Dead to Rights by Jack Patterson (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

“It’s what you might expect in a case like this. A prosecutor seizing the moment and viewing it as his big opportunity to get noticed. A pompous big city lawyer who was confident he’d get his client off. It was intense, to say the least. Both teams of lawyers were always sniping at one another. It was a game of one-upmanship. And it didn’t matter if it was about a point of law or whose lunch had just been delivered to the courtroom during recess. Everyone in town grew sick of the incessant bickering and fighting. We were all just ready for it to be over.”

“It seems like they got their wish.”

“Yeah, the trial didn’t last more than two weeks, and the jury came back with their verdict after deliberating less than an hour.”

“How did the prosecution win the case?” Kelly asked.

“I’m convinced I could’ve argued and won that case. Hell, there are tree stumps in the Okefenokee that could’ve prosecuted Isaiah Drake and got the same result. Isaiah was engaged to Susannah. Susannah started cattin’ around on him with some big shot lawyer from Jacksonville. Isaiah came back to Pickett and had been drinkin’ heavily when someone gave him a picture of Susannah and her new beau canoodlin’. Isaiah went over to her house and shot her.”

“It was really that simple?” Cal asked.

“Look, Isaiah shot her eight times and cut off her ring finger. The prosecution alleged that he chopped it off because she wouldn’t give him back the ring. Now, I don’t know about that part, but the murder scene photos were certainly gruesome enough to turn everyone angrily against him. Susannah had always been such a sweet girl, and to see her like that, it was just too much.”

“Do you think the racial makeup of the jury had somethin’ to do with it?”

Arant rubbed his face with both hands and then glared at Cal.

“Pickett’s no different than any other town. The people here ain’t perfect, but we all get along for the most part. And people are fair minded. There were five black folks on the jury and seven white folks. And the verdict was obviously unanimous. They all still live around here if you wanna go ask them yourself, but they were all convinced that Isaiah did it. This town wasn’t divided in the least bit, especially along racial lines.”

“No protests or riots?”

Arant chuckled. “God, I hate social media, and I pity reporters like you who have to work in a big city environment. People in Pickett think Twitter is a word meaning stupid girl. Celebrity sightings here consist of the few football players who go on to play college ball somewhere or Dan Davis, the best farmer in these here parts who could get a yield of two cotton bushels plantin’ in cement. All that to say, the two were united when the verdict was read as well as the sentencing a few days later.”

Cal flipped through his notepad and sighed.

“The one thing that’s bugged me about what I read is that there was never another suspect, even though most of the evidence was circumstantial.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. You’d have to be pretty sympathetic to Isaiah to think he didn’t do this. Everything was there: motive, the murder weapon, the opportunity. The only oddity to the whole ordeal was how Isaiah was found. He claimed he passed out in a boat, still holding the murder weapon and Susannah’s finger. Who does that?”

“That strange behavior is the very reason I can’t believe there were never any other suspects.”

“Why look for anyone else when the man who’s the guiltiest is right there in front of you. While I’m not some big city reporter like you, I’ve covered my fair share of trials living in this town, and there’s one constant: In ninety-nine out of one hundred cases, the most guilty-lookin’ person with the biggest motive is your man.”

“But what about the other one?”

“There are always exceptions.”

Cal nodded. “And that’s exactly why I’m here.”

“Don’t look too hard, Mr. Murphy,” Arant said as he stood up. “Flippin’ over rocks in this town to dig up somethin’ that’s probably not there is a good way to get on everyone’s bad side. Susannah’s death was painful for the people of Pickett, almost as much as it was to watch the greatest football player this area has ever seen get sentenced to death. Scabs are there to help us heal. But if you start pickin’ at ‘em . . .”

“I might just find the real killer?” Cal asked as he stood up and tersely shook Arant’s hand.

“You be careful, Mr. Murphy, and you, too, Mrs. Murphy. We’re a friendly little town, but we don’t take too kindly to strangers stirrin’ up trouble.”

Cal scooped up his notebook off the table. “If you find the truth to be troubling, this town has bigger problems than us working on a story about a man who claims to be falsely condemned to death.”

Cal and Kelly headed toward the door, both stopping just before they exited.

“Thanks for your time, Mr. Arant, and you have a nice day.”

Arant was already walking back to his desk and didn’t turn around, throwing one of his hands in the air for a half-hearted wave.

Once Cal and Kelly were outside, Kelly gripped her husband’s arm.

“I’ve got a feeling that Drake was right about this place.”

Cal shook his head. “Well, I certainly didn’t expect it to be Disney World.”

CHAPTER 5

THE PICKETT COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT located two blocks due east from the newspaper was so quiet when Cal and Kelly stepped inside that Cal wondered if the door was left unlocked by mistake. The air conditioning window unit hummed behind them, and a CB radio unit on top of the receptionist desk crackled with unintelligible chatter between bursts of static. But there wasn’t a person in sight.

Cal walked up to the desk and looked around. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

A few seconds later, quickening