Authors: R.D. Power
“Mr. Owens,” boomed the judge, sensitive to the slightest drop of discourtesy, though not to the greatest wave of injustice, “keep quiet. How dare you accuse our police and justice system of vice or incompetence. You are the one on trial here,” he said. “The court has considered the tape. The jury knows about it and will weigh it in making their decisions. The witness is excused.” Kristen knew she had damned him and wept so hard she had to be helped from the stand.
“Your Honor, please listen,” Robert pleaded. “He hasn’t even called Judy Gilmour to the stand. She’s the one who called me and told me Miss Taylor wanted to see me. She drove me to Solano’s house. I’m sure she’s the one who planted the—”
“Mr. Owens, silence! It’s your attorney’s responsibility to mount your defense. If he hasn’t raised it, he must not consider it compelling or credible.”
“She had a good alibi,” explained the defense attorney to Robert who shook his head in disgust.
Kristen was shocked at his revelation. If true, it had so many nasty implications. Why would she do it? What would she have to gain?
Oh, no
, Kristen said to herself, concluding the obvious.
It’s the only way it all makes sense. Judy loves Dominic!
Both prosecution and defense rested. Final arguments were to be presented the next morning. Robert went home determined to push the mouse button to effect the transfer of funds. Standing at the computer, he put his finger on the button. Again he held back. There was a good chance Kristen had mentioned it to the prosecutor. More importantly, his conscience was in revolt.
I’ll sleep on it again
, he thought.
That night he had the most realistic dream of his life. He was trying to push the button, but his mother, father and sister were holding his arm back.
“Bobby, this is wrong. Don’t do this!” begged his mother.
“If you do this, you are no longer my son!” roared his father.
“No, Bobby!” pleaded his sister.
“Everything will be all right in the end if you stay good,” promised his mother.
He awoke in a cold sweat. He went to the computer, erased all traces of his work and shut it off. In the morning, he called his acquaintance and told him it couldn’t be done, that the security system was much better than he’d thought.
•
Closing arguments were a formality. The defense’s final declaration was unconvincing: “Ladies and gentlemen, does this look like a drug addict to you? I think not. The blank tape should raise alarm bells about the credibility of the entire case presented by the prosecution. They dismissed it as an accident, but at the very minimum, it raises reasonable doubt about my client’s guilt. I ask you to keep in mind that the accused has no criminal record in spite of having a very hard life after his parents died.”
The prosecutor began his summary by calling the case open and shut.
“Yeah, opened and shut in a blink because you didn’t want the jury to see it was empty,” quipped Robert.
“Order in my court,” rebuked the judge. “Keep your comments to yourself. You’ll only make things worse for yourself.”
The prosecutor continued with his summary, highlighting the damaging evidence against the accused, noting in particular “the heartfelt testimony of the woman who dearly loved him.” He concluded, “The accused bore a grudge against the victim. He loved Miss Taylor and wanted revenge against the man who won her hand. He was destitute and needed money. The motives were clear. He had the opportunity, and he took advantage of it as our witnesses testified. He was found in possession of cocaine, which is also a felony. ‘I was framed,’ is the cry of nearly every criminal that passes through this august chamber. Do not fall for it, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Teach this young man and others like him a lesson that he can’t get away with these crimes.”
The judge instructed the jury to leave and deliberate.
Now the ex could be supposed to hold a grudge and lie about him, but her continual bouts with tears showed a fervid love for the accused. No woman would lie to send a man she still loved to jail. And he must be a fiend to have so grieved such a precious young creature. This was the deliberation the jury held among themselves for a good five minutes before concluding that he was as guilty as the devil.
The court reconvened to hear the verdict. The accused was instructed to stand as the foreman read the verdict. On the charge of grand theft: “Guilty.” On the charge of drug possession: “Guilty.” Though he expected the verdict, when it came, he sank to his seat in disbelief. Kristen went cold with the news; she sat there in a daze. Kim started to cry.
Robert lashed out at Kristen as her mother led her away. “You betrayed me!” he hollered. “You were in on it with him, weren’t you? You and Judy. You all set me up. The day I met you was the worst day in my life! I’ll hate you till the day I die!”
“No, Bobby, please don’t hate me!” Kristen wailed. “I only told the truth. I didn’t set you up, please believe me! I didn’t know about Judy.” She ran to him to beg his understanding, but he pushed her away. “Please forgive me. I love you!” she said as she again approached him.
“This is what you do to the person you love? Get out of my life!” She was certain he was going to strike her, so fierce were his eyes. Seeing nothing but hatred and anger there, she meekly awaited the blow, willing to play the martyr to assuage her guilt, the guilt of a woman who had told a truth that had condemned the man she loved.
He didn’t hit her; he couldn’t, even in his rage, for despite all, he loved her. The rage buried it, but could not kill it. Love would rise again, but to what avail? With Bill interceding and the bailiffs applying handcuffs, Robert was restrained. Kristen flung herself at Robert again and held fast against his repulses.
“Let go of me!” the furious man screamed. “I’ll get you back for framing me!” he yelled, conscious that the threat was empty.
“No, I didn’t know anything about it,” she shrieked. “I could never do that to you. I love you.” Finally, her frightened mother forced the lachrymose girl to leave.
Before he was led away, Robert asked to speak to Bill. “You’re a smart man. You must suspect something underhanded in all this. They set me up, and a good cop should be able to prove it without much trouble. I’m asking you to investigate this mess.”
“It’s not in my jurisdiction,” he replied coolly.
“I don’t give a shit about jurisdiction. I know you hate me, but you’re a fair man. Please check out Judy’s alibi. She’s the weak link. She must be doing this for Dominic. She must love him. This case affects your daughter and your son. I swear to God, if you don’t help me, I’ll take matters into my own hands when I get out, and your daughter may get caught up in the mess.”
“Don’t you threaten my daughter!”
“Solano will pay for this, and if his wife-to-be was in on it, so will she.”
Bill left without saying anything else. Robert was taken away. Sentencing would come presently.
•
“Hey Gertrude, they got another drug dealer off the streets,” observed Mr. Carlton. “I hope that scum rots in jail. Bring me a beer.”
•
At Kim’s, he’d left his trunk containing everything he owned: a few articles of clothing, his glove, and the disarrayed remnants of his dead family. He’d disposed of Kristen’s photo.
The anguish Robert suffered during those first days in jail was abysmal. It took a day or two for the magnitude of his downfall to sink in. He had lost Kristen forever to his arch nemesis. He’d lost his freedom. He’d lost his chance to go to university on a baseball scholarship, and he knew the Twins would never be interested in him now. A criminal record meant no future chance at a scholarship or any good job. Everything was gone. He had even shamed the family name. His son would grow up ashamed of his own father.
“Mom, why didn’t you make me go with you?” he cried into his pillow.
Dominic and Judy, the two people he hated most, had routed him; that was bad enough. That the one person he loved had helped them do it was heartbreaking.
I fell in love again and look what happened. Will I never learn?
He paced his cell, thinking of Kristen, and moaned, “How could she do this to me?”; quaked with rage, thinking of Dominic, and punched his bed, yelling, “I’ll get that fucker if it’s the last thing I do!”; and looked forlornly through the bars and said, “God, what did I do to make you hate me so much?”
Kristen lay in bed, looking at the ceiling, imagining her true love in despair, thinking of a gloomy future without him, cowering under his ire toward her—and begged, “God please bring him back to me!” She went to play his version of “Night and Day” and recalled with woe that she had deleted it. Frantically checking her CDs, she found a copy of the song, restored it to her computer, and listened to it over and over. All her pictures and other mementoes of him were gone, however.
How could it have come to this?
she asked herself again and again.
When Kristen heard about Judy’s role in the crime, all her doubts about Robert’s innocence and Dominic’s guilt vanished. She’d wanted to break off the engagement before, but now convinced of her fiancé’s guilt in the matter, she concluded it was an absolute necessity.
After the conviction, Kristen went to see Robert, but he refused to leave his cell to see her. She said, “Tell him I have good news.” She was going to tell him she wouldn’t marry Dominic.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, he got violent when we mentioned your name,” the guard informed her. She left despondent.
She wrote several times, but each letter came back unopened. Convinced from their last interaction that Bill had refused to help him, Robert wouldn’t see him either when he attempted to visit. Desperate to communicate with him, Kristen went to see Kim, whom she knew had been to see him in jail just after the trial.
“Hi, I’m Kristen Taylor,” she said when Kim came to the door.
“Come in. It’s miserable out again. Snow flurries in September. Unbelievable. What can I do for you?”
“I know you’ve been to see Bobby in jail. He won’t see me. He won’t accept my letters. I can’t get in touch with him at all,” she said, head downcast. “You’ve been speaking to him. What has he said about me?”
“You don’t want to know. The pain is still too recent for him. He thinks you betrayed him. I told him I doubted that was true—if it is, you’re the best actress I’ve ever seen—but he hasn’t changed his mind.”
“I had nothing to do with it other than looking the other way when I should’ve spoken up for him. Dominic and Judy set the trap, and we both got caught. Can you please go see him, and tell him I’m not marrying Dominic? Tell him I love him and I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll try, Kristen, I will, but when I went to see him, he asked me not to return. He’s so ashamed of being there. He warned me if I came back, he wouldn’t see me.”
“I have to get the message to him! Get the guards to make him come. Lie. Tell him his baby is sick. Please. I’ll die if he goes on believing those awful things about me.”
“Who said the baby was his?” said a surprised Kim.
“I saw it in his eyes. He can’t lie to me. I don’t blame you, although he’s way too young for you.”
“I’ve been so lonely since my husband died,” Kim said sadly. “When Bob came for help that night, I was more vulnerable than he was. I was feeling so sorry for myself—I’ve never told anyone this, but I want you to understand—I was considering suicide. When he rang the doorbell, I was actually looking at a bottle of pills and thinking I could so easily end my misery. I honestly thought God sent him to me to stop me from making the biggest mistake anyone can make. Later that evening, it occurred to me: I thought, a child, my child, would give me a compelling reason to keep going, and what better man to father my child?
“He’s young, but he’s everything any woman could want. I know exactly why you love him. Please don’t blame him. I seduced him. I decided I wanted his child. He had no idea. I don’t want to marry him, and I don’t need any financial support. I just wanted a baby. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“He’s hurt me so often, you know, with other women. I told him if this was his baby, we’re through, but God help me, I still love him. I wish I didn’t. My life would be so much simpler. Now I’m miserable.”
“I’ll try to get your message through to him.”
“Um, do you have a picture of Bobby I can borrow to make a copy? I kind of destroyed the ones I had when I caught him …”
Kim went to her room to get one she had taken the past summer. “You can have this one; I got double copies.” Kristen took it with thanks. In the picture, he was smiling, but looked sad to her. She ran her slender fingers over his image, then pressed it to her bosom with both hands.
As promised, Kim went to see Robert, but he rejected her visit.
•
Right after the trial, Kristen agonized through Dominic’s gloating and was sorely tempted to end the betrothal, but she reasoned she might be able to learn something to help Robert if she stayed engaged a little longer. Fortunately, soon after the trial, he left on an extended business trip to Africa. She asked her father for help and discovered he’d been furtively investigating the crime. He’d refuted Judy’s alibi and was checking into Dominic’s connections to the illegal drug trade.
“Dad,” said Kristen, “Bobby wouldn’t have made up what he said about Judy. She must be in love with Dominic. I think I can get her to spill the beans.”
“Nothing doing, young lady. This is police business, and it could get dangerous if these people are as bad as we suspect.”
“Dad, please. It’s my fault Bobby’s in jail. I have to get him out. I have to. It’s the only way we’ll ever—”
“No, Krissy. I won’t see my daughter in any danger.”
“I’m sorry, Dad, but I will not obey you this time. I have to do this, and I’ll do it with you or without you. I’ll just ask her to meet me at Dominic’s. He’s away on business in Africa. His place has cameras and microphones in it. You can be in the viewing room watching, and listening—and recording.” Bill had no choice but to submit to her wishes.
Kristen called Judy and asked her to come over for tea the next afternoon. Judy hesitated, but finally agreed. Kristen dismissed the housekeeper for the afternoon. When Judy arrived, Kristen showed her to the sitting room. The ladies sat.