Read Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement for Free Online Page A

doesn’t totally surprise me that Bledsoe would make that kind of phone call, but I can’t imagine Paul being dumb enough to let himself be implicated on tape.
    Butterfield pulls a tape from his desk drawer and places it in a pocket Olympus tape recorder.
    “This is a copy. The sheriff’s got the original in his evidence room,
    and you can hear it anytime you want. The relevant part is only a few seconds long.” He pushes a button, and I hear a click and then recognize Paul Taylor’s rich, bass voice saying, “This place won’t be worth a hundred thousand dollars after you die because you’ve got nobody here to run it.”
    “It sounds like you’re threatening me,” a soft Asian voice, not unlike Tommy’s, responds.
    “Willie, you can interpret it however you want, but one way or the other you’re gonna die soon…” I hear the sound of a telephone ringing, and the tape ends. Though I’m certainly not going to admit it to Butterfield, my reaction is one of deep satisfaction. There is no way in hell Paul can deny the tape. Though I’ve never done any research on this precise legal point, I’m certain the tape of this conversation could be admit y led into evidence. I ask, “What was the deal? Was Paul trying to buy it and Willie wouldn’t sell?”
    “Exactly,” Butterfield answers.
    “This was made about a month before he died. He gave this tape to his wife and told her that if anything happened to him to tell his son in Washington about it. He had told the secretary about it, too.”
    “Why didn’t Willie take the tape to the sheriff the next day?” I ask.
    “He might still be alive.”
    Butterfield shrugs.
     
    “Who knows? Those folks have always been a mystery to me. All I know is that they’re still sucking what little money there is right out of the black community with those dinky little stores they operate and never crack so much as a smile.”
    There is no mistaking the bitterness in the prosecutor’s voice. It occurs to me that there is probably no love lost between the blacks and Asians in Bear Creek any more than there is in places like Los Angeles.
    “How many stores do they have left?”
    “Three,” the prosecutor says.
    “They’re still hanging on, though there’s not much left to get.”
    I file away his response. It may come in handy later. I wonder how he feels personally about Paul Taylor. Now is not the time to ask, but I would like to know.
    “Did Paul make an offer for the plant after Willie died?”
    Butterfield presses down a creased place on one of the statements.
    “He waited about two months. Of course, we were working with the son in DCI but Taylor didn’t say anything more that incriminated himself.
    He offered a hundred thousand for the plant, but after a couple of meetings with the son, he withdrew the offer. The plant’s being run by his cousin from Greenville.
     
    Obviously, you’ll want to go out there.”
    The reason for all this chumminess and willingness to let me see the file before I’ve officially entered my appearance in court as Doss’s attorney dawns on me as I realize there is no smoking gun linking Paul Taylor to Bledsoe. Butterfield has the one overheard conversation at the plant, but the secretary can’t say whom he was talking to. I’d be willing to bet my fee in this case that at some point, perhaps very soon. Class is going to be offered a deal he may not be able to refuse in order to get his testimony against Paul. If that’s what this case comes down to, it will be fine with me.
    Before I leave his office, I ask about the sheriff.
    “I see him running for a bigger office someday.
    The pictures on his walls are pretty impressive.”
    Butterfield gives me his only frown of the day.
    “Bonner’s been running for something since the day he was born. He’s a good sheriff,” he adds quickly.
    I resist asking the prosecutor what he will be running for next. I should have realized he and Bonner see themselves as natural competitors