“Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb I wait in front of the mirror in the living room. I am standing alongside Sarah, knotting my tie as she applies her lip stick.
“Don’t make fun,” she says crossly, her lips flat against her teeth.
“It’s probably a lot more interesting than Mass.”
Either my shirt is shrinking, or my neck is growing.
I tighten the noose around my neck, dismayed by the turkey wattle I have created above my collar. The worry lines in my forehead, I tell myself, are a sign of character; my neck, increasingly a road map of cross-stitches to nowhere, is devoid of such nobility. I need to break down and buy some new shirts before I strangle myself.
I probably deprive myself of ten I.Q. points every time I fasten the top button.
“I’m just reciting from “General William Booth Enters into Heaven.” I can’t shake the feeling we’re going to an oldfashioned revival meeting.”
Sarah frowns, uncertain whether I am serious. When I came home for the summer after my freshman year at Subiaco, a Catholic boarding school in northwestern Arkansas, my older sister, Marty, went around the house reciting Vachel Lindsay’s poetry untH I learned k my self. Sarah probably thinks Vachel Lindsay is a rock group. Odd bits of my memory surface from time to time like debris washed onto a largely barren reef.
Sarah pats her hair.
“Let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”
I goose-step out the door, leaving Woogie to wonder what is going on. I’m not supposed to be leaving the house on a Sunday morning unless it is with a tennis racket in my hand.
“With a cast in the thousands,” I say, gulping in the perfect spring day, “I doubt if they’ll stop the service and hoot at us.”
Heading for the driver’s side, Sarah explains, “I don’t want to have to sit in the front row.”
Inside the Blazer, I hand her the keys.
“Me neither.
They’ll probably be able to tell we’re Catholics and make us stand up and denounce the Pope.” Sarah must feel some guilt or maybe is nervous. Do they wave their arms and speak in tongues? Full immersion for baptisms? We have been remarkably sheltered from the peculiarities of other faiths. I feel a little nervous myself.
Rainey is not reassuring when we pick her up.
“Wait and see,” she says, grinning, when I ask her what to expect She looks great in a peach sweater over a blue skirt, pearls, and heels, dressed up in a way I don’t usually see.
“They have these giant spotlights in the ceiling that crisscross the congregation looking for people who’ve been identified as sinners. I’ve told ‘em your dad’s coming,” she tells Sarah.
Sarah doesn’t believe this, but asks, turning up Damell Road, “Do they really know we’re coming?”
Rainey leans forward from the backseat and places her hand on my shoulder.
“No,” she says and gives Sarah are assuring smile she does not see.
“Not really.”
By my willingness to attend, I have earned some points.
She and Sarah know I am more curious about Shane Norman than his message, but women have been trying to reform men so long it is almost a genetically programmed response.
“I met Pearl Norman the other afternoon,” I say to Rainey, risking her newly reacquired goodwill, “and if I’d struck a match, we wouldn’t be worrying about a trial. Does she have a reputation for getting snookered, or is this a recent phenomenon?”
Sarah groans (here I go again), but Rainey reluctantly admits, “I hear it’s a problem that’s persisted for most of the marriage.”
I wince, feeling a degree of sympathy. I might get drunk too if I had married a saint and my daughter was about to be tried for murder.
“That’s tough,” I say sincerely
“She seems like a very warm person.” Unlike her daughter, I don’t add.
“She’s warm all right,” Rainey says, her voice cold with disapproval.
“I’ve been told she gets out of control on occasion.”
Out of control enough to waste her son-in-law? I doubt it. Damn, women can be tough on each other. For a social worker, Rainey isn’t showing much empathy.
Pearl isn’t pulling her weight on the road to the kingdom so a pox on her. Chet didn’t mention Pearl Nor man. Nor has Rainey. The party faithful always want to hide their warts.
“How’d she handle her daughter’s murder charge?” I ask, knowing Sarah will revolt if I keep pumping Rainey too much longer.
My girlfriend shrugs.
“About like you’d expect. Poor Shane has a lot on his shoulders.”
I square my shoulders to the seat, so my daughter won’t explode at me. Shane, you saint, you!
To give the man his due, Norman does not disappoint. For all our fears, the service is hardly exotic, though a little unusual for a Catholic fed a more formal diet. Sarah is instantly captivated by the music and amazes me by singing out from the printed song sheets as if she were Amy Grant. An electric guitar, drums, and a trumpet accompany the songs, which are up tempo with soaring melodies that even I can follow.
There are, of course, no hymnals, no official dogma to choke down. The words (on the order of “You Light Up My Life”) don’t matter as much to the two song leaders a boy and girl barely older than Sarah, as the enthusiasm with which the audience sings them. The first fifteen minutes of the service are given over to this couple, who seem right out of the cast of “Up with People which performs occasionally in Blackwell County.
Seated in comfortable theater seats toward the back, we are too far away to see faces (I wish I had brought my binoculars, but I didn’t have the guts at this point it feels a lot like a concert). The mood of those around us is happy, even joyful. The men in our section are wearing suits or sports jackets and the women suits or dresses (we are, after all, in affluent west Blackwell County), but I see a conspicuous absence of furs and lavish jewelry. The rare times I’ve been in an established Protestant church in Blackwell County, many of the women looked as if they were auditioning for a fashion show.
Though at this distance I can’t tell if Shane Norman has contributed to his daughter’s spectacular looks, the man impresses me with his apparent humility. I had expected him to come strutting out like some superstar.
Instead, he is restrained, even perhaps a trifle shy, as he stands with his head bowed while the youth minister, a kid in his twenties, prays and then reads from the Old Testament. Dressed in a dark business suit, Norman comes forward and reads the familiar text from St.
Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. ” “Though I speak with the tongues of Angels …” ” There is none of the pleading, almost whining, tone of the TV evangelist in Norman’s voice, which has a tenor’s pitch. It is pleasant, sincere, and without the heavy-handedness I feared. Rainey, to my left, whispers, “Don’t expect a stirring sermon. That’s not what this is about.”
Indeed, it’s not. Norman gives us a brief account of his just completed mission trip and impresses me by how much credit he gives to the crew of Peruvian workers that assisted them.
“They worked themselves silly, a lot harder than we did….”
The formal sermon, taken from the Scripture, is on the power of love. It is the love of God, Norman asserts that makes faith possible.
“We Christians have difficulty believing the Bible is the word of God,” he says gravely, standing beside the pulpit, “because we haven’t grasped God’s commitment to us. We don’t feel it; we’re scared to death of it. We want to live free of God’s love as if it doesn’t exist, because we don’t want the intensity and the personal challenge of a relationship with God. We want to live floating on the surface of life, avoiding risk and pain. But it is God’s love that makes all things possible….”
I cut my eyes to the right and see that Sarah is so focused on Norman’s words it’s as if he and she were the only ones in the building. Ever since Sarah began to write me letters from the campus of Hendrix College where she attended a summer program for gifted and talented high school students, I have begun to notice an intense desire for some kind of spiritual bond. The Ro man Catholic church may have just lost a member, I think, as she twists at a lock of her hair, a characteristic sign of anxiety. What will I do if she joins? Norman’s words, which have an appeal even to a hard-bitten agnostic like myself, don’t make sense. If there is a God, where is the evidence that He, She, or It loves us? I know Norman’s answer. It’s in the Bible. Free will not withstanding, my eyes and ears tell me a different story.
So does my brain.
Norman goes on to talk about the kind of love that is supposed to exist in each “church family,” and I feel a grudging interest in what he’s saying. The “family” at Christian Life replicates to some degree the extended family Americans no longer enjoy. Deliberately, each family has been given older members, children, “aunts,” “uncles,” etc. All are taught to care about each member, and each member learns to care about the group. I can tell by her expression that Sarah is eating this up. Our two-person family must seem impoverished to her. With only a grandmother and some aunts and uncles in Barranquilla, Colombia, no brothers or sisters, and my sister, whom I rarely see, Sarah has no close relatives.
Norman asks those three families to stand up who made the trip with him to Peru. Approximately forty people stand up, including women and children. With the Shining Path on the loose, I can’t imagine why they would risk sending children, but Norman anticipates my question by explaining that Christian Lifers, once they truly understand what it means to be in a Christcentered family, no longer fear death. We, he preaches, were dead before we began to live in relationship with each other; heaven will be a community, centered around God. ” “In my father’s house, there are many rooms, and I go to prepare a place for you….” ” Norman recites, describing heaven.
Having heard this passage repeatedly trotted out at funerals to comfort grieving family members, I concede that it is a nice touch. Norman uses it to build enthusiasm for a committed and shared lifestyle. Christian Lifers practice on earth what will be made perfect in heaven. Family transcends biology. The Apostles were Jesus’ real family…. I turn to Rainey, who is seated on my left, and whisper, “Does he split families up?”
“Sometimes for a while,” she says, her warm breath against my ear.
“If it’s one that’s really dysfunctional, they can learn from others who are in sync.”
Norman concludes by thanking the congregation for its massive and continuing support for Leigh. He reminds them of the trial date and asks for everyone’s prayers. Leigh probably sits down front with her mother to keep an eye on her. I wonder if Pearl lays off the sauce on Sundays in deference to her husband. I have no hope of speaking to Leigh even if she is at this service.
Surely Chet has told Norman how uncooperative she is being. If I had to place a bet right now, Leigh shot her husband in a fight over the church, and the guilt is eating her up. She doesn’t want to hurt her father’s ministry, so she is claiming innocence. Unless somebody (and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be one of her lawyers) wakes her up, she may be facing a long stretch in Pine Bluff. If she would come clean, I have no doubt that considering how much Jill Marymount, the prosecutor, fears Chet, we could whittle this down to manslaughter in a plea bargain and get her back on the street in less than three years. As it stands right now, Leigh’s clinging to an obviously false story is ridiculous.
I can’t imagine that Chet hasn’t had a come-to Jesus meeting with her, and she is too smart not to get the point. Something weird is going on, but I’ll be damned if I can figure it out.
After a few announcements, the collection plates appear.
(Dan Bailey said that the only good thing about weddings and funerals is that they don’t put the bite on you.) This church doesn’t need my money, but with Rainey and Sarah flanking each side, I feel pressure to give something, and drop in a five-dollar bill. Rainey tears off a check, but I can’t see the amount. Looking around the vast structure I marvel at the number crammed in here and don’t see an empty seat. I wonder where Chet and his family are sitting. Probably in the front row. There had been a service at eight-thirty as well, which Rainey said was also full. They are considering adding a third Sunday service. Rainey whispers, “You didn’t have to give anything.”
“It won’t break me,” I mumble against her ear. The music alone was worth five bucks. While ushers move the plates from row to row, a woman with hair down to her butt sings a couple of solos. She is accompanied by a guy on acoustic guitar and is dynamite.
Sarah, who has been motionless throughout, punches me with her elbow and says softly, “Isn’t she incredible?” I nod, as usual amazed at the level of talent in Blackwell County. We’ve got musicians who could make it anywhere.
After another prayer, Norman asks that anyone who feels moved to profess that Jesus Christ is his or her personal Lord and Savior should come forward at this time. As the band plays “Amazing Grace,” I feel myself tensing up. If Sarah wants to go, I can’t very well drag her out of the place kicking and screaming. She watches closely as a couple of women in their twenties walk quickly down the aisle. The song played on guitar is electrifying. Maybe it is the atmosphere, but this version is even more moving than the one sung years ago by Judy Collins. The emotion in the place is over whelming as she warbles, ” ‘… that saved a wretch,” ” and then when notes go up high during ” ‘like me,” ” a chill runs down my spine. With tears streaming down her cheeks, Sarah turns and says, “I have to go. Daddy.”
For an undeniable instant I am tempted to get up with her, but I know I won’t.
“Don’t you want to think about it?” I say more loudly than I intend, but she shakes her head and pushes up from her seat.
Rainey grabs my hand and squeezes it.
“She’ll be okay” I watch forlornly as Sarah walks quickly down to the front. I don’t doubt the sincerity of her feelings, but this is so obviously simply naked emotion. Damn these people! They’re slick as politicians. If you’re psychologically vulnerable at all, they suck you right in. This is like some boy trying to get in her pants. Come on, baby, I love you, and it’ll feel so good if you’ll just come on down. Hell, I know she’s searching for something.
You’re supposed to be, if you’re her age and not brain dead. But this is the kind of act she’ll regret sooner or later when she wakes up and realizes what happened.
Yet who am I to say? My life, since Rosa died hasn’t been such a success. What answers have I given her?
She doesn’t need a Ph.D. in psychology to figure out that this country’s culture is long on form and short on substance. An attention span of thirty minutes is more than enough to get you by. If you’re lucky, you can make a nice living and worship the free enterprise system but Sarah better not get too excited about it because it’ll make her sick at her stomach when she really sees how much humanity has fallen between the cracks.
The truth is, I haven’t got anything to offer her but my own anxieties. Death and taxes, you can count on them, Sarah. Wow, Dad, did you make that up? My love for Sarah will be worth at least a couple of lines on a Hall mark card at Christmas when she’s grown up and got a family of her own but is pretty cold comfort right now to a seventeen-year-old girl who admits to lying awake at three o’clock in the morning wondering why she’s alive and her mother is dead. Down front there must be twenty-five men, women, and children. Norman says a prayer, and asks them to remain after the service for a while.
“If you want to go on home,” Rainey says kindly, “I’ll wait for her and get us a ride.”
“What is he going to do?” I ask, feeling more morose by the moment. We are on our feet for the last song.
“She’ll probably come home with a cross branded on her forehead,” I say pathetically.
Rainey giggles at such nonsense.
“He’ll ask if they want to begin participating in a family that meets here a couple of times a week. If she does, one of his assistants will take some information from her, and they’ll match her up by Monday and give her a call.”
I strain to catch a glimpse of Sarah, who has been moved off to the side with the rest of the group. They’ll probably want her to turn over her paycheck from her part-time job.
“Maybe I should wait, too. I need to introduce myself to Norman, anyway.”
As Norman gives the benediction, Rainey shakes her head.
“I wouldn’t try to approach him now. Call him to morrow.”
Why? I wonder. It seems to me he would be more accessible in the afterglow of bagging converts, especially the child of one of his daughter’s lawyers. Still, Rainey has a better feel than I do for the way business is done around here, so I nod, glumly resigned to seeing Sarah only a couple of more times the rest of her life. I stare down the aisle again trying to find her, but with the service over, my view is blocked by the hundreds of people heading for the exits.
“Gideon!”
In the parking lot I look up and squint in the direction of the bright noon sun. I can’t believe it.
“What are you doing here, Amy?” I ask, dumbfounded.
“What are you doing here?” Amy Gilchrist asks, a smirk on her elfin face. Amy is an old friend from law school who made it into the prosecutor’s office and was on her way to trying major cases when she became pregnant and had an abortion, incurring the disfavor of her boss. She is now in private practice with a group of lawyers almost as motley as our crew in the Layman Building. Lively, sarcastic, and humorous, Amy is scrapping for clients as hard as I am.
“God only knows,” I say, surveying Amy’s figure.
“I’m really just visiting because a friend invited me.” I am embarrassed to admit I came with Rainey and that my daughter is still inside getting hot boxed by the head cheese. Amy seems always on the verge of carrying too much weight for her compact frame. Still, perhaps because she is so likable, the total effect is pleasing to the eyes. Dressed in a knee-length black-and-white-checked skirt and a long-sleeved white blouse, she seems more chaste and modest than usual.
“Being seen at Christian Life isn’t an indictable offense,” she says, giving me a frank once-over, too.
“As you can see, some of the best people in town are members.”
From time to time, I had thought about violating my self-imposed pledge not to date women so much younger than myself and asking Amy out. I can’t imagine it now. Why is she coming out here? Yet why shouldn’t she be? It hasn’t been that long since she admitted to me she’d had an abortion in the last year. As traumatic as that must be, that would definitely get you to wondering if your compass was pointed toward north.
“That’s true,” I admit.
“Don’t be a stranger,” she says, as I get into the Blazer. I wave as I drive off, wondering if when I get home there will be a note from Woogie to the effect that he has run off to join a Christian dog sect.
“Sarah’s an impressive young woman,” Shane Norman tells me the next morning in my office.
“Since so many other kids her age are concerned only with themselves and their friends, which is natural from a developmental point of view, she’s quite extraordinary.”
I unwrap a lemon drop and slip it into my mouth. Un like his daughter, Norman is sparing no effort to cooperate in Leigh’s defense. Having called Chet at home last night, who told him to talk with me as soon as possible, he was waiting for me when I got to work. His wife is a no-show. Still on the booze, I guess.
“She’s been searching pretty hard for most of the last year,” I say cautiously, not wanting to offend Norman. I was relieved to find out when Sarah came home yesterday that Norman had not put the hard sell on her. After learning she was Catholic, he responded by telling her that as much as Christian Life would be delighted to have her, she needed to think a little bit more about whether she was truly ready to leave her Roman Catholic faith.
“Most kids, not all, don’t feel a spiritual need at that age,” Norman says, as if he were talking to a colleague.
“When you find one like Sarah, every word becomes important. They take you so seriously that you feel under the gun to find just the right tone with them.”
Disarmed by his apparent genuine humility, I say, “You should try being her father. She’s pretty sensitive these days. Everything I say or do goes under a micro scope.”
Norman, now that I see him at a distance of less than fifty yards, is attractive in a craggy sort of way. His jaw juts out sharply, and his cheekbones are prominent under a high forehead that is crowned by a widow’s peak of brown hair. He doesn’t look a thing like Leigh except in his dark eyes.
“We forget sometimes,” he gently reminds me, “that kids that age are just as hard on themselves.”
I wait for the inevitable “Do you accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?” but decide I won’t get it from this guy. Dressed in a blue business suit and fancy silk tie, he could pass for a bond lawyer. I have to give the man credit. He seems genuinely interested in Sarah’s welfare at a difficult time in his own life. I realize I have been feeling like an errant member of his congregation, when, in fact, he needs much more help with his own daughter than I do with mine. I say, “I’m sure Chet and Leigh both told you I visited with her last week.
Frankly, I haven’t learned a whole lot, since Leigh didn’t have much to say.”
Norman rubs his mouth with his right hand as if his lips are burning. Shaking his head, he says, “Surely, if Leigh is involved, it had to be self-defense. Her husband wasn’t at all what he seemed.”
The lemony taste of the candy is irresistible, and I crunch into it. My teeth are congenitally bad, so I might as well finish them off. It dawns on me that Norman is assuming that Leigh is lying. He thinks she did it. I am amazed that he could think his own daughter capable of murder, but why not? He raised her.
“Leigh admitted the only reason Art joined Christian Life was so he could marry her.”
Norman, who only moments before seemed so benevolent, says angrily, “Leigh hardly participated in anything at church after they married. He couldn’t have been any more effective in separating her from Christian Life if he had been the Devil himself.”
I take another lemon drop from my drawer and begin to unwrap it. The little pleasures are as addictive as the large ones. From the frown on Norman’s face, I have no doubt that he believes in a literal Devil and an all consuming hell.
“But she says she was at Christian Life at the time of the murder.”
Norman shakes his head.
“Nobody yet can back up her story.”
I watch Norman’s face as he fights for control of his emotions. I wish Leigh had showed herself capable of having them. I say what I’m thinking.
“You’re convinced Leigh shot him, aren’t you?”
Norman stands up from his chair and goes over to the window.
“I know she’s lying because I called her at her house that morning about ten. Art answered the phone and said she was at the church, but I heard her voice in the background.”
I suck on the lemon drop in my mouth while Norman gazes out the window. I wonder if he, like Dan, is mentally undressing the women in the Adcock Building.
Surely not. Chet hadn’t told me Norman called Leigh. I wonder if he even knew. “Tell me what you know about Wallace,” I encourage him.
“He sounds like he got his hooks pretty good into Leigh.”
Norman turns from the window and comes back to his seat.
“If you had known my daughter before she met Art, you would understand how different she is.”
For the next fifteen minutes he paints a picture of Leigh that is very sympathetic to somebody who thinks his own daughter is wonderful. From almost the moment Leigh was born, she was a “daddy’s girl.” After two girls (Alicia and Mary Patricia, now married and living out of state). Pearl was hoping for a boy, and, in truth, so was he; but when Leigh was born, he somehow bonded with her in a way he hadn’t with his two older daughters. Maybe it was because Pearl paid her less attention, or that Leigh was more an extrovert like him, but whatever the reason, his youngest daughter took to Christian Life like nobody else.
“Preachers’ kids can be a pain in the ass….” (the word “ass” sounds queer coming from Norman), and Alicia and Mary Patricia rebelled in many little ways, but Leigh never did. As far as he knew, Alicia doesn’t attend any church, and Mary Patricia, he says, his face clouded with disapproval, has become a Unitarian or something absurd like that. Until she married Wallace, Leigh was a delight. Every spare minute was spent at Christian Life. She had been to Thailand, Mexico, Haiti, Taiwan, and El Salvador with him and loved every minute of it.
“I tried to make her feel guilty about how she separated herself from us,” he says without apology, “but nothing worked. She was obsessed with him.”
It occurs to me that Norman’s parenting techniques are more sophisticated than my own. The difference is that he thinks he is entirely correct. Sarah accuses me of manipulating her if I even look at her hard.
“How did she meet Wallace?” I ask, watching the time. Knowing how much I like to talk about Sarah, I try to move him along. We could be here all morning and never get her out of college. It is easy for me to identify with Norman.
He worries as much as I do. I probably bore people talking about Sarah. Strip away the religious gloss, and he and I have a lot in common.
At the mention of his dead son-in-law’s name, Norman frowns.
“I sent Leigh to Harding to keep her away from men like Art, and he found her anyway.”
I nod, resisting my desire for a third lemon drop.
“How?” I ask, curious. Located in a small town north of Blackwell County, Harding is a strict Church of Christ school with as many rules as the game of bridge.
Norman sighs and crosses his legs.
“Art was originally from Crossett. He had been invited by a friend who taught in the business school to deliver a couple of lectures on opportunities in international business and saw Leigh in the student center. He didn’t stop pursuing her until they were married a year after she graduated, and, believe me, that took some doing. The man quit a successful career with Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and started his own business down here.”
I lean back in my chair, intrigued by this story. Crossett, a mill town in southern Arkansas that owes its soul to the Georgia Pacific company, is a long way from the Big Cave.
“I take it Art began coming to Christian Life.”
“Religiously,” Norman says, without a trace of irony.
“I had gotten Leigh a job with the church after her graduation, and he joined as soon as he moved back to Arkansas. What a con artist! Within a month after the wedding, he had stopped all but minimal Sunday attendance and within three months so had Leigh.”
There is a mixture of anger and sadness in Norman’s voice as it trails off.
“Art fooled me as badly as he did Leigh. The only problem I had with him was the age difference, and it didn’t bother me the way it bothered her mother. The man could charm the pants off a snake though, and I was convinced he was sincere. If he hadn’t been killed, I mink he would have had Leigh moved to New York inside another six months.”
I rub my tongue over my sugar-coated teeth, marveling at Wallace’s persistence. When he was killed, they hadn’t been married quite a year.
“Do you know of any enemies,” I ask, realizing for the first time I’m talking to one, “that Wallace could have had?”
Norman gives me a bleak smile.
“Other than myself, you mean?” He laughs, but the sound coming from his throat is not a merry one.
“He could have had a million.
Who knows? He could have been running drugs into the country with all the overseas contacts he had.”
I smile to take the sting out of my words.
“So could you.” I sit up straight in my chair and feel my back pro test. How do people stand surgery on their spines? It hurts mine just to sit erect.
“My point is,” I say quickly, “we’ve got to come up with something specific if Leigh’s to have a chance. Self-defense would be okay, but there was no sign of a struggle, and besides, she already gave the cops and everyone else a different story.
I suspect you probably made some calls about Art before he married your daughter. What did people say about him?”
Norman licks his lips. He has refused my offer of coffee or a soft drink, so if he wants something, he’ll have to ask.
“That he was ethical, smart, a whiz at numbers,” Norman admits.
“I was told by one guy Art Wallace had a great future at Chase.”
I pull our investigator’s report from its envelope.
Wallace was areal chamber of commerce poster boy.
Sure, he made bad loans, but back then Chase was practically begging the Third World to take their money. At any rate, there is no evidence that some foreign operative tracked him to Blackwell County and snuffed him because at some point Chase wanted its money back.
My recollection is they finally said to hell with it and wrote off billions.
“Do the police know you called Leigh around ten that morning?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light. Talk about the proverbial nail in your coffin.
“You said you heard her in the background. Was she crying, laughing, or what? Maybe it wasn’t Leigh.”
Norman seems to be staring at my diplomas as he considers my questions. I feel selfconscious, since I have been out of law school less than five years.
Bracken must have hyped me. Finally, he says, “It was Leigh. I’d know her voice anywhere. She has this giggle when she’s excited …”
His voice dies, and I guess aloud what I’ve suspected.
“You think she was in bed with him?” My question sounds crude. I know how I would feel. This guy is her father, and a Holy Roller at that. Your child’s sexuality is taboo, but surely he has thought the same thing: that Leigh went home to get it on and somehow things turned bad. If this were Sarah, I wouldn’t want to be thinking about it either. Yet, the cops found nothing: no drugs, no gun, no weirdness of any kind. Still, she could have put anything she didn’t want the cops to see in the car and dropped it off somewhere on the way to Christian Life when she went back at eleven-thirty. If Leigh did kill her husband, though, why was she giggling an hour before his death? Norman must think this information will incriminate her. It might save her life.
“She obviously was close by,” Norman says finally.
“It was the kind of laugh she had when she was caught being bad as a child. I’ve confronted her, but she denies she was there. It’s ridiculous for her to say that!” He adds, “I haven’t lied to the police about this. They just didn’t ask the right question.”
I have a mental picture of Leigh, and it is a hot one.
She and Art making it to beat the band, when the old man calls. She might have been blowing him while he was talking to her father, and this prompted the hysteria. (My mind goes back to phone calls Rosa and I received when we were having sex. Coitus interruptus we called it. Hi, what’s going on? My husband is eating me, but aside from that, nothing much.) Poor Shane. He can’t even pretend his daughter isn’t lying. Would I lie to protect Sarah from a murder charge? Surely so. But Bracken says Norman doesn’t do things that way.
“Why were you calling her?” I ask, trying to shake the idea of Leigh’s naked body from my mind.
Norman’s face flushes.
“I was checking up on her.
She had promised to come hear the missionary from Guatemala we had been supporting, and I didn’t see her Acura in its usual parking place when I was coming from one of our morning Bible study classes, so, damn it, I called her.”
I lean back in my chair and study the lock on the main drawer in my desk. Norman is obviously embarrassed he is having to acknowledge he harassed his daughter, and I give him a moment to compose himself.
I can imagine myself doing the same thing. It must have been maddening to watch her slip away from him.
“What did you say to him after you heard Leigh’s voice?”
Norman sighs and ducks his head like a ten-year-old.
“I called him a son of a bitch. He just laughed and hung up.”
Norman is such an obvious murder suspect I want to laugh out loud. Why didn’t Chet clue me in? Norman must have an ironclad alibi. Surely Chet has checked it out. I push my drawer in and out. It catches on all the junk I have crammed into it.
“What could have happened afterward,” I propose, “is that Leigh felt guilty and they had an argument, and he made fun of you and Christian Life, and she shot him. Is that possible?”
Norman shifts uneasily in the chair as if his bladder is sending him signals of distress. He swallows with some difficulty.
“It’s possible,” he agrees.
“Have you told diet this?” I ask, knowing he hasn’t.
Damn clients. They hire you to help them and then never tell you the truth.
Norman wags his head.
“I kept hoping someone would verify her story, and either Chet hasn’t been around much or I haven’t been around.”
Weak but understandable. With this information, Nor man thinks he has been holding the key to the prison door. Now that time is running out, he is finally spilling his guts. But why tell me instead of Chet? I wonder if he is beginning to lose confidence in Chet. I am. Pissed, I lecture him, “There’s no way we can help you and Leigh if you don’t tell us the whole story, no matter how bad it makes either of you look. Do you under stand that?”
Norman gives me a sickly smile. He is not used to being talked to like this, but he takes it.
“Of course you’re right,” he says, clearing his throat.
“Tell me something. Is Chet all right? He said he’s in remission, but he looks bad to me.”
I have just preached a sermon on honesty, but it doesn’t work both ways.
“I guess he’s okay,” I say breezily.
“He hasn’t complained to me.”
Norman looks behind me at my diplomas.
“He says you’re really good.”
I shrug, but inwardly I am ridiculously pleased.
Bracken’s good opinion is worth a lot. Yet he couldn’t very well say that he had hired a guy who, outside of a couple of cases, hadn’t particularly distinguished him self. Also, I doubt if he told Norman I was at least his third choice. There is some dishonesty here, but this is no time for true confessions.
“We’re only as good as our last case,” I say, trying to seem modest. Actually, I don’t believe this. If you only take die easy ones, your “won and lost” record is meaningless. At the Public Defender’s we measured our success by how much time our clients actually did in comparison with what they could have pulled when they were originally charged.
Only if you are a Chet Bracken does it make sense to look at your record of outright acquittals or dismissals.
The problem with this case is that the Chet Bracken of six months ago doesn’t exist any longer. How could Chet not have gotten from Norman that he called Leigh the morning of her husband’s death? He must really be slipping fast. What else don’t I know about this case?
We talk a few more minutes, but I do not get anything else useful. I walk Norman to the elevators, realizing he hasn’t mentioned his wife even once, and head for Dan’s office. Poor guy. I have to feel something for him, too. If Pearl truly has been a hooch hound their entire married life, no wonder he’s been so strict with the girls. Keep ‘em down on the farm as long as possible.
Dan is on the phone but hangs up as I come in.
“I’m thinking of having liposuction,” he says, “but it costs a fortune. I should have become a doctor. You don’t really believe that crap about doctors asking their nurses to be present when they examine their female patients?”
I close his door and take a seat. Dan’s office is gross.
The air smells like the alley behind the Layman Building that receives the exhaust fumes from a Chinese restaurant that has just opened on the first floor. Boxes, files, law reviews, bar association magazines, books, and food compete for space in Dan’s office on a no-holds-barred basis. My files are admittedly disorganized, but anything that enters Dan’s office has less chance of being found than a ship sailing into the Bermuda Triangle.
“You’re not serious about liposuction?”
I ask, somewhat alarmed. Dying is the only way Dan is going to lose weight, and even that might not do it.
He’s joked he wants to be buried with a box of Hostess cupcakes and a case of root beer.
“They say the pain is terrible,” Dan says gloomily.
“Jesus, I can’t even stand to have Brenda cut my toenails.”
The thought of Dan’s prissy society wife agreeing to perform such a mundane task makes me smile.
“Get this,” I tell him.
“Bracken hasn’t told Norman that he’s about to croak.”
Dan rolls back the cuffs of his shirt two folds, revealing fat, hairy wrists.
“Why the hell not?” he muses.
“He’s setting himself up for a malpractice claim and incompetence of counsel charges if Leigh doesn’t get off.”
“His estate,” I remind him.
“I wonder if I’ve got some duty to tell Norman about Bracken. The truth is, Chet hasn’t done shit on this case, and Norman tells me just now that he called Leigh at home the morning of the murder and heard her voice in the background. The cops don’t know this yet, but it’s just one more thing that can cook Leigh’s goose. Chet didn’t know either.”
Dan reaches in his desk and pulls out a Snickers. It is not even ten yet. He offers it to me, but I shake my head. As he peels off the paper, he says, “If I were you, I’d have a heart-to-heart with Bracken. If this case is headed for the toilet, you’re the one who’s gonna be flushed.”
I begin to wonder if I have made a serious mistake in agreeing to second chair this case. A neon sign inside my head is blinking the word “sucker.” This was to be my ticket to the big leagues. The way it is shaping up it looks like a bush-league game for last place. I fight back a momentary wave of panic. As Dan ingests the chocolate in two bites, I am reminded of the night he called from the jail to tell me he was arrested at a convenience store for stealing a Twinkie. Some people can’t tell the truth even if you hand them a script. Dan, for all his faults, can’t tell a lie.
“On top of everything else, Norman admits he can’t find a thing on Wallace either,” I complain.
“Other than stealing Norman’s daughter under false pretenses. Art was a model citizen.
Even Norman admits nobody had a motive to snuff him except himself. Of course, he was smiling when he said this.”
Dan wipes brown goo from the corners of his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. With all his practice, I mink he’d learn to hit the target.
“You check out his alibi?”
I shrug. How can Brenda stand to make love to him?
She is no Barbie but hardly a Petunia Pig either.
“He says he called from the church.”
Dan finds a corner of his handkerchief to blow his nose.
“That one didn’t wash for Leigh,” he points out “Who all saw him that morning? You just said he hated Wallace’s guts.”
If I had been in his position, I would have hated my son-in-law’s guts, too, but I doubt I would have killed him. Norman isn’t areal suspect, as far as I’m concerned.
He has far too much to lose. Even assuming he lost his temper big time, the image he has of himself wouldn’t allow him to shoot the man his daughter loved. As different as Norman and I are, I mink I understand the guy. If Sarah marries a rich creep, I’ll get her the best divorce lawyer his money can buy. Sooner or later, despite the woman-obey-your-husband garbage fundamentalists love, Norman, I’m convinced, would have come around to trying to talk Leigh into a divorce.
I reach behind me and open a window to let in some air. Dan has a great view of the Arkansas River. He tells me he will switch offices any time I want. He’d rather have my view any day.
“Come on, Dan,” I say mildly, “get real. Norman’s a lover, not a fighter.”
Dan reaches into his desk again but only to pull out a paper clip. He straightens it and begins to pick his teeth.
“How else was he gonna get his kid back? To Norman, Wallace was the Devil incarnate. What could damn a person more in a preacher’s eyes than a man who uses God for his own ends, especially if it involves the person he loves best?”
Dan is forgetting that preachers are supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner, and that usually precludes murdering him. I breathe deeply. There is a slight odor of mildew in the room. Some of these boxes have probably been sitting here for years. I indulge Dan, knowing he has to get this crap out of his system or he will never shut up. I point out, “But Norman wouldn’t set up Leigh to take the rap.”
Dan, loving the role of the great hypothesizer, says, “Norman wasn’t setting her up. He calls her at home, makes her feel guilty. She goes back to the church, and he slips out and goes to their house and offs Wallace, thinking she’ll never be charged, but the cops screw it up because they can’t figure out who else to nail. Norman thinks this will be a snap, but he gets the best criminal defense lawyer in town anyway. What he doesn’t know is the best is eaten up with cancer and can barely answer the bell.”
From Dan’s window I can see a barge coming into view. He’s got a point. Preachers have been known to commit murder for more sordid reasons than protecting their daughters. Not too long ago I read about a minister who killed his wife to run off with another woman. Yet, Norman, like myself, I realize, would try to talk somebody to death before he would shoot him. To humor him, I say, “I’ll check his alibi, but surely Chet has already done that much.”
Dan runs his tongue over his teeth to get every last bit of sugar, chuckling, “But talk about biting the hand that’s feeding you.”
I protest, “I haven’t bitten it yet.” Actually, it’s Bracken who is bothering me more than anything. Even if he has been sick, I can’t believe he has done such a sorry job. I realize I have been intimidated by his reputation.
If I’m going to keep from making a fool of myself at the trial, I’ll have to stop acting like I’m the messenger boy in this case. To give Chet credit, he isn’t hiding his lack of effort from me. In fact. he is practically rubbing my nose in it. Why? Can it be that he wants me to take over the role of lead counsel and can’t bring himself to say so? Men are harder to read than women. In our sex, the ego is like a five-hundred-pound gorilla guarding the door to the rest of the psyche.
Women are more vulnerable.
“By the way, the wife’s a lush. She’s functional, but she keeps her tank topped during the day. She was lit the afternoon I saw Leigh, and Rainey confirmed she has a problem. Norman didn’t mention it.”
Dan grimaces. I have confirmed his prejudices. He says, “Of course not. These guys go halfway around the world while their families go to hell in a hand-basket.”
Julia sticks her head in the door.
“Can’t you stay in your office thirty minutes by yourself?” she scolds me.
“I thought you were having a heart attack in the crapper. Mrs. Chestnut’s been waiting for ten minutes while I’ve been trying to find you.” Julia looks at Dan and shakes her head.
“That’s how Elvis died, straining on the pot. That’s how you fat boys check out a lot of times, you know.”
Dan grits his teeth, pretending to strain. I stand up, trying to remember mrs. Chestnut’s problem. Some kind of contract dispute. I follow Julia into the waiting room for my client.
“Thanks for looking for me.”
She turns and grins.
“It was just an excuse to see Dan . It’s like visiting a preschool every time I go back there.”
mrs. Chestnut is a sweet-looking old lady with oldfashioned puffed sleeves and a floral-patterned skirt that almost touches the floor. Jewelry and pearls give her a nice rich look. Though she was extremely vague about her problem over the phone, she expressed the hope that she wouldn’t have to go to court. I hope so, too. I can’t read a contract without yawning. She sits primly in my small office, and I wish, not for the first time, my furnishings were classier. Judging by her clothes and her address in western Blackwell County, I wouldn’t mind probating her estate.
“An acquaintance gave me your name, Mr. Page,” she says, smiling pleasantly at me. This is the kind of woman who takes a cruise every summer and whose major interest on board is the stock-market report.
Money has a way of announcing itself, even to me.
“Good,” I say hopefully, glad to hear my name is getting around.
“What can I do for you?”
A timid smile comes to her lips.
“I signed up Bernard Junior for spiritual development classes,” she says, her voice delicate and shy, “and I’ve been extremely disappointed with the results.”
Sometimes, I think I’m losing my hearing. This is one of them. What on earth? Bernard Junior must be hooked up with a correspondence course with one of those New Age groups in California. Maybe Dan can enroll, too.
“Is that a grandson?” I ask.
“Absolutely not,” she says, looking me in the eye, daring me to laugh.
“Bernard Junior is a pit bull.”
I fight to retain control of myself. This is a gag Dan and Julia are pulling. The potential for spiritual development in the humans who frequent this office is almost nil. Pit bulls may have a little better chance, but not much. Still, I can’t risk not taking this woman seriously.
She could be loaded.
“I wasn’t aware anyone in Blackwell County,” I say, not believing I’m saying this with a straight face, “gave, uh, pets classes in spiritual development.”
“Oh yes!” mrs. Chestnut says firmly.
“And it’s not for just any animal. Canines only. And then only dogs over five pounds.”
No chihuahuas need apply. She is serious. There is too much dignity in her voice, even if she is totally and certifiably mentally ill, for this to be a lie.
“Who does this?” I ask. Somehow, I don’t see this presumably capitalistic endeavor as a part of corporate America.
“I’ve seen ads for obedience school but never for spiritual development.” Each time I say the words I realize I am close to hysteria. I wish I had the nerve to ask if I could record this interview so someone would believe it.
“Purely word of mouth, no advertising,” mrs. Chestnut says. Carefully groomed, with every hair in place, she is attractive for someone surely in her seventies.
“Not every dog is accepted.”
Woogie probably couldn’t get in. He meets the weight limit, but beyond that, I doubt if there’s much to work with. Undoubtedly, I’m a bad influence on him. I can’t bring myself to take any notes.
“Did Bernard Junior make any progress at all?”
mrs. Chestnut shrugs dejectedly.
“At first he seemed to,” she says, “but after about the third week he was back to his old self, scratching and licking his privates, that sort of business.” With this revelation, mrs. Chestnut wrinkles her nose at the thought of Bernard Junior’s backsliding.
“It was as if he just didn’t seem to think it was worth it.”
I know the feeling. If virtue is its own reward, we need new door prizes. I try to sit as erect as mrs. Chest nut, but no dice. My spine could be stretched on a rack for a week but it would still look as if I were slouching.
She seems to be reluctant to tell me who fleeced her, so I ask, “Were you told what the classes consisted of, or was that a trade secret, kind of like the formula for Coca-Cola?”
“Oh dear me, no!” mrs. Chestnut informs me, a frown of disapproval crossing her face.
“We were allowed to observe the first hour. Unfortunately, Bernard Junior went to sleep during the introductory lecture, but we were told that was to be expected at first.”
As if I were talking to a normal person, I hear myself sympathizing, “I’ve nodded off at a lecture or two my self.” Unfortunately for my clients, law school was one big snooze, which, come to think of it, was full of Bernard Juniors.
mrs. Chestnut complains, “I spent five hundred dollars; and to watch him now, you’d swear he didn’t get a thing out of it. The instructor said sometimes he even kept Bernard Junior in during the exercise period, but I can’t see that helped him.”
Five hundred dollars! That would buy a lot of Puppy Chow. The think method. Right here in River City.
“How many were in a class?” I get the feeling that Bernard Junior might have been the only one to pay tuition.
“Just five at a time,” mrs. Chestnut says.
“Small classes for small minds, Mr. Von Jason said.”
Not in the presence of Bernard Junior, I hope. That would crush a spirit, no matter how many classes he attended. I can’t bring myself to talk about fees.
“Would you like for me to make a phone call and see if I can get your money back?” I’m not putting anything down on paper. As soon as I do, it will probably start showing up on billboards all over Blackwell County as the most elaborate pre-April Fool joke ever played.
Eagerly, mrs. Chestnut digs in her purse and hands me a business card. In script it says:
Canine Spiritual Development By Appointment Only Jason 683-9888
Keeping a somber expression in place (this could be me someday sitting across the desk, I have decided), I dial the number and push the button on the speaker phone so mrs. Chestnut can hear. A male voice, cultured yet friendly, instructs that Jason is busy teaching a class but not to worry: he will call as soon as possible.
I manage to leave my name and number without giggling.
“That was Jason’s voice!” mrs. Chestnut says excitedly.
“He’s always talking in the third person.”
Why am I not surprised?
“Why don’t you call me tomorrow?” I say, standing to indicate the interview is over.
mrs. Chestnut looks disappointed but asks, “How much do I owe you?”
I shake my head.
“If I can get your money back with a phone call, there won’t be a charge.” What am I saying?
I should have told her my fee was two thousand dollars just to get rid of her.
I walk her to the elevators. In the hall she says, “I know you think this is silly, but Bernard Junior is really my best friend. Nobody wants to listen to an old woman. My children are so busy, and all my friends talk about is their illnesses and their children’s divorces, which seem endless, and it seemed the least I could do for Bernard Junior. After all, we send our own children to Sunday school when they’re practically babies, and Bernard Junior is smarter man a lot of children his age.
Would you like me to bring him next time?”
The door opens, and I say hastily, “I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” All I need is a pit bull attacking clients.
“I’ll call you when I hear something.”
In the reception area in front of a handful of clients waiting for other lawyers, Julia asks loudly, “What’d she want? Unlike your other clients, she seemed harm less enough.”
How reassuring Julia is. You’d make an ideal prison matron, I think, but do not say.
“I’ve got to make a phone call,” I lie, fleeing to my office.
“I’ll tell you later.”
Back in my office, I pick up Jason’s card and marvel at the human animal’s capacity for self-deception. Have I been kidding myself about Chet? Like more than a few successful lawyers, he has a reputation for doing whatever it takes to win a case. But maybe he is too near the end to care. Death is supposedly good for concentrating one’s mind. In his case, however, it seems to be having the opposite effect. When I get him on the phone, he professes not to be surprised that Shane hasn’t told him everything.
“Now that we’re coming down the home stretch,” he says, his voice calm, even a little flat, “Shane’s having to admit to himself that Leigh probably killed her husband. Memories, don’t you find, always improve dramatically the last couple of weeks before a trial? He’s only human. If it were my daughter, I’d forget a few things myself.”
Though my own thoughts aren’t radically different, I am frustrated by his failure to react more strongly to the information I’ve given him.
“You realize, of course, that Shane had as much reason to kill Wallace as Leigh did?” I regurgitate Dan’s theory without assigning him credit.
In a slightly patronizing tone, Chet responds, “So you think Pastor Norman decided on a little frontier justice after he and An had their chat?”
Irritated by his manner but beginning to feel foolish, I push my feet against the edge of my desk and practically ram my chair through the wall. I know this theory is farfetched, but what else do we have? A jury won’t acquit Leigh because she is a preacher’s daughter.
“All I’m doing is suggesting that you check his alibi,” I say as evenly as possible.
“You probably already have.”
Chet answers quickly, but without any inflection, “He was at the church.”
I wonder how much medication he is taking. His voice reminds me of mental patients I have represented.
No affect. Maybe he is just trying to calm me down.
You don’t yell at an excited child to get him quiet.
“I assume he can prove that,” I say, knowing how strident I sound.
“Shane Norman is not a murderer,” Chet replies, his voice firm for the first time.
“Surely you’ve figured that out.”
Every instinct I have about this case agrees with him, but lawyers are supposed to be more than fortune tellers.
“This isn’t “What’s My Line?” ” I yelp, my patience running out.
“Either he’s got a solid alibi or he doesn’t. Let me check it out, okay? I’ll …”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Chet says, cutting me off.
“You’ll embarrass the hell out of me if you go charging up there. I’ll look into it again.”
I can’t believe what I am hearing. When has Bracken ever worried about being embarrassed? One of the reasons he’s been so successful is that he’s never had the slightest qualms about whose cage he’s had to rattle in order to defend a client. If he is worried about how Norman is going to view this, he has no business trying to represent his daughter. I feel my sense of deference drying up in a hurry.
“That’s fine with me, but don’t you think you ought to tell Norman how sick you are?” I ask, deliberately baiting him.
“I’d want to know if I were the client.”
“I’m all right,” he says abruptly.
“Do me a favor, okay? Let’s not get too carried away. Just because we don’t have rabbits popping up out of a hat doesn’t mean you have to feel you’ve got to stage a mutiny. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but you’re still the understudy. If you can’t live with that, I’ll get somebody else.”
Chastened by his tone, I back off. Both Sarah and Rainey tell me that I have a tendency to overreact. Patience, it is pointed out, isn’t one of my virtues. I remind myself that Bracken knows a hell of a lot more about this business than I do. If I were handling this case by myself, with only two weeks to the trial, I’d be running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I have forgotten how cool Bracken can be under pressure. If I could shut up, I might learn something.
“I’m sorry,” I say, hoping I sound appropriately meek.
“It’s just that I kind of feel like we’re out on a sailboat on a hot day waiting for a breeze, and about out of drinking water.”
“Well, second-guessing me at every opportunity,” Chet mutters, “isn’t going to make that feeling go away.”
He suggests that in the next couple of days I reinterview the witnesses who saw Leigh on the day of the murder and see if he and his investigator have missed anything, then meet him on Wednesday afternoon at the crime scene. Mollified, I hang up, wondering how close I came to blowing it. Probably not very. Aggressiveness is not a sin in Chet’s book. At least it didn’t used to be.
Though I feel more comfortable, I can’t shake the sense that something is out of kilter. Not only does there seem to be no movement in this case, I can’t see a theory developing that will generate any forward motion down the line. I am like a seminarian who keeps having heretical thoughts. My mind keeps drifting back to Shane Norman. Could Chet be protecting him some how? It makes no sense that he would, but still I wonder I’d like to free-lance a little in this case, but I don’t dare. If Chet got even a whiff of what I was doing, I’d be gone quicker than a wad of spit on the Fourth of July. So what is going on with Chet? It could be that the painkillers are slowing him down, or maybe he’s so damn preoccupied with dying that he isn’t thinking straight. For most lawyers that wouldn’t be an unreasonable explanation, certainly not for me. However, the mystique of Chet Bracken is such that I expect him to shrug off a little thing like death. Maybe I’m the one with the problem.
As I am about to leave for the day, Julia buzzes me.
“I forgot to tell you,” she says, “that Mr. Blessing called while you were at lunch. He said to tell you he’s on the seventh floor at St. Thomas. He’ll come see you when he gets out” Blessing? I rub my eyes and finally remember: the guy whose hair blew off and ran down the street.
“That’s the psycho ward.”
“He’s nutty as a fruitcake,” Julia says regretfully.
“Such a good-looking guy, too. There’s always some thing wrong with men.”
“How’d he sound?”
“Crying like a baby. He said not to come by.”
“Thanks, Julia,” I say and hang up. Poor guy. I turn off the light in my office, wondering if a normal person would lose it this badly because his wig blew off. I head for the elevators. Who is normal? Nobody I know.