Act of God

by Susan R. Sloan

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s say it’s an insurance policy, if you ever need it. Hopefully, you never will. But hang on to it anyway. Put it away somewhere, and keep it safe, just in case.”

  “How will I know if I need it?”

  “You’ll know,” Dana assured her. “You’ll know.”

  She picked up the letter. Paul Cotter’s name was written on the front of the envelope. “Now I have the pleasure of delivering this.” She stood up, and put out her hand. “Good luck,” she said.

  It was six-thirty when Corey Latham came through the door of his West Dravus rental with a large bouquet of roses in hand, expecting to find Elise. But the house was empty. He supposed she must still be working on the project she had mentioned that morning, but he had thought she would be home by now. It was almost eight months since he had made love to her, a lot of lost time to make up for. And not a night had gone by that he hadn’t thought about it.

  He put the roses down on the kitchen counter and took the few belongings he had been allowed to have in jail into the bedroom. It was pristine, no clothes hung over the back of the chair, the shoes were gone from the floor, and the bed was freshly made. Elise was an indifferent housekeeper, but she had obviously made an extra effort to clean up for his homecoming. He took his personal items into the bathroom and noticed the sink counter was no longer cluttered with her assorted creams and lotions and makeup. She had even put her toothbrush away.

  Corey smiled and opened the medicine cabinet to stash his shaving stuff. The cabinet was empty. The smile slowly became a frown. He looked under the sink, but found only a few household cleaning items and some extra toilet paper. With a strange sensation starting in the pit of his stomach, he went back into the bedroom and opened the closet. His off-duty clothes and his uniforms, all clean and pressed, hung on the bar by themselves. There were no dresses or blouses or business suits keeping them company. Frantically, he pulled open the dresser drawer where she kept her underwear, and then the drawers where she kept her shirts and sweaters. They were empty. All trace of Elise was gone.

  He walked slowly into the living room, wondering what was going on. The logical answer, of course, was that she was staying with someone in her family, not to be alone. But he didn’t understand why she wouldn’t have mentioned it, or why she would have had to take her entire wardrobe with her. He was still trying to figure it out when Elise burst through the front door.

  “I’m sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I thought you’d still be with your folks, and I would get here before you did. I really wanted to be here, but we got stuck in traffic.”

  “We?” he asked.

  “Oh, a friend drove me over,” she replied carelessly.

  “Where’s all your stuff?”

  “Well, I want to talk to you about that,” she said.

  “Are you staying with your parents?”

  “God no,” she replied with a short laugh. “My mother as good as disowned me months ago.”

  He looked at her in confusion. “Then what’s going on?”

  “Well, you see, I’m staying with a friend now,” she told him, “an old friend.”

  “You mean, you were, while I was gone,” he said.

  “No, I mean, I am,” she corrected him. “Look, the last eight months have been pure hell for me. I’ve been analyzed, and scrutinized, and brutalized. I never told you any of it, since you had your own problems, but it was awful, and it never stopped. And what I need right now is to be away from here for a while.”

  “But you’re coming back soon,” he said.

  “No, not for a while, I don’t think.”

  “What are you talking about?” he asked. “We’re married. You’re my wife. We belong together. We can move someplace else if that’s what you want. But I’ve been dreaming of this moment the whole time I was in that awful place. The moment when I could hold you again, and kiss you, and tell you how much I love you.”

  He got up off the bed, and tried to take her in his arms, but she slipped away from him.

  “Please don’t,” she said. “I’m just very confused right now. I need time to think things through, work things out.”

  “Can’t we work things out together?” he wanted to know. “Isn’t that what married people do?”

  “Please,” she said, “don’t make this any harder for me than it already is. I need to go. I just came to tell you that I’ll be in touch.”

  “Wait a minute,” he cried. “Which friend? What’s her name? What’s her number? How can I reach you?”

  “I’ll call you,” she said. “I promise”

  Before Corey could comprehend what was happening, she was gone. Dazed, he stumbled after her, yanking open the front door in time to see her climb into a shiny black BMW and drive away.

  He stared in the direction of the car long after it turned the corner and disappeared. What had happened, he wondered, dazed, his head throbbing. What had it all been for? He couldn’t think straight. All he ever wanted was to serve his country and live happily with his wife. He had survived months of hell, and headaches, and nightmares, and gastroenteritis worse than anything he had experienced on the Jackson, clinging to that dream, and now here he was, with his career probably in ruins, and Elise gone. He didn’t understand. What had it all been for?

  “So tell me, was it the right verdict?” Nina Bendali asked. “Legally, it’s always the right verdict, you know that,” her husband told her.

  She gave him a nudge. “Yes, I know that,” she said. “But that’s not what I’m asking you. And I’m not asking you to breach any legal ethics, either. I’m simply asking if you think justice was served.”

  Abraham Bendali shrugged because he was unbearably tired and ready to put the trial behind him. “Who knows?” he replied.

  The doorbell in Magnolia rang at seven-fifteen. Thinking it was one of the more brazen reporters who were still laying claim to her lawn, Dana peered through a side window. Judith Purcell stood on the front porch. It was a long moment before Dana could bring herself to open the door.

  “Oh good, you are here,” Judith said breathlessly. “I was beginning to think you weren’t.”

  “I haven’t been answering the door,” Dana told her, nodding in the direction of the newshounds for explanation.

  “I just heard about the verdict,” Judith explained. “I took a chance you’d be home.”

  “Did you?” Dana murmured.

  Judith looked dreadful. She wore no makeup and there were heavy dark circles under her eyes, her hair was all stringy, she had probably lost ten pounds, and she looked as though she hadn’t changed her clothes in days. With a deep sigh, Dana stood aside and let her in.

  “Congratulations,” the friend from childhood said. “You pulled it off. I have to tell you, I didn’t really think you would.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Well, I mean, I knew you could, but considering all the public pressure there was to convict, I didn’t think the jury would have the gumption to acquit.”

  “It was a strong jury,” Dana said.

  Judith looked around, noticing the emptiness. “It sure is quiet around here,” she observed. “Where’s Sam? Where’s Molly?”

  “Molly’s in Port Townsend, visiting with my folks for a while.”

  “Good idea,” Judith said with a nod. “And Sam?”

  Dana squared her shoulders. “Sam’s gone,” she said.

  “Gone where?”

  “Gone wherever husbands go when they discover they’ve been deceived, I guess. He’s left me.”

  “Left you?” Judith gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as if to keep her words in, and she looked as if she might actually faint. “Oh my God, you never told him?”

  Dana shrugged. “I meant to,” she said. “And then, as time went by, I guess it was just easier not to.”

  “I never dreamt—I wouldn’t have—I didn’t realize… I am so sorry.”

  “Well, that’s the way things go, someti
mes.”

  “But it’s all my fault,” Judith cried, tears filling her eyes and beginning to stream down her cheeks. “It’s all my fault.”

  “Is it?” Dana asked without expression.

  “I’m the one who told,” Judith sobbed. “I didn’t mean to. I thought he cared about me. I thought I could trust him.”

  “Why would it even have come up?” Dana wondered wearily. “Why would my personal life have become food for conversation in the first place?”

  “It was all a mistake,” Judith whimpered. “I’d just come from the bank. They were going to foreclose on my house. Tom told me I could make a lot of money if I had a story to tell, and pay off all my debts. He was sure I knew some juicy tidbits about you.”

  “So you did.”

  “But I told him no, I wouldn’t do anything like that. I didn’t care how desperate I was. But then he gave me wine to drink, and I was so upset I guess I drank too much of it. And it just slipped out. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought he was a handyman, and that I mattered to him. I didn’t know he was a reporter.”

  “You know you could have come to me if you were in trouble.”

  Judith shook her head. “I’ve always come to you, and you’ve always bailed me out,” she said. “But even you couldn’t have helped me this time. Aside from the mortgage, I was more than fifty thousand dollars in debt. You weren’t in any position to get me out of that kind of trouble.”

  Dana opened her mouth to tell her about the gallery in Pioneer Square, and closed it again. What would be the point, she reasoned. What was done was done. “I see,” she murmured.

  “Oh God, I can’t believe how stupid I was,” Judith said. “I thought he loved me. I was actually planning a future around him. I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again. And if I’ve cost you your marriage, I don’t know how I’m going to live with myself.”

  Dana wanted to hang on to her anger, because it was easier to blame Judith than to blame herself. But even as she tried, she felt it slipping away.

  “If it’s cost me my marriage, it’s my fault, not yours,” she said heavily. “Go home, take a hot bath, eat something fattening, and go to bed. I forgive you.”

  Joshua and Big Dug sat in their favorite bar, nursing a beer, and watching the reaction to the verdict on television. Sporadic street fights had broken out, there were a few spontaneous demonstrations, and a little vandalism had taken place during the afternoon and on into the evening, someone having thought it appropriate to smear graffiti across the entire north face of the courthouse. But nothing happened that the police weren’t able to handle quickly and efficiently.

  “What does it mean?” Joshua asked.

  “I guess it means, in the eyes of the law, he didn’t do it,” Big Dug told him.

  “But I saw him,” Joshua said.

  “No, you just think you saw him,” Big Dug corrected him.

  Joshua frowned. “Is everyone mad at me because he’s not in jail anymore?”

  “Who’s mad at you? No one’s mad at you,” Big Dug told him. “The reason he’s not in jail has nothing to do with you. He’s not in jail because the people who decide these things decided that he didn’t bomb Hill House.”

  “And its not my fault?”

  “No, it’s not your fault.”

  Joshua digested this information for a moment. “But if the delivery man didn’t set fire to Hill House,” he said finally, “who did?”

  The call Dana had been hoping for came at eight-thirty.

  “I just wanted to say congratulations,” Sam said. “I know how much winning this case meant to you.”

  “To tell you the truth,” Dana replied, “it didn’t turn out to mean as much as I thought it would.”

  “Well, I guess now it’s on to the next big one. After this, there’ll be no stopping you.”

  “I quit Cotter Boland today,” she said.

  There was a sudden silence at the other end of the line. “Why did you do that?” he asked slowly.

  “For a lot of reasons,” she told him. “Not the least of which is that I think I need to reevaluate my priorities.”

  “But I don’t understand,” he said. “You got Latham off. You won the biggest case in Seattle history. You could write your own ticket at the place now.”

  “You may be right,” she concurred. “On the other hand, maybe getting to that point didn’t turn out to be all it was cracked up to be.”

  “What are you going to do? Join another firm or hang out your own shingle?”

  “Right now, I’m going to go out to Port Townsend for a while and be with Molly,” she said. “Who knows, maybe I’ll even stay out there, and go to work with my father. We always talked about doing that. Reid & Reid, we were going to be. Well, I think Reid & McAuliffe sounds pretty good, too.”

  “It would be a very different kind of life,” Sam observed, and she knew what he meant: less demanding, less dramatic, less star-studded.

  “That’s true,” she allowed. “But maybe I don’t really need some of the things I always thought I did. I’d like to think that I’m not totally intractable, that I can change.”

  “I would, too,” he murmured.

  “Anyway, it occurred to me that there’s no point in your keeping another place now,” Dana went on. “You could come back and stay here. It’s your home, and it’s where Molly should be able to come when she wants to be with you. And I won’t be around.”

  “Sure, I can do that,” he said tentatively. “But I’d like to think I can come out to Port Townsend, too, sometime.”

  “Of course you can,” she said quickly. “Anytime at all. I didn’t mean to imply you wouldn’t be welcome there. I just meant…”

  “It won’t be for a while though, you understand,” he cautioned her. “Maybe a long while.”

  “I understand,” she said. “I didn’t mean to rush you. Whatever you want. There’s plenty of time.”

  They were silent for a moment then.

  “So you really quit Cotter Boland, did you?” he said, and there was a mixture of wonder and delight in his voice.

  “I really did.”

  “I never would’ve thought it.”

  She smiled into the telephone. “I love you, Sam,” she said softly. “I know I haven’t shown it like I should have, and I know I did an awful thing that you have every right not to forgive me for, but I do love you. The irony is, I’m only now beginning to realize how much. Now, when it might be too late.”

  There was a pause then, and Dana heard a deep sigh before she heard his words.

  “I know,” he whispered. “I know.”

  It was nine o’clock when, uninvited, Corey made his way through a persistent rain to Damon Feary’s home in Woodinville.

  “Hey kid, you’re looking great, all things considered,” Feary said, breaking into a big grin when he answered the knock at the door. “I heard about the verdict. You beat the rap. That’s good.”

  “Yeah, no thanks to you,” Corey said. “You almost did me in on the witness stand.”

  Feary gave a careless chuckle. “You mean about the terrorist stuff? Well, I had no choice, now did I? I had to answer their damn questions. But no harm, no foul, as they say.” He still stood in the doorway. “Listen, I hate to disappoint you, when you’ve come all this way, but there’s no meeting tonight.”

  “I know,” Corey said. “It’s you I came to see.”

  “Oh?” Feary responded. “Well, I’d like to oblige, but this isn’t a real good time.”

  Looking past him, Corey could see that the inside of the little log house was filled with packing boxes. “Going somewhere?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” Feary acknowledged. “The wife and I decided it was time to move on.”

  “You mean, your work here is done, and it’s time to find another city with another clinic… and another patsy?”

  Feary shrugged. “I guess you could say that.”

  Without warning, a right arm swun
g around with mighty force, the fist catching the carpenter full in the jaw, smashing it, and sending him sprawling.

  “You son of a bitch, you set me up,” Corey cried.

  Feary lay on the rough wood floor, bleeding from his nose to his mouth. “We had to steer the cops to someone,” he slurred through the pain, “so there’d be a trial.”

  Corey stared down at him. “All those months I rotted in jail, I thought I’d screwed up. I was sick with the guilt. But I didn’t screw up, did I? It was you. Right from the start. You rigged that timer. I set it for two o’clock in the morning, so that no one would get hurt. I made that very clear. No one was supposed to get hurt!”

  “Grow up, kid,” the carpenter retorted, spitting out a dislodged tooth. “You jumped at the chance to play in the big leagues.” Grasping the edge of the door, he slowly pulled himself to his feet. “What did you think this was all about? Something nice and antiseptic like Portland? We found out just how much good that did—a couple of paragraphs in the local paper. Sorry, but this time, we were after everyone’s attention. And to get it, we needed a body count.”

  Then calmly, but firmly, he shut the door in Corey Latham’s face.

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF SUSAN R. SLOAN

  AN ISOLATED INCIDENT

  “Intoxicating suspense…the thrills come one a minute.”

  —KIRKUS REVIEWS

  “There’s plenty to keep the pages turning.”

  —BOOKLIST

  “A suspenseful and provocative thriller.”

  —PUBLIC WEEKLY

  “A well-crafted puzzle…a poignant love story…top-grade entertainment.”

  —SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE

  “A great story…a challenge of moral strength….An Isolated Incident is successful on many levels.”

  —NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

  GUILT BY ASSOCIATION

  “Engrossing… invites favorable comparison to the work of another trial lawyer, Scott Turow.”

  —NEW YORK NEWSDAY

  “As timeless as any good yarn….Its climax is a tense courtroom showdown that ends with a genuine surprise.”

  —SEATTLE TIME/POST-INTELLIGENCER