by Diane Capri
They should have been more charitable toward George, who had never done anything dishonorable in his entire life. He was a pillar of this community, and this is how they repaid him. Altruism. Bah. Humbug.
When George began to rewind the digital recording he’d run on the story in preparation for replaying it again, I’d had enough. He’d turned off the phones, and the answering machine blinked like mad. I got up and unplugged the phone from the wall. With a glance back toward George, still immersed in Frank Bennett, I went into our room to lay down.
Later, I asked myself why I didn’t talk to George. Or why he didn’t explain things to me. But at the time, it was all just too much. I’d had no sleep the night before. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture and I wanted to believe that some of my emotionalism was attributable to sheer exhaustion.
The rest was fear.
I’d had enough experience with the feeling to recognize it for what it was: an all too healthy fear of abandonment.
If I couldn’t deal with the world right now, at least I could escape it.
In less than five minutes, I’d fallen into a deep slumber. I slept through until the next morning, not waking even when George came to bed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Tampa, Florida
Wednesday 8:00 a.m.
January 26, 2000
GEORGE HAD PUT ON the morning coffee and brought in the papers by the time I wandered out into the kitchen. Front-page news was his arrest yesterday.
Looking like he hadn’t slept in three days, George sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee and eating a bagel. I filled my coffee mug and went to shower and get fortified for the day.
Tried not to think about the whole sorry mess until I was dressed in the professional suit of armor that gave me the judicial detachment I desperately needed.
Plugged the phone back in and called Margaret at home. I told her to advise the lawyers that we would begin with Plaintiff’s first witness, as planned, tomorrow. She wanted me to take the week off.
The idea appealed to me, except that I couldn’t imagine what I’d do with all of those empty hours. Work had always filled my life with purpose and importance. George had his politics and his restaurant. We lived separate lives together, and we liked it. We were more interesting to each other that way, almost like living with an exciting, mysterious partner instead of the rut many of our long-married friends had fallen into.
“No,” I told Margaret, “don’t reschedule anything on the calendar. I’ll see you as planned.” I heard the silence of her disapproval. “And Margaret?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t allow anyone to call me at home unless they have a life and death emergency,” I told her.
Like the one I was living in.
Then I squared my shoulders, took several balancing deep breaths and went into the kitchen to have a serious talk with my husband. The man I once believed I knew better than I know myself. The one who had been charged with murder.
George was still at the table, reading the papers, mainlining coffee. He looked wired. His eyes were bloodshot. Red veins not only in the whites but in the hazel irises as well; pupils dilated.
Deep wrinkles that weren’t there last week had appeared between his nose and the corners of his mouth. I’ve heard stories of hair turning white overnight and never believed them. I looked anxiously for grey hair and didn’t find any more than had been there last week visible on George’s beloved head, but that was the only thing missing from making him look twenty years older than when I’d seen him last night.
All my defensiveness melted away.
This was George. The man I loved, whom I’d loved for years, who had taken care of me and supported me since we’d first met. George, the pillar and strength of my life.
I knew he wasn’t a murderer and that was that.
Regardless of what Michael Drake said, no one would ever be able to prove something so patently false, I told myself, as if repeating the words would make them true.
I had no idea what was going on here, but I intended to get to the bottom of it and I intended to see George cleared.
God help anyone who stood in my way.
Gathering my strength of will, I said, “George,” as I sat down across from him at the table. He looked up at me and then through me. He didn’t appear to be listening at all. I reached over and touched his hand. “George. I need to talk to you. Okay?”
He said “Sure. What do you want to talk about?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tampa, Florida
Wednesday 9:20 a.m.
January 26, 2000
FEAR URGED ME TO scream at him; my words were sharper than I intended. “I want to talk about how it is that I’m sitting across the table from a man charged with murder. I want to talk about how your gun got to be a murder weapon. I want to talk about what the hell is going on here.”
The volume of my voice had jumped up of its own volition with every sentence until I felt I was almost shouting the last question, losing control. My precious control. I wasn’t used to it and I didn’t like it.
Tried again. Consciously lowered my voice. Slowed it down.
“George, please. I need to know what we plan to do.”
He turned his vacant gaze toward mine. “What is there to do? I’ll wait until Ben Hathaway finds out who killed Andy. The charges against me will be dismissed and forgotten.”
He sounded as if we were discussing one of the dogs being sick on a rug he didn’t particularly like anyway. “In the meantime, I’ll continue with my life the same as I always have.”
In the reassuringly calm way he’d handled every crisis of our lives, he said, “What else would I do?”
But this was different. Literally life and death. If George was convicted of murder, he could get the death penalty. We kill murderers in Florida. All the time.
“You’ve been married to a lawyer in a family of lawyers for seventeen years and you can ask me that?” Too shrill. I’d tried to whip up some of that passion I’d seen him display when he was fighting against the Andrews nomination. He could be passionate in altruistic pursuits. How about in self-preservation? “We need to hire the best defense attorney we can find, for one thing.”
The look he gave me was genuine surprise.
“What for?” He patted my hand. “Calm down, Mighty Mouse,” he said, in his normally affectionate tone for the nickname he’d given me years ago. He thought it described perfectly my drive to help those who couldn’t or wouldn’t help themselves.
Yet he had never needed my help. Indeed, our relationship was exactly the opposite. George took care of us. He liked it that way; so did I.
“Willa, I don’t expect these charges to go beyond the stage they already have. Ben Hathaway assured me that they are continuing their investigation. I feel certain he’s being truthful with me.” His matter-of-fact belief in the justness of the system colored his perceptions an unrealistic shade of secure. “And the man who killed Andy will be found and brought to justice. Don’t worry.”
I ran splayed fingers through my hair in frustration. I was quickly losing what little sanity I had left. People think I’m not patient. But I am. It’s just that no one recognizes my patience when I’m exercising it.
As calmly as he’d spoken to me, I asked, “Has it ever occurred to you that what the police are looking for is more evidence that they have already arrested Andy’s killer?”
For the first time, he appeared shocked. Alive. Attentive. Thank God. “Willa, are you saying that you think I killed Andy? Because if you’re saying that, then we have a much more serious problem here than my arrest.”
How could he have misunderstood me so completely?
“Of course I don’t think you killed Andy,” I said. “But think like Drake. What questions will he be asking?”
I listed the ones I could come up with quickly. “How did your gun get to the scene of the murder? And where were you at the time Andy was killed? You w
ere so determined that Andy would never be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Unless you knew Andy was going to die, how could you have been so certain?”
Now, George was truly angry. At me. He stood abruptly and knocked over his chair in the process. “You let me know when you figure it out, Willa. In the meantime, I’m getting dressed, packing my things and moving to the club.”
He turned in the doorway for a parting shot. “I’m sure you don’t want to be sleeping with an accused killer. And I don’t want to sleep with a woman who’s supposed to have complete faith in me. But doesn’t.”
He stalked out and I didn’t go after him.
My head fell to the table as I considered his reaction.
Maybe some time apart was a good idea.
Maybe we both needed time to reflect.
This was the first serious test of our marriage. In seventeen years, we’d never had a disaster to weather together.
Could we do it?
I believed we could. I needed to believe we would. But was that enough?
He would calm down, come back to the kitchen, talk this all over, I thought.
But he didn’t.
I heard the front door to our flat close as George walked through it, shutting me in. I went back to bed to close out the entire world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Tampa, Florida
Wednesday 1:00 p.m.
January 26, 2000
THUNDERCLAPS JARRED ME AWAKE, dreams so fresh I saw them like a movie. I was sixteen again, spending the last year of my mother’s life as her constant companion. She was telling me that she’d never leave me, as her life was slowly ending.
In the dream, I saw her after death experience, saw her spirit leave her body and move toward the light.
As she vanished, she said, “Be brave. Take care of George for me.”
Then she was gone as the dogs jumped on the bed when the lightning and thunder started.
The dream left me badly shaken. I don’t often dream of my mother and when I do, it always upsets me. This was a new dream and completely unlike the last moments of my mother’s life.
In reality, mom died peacefully, when my back was turned. It was as if she’d waited until I wasn’t looking to leave me. She’d struggled with breast cancer for several years and finally gave up long before I met George.
My almost forty-year-old brain understands why mom died. I try to believe that her spirit lives on with me. But the young girl I was then still feels the loss deeply. In emotional crises, I often dream of mom.
But I’ve learned things about fear. Fear is always with us, lurking around the corner, waiting to jump out and scare us when we’re most vulnerable.
If you let it, fear moves into your head and takes over your life. The only thing to do with fear is to face it, deal with it, and dispose of it.
What I knew now was that I could choose to be afraid and wait for the worst to happen. Or I could take charge of my life. I’ve done it before. I could do it again. I’d need to exercise what Aunt Minnie called pluck. Fear would not overwhelm me.
Just then, the doorbell rang. Both dogs ran barking to the door. I wanted to ignore the caller, but I didn’t. When I looked through the peephole, I saw Kate.
My resolve wavered. I invited her in, tempted to fall into her arms as she held me and let me cry. It was what I would have done as a girl, the solution that would be so much easier. Let Kate deal with it, retreat and wait for the worst to pass over.
Self-pity was near the surface, too. Emotions I hadn’t known were buried in my psyche seemed to be bubbling up like the stench from the floor of Hillsborough Bay the low tide exposed. What had I done? Why was everyone in my life leaving me? Where did George go? Would he come back? My heart was truly broken and I could have allowed Kate to mend it, as she’d done so many times before.
I did none of that, of course.
Judges don’t cry.
Except at sad movies, and funerals, and weddings, when small children are injured or someone sings the National Anthem beautifully.
And when their hearts are broken.
Kate calmly asked me what the problem was. Clairvoyance again? Probably she’d seen the same news reports we had and knew how upset I would be.
“Am I the only person on the planet who believes being accused of murder is not the best way to live your life?” I said, sounding petulant to my own ears.
Kate’s tone, as always, was gentle with me. “He’s accused of murder, Willa, not convicted. There is a difference.”
Defensiveness caused me to be impatient. Weapons launched, like Patriot missiles, unerringly hitting their target. “Of course there’s a difference,” I said. “But neither one is all that desirable, in my view.”
Kate looked at me closely for a long time. “Have you started writing in the journal I gave you at Christmas?”
“For God’s sake,” I said, snidely. “My husband is accused of murder. Writing in a journal about my feelings on the subject is not going to change that.”
Unperturbed, she said, “I was thinking you might try using it to figure out how to get yourself out of this mess you’ve made.”
Something inside me snapped, then. For the first time in my life, I raised my voice to Kate.
“I’ve made? You think I’ve made this mess? Is it my gun that killed an army general? Am I the one that now has mug shots down at the police station? Was it my face on the evening news describing how it wasn’t possible that Andy committed suicide? Are my whereabouts at the time of the murder unaccounted for? Am I the one who’s been making it plain to the entire world how I would never allow Andrews to sit on the court?”
Kate seemed unmoved by my outburst, but I couldn’t stop myself. I just kept rolling on, letting out all the frustration even I hadn’t realized was inside.
“Am I the one who told General Andrews that I’d kill him if he ever hurt my wife again the very night before he died?” I jumped up and turned to face her then. “You floor me, Kate. You really do.”
When I’d vented my spleen, I didn’t feel better and Kate didn’t look the least upset.
She sat quietly for a long while, waiting for me to stop staring at her like a pit bull.
“Actually,” she finally said, “I was thinking more of the mess you’ve made of your relationship with George and whether you are going to be able to repair the damage before the rift between you becomes the Grand Canyon.”
I collapsed onto the chair. As ever, Kate put her finger right on the pulse of my anxiety. I could love George while he served his time in prison, but I didn’t want to live without him and I wasn’t interested in finding out whether I could.
“You know George didn’t kill General Andrews. Why don’t you prove that first, if that’s what it takes to get your life back in order?” She gathered up her things and gave me a hug before letting herself out of the flat. “I suggest, though, that you might use your journal to work on your priorities.”
She left because she thought I had some serious soul searching to do. I was too stubborn to do it, though. Her comments had just made me more upset with George.
How could he put us in this situation? If he ever came back, I might throw him out for this.
Now there’s the Old Willa, I thought, a grin finding its way onto my lips. That scared, trembling female was someone else. Someone I didn’t have any intention of spending any more time with.
My husband was not a killer. I knew it, and soon, everyone else would know it, too. But what game was he playing?
CHAPTER THIRTY
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 8:00 a.m.
January 27, 2000
THE NEXT MORNING, I was in the shower when the telephone rang. Thinking it might be George, I nearly killed myself sliding from the shower to the handset in the bathroom. By the time I picked up, the machine had already kicked on.
“George? Is that you?” I said, over the tape.
“No, Willa. It’s Frank Bennett. I
sn’t George there with you?”
Shit! Now what should I do? Why didn’t I screening the call? Now what? It would make a bigger impression on Frank if I hung up than if I tried to give him some explanation that he would, hopefully, accept.
I said, “No, Frank. He went out for some bagels and he’s not back yet. I thought he might have forgotten something. What can I do for you?”
Frank accepted my explanation without comment, but he’d be more watchful from this point forward. George had to come home today, or it would look like we’d split up over his arrest. Which, of course, was what we’d done.
But it wouldn’t help in the court of public opinion, which I didn’t give one whit about except that it would matter to Drake, the State Attorney. I crossed my fingers, hoping discretion would rule Frank on this issue until I could get George to see my point and come home. We have three guest rooms, if he wanted to keep pouting.
“Do you want to comment on the latest information we’ve gotten on the Andrews killing? It concerns George.” Business as usual with Frank.
Simultaneously wanting to know and dreading the answer, I asked, “What information have you got?”
“Robbie Andrews is giving interviews. She claims George met with Senator Warwick and the President the night her father was killed and finalized their plan to defeat his confirmation.”
Standing wet and naked in the bathroom, I almost convinced myself I was cold and that’s why my hand, holding the phone, was shaking.
Hearing nothing from me, Frank went on, “Robbie says George was intent on defeating her father’s confirmation. She said George had allowed himself to be used as the front man by her father’s political enemies.”
Now I was very cold, but that wasn’t what caused me to tremble.
Frank concluded, “Robbie said George killed Andy because George and his friends were losing the confirmation fight and George couldn’t stand the public disgrace of that loss. She claims George’s entire personality was tied up in his stature with his chosen political party and losing the confirmation meant he’d lose that stature, too.” Still hearing nothing from me, he finished, “Would you or George care to respond to that?”