Free The Closing: A Whippoorwill Hollow novel (The Whippoorwill Hollow novels) by Ken Oder

object?”
    “It doesn’t always pay to make objections in Eddy Herring’s courtroom.”
    “The judge granted an unnoticed motion off the record without a full briefing and you didn’t object.”
    “I opposed Randy in a host of cases, and he never made a motion in limine. The judge is a stickler for procedure, but he ran roughshod over the rules on that motion. The whole thing threw me off balance. Later, when I had time to think, I decided to let it go. The case against Deatherage was open and shut. I didn’t need Updike’s background to convict him. I thought the judge understood the strength of my case and granted Randy’s motion so Deatherage wouldn’t have any basis for an appeal. It didn’t seem to matter to the outcome of the case. The jury found Deatherage guilty. He was sentenced to death.”
    “So you didn’t investigate Updike’s background.”
    “My resources are limited and Albany is a long way off. Besides, no investigation was warranted after the judge granted Randy’s motion.”
    Nate was puzzled by George’s concession of the issue. He was an aggressive litigator. Docility was out of character for him, but Nate decided not to press the point. “Tell me about Swiller. No one in town seems to have known him.”
    “That doesn’t surprise me. He moved here from Charlottesville a few years back. Buck County doesn’t warm up to strangers easily, and Randy wasn’t sociable.”
    “I understand Swiller represented four capital defendants in Buck County.”
    George was quiet. Then he said, “Swiller had five capital cases.”
    “Carol Ergenbright told me there were four appeals from Swiller’s trials.”
    “Swiller represented Creighton Long. There was no appeal in that case.”
    “Creighton Long, the serial killer?”
    Nate had heard about the Long case. Four or five years earlier, the case experienced a brief period of notoriety due to the brutality of Long’s crimes. It received statewide media coverage for a few days and then dropped out of the news after Long was convicted. “Long was executed,” Nate said.
    “Damned straight. Creighton Long was the best argument for the death penalty I ever saw. He murdered five little boys. Tortured and sodomized them before he killed them. He worked on them with a pair of pliers, for pity’s sake.”
    “How did Swiller get within a country mile of a high profile case like that?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “Be straight with me, George. I read the record of the Deatherage case. I saw Swiller’s handiwork. Deatherage would have fared better if he represented himself.”
    George shrugged. “Swiller did the best he could with a hard case.”
    “If that was Swiller’s best, he wasn’t fit to handle criminal misdemeanors, much less capital cases.”
    “Swiller was no genius, but I’ve seen worse lawyers.”
    “Name one.”
    George didn’t respond, and he seemed uncomfortable.
    Nate decided to move on again. He knew from his review of the record that Deatherage was first charged with crimes in Buck County General District Court. District Court Judge Tobias Gwathmey was responsible for appointing Swiller to represent Deatherage and he would have been similarly responsible for appointing counsel for the other Buck County capital defendants. Nate said, “What sort of procedure does Judge Gwathmey follow to select lawyers to represent indigent defendants?”
    George looked out the window. “In capital cases, Toby takes his cues from Judge Herring.”
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “Most district court judges check with the chief judge of their circuit before they appoint a lawyer to represent a defendant in a capital case. Toby Gwathmey is no exception. Eddy Herring is the chief judge of our circuit. He told Toby to appoint Randy Swiller to those capital cases and Toby did what Eddy said.”
    “Why in hell would Judge Herring want Gwathmey to appoint a lawyer as bad as Swiller to represent all the capital defendants in Buck