Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (33 page)

“Please call Mr. Bracken.”

I shrug helplessly. Art’s autopsy report showed no alcohol content. In her voice is the tone of a martyr, not a killer giving up.

“I don’t think you killed Art,” I argue. Actually, I have no idea whether she did or not, but I can’t allow her to make this decision so easily.

“You don’t need to sacrifice yourself for your father.”

“I’m not,” she says, her voice flat.

“Please call Mr.

Bracken.”

I fight back a rising sense of panic. She may know the odds tomorrow better than I realize. Innocent people go to prison. Why spend her life there? I can’t make this decision on my own and dial Chet’s number from the phone in the kitchen, determined to wake him up, no matter how groggy he is. Wynona answers, and I tell her what has occurred.

“There’s no point,” she says.

“Jill called here an hour ago. I was able to wake Chet up just long enough for her to tell him she had withdrawn the offer.” I look at Leigh and feel my pulse begin to race from anxiety.

“How did Chet react?” I ask softly.

“I could tell it depressed him,” Wynona admits, “but he was pretty much out of it because of the pain pills.

I’ll tell him early tomorrow morning you’ve found Leigh.”

I thank her and hang up and tell Leigh, who smiles wanly.

“I guess we better get ready for the trial.”

I want to grab her and shake her and make her tell me what the hell is going on. Why did she run off and get drunk and hide in a motel room? Why isn’t she fighting for her life? Yet, I’m afraid if I push her, she will walk out the door just as she did at my house. I stare at her until she lowers her eyes. It was as if she were an actress who wanted to improvise for two nights before the play began but who ultimately resigned her self to sticking with the script. I test her by saying, “You realize that we’re going to be arguing tomorrow that your father might have killed Art?”

She closes her eyes but doesn’t respond.

I realize I am grinding my teeth and stop. Was her disappearance merely a classic case of stage fright? I can’t shake the feeling she is reading her words from a teleprompter. What is my part? Obviously, the ambitious understudy who is willing to play any role to further his career. As I prepare Leigh for her expected testimony, I have the sense that the whole production is coming apart because the director is home in bed. In an ideal world, the judge would grant a continuance and Chet would gracefully step aside. However, at this point the outcome would be the same. I realize how little I understand Chet. Has he told me everything? I don’t have a clue.

“Do I have to tell about the video?” she asks, nibbling at a fingernail while I write out questions at the kitchen table.

I glance up at her and see that she is embarrassed.

She is on trial to decide whether or not she will ever have another single moment of privacy the rest of her life, and she is worried about her sense of dignity. Human nature wins out every time. I try to think about the impact this revelation will have on the jury. The police presumably know nothing about it. Jill has not breathed a word about it, which she would have been required to do if she knew anything.

“Probably not,” I say, thinking an Arkansas jury would want to punish her for it. What is there to argue? Somebody who knew Art entered his house during the hour or so that Leigh went back up to the church to pretend she was there all the time. Who?

Shane Norman, of course.

When Rainey returns, thirty minutes later, we take a break for Leigh to look at the clothes Rainey has bought for her. Like a mother who has been on a shopping spree for her daughter, Rainey opens the boxes with a flurry of maternal excitement.

“I hope you like these.”

She holds up a chartreuse blazer against a white shortsleeved shell and a green skirt.

“I’ve never shopped so fast for a complete set of clothes in my life,” she says, giggling, and hands Leigh’s credit card back to her. Be sides outer garments, she has obtained shoes, a bra, panties, and stockings.

“The salesclerks thought I was wonderful.”

Leigh looks through the boxes and smiles at Rainey.

“They look great. Thank you.”

While Leigh goes into Rainey’s bedroom to try on her new wardrobe, I watch as Rainey begins to make the toast I have forgotten about. Between us is an un spoken truce. No matter how convinced she is of Shane’s innocence, she cannot help but respond to Leigh. She is too vulnerable right now, and Rainey was born rooting for the underdog. She takes eggs and turkey bacon from her refrigerator. For a few moments it is like old times. Too discreet to ask questions about the case, Rainey entertains me with gossip about the state hospital, my old stomping grounds from my days as a public defender, when I represented patients at involuntary commitment hearings.

When Leigh comes out of her bedroom, Rainey smiles and says, “You look fantastic!”

Obviously pleased with Rainey’s choices, Leigh hugs her as if they were sisters. While Rainey cooks and feeds Leigh, they chat about clothes and accessories as if tomorrow were to be a normal day instead of the beginning of a murder trial. I marvel at Rainey’s capacity to put others at ease. It is an art form, one alive and well in the South.

Afterward, as Leigh and I work alone in Rainey’s living room, Leigh says, “There’s some real chemistry between you and Rainey. I could tell just by the way you looked at each other.”

Distracted, I nod, unwilling to say that it has been mostly bad for quite a while. Feeling strangely out of sync (it may be exhaustion), I drive home at eleven. So much has gone wrong lately that even though the last few hours have been better, I go to bed feeling de pressed. I cannot believe this story will have a happy ending.

at precisely five o’clock in the morning, the phone rings, it is Chet, who sounds as wide awake as I am sleepy.

“I’ll be at your house in an hour,” he says.

“How is Leigh?”

I yawn.

“Resigned to go to trial. I still don’t know why she took off.”

Chet speaks quickly, as if he has assumed this would be the outcome all along.

“What time did you tell her to meet us?”

Woogie presses against my back.

“Seven,” I say.

“I

told her I’d pick her up.”

“Good,” he says, after I give him directions.

“I’ll be there soon.”

I get out of bed and stumble into the shower, thinking perhaps this case may go better than I’ve been thinking.

Chet’s voice sounded strong and determined. The rush that a jury trial of this magnitude brings may be enough to carry him through the couple of days it will take. Jill is afraid of him, and for good reason. Even ill he must seem invincible to her, and it is not beyond Chet to tell the jury that he is dying and wants to go to his grave knowing that an innocent woman has suffered enough.

As I shave, I begin to miss Sarah desperately. She gets almost as excited as I do the morning of a big trial.

Though she is deeply ambivalent about my profession, she usually sends me off to even a small hearing as though I were Rocky Balboa. Instead, the house is as quiet as a college dorm at six o’clock on Sunday mo ming How will I handle Sarah’s absence next year?

Given my behavior a couple of days ago (I’m getting too old to have more than a beer or two), I’m afraid I know the answer. Though normally I am a big fan of the man in the mirror, it is obvious from the multiplying spider webs around his eyes that he has definitely passed the point of no return. Sarah, come home, he whispers, in clown face. In April she will hear about scholarship money. She wants desperately to go out of state, but without some major help it will never happen.

Dressed in my new suit, I make some coffee and try to focus on the case. With Chet sounding so good, I have to resist becoming passive. The truth is, I may not do a thing during the entire trial except hand him a file folder. I assume we will get breakfast out, but still I walk around the house straightening up. Not that Chet will notice, but who knows? Wynona keeps their place like a bed-and-breakfast waiting for its first customer.

What will she do after he dies? If he is as rich as I think, maybe nothing except wait for Trey to come home from school. I see car headlights flash against the Venetian blinds in the living room and check my watch.

Six o’clock. It is not light yet, and I go to the door, remembering I haven’t turned on the porch light. I hope Chet hasn’t had to wander around.

I open the door, flip on the switch, and, in the dim light, to my horror, see him standing by the Mercedes with a pistol pressed to his temple, his jaw clenched. I scream, “No, Chet!”

An explosion rockets through the neighborhood stillness, and Chet crashes to the ground. I run down the stoop to his body but turn away as I glimpse his face.

Thank God it is still mostly dark. I am about to vomit.

I run back inside and dial 911 for an ambulance, my stomach heaving. I have begun to sweat, and after I complete the call, I throw up in the sink in the kitchen.

I can’t bring myself to go back outside. I know I am an incredible coward, but I just can’t do it. Why? Is it the horror of seeing him in death, his face torn and mutilated, or is it the possibility that he is still alive and that I should be giving him mouth to mouth resuscitation?

The stillness inside me house is terrifying as I try to imagine Chet’s last thoughts. Was he thinking about Wynona and Trey? The trial? Not surprisingly, it is still quiet outside. Since gunshots periodically ring out from “Needle Park,” the partially boarded-up housing project only three blocks away, my neighbors have doubtless chosen to interpret the noise as something familiar. My mind races frantically, until I finally realize I must call Wynona. Why did he do this? Damn him! My real question is. Why did he do this to me? But why not me?

He wanted to spare Wynona and Trey the shock of finding his body, but even as I think this, I wonder if there is more.

I calm down enough to look up his number and dial it, wondering what to say. The time it takes for her to answer the phone seems like an eternity, but my mind is blank.

“Wynona, I’ve got some terrible news!” I blurt.

“Chet just shot himself!”

“Dear God!” she gasps.

“Dear God! Is he dead?”

I imagine her lying in the spot where her husband’s body had been just aa hour ago. I can’t bring myself to tell her I don’t have enough guts to check to see if he still has a pulse.

“It looks bad,” I say.

“I’ve called an ambulance. I’ll meet you at St. Thomas.” Tears running down my face, I hang up on her, so I won’t have to say any more. Woogie, who apparently ran under my bed at the sound of the shot, slinks into the kitchen, his tail between his legs. I should be out trying to help Chet, stopping the bleeding, something. Instead, my teeth chattering, I call Rainey. My voice shakes so badly that I wonder if she can understand me.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Rainey repeats as I admit to my cowardice.

“There’s nothing you can do.”

Her voice, soothing and gentle, touches something in me, and I begin to cry again.

“I saw him do it!” I say.

“Just take a couple of deep breaths,” she says.

“You’re going to be all right.”

I realize I am panting and try to gather as much air in my lungs as possible. I hear the wail of the siren. St. Thomas is barely five minutes away.

“I’ve got to go outside,” I stammer.

“I’ll see you at St. Thomas.” Not even for a moment do I assume she won’t come.

I rush outside into the street and wave my arms as the ambulance careens around the corner toward me. Lights begin to go on all over the neighborhood. Denial can take my neighbors just so far. The door on the passenger side opens and, to my shock, the attendant is a young woman. What a job, I think. Lightheaded and dizzy, I point needlessly to the yard.

“He’s there. He shot himself!”

My neighbors on both sides of the house, Moses Gardner and Payne Littlefield, converge on me at the same time.

“You shoot him?” Moses asks bluntly. He is an occupational therapist at St. Thomas, and is in his bathrobe with a pistol in his hand.

What is he thinking? A drug deal that went wrong?

Chet’s Mercedes is visible in the lights.

“Fuck, no!” I say angrily.

“He shot himself. He was dying of cancer.”

Payne, a retired schoolteacher who can’t afford to sell his house and get away from blacks, nods.

“Damn,” he says to Moses. We watch in fascinated horror as the female tech, using the headlights of the ambulance, checks chet’s pulse with a stethoscope and then places a tube down his throat. How she sees what to do through the blood streaming everywhere seems like a miracle. She nods, and the driver, an older black male, squeezes a bag attached to the tube. Within moments they have diet’s body loaded into the ambulance.

“He ain’t gonna make it,” Payne says.

Great neighbors, I think miserably. More are standing in their yards watching the excitement. They probably think I killed one of the women I have brought home from time to time.

“You better wait for the police, Mr.

Page,” the female EMT tells me.

“They should be here any second.”

Moses nods as if that’s a load off his mind. I’m surprised he and Payne don’t have me spreadeagled against my car. Woogie, my watchdog and protector, begins barking furiously behind the screen.

“He’s still alive?”

I ask as she moves off.

Without turning around, she shakes her head and calls, “Barely.”

Payne says, “They ought to just take him to a funeral home.”

As they pull off, two squad cars roar around the corner and pull up in front of the house. I feel a numbness spread through my body. Well, at least, I think, as I go over to them, escorted by Moses and Payne, I won’t have to try the case today. Chet accomplished that much.

Since I must give an endless statement to the cops, who seem relatively satisfied that Chet’s gunshot was self-inflicted (they say the tests may be back from the crime lab before the morning is out), it is eight o’clock before I get to St. Thomas, only to find that Chet was pronounced dead fifteen minutes earlier.