The Sacrifice Read online

  Scott saw an opportunity to make a point. “In the nineteenth century, colonel was an honorary title granted to prominent lawyers. They weren’t military colonels; it was a term of respect for the position they held and gave them a new identity. That’s what I want you to imagine when you introduce yourself to the judges.”

  “That I’m a colonel?” the young man asked.

  “No, that you’re no longer Dustin Rawlings, high-school student. You’re Dustin Rawlings, advocate for your client and member of the Catawba Mock Trial Team.”

  “Yes, colonel.”

  Scott smiled. “Do you play on a school sports team?”

  “Yes, I came from football practice to this meeting. After I took a shower, of course.” Dustin raised his arms over his head and stuck his nose in his shirt.

  “Good. For those who don’t play football, tell us what happens on Friday night in the locker room before a game.”

  “Huh?”

  Scott continued, “It’s game day. You’re going to play a team that beat you by twenty points the previous year then talked bad about you all over the area. When you get to school on Friday, there are paper banners in the hallways and a big pep rally during sixth period. Everyone on the team is wearing their jersey and sits in chairs on the gym floor while the students in the stands scream and stomp their feet. Now, it’s a few minutes before the kickoff, and the only people in the locker room are the players and coaches. What do you do?”

  “We get ready.”

  “How do you get ready?”

  “We put on our uniforms and listen to a pep talk from Coach Butler.”

  “That’s not all. Put yourself in the situation and give us more details.”

  Dustin thought a moment. “We become football players. We tape our ankles, strap on our pads, and gather together in a circle around the coach. Everybody takes a knee and puts his hand on his helmet.”

  “That’s it. What’s going through your head at that moment? Are you thinking about what you’re going to do after the game? Where you’re going to eat? Who you’re going to run into?”

  “No. It gets quiet. Everybody puts on his game face. You know, we all get that look. We’re different.”

  “A different identity?”

  Dustin nodded. From the look in his blue eyes it was clear he was in a circle of gridiron warriors in the locker room under the home stands of the football stadium.

  “What do you think about during those times?” Scott asked quietly.

  “Hitting somebody. Making a play. Helping the team. Winning.”

  “It’s not about you as an individual player, is it?”

  Dustin shook his head. “No, it’s all team.”

  Scott paused. The room was silent. “Before we’re finished, all of you are going to get that look. Male and female. No matter the role you play. You’re all going to be focused. You’re all going to take on a new identity. You’re going to become a team.”

  Scott turned to Kay and broke the spell. “Please distribute the materials, so we can give them an overview.”

  An hour later, Scott and Kay finished going over the preliminary information. Each teenager had a packet of papers similar to the one Scott had received from Dr. Lassiter.

  “That’s enough for tonight,” Kay said. “The next meeting will be at the same time on Thursday. Read the fact summaries for all the witnesses. If there is a particular witness role that interests you, let me know as soon as possible. If you want to be a lawyer, you need to begin studying the rules of evidence on pages eight through sixteen. Mr. Ellis will explain that part of the materials at a later meeting.”

  While most of the students filed out of the trailer, Kay turned to Scott. “Good speech. I don’t know whether to call you ‘colonel’ or ‘coach.’”

  “Did it make you want to put on a helmet and hit somebody?” Scott asked.

  “No, but I may tape my ankles before I come in to teach in the morning.”

  Dustin came up to them.

  “You were right about what happens in the locker room before a big game,” he said. “Did you play football in high school?”

  “Three years as a linebacker here at Catawba,” Scott answered. “What’s your position?”

  “Wide receiver. I’ll ask my father if he remembers you. He played linebacker, too.”

  “I’m not that old,” Scott responded. “You could be my little brother.”

  “That’s not what I meant. My dad has been coming to the games for years and knows tons of trivia about Catawba football.”

  Scott smiled. “All the facts about my football career would qualify as trivia.”

  “We have a game Friday night. You ought to come.”

  “I might do that,” Scott answered.

  Dustin left, and Kay gathered the papers strewn across the top of her desk.

  “What did you think of the young faces in the room tonight?”

  “It was a good first meeting. I only see one problem.”

  “What?”

  “It’s going to be hard to decide which students should play the most important roles. Most of them seemed bright and able to communicate.”

  “Did any of them remind you of yourself at this age?” Kay asked.

  Scott scratched his head. “Maybe Dustin, except that he’s more extroverted than I was in high school.”

  “That’s true. When we first met, I doubted whether you’d ever put three sentences together in a row.”

  Scott didn’t disagree.

  Kay continued, “Also, Dustin may pretend that he’s a dumb jock when it suits him, but inside he’s a smart young man.”

  “Like me?” Scott asked.

  “Know thyself.”

  “A philosophical answer. What about you? Are any of the girls similar to you?”

  “I’m not sure. Do you have one in mind?”

  The names and faces were a blur to Scott. “No, I haven’t been around them enough to appreciate the nuances. Women are more complex than men.”

  Kay smiled. “You’re more advanced than Dustin. An eighteen-year-old male would never have said that.”

  Kay stayed behind after Scott left. It was dark outside, but she wasn’t in a hurry to go back to her apartment. Loneliness before marriage is bad; loneliness after marriage is worse. Her only faithful companion was her pen and a piece of paper.

  Writing was Kay’s lifeline—connecting her heart to the day-to-day world. Since she was a little girl, she’d filled notebooks with thoughts and moods that chronicled her inner journey. She especially loved it when the words took on a life of their own and created a synergy in combination they couldn’t express in isolation. She wrote by hand. Sometimes random, sometimes structured. Always seeking to find the key that released a piece of herself through her literary voice, the unique means of expression that set her apart from everyone else on earth.

  If writing had color, Kay’s favorites were pale blues and rich greens. Recently, she’d been using more grays and browns. But no matter the color, when after the passage of time she read her words and they enabled her to revisit the emotion or feeling she’d described at the time of creation, she was satisfied.

  Since seeing Scott’s name on his business card, Kay had also browsed through the archives of her high-school memories. She could recall many details about the few months they dated, but her copy of the poem she gave him before he left for the army was gone. It hadn’t survived multiple moves back and forth across the country, and all that remained were snippets in her mind. However, she’d never forgotten the desire in her heart when she wrote it. It was an expression of vulnerability and tenderness that unveiled the heart of a sixteen-year-old girl who wondered if there was something more in their future than a senior prom in their past. It was one of the first birth pangs of true creativity within her soul because in revealing her feelings to Scott, she drew water from a deeper well. All she received in response was silence. It had hurt deeply for a few months. But with the resilience of adolesce
nce she’d gone on, and Scott Ellis became a distant memory with no reason to return.

  After Jake left, her thoughts didn’t revisit a high-school romance with Scott Ellis. He remained buried under several layers of relationships. Kay wanted Jake, not as he was, but as he had been when they fell in love, and a glimmer of hope still burned in her heart that her marriage could be restored. Seeing Scott didn’t change the focus of her heart.

  Kay took a notebook from a side drawer of her desk. She kept paper close at hand so she could record her thoughts before they escaped like fidgety students at the end of class. Opening to a clean page, she closed her eyes and turned back the clock to a beautiful beach on the California coast. Details of the scene floated to the surface; the sounds of the waves crashing against the rocks returned. Kay saw herself. She saw Jake. She began to write.

  8

  The humblest citizen of all the land,when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of Error.

  WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN

  Thursday arrived with a crisp snap of fall in the morning air. Up early, Scott pulled on a sweatshirt and walked around in the backyard drinking a cup of coffee while Nicky ran in circles on the wet grass. The sun was casting its first clear rays on the edge of the fishpond when he went inside and dressed for work.

  He arrived at the office before anyone else and checked for the third time all the papers he would file in Lester’s case. The clerk’s office would open at 8:30 A.M., and he wanted to have his motions filed and stamped, so he could hand them to assistant D.A. Davenport as soon as she entered the courtroom. He carefully put everything in his briefcase and walked to the courthouse.

  The front of the white-brick courthouse was crowned by a three-story clock tower that had solemnly struck the hour for over a hundred years. Color photographs of the Blanchard County Courthouse had appeared in several calendars featuring nineteenth-century architecture in North Carolina, and visitors to Catawba often mistook the historic building for a church and the clock tower for a steeple. Three massive oak trees grew on the property. In years past, they had provided welcome shade before air conditioning made the South a tolerable place to live in all seasons.

  The old courthouse was still used, but in the 1980s the county built a modern, one-story annex that spread out behind the original structure like a bridal train. The clerk’s office was in the annex. After filing his papers, Scott passed through a short hallway that led to the back entrance to the original courthouse. Stepping from the new building into the old courthouse was like stepping back in time with its polished wooden floors, high ceilings, broad hallways, and narrow doors with transoms at the top. There were two courtrooms. The main courtroom was on the ground floor and a smaller courtroom was on the second floor. Only the senior superior court judge had an office in the original building. The other judge was headquartered in the courthouse annex.

  The first time Scott entered the main courtroom, he thought about the movie adaptation of Inherit the Wind, the story of the gargantuan legal battle between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes evolution trial of 1925. Eloquent speeches and passionate appeals deserve a courtroom with dignity, and the white plaster walls and elaborate columns behind the judge’s bench had heard much worth remembering. Scott wished he could put his ear next to one of the columns and command it to replay a sampling of the oratory from days when lawyers were warriors instead of technicians and trials more like mortal combat than computer programs.

  He walked down the middle aisle and through a swinging opening in the bar, a waist-high wooden railing of finely crafted walnut spindles. A handful of people were scattered about the room—defendants out on bond, family and friends of people who were in jail, and a few curious spectators. A clerk from the district attorney’s office placed a rack of files on the table used by the prosecutors when trying cases. Scott knew that somewhere in the rack was a thin folder labeled “State v. Garrison.”

  At 8:55 A.M. a short young woman with close-cut black hair, dark eyes, and wearing a navy business suit entered the courtroom from a door used by court personnel and went to the prosecution table. Scott went over to her.

  “Are you Lynn Davenport?”

  Somehow, the diminutive prosecutor managed to look down her nose at him when she answered, “Yes.”

  “I’m Scott Ellis. I called you about the Lester Garrison case.”

  “And?”

  Scott abandoned any thought of morning pleasantries and put copies of the motions he’d filed on the prosecution table. “Here are motions I filed this morning in the case.”

  “Anything else? I have a full calendar this morning.”

  “No.” Scott returned to his seat and watched Ms. Davenport flip through the papers in less than ten seconds before dropping them on the table.

  When the big clock in the tower began to strike the hour, the clerk of court came into the courtroom and called out, “All rise! The Superior Court of Blanchard County is now in session, the Honorable Wayman Teasley presiding.”

  Judge Teasley was a former district attorney elected to the bench ten years before. A tall, thin, balding man, Judge Teasley looked scarecrow-like in his judicial robes. He wore black half-frame glasses that he twirled in the air when a lawyer or witness began to get on his nerves. Veteran attorneys knew that if Judge Teasley’s glasses started spinning it was time to get things moving.

  “Where are the prisoners?” the judge asked a deputy standing next to the jury box.

  “They’ve not arrived from the jail, your honor. There is also a juvenile coming from the detention center.”

  The judge took off his glasses and gave them a spin. “Ms. Davenport. Begin with the noncustodial matters.”

  “Yes, sir. Call State v. Rogers . . .”

  It was a catchall day. The first two defendants didn’t have lawyers, and the judge sent them out the door to the public defender’s office for an appointment. Another entered a guilty plea and went to the side to talk with a probation officer. The men from the jail arrived in handcuffs and leg irons. At the end of the line was Lester Garrison. He wasn’t wearing any handcuffs and looked pale and small sitting next to an enormous male prisoner with a long brown ponytail and full beard.

  “State v. Garrison,” Lynn Davenport called out. Scott got to his feet and motioned for Lester to come forward. The D.A. opened her folder. “The accused is charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to inflict serious injury, assault by pointing a gun, and criminal damage to property.”

  The judge peered over his glasses at Scott and Lester.

  Scott stepped forward. “Scott Ellis with Humphrey, Balcomb and Jackson representing the defendant. I’ve filed—”

  “How old is your client?” the judge interrupted.

  “Sixteen, your honor. One of the motions I’ve filed is a request that the case be sent back to juvenile court.”

  The judge took off his glasses but kept them still for the moment. “Ms. Davenport, give me the file.”

  The judge repositioned his glasses and quickly looked through the papers. He closed the file and handed it back to the D.A.

  “Why shouldn’t an alleged incident like this involving a sixteen-year-old be handled in juvenile court?”

  “Your honor, there is more to this case than the charges outlined in the juvenile court petition and accusation filed by our office. We intend to file additional charges of criminal conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Scott took a step forward. “Your honor, we’ve not been notified—”

  “Hold on, counsel, I’m not going to spend all morning on this case. Ms. Davenport, I’m setting a hearing on Mr. Ellis’s motion to remand this case to juvenile court at ten o’clock in the morning. You’d better show me more than the information in this file if you want to prosecute this young man as an adult. I will postpone arraignment until that time.”

  Lester followed Scott to a small bench against the wall near the other prisoners. The young
man was obviously agitated. “Why didn’t you ask him to let me out?”

  Scott’s jaw dropped. “Didn’t you hear what the D.A. said? They’re going to charge you with conspiracy to commit murder!”

  “I didn’t try to kill anyone, and they can’t prove anything serious against me.” Lester looked suspiciously at Scott and jerked his head toward Lynn Davenport. “Someone told that D.A. about my beliefs.”

  Scott didn’t connect the suspicion in Lester’s eyes to himself. “Anything is possible.”

  “Did you talk to her?” Lester asked through clenched teeth.

  “Not about that. Remember, everything you tell me is confidential. All I did was try to convince her to send the case back to juvenile court.”

  “She’s prejudiced,” Lester said.

  If it hadn’t been a serious situation, Scott would have burst out laugh- ing. He glanced quickly at Lester to see if the young man with the swastika tattooed on his arm realized the utter hypocrisy of his statement.

  “We’ll find out more tomorrow. In the meantime, keep your mouth closed and your hands by your side.”

  When he returned to the office, Scott stopped by Mr. Humphrey’s office and told him the latest developments.

  “And that’s where we are at this moment. Judge Teasley scheduled the hearing on my motion to remand the case to the juvenile court for ten o’clock in the morning.”

  The older lawyer finished writing a few notes on a legal pad. “Do you know any facts supporting the conspiracy to commit murder charge?”

  Scott shook his head. “No, but the kid is a cauldron of rage and bigotry. He’s capable of anything.”

  “You can probably assume the D.A. is coming from a different angle. She has something unrelated to what you already know.”

  Scott grunted. “She’s not volunteering any information.”

  “What was the judge’s attitude?”

  “I’m not sure what he was thinking. All I could tell was that he wanted to move through his calendar.”

  Mr. Humphrey leaned back in his chair. “When Wayman Teasley was the D.A. he was tough but fair. He would work out a deal on a case if it didn’t need to be vigorously prosecuted, but when he thought a defendant needed to go to prison, the accused could forget a plea bargain unless he agreed to substantial jail time. You know that thing he does with his glasses?”