His Lawyer Asked What A Poor Grader Could Possibly Know

Ten months passed before I took the witness stand in Fannin County.

In that time, I worked. I graded white oak in summer heat and checked frozen poplar under a tarp in January. Some customers never came back. Others brought coffee and acted as if they'd only meant to ask about board feet.

I learned to accept the work without asking which kind of customer they were.

The criminal case covered the yard's organized theft scheme, the forged records, the threats, and June's confinement. Lawyers from the counties tied to the cutting worked with the prosecutor handling the yard case.

Wade had pleaded guilty and agreed to testify. The scale supervisor had turned over his payment records. Silas went to trial.

Before it started, Rosalie called me about the witness schedule.

We still hadn't gone on a date.

She'd reported our coffee conversation to her supervisor. After that, another investigator attended every formal interview involving me. We kept personal calls off the calendar.

"You might find out I'm dull when I don't have an evidence bag," she said.

"I grade boards for a living. My standards for excitement are low."

"That sounds promising."

It was enough to carry through another week.

On the stand, I looked at the jury instead of Silas. When the prosecutor asked what I did, I explained sound cuttings and defects without trying to sound like a book.

She showed my May 6 rejection slip.

"Why did you leave that square empty?"

"I had no source permit number to put in it."

"Did Mr. Horne ask you to approve the shipment anyway?"

"Yes."

I repeated his friendly advice. Saying it in that room took away the soft edges he'd wrapped around it.

His lawyer rose with my pay records.

"Nineteen dollars an hour. You were having financial trouble, weren't you?"

"Yes."

"Eighteen thousand six hundred dollars would have helped."

"If I'd had it. I didn't."

He held up a photo of my shed.

"No laboratory. No university appointment. What could you know about where a tree grew?"

"From that photo? Nothing. From fresh wood? I could tell you its condition. The research lab handled the ring comparisons."

He paused, then asked why I'd approved four earlier shipments.

"I graded them and noted the source claim relied on the papers supplied. I should have checked those papers further. I did when the next load came without them."

"So you made mistakes."

"I kept records of those too."

The prosecutor later showed the samples, their seals, and the cooperative's index. Ruth's contract clause came in through the proper witness. Silas couldn't turn my ownership into theft by calling it something else.

Ada explained the rings. The second lab's examiner explained where the method could fall short. Both compared the boards with the archive and the remains of mapped trees at Morrow Brake.

The evidence wasn't just a pattern in wood. Site photographs, stump locations, cutting dates, truck movements, invoices, and bank payments agreed with it.

I watched jurors make notes when the examiner said that.

June testified the next morning. We witnesses had waited apart until our own testimony was finished. When I could sit in the gallery, she was describing the locked dispatch room.

Her voice stayed low.

The lawyer asked why she'd run instead of going straight to police.

"He knew my daughter's address," she said. "I believed him."

She didn't give him a better-sounding reason just because he wanted one.

The nurse who had given her a ride remembered the taped red cuff. A bus ticket purchase fixed the next part of her route. Her missing phone had been recovered from a locked cabinet in Wade's office.

Wade admitted locking the room and carrying out Silas's orders. His plea agreement was read to the jury, including the benefit he hoped to receive.

The records had to support him. They did.

The driver described bringing R17 back with every board aboard. The bank showed the false settlement payment. A computer examiner explained the receipt bearing my copied signature and the message approving its use.

On the sixth day, the jury went out.

I waited in the hall beneath a square window. June sat with her daughter. Ruth brought sandwiches nobody finished.

Silas passed us on his way from a meeting with his lawyer. He opened his mouth, then looked at the court officer beside the door.

For once, no advice came out.

At four seventeen, the courtroom door opened.

The bailiff held a folded note.

"The jury has a verdict," she said.