Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (8 page)

“Nineteenth century Hell, we’re talking feudalism, boy!” Dan cackles woefully about once a week.

Christian Life is not a collection of buildings; it is like one of those new towns that seems to have been created all at once. The flowers, trees, and buildings all look freshly put down. I pull in behind chet’s Mercedes in front of a two-story brick house whose trim is newly painted. Given its location (western Blackwell County, naturally), the mortgage on this property probably exceeds the national budget of some small countries.

“Shades of Jim and Tammy Bakker,” I say under my breath, noticing the exquisitely cared for lawn of Christian Life’s senior minister, Shane Norman, who presumably lives here rent free with his wife, Pearl. For all I know, however, they own the entire property outright and charge the congregation rent on the acres of parking that we passed on the way in. Ironically enough, given its self-proclaimed Biblical literalism, from the outside the church itself looks like a Greek temple, surrounded as it is by columns vaguely reminiscent of pictures of the Parthenon. With all the starvation and suffering in the world, how do churches justify their wealth? Wasn’t Jesus poor? One of the church columns alone has enough marble in it to pay for a well in Somalia. The Vatican could sell its art collection and probably provide housing for a small country with the proceeds.

The trouble with people who have money and power is that you are always expected to kiss their asses if you want any of it. Obviously, it pisses me off that I have had to drive out here. What in the hell is Leigh Wallace’s problem that she can’t make it down to chet’s office? Talk about kissing ass. And totally unlike Chet An old story about him is that if he doesn’t like a judge, he won’t even nod to him or her outside the courtroom. Shane Norman must have really done a number on him. I’m not sure why I’m feeling so superior I’d probably be groveling too, if I were in Chet’s shoes and measuring time in perhaps weeks instead of years. The plan is for him to introduce me and then say he has to go to court.

Why he thinks I’ll be able to induce her to talk is be yond me, but it’s his money and his case. Unlike her father, Leigh may not accept Chet’s eleventh-hour conversion and therefore may not be able to bring her self to trust him as her attorney. She didn’t hire him;

her father did. Norman may think Chet can steam roll her through to an acquittal when all she wants to do is plead guilty and throw herself on the mercy of the court. Representing children is a tricky business. It is easy to forget who the client is if you are getting the check from the parent. At least one thing is for certain:

children are the same everywhere. Leigh Wallace may not like who her father has hired as her lawyer, but it hasn’t kept her from moving back in with her parents According to Chet, she moved home two days after the murder.

As I meet our client, I think to myself that there are a few women (Michelle Pfeiffer in Frankie and Johnny comes to mind) who always look good under any circumstances. I suspect Leigh Wallace may be one of these women. Still, she has altered her appearance from the day of her husband’s death. If I correctly recall her picture in the paper the day of her arrest, she had shoulder-length hair, was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, and looked ravishing. Today her body is concealed by a long turquoise-and-beige Mexicanlooking dress, her dark, glossy hair piled up on her head like some diva’s. She looks spectacular but seems a de cade older than her twenty-three years and a hell of a lot more sophisticated than I expected.

Chet wastes no time in making his getaway, and she and I are left alone like a mismatched couple on a blind date. I look around the living room and barely restrain myself from gawking. Somehow, I had expected the walls of the home of a fundamentalist minister to be decorated with religious art of the Jesus-flying-off-on-a-cloud variety. Though I am hardly a connoisseur of interior design, even I have an inkling of the quality of the wall hangings, tapestries, sculptures, and paintings that are on display in the living room. Most, if not all, have something of the foreign or exotic about them. My eyes come to rest upon an oil painting of a scene I recognize from my Peace Corps days in Colombia a famous Spanish fort in Cartagena that is a mandatory stop for sightseers.

“Gifts to my father,” my hostess says in response to my poorly disguised amazement.

“Symbols of gratitude from his mission trips on which he takes Christian Life families to work for the poor.”

“Have you ever gone with him?” I ask, letting my eyes move to her face, thinking they didn’t come from the poor. She is perfectly made up and exudes a fragrance that suggests rose petals. Is this for me or for herself? Chet hasn’t prepared me for her at all. I expected her perhaps to be subdued, but there is some thing standoffish in her manner. Usually, criminal defendants want instant reassurance you can help them, whereas Leigh Wallace seems as if she could care less.

“Every year for the past five,” she says, walking ahead of me into a formal dining room, “until this one.”

A massive mahogany table whose wood is nearly obscured by a Spanish lace cloth dominates the room, and I find myself wanting to touch the shiny surface. It is as if she is a tour guide who is answering the same questions for the millionth time in a well-rehearsed, detached voice.

I look in vain for pictures of her father perhaps exhorting the faithful from the pulpit or mixing cement for the masses in a foreign land, but there is not even a snapshot of a family dog.

“Would you care for some coffee or something to drink, Mr. Page?” she asks, stroking the lace with her fingers. Though she has on a ring, an opal, I spy no wedding band. A silver bracelet adorns her wrist. Her red fingernails are perfectly manicured Hardly the weeds of a grieving widow and certainly not the getup I had pictured of the daughter of a Bible-toting Jesus freak. In fact, Leigh’s dark, dramatic features remind me of nothing so much as those of a well-to-do, haughty Colombian beauty. Even shop girls dressed to the teeth in the larger cities on the northern coast, and the ones who could afford it decked themselves out in a way that eclipsed their paler American counterparts. Though I am not particularly thirsty or in need of further stimulation this windy March afternoon, perhaps we could use something to break the ice.

“Coffee would be great,” I tell her and follow her into the kitchen, which gleams with copper pots and pans hanging from the walls like foreign artifacts.

The perfect hostess, she gives me a steaming cup of dark roasted coffee and offers me a piece of German chocolate cake. Accepting both, I make myself at home at her kitchen table. Sitting across from me, sipping at a glass of water, she asks, “Are you a Christian, Mr. Page?”

I suppress a sigh, remembering my earlier thought that she might mistrust Chet because of his Johnnycome-lately attitude toward fundamentalist Christianity.

Fearful that the answer to this question guards the gate to a genuine conversation about the case, I push aside my desire to question its relevance.

“Does Catholicism count?” I ask lightly, hoping to avoid an inquisition.

“There are Catholics,” she says, “and there are Catholics

“That’s true,” I admit, surprised she would know. I suspect it is not the Pope who bothers her but the accommodation made by any modern-day Christian to harmonize faith and science. Ever since Galileo looked through his telescope, the battle has been joined. My latest evidence of the fight, laughably sketchy, since I don’t have anything to do with the church, comes from the popular press. Shamelessly summarizing years of scholarship mainly by European Catholic Biblical scholars, an article I read some time ago in The Atlantic on the historical Jesus put the matter bluntly: the four gospels in the New Testament are best understood as a collection of interwoven faith documents which put a particular theological spin on early Christianity (St.

John, for example, was influenced by Greek philosophy). As accounts of the life of Jesus, according to the article, they contain very little history.

“Either you accept the entire Bible as the written word of God or you don’t,” she says flatly, her eyes fierce.

I wonder if poor Chet is cutting the mustard as a con vert. The hypocrisy of people never fails to amaze me.

Now that this Miss Ice Bitch is back home, she’s holier than the Pope. It hasn’t been very long since she was doing some serious backsliding of her own. According to the file, she had practically dropped out of the church by the time of the murder. I swallow a mouthful of moist cake to keep from saying that I’d rather be inter viewing a boa constrictor. Get a grip, I tell myself. Murderers aren’t usually Miss Congeniality material.

Actually, behind this frosty facade, she may be scared to death, and that accounts for her snottiness. I decide to kill her, if not with kindness, at least with my own hypocrisy.

“It looks like events are conspiring,” I say in my friendliest voice, “to get me to see what Christian Life is all about.” Briefly, I tell her about Rainey’s apparent conversion and my conversation with Chet’s stepson. I conclude by saying, “I’ll be there Sunday.”

Leigh Wallace’s face softens a bit. Stories about women and children get women and children every time.

“Don’t expect to get everything from the Sunday service,” she warns.

“The place where you change is in your family, if you choose to participate.”

“That’s what Rainey says,” I gladly acknowledge.

“Can I ask you something about it?” I ask, feeling at last that the bait is set.

“What bothers me about religion is that it seems like a feast-or-famine proposition. For example, Mr. Bracken says that after you were married your participation at Christian Life dropped way off. It seems like people get excited about Christianity and then drift away from it. Is that what happened to you?”

For a moment she does not speak, as if I have asked a profound question that demands reflection.

“There really is such a thing as evil in the world,” she says, without smiling.

If she weren’t so serious, I’d have to laugh. It’s not that I disagree, but the evil I know comes in human form. Her tone makes it clear that it might not be a bad idea to check under the beds when I get home tonight.

Peeling as if I were auditioning for a part in a soap opera, I ask, “Was your husband a part of that evil?”

Perhaps realizing she has sounded a little more dramatic than the situation warrants, Leigh gets up to cut a slice of cake for herself.

“Art really wasn’t interested in Christian Life. He joined just to get me to marry him.

I quit going regularly to please him.”

I’d like some more cake, but feel I ought to wait until I’m asked.

“Wasn’t that a natural thing to do for a while?” I ask, sympathizing with the lust of a dead man.

Who wouldn’t want to skip church to stay home with a woman who looks this good?

The piece she has cut for herself hardly seems worth the trouble. She moves some crumbs around on her plate. “There is always a choice about how a person lives. I let myself be lulled into believing I could be a Christian outside my family at Christian Life;” So far I haven’t learned anything I didn’t already know, but at least she’s talking. So long as I stay on the topic of religion, she feels safe, but sooner or later, we are going to have to begin talking about his murder.

“Do you feel somehow guilty about his death?” I ask.

“I mean, if he had been interested in the church, maybe this wouldn’t have happened?”

For the first time, Leigh recoils as if she had been hit.

Ah, guilt. What would we do without it? I have wounded her, but she won’t admit it.

“Art had every opportunity to stay involved,” she says mechanically.

“He never intended to.”

Despite her tone, her face looks sad, as if she has failed someone besides herself. I feel slightly more confident now.

“Who do you think could have murdered him?” I ask, relishing the last sip of coffee. I’ll take more of everything if I get the chance.

Leigh folds her arms across her breasts.

“I have no idea,” she says coolly.

“I’ve already been over this with Mr. Bracken.”

I don’t believe her. I may be wrong, but she sounds too defensive.

“Just so I’m clear,” I say quickly, “my understanding is that you told the police you had been at the church all morning that day you brought a friend home for lunch and found your husband’s body.”

Her cake is forgotten now. Rigid in her chair, she says, “That’s absolutely correct.” There is not a jury in the world who would fail to read guilt into her body language.

I hurry, afraid she won’t let me continue.

“According to Chet,” I say, making him the bad-news messenger, “there is some dispute about this.”

Leaning into the table between us, she answers, “Which is easily explained. The two women whom I saw and spoke with at Christian Life that morning are in their eighties. They often get their times confused, for obvious reasons. I myself was in error when I told the police I spoke with Nancy Lyons. I probably saw her the day before.”

Like a hungry dog licking his dish, I scrape at the crumbs on my plate. This is weak even if you blow off the neighbor who remembers her driving past on her way home at nine-thirty. Several members confirm seeing her again at eleven-thirty, but nobody remembers her there between nine and eleven as she says. Since it was undisputed that Wallace died about an hour before an ambulance reached him (a fact confirmed by his autopsy), the police did not suspect Leigh initially, because they thought, with good reason, she had been at the church all morning. Mrs. Sims, the old woman Leigh invited to lunch, had told the cops Leigh had been with her at the auditorium listening to a missionary But after Leigh had become the only suspect, the old woman admitted that she had not seen her since a little before nine, when the meeting began, until it was over at eleven-thirty. The police hypothesize that Leigh set it up to look as if she had been at the church for almost three hours.

“Is it possible,” I ask, avoiding her eyes so as not to challenge her, “that for a perfectly good reason you wanted to play hooky and stay home with your husband that morning and just didn’t think it was the cops’ business that you were home instead of at the church all morning?”