Austin rounded the podium and stood before the judge, who spoke in a near whisper. Again, I heard something about polygraph and something about “indicated she has been truthful,” and Austin shook his head no.
When the jury had filed back into the box, Austin continued his questioning.
“Mrs. Raynor, you expect this jury to believe . . .”
“Objection as to the form of the question.” Howell was on his feet again.
“Sustained.”
“Mrs. Raynor, am I to understand that what you are telling this jury is that in the space of six months or so you went from being a fine upstanding officer of the law to being a dopehead, a liar, and a thief? That you skimmed evidence, you lied in court, you took drugs, and you accused Will Gaines of selling to you when he hadn’t? Is that what you’re telling this jury?”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Pass the witness for redirect.” Austin took his seat.
Howell carried his legal pad to the podium.
“Mrs. Raynor, you had started a new life for yourself after you left Beaumont, had you not?”
“I was trying to. I was planning to enroll in college.”
“And you knew if you came forward, all of that would go down the tubes, so to speak?”
“Yes sir.”
“You’ve pled guilty to a conspiracy to violate the civil rights of Will Gaines, a conspiracy involving you, Jim Raynor, Larry Dodd, and Donald Nettle.”
“Yes sir.”
“Will you identify, for the jury, the man you went to when your partner, Jim Raynor was strung out, addicted to drugs? Will you point out please the man who told you and Jim Raynor to make a cocaine case on Will Gaines, whether he was dealing or not? Point him out please.”
I pointed at Nettle.
“That’s him,” I said.
“Now at this meeting, when you met with him to discuss Jim’s addiction, after this meeting did he ask you to follow him down the road to talk things over?”
“Yes sir, he did.”
“And you complied?”
“Yes sir.”
“And what happened then?”
“He pulled over near a church and I got in his car and we talked.”
“What did you talk about?”
“He told me he was glad he could trust me to come to him when there was a problem and that he hoped I would always feel comfortable doing that.”
“Anything else?”
“He said he would remember my loyalty come promotion time.”
“And did anything else happen that night?”
Howell knew about it. I’d told him, and that was why he was now asking the question. He’d said during preparation that the decision about how to answer would be up to me. It wasn’t a criminal matter, it had no bearing on the case. It was personal, between me and Nettle. I don’t know why Howell’s attitude made me feel that to admit what had happened would make me a topwater floater, a lightweight.
Nettle was staring at me, and for the first time since I had met him I saw him squirm. A bright red flush crept up his neck, up past the perfectly knotted tie, and into his cheeks. He slunk down, just barely, but enough that I noticed, and pulled his hands into his lap. He squirmed.
I waited, wanting to enjoy the moment and angry at myself for feeling that way. I thought about it. I savored it. He squirmed and I enjoyed it.
“No sir,” I said. “Nothing else.”
* * *
It was quiet in the witness room, centrally heated and deadly quiet. The trial went on for another two days after I’d finished testifying. Rob and Denny had managed to get finally excused immediately after they testified, and did not stick around for a verdict. Dodd sat against the wall, Jim and I at the table. There wasn’t much to say.
I kept having this daydream, while I sat there waiting for the end of the trial. It took place out in the hallway: Nettle would walk up to me, and I would pull out my pistol and point it at his arm and squeeze the trigger. I could feel it. The bullet would take away the exact same section of bone that Jim had lost in the shooting. Nettle would scream and fall to the floor, blathering on the white tile while phosphorescent blood spilled out of his arm. Then I would aim at his leg and put a bullet precisely where Jim’s wound had been. And even though I was using a revolver, the wounds were those of a shotgun, just like that night. Nettle would squirm on a floor slick with his own blood, crying out, begging me not to kill him. I would put my gun slowly away and say, “Jefe. Jefe, you little sweetheart, you.” In my dream, I took out a quarter and tossed it on the floor next to him. “Here, Jefe,” I said, “call yourself an ambulance.” And walked away.
* * *
The jury was out for sixty-six minutes. Maygrett and Fearsome and the rest of team fed were ecstatic. Sixty-six minutes. It had to be guilty.
But I felt it when we were standing in front of the elevator, waiting to ride up to the courtroom. He would walk. He would go back to his office and live his life and be the chief of police. Fight crime with crime. I felt the jury saying, “This is Texas, not New York City. This kind of thing can’t happen here. Leave us alone. We have bills to pay, children to raise; you took the job, now just do what you have to, but keep the drugs out. And do it quietly. We don’t want to hear about it. The lawn needs edging.”
I felt it, and then a few minutes later I was standing at the back of the courtroom, listening as the jury’s verdict was read aloud, for all good citizens to hear.
Not Guilty.
All I could think about were the simple, weary words said by every Catholic who has ever knelt before a priest. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.
25
Jim took my arm as we approached the bench. I don’t remember what we did during the week that passed between Nettle’s acquittal and our sentencing. I remember reading quotes in the newspaper: Nettle was back in his office, talking to reporters about putting the incident behind, about moving forward and doing the best job he could.
He didn’t attend our sentencing. Different courtroom, different judge. The Honorable Frank said he’d done his best for us. It was out of his honorable hands.
It was the only time I ever saw Maygrett look helpless. He was there, sitting at a table fingering the wood-grain top.
We stood in front of the bench while the judge shuffled papers. There were presentence reports. There was a letter from Will Gaines stating that he did not demand incarceration for us, that we had told the truth, the real party responsible had gotten off. I couldn’t figure why he’d written it, but found it obscene somehow, that he had taken it upon himself to ask for mercy on our behalf. Pornography redefined. Or perhaps the feds felt bad about taking down cops, perhaps they had encouraged him.
Maybe Gaines realized that the wrong people had been shot.
I could see the top of the judge’s scalp shining beneath his side-combed gray hair. When he finally raised his eyes, he was looking past us, out into the courtroom, off into the space where judge’s minds must go before they send a human being to be locked away in a cage. He stared that way for unending minutes, perhaps only seconds, and then looked at the Honorable Frank.
“Proceed,” he said.
I thought my knees were going to let me fall. I leaned against Jim. He was shaking the same way I was. I felt the trembling of nerves in his arm, the ancient fluttering, like the tremors in the skin of an animal trapped, captured in the horrible grip of human hands.
Honorable Frank started to do a song and dance about leniency in sentencing, but anybody could see that the judge didn’t want to hear it. He was pleading for me and I didn’t want to hear it.
We could have gone to trial. As a result of our coming forward, every single case we made in Beaumont had been dismissed. Every case. We could have continued the lie and been blessed by the jury. Nettle would have backed us. We could have walked away from it and left Dodd standing there like a fool with his immunity grant in one hand.
Gaines wo
uld have gone back to jail, and the rest of the dealers would have stayed there. Jim might have been able to do it, might even have seen it as the right thing to do. I like to think not.
When Frank’s voice finally trailed off into a dribble and he folded his notes, the judge looked and Jim and me for the first time and cleared his throat. I remember thinking that his ears were incredibly small. I remember the black robe and large green eyes, sitting beneath the blue-and-gold seal of the Department of Justice.
“This,” he said, “is a most difficult sentence, perhaps the most difficult that I’ve had the responsibility of imposing during my fourteen years on the bench.”
I could not hope. But I did.
“Your past contemptible actions have affected lives in this community. Had you not voluntarily confessed, those actions would have continued to adversely affect those lives. Despite your turnaround, those crimes cannot go unpunished.”
I heard those words and thought I was going down, thought I would simply collapse to the floor.
“James Michael Raynor, it is the order of this court that you shall be confined in a Federal Correctional Institution for a period of four years, to begin on February 15, 1982.”
I felt Jim’s arm tense beneath my fingers. He didn’t move, didn’t nod. Nothing.
“Kristen Ann Cates, it is the further order of this court that you shall be confined in a Federal Correctional Institution for a period of two years.”
Half the time. Two years. It could have been ten. But they were doing this to punish us? To punish? Crawling on the floor, begging, that hadn’t settled things?
The Honorable Frank looked at us and nodded his head, and Jim and I said, “Thank you, Your Honor.” It just came out, like we were a couple of trained dogs or something. Thank you. Your Honor.
We walked from the courtroom. Probation, Maygrett had said. He’d been certain I’d get probation. That was his unofficial opinion, not a promise. But I couldn’t help feeling that I had been lied to yet again, by yet someone else. Or was it only that I had needed desperately to believe there was a chance?
Outside, there were reporters shouting questions. Honorable told them to come to his office at three for a conference and then he drove us to lunch. On him. He insisted.
I don’t remember where we ate or what we ate, or even if I ate at all. I was there at a table, watching Frank stuff food into his mouth. I looked up at one point and saw Maygrett and McPherson at a table across the room. Maygrett walked over to us, resting his hand on the back of my chair.
“I didn’t expect this,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“What the hell can you say,” Jim whispered. “We’re being punished. I guess blood isn’t enough.”
“We’ll find who shot you,” Maygrett said. “That’s one thing I promise.”
“Tell me one thing,” Jim said. “Gaines snitching for you guys?”
“Like I told you,” Maygrett said, “we’ll find the man who shot you.” He walked back to his table.
* * *
We stood near a boarding ramp in the Houston airport. Jim’s flight would depart in an hour. I was awaiting final call.
“Hey, girl.” He took my face in his hands. “Just remember, you’re doing Nettle’s time.”
I pulled away and looked at him and then down at the carpet.
“That makes it a hell of a lot easier, Jim.”
“Hey,” he said softly.
I sat down on his suitcase.
“I shouldn’t have stopped in Corpus Christi,” I said. “You know? I should have just kept on going. But I couldn’t quite make myself give up. I’d find myself looking around the beach every afternoon, hoping to see you walking toward me. I just couldn’t give up.”
He was silent for a long time, and then he said, “You act like I took you when you were goddamn sweet sixteen or something and turned you smooth out and put you on the streets.”
He blinked suddenly and his eyes got big. I thought for a moment he had recognized someone in the crowds rushing from gate to gate. He looked away to the departures screen and then back at me.
“I need you to be there for me,” he said. His eyes were clear, and focused on my own. He needed me. He needed me. The airport carpet was red, almost maroon.
“Ain’t that the way,” I said. “I’m feeling really thin just now. I don’t think there’s enough of me left to go around. Do you know?”
He sucked in a quick breath and took a step back.
“We’ve both had a pretty big chunk carved out of our asses, so what do we do, check out, say ‘it’s been real, see you later?’ You’re my wife.”
“I just honest-to-God loved you. But I . . .”
“You’ll have time to think.”
“I will indeed have that,” I said. “Right now, I’m not even sure where to start. Ask me anything. The answer is I don’t know.”
He stood there looking at the gate until a steward-smooth voice called boarding.
“That’s me,” I said.
“Right.”
I stood and turned to go.
“Hey,” he said. I looked back at him, tried to see only a man standing next to his luggage in an airport. “You’ll handle it.”
I walked down the ramp. The carpet became navy blue.
On the plane, I bought a headset and stared at the screen and took a Valium and drank a vodka tonic. And then another one.
* * *
There was a transportation desk near the main entrance to the airport.
The cowboy behind the counter had black hair slicked with oil and a Superman curl on his forehead. He stapled something and asked where I was going.
“To the prison.” The words seemed to come from behind me, slipping over my shoulder and through the stale air that surrounded me.
“We got state and federal, which one you want?”
“Federal.”
“The limo leaves in about ten minutes. Right out there.” He pointed out the window to a plain white van with airport limo painted on the side in bright orange letters. I paid four dollars.
There were five other passengers. I sat toward the back, sweating quietly. We wound through hills, past miles and miles of whitewashed fence glaring in the afternoon sun. Horses grazing. It looked calm.
The driver turned onto a thin gravel road and we passed a small sign, raised metal lettering on a brick slab: united states federal correctional institution, lexington, kentucky. He pulled around a circular drive to the front of a huge red brick building dotted with hundreds of small-paned windows.
The middle-aged, business-suited man sitting next to me in the van followed me out toward the entrance.
“Are you going in?” I asked.
“Only for a visit,” he said. “I’m an attorney.”
I stood before the locked glass door and looked into the lobby. There were a couple of men in dark blue uniforms sitting behind a control panel on a platform in the corner of the room. One of them looked up, and then a buzzer sounded. I pushed open the door.
Epilogue
The Beta Unit
I know that I am crying, but I cannot feel it inside, and I do not know why it is happening. It is simply a matter of water leaking down my face, which jerks and twitches and jumps about, as though there is corn popping inside my head, beneath my skin. I wipe under my eyes and put wet hands back in my lap. I am sitting on an examination table, and each time I move, the paper beneath me crinkles loudly.
The doctor walks in and stands before me. He is a blur of pale skin and baggy suit. He puts a hand on my knee, and I can feel the cool of his palm through my jeans.
“You’ll be fine,” he says.
My lips twist into a shape that I cannot imagine. I feel them jerking, but it is not something I can control.
“Try to relax,” he says. He turns to the guard and says, “I’ll take this one with me. Send the papers to my office.”
The guard shrugs and leaves. I follow the doctor out of the hospit
al, past people staring and down a long corridor that dead-ends into a dull yellow steel door. He presses the intercom and a man’s voice says, “Yes?”
“Dr. Mossman,” he replies.
In his office, he prepares a shot. “This will get you over the worst of it,” he says. “How long have you been here, two days now?”
I don’t know.
“Three, I think.” I see the syringe and right away I can taste the smell of cocaine in the back of my throat.
“And you were taking medication? How long?”
“Off and on,” I say. “Since the shooting.”
He looks up at me. “How long is that?”
It takes me a minute.
“Almost four years.”
Until now I have measured time in increments which fell either before the shooting or after it. Now the center will shift forward, to my release date.
I can’t think about it. Now, it is all still with me. Past contemptible actions. I should sleep. There are no guns here.
I feel the pinch of the needle in my arm and wait for the drug to wash into my system. What he’s giving me isn’t important. I will be put in a room somewhere in this place and I will sleep without a gun under my pillow.
Past contemptible actions.
I am sure of nothing.
I will sleep. I will rest. I don’t know for how long. I simply don’t know.
Give yourself a chance.
I don’t know when, or even if. I don’t yet know how. I am sure of nothing. But maybe it will come.
Maybe.
I will fold back the covers.
And I will get up on my feet and walk.
Acknowledgments
My heartfelt thanks to:
Blair Breard, Raymond Kennedy, Betsy Lerner, Gordon Lish, Pat Mulcahy, David Rosenthal, Howard Swindle, Dr. Robert Towers, Amanda Urban, Gordon Wemp, Terry Wozencraft and Deirdre and Mel Wulf.
About the Author
Kim Wozencraft is a former police officer and a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA Writing Program. The hardcover edition of Rush (Random House, 1990) was her first novel. An international best-seller, Rush was adapted into a feature film starring Jennifer Jason Leigh and Jason Patric.
Rush Page 30