Rabid

by T K Kenyon

  Leila wasn’t a harmless mote. She was as poisonous as if she had been weaned on foxglove and nightshade, an apoptosis ligand incarnate.

  Saving anyone she latched onto was impossible.

  Apoptosis was her nature.

  George Grossberg smiled and pressed down his steel wool hair. They had gotten through the first few questions quickly, as they planned.

  George reached the end of his questioning and walked back to his desk. As an apparent afterthought, he asked Leila, “And what was your relationship with Conroy Sloan at that time?”

  Here was the place for the equivocating answer. Your relationship and at that time meant that she should answer about what she thought their relationship was on that night, not what he thought and not previously. If the defense raked up other muck, they would look like they were trying to smear the murder victim.

  The prosecution had decided to sacrifice Peggy as Conroy’s mistress and thus the sole root of Bev’s rage because they needed Leila to look like an unbiased witness.

  But Leila wasn’t an unbiased witness. She’d fucked Conroy until he had ripped apart his whole life, and his wife and his daughters had been caught up in his insanity.

  It was Conroy’s own fault that he had been entangled, but she was the spider and she was the web.

  It would hinder her professionally when the story slithered out that she had been screwing her professor, but maybe it would warn off any stupid man who thought he should get involved with her, like the Roman-collared Monsignor who had clung to her last night, who now sat behind the sad Beverly Sloan. That Leila had liked Dante, that there had been some small tenderness toward him, that she thought of last night as one perfect night meant nothing. Her presence and her flesh would destroy Dante, too.

  The planned answer was, He was my mentor for my PhD studies, and we were friends.

  Leila inhaled one last breath and smiled her demure student smile.

  She said, “Conroy and I had an adulterous, sexual affair for seven months, but I broke it off with him a week before that night. That night, he told me he loved me and he had left his wife to marry me.”

  “Objection!” George Grossberg yelled.

  Judge Leonine Washington licked her teeth and said, “You can’t object to your own witness answering your own question.”

  Leila shouted over their arguing, “I told Conroy that I wouldn’t marry him, that I wouldn’t sacrifice the work and the science and myself for him, and that I’d sabotage him professionally if he persisted. He tried to grab me, and I hit him in the face, his left eye.” She took a deep breath and looked past the ADA Georgina with her frizzy hair slumped on the desk, past the cameras with the towering, blazing lights, over to the defense table.

  Bev had wrapped her Rosary beads around her hands, straining against them, and tears fell from her chin onto the red, swollen areas of hand flesh puffing between the black beads and silver chain.

  God, another betrayal, but Leila could save her and her daughters from Conroy’s ultimate stupidity.

  Dante was half-standing behind Bev, clutching the witness rail.

  Heath Sheldon’s mouth had fallen apart and his eyes swelled until he looked like he had witnessed a three hundred yard hole in one and the winning touchdown and a record-shattering home run and the do-you-believe-in-miracles hockey goal.

  Leila said slowly and clearly, and she almost believed it herself, “Conroy punched the wall, and then he threatened to kill himself.”

  ~~~~~

  Heath Sheldon bobbled. He was an entire Californian crowd leaping to its feet but dropping back into his chair at the same time because he should have known all about what she was going to say though he hadn’t because she wouldn’t talk to him and because he didn’t want the jury to see him celebrating winning the impossible case.

  He could do the happy chicken dance when he got back to the office.

  Sober, he had to look sober and respectable because absolutely literally the jury wasn’t out yet. He still had to finagle the jury to make sure they understood that the Leila chica had corroborated his whole cockamamie alternate theory of the crime and that he had won.

  His client crumpled and wept into her hands.

  Heath Sheldon plucked tissues from his briefcase and dropped them without looking beside her damp hands and one on her soft brown hair, where it clung like an old-fashioned church veil.

  ~~~~~

  Dante unclamped one hand from the rail and reached for Bev’s soft shoulder.

  He should comfort Bev, who had not loved him and had used him, even while he longed for Leila.

  Bev reached up to his hand on her shoulder and grasped his fingers.

  Leila watched them, especially their intertwining hands, from the witness box.

  Last night, lying in Leila’s dark bedroom with his sprained arms shackled over his head, Dante stared at the red gauze striped with streetlight draping her bed, swallowing rage.

  “Unlock me,” he whispered.

  “Why?” Her voice was hoarse and she swiveled, sitting on the edge of the bed next to the striated window.

  “I want to leave.”

  “Maybe I’ll keep you here.” Her gravelly voice was flat and angry.

  “I can break the headboard.”

  “It’s wrought iron. Maybe I’ll bring home some gay guys to shag the hetero.”

  His breath caught in his throat and he coughed. “What do you want?”

  Metal slid on metal, and a spark jumped in midair. Leila’s cigarette lighter glowed brighter than the slatted blinds behind her. “You wanted to know what it’s like. Afterward, when your head is full of lies and you hate yourself, you know that it’s going to happen again, and again, and there’s no way out.”

  Powerless.

  Leila owned a large dog, probably fierce when he was younger, and a gun.

  She had jabbed that vulnerable spot on his side because she knew where it was, and she had mentioned punching Conroy when he grabbed her.

  In the church’s parking lot, when Conroy had grabbed her, she slipped his grasp and jammed his arm with easy skill.

  Her walls were reinforced with thick plaster.

  Even her bed was guarded by veils.

  She had created a well-armed fortress because she was powerless, a mote.

  She smoked in the night, and the tip glowed orange. “He was in my grade school every day, all day, waiting for me to make a mistake so he could haul me off to his office for punishment.” Leila unlocked the handcuffs, stood on the opposite side of the bed so she was a dark, lean silhouette against those glaring window slats. “Go home.”

  Dante dragged the red silken sheets over his skin that was still moist from her mouth and rubbed his chafed wrists. “I am sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

  “You don’t know shit. I should have used the strap-on and raped you until your ass was bleeding instead of just the Cosmo girl prostate massage with the finger dildo. I should have called the guys and let them pass you around. Go home.”

  “Leila, I want to help you.”

  Her breathing rhythm changed to staccato, and her silhouetted hand touched her face. Cigarette smoke streamed toward the ceiling. “I don’t want your help.”

  “He was a monster, Leila. If you tell me who he is, the Dominicans will track him down. If he is still a priest, he will be removed to the monastery. If he is not, we will find him anyway.”

  Her shadow nodded. “He’s in New Mexico, still a priest.”

  “Then the Dominicans can have him. Tell me his name. He will be on a plane for Italy in a few days.”

  “It’s over. I don’t want to testify and I don’t want to see him.”

  “There are no courts. You do not have to talk to anyone else. You only have to tell me, once.”

  She smoked, and her exhaled jet of smoke boiled in the air. “I wouldn’t have to tell anyone else?”

  “No. Just tell me, only once, here. Tell me the names and places, and that will be all. It will be over. Yo
u will not have to think about it ever again.”

  She paused, considering, and Dante thought that she would, but she said, “It was a long time ago,” and shook her head. “I’m okay, now.”

  She was not okay, and Dante knew she wasn’t because she had shown him her fear and powerlessness and pain, but saying that wouldn’t convince her. “Has he hurt anyone else?”

  She smoked the cigarette. “When I was in high school, he had someone else.”

  “Since then?”

  “No. He’s not working at a school anymore. He can’t get at little girls.”

  “There are no schools around where he is, or houses, or people?”

  Leila tapped the cherry off her cigarette into an ashtray. “But he’s not working in a school.”

  “He will find more girls. Pedophiles are like rabid dogs. They fight to escape and get to children, like heroin addicts.”

  The glowing tip of her cigarette trembled in the dark. “My God. He might still be doing it.” She coughed. “All right.” She took a deep hit off the cigarette and blew it out. “His name is Sean Gelineau.”

  She talked for hours, and Leila remembered details about those years of her life and the names of other girls who the priest had stalked around the elementary school.

  Leila wouldn’t turn on a lamp. She said, “It’s easier in the dark.”

  The sheets covered Dante’s naked body. He wrote notes in the striped streetlight on a pad of paper she tossed him.

  She paced, but she didn’t cry. She opened the bedroom door, and Meth the dog trundled in and followed his mistress around the bedroom as she paced, a dark hole in the light-striped walls, occasionally resting as if her pacing and ranting were routine, though the black dog eyed Dante warily, his retinas flashing metallic green in street light in cadence with his panting doggy breath, as if the presence of someone else in the room was a variation that must be watched.

  “Was there anyone you told at the time?” he asked.

  Leila sat on the bed, her back to him. “No one who’s alive now.” She sniffed once.

  He flipped down the pages. His cramped writing, outline and bubbled side notes, filled eight sheets of paper.

  “It’s why we joined the Coptic church. My mother wouldn’t go to a non-Catholic church. So my father, from Florida, talked to my mom one last time, said that it was important that I knew my other roots, so we joined the Coptic Orthodox church, and I changed high schools.” Leila sighed. “It’s three in the morning. I have to be in court in a few hours.”

  “Leila, I am so sorry.” He hesitated as he reached, because he was a naked man in her bed and she had been a raped child. He touched the rough lace on her shoulder and braced in case she turned around fighting.

  She flinched, but she didn’t run, and she didn’t punch him.

  He stole his arm across her shoulder.

  She stiffened.

  He draped several folds of the sheet across his lap and wrapped his arms around her.

  Her hands jerked, splayed in the air, and then touched his back. Her neck bent. Her lips touched his collarbone, and she started to pull the sheets away from his body.

  “No,” he said and adjusted her head so her cheek pressed his shoulder.

  Her body quaked, but she didn’t cry.

  They slowly descended to the sheets, and he touched his lips to her lace-encrusted shoulder, just once, before he slept.

  ~~~~~

  George Grossberg stumbled back to his chair and said, “The prosecution is finished with this witness.” He knew the jury was watching, but his head fell into his hands and he swallowed the chunky sick in his mouth.

  Heath Sheldon leapt to his polished loafers.

  Judge Leonine Washington wagged a finger at Sheldon. “Oh, I think we all need to break for lunch. And you, counselors,” she crooked her finger at the Georgies, “in my chambers, now.”

  ~~~~~

  Leila strode through the courtroom, trying to outrun Dante and Beverly and the lawyers and the people with the cameras and bright lights.

  Thinking she could outrun them was pretty dumb, since she had to pass them to get out. She trotted.

  “Leila!” Dante swam over an older lady and jiggled her knitting.

  Leila was almost to the door, right beside the scruffy guy holding a white notepad in front of the camera that resembled a bazooka, when Dante touched her shoulder and she shied out from under his hand as if he had jolted her with a cattle prod.

  She ducked through the door as a scruffy guy aimed a smaller camera at her.

  Dante caught the door and jumped after her, but she zigzagged through the crowd and ducked into a ladies room.

  When Dante’s arms had wrapped around her last night, when the priest’s naked body had form-fit to hers, she had thought he wanted to fuck her, but he hadn’t tried, and she had lain awake, waiting for him to roll over and for his hands and mouth to hold her down, but he hadn’t, and she didn’t know what to do now.

  ~~~~~

  After lunch, Leila reaffirmed that she was still under oath and Heath Sheldon cross-examined her, reaffirming the scenario she had volunteered at the end of the prosecution’s examination.

  Dante sat behind Beverly Sloan, his head hanging in his hands, while Beverly Sloan silently fiddled with her Rosary beads. Behind them, spectators scribbled notes, and the three black cameras flanked by blazing light trees swiveled and alternately rested on Leila, the attorneys, Beverly, or the Judge.

  Leila had hidden in the ladies’ room the whole lunch break, not even venturing outside for a cigarette. Nicotine-hungry worms scurried through her mind while Sheldon phrased his questions so precisely that she only had to say “yes” or “no.”

  Leila was good at not answering too much. The oral defense of the PhD candidacy exam will beat the tendency to expound right out of a person. Anything you say is the basis for another question, so the trick is to answer but say as little as possible. Leila had done her comps in her second year.

  Dante sat behind Beverly Sloan, his head resting on his arms. The note he had slipped to Heath Sheldon during the prosecution’s disastrous examination read, Be careful. You resemble someone who hurt her. Don’t get too physically close. And she’s exhausted.

  Heath frowned and scribbled back, You didn’t threaten her, did you? Bribe her? Change her testimony in any way?

  Dante shook his head, and Heath blew a long, relieved breath into the middle of the courtroom.

  While he questioned Leila, he lounged against the defense table, as far away from her as he could get and still be near the jury, and he noted every time she touched her temple or massaged her neck.

  She was exhausted.

  If that priest had commanded her to lie, if he had exercised undue authority over her and she was committing perjury, Heath should stop her testimony because he must not suborn perjury, even though Leila’s testimony was very good for his client.

  Very, very good.

  But Heath didn’t know what had happened. Could have been anything. Probably was nothing. Probably nothing illegal.

  He asked, “Why did you leave Conroy Sloan alone in that apartment, if you thought he was suicidal?”

  Leila said, “Conroy Sloan was becoming more and more unreasonable. I feared he might attack me again. After Beverly Sloan arrived, I thought that he wouldn’t commit suicide with her there. I guess he hurt her arm while they were wrestling for the knife, before he stabbed himself.”

  Heath gaped but snapped his mouth closed. He waited for the Georgies to object to the blatant speculation, but they didn’t.

  His knees weakened. God loved him.

  Bev twisted the Rosary beads into a noose. Leila had said that Conroy wanted to marry her. That horrible Peggy had said the same thing. Conroy wouldn’t have lied like that. Maybe he was sick. Maybe it was that terrible virus.

  Dante listened to Leila’s contralto voice answer the lawyer’s questions. Knowing that he had ripped those memories out of her head last night a
nd now this lawyer was scalpeling precise answers out of her hours later sickened him. She wasn’t even weeping.

  He should be, but his eyes burned hot and dry.

  Last night, when her mouth had touched the skin on his shoulder, when she had tried to pull the sheet off of him, his body had cried to leap at her and bury himself in her. Leila was a bundle of nerves he had scraped raw, and she had responded to his body that way because that was how she, powerless Leila, responded to priests and to all men because, in her own words, she might as well get fucked.

  Dante’s chest and his lungs were crushed by cardiac tamponade because his heart bled.

  Heath Sheldon tossed off his last few questions just out of curiosity while he was circumnavigating the defense table, while he had Leila Faris on the stand and under oath. “Other than yourself and Peggy Strum, do you know if there were any other women with whom Conroy Sloan was carrying on sexual affairs?”

  Leila said, “Yes.”

  Heath stopped, wondering if the jury and his client needed to know yet more. “Would you tell us their names and how you know about them?”

  Leila said, “I saw Conroy and Dr. Valerie Lindh together at meetings. When I asked him about it on the night he died, he admitted a long-term, intermittent affair with her. There was also another woman named Mary, whom he mentioned a few times, but I don’t know her last name.”

  Bev turned in her seat to whisper something like Isn’t that odd? to Mary, but Mary was staring at Leila with horrified eyes and glanced back to Bev, startled. The embroidery project slid off her lap and fell on the dusty courthouse floor.

  Bev whispered, “Not you, too?”

  Mary whispered, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. It was an accident, several accidents. But I stopped. I’m so sorry.”

  Bev squeezed her Rosary beads. “You could have told me.”

  “With everything else? It was easier to bear the guilt than to do that to you. I’m so sorry.”

  Dante listened to the women whispering. If Sloan were here, Dante would punch him in the face. Wrath was leading Dante around again, but Sloan deserved some wrath.