Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (37 page)

“Do you want me to go with you to Mr. Bracken’s funeral?”

Sarah asks from the couch where she is scratching Woogie. Our dog, who is on his back with his legs in the air, seems as happy as I am that his mistress has returned and moved back into the house with all her belongings.

Unlike myself, Woogie had no one to assuage his grief at her temporary abandonment. Jason Von Jason could make a fortune in this country treating animal depression.

“There’s no need,” I say cautiously.

“I’m sure Dan will go with me.” For the longest time I have tried to shield Sarah from death, as though the loss of her mother was a quota that must not be exceeded. I slice the sausage pizza that has just arrived from Domino’s.

I sense a reluctance on her part to come to terms with what happened in our front yard only a few hours ago.

I can understand her feelings. I’m not sure it has completely sunk in on me. I check my watch. Seven o’clock. Leigh should have been here by now.

“Come wash your hands and let’s eat before this stuff gets cold.”

Sarah smirks at Woogie as if to say, “When will he learn not to treat me like a kid?” but obediently comes into the kitchen and scrubs her hands in the kitchen sink. I give her a graceful way out.

“Do you have any tests you’d be missing?”

“Actually, I do have a couple,” she says, drying her hands on a dish towel she has taken from the counter by the sink.

“I guess I better not. Did you like him?”

I open the refrigerator and take out a couple of Coke Classics and hand one to Sarah. No booze tonight, though I could use a couple of beers. Did I like Chet?

A good question.

“I think I would have if I had gotten to know him better and hadn’t been working for him.”

As we eat at the kitchen table I tell Sarah about Wynona and Trey.

“The kid was crazy about Chet,” I conclude.

“That was obvious.”

“Most children go through a stage where they worship their parents,” Sarah says dryly, wiping her mouth on a paper napkin.

Trey was a stepchild, but I won’t quibble.

“I haven’t exactly felt worshiped lately,” I say, getting a smile out of my daughter.

“How do you feel about Leigh coming over here tonight?” I add, realizing I haven’t given a moment’s thought to Sarah’s reaction. For some reason I don’t fully understand I won’t be content until I have rammed this case down my daughter’s throat. I know I risk further alienation, but I’m determined that she see the other side. Even if she is guilty, Leigh seems more human than her father.

“Weird,” Sarah confesses, “but a little curious. Our house seems to attract death these days.”

I try not to react while I absorb her remark. She’s absolutely correct. What a great father I’ve been lately.

There is a knock at the door and, of course, it is Leigh. As I glimpse her face in the glow of the porch light I realize that I had been afraid she wouldn’t show up. I invite her to share our pizza, but she tells me she has eaten with her parents. She follows me into the kitchen, and I introduce her to Sarah.

As they exchange pleasantries, I am struck by how much they resemble each other. Leigh is taller, not as dark, but her ebony hair and delicate facial structure make her look like Sarah’s older sister. She has discarded Rainey’s sweats for a white turtleneck sweater and red skirt, making me fear she intends to spend the night in her parents’ house. Smiling, Sarah informs me she has to study and takes her pizza and Woogie to her bedroom. Leigh takes Sarah’s seat at the kitchen table, and as soon as we hear Sarah’s door shut, she says, taking the tiny tape recorder from her purse, “My father doesn’t say a word on the tape that would make anyone suspect he was involved in Art’s murder.”

I try to mask my disappointment. I had naively been convinced that he would implicate himself. After the trial he might, perhaps, but not now. If he confesses to Leigh before she is tried, there is no telling how she might react. She pushes the “on” switch and I hear Shane’s voice scolding her for not telling him and her mother where she has been. Ruefully, I recognize the tone: manipulative, judgmental, perfectly calibrated to induce a sense of pity and guilt. Sounding defensive, Leigh says she was “afraid,”

“ashamed,”

“exhausted,” but in no manner explains her refusal to call her parents Shane does most of the talking but says very little of substance, making me wonder if my conversations with Sarah are equally one-sided and meaningless.

Leigh admits to taking a room in a motel and gives its correct name but omits to mention her state of drunkenness. On tape she sounds no older than Sarah.

Disappoint her father? No more than necessary, even if he might have murdered her husband. For the first time she reveals to her father that she had allowed Art to photograph her dancing naked. I had encouraged her to bring this up to get Shane’s reaction.

“How could you take off your clothes and dance nude in front of a cam era?” Shane exclaims, his voice boiling with righteous indignation. I listen hard to gauge his sincerity. If we knew he somehow had found out about her little performance Shane would have even more of a motive than he already had. He sounds angry, but there is a professional tone to his words as if he were preaching in church. Leigh does not immediately answer, giving Shane an opportunity to give further vent to his outrage:

“What did you get from displaying yourself naked like that? Is your lust so out of control that you’d do any thing to gratify it?”

Leigh no longer sounds like a woman but a child as she attempts to explain.

“I loved him. Daddy. Nobody else saw. He said that he wanted to capture my beauty forever. It didn’t seem wrong….”

“Not wrong?” Shane shouts.

“How can you say that?

You were made in the image of God, Leigh. Have you forgotten that? How can you hope to reflect the love of Jesus Christ when you let a man satisfy his nature by taking your picture with your legs splayed apart like some drug-crazed whore?”

Leigh’s voice is teary but stubborn.

“He was my husband. “Wives, be subject to your husbands.” Don’t you remember saying that in your sermons?” Though she has set up an argument, one not without its own internal logic, her voice pleads for forgiveness.

I glance at Leigh, but her eyes are shut, her lids fluttering with each blow as she relives each moment. It is as if she has forgotten why she went over to see him.

“God has given you a free will, Leigh,” Shane says severely

“You can’t justify your own sin by hiding be hind your husband.”

“You won’t try to understand,” Leigh says.

“I wanted to please him because I loved him. Didn’t God give men and women this nature to please each other?”

I listen, fascinated as always by the topic of desire.

The official line at Subiaco, of course, taught that sex was for procreation. If you were married and were trying to make a child, it was okay to like it. The practical absurdity of this dogma was apparent to every boy old enough to masturbate. The first joke at Subiaco I ever learned was couched in the familiar language of the catechism Why did God give Adam two hands? So he wouldn’t wear one out. Shane can’t, or won’t, shed the role of preacher.

“He gave us our nature to please Him,” he says, his voice didactic and cold.

“And making ourselves objects of lust does not do it.”

Leigh’s face is now buried against her knuckles. Un less she is willing to argue that evolution has dictated the female form to be an object of sexual desire, she is fighting a losing battle. Shane holds all the cards. Ethics morality, and religion are all on his side. Biology is on hers, but it is a weapon she cannot bring herself to use. She does not respond, and he continues to rant until he realizes that she will not answer him.

She clicks off the tape when he insists that she eat dinner with her mother and him.

“What was that like?”

I ask, allowing myself to speculate about Shane’s own sex life. Surely no man is more tempted to stray than a minister. Women of all ages at all hours of the day and night wanting assurance that they are lovable and that their lives have meaning. I would be only too happy to assure them.

“Horrible,” Leigh says, finally raising her eyes to meet mine.

“Mother cried the entire time; Daddy alternated between a grim silence and lectures. He kept demanding that I ask the judge to postpone the trial and allow me to get a new lawyer.”

I stare out the window into the darkness. Not a bad idea. I’m not even capable of getting a week’s continuance for her.

“Did he say why?”

Leigh, her voice a mixture of indignation and embarrassment, straightens her spine and looks me in the eye.

“He said you were just Mr. Bracken’s flunky that he checked your record out and you’ve never won an acquittal in a big case.”

I see the beginning of panic in her eyes. She wants me to tell her that I am a great lawyer, another Chet Bracken. I ask, “What did you say?”

“That I trusted you!” she says sharply, as if the emphasis in her voice justifies her decision.

Instead of gaining confidence, I feel more burdened than ever. I didn’t lose much sleep over the convictions of the drug dealers, rapists, pimps, and killers who made up the clientele at the Blackwell County Public Defender’s office. I will if Leigh goes to prison. I realize that the fact she was willing to tape Shane has convinced me of her innocence. If she really does trust me, now is the time to find out.

“Despite the fact you didn’t get anything on tape,” I say, challenging her, “you know I’m going to have to argue in court tomorrow that your father may have killed Art.”

Leigh drops her eyes, her long lashes a temporary screen against reality. Finally, she raises her head.

“I

know.”

Mightily relieved, I resist the urge to go over and hug her. This moment has been a long time coming, and though I am exultant, I am forced to wonder what has changed her attitude. Was there something in his tone that made her doubt him? As if reading my mind, she clicks the tape back on and lets it run until I hear her voice.

“I don’t believe anymore. Daddy. I just don’t think every word in the Bible is true. Art was right. The world is older than six thousand years. The Bible was written by men who couldn’t know what we know today. They just didn’t know.”

As if from a great distance, I hear Shane’s voice, more sad than angry.

“Don’t you see what you let happen? He stole your faith, Leigh. Just as if he were a robber breaking into your house, he stole the most precious thing you’ll ever own. It doesn’t mean much to you now, but it will. Your sisters couldn’t wait to disown their faith, and what do they have? Nothing of value.

If you go to prison, and you probably will, you’ll need your faith more than ever. But it’s hard to regain it once you let someone convince you that reason holds life’s key. You see what happened? Art made you his slave.

Only faith in God’s Word can prevent what the world does to people. I failed you. You, whom I loved best. It wasn’t that I didn’t love Mary Patricia and Alicia. I did, but I tried so hard to keep you pure that I grew to love you more than them. And now you’re just like them!”

I hear Leigh cry, “Daddy!” but then nothing more except the sound of her crying and her car starting. Then the tape stops.

Leigh now cries silently into her hands. Guilt. Shane has dumped a ton of it on her, and yet she has finally fought back. I am proud of her and yet amazed she could do it.

“The argument that Shane may have killed Art probably won’t be enough by itself,” I follow up.

“But with the rest of our case it may be enough to cause a jury to find reasonable doubt.”

A sustained hammering at the front door announces Dan’s arrival. Sarah and Woogie, who is barking furiously, usher him into the kitchen and retreat immediately to her bedroom while I explain to Leigh that it will be helpful for me to have another lawyer at the defense table tomorrow to help listen to the state’s testimony.

In no position to object, Leigh forces a smile at Dan, who barely manages not to leer at her while I introduce them. Since his stomach is mostly concealed by a jacket he declines to shed, he does not look too bad, and I seat him next to me at the kitchen table and hope he keeps his smart-ass cracks to a minimum. In the last few minutes Leigh has begun to look shaky and does not need Dan’s irreverent wit.

Perhaps chastened by my serious expression, Dan asks deferentially, “Where do you want to start?”

A good question. First assuring Leigh that Dan is ethically obligated to keep his mouth shut, I reprise for Dan my conversation tonight with Leigh, knowing it will become apparent to her that he knows a lot about her case already.

“Our defense obviously has to be that practically anybody, including Shane, could have killed Art during the forty-five minutes she was gone from the house.”

Dan stares across the table at Leigh, who has cradled her beautiful face in her hands. Knowing Dan, I realize he has probably volunteered to help me as much from the desire to be this close to a looker like Leigh as out of friendship. He turns to me and says, “You have to consider the fact that if Leigh testifies, it could play right into Jill’s hands by giving her the opportunity to show the jury how bad Leigh was feeling about her father.

The jury may knock the charge down to manslaughter if they think that Leigh decided to kill Art in a moment of guilt and anger after her father called, but it could just as easily come back with first degree.”

I pull out a legal pad and begin to make some notes.

“Jill will get most of this out of Shane anyway,” I say, glancing at Dan’s beefy face.

Dan nods and looks up at my cupboards—he probably would like a snack—but again fixes his gaze on Leigh’s bowed head.

“And she’s got to explain why she lied to the cops,” he contributes.

“She’s prepared to do that,” I say for her.

Leigh looks up and nods bravely.

“It’s going to go well,” I say, kicking Dan under the table. He sounds too pessimistic. Leigh has to appear confident, or she won’t have a chance.