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Blood Secrets

Page 22

by Jones, Craig


  I leveled the gun on Regina.

  “Don’t come near me,” I said. “Don’t touch me or so help me I’ll put a bullet in that machine that’s supposed to be your heart.” She drew back. When the momentary shock slid from her eyes, a grin slid into her face. “So help me.”

  “You’d really like to, wouldn’t you?”

  “Right this minute, yes, I would like to very much. Just don’t touch me. I don’t ever want you to touch me again.”

  “Who in hell do you think you are!”

  “I know who I am, Regina.” Don’t cry, stop crying. “And what I am is not superior at all if you’re my daughter. Now get away from me and stay away.”

  She yanked herself free from Frank and joined the huddle surrounding Vivian. Leo came out of that huddle. His lips were white, his face nearly purple. He started toward me.

  “You stay away from me too,” I said. “I want everybody to stay away from me.”

  Jack grabbed Leo’s arm and pulled him back into the huddle. Frank sat down next to me and stroked my arm.

  “Give me the gun, Irene. I won’t let any of them near you.”

  I gave it to him and collapsed against his chest. Gloria stroked my hair.

  “I love you, Frank, I do love you.”

  “Shhhh. I know. I’m here.”

  I didn’t wake up until the police arrived. I don’t know exactly how much time elapsed, but it had been time enough for Regina and Virgil to escape. After I had fainted, Frank had carried me up to one of the bedrooms. Leaving it, with one of the policemen gripping my arm, I was certain that it was Regina I had shot. Not until I got downstairs and saw Vivian smiling in the chair did I remember what had happened. Everyone was gathered in the living room. The two women were crying softly, sitting in their original places on the sofa. I leaned against the bar, with Frank and Gloria on either side of me.

  Everyone, including the police, seemed to be waiting for something. Something turned out to be someone. The chief or the captain or whatever they call themselves arrived and took in the situation with one officious glance. He looked at Vivian dispassionately, then at me the same way. One policeman began to explain to him and finished with a long sigh of familiarity before he added, “Some family reunion, eh?”

  Only two of the bullets had struck Vivian. The other two were found in the arm and the leg of the white chair. This, my lawyer told me, might prove beneficial to my plea of temporary insanity, but I can’t remember the reason he gave. I can’t even recall the trial in any sequential fashion. The wheels of justice move through verbal muck, advancing one day and sticking the next, while the people in charge argue over whether to push or pull. And my lawyer, Mr. Bates, informed me in no uncertain terms that my demeanor in the courtroom was adding extra weight to his load:

  “Mrs. Mattison, I do appreciate the fact you are level-headed and cooperate with the court, but for credibility’s sake your image in there has to coincide with the circumstances of our case. The jurors look more concerned than you do, and that is never a good sign. Your daughter’s disappearance and her refusal to surface is extremely damaging. And I don’t have to tell you what McPhee’s testimony is doing for the prosecution. You’ve got to show some kind of reaction to things that are said, some expression. Otherwise, it’s going to be uphill all the way to the end.”

  It was uphill until very nearly the end. Leo, Jack, Tom, the two wives, two of Frank’s other brothers—all of them denied Vivian was Frank’s mother. Frank, the prosecution contended, had manufactured the lie to delude me, he had defiled his retarded sister and driven her to suicide, and he had taken advantage of his daughter as well—hence her fear to show herself. Gloria’s account of Vivian’s admission and Regina’s conversion pleased Mr. Bates: her frustration and rage coming out in tears (something I was incapable of all through the trial), she gave a vivid picture of Vivian’s smug assurance and contempt. Although it made colorful copy in the papers, it ultimately would carry very little weight with the jury, for the simple reason that Gloria was outnumbered. One thing I had in my favor—and a very small thing, Mr. Bates assured me—was that Leo had waited almost an hour before calling the police, time enough for Regina and Virgil to disappear. But it was Frank’s car they had taken and Frank could not figure out how they had got his keys. The car was found abandoned fifty miles south of Ridgeway.

  Considering the flimsiness of our case, Frank and Mr. Bates proposed a new tactic: “Your husband and I have decided it would be best if he went along with the prosecution’s accusations. They’ve already set it up for us; all he has to do is confess he purposely misled you. You’ll have a chance that way, a very good chance.” Frank squeezed my hand.

  “No.”

  Mr. Bates leaned forward. “Let me put it to you this way: it’s your only chance.”

  “He’s not bowing to them and neither am I. I did it once; I won’t do it again.”

  “Irene,” said Frank, “if this benefits the case, what does it matter how we bend?”

  “Because it’s time to break it with them. They’ve held on to you all these years with the truth. I won’t let them hold on now with a lie.”

  They left, but Mr. Bates soon returned alone. He sat facing me, but he watched the pen he was twirling between his fingers. He spoke deliberately.

  “History is full of martyrs who died for the truth. I have my own theory that most of them didn’t happen upon a cause. They went out looking for one, one they knew could fulfill their fame-in-death wish.”

  “I didn’t go out looking for a cause.”

  “No, but when you found one, you took a gun to it. All right, you made a righteous accomplishment. Now you are being offered the opportunity for a second accomplishment—getting the verdict we want. And yet you turn down that opportunity.”

  “I won’t buy a verdict with Frank’s name.”

  “So you’ll risk a prison term and a long separation from him? Mrs. Mattison, your husband needs you more than he needs his name. You committed murder for your daughter, but you will not bend for your husband.”

  “I did not commit murder for my daughter. I knew she was already lost to us before I fired that gun. I killed that woman for myself. I’ve had plenty of time to think, Mr. Bates, and I’ve thought about my motive. You talk about righteousness. My killing Vivian was not done out of righteousness. It was done out of humiliation and shame. Let me tell you something. I married a decent man. His decency, his integrity, his love for me, are as tangible as that pen you’re playing with. For nineteen years, I had daily proof of them. But when he ran up against this—this plot, I chose to doubt him, to wipe out years of evidence with one single suspicion. I chose to believe Regina even after I caught her lying to me about school and I chose to believe Vivian, a perfect stranger, because she flattered me with some cheap sympathy. And so did I love him any better than his daughter and his mother did? Vivian knew I didn’t; she told me so that night. And I shot her for it.” I was proceeding calmly, rationally, and yet my throat tightened and the tears started down my face. “I’m no martyr. Far from it. I turned Regina over to his family and in a way I turned myself over to them too.”

  “You’re distorting the situation. You seem to forget he could have told you the truth years ago.”

  “I haven’t forgotten that. But with another woman he might have told the truth. Another woman might have made him feel safe.” I took the pen he was playing with and held it tight to steady myself. “He spent all those years loving and protecting his daughter the best way he knew how. Maybe he did it wrong, but he did it single-handedly. But the failure isn’t all his. It’s mine too. And Regina’s. Mostly Regina’s—I can’t help but believe that. I’m not going to offer him up with a lie to make Regina and myself look good. We’ll just have to continue as we have been and hope.”

  “Then hope for a miracle.” />
  Mr. Bates did his best to create a miracle. Our next witness was the reporter who had photographed me scrubbing the graffiti off the front of the school. It seemed most of the jurors were impressed with this, but some of them changed their expressions when the prosecution pointed out that this gesture of mine had been “extreme and reactionary.”

  We were nearing the end. When Frank would come to see me, he would don a smile and reaffirm his faith in the jury. But there was always doubt in his eyes when his words ran out. Invariably, I turned the conversation to the weather and world news. We never mentioned Regina.

  I rehearsed facing the verdict, although I said nothing to Mr. Bates. My resignation seemed almost sacrilegious next to his perseverance. He was still stinging from my refusal to go along with his and Frank’s plan, but at the same time this fed his determination to win. There was a growing glint in his eye whenever he turned that pen round and round between his hands.

  It was a Monday morning when I entered the courtroom and saw the pen not in his hands, its customary place, but stuck squarely in his pocket. He gripped my arm and whispered in my ear.

  “We may have ourselves a deus ex machina.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have one more witness. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  “Who is it?”

  “No one you know. Someone’s volunteered to come forward. This might make all the difference.”

  After the opening rituals, the judge called upon Mr. Bates. “You wish to call another witness?”

  “Yes, Your Honor. I call Wanda Lowell to the stand.”

  Peck High had its share of poor kids, mostly black and Mexican, but the relaxation of the dress code and the adoption of denim as the national uniform of youth had successfully eliminated the conspicuousness of poverty. Wanda Lowell was conspicuously poor. Her face was gaunt and sallow, her hair thin and lusterless. Her shoulders rounded to make a hollow of her chest, while her hipbones jutted forward like two tiny buttresses. The yellow and white in her dress cruelly accentuated her colorless appearance; the striped material did not match up at the seams. It was painfully apparent this woman had no time for, or perhaps no conception of, even modest vanity. I looked at her ankles, and remembering Frank’s story, I half expected to see socks sliding down them into her shoes. Of course, she didn’t wear socks. She wore white heels, dulled and cracked by several layers of liquid polish.

  She was sworn in and gave the court her maiden name, place of residence, and former relationship to Frank. Mr. Bates began his questioning, and several of the jury leaned forward in their seats.

  “Mrs. Lowell, will you please tell the court how you came to be here today?”

  “I been reading about this in the paper and I seen the lies Mr. Mattison’s brothers were telling about—”

  “Objection!”

  “Your Honor, Mrs. Lowell’s testimony will clarify her accusation.”

  “Objection overruled. Proceed.”

  “Well, that’s what they were,” said Wanda Lowell. “It looked like no one knew Mr. Mattison’s side of the story except me, so that’s why I decided to speak up.”

  “Will you tell the court why you waited so long?”

  “My husband didn’t want me to get mixed up in it. I had pneumonia in January and lost three weeks at work. And I don’t get paid for today, either.”

  Mr. Bates guided her through an explanation of how she had known Frank from the third grade on. She made it clear—and Mr. Bates underscored the fact—that the two of them had never been romantically involved.

  “And you never went out with him on a date? You never had a romance with him?”

  “He didn’t have any money for dates. He never went out with anyone. He was too busy looking after his sister. She was retarded.”

  Several of the jury sat up and leaned forward.

  “Now tell us about the evening you visited the Mattison house.”

  “It wasn’t visiting; no one saw me. It was in the winter, around Christmas time. A couple of days before, I asked him to go to a school dance, the kind where the girls are supposed to ask the boys. I asked him in front of his friends and it embarrassed him. He didn’t have any money to go to a dance. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but in school there were always too many people around. I knew him and his sister slept in this shack behind their house and I was going home after a baby-sitting job and their place was on the way so I figured I could talk to him alone. I took the shortcut through a field so I wouldn’t have to go past the house. Well, I got nervous thinking he might get mad at me for coming around at night. I stood behind the shack awhile, trying to make up my mind. Then someone opened the back door of the house and I heard voices coming. I was scared if I ran they’d see me, so I stayed where I was. I heard them pound on the door and Regina started crying inside.”

  “And who was it pounding on the door?”

  “I couldn’t see but I could hear them. Two young men and a woman. They broke the door open and—”

  “They broke it open? Something was blocking it?”

  “I heard something crack and then something heavy fell on the floor. They got the door open and there was this kind of fight inside. Somebody got knocked against the wall.”

  “Were you able to look through a window?”

  “There wasn’t no windows.”

  “This shack that Mr. Mattison and his sister slept in had no windows at all?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I see. Go on, please.”

  “I looked for a window. I come around to the one side, and then around the back to the other side, and there wasn’t a window. I was standing just around the corner from the front when Regina and the woman come out of the shack. Regina kept saying she didn’t want to go in the house, but the woman said it’s all right, he loves you.”

  “Who was the woman?”

  “Vivian Mattison.”

  “When she said ‘he loves you,’ did she say who the man was?”

  “No. She just took Regina in the house and closed the door.”

  “What about the two men? What were they doing while Vivian and Regina were in the house?”

  “They stayed in the shack. They must have been holding Mr. Mattison down, because he kept begging them to let him go. Then Vivian come out of the house and the two men went in. She went in the shack and there was some talking, but it was real low and I couldn’t make out what they were saying. I moved around the corner close to the door and then all of a sudden it opened. I sort of squeezed myself up against the wall because if I moved the snow would crunch. Then I heard Mr. Mattison tell her he hated her and the rest of them and he was going to get the cops after them. She was standing in the door and she laughed and she said, ‘You wouldn’t call the cops on your mother, would you?’ and he said she was a liar. She said the cops would haul him away to the nut house if he ever opened his mouth.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “She went back in the house. She didn’t even close the door to the shack. He had to do it.”

  “Did you go into the shack?”

  “No. I ran home. I cut back through the woods and I fell on a stick. It stuck right in my leg. I still got the scar.” She pointed to a spot below her right knee.

  “Did you ever mention this incident to Mr. Mattison?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It would’ve shamed him. That kind of thing you don’t want no one to know.”

  “How soon after this December night did Regina Mattison kill herself?”

  “Couple of months. April, I think.”

  “April ninth, to be exact. Did you ever return to the shack?”

  “No. I never went near that house again.”

  “Did you have any
contact with Mr. Mattison after he left Ridgeway?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Lowell.” He turned to the prosecution. “Your witness.”

  Naturally, the prosecution did its best to discredit Wanda Lowell’s testimony. How, after all these years, could she recall exact words, exact dialogue? What was her real interest in the defendant’s husband? Was she secretly in love with him? Wanda grew indignant at the last question and told her questioner she was a married woman and a mother and she hadn’t come here to be insulted. I watched the jury. They were impressed.

  The wrap-up came on a day of record-breaking temperatures. Collars wilted, faces drooped, magazines and newspapers were used as fans. Among the jury I sensed a definite anxiousness for the whole thing to be over with. For some of them, what had begun as a privileged adventure had now degenerated into a ritual of tedium. In his summary, my lawyer flattered them, caressed and cooled them with his mellifluous voice.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, you have had the most difficult task any jury can have. You have sat through a trial which has proceeded mostly on hearsay. Yet a few facts have been produced which cannot be overlooked. One, Irene Mattison has devoted fifteen years to teaching children. She has been sensitive to their needs as well as society’s needs. It was a child’s welfare, her own daughter’s, that drove her to murder. It was outrage over an unspeakable depravity that compelled her to pick up a gun and use it. It was Vivian Snell’s clever deceit and vengeful disregard for a child’s life that overruled the defendant’s rational powers. And if we look closely, what other course of action was open to her?”

  Not once did he turn his back on them. Instead, he leaned forward, seeking out one pair of eyes after another until he had enlisted them all. He orated but it did not sound like an oration. His tone suggested he was telling them something they already knew.

 

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