I am at the airport waiting for Jessie St. vrain to get off the plane, when I hear my name paged over the PA.
system. It must be Chet. No one else knows I’m here.
“You didn’t have to come pick me up!” Jessie exclaims as she emerges from a stream of United passengers. She unnerves me by having cut her hair even shorter than it was last week. With the trial to begin tomorrow, it is not too late to suggest a wig. Of course, she would be highly offended.
“Southern hospitality,” I say, smiling.
“How was the flight?” Jessie is wearing loose-fitting brown pants under a green suede jacket. Her brown shoes look like the kind elves wear in animated cartoons. I hope she has something more appropriate in her bag. Her story is going to be hard enough for a jury to swallow without her looking like Peter Pan.
“Tricky winds out of Denver,” she replies, grimacing, as she matches me stride for stride.
“If we had been lower, I think we would have bounced into a mountain.”
I shudder and hear my name again. Chet could have sent Daffy to get her. He and Jessie would have made a nice pair.
“Isn’t that you,” she asks, nudging me, “being paged?”
“I get the joke,” I say weakly, wondering what other people in the airport think of this woman. She seems equally curious, staring boldly at my fellow Arkansans, who look pretty normal to me.
“Shoes, see?”
“I was just kidding!” she practically shouts, crowding me into the wall.
Chet’s message says to drop off Jessie at the Excelsior Hotel and meet him inside the courthouse at the east entrance. This can mean only one thing: the prosecutor is willing to cut a deal. We still have no idea of Leigh’s whereabouts, unless in the last half hour something has happened I don’t know about. When I arrive twenty minutes later, Chet is pacing around the rotunda as if he were sweating out the jury’s decision.
“Jill called from her office ten minutes after you left,” he says, his voice excited for the only time since I’ve known him.
“She wants to talk.”
Flattered that he has waited for me, I feel obligated to point out the obvious, “It would help if we had a client to run this by.”
Chet punches the button to take us to the third floor.
Six months ago he would have taken the steps two at a time.
“She’s bound to show up sometime. Did St. vrain make it in?”
I nod as the elevator opens.
“She’s a little weird.”
Chet grins.
“That’s what you keep telling me. Maybe we won’t need her.” As we ride up and walk around the corner to the prosecutor’s office, it sinks in how much Chet wants to avoid this trial. His zest for trial work is such that he almost hates to cut a deal and browbeats the prosecutors until they are practically begging him to take probation. These stories are surely exaggerated, but they prove a point: Chet isn’t afraid to go for an outright acquittal. Yet, why shouldn’t he want to plead out this case? He isn’t prepared, he is sick, and his loyalties are clearly divided.
“Jill must be having some problems,” I whisper as we enter the suite of offices that house Blackwell County’s chief legal officer. Chet winks, as if this turn of events is too good to risk commenting on.
Jill Marymount has proved to be a decent prosecutor in her tenure in office. She can grab headlines with the best of them, but underneath all the hype is a solid record. Unlike some prosecutors after their election, she tries cases regularly instead of relying on assistants. I had thought she had political ambitions, but the rumors have died down that she wants to run for attorney general They will be revived if she knocks off Chet Bracken. Jill sweeps through the door to the reception area, reminding me of the actress Loretta Young. She is wearing a dress instead of the suit she will don tomorrow, and she shows a mouthful of perfect teeth as if we were fans waiting for autographs. Chet, who is used to being courted in these situations, is unusually gracious, betraying his own eagerness.
Temporarily old pals instead of old enemies, we come close to slapping each other’s backs as she escorts us to her office. Once there, she offers us coffee and serves it herself. It seems a miracle that she hasn’t heard that Leigh has disappeared, which is a tribute to the tightness of Christian Lifers in Blackwell County. From be hind her desk she says lightly, “Two against one, no fair, guys.”
I steal a look at Chet, who is slouched in his chair. To be prattling on like this, Jill must have a hole in her case we can drive a truck through. But where is it? I can’t see it. Chet might know, but I have no idea.
Maybe it is simply her fear of the religious fundamentalists who will be on the jury and who will surely be manipulated by someone as skilled as Chet. Jill could wind up with a goose egg and have a killer on the loose in the swankiest part of Blackwell County. Chet acknowledges the truth of her remark by saying, “When Gideon and I were growing up in the Delta, we used to say, quite innocently, “Two against one, nigger fun.” ” Jill swallows hard as if she were a child forced to swallow a tablespoon of milk of magnesia. I don’t recall the innocence of that remark, but it was a common schoolboy lament. She says, “I didn’t know you were from the same town.”
Our solidarity established, I clarify.
“Chet’s from Helena in Phillips County; I’m from Bear Creek in Lee.
There’s not a lot of difference.”
Jill forces a smile at us. Good old boys riding up and down Main Street, looking for someone to gang bang
She has changed her office again since I was in here last. During the Andy Chapman trial, she had dozens of pictures of children on the walls. Now, painted a fresh eggshell blue to cover up the holes, I assume, the room seems empty and sterile. Jill says abruptly, “I’m offering you ten years and a plea to manslaughter.”
Just a little over three years with good time. Jill’s eyes are on Chet. There is not even the slightest pre tense that we are co-equals on this case. Licking his lips, he doesn’t so much as look at me before saying, “I’ll talk to Leigh and get back to you.”
I feel my insides bind. Chet barely let her get her words out. Is he selling Leigh down the river, or does he think she is guilty? I no longer have any idea. Now all we have to do is find her. Jill runs a hand through her thick, glossy hair. I don’t know which of them looks more relieved.
“I’ll talk to Judge Grider and see if he has time to take a plea this afternoon.”
Chet shakes his head.
“Let me get hold of her first,” he says, his voice sounding hollow against the bare walls.
“If she won’t take it, I don’t want Grider dunking she changed her mind.”
Jill begins to write on the pad in front of her. Instead of conventional legal paper, she is writing on ledger sheets. The logic of chet’s statement is unassailable, but she frowns.
“You’ll get back to me immediately?” she asks.
Chet stands up.
“Just as soon as I can,” he says, trying to sound like the Bracken of old. He is not known for giving anything away. Too bad for Jill, she doesn’t know we have nothing to give. She must wonder what I’m doing on this case. So am I. Like a slave attending his master, I pop to my feet but have nothing to say. To avoid potted-plant status entirely I remark, “What happened to your pictures? You must have had dozens the last time I was in here.”
Jill’s gaze goes proudly to her empty walls as she comes from around her desk to walk us out.
“They’re on loan to a museum in Fort Smith.”
To add to the slightly unrealistic atmosphere that has surrounded this meeting, we beam at each other as if we were busy philanthropists and patrons of the arts.
“That’s great!” I say, enthusiastically. Jill must wonder if Chet owes me something. She probably has heard he has cancer, but he has put the word out he is in remission so often maybe she believes it.
As soon as we are in the sunshine on the sidewalk, Chet asks irritably, “Where in the hell can she be?”
A lot of places, I think, watching an attractive woman cross the street. Like a spoiled child who isn’t receiving enough attention to suit him, I feel left out.
“You want me to go over and pick up Ms. St. vrain and bring her to your office?” I say in response, having learned to answer rhetorical questions at my peril.
Chet nods glumly.
“It’ll give us something to do.”
In the next three hours Jessie St. vrain watches as Chet and I go nuts. At one point we get a call from Shane saying Leigh has been sighted in Lonoke County in a convenience store. Shades of Elvis. We get two calls from Jill. who is plainly becoming suspicious.
“Client disappeared?” she jokes the second time, but there is little humor in her voice.
“Halfway to Brazil,” I say, not certain it isn’t true.
“What’s going on, Gideon?” Jill asks.
“This isn’t an essay question.”
More like multiple choice. Texas? New Jersey? Hong Kong? None of the above? I put my feet up on Chet’s library table.
“You should try the defense side someday.
You’d appreciate us more.”
Jill cuts me off.
“If we have to go to the trouble and expense of impaneling a jury and then take a plea, Judge Grider won’t like it.”
I almost laugh. She’s worried about the costs to the county and keeping a pit bull happy.
“We’ll pay the jury off,” I say, trying to sound relaxed.
“Grider will find something to do tune in a cockfight on TV or some thing.”
Jill giggles. She knows how much Grider likes to watch lawyers tear into each other.
“Just get back to me okay? if and when you find out Chet’s not going to plead her out.”
Relegated to flunky status again, I oblige.
“You’ll be the first to know.” I hang up and stare at the hundreds of books in Chet’s library, a personal luxury few lawyers can afford. I’m pissed that I am such a nonentity on this case. During the conversation with Jill, I was tempted to blurt out that the great Chet Bracken had no idea what his opening statement was going to be just a little over half a day before the trial. She has lost her nerve for nothing.
By six o’clock Chet is so worn out he decides to call it a day, saying he will call me after dinner, but I doubt it. He is so white around the gills it sets my teeth on edge. Thank God the prosecution has the burden of proof. As little as we seem to have accomplished this afternoon, I wouldn’t give even money that we will be able to prove our middle names. We have propped Jessie’s testimony and sent her back to her hotel, and that’s about all.
“I know it’s a hell of a time to ask,” I blurt, “but where is the cancer?”
The lock snaps on chet’s door. In a voice so soft I barely pick it up, he says, “At this point, it’s more a question of where it isn’t.”
What is there to say? Go home and take some aspirin and get a good night’s sleep? On this cheerful note we leave each other. I race home, hoping Woogie hasn’t taken revenge on the carpet. With Sarah not there to let him out in the afternoons, he can only restrain himself so long.
Woogie races past me into the yard and cocks his left hind leg in the direction of a holly bush. Usually, he concentrates his irrigation project on my neighbors’ shrubs and plants, but from the look he gives me, this is out of the question.
“Sorry, boy,” I apologize. At my age, I’m glad no one has asked me to make the same sacrifice. He still has one more act to perform, but this is done in a more leisurely manner on the playground of the elementary school at the end of the street As we stroll back to the house, accompanied by howls of outrage from more law-abiding members of the canine population who are confined behind their masters’ fences, I wonder in vain where Leigh has hidden herself.
All afternoon long, Chet and I took message after message that she is nowhere to be found.
At home I have a message on the answering machine from Leigh’s sister Mary Patricia, who has returned my call. I wonder for a moment if Leigh could have taken off looking for a safe harbor at one of their houses, but those were the first numbers Shane called. I am still surprised that the sisters are not coming for the trial. At this rate, they would be by themselves. No telling, though, what it was like growing up in the Norman household. I should have been in touch long before now. I get her on the second ring. I am expecting a Yankee accent, but she sounds so much like her sister Leigh, I am startled. There is a softness to an Arkansas accent without the deep-fried quality that marks the speech of our neighbors in Mississippi.
“Ms. Norman, I appreciate you calling back,” I say, wondering how to interest this woman in talking to me.
“I should have called you a lot sooner than the day before the trial.”
“Do you represent my father or Leigh?” Mary Patricia asks, without preliminaries, her voice politely suspicious.
“Mr. Bracken and I represent only Leigh,” I assure her. If she knew how this case was going, she wouldn’t be assured, no matter what I said.
In the background I hear classical music and wonder if this woman is as lovely as her sister. All I know about her is that she escaped the clutches of her father.
“Leigh is still missing.”
“I’ve tried to think where she might go,” Mary Patricia says, “but it’s been too long. Leigh and I aren’t as close as we once were.”
I watch Woogie lick his empty food dish. I hope Mary Patricia proves to be equally unsubtle.
“Frankly, I’m surprised that neither you nor your sister are down here for the trial. Surely you know Leigh could be going to prison for life.”
There is silence on the other end, and I fear I have pushed too hard. Yet, as estranged as I am from my own sister, I know she would be there for me if I were on trial for murder. Finally, her voice tentative as if she can’t decide how much she should be revealing, Mary Patricia says, “I’m sure you don’t understand the dynamics in our family. My other sister and I aren’t close to our parents at all. In fact, my father thinks we are atheists. For my part, I think he and others like him would like nothing better than to run people like us out of the United States. Leigh would defend him to the death. I know. I was just down there a few months ago.
Leigh hadn’t changed a bit. We had an enormous fight, and she told me she never wanted to see me again. Naturally I called her after I found out she was charged with murder; but she said it was all a big mistake and that Daddy would have it dismissed.”
I can hear the guilt in her voice, and I try to think how I can exploit it. It will take violating a client’s confidence but over the years I’ve gotten better at rationalization For the next fifteen minutes I tell her everything I know about the case, including Leigh’s belief that her father may have killed her husband.
Mary Patricia listens almost without interruption and responds simply, “Daddy would never do something like that himself. He might give the idea to somebody else, but his concept of himself as a personal representative of God is too strong to allow him to kill anyone.
He can preach a sermon that galvanizes a thousand people to go lie down in front of an abortion clinic, but he would cut off his arm before he would take part him self.”
Finally, something clicks in my mind about who may have killed Art Wallace. I ask her, “Tell me something about your godfather, please.”
Leigh’s sister obviously sees this guess as something of a stretch. Her voice grows faint with obvious disbelief.
“Do you think Hector could have actually done it?”
“Why not?” I plunge ahead, remembering his still keen eyesight and the trophy for marksmanship.
“He was there; he was a friend of your father’s; it’s not as if he is a feeble shut-in.”
She protests, “But he’s an old man.”
I remind her about his fitness and the trophies.
“He seems in remarkable shape.”
“You probably could say that of a high percentage of those who live on my sister’s street,” she responds, clearly skeptical of my hypothesis.
“Hector’s not a violent man.”
Stubbornly, I pursue the possibility.
“But he’s still extremely competitive, and he could have acted as your father’s surrogate. Wasn’t he upset when you left the church?”
In the background now, I can hear Glen Campbell singing. I must have made her homesick.
“He was horrified,” she admits, “but he didn’t kill anybody.”
I point out, trying not to sound too combative, “You weren’t the last child to fly the coop.”
For the first time, Mary Patricia concedes, “And I wasn’t the favorite.” She adds, however, “But Daddy wouldn’t talk Hector into killing Art.”
“He wouldn’t have to,” I say, seizing on her earlier comment about her father’s ability to influence other people.
“Hector would get the idea.”
There is a respectful pause while she apparently considers the possibility.
“I just don’t see Hector capable of murder.”
I drop the subject, myself troubled by the timing of the events. How would this old man know things were flying apart at this particular moment? Nobody has accused him of being a peeping Tom. He did say it was odd that Leigh didn’t wave. But that was all.
“What about Leigh?” I ask.
“What do you see her capable of?”
There is no hesitation in Mary Patricia’s voice.
“If Leigh were angry enough,” she says, “she could have killed him. Leigh has Mother’s temper, but she’s incapable of killing someone in cold blood.”
mrs. Norman has been forgotten in all of this. Both quintessential Southern women. All that repressed anger beneath a boozy surface. Leigh could have had a snootful to try to relax that morning and simply exploded.
Her mother’s baggage. Maybe Jill’s offer of ten years for manslaughter is about right.
“Does Leigh drink?”
Mary Patricia answers, “Not unless Art was teaching her.”
Perhaps he was. We talk for a few more minutes, but I get nothing useful except a promise that she will call me if she hears from Leigh.
I call Chet to run my latest theory by him, but Wynona tells me he had already taken a painkiller and is in no condition to speak to me. I think to myself that this case is turning into a joke. No lawyer, no client, only a single, flaky witness from California. I mope around the kitchen looking for something to eat and decide the easiest thing to do is to open a can of soup. I am beginning to have some real doubts about myself both as a lawyer and as a father. Nothing I say or do seems to make a difference. Chet apparently has no confidence in my abilities to handle this case. Perhaps he has been in touch with my old employers. Mays amp; Burton, who fired me. Granted, I didn’t give my bosses anything to write home about, but I wasn’t given much to work with either. As I open the pantry to look for the chips, the phone rings, startling me out of my growing self-pity.
“Is this Mr. Page?” It is a foreign voice, perhaps Japanese and barely understandable.
In no mood for telemarketing, I bark, “If you’re selling something, you better tell me right now.” Wow.
What am I going to do hang up on them?
I hear the sound of someone clearing his throat.
“There is a young lady in our motel who is asking for you. I’m afraid she is very drunk. Room 104 of the Delta Inn. Would you please come get her?” This last sentence is more of a command than a request, and the line goes dead. Leigh, obviously. Grabbing my keys off the shelf by the phone, I race out to the Blazer. It could be Sarah. Or even Jessie St. vrain. The way the day has gone, it would be just my luck.
The delta inn is on 1-30 almost halfway to Benton.
Since its parking lot is shielded from the highway, the motel offers a twenty-five-dollar-a-night sanctuary to adulterers and others who have a reason to hide their automobiles. Leigh’s father claims his church members have cruised every motel parking lot in Blackwell County, but I can see how someone in a hurry would have missed Leigh’s maroon Acura, which is not parked in front of the rooms but is wedged between two pick ups across from the motel restaurant. I park right in front of room 104 and knock on the door a full thirty seconds before Leigh opens it and staggers back four feet to sit on the bed.
“Don’t take me home,” she says, her voice slurred and low.
“I won’t,” I promise, but I have to get her out of here before I throw up. The tiny, moldy room smells overpoweringly of mildew and bourbon and the remains of some kind of Mexican dinner that looks more than twelve hours old. A half-empty six-pack of Cokes, an empty bottle of Old Crow, and a clouded plastic glass sit on top of a dresser that looks as if it has survived a couple of fires. An entire bottle would have blot toed me. I marvel how Leigh managed to give my name to the manager. It is hard to believe such a beautiful woman can look so terrible. Matted, damp hair frames her face, which is swollen I assume from crying and alcohol. She appears to be in a stupor, and from the phone by the bed, I dial Rainey’s number.
“I need some help,” I say when she answers the phone.
“I’ve just found Leigh dead drunk in a motel, and I need a woman’s touch in sobering her up for the trial tomorrow.”
Rainey responds immediately.
“Bring her over here.”
Taking a look at the dried vomit on Leigh’s sweatshirt, I gag before I can get out, “We’ll be there in half an hour.”
I feel like a gangster hauling an unconscious body out to the Blazer as I struggle to support Leigh’s weight in the darkness. Fortunately, there is nobody else around as I half-drag her out to the Blazer. I feel keenly selfconscious about how this must look: a middleaged guy forcing a drugged young woman into a car. She is surprisingly solid; and, to my consternation, the image of her dancing nude for the camera forces its way into my mind as I help her lie down in the backseat. There is nothing visually attractive about Leigh at the moment. I go back in, looking for any personal belongings, but find only her purse. I know myself well enough to realize that calling Rainey was the best decision I’ve made in a while. At moments like this, she has always been there for me, even when she is furious at me. It hasn’t been too many months since my face was turned into mincemeat while I was working on a case. I was in worse shape than my present passenger in the backseat, but I pried myself loose from soft asphalt in a honkytonk parking lot and headed like a homing pigeon for Rainey’s, where she patched me up enough to allow me to go home and face my daughter.
I stop in front of the office and run in to pay the bill and tell the man at the desk that it may be tomorrow or the next day before we pick up the car. With his distinct Asian features and his black dressing gown that could cover the side of a barn, he looks like a finalist from a sumo wrestling championship forty years ago. A rerun of the “Cosby Show” flickers on an ancient black and white TV in the corner next to a huge green safe, and I wonder briefly what odyssey has brought this man to the desk of the Delta Inn.
“I think you called me about the young woman in 104,” I say over the voice of one of Cosby’s TV daughters, whose problems never got this seedy.
“I’m taking her home.”
He shoots me a look of pity.
“Is the room all right?”
he asks in a heavily accented voice. What the hell, I think. Henry Kissinger still sounds as if he just got off the boat, too.
“I think so,” I reply, not really having checked it out.
How much damage could anyone do to the Delta Inn and not be justified in calling it a part of a demolition effort?
“You send me the bill if there are any problems with it, okay?” I hand him a card, as if I were the manager of a rock group that regularly trashes hotels.
“You a good rawyer?” he asks, studying my card.
Poor guy. What a crap shoot You get one, and he’s dead on his feet of cancer. I nod ambiguously. This man has probably been a citizen for longer than I’ve been alive, yet he’ll go to his grave thinking he can be deported because he can’t say his ‘s.p›
“I need a divorce,” he confesses, near tears as he hands me a bill, showing an amount owing of fifty cents for two phone calls.
“My wife-she run off with one of the maids.”
I can’t say that I blame her.
“Give me a call next week,” I say, fishing from my pocket two quarters and the room key. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be able to give up taking civil cases when Leigh’s trial is over.
On the drive to Rainey’s, Leigh stirs in the backseat but says nothing I can understand. Alcohol. It may be playing more of a role in this case than I thought.
Leigh, out from under the parental thumb, may indeed be a hooch hound like her mother.
Rainey is waiting outside and helps me walk Leigh into her house.
“This is my friend Rainey,” I say to Leigh.
“She’s very discreet.”
“Hi, Rainey,” Leigh says, giggling loudly.
“Are you his girlfriend?”
“Just friends,” I say, taking Rainey off the spot. I am grateful for the darkness.
“Have you called her father?” Rainey asks as she opens the door.
At this reference to the man who has loved her longer than any other male, Leigh opens her eyes and tries to pull away from us. I tighten my grip on Leigh’s arm and reassure her, “No, and I’m not going to.” To Rainey behind Leigh’s head, I mouth the words, “I’ll tell you later.”
Rainey’s house, as always, is spotless. As much as she has been gone lately, I don’t see how she has even had time to water the plants that abound is the Hving room. I have spent many pleasant hours here and feel a wave of nostalgia wash over me as Rainey walks Leigh into her bathroom.
“I’m putting Leigh in the shower,” she says.
“You go to the kitchen and start some coffee.”
Damn. Not even a little peek. I take a final look at Leigh before her transformation begins. Her stomach heaves beneath her sweatshirt as if she is about to be sick. Not exactly what I had in mind. I close the door behind me and make a right turn back into the living room on my way to the kitchen. If I bad turned left, I would have walked into Rainey’s bedroom. She and I must be the only two single heterosexual adults in the country who have professed romantic love to each other, meant it, had the opportunity on many occasions, but have never followed through. I remember the night I thought she was taking me to her bedroom and she opened the door onto a Ping-Pong table and proceeded to beat my brains out. Though we have played many games since that night and I have come close on occasion, I have never beaten her a single time. Some things just don’t seem meant to be.
While I wait for the coffee to drip, I sit down at the kitchen table and worry that Leigh won’t sober up enough to be able to discuss Jill’s offer of a plea bar gain. We led Jill to think it was under active consideration but by the end of the day her patience was growing thin.
Twenty minutes later, Rainey escorts a shaky but much improved-looking Leigh into the kitchen. In Rainey’s white terry-cloth robe, her dark wet hair gleaming under the bright light, Leigh looks like a bedraggled teenager who has paid the price for downing an entire bottle of Southern Comfort. I hand her a cup of coffee as she smiles uncertainly at me.
“What are we going to do about clothes?” I ask Rainey. From her neck down Leigh looks almost fetching in the robe, which barely comes to her knees, but she is hardly dressed for a court appearance.
“We’ve been talking about that,” Rainey says, flashing a Dillard’s credit card and what I assume is a shop ping list at me.
“I’m going to run to the mall for Leigh.” It is a foregone conclusion that Leigh will not be calling her father tonight.
I look at my watch. It is just before eight, and the mall closes at nine.
“You better hurry,” I say.
Rainey, whose salary as a social worker goes for her mortgage and not her clothes, grins.
“They may be getting in a little overtime tonight.” In the background I can hear Rainey’s washing machine in the utility room and realize that underneath Rainey’s robe, Leigh can’t be wearing much. She is a good five inches taller and fifteen pounds heavier than Rainey.
As soon as I hear me screen door close, I tell Leigh about Jill’s offer.
“You could be out in just over three years with good time,” I say, thinking about the women’s unit at Pine Bluff.
“I’ve been down there. It’s not as bad as it could be.” Who am I kidding? Prison is prison even if they let you get your hair done. Leigh’s hands shake as she brings the coffee to her lips. She needs something to eat.
“You think you could eat some toast?” I’m not much of a cook, but I can handle bread if there is a toaster around.
Leigh swallows, giving herself time to think.
“Why should I plead if I’m not guilty?” she asks finally.
The implication of Leigh’s remark is that she is innocent, but this is susceptible to more than one interpretation. The answer to her question is more complicated than my response, but out of habit, I give the short version.
“I’m not saying you should, but you have to consider the following facts: you’ve lied about your whereabouts, and the prosecutor will have a field day with it; you were overheard arguing the night before the murder, and so far as we know, nobody, including the police, has found a shred of physical evidence that any one else is a suspect. And three years and four months at your age is a lot more tolerable than spending the rest of your life in prison.” Plus the fact that your lawyer is knocked out with a pain pill for the night instead of pre paring your defense and will be out on his feet by three tomorrow afternoon if he lasts that long. But I do not mention this last extremely crucial fact. Why? Out of habit? Lawyers protect each other as much as doctors do. It is as reflexive as an eye blink and happens at least as often. I find a loaf of wheat bread in the freezer next to a Ziploc bag of chicken breasts and lay it on the counter to thaw. When I was a child in eastern Arkansas, the idea of freezing a loaf of Wonder Bread must have been heretical, since I was never privy to the phenomenon until I moved to the center of the state as an adult. What are bread boxes for? As warm and moist as the Arkansas Delta is, I’m surprised bread didn’t turn into penicillin right before our eyes.
Leigh stares into her coffee. I’ve never seen her face so sad. I’m certain there is something more she is not telling me. She says quietly, “Will you call Mr. Bracken for me?”
I nod but say, “Let me ask you a question first. Were you and Art drinking that morning? You don’t seem to handle alcohol very well.”
“No,” Leigh says, a little too abruptly.
“Please call Mr. Bracken.”
I shrug helplessly. Art’s autopsy report showed no alcohol content. In her voice is the tone of a martyr, not a killer giving up.
“I don’t think you killed Art,” I argue. Actually, I have no idea whether she did or not, but I can’t allow her to make this decision so easily.
“You don’t need to sacrifice yourself for your father.”
“I’m not,” she says, her voice flat.
“Please call Mr.
Bracken.”
I fight back a rising sense of panic. She may know the odds tomorrow better than I realize. Innocent people go to prison. Why spend her life there? I can’t make this decision on my own and dial Chet’s number from the phone in the kitchen, determined to wake him up, no matter how groggy he is. Wynona answers, and I tell her what has occurred.
“There’s no point,” she says.
“Jill called here an hour ago. I was able to wake Chet up just long enough for her to tell him she had withdrawn the offer.” I look at Leigh and feel my pulse begin to race from anxiety.
“How did Chet react?” I ask softly.
“I could tell it depressed him,” Wynona admits, “but he was pretty much out of it because of the pain pills.
I’ll tell him early tomorrow morning you’ve found Leigh.”
I thank her and hang up and tell Leigh, who smiles wanly.
“I guess we better get ready for the trial.”
I want to grab her and shake her and make her tell me what the hell is going on. Why did she run off and get drunk and hide in a motel room? Why isn’t she fighting for her life? Yet, I’m afraid if I push her, she will walk out the door just as she did at my house. I stare at her until she lowers her eyes. It was as if she were an actress who wanted to improvise for two nights before the play began but who ultimately resigned her self to sticking with the script. I test her by saying, “You realize that we’re going to be arguing tomorrow that your father might have killed Art?”
She closes her eyes but doesn’t respond.
I realize I am grinding my teeth and stop. Was her disappearance merely a classic case of stage fright? I can’t shake the feeling she is reading her words from a teleprompter. What is my part? Obviously, the ambitious understudy who is willing to play any role to further his career. As I prepare Leigh for her expected testimony, I have the sense that the whole production is coming apart because the director is home in bed. In an ideal world, the judge would grant a continuance and Chet would gracefully step aside. However, at this point the outcome would be the same. I realize how little I understand Chet. Has he told me everything? I don’t have a clue.
“Do I have to tell about the video?” she asks, nibbling at a fingernail while I write out questions at the kitchen table.
I glance up at her and see that she is embarrassed.
She is on trial to decide whether or not she will ever have another single moment of privacy the rest of her life, and she is worried about her sense of dignity. Human nature wins out every time. I try to think about the impact this revelation will have on the jury. The police presumably know nothing about it. Jill has not breathed a word about it, which she would have been required to do if she knew anything.
“Probably not,” I say, thinking an Arkansas jury would want to punish her for it. What is there to argue? Somebody who knew Art entered his house during the hour or so that Leigh went back up to the church to pretend she was there all the time. Who?
Shane Norman, of course.
When Rainey returns, thirty minutes later, we take a break for Leigh to look at the clothes Rainey has bought for her. Like a mother who has been on a shopping spree for her daughter, Rainey opens the boxes with a flurry of maternal excitement.
“I hope you like these.”
She holds up a chartreuse blazer against a white shortsleeved shell and a green skirt.
“I’ve never shopped so fast for a complete set of clothes in my life,” she says, giggling, and hands Leigh’s credit card back to her. Be sides outer garments, she has obtained shoes, a bra, panties, and stockings.
“The salesclerks thought I was wonderful.”
Leigh looks through the boxes and smiles at Rainey.
“They look great. Thank you.”
While Leigh goes into Rainey’s bedroom to try on her new wardrobe, I watch as Rainey begins to make the toast I have forgotten about. Between us is an un spoken truce. No matter how convinced she is of Shane’s innocence, she cannot help but respond to Leigh. She is too vulnerable right now, and Rainey was born rooting for the underdog. She takes eggs and turkey bacon from her refrigerator. For a few moments it is like old times. Too discreet to ask questions about the case, Rainey entertains me with gossip about the state hospital, my old stomping grounds from my days as a public defender, when I represented patients at involuntary commitment hearings.
When Leigh comes out of her bedroom, Rainey smiles and says, “You look fantastic!”
Obviously pleased with Rainey’s choices, Leigh hugs her as if they were sisters. While Rainey cooks and feeds Leigh, they chat about clothes and accessories as if tomorrow were to be a normal day instead of the beginning of a murder trial. I marvel at Rainey’s capacity to put others at ease. It is an art form, one alive and well in the South.
Afterward, as Leigh and I work alone in Rainey’s living room, Leigh says, “There’s some real chemistry between you and Rainey. I could tell just by the way you looked at each other.”
Distracted, I nod, unwilling to say that it has been mostly bad for quite a while. Feeling strangely out of sync (it may be exhaustion), I drive home at eleven. So much has gone wrong lately that even though the last few hours have been better, I go to bed feeling de pressed. I cannot believe this story will have a happy ending.