Evidence of Love

by John Bloom

  “Okay, Don.”

  “And make me a biography. You know, just the basic details of your life.”

  “I’m afraid it’s not very interesting.”

  Elaine thought she noticed a slight grin when Candy said that. It upset her. She seemed to be enjoying this too much.

  When the interview was over, Rob gave Elaine the names of the doctor and polygrapher he had scheduled for Candy’s examinations, and the two women left. Rob was still disturbed by the extensive media coverage. One thing he didn’t need was some grandstanding cop to show up at Candy’s house with fifteen reporters behind him, so that he could slap the cuffs on her in full view of the world. Besides humiliating Candy, a scene like that would only encourage the cops to charge her with the stiffest crime they could come up with. Capital murder, for example, which in Texas almost always meant the death penalty. He doubted that they could make a capital-murder charge stick, but they might get the indictment anyway, hoping to get her on a lesser charge. He didn’t understand why they were talking to the press at all. It was not the way the game was supposed to be played.

  Rob decided to call Joe Murphy, the DPS agent he had spoken to the day before.

  “Have you decided to let us put her on the lie box?” asked Murphy, hoping Udashen’s inexperience would make his job easier.

  “No, we still don’t want to do that yet. But what I’m calling about is all this information that’s been in the press. I don’t know how much of it’s true, but if it is, then I’d just like to ask you for the courtesy of calling me in the event that you get an arrest warrant. Because, if you’re planning to arrest her soon, we’d appreciate being able to bring her up there to you and surrender her, to avoid the press and everything.”

  “Mr. Udashen,” said Murphy, “if we do get a warrant, finding and arresting Mrs. Montgomery will be no trouble for us.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way about it.”

  Rob was still steaming that afternoon when the reporters started calling. Somewhere along the way, word had gotten out that Rob represented Candy Montgomery, so Swanson of the Times Herald and Selcraig of the News both had calls into him by midafternoon. He returned both calls, confirmed that he represented Candy, and listened as the reporters told him that an arrest was “imminent.” They also wanted a comment about the bloody thumbprint reportedly found on the refrigerator in Betty’s house.

  “I can’t believe that’s her print,” Rob told Swanson. “If it is, then why don’t they just come and arrest her? They know where she is. They tell the press that she’s being sought, but she’s right here. She and her husband and children haven’t gone anywhere.”

  As the questions continued, Rob was a little surprised by how much Swanson already knew. He was aware that Candy had canceled the police polygraph examination, for example.

  “I did that to find out what was going on with the case first,” Rob explained.

  It was to be Rob’s final press interview. When he got out of bed the next morning, the first thing he saw was the Times Herald headline:

  Lawyer dares

  police to jail

  ax suspect

  Since it was Saturday, Rob called Don at home.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I saw it. I thought it was a great shot at the cops.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Rob. “I don’t like arguing the case in the newspapers. But I’m not sure what to tell the media when they call.”

  “Forget it. I’ll handle the media if you don’t want to.”

  “I’m not sure anybody should talk to them.”

  “No,” said Don, “this might be the best thing that ever happened to us. Besides, those hick cops are leaking every damn thing they can, trying to get Candy tried and convicted in Collin County before they even arrest her. The least we can do is talk back.”

  “I say we ignore it.”

  “I’ll handle it. Tell everybody at the office, from now on, whenever the media calls, I handle it.”

  Until then, Don had kept the case at arm’s length. Rob, after all, was the firm’s criminal expert. Don was a civil-court lawyer; he didn’t know the rules like Rob did. But he had to admit that once the headlines started getting bigger, he started to enjoy the idea of being Candy’s lawyer. He didn’t know whether or not she would ever go to trial. Apparently all the cops had was one lousy fingerprint. What were they going to do for a motive?

  On Saturday afternoon Don drove over to the parsonage and spent a couple of hours with Ron Adams. Don knew that Ron could keep a secret, but just to be sure, he reminded him of the pastor-parishioner privilege, a legal principle that protects priests from having to reveal information confided during confession or other intimate counseling.

  “This church is going nuts over this whole thing,” said Don, “and I know you’re going to have to deal with it in the days ahead. I don’t want the church to suffer. I know that at some point it might come out that Candy and Allan had an affair, and I think it would be better if you talked to people first, to prepare them for that. Candy’s going to need their support.”

  “I understand,” said Ron, “and I’ll do what I can.”

  Don had another motive as well. If Ron turned up anything about Betty’s personal life that might be helpful to Candy, Don wouldn’t refuse that information either. The two men had reached an agreement. They were partners. Ron wanted to hold the church together. Don wanted to keep Candy out of jail. As soon as they had finished talking, Rob drove over to the Clecklers to check on Candy and to ask her if she needed any “counseling.”

  She was going to need it. The next day’s newspapers reported that the police investigation was over.

  But still they didn’t arrest Candy. Don went to work Monday morning fully expecting a call from Joe Murphy or Royce Abbott asking them to bring her in. But Joe Murphy was biding his time, eliminating all other suspects first.

  “Let’s let her stew for a while,” Murphy told his colleagues. “Let her think about it. Maybe one day the pressure will get to her and she’ll just call up and say, ‘I did it.’”

  For all practical purposes, the formal investigation had ended as soon as Allan Gore returned to Dallas and submitted to a polygraph examination. The examiner was chosen by mutual agreement between the police and Mike Gibson, the attorney now representing Allan. Allan drove to a doctor’s office in North Dallas to take the test, but, once there, he had to wait two hours for the equipment to be set up properly. He was scared to death by the time they actually hooked him up, and afraid it would show untruthful simply because of his fear of being charged with something. The pertinent questions were:

  “Do you know who caused your wife’s death?”

  “No.”

  “On or about June 13, 1980, are you yourself the one who caused your wife’s death?”

  “No.”

  “At the time your wife was killed, were you physically present at the home?”

  “No.”

  “Did you plan or set up with anyone to have your wife killed?”

  “No.”

  “Before you arrived in Minnesota on or about June 13, did you know your wife had been hurt or killed?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know anything about your wife’s death you’re deliberately not telling me?”

  “No.”

  “Are you withholding any information regarding your wife’s death that you have not admitted?”

  “No.”

  To each and every relevant question asked during the course of the examination, Allan Gore, in the opinion of the polygraph examiner, was telling the truth.

  On Friday the twentieth Pat Montgomery asked for a meeting with his supervisor at Texas Instruments. TI was a conservative, image-conscious company, and he thought it would be best they know that his wife was a suspect in an ax murder. The meeting made Pat nervous at first, but he needn’t have worried. Perhaps if he had been a blue-collar assembly-line worker, the revelation wou
ld have caused problems. Coming from one of the company’s top research scientists, it elicited only the tenderest concern. Like everyone else who knew the Montgomerys, Pat’s boss assumed it was merely some terrible mistake; he was more than willing to let Pat have as much time off as necessary to take care of things. And since TI was a company well accustomed to keeping secrets, there wouldn’t be any problem on that score either: no one would know about the police investigation except the people Pat wanted to tell. Pat had another company errand to run, too. He dropped by the TI Credit Union and asked for a loan, to help cover Candy’s legal expenses. But the loan officer said there was really no way to do that. Pat could get money for a car or a house, but a murder case wasn’t really in their line. Pat had assumed as much.

  That afternoon Candy called Pat at work and, for the first time, sounded almost hysterical.

  “Pat, can you come home please. It’s everywhere now—in the newspapers and on the radio and TV, and I’m so upset I don’t know what to do.”

  Pat left work right away, and when he got to the Cleckler house, Candy collapsed into his arms.

  “Oh Pat,” she said, “pretty soon everybody will know. Everybody will know I’m a suspect.”

  “Maybe not,” he said soothingly. “I heard something on the radio about a fingerprint they found in the house. Maybe when they finish looking at it, you’ll be cleared.”

  “I hope something happens. I took the polygraph today.”

  “Maybe they can show that to the police.”

  Candy didn’t say anything.

  That morning, after finishing the interviews at Don’s office, Elaine Carpenter had taken Candy to St. Paul’s Hospital for a physical examination. Stripped to her underwear, Candy was scrutinized by a doctor, who duly recorded the half-dollar-sized bruises on her upper thighs and chest, as well as lesser discolorations on her fingers, ankles and one breast. He described the cut at the hairline of her forehead, which was now scabbing over. He also noted that she seemed full of anxiety, and prescribed Valium and Serax. After that, Elaine and Candy drove to a high-rise office building in suburban Irving, where they had an appointment with a polygraph examiner named Don McElroy. As they sat in his waiting area, Candy seemed even more nervous.

  “Now Elaine,” she said, “do I tell him the whole story or what?”

  “Yes, Candy, that’s the point of the test.”

  “I tell him the truth?”

  “Yes, this is our examiner. That’s why we hired him.”

  Candy didn’t mention the doctor’s examination to Pat, nor did she go into any detail about what transpired during her two hours spent with Don McElroy.

  “The police might not even believe the polygraph,” said Pat.

  Pat was getting paranoid about the police. They had suddenly called his wife a murderer. They had been telling the newspapers that they thought Candy killed Betty, a theory that was absurd to anyone who knew both women. They wouldn’t cooperate with Rob Udashen. They had even told the reporters where the Montgomerys lived. Pat wondered whether the police wanted them out of the house so they could go in with a search warrant and look for evidence. What if they found their Marriage Encounter letters? Worse yet, what if they found Allan’s letter to Candy, ending the affair? Pat had to go over to the house anyway, to check on the pets and see that they were fed. He decided he’d be on the lookout for police stakeouts whenever he made the trip, and he made a mental note to find all the letters and bring them back with him.

  The pressure lessened a little as the weekend approached. Pat had always liked the Clecklers; this would give him a chance to get to know Tom a little better. That first night Pat and Tom discovered they had both been trumpet players in high school, so Tom got out his old trumpet and they traded it back and forth and blew on it a little bit and reminisced about old band trips. Whenever it was time for the television news, Pat would head for the set and switch from channel to channel in an attempt to catch everything that was said. The bloody thumbprint was still the big item; Pat hoped either that or the footprints they had found earlier would be enough to prove Candy’s innocence. On Saturday night, the two couples, Jenny, and Ian all gathered in the living room to look at old slides of Tom’s tours of duty in Germany and Vietnam. In the middle of the presentation, Candy left the room to take a call from Rob. When she returned, she was bubbling with joy.

  “They’ve found a woman who says she saw Betty on Friday afternoon,” says Candy. “That means I can’t be a suspect, because I was only there in the morning.”

  “Great,” said Pat. “I knew something like that would turn up.”

  Pat was surprised to find how relieved he was. He didn’t want to think he had ever believed Candy was involved.

  On Monday, the tenth day after Betty’s death, Don called from Dallas and suggested that the Montgomerys move again.

  “I want to have positive control over the surrender, if and when it comes,” he told Pat. “But I don’t trust these cops. Do you have any place you can go away from Fairview?”

  So, for the second time in four days, the Montgomerys loaded up the station wagon and headed for a new home. They chose Euless, where they would move in with Pat’s father, seventy-seven-year-old Jewel Montgomery. This time they were so addled by fears that the police were spying on them that they backed the car into the garage before loading their luggage, then had Sherry drive it to Euless, with Candy lying down on the seat so that no one in the area would see her leaving. Euless was about thirty miles away, a little town on the outskirts of the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport. It was sweltering when they arrived, the first 100-degree day of the year.

  They did find a measure of rest in Euless, though. Jewel’s house was just a block away from a large park, and that night Pat and Candy walked down there with the kids. Ian and Jenny played on the see-saws for a while, but Ian was so hyperactive that he kept running around and, quite by accident, stepping on his mother’s feet. The second time it happened, Candy flinched and grimaced terribly, and Pat suddenly remembered the cut toe he had seen her bandaging a few days before.

  “How bad is it?”

  “It hurts like hell.”

  When they got back to the house, Candy took the bandage off and soaked her foot. Pat took a good long look at it and realized for the first time how very deep it was.

  “I’ve got to get rid of that threshold on the back door,” he said. “That’s dangerous.”

  The physical pain only aggravated Candy’s already frazzled emotions. “I want to be home again,” she kept saying. “I want to be in our own house.”

  “I’ll ask Don whether he thinks we could go back over there.”

  “Pat,” she said as they were climbing into bed, “I’ve got two kids who need me.”

  “Yes.” He held her tight.

  “And I could end up going to jail for the rest of my life.”

  “It’s gonna be all right.”

  The next day, a Thursday, Pat went to work again and called Don to see if it was all right to move back to Montecito. Don gave his assent, since there had been no further evidence of harassment by the police, so Pat called Sherry to ask her to help. Before they could get fully organized, though, Pat got a call from Candy.

  “Pat, they’re going to arrest me.”

  “What?”

  “Rob just called. They’re going to arrest me today.”

  19 Center Stage

  The one thing Rob Udashen wanted to avoid was flashbulbs. It was the first thing that occurred to him when the call came just after noon from the District Attorney’s office of Collin County. He was heartened to hear that the assistant DA, Jack Pepper, was amenable to a quiet, private surrender. The plan was to secure bond before taking Candy to the Collin County courthouse. That way she could be whisked through arraignment and released in a matter of minutes. Pepper even said he’d have it arranged so they could pull into a secluded sally port used for unloading prisoners.

  Rob was satisfied enough with the plan�
�at last, a reasonable person to deal with—but it all depended on having the money for the bond when they arrived. He would figure that out later. First he needed to get Candy under his wing.

  “Candy,” he said when she came on the line in Euless, “they’ve issued a warrant for your arrest. Come on into my office and we’ll go with you down to the court.”

  “All right,” said Candy dully. The implications hadn’t sunk in yet.

  Next he called Glen Swanner, the Justice of the Peace who had issued the arrest warrant, and asked about bonding. Swanner agreed to be at the courthouse for the arraignment and said the bond would be no more than $100,000. In most murder cases that amount would not be excessive, but Rob balked. The only purpose of a bond is to ensure a defendant’s appearance at trial, and Candy was obviously not a candidate to run off to Mexico. She was a wife and mother, for goodness sake. She’d been under investigation for more than a week; if she’d wanted to run away, she could have done it long before now. As a practical matter, it would be difficult to come up with the $100,000. Bail bondsmen require a 10 percent fee; that meant the Montgomerys would have to pay a nonrefundable $10,000 to keep Candy out of jail. Rather than ask them to do that, Rob called Tom Ryan, a state district court judge in McKinney, to set up a bond reduction hearing.

  By the time Rob finished all his calls, Sherry Cleckler had dropped off Candy at the office.

  “Here are your options, Candy. The bond is $100,000 because it’s a murder charge, and there’s nothing I can do to change it today. So you can spend one night in jail and hope we can get it lowered in the morning, or you can come up with $10,000 and spend tonight at home.”

  “I have to call Pat,” she said.

  Pat was adamant: he didn’t want his wife in jail. They would come up with the money.

  Candy walked out of Rob’s office and sat down in another room, lighting a cigarette as she did. She had started smoking again. Chain smoking. Elaine Carpenter came in to see how she was doing. Don poked his head in once or twice. Candy was vaguely aware that there were “problems” in the other room. After a while, she got tired of waiting and went back into Don’s kitchen. She made coffee and then, noticing all the dirty dishes, started cleaning up the place. She found some baking materials in one of the cabinets and made a batch of chocolate-chip cookies. It all seemed like a lark.