Life By Chocolate

Kaycee Keller didn’t have a job after law school. Not as a lawyer, anyway. She passed the bar exam on her first try. But her grades didn’t rank in the top third of her class, and her school wasn’t among the top third, either. So instead of donning a business suit and writing complex commercial documents in a skyscraper, a month after she was sworn-in to the bar she found herself wearing a green apron and mixing complex caffeinated beverages.

But what she did have was an inquisitive mind, and an outgoing personality, and a ready smile, and, so, dozens of friends. People were just drawn to Kaycee. Within her first two weeks at the coffee shop, she knew all the regulars’ names and orders. More than a handful would stop to chat with her after the morning rush, on their walks from one skyscraper to another.

So it was, that rumpled, portly John Byrd stopped by one sunny Thursday afternoon. He didn’t order. He just sat down at a corner table, and loosened his tie, and looked to meet Kaycee’s eyes behind the counter. Two minutes later she brought him a venti double-shot caramel macchiato, and he handed her about twice the price in cash.

“Thanks, Kaycee. Keep the change. Say, you don’t happen to have any aspirin handy, do you?”

Kaycee thought for a moment and nodded. “There’s some Advil behind the counter. You OK, John?”

He took a sip of his drink. “I’ll live. Just stressed. Gotta pull a rabbit out of a hat again, and I don’t know how I’m gonna do it.”

Kaycee left for the counter, took care of a customer, and returned to find John scowling at his laptop computer and shaking his head. She put a bottle of Advil down next to his keyboard, and then she snuck what she hoped was an unnoticed peek at the screen.

“What kind of rabbit are you after?”

John looked up at the ceiling and sighed. Then he reached for the Advil and opened it as he spoke.

“Between you and me? I’m consulting for the governor’s campaign. He’s got a problem. Remember that execution last week?”

Kaycee nodded. “I saw the story on the news. Terrible thing.”

John popped three pills into his mouth and swallowed quickly. “Tough part for the governor is, he’s got a primary opponent. Very progressive. The campaign thinks this death-penalty thing’s costing him votes. His chief of staff told me to hire a lawyer, off the state’s books, to come up with an innocent death-row inmate he can exonerate, or pardon or whatever. But it’s a crap job with worse pay. It’s a snipe hunt, probably. Nobody wants to do it.”

Kaycee reached into her apron to find a business card, and exchanged it for the Advil on the table. “I’m a lawyer,” she smiled. “I’ll do it.”

John folded his arms and frowned. He looked from Kaycee to his computer, then back to her. Then he shrugged, studied her card, put it in his shirt pocket and started typing.

“OK. The governor’s got a rally in Knoxville this Saturday. At the fairgrounds. Find his campaign bus and ask for Shanda Perkins. She’ll get you started. Meanwhile, don’t tell a soul without my say-so.”

He picked up his phone and nodded to thank Kaycee and send her off. Her feet took her body back to the counter, but her mind was already 200 miles east down I-40.

All night Thursday, and then all night Friday Kaycee scoured the internet, reading everything that seemed useful on capital punishment and exonerations. Saturday morning, she nearly fell asleep on the drive from Nashville. But by 10:00 a.m. she’d made her way to Chilhowee Park, where there was only one red, white and blue-wrapped luxury coach to be found.

A state trooper stopped her a few feet from the bus. “Can I help you?”

Kaycee handed him her card. “I’m here to see Shanda Perkins.”

He stepped away a few paces and used his radio. A moment later the bus door opened. A woman in a business suit emerged with a cardboard file box; she strode over to Kaycee and set the box down near her feet.

“Good morning. Who sent you?”

Kaycee hadn’t expected that question. She almost lost the name, but quickly remembered.

“Mr. Byrd. John. John Byrd.”

Shanda nodded quickly. “Just checking. So, Kaycee Keller, of Sumner Avenue in East Nashville, here’s the deal. Your client’s the governor’s campaign committee. Not the governor himself, not the state of Tennessee, and not any inmate whose case you might evaluate. Clear?”

Kaycee nodded. Shanda continued.

“The governor’s already stated publicly that he’s making a diligent effort to re-examine capital convictions for errors. You’re his ‘diligent effort.’ Mr. Byrd will be your contact point. Don’t discuss any of this with anyone else, including me. You’ll get a check in the mail for $5000 Monday. Well, $4999.99; spot us the penny. It’s earned when paid. But account to John for any expenses, and bill your time at $100 an hour. Clear?”

Kaycee nodded again. Without another word or glance, Shanda turned and went back inside the bus. Kaycee looked about, seeing only the state trooper who was pointedly looking in another direction. There was nothing to do but heft the box and return to her car. So, she did.

An hours’ driving westbound was all Kaycee could manage without at least a peek inside the box. She stopped at a rest area and bought some sodas from a vending machine, then returned to her car to read.

From her first look at the plain manila files, she saw that they all related to a single case. The file in front was just news clippings. She started there, and learned that Eustace Garth Spangler had been convicted of stabbing his ex-wife and her boyfriend to death at her house in 1991.

Local reporters had quickly dubbed Spangler the “Burned Bundt Killer” because of what the police found at the scene: an unfrosted, overcooked cake with one large slice gone. Autopsies determined that neither victim had eaten any cake, and there were traces of the victims’ blood where the cake had been cut. The state’s case didn’t include eyewitness testimony, a murder weapon, or any other forensic evidence.

But the prosecution did bring in a dozen relatives and neighbors who’d heard Spangler threaten his ex previously, and who knew all about his insatiable sweet tooth. So, despite his vehement denials on the witness stand, the Dickson County jury sent him to death row.

Kaycee boxed-up the file and took a long drink from one of her sodas. Then she called her boss and got the following week off work. As she made her way back to I-40 and East Nashville, she calculated and re-calculated what she could do with $5000. And, more than a few times, she wondered whether Eustace Spangler might, somehow, be innocent.

It took most of Sunday for Kaycee to read through the files. The check didn’t arrive in the mail on Monday, and she worried off and on as she reviewed Spangler’s unsuccessful appeal pleadings a second time. Then the money arrived Tuesday morning, and all she had left to worry about was how to proceed. Spangler’s formal appeals were exhausted. Only the governor could save his life – if, some way, she could find some reason for that.

Wednesday morning, she called across town to Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. A surly-voiced clerk wouldn’t grant her an appointment to visit Spangler because she wasn’t his last attorney of record. So she called John Byrd. 20 minutes later the clerk called her back, sounding nice as pie. He offered to let Kaycee visit Spangler, in the warden’s office, anytime she wanted.

Two hours thereafter she was whisked through security at the prison without a search. Two very courteous guards escorted her to a spacious, nicely-appointed office. Spangler was already seated there, uncuffed, wearing orange coveralls with a belly chain. As soon as she sat down behind the mahogany desk, he started in.

“You’re not my lawyer. Who are you? What’s this about?”

Kaycee had a list of questions, but she hadn’t thought to prepare any answers. It took her a moment to reply.

“Well... Sir... I’m Kaycee Keller, and I am a lawyer. However, so we’re clear, I have to point out that I don’t represent you, or the state of Tennessee.”

Spangler didn’t miss a beat. “Well, then, why should I even talk to you? What’s in it for me?”

Kaycee picked up a pencil and studied it, thinking. “Sir, I’ve been hired to re-examine your case. It could be very much in your interests to answer my questions.”

Spangler snorted dismissively. “I ain’t got no appeals left. They’re gonna kill me regardless. So, like I say -- what’s in it for me?”

She didn’t respond directly. Instead, mostly out of her own curiosity, she inquired. “There might not be much I can do for you. What do you want?”

Spangler had an answer ready. “Candy. Five pounds. You’re in this here office somehow. Bet you can get candy for me, easy.”

Kaycee had no idea what she could or couldn’t promise, but she saw his logic. “OK. I’ll try my best. Now, may I ask you some questions about your case?”

The man agreed, and over the next two hours Kaycee asked him everything she could think of. At the end, she thanked him and went to knock at the office door to summon the guards. As they entered and went to take charge of Spangler, she asked him one more question.

“Eustace? What kind of candy would you like?”

He thought for a moment as the guards shackled his wrists and ankles. “Any kind’s fine, ma’am. Different sorts, I guess. Surprise me. Anything but chocolate.”

That last remark stopped Kaycee cold. “Why not chocolate?”

The guards walked Spangler past her to the corridor; he spoke as he took small steps in his ankle-chains. “I’m deadly-allergic to chocolate. Can’t hardly touch it. It’d kill me faster’n the electric chair will.”

Kaycee left the building as quickly as she could. When she reached her car in the parking lot, she got in and rifled through several files again. Then she found her cell phone in the glove box and called John Byrd.

He didn’t sound happy when he answered. “Miss Keller, I hope you’re not calling for another favor. The governor wants to keep your work as far off of anybody’s radar as possible.”

Kaycee had butterflies in her stomach when she spoke. “I understand. And I hate to ask. But I need to talk to the detective in charge of the Spangler investigation. You see –”

John interrupted quickly. “Noooo, no. No ma’am, you don’t. Maybe, possibly, I might have a discreet, off-the-record chat with that detective, depending. Not you. What’s so important?”

“I just need to know one thing that isn’t in the documents.”

John paused for a long moment. Kaycee’s heart skipped a beat when he finally answered.

“OK, maybe. What could you not get from the file, or from Spangler?”

“It’s the Bundt cake, with the slice cut out.”

John jumped in impatiently. “I know, I know, with the blood on it. Killer probably ate a piece. So?”

“I need to know what flavor it was.”

“What flavor? It was burned, if I remember –”

Kaycee chanced an interruption of her own. “No, the mix. The kind of cake it was.”

There was silence on the line for about five seconds. John finally offered a terse “I’ll call you” and hung up.

Kaycee waited an hour. She’d just started driving back to East Nashville when John called. He chuckled a bit when she answered.

“Ironic, this. It was Devil’s food. Chocolate.”

Kaycee changed lanes abruptly, and then made a right turn to go downtown instead.

“John? Listen. I think I need to talk to the governor.”