by T K Kenyon
Heath Sheldon watched his client Bev whispering to her pale friend Mary and shook his head. He didn’t need to smear Conroy Sloan. The guy was a slimeball, and when a lawyer thinks someone is a slimeball, that’s some serious slime.
He should add Mary to his witness list.
Heath asked Leila, “Did Conroy also propose to Peggy Strum?”
Judge Leonine Washington glanced at the prosecution table, but they were furtively whispering to each other, probably blaming each other for the fiasco, and so they missed this obvious objection to Leila’s speculating or hearsay about Conroy’s actions.
So be it.
Leila said, “I think it’s entirely possible that he proposed to Peggy, and Valerie, and anyone else, and that he was lying to all of us, maybe just to get a reaction.”
Heath’s chest tightened like a heart attack. He knew he was asking her to try on the glove. “Do you think Conroy Sloan was leaving his wife?”
The girl inhaled, gathering herself. “I think he had profound emotional problems, likely precipitated by my actions and worsened by an infection with a neurotropic, psychotropic virus that he released into the lab. I think he may have told Beverly Sloan that he was leaving her so that she would beg him to stay. I think he told the other women that he wanted to marry them so they would want him.”
“Do you know how he got the bruises on his body, besides the one on his left eye, which you testified that you gave him?”
Leila nodded. “He punched the wall, so that’s the bruised knuckles. He also grabbed my arm on a previous occasion and I twisted his arm behind his back. And rough sex, of course.”
Heath could hardly breathe.
He embodied every genius courtroom lawyer all the way back to Daniel Webster’s litigation with the Devil.
He wanted to leap onto the defense table and shout his questions with his fists raised in the air.
He spun a felt-tip pen on the table lazily on the table next to his briefcase and asked, “Do ya think he might have stabbed himself?”
Heath, Leila, and Judge Washington waited three nerve-wracking, fingernail-scratching, teeth-grinding seconds for the objection on the grounds of speculation, but the Georgies were still whispering to each other, oblivious.
Leonine rolled her big brown eyes and Heath repressed the spring-loading in his calves that wanted to bounce around the courtroom. “Leila?”
Leila knew she could count on this lawyer to ask the ballsy question, especially since the demoralized prosecution attorneys had slacked off their responsibility. “Conroy Sloan was a medical doctor, and he was arrogant and probably sick with a fatal, dementing viral disease, which he might have known about and which might have affected his judgment. He probably thought he could miss all his vital organs with such a tiny knife and that everyone would rush to his bedside, and everyone would forgive him all his indiscretions. Suicide attempts, especially with less lethal means like a small knife, are usually cries for attention. He may have been actually suicidal. I’d just told him that I wouldn’t marry him and that I would destroy his career if he didn’t leave me alone.”
Leila took a deep breath. “Any of those could have been the reason that he stabbed himself.”
~~~~~
In the jury box, Tom Agosin was disgusted by the slutty witness and the tomcatting dead doctor. There was nothing to redeem this case, except perhaps the long-suffering widow at the defense table. After word had gotten around Tom’s Baptist church that he was on the jury, his pastor had approached him.
“There’s been a big shakeup over at that Catholic Church, Perpetual Help,” his young pastor Reverend Annabel Hanraets had said, shaking her head. Her curly, blonde hair bobbed. “Two priests disappeared. I don’t mean reassigned. They disappeared. Brother Samual was a friend of mine. First, one new priest came, stayed a few weeks, and then he and Sam’s assistant pastor Brother Nicolai left one day. Sam was shook up after Brother Nicolai disappeared.
“Then a new priest arrived at the parish, an Italian guy, an honest-to-God Roman Monsignor, a Jesuit, and Sam was scared of him, wouldn’t talk about him and actually spilled his coffee when I asked. Then Sam sent an email that he had been recalled to Rome and left the next day. We used to discuss theology through email and at coffeehouses, and he hasn’t emailed. It’s like he fell off the face of the Earth.”
Tom Agosin had watched the priest sitting behind Bev with a mixture of superstition and horror ever since, because he was pretty sure that the red piping on the cassock that the man had worn one day last week meant that this guy was indeed the Roman Monsignor who made other priests fall off the face of the Earth.
Gina Salerio had also seen Monsignor Dante Petrocchi-Bianchi sitting behind Beverly Sloan, and she knew exactly who he was. The Monsignor had given Gina communion both times she had been to church in the last six months, and he was counseling her friend’s son, John, though her friend wouldn’t say why John needed counseling, just that Monsignor Petrocchi-Bianchi was a good man and a good priest, and she said it with desperate conviction, often.
Weeks later, in the jury room during deliberations, Tom Agosin asked Gina if she knew anything about the Monsignor and told her what his pastor had said, and Gina told him what she knew. They didn’t know why the good Monsignor was sitting behind Beverly Sloan or what was going on at the church, but they agreed it was something important.
Tom was less convinced that it was benign. In his experience growing up in New Jersey, Italians plus people disappearing meant very bad things that you didn’t talk about.
~~~~~
Heath Sheldon finally admitted that he had no more questions for this witness.
Bev sniffled beside him, so he grabbed a wad of dry tissues out of his briefcase and handed them to her.
George Grossberg, standing straight despite the sparking pain in his neck, called Malcolm Hay to the stand.
Heath Sheldon riffled through his documents and found the single mention of Malcolm Hay as a character witness for Leila Faris.
Crap. Leila’s testimony was fine just as it was.
No one had even deposed Hay before the trial.
Malcolm entered the courtroom and saw Leila huddled in the back row and the priest sitting in the front, looking guilty.
After the usual rigmarole about his being a Scot and a couple of unprovoked, filthy glances from the court reporter who was pissed about trying to transcribe his testimony through his Scottish burr, Malcolm was duly sworn in.
Not that he gave a whit about this whole pig circus.
The prosecutor, the blonde lady attorney, asked him if he knew anything about Leila Faris and Dr. Conroy Sloan having an affair.
Malcolm’s eyelids rolled up, and his eyebrows dropped. “Och, no, that’s slander, t’is. She’d’ve had none of that. My buddy O’Malley fancied her.”
Georgina smiled and nodded. “Did you ever see anything about their relationship that suggested it was more than a mentor-mentee relationship?”
“No, never. Och.”
Heath Sheldon decided not to ask Malcolm Hay any questions. His not knowing about their relationship didn’t mean that it hadn’t existed. Leila had admitted it. Shortening his time on the stand would do just as much good as any discrediting he could have pulled off.
Malcolm didn’t remember seeing the thin stripe of red Porsche tail lights driving away from Leila that night when Conroy had returned from the NIH study section.
Even if he had remembered Conroy’s black Porsche, Malcolm wouldn’t have ratted Leila out.
That was nobody’s business but her own, t’was.
~~~~~
George Grossberg sat at the prosecution table, holding his head in his hands, while Georgina Pire stated for the record that the prosecution rested its case.
~~~~~
Chapter Twenty-One
Bev kneeled before the niche of the Virgin Mary.
The clicking of the Rosary beads comforted her. The hollow church was quiet.
She
had to pick up the girls from Lydia’s soon. Christine insisted on knowing what had happened at court, who had testified, what they said, why the judge had upheld or overturned objections.
Dinah preferred denial and chittered about cartoons.
The church door clunked open behind her. A swath of light climbed over the blue-robed Virgin.
“Bev? Is that you?” Dante’s voice rang though the church.
She twisted around and sat on the floor.
He walked up the center aisle and around to the Virgin’s niche. He spun and settled on the floor beside her, leaning against the wall, knees bent. “You finished with the lawyer quickly.”
Bev said, “He was busy. He had papers to file.” She fiddled with the black Rosary beads and dribbled them onto the floor.
“There isn’t much trial left. I testify, then your medical expert, then you, and that’s all.”
“And then I go to jail. Laura is in our will as getting the girls if we both died. She said she’ll take them for me, but I can’t bear to leave them.”
Evening sunlight reflected from the polished pews and touched Dante’s face with gold. His skin was the color of the honey oak of the crucified Christ behind the white-draped altar. Both had strong, Mediterranean features.
The Christ’s face was haggard with suffering. Dante’s eyes were gathering similar lines.
He said, “If Laura can’t take the girls,” and his voice held a note of panic, “if something happened, I would take care of them.”
This was odd. “That’s nice of you.”
He glanced up at her. “There are American schools in Roma. My apartment is too big for just me. I have too much money, professor’s salary, Monsignor’s stipend, family money. They could come back to America for university.” He looked away, over the church pews. “If they needed me, I would be there for them.”
She touched his hair, so silky and black. Damp strands of it fell through her fingers. “You’ve thought about this.”
He tucked his mussed hair into place with his fingers. “If they need some place, they are welcome. I would, or, it would, or, I don’t know.” He couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. He sank both of his hands into his hair. “They would be taken care of. I would take care of them.”
“Don’t you travel? Isn’t this what you do, go different places, help people?”
His head rested on his crossed forearms. “I don’t know what I do.”
“You’ve helped Luke. Laura says so.”
“Have I?” His voice wove around his arms and lost itself in the thin air over the pews.
“I’ll leave the girls with Laura,” she tried saying the words, “when I go to prison,” and she didn’t choke or vomit. “I think you need to help other people.”
Dante covered his face with his hands. His voice was a far-off trumpet. “It’s too hard.”
She stroked his hair. “Kids like Luke need you.”
He nodded, though his hands still covered his face.
~~~~~
Dead Doc’s Lover Says Suicide
by: Kirin Oberoi
Today in the case of the State vs. Beverly Sloan, in a devastating blow for the prosecution, Leila Sage Faris acknowledged she was one of four mistresses of the deceased Dr. Conroy Robert Sloan and that he had threatened to commit suicide the night he died.
This devastating blow for the prosecution was the capstone of Faris’s otherwise mostly uneventful testimony, which reiterated that she was at Conroy Sloan’s recently rented apartment near UNHHC before Beverly Sloan arrived, that she waited outside, that no one else went in for some time, and that she then returned to the apartment and found Conroy Sloan on the kitchen floor, unconscious and bleeding from a knife wound.
One minor addition to her anticipated testimony was that Monsignor Dr. Dante Maria Petrocchi-Bianchi, a Catholic Jesuit priest temporarily attached to the Sloans’ parish Our Lady of Perpetual Help, appeared outside the apartment and waited and entered the apartment with Faris.
Monsignor Petrocchi-Bianchi is scheduled to testify for the defense.
~~~~~
Another insomniac night pacing the rectory.
Two nights before, Dante had slept in Leila’s bed, and then she testified.
Last night, he had paced with his arms wrapped around his chest, holding his cell phone in case she called. He called her at home and on her cell. His body groaned with loneliness as his footfalls thumped the whitewashed wood of the rectory floor.
That morning, Dante had donned his full ecclesiastical regalia—Jesuit black cassock and Monsignor’s red-piped cape and stole—and at court he had sworn on the Bible that he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God.
No lightning struck him.
Heath Sheldon started with a windy explanation to the jury that since Monsignor Dr. Dante Maria Petrocchi-Bianchi, SJ, MD, PhD, was in fact a doctor (and a psychiatrist at that) and a priest (and a Vatican Monsignor and a Jesuit at that) some of his communications were privileged.
The judge, a curvaceous black woman, instructed the jury that they should not interpret Dante’s refusal to answer any question as being positive or negative, or that he even knew the answer. She smiled at him, and her slim smile reminded him of Nyla, a Parisian college student of Nairobi descent.
Heath Sheldon nearly bowed to Dante. “Dr. Monsignor Petrocchi-Bianchi, what was your relationship with the deceased?”
Heath Sheldon asked many questions about Conroy Sloan, and Dante answered what he could, when he could. Equivocating, meandering Jesuit theology had prepared him to answer such tedium with alacrity and evasion, and it did not require much attention.
Heath Sheldon read questions from his chair beside Bev. She clicked through her beads, praying the Rosary. Fragile skin clung to her skull and slate shadowed her tired eyes.
Sheldon asked, “Do you know if Conroy Sloan was having an affair with Leila Faris?”
Dante settled his hands in his lap. “I could not answer that.”
Dante watched the oak double doors behind the gawking spectators and checked his cellular phone for messages during breaks, but Leila didn’t call.
And now, he paced the rectory floor again, another insomniac night, heartsick.
~~~~~
Leila collected a few personal effects from the lab that afternoon while the conservators stripped her flat uninstalled the Parisian plaster, and packed the Tiffany chandelier, the antique furniture, the tapestries and the art in acid-free paper-lined, humidity-controlled cartons. By the time she got home, the only things left would be what she needed to survive the next few days: dog accoutrements, a sleeping bag, and her computer. She would spend her last days in New Hamilton camping out in her apartment, drinking goodbyes, caulking nail holes, and printing her final thesis copies.
The newspaper was lying outside the lab door, innocuous as an empty syringe. She considered ditching it, but that was juvenile.
The paper pile on her desk was two feet high. Conroy’s slovenly desk habits were communicable. She began sorting the pile into keepers and trash.
Joe slapped the newspaper on the table by her desk. The page was open to a short commentary about her testimony. “You and Dr. S.?”
She nodded and tossed academic papers into a huge trash can beside her desk. Technicolor papers swished into the trash bin, evidence of her highlighter habit.
“Why?” Joe’s deep eyes rolled.
“Just because.”
“Then why me? I thought we were friends.” He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
Leila tossed out a sheaf of outdated journal papers. “It just happened. It was nothing.”
Joe stared into the lab. “Did he leave Beverly for you?”
Leila resumed trashing paper. “He knew I was graduating this summer. He knew that I wanted to postdoc at Columbia.”
“Then why?”
In Leila’s hands, Conroy’s lab notebook fell open to a scan of a gel with random
bands like schizophrenic dimmer switches.
She said, “His rabies virus test was inconclusive.”
She pressed his cold notebook to her chest.
She said, “Conroy was raving, howling, gibbering, moon-barking mad.”
~~~~~
Dante descended the stairs of the Dublin Underground and scanned the room. Leila sat near the pool table in a long booth with Malcolm and Joe. Dante ordered two pitchers, a Guinness and a sweet pilsner, and carried the pitchers over. He edged past the burly, raucous men shooting pool. Joe scooted toward the wall as Dante approached, making room.
“Och.” Malcolm reached for the Guinness pitcher. “Beware of the Romans bearin’ gifts.”
“Far more treacherous than the Greeks.” Dante scooted in next to Joe, and they nodded at each other and resumed staring straight ahead. “Buona sera, Leila.”
“Buenos noches,” she said. Both her hands protected her pint glass.
Malcolm poured himself a pint and sipped. His face contorted as if someone had stuck a vacuum up his nose and sucked the skin inward. “The Americans screw up even Guinness. Padre, how is American beer like having sex in a canoe?”
Dante sipped and considered how a priest should answer that question. “I wouldn’t know.”
“They’re both fucking close to water.”
Dante watched Leila smile gently and glance at Joe, who glared at his beer as if it had insulted him. She looked down again.
Leila’s smooth black hair and dark eyes seemed to alleviate the pain of the world, even if she wouldn’t look at Dante and only stared plaintively at her beer.
~~~~~
Leila sat with the priest after Joe and Malcolm went home around eleven o’clock.
If she had left with Malcolm, he would interpret it as a sign she was finally going to bed him, even though the conservators had disassembled her grand bed that afternoon.