Evidence of Love

by John Bloom

  “But you had an affair with her husband, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Don paced across the front of the courtroom and passed in front of her. He turned when he reached the clerk’s table.

  “The two of you put her in that position, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, we did.”

  Don reached for something beside the table, blocking Candy’s view with his body.

  “When you went over there,” he said, “did you mean to kill her with that ax?”

  “No.”

  Don picked up the object and placed it on his right hip. Time for a bootleg play, he thought to himself.

  “But you did kill her with the ax, didn’t you?” he said as he walked back toward the witness box.

  “Yes.”

  “This ax right here—”

  “Don’t make me look at it.”

  Don grabbed the ax with both hands, brought it into full view, and thrust it toward Candy’s face.

  “Don’t!”

  “You killed her with this ax right here, didn’t you?”

  Pat Montgomery could hear the scream in the witness room, thirty yards and two walls away. Tears burst out of Candy’s eyes and she seemed to rise out of her chair.

  “You killed her with this ax right here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said, so he would take it away.

  One of the woman jurors dabbed at her reddened eyes with a tissue. Another squirmed in her seat, offended by the cheap trick. She, too, had wondered why Candy seemed so cold and impersonal, but she also felt an odd sympathy toward her. Her story hung together; it didn’t seem whitewashed. But how can you be sure? She wanted Tom O’Connell to be tough, to pry open every part of the story, to find the one lie in it that would make it all come apart.

  Don led Candy through the rest of her day—the swimming lesson for Alisa, the family trip to The Empire Strikes Back, the four phone calls from Allan Gore, each one more desperate than the last. Then Candy admitted all her coverups and evasions of the following week, as she tried to avoid detection.

  After a ten-minute recess, Tom O’Connell drew a deep breath and plunged in. This is what he had been afraid of. Candy had been intelligent, attractive, and direct. She handled herself well. And she used the best possible explanation—the “I freaked out” excuse. He would probe at her story, trying to pick out the discrepancies.

  O’Connell asked Candy to repeat much of her account of what happened in the utility room, but with much less detail. She didn’t hesitate in answering, and there were no contradictions. She even added small details at certain points, like the fact that the peppermint candies were located in a glass bowl on a shelf just to the left of the fireplace. It was the kind of detail a bald-faced liar wouldn’t know. O’Connell dwelt for some time on the fact that a bloody sunglass lens had been found in the garage—an apparent contradiction in her testimony that the entire fight had taken place in the utility room. But when O’Connell really pressed her, Candy abruptly switched her cool pattern of response and snapped back. Finally, O’Connell scored most of his points by emphasizing her lies and coverups after the killing.

  “Would it not be a fair statement,” he asked, “to say that had the fingerprints not been found, that perhaps we might not have ever known the true story?”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Doubt what? That we would or wouldn’t?”

  “I doubt that you would have never found out.”

  “Why is that? You weren’t going to tell anybody.”

  “I don’t think I could have lived with it for very long.”

  “You lived with it long enough to find out whether there was going to be any direct connection between you and the offense—”

  “I did not hold off because of the prints.”

  “I didn’t ask you that. The question was that you held out telling anybody at least until the comparison was made, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Who did you tell before that if anybody?”

  “I told no one before then.”

  O’Connell got to her one other time as well. Going back over the affair, he took a chance and suddenly asked, “Was the affair with Allan Gore the first and only one that you’ve had since your marriage to—”

  Don Crowder was on his feet in an instant. “Your Honor, we object to this. Whether there is or not, it wouldn’t be material to these proceedings.”

  “Objection,” said Ryan, “is overruled.”

  O’Connell looked back at Candy.

  “Would you repeat the question?” she said.

  “Was the affair that—”

  Don tried again. “Your Honor, that’s not proper. It’s not proper at all and we renew our objection.”

  “Objection is overruled,” growled Ryan.

  “Was the affair that you had with Allan Gore,” said O’Connell, “the first and only affair that you’ve had since your marriage to Mr. Montgomery?”

  “It was the first one, yes.”

  “Well, was it the last one?”

  Candy flushed deeply. “No, sir.”

  “The affair with Mr. Gore terminated as I understand from the testimony, in October of ’79. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Since that time, who else have you been involved with?”

  This time Rob Udashen objected, thinking perhaps Don was simply posing his objection in the wrong form. He was overruled.

  “There was one other man,” said Candy, “that I saw very briefly. From about the beginning of November until mid-December.”

  “And that also is of ’79?” said O’Connell.

  “Yes.”

  “What is his name, please?”

  “I will not give you his name.”

  “I’m sorry,” said O’Connell, disbelieving. “I didn’t hear the answer.”

  “I said I will not give you his name.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s irrelevant. And I would not want to damage his family.”

  “Well, I appreciate your concern at this point in time. But I’m going to have to insist that you answer the question.”

  Don rose again and asked to have the jury dismissed. Ryan complied, and briefly the lawyers argued over the relevance of the man’s name. The judge then pointed out that Don had gone on endlessly about Candy’s reputation as a pillar of society, active in church, and the like, and the prosecution had the right to show otherwise. All objections were overruled, and the jury brought back.

  “Who was that individual?” asked O’Connell.

  Candy said Richard’s name quietly.

  “Richard who?”

  She repeated the last name.

  “Spell the last name.”

  Candy hated O’Connell for this. She spelled it.

  But shortly thereafter, O’Connell dropped the line of questioning. There are prosecutors who froth at the mouth like mad dogs and wave their arms and work themselves into a frenzy of moral outrage, but O’Connell wasn’t one of them. He saw no reason to go into the nitty-gritty details of a man’s love life. It was not his style. He would stick to his original plan, and try to expose the cracks in her story. He wandered from place to place, from the utility room to Jackie Ponder’s divorce and back to her furtive cover-ups of the weekend. (He missed the most damning one, the fact that Candy had scissored her “thongs” to pieces and dumped them in the garbage. Don had conveniently left that out of the direct examination.) He emphasized the fact that a year-old baby had been left in the house alone by this woman who prided herself on her motherhood. He pointed out Candy’s repeated lies to her friends. And then, abruptly, he stopped.

  “You may stand down,” said Ryan.

  It was over.

  As the jury filed out of the courtroom, Candy could think of only one thing at first. She had to get to Pat before anyone else did.

  “Pat doesn’t know,” she told Elaine. “He doesn’t know about Richard.”

  As
soon as Ryan adjourned for the day, Candy got Rob to escort her across the hall, and when everyone had left they closed the door. At first Pat put his arms around her. Then haltingly, trying to get it over with quickly, Candy told him that she had been forced to reveal another affair that day.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t want to tell you. I was afraid it would hurt you.”

  “Who?” Pat started to cry.

  Candy gave him the name.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Pat, and he started to bawl like a baby. Candy started to cry, too, and tried to touch him. Pat turned away and walked across the room. He stared out at the throngs on the courthouse square, studied the television reporters, dabbed at his eyes. Then he wept some more, still shaking, unable to get himself under control. On top of all the other pressures, it was too much.

  “Pat, it’s not that bad.” Suddenly Candy turned huffy. Pat wept more loudly.

  Don opened the door to the room and stuck his head in. Pat and Candy weren’t speaking. Candy sat pouting in one corner, Pat stood in another. The room was full of iciness and depression.

  “All right,” Don announced, entering the room, “we’re about seventy-five percent of the way home, folks.”

  They said nothing.

  “Let’s don’t blow it now.”

  Don walked over to Pat’s corner and placed an arm on his back.

  “Look, Pat, I know this is hard to take.”

  Embarrassed by his tears, Pat tried to look at Don.

  “She shouldn’t have done it, Pat, but it’s over.” Don looked Pat in the eye. “It doesn’t matter if she fucked a hundred men as long as she doesn’t do it again. Now come on, we’ve got to pull this thing back together.”

  On the way out of the courthouse, fighting his way through the thicket of reporters, Pat ran into a parking meter and bruised his wrist badly. That night at home there was little to say. Pat watched the Channel 8 news and tried to sort out his feelings. A little later, Ron Adams came by for what he called “counseling.” He told them he knew they still loved each other. Pat felt comforted by his words. He tried to put it all out of his mind. Don seemed elated by the events of the day. Pat wanted to feel the same way. He wanted to be prepared for whatever might remain.

  When Tom O’Connell left the courtroom that day, the first person he saw in the hall was Allan Gore.

  “I think we may have trouble with this whole thing,” said O’Connell.

  “Well,” said Allan, “whatever happens, I guess it’s for the best.”

  In his hand, Allan carried a paperback copy of Shōgun. He had read most of it in the witness room that week.

  For all practical purposes, the trial was over. Barring any unforeseen bombshells, the twelve jurors either believed Candy Montgomery or they didn’t. Still, Don went on to bolster her testimony in every way he could imagine. First he called Dr. Robert Bright, a handsome, articulate pathologist who had been hired to analyze the autopsy. Bright said most of Betty Gore’s gruesome face injuries were probably sustained after she was dead, and that the other wounds indicated that a struggle had taken place. For the spectators, it would have been fairly boring testimony, except that Ryan kept reacting to the testimony. He swiveled nervously back and forth in his chair, played absentmindedly with a rubber band, rolled his eyes, sighed deeply, looked at his watch, and increasingly unnerved Don and made him lose his concentration. When Don asked a question about adrenaline, Dr. Bright started a long, rambling answer.

  “Mr. Crowder,” interjected Ryan, a little testily, “I’m going to insist we conduct this examination in question and answer form. I will not permit narrative testimony.”

  “Your Honor, I’m doing the best I can,” said Don. “I’m asking him the questions.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand that.”

  Don detected a note of sarcasm and snapped angrily back. “I don’t recall, Your Honor, this interruption with Dr. DiMaio’s testimony yesterday or Dr. Stone’s when the exact same questions, many of the same were asked, and many of the same type of responses were given—very very long responses at times.” He grew angrier as he spoke. “We’d like the record to show how the judge is interfering with the questioning of the witness and has continued to do so since this witness took the stand.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” said Ryan, “will you go with my bailiff, please.”

  As soon as the jury had left, Ryan opened up. “I’ve been very patient all morning,” he said. “There’s no necessity to dictate into the record anything that the court says because it’s already in the record. The record speaks for itself.”

  “We have to preserve the record, Judge,” said Don. “You have interjected your bias in this trial from the very moment it started. We want the record to show that. We want the record to reflect that for appellate purposes.”

  “Let me tell you something,” Ryan retorted. “I am going to run this court in an orderly, professional manner. And I anticipate the same from the attorneys. We discussed this in great detail one day last week. How this trial would be conducted. And there are not going to be any personal attacks on the presiding judge of this court.”

  “That’s fine with me,” said Don. “As long as you stay out of it.”

  “Will you let me finish what I’m saying?” said Ryan.

  “Your Honor,” said Don, ignoring him, “I won’t be lectured or bullied in this courtroom. I’m representing a woman who may go to jail for her life. I’m going to perfect the record and have the record show it, and the record of this trial shows from the very time it started to now, you have interjected your bias and continued to do so, and no, I will not lay down for you.”

  “All right, sir,” said Ryan. “For that remark this court is going to hold you in contempt. I am going to assess your punishment at a hundred dollars in costs, seventy-two hours in the Collin County jail, effective immediately when this court stands in recess this afternoon.

  “Bring the jury in. Let’s proceed.”

  Now fully expecting to spend the entire weekend in jail, Don continued his questioning. Ryan posed no more objections from the bench.

  Dr. Ronald Washington, the first doctor to examine Candy after her confession, detailed the bruises on her chest and legs and the cuts on her head and toe. Dr. Maurice Green, the Dallas psychiatrist who started seeing Candy after her visits to Houston for hypnosis, testified that since the killing she had been numb and detached. He described her condition as “dissociative reaction,” in which a person induces amnesia in himself in order to suppress intense anger or rage.

  “When I initially saw her,” said the doctor, “she continued to tell me that she had feelings of anger towards Betty Gore. I explored this with her. And she felt that Betty Gore had triggered something within her that had caused her to commit acts of violence, and as a result of this, Betty Gore had in essence, like ruined her life. Ruined her family’s life. And her friends’ lives, in many ways.”

  Dr. Green went on to say that Candy’s suppressed anger was triggered during her struggle with Betty, and that the overkill was a “depersonalized” act. “Almost as if she were a spectator. As if she was watching it. Wasn’t really involved. In other words, she felt it wasn’t really me that did that.”

  On cross-examination, Dr. Green admitted that “dissociative reaction” implied no mental illness, and that Candy always knew what she was doing—except when she was swinging the ax at Betty. “She just kind of went berserk—momentarily.” His ambiguous explanation of her behavior—she was sane enough to know what she was doing, but not sane enough to stop hitting the dead body—led Tom O’Connell to question the whole concept of “dissociative reaction.” What about her subsequent lies to her friends and to the police? Was that “dissociative reaction”?

  “To some extent,” said Dr. Green.

  Dr. Green was nervous and sweaty throughout his testimony, an indication to several jurors that he had a personal stake in trying to help Candy. Most of them disregarded his rema
rks.

  After a failed attempt to get religious testimony introduced—Don had found an SMU theologian willing to say that Candy did not violate the second commandment, but Ryan ruled that theology had no bearing on the case—the regional executive of Marriage Encounter took the stand, primarily to refute a rumor. Lest the jury be in doubt, Don wanted it on the record that Marriage Encounter was neither a cult nor a wife-swapping club, but a church-sanctioned program.

  Pat Montgomery ended the first week’s testimony. Don called Pat strictly to indicate that after everything that had happened, he still stood by Candy. For the first and only time in his life, Don called him “Dr. Montgomery,” referring to his Ph.D. in electrical engineering. Pat answered a few routine questions dealing with Candy’s feelings about violence—she didn’t allow toy guns or let the kids watch shows in which animals are killed—and about the Montgomerys’ friendship with the Gores. Then, in his proudest moment, Pat told a favorite story about Candy once rescuing a stray kitten. Don had him repeat the story about the weekend when he found Allan’s farewell love letter. He had him run quickly through the events of the thirteenth, to show the jury how it fit with Candy’s version.

  When Pat was finished, Ryan surprised everyone by announcing that the trial would be suspended until he could hold a full psychiatric hearing to determine Candy’s sanity. In view of Dr. Green’s “dissociative reaction” remarks, Ryan said, he was obligated to make sure she was legally competent to stand trial. He asked the lawyers to suggest psychiatrists and scheduled the hearing for the following Monday morning.

  Everyone went home except Don Crowder. As soon as Ryan rapped his gavel, Don was arrested by the sheriff and, with reporters and cameramen following along every step of the way, escorted two blocks to the county jail.

  “Chickenshit,” Don muttered, apparently not caring who heard him. “Son of a bitch.”

  The defense team had offered a motion for Don to be released on his personal recognizance, the normal procedure in the case of an officer of the court, but Ryan refused the motion without comment. Don was fingerprinted, booked, and mug shots were taken, but they never actually got him into a cell. Rob Udashen had called an attorney in Austin, who ran over to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, found the chief justice, and got him to approve a writ of habeas corpus on the spot.