"You're fun," she whispers as we rest. "I had a hunch you'd be good at this."
We share a laugh, then she eases me out, telling me she has to get her ‘beauty sleep’.
"I'd ask you to stay but I know if I do we'll end up playing through the night," she says. "Then I'll look a mess when I do my early stand-up at the courthouse door."
Riding the hotel elevator down to my floor, I realize I've been blown off… but in the nicest, coolest, most flattering way.
*****
The Foster Case: Another of those sordid celebrity cases that grip the country from time to time. The kind that, just when you think you've had enough of it, along comes a new twist and then, stirred by the media frenzy, you're back in thrall.
I'm here in Calista as part of the pack covering the event. On the very day Judge Stella Winterson banned cameras from her courtroom, I was hired by ABC on an urgent contract basis to make sketches of moments of high drama and conflict during the trial. This entitles me to a reserved seat in the courtroom behind the defendant's table, from which position I have an excellent view of the cast of characters:
The Judge – big, bosomy black woman with white hair, stern demeanor, occasional maternal smile;
The Jurors – usual mix: men and women, black and whites, maintenance and postal workers, with a couple of college grads thrown in;
The Defendant, Kit Foster – waiflike with off-center eyes, heart-breaking smile, punked-out auburn hair;
The Prosecutor – young, earnest, articulate, organized;
The Defense Attorney – mellifluous voice, expensive cream linen suit, flowing gray hair that curls over the collars of his beautiful made-to-measure pink shirts.
In the most banal terms, the case comes down to this: super rock star Caleb Meadows (he of the whiny attenuated voice) was alone one afternoon this past winter with his girlfriend, performance-artist Kit Foster (she of the scrawny, multi-pierced body), in the Dinosaur Room of the new architecturally brutal Calista Museum Of Natural History.
Moments later Meadows was dead. Hearing screams, a museum security man arrived on the scene to find Foster covered with Meadows's blood and an old hunting knife buried in Meadows's chest. Later examination of silent videotape from a surveillance camera showed the couple apparently quarreling fiercely in the moments just before the knifing.
According to Foster's statement, made just afterwards to police, Meadows pulled out the knife, thrust it at her, and, in the ensuing struggle, stabbed himself. She was vague about the details, couldn't explain how she, at a mere one hundred two pounds, managed to deflect his attack and turn it around. "I've blocked it all out," she said. Ironically or by design, depending on one's point of view, these final contested moments were, on account of the odd place where the parties were standing at the time, invisible to the surveillance camera and thus not recorded on tape.
Friends of the victim subsequently informed police that Ms. Foster was a heroin addict who had threatened Mr. Meadows with violent bodily harm should he break up with her as he'd been threatening to do for several weeks.
Friends of Ms. Foster counterclaimed that Mr. Meadows was a degenerate who'd threatened to carve up Ms. Foster if she ever left him, which, that very afternoon, she'd informed him she was about to do.
Complicating these contesting claims was the fact that Mr. Meadows and Ms. Foster had each named the other sole beneficiary in reciprocal wills executed several months before. It has been estimated that at the time of his demise, Mr. Meadows was worth approximately sixty million dollars.
So there it is, a tawdry case involving selfish, tacky people with too much money and fame. Yet, the commentators keep reminding us, it has all the ingredients of a great crime story: the essential trio of sex (kinky), lies (stupendous), and videotape (incompetent), not to mention drugs (hard), money (huge), and murder (most foul).
Depending on one's point of view, the killing was either accidental as the defendant claims, or calculated and committed for profit as the prosecution wants desperately to prove. In short, a case of no particular consequence that carries no moral lesson or tragic overtone that may illuminate our fragile human condition. A case that would inspire no interest at all except for the celebrity status of the principals and the odd venue of the scene of blood.
Frankly, I don't care a damn abut it and am totally neutral as to its outcome.
*****
Calista in summer: The air hangs heavy here, fraught with high humidity and heat, while the river gives off pungent fumes. I love this kind of weather. It reminds me of the summers of my youth -sweating on baseball diamonds beneath relentless sunshine broke only by occasional fierce summer thunderstorms.
We had one last night. Thunder boomed. Great sheets of rain lashed the streets. Calista's landmark mid-century twin towers, hometown architect Eric Lindstrom's heroic Tower of the Great Plains and Tower of the Great Lakes, stood stark and lonely against the lightning-torn sky.
The residue is still upon the city this hot, damp Tuesday morning, as I make my way along rain-slick sidewalks to the welter of video units and trucks parked at the rear of the ornate beaux-arts Calista County Courthouse.
I've come in search of Pam Wells, hoping to discern whether she regards me as but a one-night stand. Also to see if, indeed, she slept well last night, or, like me, tossed and turned during the storm, unable to expel the memory of our coupling from my mind.
I find her in the CNN Winnebago being worked on by a frizzy-haired hairdresser.
"Well, hi!" she says, with a cheerful smile. "How're you?"
"Sleep well?"
"I did, yes. Thanks for asking."
Since the hair gal ignores us, I figure it's okay to behave as if we're alone.
"Any chance of a get-together after work?"
"How ‘bout Waldo's, seven o'clock?"
"Sounds good." I turn to leave.
"Oh, David-" I turn back to her. "What I said last night about you being fun – I meant it."
I search her eyes seeking some trace of irony. Finding none, I still can't bring myself to believe her.
"You're a flatterer, Pam!"
The hair-dresser snorts a laugh.
"Millie here knows better. Don't you, Millie?"
"Go away, Mister," Millie instructs. "Pam's having a bad hair day and I got just two minutes to fix her up."
*****
Winding my way back through the labyrinth of cables, past RVs where other star commentators are being groomed, I feel a certain compassion for on-camera reporters. Not, certainly, on account of their salaries, which are scandalously huge, but for the requirements that they always look great and that their clothing always appear fresh and pressed. Unless, of course, they're covering a hurricane or a war, in which case they carefully ruffle their gorgeous manes of hair and sport tailored bush jackets to resemble dashing correspondents of old.
Having no particular desire for fame or fortune, I prefer my sketch-artist's role behind the scenes. All I have to do is make drawings that, when broadcast, speak for themselves. And if a certain point of view should happen to intrude, it will not be my excitement over this or that twist in the tale, rather my fascination with humans in conflict and their grace or lack of same when under stress.
I enter the courthouse, hang my press ID necklace about my neck, get in a line for the metal detector, hand over my sketchpack, endure a frisking, pick up my pack, then head for the elevators and the fourth floor.
The first two weeks of trial here have been hard as I've labored to create an image-bank – portraits of the principals as well as a selection of their facial expressions at moments of excitement, amusement, confrontation, or that great criminal trial standby, the stare of righteous indignation. Now, with these images in hand, I've got the job down to a manageable level, able to quickly build composite drawings that can illustrate most every courtroom situation likely to arise.
Whenever a new piece of physical evidence is introduced or a new witness appears, I immed
iately sketch it, him, or her, adding same to my store. At which point, unless I sense a fine moment is in the offing, I feel free to go about my business, confident that I can create strong drawings that will please my producer so long as she receives them in time for broadcast on the early evening news.
Courtroom work is not my specialty; forensic ID portraiture is. I've made perhaps a thousand drawings of wanted felons, with an accuracy that has propelled me to the top rank of my profession.
These days, what with Identi-Kits and computer programs that the average cop can operate, we forensic artists are often viewed as relics. But composites generated by systems are never as accurate as freehand drawings made by an artist working closely with an eyewitness. We can introduce emotion, depict characteristic expressions, even create the aura of a subject, his menace, craftiness, joviality, or, if appropriate, that distinctive strange, almost bland, vacant stare so typical of the sociopathic killer.
I enjoy forensic work, the unhurried pace of it, long eyewitness interviews, evoking the original trauma of the crime, breaking through screen memories to uncover real ones, then the drawing itself, the slow accretion of detail that can bring a portrait of a criminal to life.
So why now the courtroom sketching, a business requiring the speedy production of cartoons? For a change of pace, perhaps, a chance to make a few extra bucks, but most especially for the opportunity to revisit my hometown where another homicide, one that took place more than a quarter century ago, grips my interest and fills my dreams with an intensity the Foster trial cannot even begin to touch.
I have come back, you see, to try to resolve my past. Also, hopefully, to complete my father's great unfinished case.
*****
This morning the courthouse seems especially tense. Perhaps it's last night's thunderstorm. Exasperated reporters, having bad hair days, lope morosely along the corridors. Even the bailiffs, normally an even-tempered bunch, appear unduly stressed.
I nod to acquaintances, catching, in the process, a dour glance from Jim Henderson, the CNN courtroom sketch artist whom Pam Wells's producer wants to replace. Just as I'm about to show him a friendly smile, my own producer, Harriet Mills, sidles up.
"Hear about the overnights? We beat the competition again thanks to you." Harriet's a tough go-get-‘em type. She grins at me. "Hear you were seen leaving Waldo's with Pam Wells. What's she like?"
I shrug.
"Well, I hear she's a real bitch," Harriet says.
There's more media baiting and back-biting at this trial than any I've attended, perhaps because the pickings are so slim and the competition so intense. I feel bad for Henderson. He's a nice guy and his drawings are decent enough, but he lacks a feeling for trial-as-theater. I'm pretty sure he dislikes me because he thinks I think I'm slumming. Probably he also finds it disgraceful I don't stay in my seat, but instead wander out of the courtroom on my own business for hours at a time.
Judge Winterson's bailiff appears at the door.
"Okay, folks – you can enter now. Keep it orderly. No shoving like yesterday. Judge was plenty pissed when she heard." Dramatic pause. "Believe me, it's not fun for us when Judge gets pissed."
And with that in mind, we of the media herd file solemnly in to take our seats.
*****
Court lets out early. There are evidentiary issues that require thrashing out. I speedily finish up my drawings, drop them off with Harriet at the ABC suite, plant a kiss on her less-than-tender cheek, then call down for my rental car in the hotel garage.
*****
3:00 P.M.
I'm driving east along Dawson Drive entering the narrow portion where it passes through elegant, shady Delamere.
The old suburb had changed since my day. High-rise condominium buildings have sprung up. But many of the old mansions still stand far back from the road behind walls and gates with enormous well-groomed lawns in front. Long, straight driveways lined with evenly spaced trees lead to these stately homes, contrived to remind the visitor of the approach to a French chateau or English country manor.
The architecture here is European revival: mansard-roofed Normans, brick Georgians, timber-in-stucco Tudors, even a couple of Gothic-style castles with arched windows and crenellated parapets. All were constructed with lovingly lavish detail between the end of World War I and the start of the Great Depression.
I slow as I approach the Fulraine house. Built in the manner of a Palladian villa, it is perhaps the finest residence in Delamere. I pull over opposite the gate, then peer in, able to catch a glimpse of the entryway at the far end of the gravel drive.
Here, I know, there's a turnabout where, in the days when the Fulraines gave parties, limousines would pull up and leave off guests. I also know that on the far side of the house, facing Delamere Lake, lies the tennis court where Barbara Fulraine played steamy matches against her young lover, Tom Jessup, while her sons, my classmates, whom Jessup tutored, frolicked in the vast swimming pool down the slope.
But it's the gate itself that's burned into my memory. As I look at it now the old television images flood back: Barbara and Andrew Fulraine begging for the return of their kidnapped daughter, Belle, s microphones are thrust toward them and cameras mercilessly strobe their tear-streaked cheeks.
I feel my own eyes grow wet as I recall those impromptu press conferences. I will never forget something my father said to my mother as we watched.
"People love this kind of thing. It shows them that even the rich and powerful feel pain."
Oh, yes, I think, Dad was right.. for what happened before this gate was the very substance of tragedy – the anguished bellowings of great lords rolling in the dust.
*****
Once past the great Fulraine place, I pick up speed, arriving a few minutes later at a cluster of apartment towers where Tremont Park once stood.
It was one of the great amusement parks of its era, a complex embracing dance halls, lovers' lanes, penny arcades, cotton candy stands, and numerous rides: Flying Ponies, Flying Scooters, Mill Chute, Roller Coaster, Over the Falls, and the inimitable Laf-in-the-Dark, where, alone in a boat in total blackness on a murky canal, between the barrel of stars and the enormous sliding spider, I imagine Barbara Fulraine and Tom Jessup kissing for the first time.
My destination today is the Flamingo Court Motel situated on the other side of Dawson. It was shabby then and still is today, but not by any means repulsive – a decent enough place for a family to spend the night or a pair of lovers to while away a hot summer afternoon.
The two-story powder-blue facade sports a fading mural of pink flamingos caught in mid-flutter between the trunks of lime-green palms. Looming above is a neon sign depicting a flamingo and, beneath that, another informing weary travelers and./or randy lovers that vacant rooms are still available within.
I pull into the lot across the street between Moe's Burgers and the Shanghai Sapphire Restaurant, then cross the street on foot and enter the motel courtyard. There's a rectangular pool here, its aquamarine interior fading, rust stains on the surrounding concrete, and water that appears less than perfectly clean. Two small boys splash happily at the shallow end. Nearby a woman in the skimpiest possible yellow bikini reads a magazine while taking the sun on an angry orange plastic-strap chaise lounge.
Not many clients at this hour. Perhaps a slew will appear at dusk. I note the configuration of the court – a two-story U-shaped building with exterior staircases and covered open porticos providing access to room doors running along the courtyard sides.
The office is to the right of the entrance. I'm about to turn toward it when I notice the woman on the chaise observing me over the top of her magazine.
"Hi," I greet her.
"Hi, yourself. Help you?"
"I'm looking for Johnny."
"You'll find him in the office," she says, then turns back to her magazine.
I find Johnny Powell leaning on the reception counter gazing at the TV set across the room. A Calista Forgers-Boston Red S
ox game's in progress, the score 5-2 in favor of the Sox.
I introduce myself.
"Oh, sure," he says, "been expecting you. You picked a good time. Nothing going on now ‘cept the baseball. Forgers playing like fools today."
"If I've ever seen a person to whom one could apply the moniker ‘geezer’ it would be the old man grinning at me now. He's stooped, thin, gaunt, unshaven, a pair of bright blue eyes in a tanned, cracked-leather face. His voice is cracked too, with a nasal twang. He looks the type who play wily old prospectors in westerns, spouting cracker-barrel philosophy about the lure of gold and how it's akin to the lust stirred by a wicked woman.
He mutes the TV with a remote.
"So you're here to see old two-oh-one?" he said. "Been a couple of years since anyone asked. First year after the killings they came in all the time, curiosity seekers wanting to take pictures and snatch up souvenirs. Mr. Evans – he's dead now, that's his daughter sunning herself outside – he decided not to let the room out or even paint it up. ‘Just leave it be, Johnny,’ he told me. Didn't even want me to scrub the bloodstains off the walls, though of course I did. We charged ‘em five dollars for a five-minute look. Made a bushel of money that way. When stuff started getting swiped – ashtrays, lamps, even one of the pictures on the wall – he had me screw everything down. For a couple years old two-oh-one was our top-producing room. Biggest thing ever happened here at the Flamingo. Biggest thing ever will happen, I betcha."
I ask Johnny if he was here the day of the murders.
"Sure was," he says. "Was afternoon man then, same as now. Knew the couple too, since they were regulars. Knew Mr. Jessup actually. Not the lady. Never exchanged two words with her. He'd come in, register, then wait for her up in the room. Or, if Mrs. Fulraine got here first, she'd wait out in her car till he registered, then follow him up. He always asked for an end room near the parking. That meant one-oh-one or two-oh-one depending on which was occupied.
The Dream of The Broken Horses Page 2