Tom asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Leave him alone then,” Tom said, climbing out of the Explorer. “But as soon as it’s over—”

  “We’ll go to Springville.”

  “Good man,” Tom said.

  “Professor, do you think it’s possible that Jack Willistone or JimBone Wheeler could somehow be involved in Andy Walton’s murder?” Rick asked as Tom opened the door to the visitor’s entrance to the Giles County Jail.

  “I don’t know,” Tom said. “But I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  18

  In the consultation room of the jail, Bo was anxious and on edge, pacing as Tom summarized everything Ray Ray had told him. He seemed to be having a difficult time coming to grips with the fact that Raymond Pickalew was going to be part of his defense team.

  “Professor, I know we need local counsel, but I hate that motherfucker,” Bo said, scowling, his hands balled into fists after Tom had finished the recap. “The last case I had with Ray Ray, I just about took his head off.”

  “The reasons you hate him are exactly why we need him,” Tom insisted. “He’s a brawler, and he’s gone toe to toe with Helen before and whipped her ass.”