Thursday night. my daughter’s night to open cans, for surely what we do can’t be called cooking. Yet food is the furthest thing from her mind. I sit at the kitchen table while she checks a pan on the stove. Always the optimist, Woogie, whose culinary requirements are almost as simple, watches hopefully beside my chair.
“I feel so sorry for Pastor Norman,” she says.
“All that he is doing, and his wife is an alcoholic, too.”
I reach down to pet Woogie and decide my sympathies lie with Pearl Norman, who sounds as if she has been starved for attention ever since she married Shane and especially since Leigh was born.
“It could be that she has a genetic predisposition toward alcoholism,” I point out.
“And I suspect she feels lonely a lot of the time.”
Sarah, judgmental as only the young can be, will have none of it. She tosses an empty box in the trash.
“She doesn’t have to drink,” she says blithely.
“She has a choice.”
I feel a bump on Woogie’s head and wonder if it is a tumor. Surely not.
“It’s not that easy,” I say, finding this conversation an uphill battle. My daughter has many virtues, but at this stage of her life, tolerance is not among them. During her grandfather’s lucid periods, he knew that alcohol and schizophrenia didn’t mix well, but that didn’t stop him from drinking. I haven’t always known when to quit either. People drink for a reason It may not be a good one, but nobody promised that the species wouldn’t have its perverse moments.
“Maybe not,” Sarah replies, “but you have to admire the strength that enables Pastor Norman to endure her drinking and do so much, too.”
Woogie settles down on the floor, and I rub the arthritic knuckle on my left hand. I have my own bumps.
Shane Norman doesn’t seem the type to endure much of anything.
“Maybe,” I can’t resist saying, “she drinks because of him.”
Sarah puts her own spin on my remark.
“I can see how she might feel inadequate,” she says, putting a lid over the pan.
“It would be hard to feel you could ever do enough to help a man like that.”
Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. How much of this crap will I have to endure? It’s not as if Shane Norman is on the cutting edge of anything. I complain, “What bugs me is the insistence on the literal belief in the Bible. I just don’t see how you and Rainey can swallow that.”
Sarah slowly turns the knob on the oven as if she were performing an experiment for her chemistry class.
My mind goes back to my sophomore year in high school. My biology teacher, who had a stutter, told our class after we summarily covered the theory of evolution in five minutes, “You can believe you came from mon-mon-monkeys, but the ‘h’ if I-I-I do.” We all laughed, but somehow even then it didn’t bother me to think my ancestors swung down out of trees. Sarah says, “You can’t explain the world any better. If the world was originated by the Big Bang, who or what began that? Where did that first little something that originated the universe come from? Nobody knows.
Something can’t come from nothing, can it?”
I sip at a can of Miller Lite and futilely try to think.
This is why I have given up the Big Questions.
“I don’t see how,” I admit.
“Sort of like, what began in the beginning?”
“God did,” Sarah says firmly. Holding a spatula so old it precedes her birth, she turns over ground beef in the skillet. We are having spaghetti again.
“But surely not just six thousand years ago,” I say, shaking my head.
“No reputable scientist believes that.”
Smelling the meat, Woogie begins to whimper. I doubt if he’s lost any sleep over the Creation. I stroke him with my foot to hush him. Sarah says, “That’s not true. In our creation science trial even the judge who ruled in favor of the evolutionists admitted in his written opinion that no scientists have been able to explain away the discovery of the existence of radioactive polonium haloes in granite and calcified wood that call into question the inference from carbon dating methods that the earth is ancient.”
Good Lord! What’s she talking about? They are already working on her. I don’t want to get into a scientific argument I’m sure to lose.
“Even assuming you’re one hundred percent right, you just can’t isolate the one blip that nobody understands and say that justifies disregarding the overwhelming body of knowledge on the subject.”
Stubbornly, Sarah shakes her head.
“It’s not knowledge; it’s theory. You just want to be on the side that appears intellectually respectable. You’re worried about what people think. If a bunch of Harvard scientists came out and said they had just discovered evidence that the world was only about six thousand years old, soon you’d start saying the same thing.”
I get up to set the table. She’s probably right. Most lawyers are suckers for authority figures. That’s how we earn our living. I feel a little tension in the room, but she doesn’t appear to be getting angry.
“Maybe that’s true,” I admit.
“But they all say the earth’s several billion years old.”
Sarah drains the boiling water from the spaghetti, and a cloud of steam rises from the sink. A documentary on Channel 2 a few weeks ago portrayed the earth dramatically cooling down after its fiery formation. Needless to say, this one re-created the beginning of life without reference to the book of Genesis. Vapor rises into the air that condenses into rain. Lightning flashes, and somehow chemicals interact, and poof! life begins. It makes more sense to me than some giant in the sky scooping up clay and molding a human who comes to life.
“You’re just afraid of looking silly,” she says benignly dishing the noodles out onto the plates.
“It’s more comfortable for you pretending you sort of under stand science when you really don’t. All you’re doing is taking someone else’s word instead of the Bible’s.”
I bring the meat over to the table. She’s right again.
I still don’t understand why the earth rotates. No Clarence Darrow or even a William Jennings Bryan, I’d be a liability to either side of a debate on the subject. Actually I’m more interested in how much time Sarah will be spending away from me than what she is being told, which, obviously, is quite a lot, if she already has been briefed about the evidence at our own monkey trial.
Since Sunday she has spent a couple of hours every day out there, even though Norman told her she should wait.
“Citing authority is about all lawyers know how to do,” I concede.
“One good precedent is worth ten pages of legal arguments.”
Tasting the spaghetti, Sarah seizes the opening I’ve given her.
“And the Bible is the oldest precedent you could possibly cite.”
Dan, my childless expert on child rearing since Rainey’s defection, tells me the more I argue (even if I knew what I was talking about), the more she will resist. But I want to cry out the obvious, which she surely knows:
the first monkey trial showed how badly eroded the Bible’s authority is for the purpose of demonstrating the origin of life, and the trial in Little Rock wasn’t any different.
I mutter, “It’s old, all right.” I guess I do care about appearances. I don’t want Sarah to be so out of step with the mainstream that she spends her life trying to defend something most of the country outside the South discarded long ago. She is too young to get stuck with such a narrow outlook on life. I thought people were supposed to be liberal when they are young and turn into conservatives when they get old. Maybe the country has become so threatening with its steady diet of violence, drugs, and sex and out-of-control economic problems that some kids will jump at the chance to bypass the complexity and uncertainty of reality for some definite answers. I know Sarah’s answer already.
The Bible is God’s truth.
Sarah puts down her fork.
“What you can’t or won’t see is how meaningful the Bible becomes when it is believed,” my daughter lectures me, “and not just taken as metaphor or statements of faith.”
Despite Dan’s injunction not to argue, I protest, “But for something to be meaningful, surely it has to make sense and be true.” As my voice gets high, Woogie stirs restlessly under the table. He doesn’t like conflict either.
Sarah moves her glass of milk around on the place mat as she responds, “When Jesus died on the Cross for us, it didn’t make sense, did it?”
I suppress a sigh. Shut up right now, I tell myself. A total no-win situation. She wants to argue with me. It will be a test to see if she already knows enough to beat the old man. What she doesn’t know is that it will bruise our relationship, and that’s the last thing I want to happen. I’m already losing Rainey. I can’t afford to lose Sarah. I try a question, myself.
“Isn’t the reason Jesus died a question of theology?”
“No!” Sarah practically shouts, her food forgotten.
“It’s what gives my life meaning.”
I have lost my appetite. Maybe all of this is rebellion.
I am not going to fight with her. If she wants to become an evangelist, I’ll try to learn to live with it. I’m just afraid she is going to miss so much of life. The world is a larger place than Christian Life, our house, and her school.
“You’re going to end up like Leigh Wallace,” I say stupidly, my voice trembling. Who am I kidding?
Of course, I dread the thought of her cutting herself off from the twentieth century; it’s ridiculous to pretend otherwise. True enough, so much of what exists is banal or even hideous, but at least some people weren’t afraid to think and experiment. Why throw them out?
Sarah gets up from the table, knocking her chair back against the wall.
“That’s the most absurd thing you’ve ever said!” she storms at me.
“If Leigh hadn’t turned her back on Christian Life, she wouldn’t be in the situation she’s in now.”
I stand up, too, and take my plate over to the sink.
“Most people can’t live all their lives shut up in a little cocoon. Not at your age. Now is the time for broadening yourself, questioning things. The way you’re going about this is to shut yourself off. For God’s sake, Christian Life is a fortress. It might as well be patrolled by security guards. That’s not living; that’s hiding.”
Sarah follows me over to the sink.
“I suppose what you do is real living, huh?” she yells.
“After Mom died, you’d have brought a prostitute to the house if you thought you could’ve gotten away with it. You make a living defending people who spend their lives doing evil things, and then you use people who care about you to help get them off. You finally find one woman who’s good for you, and you risk giving her AIDS and jerk her around like a puppet! If that’s what you call living, who needs it?”
Sarah is way over the line. I don’t claim to be a saint, but I’m not much worse than most people I know. I turn on the hot water full blast and squirt some detergent into the sink. I am so mad right now that if I say any thing, I might regret it the rest of my life. I realize now I have told Sarah too much about my cases over the years. Dumb as a rock, I got involved once with a woman who later died of AIDS. Everything I could possibly do wrong during that case I did, but I didn’t expose Rainey to AIDS; and, even more than anything else, it galls me to realize Sarah assumes I would.
“What makes you think I’ve ever slept with Rainey?” I ask, my voice calm as I can make it.
Sarah, who is leaning against the refrigerator, says, “I’m not that naive!”
“Not that it’s any of your business, young lady,” I say, turning to face her, “but we haven’t, and you have said just about enough for one night.”
“I’m going up to the church!” she says, checking her watch.
I slam the sponge into the sink.
“What is so wonderful about that goddamned church? Before you fall too much in love with him, you might as well know that Shane Norman had as much reason to kill Leigh Wallace’s husband as she did.”
Sarah looks at me as if I had called her mother a whore.
“What are you saying?” she asks, her voice now shaky.
I back off, knowing I shouldn’t be discussing this subject.
“I’m not saying anything except people aren’t always what they seem, and the sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”
Sarah’s eyes are enormous.
“Do you have any evidence he’s involved?”
“That’s none of your business!” I say harshly, ashamed to admit I couldn’t prove right now that the man came within five miles of Art Wallace the day he was shot.
“And don’t you breathe a word of this to anybody, you hear me!”
“Yes, I hear you!” she yells and bursts into tears as she runs out of the room.
“Good!” I holler after her. My voice sends Woogie slinking away after her. What is her problem? Anger that her mother died, leaving her to be raised by a not always-model father? She has really pissed me off. The trouble is that a lot of what she says is true. Granted, very few of the women I dated after her mother’s death were candidates for a convent. Although criminal defense work doesn’t usually put one in contact with the cream of society, I doubt if most of my clients have had the energy to engage in nonstop evil. I admit I haven’t always done right by Rainey, but she has backed away a time or two herself.
Sarah wants everything to be black or white, and even though I would like fewer shades of gray myself, it doesn’t work that way. Maybe she didn’t ask to be born during the last gasp of the twentieth century, but I didn’t either. The only thing I know to do is to slog through it one crisis at a time. I shouldn’t have mentioned Shane. That was stupid. Still, she’s got to learn that the only people who don’t have feet of clay have been dead for centuries. Norman may not be a murderer, but he was an overbearing son of a bitch who tried his best to smother his daughter. Even if Leigh is guilty, as far as I’m concerned, Norman has some blood on his hands. If he had let her lead her own life, perhaps she wouldn’t be facing a murder charge.
In a few minutes Sarah returns, her dark winter coat, over her gray sweats. At least Christian Life doesn’t require designer clothes. That might be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“My ride’s outside waiting. I’ll be back by nine,” she says, her voice containing the bare minimum of civility. She is no longer crying, but her eyes are red.
“Is your homework done?” I ask, exercising my prerogative, though she is almost a straight-A student.
“Yes, sir,” she says, unsmiling.
“Would you like to check it?”
She hasn’t said “sir” to me this year.
“I doubt if that’s necessary,” I reply sarcastically. Damn. I want my daughter back. I thought Christianity was supposed to be about love and acceptance. For a moment I am tempted to tell her to go to her room, but all it will do is convince her even more that I am the Devil.
After she leaves, I call Rainey, who starts the conversation by telling me she is about to go to Christian Life, too.
“I’ve tried my best not to let this bother me,” I say, feeling I’m getting the bum’s rush, “but I confess I’m really beginning to resent your meddling with Sarah’s religious faith.” There is a long silence on the other end, and while I haven’t quite said what I intended, I’m not sorry I’ve said it. I didn’t mean to sound so pompous, but damn it, I want someone else to feel a little guilty, too.
Finally, Rainey says, more evenly than I expected, “All I did was tell her about Christian Life and invite her to attend. She wasn’t bound and gagged last Sunday.”
I squeeze the receiver in frustration.
“She’s a seventeen-year-old kid who got caught up in a wave of emotion. The Bible isn’t any more literally true in some places than a Grimm’s fairy tale. It’s not science; it’s myth, and you know it as well as I do. I’m sick and tired of pretending it doesn’t matter to me what she believes, when it’s clear she isn’t thinking rationally about this.”
Rainey remains maddeningly calm.
“Faith isn’t rational Gideon. That’s what scares you about it. The idea of Sarah having enough faith to commit her life to something other than a career or a man frightens you to death. After all, you can’t commit yourself to anything or anybody, because you can’t get over your wife dying sooner than she should have, and you’re terrified of losing someone again.
“As long as Sarah remained under your thumb, it was easy to be wise and tolerant, but the moment you can’t control her you want to blame me. If you think Sarah isn’t thinking with her head as well as her heart, you’re sadly mistaken. Of course she is. For the first time in her life she’s being offered something more than, here, take a number, buy this, buy that, and keep smiling until you find a job and a husband. Sure, we’re taking a risk. At Christian Life we know we’re ridiculed. You saw Inherit the Wind. The character based on William Jennings Bryan was made to look like a senile old fool, and people such as yourself haven’t gotten any kinder since then. Sarah’s not dumb. She knows you’re upset by this, and she knows that you’ll react by making her feel as guilty as you possibly can.”
I feel myself on the verge of throwing the phone through the kitchen window. I have never heard Rainey sound more condescending. There have been times when I thought she was going to be the answer to every problem I’ve had since Rosa died. We used to talk about everything; she was the one person who would always be there no matter how bad I showed my ass.
Once, when I was fired, she offered to dip into her savings. I’ve been there for her, too. During her breast cancer scare, I was the one waiting at the hospital for the surgeon to come out of the operating room. Granted, I nearly wimped out when she first told me and probably would have if it hadn’t been for Sarah, but I was there. I’ve listened to innumerable complaints about the state hospital and worried more than I ever admitted that she would lose her social worker job when the inpatient census was drastically reduced. Now, however, she is not the same person. Although she was never dogmatic before, these days she is almost a zealot. It seems every conversation we have revolves around Christian Life.
“Maybe you ought to let Sarah speak for herself. I haven’t made her feel guilty. As a matter of fact, she’s up at the church right now. For all I care, she can move in so she can be there twenty-four hours a day if she wants to.”
Rainey laughs, as if I can’t possibly be serious.
“You want to cut her throat for going up there at all. If you would let her go gracefully, she’ll come back. Kids her age have a hard time staying committed to anything.
There’s so much else for them to do.”
I shout into the phone, “That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. If she were our age, she would at least have tried to live a normal life. Now she won’t even be able to say she tried.”
Rainey’s voice becomes impatient.
“That’s just dumb.
You’re overreacting as usual! You make it sound as if she wants to become a preacher. Listen, I have to go.
Calm down, and she’ll be all right.”
Never have I heard her so patronizing. Her smugness is making me sick to my stomach.
“This is in confidence,” I warn her, “but I’m going to tell you what I told Sarah. Before you write him in as saint of the year, you need to know that the great Shane Norman is a suspect in his daughter’s murder case.”
There is stunned silence on the other end. Finally, her voice shrill, Rainey says, “I simply can’t believe that!”
It is my turn to laugh. I say savagely, “Why the hell not? You can believe God took one of Adam’s ribs and made a woman out of it; you can believe that after six days of making a world God needed a rest, so he called the next day Sunday. The trouble with people like you is that you think it’s perfectly wonderful to pick and choose your beliefs. If it makes you feel good, you can swallow a whole book. In the real world insensitive slobs like me don’t have that luxury. While you’ve got your eyes squinched shut reciting some prayer to give you more faith to believe what Norman tells you to, dumb clods like me have to consider the very real possibility that he shot dead his son-in-law. Maybe, though, I ought to just take his word that he didn’t do it. If I just pray hard enough, any disturbing thoughts I have about the man will go away.”
Rainey asks so quietly I can barely hear her, “Do you really have some evidence he might have done it?”
I bluster, “You know I can’t go into that, but tell me what I should do, Rainey. If there is enough evidence that Shane Norman killed Art Wallace, should I just sit on it, and let your beliefs guide me in this case? If he says he is innocent, do you think that ought to be the end of it? After all, he’s telling you to swallow the Bible whole. Shouldn’t his word that he didn’t kill his son-in-law be enough?”
She says weakly, “I just can’t believe he is capable of murdering anyone. You don’t know him. I know what your point is, but until I see some evidence, I just can’t accept he might have killed Art.”
I laugh triumphantly.
“Evidence! What do you want evidence for? There’s a ton of evidence the world wasn’t created in seven days, and you couldn’t care less about that. If Leigh goes to prison for the rest of her life for a crime her father committed, I guess that’s okay, because facts only matter when you want them to.”
“You’re not being fair,” Rainey says, her voice almost fading out.
“It’s not the same thing.”
Who is fair? Is anything or anybody fair?
“No, I guess you’re right,” I say sarcastically.
“Unless you can look it up in the Book of Genesis that Shane Norman killed Art Wallace, it could never have happened.”
Rainey says, her voice tremulous, “I have to go.”
With this, she hangs up, leaving me feeling almost gleeful. It’s about time she and Sarah learned they can’t have it both ways. They’ve both been so obnoxious it’s made me want to puke. Even if Norman’s got an alibi, they’ll never feel the same way about him again. Even if the son of a bitch didn’t have the guts to do it, he had murder in his heart. That’s got to be a sin in his book.
Shades of Jimmy Carter. These people drive me up the wall. The phone rings, and I pick it up, knowing it is Rainey. She’s decided she wasn’t in such a hurry after all. She’s too smart to stay in la-la land indefinitely.
“Hi!” I say, more cheerful than I’ve been all day.
“Gideon,” Chet says, his voice scratchy but full of life, “we’ve finally got something on Wallace that might lead somewhere. I’m down at my office with my investigator. Can you come down? I’m finally feeling a little better.”
“Sure,” I say, looking at my watch. I’ve had the feeling Bracken has been avoiding me. It’s about time I heard from him.
“I’ll be right there.”
I scribble a note for Sarah. For once this week she will be waiting up for me. Woogie, sensing I’m going out, thinks he may be getting a walk and begins to bark and jump up against my legs.
“You’re not going,” I explain.
“No!”
Frightened by my tone, he slinks away into the hall.
Though I am glad that Chet seems to be finally doing something on this case, I am disappointed he isn’t calling me to tell me about Norman’s alibi. Woogie turns and gives me a look that leaves no doubt he is pissed off at me. Lately, somebody’s always mad about something in this house.
Downtown is not a fun place after dark, and tonight is no exception. What little life there is gives me the creeps. I am no stranger to criminals, but the older I get, the more I like to see them sitting politely by me in a courtroom filled with cops. The shadowy figures walking the streets tonight are possibly candidates for future clients because there is absolutely nothing going on here after 6 p.m. that will find its way into the hands of a tax collector. The dream to revitalize the downtown center dies harder than the Terminator. As I drive down between the Layman and Adcock buildings on my way to chet’s office, I view the remains of the latest mall. A Wal-Mart would have to open up down here before real shoppers would come back downtown, and that is about as likely as Paul Simon doing a concert in my living room.
Bracken owns his own small one-story building near the courthouse, but with its barred windows, it looks more like a reconverted bunker from World War II than a law office. Dressed in jeans that fit him only slightly better than the jeans he was wearing the night I ate dinner at his place, he lets me in the heavy metal door, saying “Glad I caught you at home.”
I have been to his office once before, on the Sarver case. The law books in his library, overflowing before, seem to have multiplied. In fact, there is little in his office except books. Lawyers as famous and rich as Bracken usually cover their walls with crap that lets clients know how great they are. His walls are bare. Who will get his books? He probably pays more in updates and supplements than I make in a year. Many criminal lawyers, myself included, hate research. Judging by his library. Bracken must love it. I go to the law library at gunpoint.
“No problem,” I say as another man walks into the room. As little direction as Bracken has provided I would have driven to Memphis for this conversation.
“This is Daffy McSpadden, my investigator on the case,” Chet says, introducing me to a short, dumpy guy in his thirties with slightly crossed eyes. He is wearing a gray suit and striped tie and, except for his eyes, looks normal enough, until I notice his feet. He is wearing sandals. Though I get only a glance, I swear his toes are webbed. Surely not.
“How are you?” I ask, unable to call him Daffy. His hand feels like the skin of a reptile. This is one guy who didn’t get his job on his looks.
Instead of speaking, he nods, which makes me fear that he can emit only quacking sounds. I look uneasily at Chet. Maybe he is beginning to suffer dementia.
Daffy seems like a character out of a Batman movie.
Chet commands, “Daffy, tell him what you’ve run across.”
Daffy nods eagerly as we seat ourselves at a small conference table in the library. Speaking in a rapid monotone, he says, “Among Mr. Wallace’s other business interests, all legitimate so far as I’ve been able to tell, is evidence of a deal for pornographic videos produced in the Netherlands which probably went sour with a buyer in New York. Wallace found a distributor in San Francisco who later accused him of cheating on the price. The distributor, who reportedly has connections with some pretty tough customers, was obviously leaning on Wallace to come up with two hundred thousand dollars in cash to make things right. Wallace was acting as broker on the money transaction but apparently not an honest one.”
Art, you old sleazoid, I think. Yet a little extra profit on that kind of deal would be easy enough to conceal.
It’s not the kind of market that puts out a big Christmas catalog.
“How do we know all this?” I ask Daffy, but it is Bracken who answers.
“I had him,” Bracken says, nodding at Daffy, “do some digging on a series of phone calls Art made to San Francisco the month before he died. On the surface it appears legitimate, but if you represent enough crooks, you begin to sniff a distinct odor. The paperwork behind the calls didn’t check out; and, with a little work. Daffy heard enough rumors about the buyer to guess at a connection. I wasn’t certain about the skimming until Leigh admitted it to me this afternoon after I confronted her. She said Art had been threatened, but she was afraid to tell me. Art said they would come after her, too, if she talked. He was still trying to come up with the cash when he died.”
I lean against the table and look at Daffy’s crossed eyes with grudging respect.
“The cops don’t know about this?”
Daffy answers, with a snicker, “Are you kidding?
They might have spent five minutes checking out his phone bill.”
Poor Leigh, I think. No wonder she looked so grim.
If I were in her situation, I’d keep my mouth shut, too, and count on Chet Bracken to do his magic.
“Why didn’t Wallace pay off?” I ask Chet.
“I thought he was loaded.”
Daffy volunteers, “Two hundred thousand takes a while to come back from the laundry. The problem is that some guys get their feelings hurt when they’re taken and aren’t very understanding of international currency laws. Wallace knew how to keep his money working, but that kept it from being as liquid as his creditor in this case would’ve liked. Rub-out guys aren’t paid to have a lot of patience.”
Rub-out guys. Great. I’m out of my league. Is this for real? The closest I’ve gotten to international currency was down in Colombia in the Peace Corps, and it seemed like play money, it bought so little. I look around Bracken’s library a little dazed. I didn’t sign on to spend the rest of my life wondering if I’m going to have an unexpected dinner guest some night. I ask stupidly, “Do we call the cops?”
Across the table. Daffy coughs politely, and Chet tells him he can go home now.
“I’ve got sole custody of my five kids,” Daffy explains.
“I need to get to the house.”
Five kids! I have to wonder what the ex-mrs. Daffy looks like. And the children. Chet accompanies him into the hall and reaches for his wallet. I suspect Daffy is not averse to working off the books occasionally. With that many mouths to feed, he doesn’t have a lot left over to feed Uncle Sam, too. Chet walks back into the library and gives me a wan smile.
“So you want to turn this information over to the police, huh?”
I lean back in the leather chair and try to think, “We can’t protect her.”
Chet sits down across from me and pushes his thick brown hair back from his forehead.
“I’m sure not going to be around,” he says, grinning sourly at his own black humor.
“Look, this doesn’t add up, no matter how you do the math. Wallace was killed with a twenty-two pistol.
What kind of hit man uses a popgun? The cops searched the house and found nothing. There was no sign of a struggle, no forced entry. Wallace was hardly the type to invite his killer inside for a cup of coffee and then draw an x on his forehead for him. He would have fought like hell. If Wallace was really worried about his health, don’t you think the cops would have found a weapon or two around his house?”
I rub my eyes, trying to keep up. By this time of night, my I.Q. is in the single digits.
“So she’s making all this up?”
Chet looks down at the papers in front of him.
“Maybe the death threat, I don’t know. It’s not like I can call up the distributor in San Francisco and get him to go on David Letterman to talk about this deal. Maybe Leigh’s getting a little desperate. Maybe she made up the threat because she’s scared the porn business will come out in court, and pull her father and mother into the slime. This could really be a problem for her family.”
People are weird. She’s on trial for murder, and she’s worried about her daddy’s reputation?
“Maybe Shane knew about the porn stuff and killed Wallace,” I suggest, taking the opportunity to raise the subject of Norman’s alibi.
“I could see that a lot quicker than him killing Wallace because he was keeping Leigh away from the church.”
Chet fidgets in his chair. As his face becomes thinner, his ears seem to get larger.
“That’s garbage,” he says curtly.
“He’s seen a lot worse than what Wallace was involved in.”
Perhaps so, but not where his own daughter is concerned.
God damn it. I feel my face burning. The son of a bitch still hasn’t checked out Norman’s alibi. What has Norman got on him? Chet must have confessed to some crime and has had to cut some deal. So much for confidentiality between priest and penitent. Norman could leak information about Chet in a million different ways, and Chet won’t be around to save his reputation.
But surely Norman wouldn’t risk his daughter’s freedom this way. What in the hell is going on? I realize I’m beginning to think of Norman as a thug instead of one of the most respected men in the state. The odd thing is that I like the man. In some ways he and I don’t seem all that much different. Hell, yes, I could murder someone. And so could Norman.
“So what do we do with this?” I ask, watching Chet take a beer from a cooler he has beside his chair. I wouldn’t mind a beer right now, but, feeling like a junior law clerk, I don’t ask.
Chet makes a face as he untwists the cap from the bottle.
“At this point we’ll follow it until it dries up or we run out of time. Even if it turns out to be worth less than dog crap, we’ve got to throw some sand in the jury’s face. Shit, we don’t have any choice. This is all we’ve got at the moment. I want you to go to San Francisco and see what you can find out about the distributor. If we have to put Leigh on the stand with this story, we need to know a hell of a lot more than we do now.”
Why should I go? I’m a lawyer, not an investigator.
“Can’t Daffy go or someone else? There’re a million guys who’d love a free trip.”
Chet shakes his head and takes a long draft before he speaks.
“What I’m mainly interested in is you finding someone out there whom we can qualify as an expert witness to testify that Leigh and Art had something to worry about. An investigator won’t have that kind of credibility. I’d go myself if I were in better shape.”
With the trial only little more than a week away I feel I’m being gotten out of the way. From a defense standpoint, it’s not a wild-goose chase; Chet is right. We’ve got to give the jury area son to acquit Leigh, but it is as if there’s something here Chet doesn’t want me to find.
The main tent is in Blackwell County, not San Francisco.
“Shouldn’t we be asking for a continuance?” I ask, searching his face for clues.
Chet looks down at the table and winces as if he had just discovered some kind of flaw in the wood.
“We wouldn’t get it. Besides, I may not have that kind of time. Trust me on this one,” he says, glancing up at me with an attempt at a smile.
“My track record is pretty damn good. I may not even put Leigh on to testify, but we’ve got to be prepared to go with this story if we have to.”
My mouth feels dry, but for some reason I decide not to ask for anything to drink. This case feels terrible.
Yet, I can’t argue with him. He has won acquittals for some clients for whom I would have been satisfied to accept a plea bargain of life imprisonment. I warn him, “I’ve got to be back no later than Thursday night. I’ve got a custody case to get ready for Friday I told you about.”
Chet nods absently and slides me a file.
“My Visa is in there, and so are Daffy’s notes. I’d like to see you gone by tomorrow night.” He stands up, dismissing me.
“I promised Wynona I’d get home early. Call me tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to decipher Daffy’s handwriting. I won’t be coming into the office.”
Wondering what’s on my calendar for the next two or three days, I let myself out of the heavy, fortresslike door. I can put off an uncontested divorce, and Dan, who owes me one, can make an appearance for me in municipal court on a DWI I know is scheduled. As I pull away from the curb, I feel a strong need to discuss this recent turn of events with Dan. I don’t understand what Chet is doing in this case. As good for nothing as Dan can be sometimes, he provides a decent sounding board.
I take Skyline Drive along the Arkansas River, knowing he and Brenda will be through with dinner and watching TV, which is all they do until bedtime, so I probably won’t be interrupting anything. With money on both sides of her family, and none on his, Brenda keeps Dan on a short leash, although why she doesn’t cut it altogether probably neither of them understands.
He says they were put on earth to make each other miserable, and from the expression on her face when she answers the door, tonight is no exception.
“Sorry not to call first, Brenda,” I say, without an ounce of sincerity in my voice, “but I need to talk to your old man if he’s not yet comatose.”
Brenda, who is smaller than Dan but not by much, jams her hands into an old gray cardigan sweater she is wearing over extra-large sweats and stares warily at her husband’s best friend.
“Come on in,” she decides.
“He’s still awake. But just barely.”
I look down at my watch. It is not quite eight o’clock. Married love: almost as exciting as bachelorhood.
She leads me down a hall toward the back of the house.
“How are you, Brenda?” I ask, pleased as a life insurance salesman to gain entrance. My theory is that this would be a relatively happy union if they would quit trying to conceive children and try to buy a couple instead. Brenda can afford it. If they would, then Brenda could quit trying to make Dan grow up and turn her attention to kids who at least have a chance of maturing.
For an answer, Brenda says, her voice rich with the snideness she is famous for, “I hear Sarah has found Jesus.”
The carpet in the hall is so lush I nearly stumble.
“I guess there are worse ways to spend your time,” I say, unwilling to incur Brenda’s full wrath, but also unwilling to deny my own flesh and blood. I can kick my own kid around, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let somebody else.
As usual, Brenda has the last word.
“I can’t imagine what they’d be,” she says, leading me into the den.
“Gideon’s here,” she informs her husband over the sound of a documentary on what appear to be dolphins and other sea creatures. My theory is we love animals because they can’t talk back. If they could, there’d be no end to their grievances against us. Wholesale slaughter not the least of them.
His head bent low over a bowl of cheese dip, Dan looks up with a sheepish expression. He has assured me he is on a strict diet.
“Come to check on me, huh?” he says, grinning.
“It’s gotten so bad in this country that you can’t even lie to your friends without them getting suspicious. Want a beer?” he says, punching the remote.
Beside Dan’s recliner, separated by a small table, is a couch that makes into a bed. As good friends as Dan and I have become, I have been in this room only a time or two before. Dan prefers to escape, and Brenda’s parties don’t include me. I can feel Brenda’s disapproval radiating next to me.
“Love one.” I’d drink an entire case if I thought I could get her goat.
Dan lifts his obese body half out of the chair and reaches to his left to open a door to a small refrigerator.
“Take your pick,” he says. From where I’m standing, I can see a six-pack of Miller Lite and at least as many soft drinks in cans. If he had a microwave in here, they could rent out the rest of the house.
“I’m going to bed,” Brenda announces, and Dan climbs out of his chair and pads across the room to pacify her. Obviously irritated, nevertheless she lets him kiss her on the cheek and pat her wide shoulders. Like so many fat women, she has a pretty face.
I go take a beer.
“Good night, Brenda.” I am tired and do not plan to stay long, but Brenda doesn’t have to know that.
She murmurs something I can’t pick up, and Dan disappears down the hall with her. I sink down on the couch and grab a chip from the bag of Lay’s beside me.
When he comes back, I say, “I didn’t mean to spoil her evening.”
Dan shrugs, an embarrassed grin coming to his lips.
“We got a TV in our room. She’ll be okay. What’s up?”
he asks, arranging himself in his chair. He speaks softly as if she might be listening through the wall. How do retired couples stand each other all day? Dan says he and Brenda can’t get through a weekend without at least one fight. Considering how long people live nowadays, it’s surprising there’s not something called eldercide.
“You gotta promise to keep your mouth shut,” I warn him, but before he can open his mouth, I fill him in on my visit to Chet’s office.
“What the hell do you think this is all about?” I ask, when I am finished.
Dan moves in on the cheese dip he had temporarily abandoned.
“Bracken’s sending you on a wild-goose chase,” he says instantly.
“He’s protecting Norman, obviously, and doesn’t want you sniffing around the church, because as soon as you do, you’re gonna find that nobody saw him during the time Wallace was killed.”
I sip on the Miller Lite after crunching into the chips.
I could add a couple of pounds tonight easy. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would he be protecting Norman?”
Dan wipes his mouth on his sleeve.
“Somehow Norman found out about the porno, probably from Leigh,” he guesses, “and killed Wallace. As bad off as Bracken is, it’d be easy for Norman to convince him that Wallace was truly evil and deserved to die. For all we know, Norman has convinced Bracken that this is his ticket to paradise. This is Bracken’s last case. He doesn’t care that he’s covering up a murder. He just wants to go to heaven. Hell, it wouldn’t be the only time he’s pulled shit like this.”
I tap the can against my teeth. In a case that forever earned him the enmity of a former prosecutor, Chet hired a psychologist who had the reputation of fashioning his theories to fit the facts and won an acquittal for a major child abuser. Then there are the stories about violent paybacks. Though Dan and I are on the same wavelength, I try to play devil’s advocate. I argue, “But the guy just converted to Christianity. The last thing in the world he would do is get involved in a cover-up.”
Dan dips a chip into the cheese.
“Who in hell could be worse than a guy that profits from porno and corrupts his wife? Wallace sounds like a scumbag to me, and while these Bible churches preach love, they love the Old Testament’s eye for an eye.”
I sip at the beer, trying and failing to think of a decent reply. Violence is the easiest thing in the world to rationalize. Every time a handgun is sold in this country, somebody does that. Norman is no idiot. He easily could have heard about Bracken’s reputation for taking revenge. Chet probably told him. Even if leopards could change their spots, it wouldn’t happen overnight. I look at Dan, who is chewing thoughtfully and staring at the wall above the TV.
“Why would he ask me to help him? Somebody who’s trying to pull off a cover-up like this isn’t going to want another lawyer looking over his shoulder.”
Dan snorts, and when he speaks his voice is full of condescending mirth.
“Lawyers like you and me are the perfect cover. Bracken knows his reputation. He can say night is day and get guys like you and me to believe it.
When it comes down to it, he knows you’re not going to question him. He’s the great Chet Bracken. The only thing that can screw this up is him dying before the trial.”
I put down the beer can.
“Where this breaks down,” I say, “is they wouldn’t expose Leigh to a conviction.”
Dan rolls his eyes.
“What conviction? Leigh’s probably in on this, too. Where do you think she came up with the story about the death threat? Bracken fed it to her. By the time he gets through with Wallace’s reputation, the jury will be glad he’s dead. Hell, he’ll probably have you giving the closing argument while he sits back and pulls your strings. The guy’s slick as pig shit. He’s got you believing he just stumbled on Wallace’s porno deal. Look at the way he had his investigator discover this a week before the trial. He made you think that weirdo broke this case himself! Bracken probably rubbed his nose in it until he nearly suffocated.”
Dan belches. I lean back in my seat to get away as far as I can.
“What do you think I ought to do?” I ask, stung by his assessment of us. Hell, he’s right. Around Bracken I’ve been acting as if I were a first-grader afraid to raise his hand to ask to go to the bathroom.
Yet Dan and I are hardly the first persons in history to be intimidated by a forceful personality. Demagogues are made, not born, and in the South it has been a specialty.
Dan says, “Enjoy the ride. You don’t have any proof anything unethical has happened. Actually, if you put yourself in Bracken’s place for a moment, there’s no funny business going on at all. After all, it’s areal stretch to think Shane Norman would murder anyone, especially if he just converted you to Christianity.
So, naturally, Chet doesn’t want to smear him, and who can blame him for that? Norman has just opened the gates to eternal life to him, and now Chet is supposed to argue he’s a murderer? Get real. Our mentality is the reason the tabloid industry is alive and well in the United States. We’re happiest when somebody is making up some dirt about the rich and famous. We tell ourselves the most improbable gossip must be true because we’re jealous and envious of their success. chet’s got to send you to San Francisco.
What other leads are there?”
Tired, I rub my eyes, wondering which of Dan’s versions makes more sense. Like any decent lawyer, he can argue both sides of a case.
“So you really think I’m off base?” I ask.
He grins.
“Hell, no. I think this case stinks worse than I do.”
Ten minutes later, I am hustled out the door by Brenda, who reappears in her robe and slippers, looking like that old Vicki Lawrence character on TV.
“I’ve got to talk to my husband before I go to bed,” she tells me, daring either of us to argue.
Having heard enough of this, I drive home, my head spinning. Dan should have written a book on the Kennedy assassination. The only person who isn’t implicated, according to him, is Billy Graham, and if I mentioned his name, Dan would have me checking his alibi, too. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are an awful lot like the astrological predictions I read every day in the Democrat-Gazette. They have this amazing way of coinciding with our desires and prejudices. Dan couldn’t be more hostile to religion if he had been forced to watch Jim and Tammy Faye every day for the last twenty years. I realize that I’m not much different. You see all this stuff on TV and expect the worst out of everybody when the reality is that people are different.
Most of us have a line we refuse to cross. The man who preached about the work being done in Peru to help poor people wouldn’t shoot down his own son-in-law in cold blood; arguably, the greatest trial lawyer Blackwell County ever had wouldn’t orchestrate a murder.
Even if there were some benighted, bloodthirsty kingdom of heaven to gain, they have too much to lose on earth. For one thing, the risk of discovery is too great. People have a compulsion to talk. I’m living proof of the way people run their mouths. Chet has cross-examined too many informants not to know that.
When all is said and done, he wouldn’t want his kid to wake up one morning and, while looking for his baseball glove, find instead a newspaper article about how his stepfather cast doubt in his final case on all he had accomplished.
The truth is, jealousy accounts for the negative talk about Chet. No one has proved he has ever suborned perjury or arranged a single payback. So why do I feel so bad about this case? I think back to the one case Chet and I worked on together when I was at the Public Defender’s. What was the difference? He was as subtle as a steamroller, and that’s always been his reputation.
In Leigh’s case it is as if he were working with an archaeologist’s hammer, tapping here, tapping there. It could be his illness. Dan has confirmed what I have already suspected. The problem is that I don’t know what to do about it.
At home, Sarah is full of herself. Before I can tell her about San Francisco, she begins to talk about what the youth of Christian Life are doing.
“They don’t take ski trips or have lock-ins; they help a lot of people,” she says, instructing me as if I were a slow student.
“I’m not just talking about the foreign work trips. At the shelter downtown, for example, we baby-sit the kids while the parents go look for work.”
Go look for a bottle of Ripple, I think sourly.
“Is there security down there for you? Even many of the homeless won’t stay in places like that because they’re too dangerous.”
Seated on the couch with her English book, Sarah strokes Woogie until he is almost purring.
“There’re tons of kids around. But it’s not a social thing. We’re not down there to show off or hang out with friends.”
When I tell her that I am leaving for San Francisco, she becomes anxious (as I knew she would). It’s okay for her to run around, but she likes the old man to stay put.
“What for?” she asks.
“Isn’t this kind of at the last minute?”
I collect the day’s residue from the coffee table: the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, an empty Coke can, the junk mail, including a plea from Greenpeace, one of Rosa’s favorite charities, which can’t take the hint after three years of silence from her.
“That’s one of the weird things about this case,” I say.
“It’s not making a lot of sense.”
Sarah’s back visibly stiffens, as if she is daring me to fight her again.
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said about Pastor Norman. I know you can’t understand it, but a man who radiates so much joy and peace just isn’t capable of murder.”
I open my mouth to argue. Every man wears a mask at some time in his life. But do I really want my daughter to become as cynical as I am? Suddenly, I feel like an asshole. I knew I didn’t have any proof that Shane was involved, so why did I say it in the first place? Am I so weak that I have to accuse a man of murder because I am jealous of him? Obviously. How pathetic!
“You could be right,” I say insincerely.
“Sometimes defense lawyers try so hard to get our own clients off we forget other people are entitled to a presumption of innocence too.” I paste a smile on my face, wondering how disillusioned she will become if it turns out that Shane is the murderer. I don’t want to destroy her capacity for a less radical kind of faith, but I may not be able to have it both ways. Fearful she will pick up on my hypocrisy, I change the subject.
“Can you stay here, or can you find a friend?”
“I’ll call Rainey,” she says quickly.
Most kids her age would love to get their parents out of the house so they could have a party. Not Sarah. I know she is nervous about staying by herself. I came in late too many nights after her mother died for her to have a sense of security.
“You can have a friend over to stay,” I say, thinking of Sarah’s best friend. Donna Red den. Sarah hasn’t mentioned her in a couple of weeks.
“What about Donna? Wouldn’t her parents let her?”
Sarah wrinkles her nose at the thought.
“I don’t see Donna much these days. I’ll call Rainey. I saw her leaving the same time we did.”
Naturally. I try not to sigh audibly.
“Rainey’s probably a little mad at me.”
Sarah is on me like Woogie on peanut butter.
“What did you say to her?” she yelps.
Too damn much, I think.
“Pretty much what I told you,” I lie. I can’t bring myself to admit that I accused Rainey of interfering with her faith.
“I don’t think it’s such a bad idea to be prepared for the worst.”
Sarah heads for the phone in the kitchen.
“Daddy, you’re just incredible,” she says coldly, dialing Rainey’s number.
I’ve been called worse.
“Let me talk to her after you’ve asked her.”
I eavesdrop as Sarah talks to my old girlfriend. Sarah’s voice changes tone, becomes happier as she rattles on about her new “family.” I sit at the table, pretending I am reading Daffy’s notes.
“It’s great,” Sarah says.
“One of the men about Dad’s age hasn’t missed a mission trip in six years. He had everybody in stitches.
I was afraid I’d be scared to talk, but they all made me feel so comfortable, I jumped right in.”
Woogie comes over to the table, and I reach down to pet him. I wonder if Sarah will ask me to let this guy adopt her. Doesn’t she remember I was in the Peace Corps? That was two solid years, and I didn’t have a “family” supporting me. But I guess it doesn’t count, because we didn’t run around screaming “Praise Jesus!”
at the top of our voices.
By the time Sarah hands me the phone, I am mad again, but I try to fake it. All either of them will do is patronize me.
“Is it okay if she stays?” I ask.
“I’ll be back Sunday.”
“Of course,” Rainey says.
“You know it is.”
Her voice sounds so smug and sugary I want to vomit.
“If anything happens to me, I’d appreciate it if you’d call my sister. Sarah has her number.”
Rainey laughs.
“You’re so dramatic. It’s safer to fly than to drive downtown.”
For an instant I am tempted to tell her this case stinks worse now than it did when I talked to her a couple of hours ago, but I don’t feel particularly credible at the moment.
“Thanks,” I tell her. There are worse things than hard-core Christians, I tell myself, and hang up.