Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (21 page)

“Well, why not?” she responds with a sly smile.

“What else do you want me to do? I can hot-wire a car, disconnect a burglar alarm. I can even crack a safe.”

I put down the paper and stare. Is she pulling my leg?

Probably not. I wouldn’t be surprised if this woman had done some time.

“Just testify,” I say.

“Just testify.”

She looks disappointed.

On the flight home the next day the winds out of Denver bounce the plane like a yo-yo. “… encountering a little turbulence …” the captain tells us in a glum voice that on a routine flight would suggest he is merely battling a hangover.

“A little, my ass!” shrieks my seatmate, a copy machine sales manager from Oklahoma City.

“It feels like this damn thing’s attached to a bungee cord.”

Next to a window, I look out to see if we are about to slam into the Rockies. Since nothing but soupy yellow clouds are visible, I force my attention back to the file in front of me and to the custody trial I have on Friday. Ordinary hatreds between a man and a woman. As bizarre as the Leigh Wallace case has become, there is something comforting about a case that consists largely of garden-variety malice.

“Somebody, get me a towel, damn it!” my seatmate pleads. Queasy myself, I keep my eyes glued to the page of notes in front of me and try not to breathe. Get me home, Lord, and I’ll never leave again.

“if either of you insists on trying this case,” Teresa Mason, the guardian ad litem appointed to represent my client’s child, says, her eyes-flashing, “I’m going to recommend foster care. Wayne, your client beat this child black-and-blue, and, Gideon, your client let him, and I’ve got the records from Cook County Social Services to prove it.”

I want to lean over and kiss Teresa. She has done her homework. I was prepared to win this case and have nightmares the rest of my life. Wayne Oglesby, glancing over at our clients seated with their witnesses on opposite sides of the courtroom, blusters, “They’re not admissible It’s all hearsay.”

Teresa, who must be a third of Wayne’s size, scoffs, “Give it up, Wayne. I’ll just ask for a continuance and get them certified. You know the judge will grant it if I ask him. I just got them in the mail this morning.”

Wayne, an ex-tight end for the Arkansas State Indians swells up like a toad, somehow reminding me of Jabba the Hutt in one of the Star Wars movies. I know he is thinking that Teresa is a meddling little bitch, but thank God for lawyers who take this role seriously.

Both Wayne and I have known that neither of our clients was fit to have custody, but we were prepared to tear little Bobby McNair apart this morning in the name of representing them.

“What do you want?” I ask Teresa, knowing I can shove down my client’s throat whatever she recommends.

Salina McNair can no more resist the male species than Dan can stay on a diet. Away from dominant, brutish men, whom she attracts like flies on fresh roadkill, Salina is a marginally decent mother; however, she won’t or can’t protect her son from the hideous guys who seem to line up at her door. In my bones I’ve known this for the last month, but pretended she only needed one more fresh start, despite watching the dynamics between her and the asshole who insisted on coming to my office with her each time I interviewed her. Over Teresa’s shoulder I get a glimpse of him now, all draped around Salina. He would have locked Bobby down in the cellar after a week, and she would have told herself, “Gee, all of a sudden, Bobby likes to play where it’s nice and dark.”

“Salina’s sister will take him,” Teresa says firmly.

“The home study’s not bad, but each of your clients will have to kick in for support. She can’t do it by herself.”

“No fucking way,” Wayne grunts under his breath.

“He’ll never go for it.”

“That’s okay with me,” Teresa shoots back. “Tell him the social worker in Chicago has promised me she will file criminal charges for assault if he gets custody.”

Wayne picks at a herpes cold sore as big as a dime on his lip. He knows this may be a bluff, but it is something his client will have to think about. His distaste for Teresa is obvious, but she couldn’t have him more firmly by the balls if she were holding on with a set of pliers. Rick Crawford, the chancery judge who appointed Teresa to represent the kid, would believe her over Wayne or me even if we had the entire United States Supreme Court as character witnesses for our clients.

“Let me go talk to him,” Wayne mutters as he gets up.

I can’t resist winking at Teresa as soon as Wayne’s back is turned. Teresa is one of the better-looking female attorneys in Blackwell County, and is happily married with four kids. She glares at me.

“How can you represent a woman like that, Gideon?” she hisses at me as I start to push up from my chair to go talk to Salina.

“She should have her cunt sewn shut and you know it!”

The fierceness of her words shocks me as much as her profanity. Teresa and her husband, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital with a national reputation, appear regularly in the society pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. I shrug.

“Women who want custody of their kids don’t seem at first blush public enemy number one.”

From a manila folder Teresa throws out on the table pictures of Bobby that turn my stomach. His buttocks look like hamburger meat.

“I haven’t seen these,” I say, feeling my face turn warm.

Teresa shakes her finger at me.

“Your client doesn’t have any business even trying to raise a hamster.”

I finger the pictures, trying not to wince.

“She’s had a hell of a life herself,” I say weakly. Actually, I do not know this, but only suspect it from some of my client’s comments.

“That doesn’t give her the right to let her child suffer like this,” she says harshly.

“I’m not kidding. She should be sterilized.”

So should about half the population of this country, I think, having had enough of Teresa’s righteous indignation It must be nice to be on the side of justice all the time.

“I’ll go talk to my client,” I say, and scoot away before I shoot off my mouth.

Ten minutes later, we announce to a relieved Rick Crawford that we have a settlement. He tells our clients to make sure they pay Teresa’s fees within thirty days, and I walk back to my office, relieved I have lost another case and telling myself for the tenth time since I have been in private practice to turn down all but childless divorce cases with ironclad prenuptial agreements.

“Why, Mr. Page,” Leigh says, displaying only mild surprise, “I didn’t know we had a meeting set up.”

Though it is after two in the afternoon, she looks fresh and crisp, and, as usual, is dressed as if she is ready to go out on a moment’s notice. What is different is her hair. When I had seen her before it was up. Today it is down past her shoulders and more gorgeous than ever.

She is wearing a pure silk emerald green shell with padded shoulders over a tan skirt. Even her belt looks expensive.

Maybe Art laundered a lot more money than we know.

“You didn’t call me back,” I remind her. In the background I can hear her mother’s voice on the telephone.

“Why don’t we go for a ride? I need to talk to you, and I don’t think you want your mother present.”

She gives me a quizzical look. She has seen the deferential version of the faithful sidekick and probably likes him better, but she nods.

“Just a moment.”

I try to look into the house, but my eyes don’t have the time to adjust to the dimness before she is back striding past me out the door. It is a brilliant spring afternoon, the kind of day that makes me wish I had a job out of doors. After this morning’s travesty, I ought to try to get one. The best thing about Arkansas is that even its most populated areas are within fifteen minutes of the country in any direction. Since we’re out in the western part of the county anyway, I head for Pinnacle Mountain, only a short drive west. No one will mistake us for an illicit couple looking for a place to neck. No McDonald’s employees I know have girlfriends who look this classy.

“Why didn’t you call?” I ask, trying not to sound like a rejected suitor. I realize as soon as I ask that my feelings are slightly hurt. I pride myself on being able to get clients to talk to me. I didn’t expect her to fall in love with me, but I assumed she would keep her word. Just like a man, Rainey would say.

“I’ve been talking to Mr. Bracken,” she says carefully.

“I’m sure you know that.” I glance over at her, but she keeps her eyes on the road.

I decide to wait to respond until we are at the park.

I want to see her face when she is speaking. I tell her where we are headed, but she has no comment. Surely Chet has told her that I have been to San Francisco. It is all I can do to keep my mouth shut.

I turn off the engine in one of the parking spaces near the picnic tables, remembering one Saturday long ago with Rosa and Sarah. Sarah was about nine years old, and it was her first ascent to the top. We treated it as if we had climbed Mount Everest. An ache comes into my heart as I remember the exhilaration we all felt as we came down. I turn off the motor and ask, “You ever climb Pinnacle?”

“Sure,” she says, her face softening for the first time.

“My dad used to bring me out here lots of times. The best thing about being a preacher’s kid is getting to see your father. His days off were in the middle of the week.”

The park is virtually deserted, with only a couple of cars in it. Too late for picnickers, too early (I hope) for the teenagers who come out here to smoke and hang out. We get out and both wander around, each of us locked for a moment inside our own memories. Eastern Arkansas, with its rich Delta soil nourished by the Mississippi, for the most part, is flat as a table top, and it does not take much of a climb to impress me. Leigh, in four-inch heels, is hardly dressed for an assault on a peak I’ve seen five-year-olds conquer, but such is the mystique of heights that we both search the brush for the trail that leads to the top. She could easily be taken for my daughter, I realize. Not for the first time I wonder if I have smothered Sarah as much as Norman has smothered Leigh. Sarah is still angry at me. Though she pretended to have gotten over our fight the night before I left for San Francisco, she said barely two words after she picked me up from the airport. How much am I really like Norman? Probably more than I care to admit.

He got Leigh a job in the church to keep her close; secretly, I’ve dreamed for the last year that Sarah would attend law school at UALR and come into practice with me. Norman and I both use guilt in the same quantities the Nazis used gas. I think Leigh is protecting her father.

As disgusted with me as she is right now, I’m not sure Sarah would be so charitable.

I sit on one side of a picnic table and watch Leigh staring at a squirrel that is eyeing her with an equal amount of curiosity. Could she really have murdered her husband? At the moment, nothing seems more unlikely.

Bending down and clucking at the bemused animal, she seems about ten. Finally, it scampers away and she comes to the table, smiling as if she had tamed it. I say, hoping to catch her off guard, “I didn’t learn anything in San Francisco that will convince a jury you were at risk.”

She does not respond but places her hands over her mouth as if she is becoming nauseated.

“Art wasn’t a lot different from your father, was he?” I say, and tell her my belief that they must have hated each other.

“It must have seemed like Art was fighting for your body and Shane was fighting for your soul.”

Parting her hands, Leigh gives me a fierce look.

“My father didn’t kill my husband, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The bench is hard. There is no getting comfortable on it. I follow up quickly.

“But you’re worried that he might have, aren’t you?”

When she doesn’t say anything, I plunge ahead.

“He was furious that morning at Art because you hadn’t come to church. He knew you were home, and when you went up there to pretend to check in, he went to the house and killed Art.”

Her beautiful face is flushed.

“That’s ridiculous!” she shouts at me.

“My father is incapable of killing anyone.”

She is breathing too hard for me to believe she is convinced of that.

“You know how jealous he was of Art,” I say.

“He thought he was the very personification of evil, and that’s what you now think, too. What was it you stayed home to do with Art that morning? Was it sex? Is that what you’re ashamed to tell?”

She begins to cry. Somehow she has to open up to me. I tell her, “My own daughter and I have become incredibly close since her mother died. I feel so helpless right now, because it seems like I’m about to lose her-ironically, to your father’s church. Could I kill somebody?

I think I could, but if I couldn’t, I suspect the reason is that I don’t know anybody at the moment who I can say is evil. If somebody abused her, hurt her, I doubt it would take me long to work up some uncontrollable anger. Did your father know about Art’s porno skimming plan? Is that what tipped him over the edge?”

Leigh reaches into her purse for a tissue. Her hands are shaking. Most women look terrible when they cry.

Instead, her eyes have become more enormous and beautiful.

“I don’t see how he could,” she gets out.

With the trial next week, it is now or never. I fear that someone will drive up, but it is quiet and peaceful, beyond words. In the distance I can see a park ranger’s truck stop down by the entrance. I say, “I know how attached your father is to you. He lost your sisters, and he was about to lose you. He probably loves you more than he loves your mother, Leigh. And Art stood for everything he hated. Your dad knew how the world seduces people, and he spent his life building a fortress so you could be safe from it. He didn’t want you to marry Art, did he?”

Leigh’s breasts rise and fall under the silk. She shakes her head.

“He wanted me to delay the wedding, but he couldn’t find anything specifically wrong with Art. He did say that if Art really loved me, he wouldn’t mind waiting until we got to know each other better.”