Between Black and White (McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers #2)(61)

“I’m sorry,” she said. “How long—?”

“Forty-two years,” Tom interrupted, now holding his mug with both hands.

For a minute neither of them spoke. This happened to Tom a lot when he told people he was a widower. A moment of silence, so to speak, for the dead.

“How about you, Helen? Did you remarry after . . . ?”

She snorted, and Tom stopped his question, smiling at her. “I was never cut out for marriage, Tom. Butch always said I was married to the job, and he was probably right.” She sighed. “It irks me, though. Marriage is the only thing I’ve ever failed at.”

“Never too late,” Tom said, but Helen crossed her arms and narrowed her gaze. Small talk was over.

“What do you want, Tom?”

“I want you to know that this case is going to go all the way to verdict. Ain’t no two ways about it.”

“I already know that,” she said. “Are you sure you’re physically up to a trial?”

Tom gritted his teeth. “I’ll manage. I also want you to know that Darla Ford told my partner that Andy Walton confided to her that he was going to confess to the murder of Bo’s father.”

“Double hearsay,” Helen said. “Good luck getting that in.”

Tom stared at her. “Is that all you care about, Helen? Christ, woman, Bo Haynes’s life is on the line here.”

“Bo Haynes took Andy Walton’s life in cold blood. It is Andy’s life that I am concerned with. The victim.”

“Darla also said that despite Andy’s admonition to remain quiet about his intentions, she told Larry Tucker about Andy’s plans to confess.”

Helen blinked and pursed her lips. “When?”

“Two weeks before Andy was murdered.”

“Doesn’t change anything. You’re still grasping at straws.”

She stood from her chair, and Tom followed suit, pulling a folded piece of paper out of his pocked. He handed it to Helen.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s a page from the St. Clair Correctional Facility visitor’s log. I gave you the full log back at the office.”

She raised her eyebrows. “OK . . .”

“The log shows all the visitors who have come to see Jack Willistone in jail. Helen . . . Larry Tucker is on the list. He came to see Jack on July 20, 2011, less than a month before the murder.”

Helen looked at the document. “Why do you want me to know this?”

“Because there are folks in this town who do not want Bocephus Haynes to get a fair trial. I was nearly killed, and my partner escaped death by a nose hair.”

“What do you want me to do, Tom?” Helen asked.

“I’ve already asked for it, and you said no.”

“The security detail?” She snorted again. “You can’t be serious. This is Giles County, Tennessee. We don’t have enough manpower for that.”

“Then perhaps you should call in the National Guard.”

Helen raised her eyebrows in mock amusement. “You must be joking.”

“The Ku Klux Klan has already requested a permit to be here during the trial. I read that in the paper today. They’ll be out in full force. Things are only going to get crazier . . . and more dangerous.”

“They’re clowns, Tom.”

“Maybe so, but why do they want to be here? Have you asked yourself that?”

“They want to be here because a long-lost former leader of theirs has been murdered by a black man seeking revenge. It’s a straight-up racial revenge hate crime, and the Klan lives for that kind of mess. Don’t be so obtuse, Tom. If this same thing happened in Tuscaloosa or Birmingham, the Klan would be there too.”

“Maybe so. But would lawyers be getting attacked?”

“I thought you were implying that Larry Tucker was responsible for your attack.” She waved the page from the visitor’s log in front of his face. “Is it the Klan now?”

“Larry Tucker is the Klan,” Tom said. “He was in it in 1966, the same as Andy.”

“You can’t prove that.”

“Maybe not, but we both know it’s true.”

“Andy Walton got out of the Klan in the ’70s,” Helen said, keeping her voice steady. “The Klan’s only relevance to this case is in regard to your client’s motive. Bocephus Haynes believed that Andy Walton and a group of other Klansmen killed his father in 1966, and forty-five years later, on August 19, 2011, he murdered Andy Walton out of revenge.”

“That’s a great impact statement for your opening, Helen, but this case goes deeper than that. That’s why I wanted to talk with you. Andy Walton had pancreatic cancer. He was about to die, and before he did he was going to put a bow on a forty-five-year-old murder. He was going to bring a bunch of people to justice, some of whom, like Larry Tucker, still live in this town.”

Tom held his palms out and smiled. “We think it is highly probable that one of these people, most likely Larry Tucker, hired JimBone Wheeler to kill Andy to keep the truth buried.”

Helen chuckled, shaking her head. “Well, that is quite a story. One that I’m sure a jury might enjoy. But here’s the problem. You don’t have any physical evidence linking JimBone Wheeler, Larry Tucker, or anyone else to Walton’s murder. All the physical evidence points to Bo.”