Part 25 (2/2)
At the end of the shrimp c.o.c.ktail, I said, ”Gary, we're on the same side now. I came up here because I need your help.”
Oliver nodded warily. The last time we talked, he'd been selling. Now he was buying.
”Back in trial, in April '79, you believed Morgan was guilty, isn't that so?”
”Sure, but the kid kept telling me he didn't do it.”
”That didn't sway you to believe him?”
”Can you raise corn on concrete?” Oliver said.
”Then why'd you put him on the witness stand?”
”I told him, 'Darryl, don't get up there.' He insisted.”
”He, not you?”
”You think I'm that dumb? He was gonna have his say if it harelipped every mule in Georgia.”
”But when he was on the stand, he never really told his version of what he and William Smith did that night.”
”That's right. I knew it'd hurt him. Jury'd find him guilty, which they were going to do anyhow, but then they'd give him death for making up such a ridiculous lie. I kept him away from that story of his. I just let him say, 'No, I didn't kill no one.' I figured that's all he really wanted to do.”
”Gary, I want to run a few facts and theories by you, if you don't mind. Just consider that you're singing for your supper.”
”If I can help that kid, I'll do it.”
I told him just about everything that had troubled me since I had become involved in Florida v. Morgan the second time around. He already knew about Jerry Lee Elroy, and I told him about my hunch that Floyd Nickerson had also lied about Darryl's confession, and how Carmen Tanagra had all but confirmed it. And about the odd coincidence that had sent Nickerson from JSO to a plush job at a ZiDevco country club village near Gainesville, and about Neil Zide's slip when at first he'd denied any knowledge of how Nickerson got the job but somehow knew the date of the detective's departure for Orange Meadow. About the violent death of Victor Gambrel, security chief for Zide Industries-the man who had arrived at the Zide estate only a few minutes before the Jacksonville Beach patrol car. ”So what's your theory?” Oliver asked.
”Let's a.s.sume for the sake of argument that your old client and my new client is telling the truth. He was there at the Zides'-he admits that. But he didn't pull the trigger on the gun that never turned up.”
Oliver looked at me carefully. ”Well, Zide didn't turn that gun on himself, that's for sure. And Mrs. Zide didn't cut her own face that badly. Someone did it.”
”Someone who looks like Darryl?”
”Not many fit that bill.”
”Someone who doesn't look like Darryl?”
”Only other people around were Mrs. Zide and her son.”
”Yes,” I said.
”Could be. Unlikely, but could be.”
”Why unlikely?”
”She got cut bad, Ted.”
”But not necessarily by a burglar.”
He mulled that over for a while, as I had done on other occasions. ”Husband might have cut her. And then she shot him.”
”It's possible.”
”You don't sound convinced.”
I asked Oliver how often he'd heard of a middle-aged multimillionaire cutting his wife in the face with a knife. While he was formulating an answer, I added, ”In the presence of his adult son.”
Oliver finally said, ”Not a good bet. But that doesn't mean it couldn't happen.”
”Set that aside for a while. Suppose Darryl and William Smith came there to rob the estate, which is what Darryl says happened. And they arrive in the midst of an argument, and get scared by someone, and run off. Darryl says he saw Connie Zide outside on the terrace, in a bathrobe. So she might well have seen him. Then the family argument resumes, and Zide cuts his wife. She shoots him. Kills him. Maybe she didn't mean to do it, but there he is, dead on the patio floor. She freaks out. It's justifiable homicide, maybe, by reason of self-defense, or maybe it's manslaughter. Or maybe it's murder. She doesn't really know. She's not thinking clearly. So she says, 'Hey, I'll blame it on Darryl Morgan. Just a big ignorant n.i.g.g.e.r. And he was here. That's a fact.' ”
Oliver shook his head slowly. ”That would make her out to be a mighty mean woman. She didn't strike me that way.”
”No, she's not mean,” I said. ”But you never know, do you?”
He was silent awhile, but I could tell that the taste of the thought intrigued him. ”You think that's what happened?”
”Not really.” The truth is, I couldn't imagine the woman I had made love to, the woman who had wept in my arms on c.u.mberland Island, deliberately pointing the finger of guilt at a young man she knew to be innocent; proclaiming, ”He did it.” She would have realized that her word-and Neil's, if she convinced him to go along with her story-would be enough to put Darryl away for life or send him to the electric chair. But she hadn't wanted Darryl to die; I remembered that. She had felt for him as a human being.
But maybe she didn't want him to die because she knew that he was innocent.
Oliver stroked his jowls and said, ”How does Floyd Nickerson getting that job tie in with the rest of it?”
”It's pretty blatant, but it could have been a payoff.”
”And Gambrel's murder?”
”Maybe that doesn't tie in at all. You know how it is when you're trying to shape a theory of defense. You clutch at everything and anything.” Finis.h.i.+ng my coffee, I called for the check. ”You were an investigator before you took up lawyering, and Beldon told me you were pretty good at it. Why don't you sniff around? You could talk to potential witnesses. I never sat down with the security guard back then-he may have seen something that he didn't report to the police. The deal is, if I win the appeal over in Tallaha.s.see, and there's a hearing or a retrial, I'll ask you to sit second chair with me. For whatever's your standard fee.”
”How much money are you making out of this?” he asked.
”Diddly squat.”
”Well, I'll take a fair half of your diddly.”
I had watched Oliver drinking. He seemed to be taking it easy, in control. I gave him a Xerox copy of my notes.
Changing the subject, I said, ”Gary, when I was down at Raiford I a.s.saulted a prison official. I broke his nose.”
Oliver's eyes widened. ”No s.h.i.+t.”
”When the moon is full, I lose control. Turns out it's a second- degree felony. Will you represent me in Bradford County? Not for diddly, but for whatever your normal fee is. And we won't argue about that.”
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