“Thing is,” said the detective, “I’ve got roughly fifteen witnesses who saw you standing frozen in the street, looking around like you were trying to find somebody. You weren’t crying out for help. But you did have a knife.”
“I only grabbed it in case Jack came back to attack us again,” I explained. “I did go out to get help but I don’t remember anything after that.” I stared down at his Styrofoam coffee cup, which had a small series of bite marks along its left edge—perhaps, I tried to assure myself, he was just as nervous as I was. “I must’ve been in shock,” I added.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.” He leaned back for a moment, staring at me with a badly hidden smile upon his face. It seemed like he was trying to run down the time on a secret clock I was unaware of—that if he could keep me talking for just five more minutes, I would instantly confess. “Help me understand this then,” he finally offered. “Why didn’t you use either one of the two cell phones in your purse to call 911? Or the phone in Boyd’s pants?” Instead of looking at me while he waited for an answer, the detective began cracking the joints of his fingers one by one. Clearly he thought he had me.
There was nothing to do but cover my ears and begin making a high-pitched scream. I continued until my throat gave out and the detective, shaking his head, reminded me my dramatics were being filmed, then I caught my breath and began to scream more. Soon there was a sharp knock on the door that presumably increased in urgency upon hearing my distress. I didn’t quit screaming entirely; instead I lowered the volume to a trillish shriek and waited to see who’d enter. Had Ford finally learned I was being interrogated and arrived to take me home? I resolved to bed him vigorously and without complaint the moment we got to the house; perhaps, if my sense of gratitude had not fully dissipated upon arrival, I would even fellate him—there didn’t have to be anything sexual about it. It would simply be reciprocal appreciation for his getting me out of this most uncomfortable pinch.
But it was not Ford. Instead a man wearing a suit who looked very awkward wearing a suit stood in the doorway; he had a flat-top and a straight bristly mustache, and appeared to be somewhat bowlegged. “I’m Mrs. Price’s attorney,” he called across my low wail. “This interview is over.”
With that, I closed my mouth completely.
chapter sixteen
Though the lawyer was a concession on behalf of Ford’s family—he’d represent me during the trial and also through a speedy divorce—he wasn’t free: I had to make a public apology that both glorified my husband and portrayed my grief and shame over hurting such a good man. If I could manage to weep, the attorney explained, Ford’s family would give me a bonus of roughly $15,000 for personal expenses during the trial to do with as I wished. “You can keep your car,” he said succinctly. I was in awe of the fact that no matter how radically the muscles around his mouth moved as he enunciated, his stolid mustache didn’t once squirm; it seemed not to be attached to his face so much as constantly hovering a half inch in front of it. “They’ll have all your possessions in the home packaged and moved to a studio apartment that will be paid for until your trial if they deem your set bail is reasonable and decide to pay. If your bail is exorbitant, these items will be moved to a paid storage facility until your release. In exchange for these conditions, you will agree to never publicly speak ill of Ford Price, nor imply that he was responsible, either directly or indirectly, for your actions. Do you accept these terms?”
My mind was swimming at the immediate plummet of socio-economic class I’d just sustained—having never planned on getting caught, I certainly hadn’t put much thought into the adultery clause of our prenuptial agreement. But I knew I didn’t have time to mourn financial affairs at present; more important was staying out of jail, away from the cloying paws of stinking adult women. “What do they mean, ‘reasonable’?” I asked. “What’s the most they’ll pay?”
He was honest. “Henry didn’t tell me.” A check of his watch revealed that it was now past two o’clock in the morning.
“I didn’t think the news would travel so quickly,” I muttered. Was the situation with Ford now hopeless? Perhaps his hearty reserves of denial were still pliable; if it was media attention he was so concerned about, maybe after the trial we could move overseas. In my head I fashioned a fantasy where Ford wanted desperately to come save me but his family was forbidding it. Was it so implausible that Ford might be able to come to a peaceful acceptance of my more inconvenient cravings, just as I had in deciding to live with him and agreeing to play the part of wife? “Did you see Ford tonight?” I asked. “Did he ask about me?”
The attorney, who went by Dennis but whose actual first name was Maximilian, stared at me blankly. “I only spoke to Henry.”
I’d never had much of a relationship with Ford’s father. The first time I met him, he was polite until we had a moment alone. Then he stared at my body as though he was making a scrutinized inspection of something he’d custom-ordered. “You know,” he’d said, “I’ve built a sixty-million-dollar company from the ground up and I still don’t have a trophy wife—you’ve met Margery. Ford can barely wipe his own ass and he’s got you on his arm.” He’d shaken his head, then removed a cigar from his pocket, licked around its end in an obscene way. His enormous pink tongue had looked like some invertebrate coming out of a shell.
I directed my attention back to Dennis. Though I hardly looked my best, I wanted him to care very personally whether or not my case succeeded. Taking his hands into my own—a move he found awkward; his fingers went limp and he stared down at them, spreading his fingers willfully apart as though he was testing out a prosthetic for the very first time—I stressed that I could not go to prison. The thought of having to do the things I’d done with Ford and Buck all over again with gruff women, but this time for nothing—no payoff of getting to live in luxury or gain increased access to pubescent sons—was too sickening to bear. Instead I’d have to perform morbid sexual acts just to avoid getting beaten up, or to get beaten up less. Not to mention that the environment would serve as a pressure cooker, mercilessly aging me; I’d emerge from lockup malnourished and sickly, with brittle hair, gray skin and fully pleated crow’s-feet around my eyes. For the first time in my life I wondered if I could be capable of suicide. “I’d be an unfair target,” I pointed out to him. “People who look like me don’t go to jail.” I realized that for once I wasn’t just attempting to be a bewildered younger woman looking toward an older man for guidance; I was truly frightened and needed his help.
“You are unusually attractive.” His voice had a tone of robotic assessment that made me wonder if his mustache was in fact a life-like series of tiny brown wires. “I can argue your appearance might put you at risk for increased sexual violence. You’re safe tonight; you’ll be alone in a holding cell until your bail hearing tomorrow morning.”
“No!” I gripped his arm with great force, as though the door might burst open any moment with a hurricane-force wind sent to deliver me to my cell. I imagined lying down on the hard cot and eventually masturbating, despite my best interests, in order to feel something besides terminal fear. Guards would walk by and shine their flashlights on my moving pelvis; surrounding inmates would see it all and yell out promises to quell my urges through a series of impending rapes.
Dennis let out a long sigh and opened his briefcase. He brought out not a tape recorder or legal notepad but a bottle of what I assumed were stimulant pills; he popped two without water and moved his neck from side to side to crack it. “If you want to do this now, have at it, I guess.” The Prices were paying by the hour; I suppose he was willing to be patient.
*
We spoke until morning, by which point Dennis’s eyes seemed to have widened and set with a gelatin of wariness. Although every window inside the consultation room was firmly shut, by the time I finished telling my version of events, his hair looked blown back slightly at the roots.
“All right,” he said. Two crescent moons of perspiration, ad
mirable in their convergent symmetry, had appeared beneath the underarms of his blue button-up shirt. “We can do this.” He clicked his pen as though to begin writing, but soon clicked it again, deciding against it, and set it back down on the table. “Though it probably would’ve been better if I hadn’t heard over half of that.” This was almost enough to make me laugh—all in all, I’d barely told him anything scandalous. “I recommend you get a shower in before the bail hearing,” he advised. A few trace smears of Boyd’s blood upon my collarbone were visible above the zipper of my orange jumpsuit; Dennis stood and pointed at them. “The kid’s okay, by the way. Boyd. Needed a lot of stitches and bled like hell. He’s all right but his mom’s already stirring up shit with the media.” Though I’d never even seen a picture of her, I imagined her to be a thin, fierce woman whose affinity for cardigans and other modest clothing took precedence over Florida’s warm climate. Would she hold a Bible beneath her arm when she spoke to the cameras?
*
Having been in custody all night, I had no idea of how fast my story had spread in just sixteen hours. The bail hearing was packed with journalists and photographers who called out my name immediately after the proceedings and flashed cameras as they barked questions. Overall the attention felt more adoring than judgmental; they relished the audacity and vanity of my defense. “Your Honor,” my attorney began, “my client’s looks would make her a particularly susceptible target for sexual violence and harassment in prison. She’s too beautiful to be in the general population of jail.” There was a hushed chorus of shock from the packed room of reporters; their whooshed inhale was the sound made just before a match thrown on a pool of gasoline erupted in flame. The prosecution had a logical rebuttal—they argued we’re not a society whose penal system has a sliding scale based on attractiveness. But whether the judge agreed with my attorney, took into account my previously stainless record (for all the times I’d been pulled over, I’d never once actually received a speeding ticket, even before marrying Ford) or just confirmed from my personal banking statements that I didn’t have the monetary resources to flee (I knew without ever testing them that none of my credit cards would work any longer), he agreed I could be on house arrest until the trial.
I was charged with six counts of lewd and lascivious battery against two minors—a laughably small amount given the number of times I’d been with Jack and Boyd, but apparently what the prosecution felt they could prove beyond doubt. Though the DA’s office made it known to my attorney that according to Jack’s version of events I should have been charged with attempted manslaughter for chasing after Jack with a knife, they only flirted with actually trying to make a case. Dennis and I met with the DA a few days after my bail hearing to discuss a possible additional indictment, and it was clear their evidence was scarce.
“This implication that my client was seeking Jack Patrick out in order to commit a violent stabbing—well.” My attorney rubbed his hand across his mustache and the corners of his lips several times, as though the allegation was a piece of cake he’d just eaten that had deposited crumbs all over his mouth. “We know for a fact, and Mr. Manning’s account of events supports this, that Jack attacked him in a fit of rage and possibly homicidal agitation. How much of a leap of faith is it that my client felt threatened by him as well? When he ran from the room, isn’t it likely she thought he was going to go retrieve a gun from his father’s bedroom? That he himself was going to get a knife and come back to attack her or lie in wait for her somewhere else? Of course my client grabbed a knife and ran. She was so terrified and frightened for her life, she didn’t even feel like she had time to put clothes on first.” He placed a hand onto mine and turned to me. “I bet you could cry just thinking about it, couldn’t you?”
I nodded. The detectives had their heads tilted slightly askance, examining each microexpression I made for traces of guilt. “I could,” I said quietly.
“Don’t blame you one bit,” my attorney bellowed. Then, looking back at the detectives, he repeated himself. “I don’t blame her.”
While my attorney continued to play up the fear I’d felt that evening, I thought about how I probably wouldn’t have actually killed Jack even if I’d caught up to him. Not unless he’d made some sort of aggressive move—lunged at me, grabbed at the knife—or had been entirely unreasonable in conversation and forced me to take preventative action. I’d only wanted to make him see the benefits of storytelling. He could’ve gone back and tended to Boyd until I gathered my things from the house. Then, after I’d left, he could’ve called an ambulance and spoken an innocent-enough tale: that he and Boyd were friends who’d been play-wrestling and the head injury was an accident. I believe that Boyd would’ve been conscious enough to understand the tale and go along with it, or at least commit the scenario to memory before blacking out.
The detective exhaled and traced his finger along the table in large circles. “You know,” he said, “Jack tells us you were banging his father, too.” The other detective lifted a coffee cup to his mouth and spat a clump of chewing tobacco inside. I realized I’d begun to hold my breath with fear that he was about to continue—to relay Jack’s accusation that I’d purposefully let his father die so that my shameful secret would die with him. This could open a whole new mess of legal charges, vastly complicate our defense and the public’s perception, and even cause Dennis to drop the case if he felt too put off by the surprise or guessed that others were likely in store. But apparently the past few months of despondent copulation I’d had with Jack were paying off: he hadn’t passed this information on. Jack himself felt too implicated in it all—he’d been too much a part of the process of having done nothing in Buck’s last hour of need. He’d also continued to sleep with me after I’d made sure Buck couldn’t be saved.
My attorney’s head pivoted subtly from side to side, considering. “If that were true, it would seem to go toward establishing the fact that my client is a troubled young woman desperately searching for love. Not the ‘ravenous pedophile’ the DA has been referring to her as in media interviews.” I couldn’t help but give Dennis a delighted smile—having his nimble mind on my side was truly an advantage.
The second detective spat into his cup again with more force. “Or she could just be a ravenous pedophile and a whore,” he said. The commencement of name-calling meant our burden of defense had been met—they weren’t going to bring any additional spurious charges beyond the sex crimes.
“With that, gentlemen, I believe we’re done for the day.” My attorney stood and I followed; the second detective stared at me as we walked past. His eyes took in the details of my body with a conflicted gaze that I knew well: even having seen all the facts of the case, he still wanted me. He wanted me despite knowing what that meant about him.
chapter seventeen
The months before my trial were spent alone on house arrest in a shoddy Tampa apartment; it had wheezing air-conditioning and low-quality gray carpet that I refused to walk on barefoot. Droves of pear-shaped soccer moms set up camp on the sidewalk across the street and picketed day and night with homemade posters declaring me to be a sick child molester who deserved life in prison. I could only imagine their husbands were happy my case had given these beastly women a new hobby that got them out of the house.
Yelling and shaking signs, they became workers in a protest economy whose currency was appreciative car honks; any time they received the blaring horn-tap of a supporter, the women’s beefy arms would raise up and they’d high-five one another. Of course none of them actually looked fearful about anything, least of all me. It was quite the opposite—in my trial they’d found a sense of purpose that rendered them giddy and energized. On weekend nights when their numbers were greatest they’d often deliver choral group chants into a feedback-ridden microphone, “Teachers not touchers” being one of the more popular. There were never any men among the group, though occasionally some of the mothers did see fit to bring their young children along to practice the valuable l
ife skill of standing on the side of the road with indignation. My house arrest stipulations allowed for court-approved prescheduled excursions to purchase food but I most often ordered in, and once it became apparent to the onlookers just where a given food order was headed, they’d incorporate the employee into their calls and protestations. “Are you over eighteen?” they’d yell to a bewildered pizza deliveryman. “You’re not safe unless you are!”
After a decade of hiding my urges, I’ll admit it wasn’t easy to come to terms with the fact that my preference had been publicly outed. It was as though in merely following my own desire I’d been catapulted far beyond the intended lands of pleasure into a realm of punishment. By some trick of the mind, several times a day I would nearly forget what had transpired—that everyone knew, that my face was plastered across newspapers nationwide—but then with all the panic of the initial realization, recent events would flood back to me until my thoughts wandered again and the cycle repeated itself for a whiplashed sensation of déjà vu. It made me recall a particular seasick feeling of my youth: I’d once had a spirited bus driver who liked to come over the PA system whenever a sizable piece of low-processed roadkill emerged in her path, usually an armadillo, that was going to cause her to rapidly decelerate. “Huh ho!” she’d yell, and we’d brace our tiny arms against the seats. The force’s weight was always greater than expected; it always gave me the real fear, as I slid against my will closer and closer to the green vinyl of the seat-back in front of me, that I might continue forward and hurtle into the air.
Ford had once expressed a similar sentiment to me after being hit with a Taser gun at work during a training exercise: he’d been incredulous at how unable he was to ready himself, mentally or physically, for the pain. “I know you don’t have balls,” he’d told me, “but imagine having them, then imagine them being struck by lightning and a hammer at the same time.” Ford always was one to ask the impossible from others, both often and casually.
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