by Buffa, D. W.
"That's not the point. The point is, you didn't know. I watched part of that trial. You haven't lost a thing. You're still the best lawyer I've ever seen, the best at winning. But that's also your weakness. You wouldn't last a day in politics. You can only see one side of things."
"That's what I'm supposed to do."
"All you could see was the way the evidence proved what you wanted it to," she went on, ignoring me. "Marshall was supposed to be guilty, and everything followed from that, didn't it?"
My hand on the arm of the chair, I sat straight up.
" 'Supposed to be guilty?' "
Raising her chin, she studied me a moment, her hands resting in her lap. "Did you ever consider the possibility that Kristin knew what was inside that envelope she delivered to Quentin?"
"Of course."
Her chin came up just a little higher. "Did you ever consider the possibility that she knew what was inside it because she put it there herself ?"
It hit me like the news of my own imminent death. I could think of nothing to say. All the wretched soul searching I had done at the beginning had counted for nothing once I walked into court and started the trial. I had to win, and that meant Marshall Goodwin had to be guilty. Even now, after it was over, I did not want to admit that I might have been wrong.
"Are you suggesting that Goodwin didn't know anything about it? That she acted alone?" I asked. "He was the one who had the conversation with Quentin. He was the one who dropped the charges," I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
She laughed at me. "Maybe the search was bad. Maybe Marshall decided to have a little fun with him before he dismissed the charges. Marshall does things like that. Or maybe he really did talk to him to see if he could use him as a witness in that drug case. He talked to a lot of people about that."
She went on, waving her hand in front of her. "Marshall loves to talk about himself, and Kristin, who was practically his deputy, was always willing to listen." Her eyes sparkled with malice. "He would have told her the whole thing, especially the part about Quentin asking who he had to kill."
I felt like someone on trial listening to a witness destroy the only alibi he had. "What about the money?" I asked, forcing myself not to look away.
"Maybe it was just the way he said it was. Maybe he took it out to invest it. Kristin wouldn't have had any trouble coming up with the same amount."
The only thing I could do was turn it back on her. "Do you think that's what happened?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. The point is, it could have." For the first time in my life I was face-to-face with the question that everyone liked to ask and no one really wanted to answer: What was it like to convict an innocent man?
Arching her eyebrows, Gwendolyn fixed me with a dismissive stare. "You won. Isn't that all you've ever wanted?" She bent forward at the waist, her back still straight. "Now, about Alma Woolner. Russell Gray was murdered, and her fingerprints are all over the gun. With that kind of evidence, we have to prosecute, and you know it."
I tried to appear indifferent. "So her fingerprints are on the gun. It might help if she had a motive."
"She was having an affair with him," Gwendolyn replied.
"That's a lie," I said automatically.
"Why?" she asked, her eyes flashing. "Because Alma Woolner couldn't do a thing like that?" The question faded away, unanswered, a silent reminder of the long afternoons Gwendolyn and I had once spent, when we were both much younger, in lonely out-of-the-way motels.
"Even if they were having an affair," I said finally, "that's not a motive."
"It is if he wanted to break it off and she didn't."
"She didn't do it," I insisted, as I rose from the chair.
Instead of a reply, Gwendolyn picked up the telephone. "What time is the arraignment?" She held her hand over the receiver. "Can you be in court at one o'clock?"
"Of course."
"That will work," she said into the phone, and hung up. "As a favor to Horace, I'll do what I can to keep this out of the hands of the media." For Gwendolyn, a favor did not count unless you got credit for it.
"I'll see you in court at one," I said.
The district attorney was as good as her word. Every reporter and news organization that called to find out when Horace Woolner's wife was going to be arraigned for the murder of Russell Gray was told the same thing: arraignments were scheduled by the court. No one bothered to ask whether, given that unremarkable fact of criminal procedure, the arraignment had already been scheduled. Instead, the caller would hang up and call the court, but there were lots of courtrooms and lots of clerks, and, even if they were sitting at their desks eating lunch, no one answered telephones between the hours of twelve and one.
Harper Bryce did not bother to call anyone. Wearing a different suit, but the same tie he had on the day before, he waited outside the entrance to the courthouse and, when he saw me coming, held open the door.
"What do you know about Russell Gray?" I asked, as we walked together toward the elevator. I moved slowly, keeping to his normal pace.
"You mean off the record?"
We stood waiting for the elevator to arrive. At a quarter to one, the hallways were still largely deserted. "Actually, I know quite a good deal about the unfortunate Russell Gray," he said, once we were alone inside the elevator. "How much do you know about Alma Woolner?"
I threw him a warning look. "Not even off the record."
"Lawyer-client privilege. I understand. Fair enough." He looked straight ahead, staring at the elevator door. "Russell Gray liked women. A lot." Without moving his shoulders, he turned his head until he was looking at me. "Don't be surprised if one of the women he liked was your client."
"Do you know that?"
"Let's just say that Russell Gray wasn't the kind of man I'd trust my wife with, if I had a wife," he added. "Or my husband, either, if I was the sort of fellow who had one of those."
"He was interested in men too?" I asked, not entirely surprised. The elevator stopped and the door slid open.
Bryce shrugged. "Russell Gray was a man who believed in pleasure. From what I've heard, he took his pleasure where he found it. Sometimes he found it with women; sometimes he found it with young men." Casting an ominous glance, he added, "Very young."
"How young?" I asked, as we walked toward the courtroom of Judge William West.
Bryce rolled his eyes. "As I say, wherever he could find it."
We stopped outside the courtroom door. Bryce inspected the empty corridor. "I wonder why I'm the only one here."
"All the others must still be at lunch."
There was no one inside, and I sat alone at the small blond table just inside the bar, thinking about what Harper had told me and what it eventually might mean for the case. I sat back, crossed my ankle over my knee, and pulled up my sock. I checked my watch. Three minutes before the hour. If you listened hard you could hear the only sound in the room, a dim distant whirring of the air filtration system coming from somewhere in the ceiling.
My stomach made a slight noise, and I remembered I had had nothing to eat since the night before. Nothing to eat and hardly any sleep, staring out the bedroom window, worried whether I would go mad trying to keep thoughts of what I might have done to Marshall Goodwin separate from thoughts of what I had to do for Alma Woolner. The words of Gwendolyn Gilliland-O'Rourke had played in my head until I feared I might never be able to think about anything else again.
At one o'clock the court clerk burst in from the side of what was one of the largest courtrooms in the building. Following a few feet behind her, William West, trim and fit, with a quick athletic step, took his place on the bench. Gwendolyn Gilliland-O'Rourke materialized at the counsel table a short distance from where I had scrambled to my feet.
With his dark expressive eyes and angular face, West had the brooding aspect of a poet. He looked directly at Gilliland-O'Rourke."Are we ready?"
"Should be any minute," she said, and glanced down at a thin file f
older she had placed on the table in front of her.
"Nice to see you, Mr. Antonelli," he said, in a calm, relaxed voice.
"Your Honor," I acknowledged.
Looking around, I saw Harper sitting quietly in the last row, a reporter's notebook, the cover thrown open, balanced on his knee.
Dressed in the dark-blue cotton jail uniform, Alma looked like a little girl in her mother's clothes. The V-neck top slipped sideways over one shoulder. Pulled as tight as they would go, the bunched draw-string trousers dragged along the floor. The jailer carried the handcuffs that should have been on her wrists.
Brought to the counsel table, she waited until the guard moved away. Then she took my arm in her hand and rose up on her tiptoes until her mouth was next to my ear. "Where's Horace?"
"I'm going to represent you," I said.
"He said he'd be here," she said, tightening her grip on my arm.
Before I could say anything, Gilliland-O'Rourke began the formal arraignment. She was willing to mislead the press, but that was the only concession she would make. Alma Woolner was a defendant in a murder case, no different from anyone else charged with a serious crime. The State opposed a conditional release.
I argued what seemed obvious, that Alma had longstanding ties to the community, was not a flight risk, and was certainly not a threat to anyone. Standing next to me, her shoulder rubbing against my arm, Alma stared down at the table, a startled expression on her face, as if it had just occurred to her that she was in the middle of something serious.
Nodding to himself, West had reached his decision."Bail will be set in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars."
Neither Gilliland-O'Rourke nor I had anything else for the court. West rose from the bench, hesitated, looked at Alma as if he wanted to say something, and then, deciding against it, gave her a brief smile of encouragement and walked quickly out of the courtroom.
I caught a glimpse of Horace standing next to the double doors that led to the corridor outside. His arms were folded in front of him and his chin was on his chest. He was looking right at me, but his eyes were full of some private meditation.
"There's Horace," I said.
Alma looked up. "Where?"
He was gone, the only sign a slight shudder of the door as the handle clicked back into place.
Outside in the corridor, a half dozen reporters and a television cameraman were moving at a quick trot toward the door. I left Gilliland-O'Rourke to deal with them while I went in the opposite direction, hoping to catch up with Horace. I found him in his chambers, next to the coat rack, slipping out of his suit coat and putting on his robe.
"Bail is set at a hundred thousand," I said, catching my breath. "You can get her out in a couple of hours."
"I can't," he said, his eyes tense, expectant.
"What do you mean, you can't?"
"I don't have a hundred thousand dollars," he explained.
"Well, if you don't have it, Horace, go get it," I told him. "Go to the goddamn bank, get a loan, take out a second mortgage, do whatever the hell you have to do. Just get it!"
He shook his head. "I can't do that, either."
"You can't—or you won't?"
"I can't. I'm already mortgaged up to my neck. I couldn't borrow ten cents if my life depended on it."
"I'm sorry, Horace," I said. "I didn't know. It's all right, I'll take care of it. She'll be home tonight."
"I'll handle it," he insisted. "It'll take a few days, that's all."
"You can pay me back when you have it."
Something ominous entered his eyes. "I appreciate what you're trying to do," he said slowly, as if he had to force himself to speak the words. "I'll have her out in a couple of days." He put his hand on the door, ready to go into court.
"Don't worry about it, Horace," I said, trying to give him some assurance that things would work out. "I'll have her out this evening."
"Listen to me," he hissed. "She got herself into this. Let her sit in jail for a few days and think about it." The door slammed shut behind him, and I was left alone in the dimly lit room, wondering if he believed his wife capable of murder.
Chapter Nineteen
Alma Woolner was out of custody by the end of the day. Horace had found a way to cover bail. "She didn't do it, Joe. She didn't do anything," he said, as if it were the first time we had talked about it.
"I need to talk to her, Horace. As soon as possible."
"Tomorrow soon enough? I gave her a sleeping pill and put her to bed."
"Can you bring her down to the office?"
He hesitated. "I thought it might be good to get out of here for a while. I thought we'd take a drive up the gorge. Why don't you come along? There'll be plenty of time to talk."
The next morning, with Alma at the wheel, the three of us left the city behind and drove east along the river, following it as it broadened out, gradually covering everything between the dark wooded high-walled plateaus on each side of the Columbia Gorge. On the other side of the Cascades, where the river moved through the high desert, you were in one of those places where you begin to think that God must have became bored creating the world and repeated himself to get it over with.
We drove deep into the gorge, following the straight line of the road, parallel to the narrow railroad tracks. Above us, a shallow stream plummeted over a cliff and fell like a silver thread to a pool more than three hundred feet below. Horace sat in the back, one long leg stretched stiffly out across the seat, and Alma kept her attention focused on the road. Conversation was brief, an awkward self conscious intrusion into the silence.
Alma pulled into the parking lot at the waterfall. Passing a long line of tourist buses, we walked across to the visitors center and down the rough stone steps to the railing that ran around the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. Spray filled the air around us and a fine mist settled on our faces.
We bought coffee from the concession stand and found a place to sit at the far end of an empty table on a rock walled landing with a view of the falls. In the branches of a fir tree just above us, a hummingbird, buoyed on whirring wings, waited motionless in midair and then darted away. "We haven't been here in a long time," said Horace, as he lifted the paper cup to his mouth.
"It's funny how that happens," I replied, though the remark had not been addressed to me. "You live somewhere and you never really spend that much time looking around. I haven't been up to the lodge at Mount Hood since I was a kid."
Alma looked at me, curious. "Why not?"
Whenever she asked me a question, I felt struck by the urge to say something interesting, something she had not heard before.
"Maybe it's because some things should only be seen from a distance. Maybe it's just a matter of perspective."
Her eyes, always sympathetic, watched me a moment longer. "Is that the reason you haven't married? Because the absence of distance might spoil the effect?"
I glanced at Horace, but his eyes were on the waterfall.
"No," I said, turning back to Alma. "I just never met the right woman."
Her eyes never left me. "Yes you did," she insisted.
"The Alexandra I knew never existed. She pretended to be someone she wasn't."
"We all do that, don't we? Pretend to be something. Isn't that really who we are? Who we pretend to be?"
A shadow slanted across the table between us before I realized Horace was getting up. "You two need to talk," he announced.