Page 55 of The 1 Lawyer

In Mississippi, people believe that tramps and vagrants deserve whatever they get.

CHAPTER 42

JENNY HADN’T been inside Stafford Lee’s house on St. Charles Street in ages—at least ten months, maybe longer. Stafford Lee probably didn’t even remember that she had a key to the front door.

His recall was spotty these days.

The courthouse rumor mill was churning over his yearlong decline. Jenny needed to find out if the talk was accurate. She stood on the front porch, put the key in the lock, and turned it.

The living room was dark, the shades and curtains drawn across the picture window. When she flipped on the overhead light, she saw his current sleeping quarters. A sweat-stained pillow and a crumpled sheet were strewn across the couch. She shook out the sheet, then switched her focus to the documents and legal pads scattered across the coffee table. A half-empty bottle of bourbon sat next to a dirty glass.

Tears pricked her eyes. Was he drinking all night? She couldn’t believe Stafford Lee had sunk so low.

Jenny resisted the impulse to pour the bourbon down the kitchen drain; instead, she went down the hall—glancing briefly into a bathroom littered with dirty towels that had soured with mildew—to the main bedroom.

The door was shut.

Jenny turned the knob, went in, and took in the grisly view of the murder scene.

Though more than a year had passed, all the marks of the crimes remained, with the exception of the corpses and the bed linens and coverings taken as evidence. The bare mattress was stained with the blood of the murder victims. The forensic officers had taken samples, but fragments of bone and dried particles of human flesh dotted the headboard and the wall behind it. Pellet marks from the shotgun blast were also embedded in the wood and the plaster wall. It was a good thing she had a strong stomach.

She spoke out loud to steady herself: “Don’t think about Carrie Ann. Just pretend it’s somebody else’s house.”

She had to act like it was standard business. Do a dispassionate perusal. That was the only way Jenny could bear to remain on the premises. So she pulled a tape measure from her pocket. Setting her jaw, she commenced taking measurements, dictating notes into her phone, and snapping pictures.

She had read the police reports Stafford Lee had shared with her. As she examined the bloody carpet where Benjamin Gates’s body had been found, she thought about Detective Sweeney’s conclusions. The police ultimately attributed the shooting deaths of Carrie Ann and Coach Davies to Gates. They found the shotgun propped against a chest of drawers just a few feet inside the doorway. The blast almost blew the coach’s head off, which was why the police had initially misidentified him as Stafford Lee. It was an understandable error. It was Stafford Lee’s home, and everyone knew Gates was furious with him after the verdict in the Caro trial.

Benjamin Gates’s suicide had occurred on the far side of the room. The reports said Gates had apparently stuck a semiautomatic pistol in his mouth and pulled the trigger; the bullet had exited from the back of his head and lodged in a plaster wall. The handgun was found on the floor near his body.

Jenny squatted beside the bed and aimed her cell phone at the carpet, focusing on a bloodstain left behind by Gates’s self-inflicted gunshot. Shaking her head, Jenny pondered the purpose of bringing two weapons into the house. Why use a shotgun to commit the murder when he had a handgun? And why did he opt to walk over to Carrie Ann’s side of the bed to pull out the revolver and eat the gun? There was no way to know Gates’s intention. The Gates family insisted that they had had no knowledge of his plot.

She strode to the doorway and turned to take a last look at the hideous scene. There was no rational reason for preserving the site of the bloodbath. The investigation was complete. For a price, Stafford Lee could have hired a commercial cleaner to scrub the place down. She closed the door and shivered as she walked swiftly down the hall.

Yet she didn’t regret the unauthorized tour of the house. The ghoulish crime scene confirmed her friend’s troubled mental state.

Her friend’s mind was in a bad place.

CHAPTER 43

I SAT on a stool at the end of the bar at the Salty Dog and drained the last swallow of bourbon from my glass. To get the bartender’s attention, I raised the glass up high.

He ignored me, stepping over to another patron. I shook the glass, and the ice cubes rattled inside it. “Another Jim Beam on the rocks, Porter.”

He set a fresh drink in front of me. “You’re starting early today, Stafford Lee.”

“You got that right. I earned it, man.”

I was still dressed in the wrinkled suit I’d worn to court, though I had stripped off the necktie before I came into the bar. That courtroom defeat in the Della Calhoun case stung, and the first four cocktails hadn’t eased the pain.

My conscience pricked me; I wondered if my client was waiting for me to appear at the jail and discuss her post-conviction motions. I’d promised her that I’d come by. Taking a healthy swallow of bourbon, I pushed the thought aside. After the attack Della had launched on me in open court, I had no appetite for the woman’s company. When I’d left the courthouse that afternoon, I’d just wanted to sit and drink in peace.

After that hellish shitshow of a trial, I felt like I deserved it.

Mason finally showed up. I refrained from checking the time when he slid onto the stool beside me. He gave me a slap on the back that felt a little too hearty. “How you holding up, Stafford Lee?”

I lifted my glass. “Where have you been, Mason? I’ve been waiting on you.”

He gave me the side-eye. “Doesn’t look like you waited. Looks like you started without me.”

---