by Harry Kraus
She sat beside him and tussled his hair. “You’re not imagining it, Kyle. You told me everything.”
He looked at Margo, studying her for a moment. Her eyes were wide, her face a reflection of calm.
She kissed his cheek. “You need a shave,” she teased, stroking his cheek.
“I don’t get it. I told you what a jerk I was. You know how much I’ve screwed up my own life.” He halted, then added, “And Claire’s. So why are you so cheerful?”
“Because the right road begins at a point called honesty, Kyle.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m not going to downplay what you did.
But it was a long, long time ago. Love will get us through.”
He sipped his coffee. “I love you.”
“You too.”
“So what’s the next step on this right road?”
“Talk to Claire.”
“What do I say?”
“Tell her the truth.”
“She will never forgive me.”
“I suppose you’ll just have to take that chance.”
By Sunday morning, Claire was a week overdue for some meaningful face time with John. At 10:30, a guard called eight names. The girls lined up and were escorted in single file into the visiting area, a long, skinny room lined with windows. Beside each window was a black phone. In front of each window was a metal black stool bolted to the floor. There were concrete partial-wall partitions between each stool. On the other side, the families had gathered in an identical room. The inmates rushed to the phones. Claire had thirty minutes.
Claire saw her mother and John standing at one of the middle windows. The other room was crowded with children. Most windows were plastered with two adult faces and numerous kids. The room was drab beige cinderblock with a tile floor. Everyone’s voice seemed to echo, and kids on the other side were fighting to talk on the phones. Claire picked up the phone and put her hand against the one-inch glass window. John lifted his hand to touch the glass across from hers.
“Hi.” She squinted to see his face through the scratched surface of the window.
“How are you doing?” John asked.
There wasn’t time for small talk. “Peachy,” she said. “John, what is going on? You know about the body in my car?”
“Of course.”
“It was Tyler Crutchfield!”
“We know, Claire.”
The volume of the phone was low and everyone in the room was talking. She leaned closer to the glass in a futile attempt to hear better. She stared at John, his face sober, his eyes penetrating. Della’s hand covered her mouth but did not hide the quivering of her chin. It’s too much for her to see me this way. An uncomfortable silence hung between them as the realization began to grip her gut. They aren’t feeling sorry for me. Do they think I killed Wally and Tyler Crutchfield? She started shaking her head slowly.
“You don’t know, you don’t know,” she repeated. “You think I’m guilty?”
“Claire, we — ” John halted as his voice caught in his throat. “We — ”
“Don’t do this to me. I haven’t been able to talk to you for days, I’m here and I don’t know why, my attorney doesn’t believe me, and now you — ” She halted, her voice choking with a sob.
John spoke as he and Della leaned their heads together so they could both listen. “We didn’t say we thought you were guilty.”
She wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand. “You don’t need to say it. I can see the fear in your eyes.”
Della tilted the mouthpiece toward her. “Tell us what happened, honey. What did Tyler do to you? Did he catch you when you went to see Wally?”
Claire took a deep breath and looked into their eyes, one pair at a time. “I need you to listen. I knew nothing about Tyler Crutchfield until Mr. Fauls told me about him. I knew nothing of Daddy’s death until I was accused of killing him.”
“Mr. Fauls told us you fired him.”
“I need someone who believes me.”
John sighed. “Claire, maybe it wouldn’t hurt if you agreed to work with him. He’s trying to help. Could you at least talk to a counselor about — ”
She held up her hand. “I don’t need a counselor, John. I need someone to believe me. Someone to realize that someone is setting me up.”
“We do believe you, Claire, don’t we, John?” Della said, nodding her head.
“Claire,” John started. “We want to help. Mr. Fauls isn’t such a bad guy. He helped me, remember?”
“Mr. Fauls seems to have the wrong idea. He seems to think his job is to get me off for doing something wrong. I need someone to defend me because I’m innocent.”
John sat on the stool, forcing Della to lean over with her ear still plastered to the phone. “Help us understand, Claire.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
John reached out and touched the dingy glass window again, his face etched with tension.
“Did you know I helped deliver a baby this week?” She watched their mouths open silently. She spoke through her tears. “Oh, no? Well, that’s because I’ve had quite a week here that I can’t share with you because the phone company won’t let me call yet, and the judge wouldn’t let me attend Daddy’s funeral, and I couldn’t see you last Sunday because your name had to be on the stupid list by Friday, and when I see you now, you both have decided that I must be in here for a good reason.” Her voice cracked. She sniffed and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her orange jumpsuit. She looked up at their blank stares, feeling like a freak at a carnival.
“Claire,” John said, placing his hand against the glass in front of her. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” she said, shaking her head. She returned the phone to the cradle and cried. “Bonnie,” she called to the guard. “I need to go back to the pod.”
She moved away from her seat, pausing once at the door to stare into the pleading eyes of her husband. Then she walked back into the commons, where there was an hour of freedom before lunch and afternoon lockdown.
Tamika inspected her fingernails, cut short as per jailhouse rules. Trisha slouched on the opposite end of the couch with a look that dared anyone to sit between them. She frowned and looked at Claire. “The doc’s back early.”
Claire nodded silently. She felt like crying, definitely not the thing to do in this crowd.
Tamika looked up. “ ’Sup, girl? Your new husband dis you or something?”
“Nobody seems to believe me.”
“Join the club.”
Claire sat in a chair and stared at the floor. “My family seems to think I need a psychiatric exam.” She sighed. “It’s my attorney’s idea.”
“I thought you fired your attorney,” Tamika said.
“I did. My husband wants me to give him another chance.”
Trisha yawned. “My attorney had me take those psycho tests.” She grinned. “The judge says I’m not mentally competent to stand trial.”
“It can only help you, Doc,” Tamika added. “Even if you have to go to trial, it can help the jury understand the stress you was under.”
The old woman Claire only knew as a husband killer smirked and lifted her tattooed hand. “Gets you out of this place for a few hours. It took me all afternoon to take the tests.”
Claire slumped in a chair. “I’m not crazy.”
Tamika nodded. “Don’t matter, Doc. We knows you’re not crazy.”
“How do you know? Everyone else seems to have their mind made up about me.”
Claire searched the faces of the other inmates as they looked away to avoid her gaze. Their silence wasn’t encouraging.
Maria entered and leaned against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest.
Tamika looked over. “Maria’s back!”
Trisha tilted her head at the space on the couch beside her. “Sit. You just had surgery. They make you come back here so fast.”
Maria nodded. “The locked ward at Brighton University is like the Hilton. They serve you meal
s in bed.”
“But they have to cut you open to let you in, huh?”
Claire smiled as Maria slowly lowered herself onto the couch. “How’s little John?”
“He’s okay.” She held her hand to her mouth. “They took him from me.”
“Who has him?”
“Social services.” She sniffed. “I never had a chance to say thank you.”
Claire shrugged. “I’d do anything to get out of here for a few hours.”
Tamika interrupted. “Then you should take those tests, Doc. You’re not crazy. So prove it to them.”
Claire tried to smile. “I’ll think about it.” She walked back to her cell and lay on her bed, feeling isolated and alone. How can it be that everyone I love seems to have lost faith in me?
A few minutes later, Maria slowly lowered herself onto the bottom bed of the adjacent bunk. There she lay in silence, her breathing heavy.
Claire looked over to see that Maria was crying. “What’s wrong?”
“I miss my baby.”
Claire joined her by shedding fresh tears of her own.
“So why are you crying?”
“Nothing went right with my family. I was so looking forward to talking to John, but everything went wrong.”
“I hate the black phones. There’s too much pressure to get everything perfect ’cause you only have a short time. No one likes to talk in front of everyone else.”
“Really.” Claire smiled. Maria understood. “What if everyone is right about me? What if I’ve just lost it and can’t remember?”
“You’re not crazy, Doc. And you’re not a murderer.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“No murderer would spend so much time saving the life of my child.”
That evening, John tried to lose himself in a detective novel, but every twisted piece of evidence made him think of Claire. He had been staring at the same page for five minutes when the sound of the doorbell lifted him from his trance.
He opened the door to see Ami with a large basket in hand. “Hi, neighbor,” she said, smiling.
“Ami, I — ,” he started to protest.
“I’ve brought you supper. I know you are bachin’ it, and I just imagined you over here ordering pizza night after night.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“Well, I did. Now make yourself a gentleman and invite me in.”
“Ami, this isn’t a good idea.”
She barged past him. “If you hadn’t noticed, I’m trying to be a good neighbor here. And I’m trying to make things right between us.”
John followed her into his kitchen. She started unloading her picnic basket. A plate of steaming fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, cole slaw, and biscuits soon covered the round oak table.
“Can we use your eating utensils?” she asked.
“I don’t think we should — ”
She shook her head and interrupted. “There’s nothing wrong with sharing a meal with a neighbor when there’s a crisis in the family.” She opened cupboards until she found plates. She set the table for two while John inhaled the aroma of fresh biscuits.
“This isn’t KFC.”
“I can cook, you know.”
“You shouldn’t stay.”
“Now John Cerelli, what would your mother think if your neighbor made all this food and you refused to share? Sit,” she said, pouring tea into two tall glasses.
Ami loaded a plate, set it in front of him, and quickly put a leg along with a small dab of cole slaw and potatoes on her own. She sat down next to him.
He sighed and picked up his fork. The fragrance was heaven.
“Shouldn’t you ask a blessing?”
“You want me to pray?” He was incredulous.
“Of course. I know you’re a Christian.” She closed her eyes and waited.
John offered a simple prayer of thanks, halting only when he felt her warm hand curl into his. “Amen!” he added abruptly. He opened his hand and grabbed his fork again.
She kept her eyes closed for a few extra moments before whispering, “Amen.”
John ate too fast, emptying his plate in a few minutes, hoping Ami would speed along. Instead, she chatted about her day, her search for a new job, how she liked the neighborhood, and her mother’s adjustment to life without Richard.
“Your food is going to get cold,” John said. “You’ve hardly touched it.”
“You eat like you think it’s going to get away.”
“It has been pretty dreary meal-wise around this place.” He set another piece of chicken on his plate and slathered a biscuit with butter. She acknowledged him with a tentative smile before she looked away.
He finished his chicken without talking, wishing Ami wasn’t so attractive and pushy.
“I’ll leave you the leftovers,” she said, moving the plates to the sink. “You know, I had a friend who got her marriage annulled. I think you can get a judge to do that if you haven’t consummated your commitment.” She let the last words drip from her mouth like a starving man salivating for bread.
“You should go,” John said, leaning back against the kitchen counter. “Thanks for the chicken.”
“Anytime,” she said. “I’ll come back later for my dishes.”
Wednesday afternoon, William Fauls plodded past his secretary’s desk and plucked the messages from her hand as he passed. She smiled. “You were right. Claire Cerelli still wants to retain you, and she has agreed to a psychological evaluation.”
He chuckled. “Things must be getting boring down in the female pod.”
He closed his door and hung his gray suitcoat on the back of his desk chair.
He looked at the first message from Claire Cerelli and dialed Joanne Phillips. She answered on the first ring.
“Joanne, it’s Bill Fauls. I need a favor.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’m representing Claire McCall Cerelli. I think you’re familiar with her.”
“I read the paper.”
“Well, I’m looking ahead, really. I can’t make sense of the evidence in the case and what my client is telling me. Can I speak in confidence?”
“Of course.”
“Everything is pointing to the fact that Claire killed her father out of revenge for some childhood sexual abuse. In addition, the police have opened another investigation involving Claire, involving a body found in her car.”
“I saw that in the paper. What is going on?”
“It looks like the man is Tyler Crutchfield, the serial rapist who attacked Claire about seven months ago. The evidence looks like he raped Claire, then died of a stab wound to the back. It looks like a defensive wound. Either she is the best liar in the business, or crazy, or telling the truth and all the evidence is a lie.”
“What’s this have to do with me?”
“I need some idea about her mental status. I understand you worked with her before. What’s your read of her? Can you do some additional interviews or tests as a professional opinion of her competency to stand trial?”
“Bill, first of all, you know all about therapist-patient privilege. I can’t divulge information to you without a signed release of information form.”
“Come on, Joanne, I’m just asking for your opinion, not a binding — ”
“There’s another issue here, Bill. I don’t have any information for you.
She’s never been a client of mine.”
“What? She told me she saw you when she was working through some post-sexual-assault trauma issues.” He paused, tapping his fingers on his desk. “In fact, she seemed a little put off the last time I talked to her, saying that you were the one that brought up the abuse issues in the first place.”
“I think you’re confused. Or she is. I’ve never talked to this woman. Or maybe you have your answer already.”
“What do you mean?”
“She could be lying to you.”
“What would motivate her to do that?”
; “You say the evidence points to her being raped?”
“According to the medical examiner.”
“Perhaps she’s having some post-traumatic amnesia or blocking everything out by some defense mechanism. Perhaps she doesn’t know she’s lying.”
“Why would she claim to have been your patient?”
“Lots of reasons. Maybe she doesn’t want to be evaluated. Maybe she’s a pathological liar. Maybe she’s confused and had therapy from someone else. I really don’t know.”
“Nothing about this case makes sense.”
“Is she paranoid? Does she think everyone’s out to get her?”
Bill thought back about Claire making a secret tape of her fiancé at work. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“I’m just brainstorming. From what I read in the papers, her father had end-stage Huntington’s disease. I thought folks were speculating that his death was euthanasia.”
“That was the media guess. But I’m thinking that was all just a cover-up. Evidence points to something a bit more troublesome, that she may have killed her father out of revenge.”
“And hoped everyone would accept his death as natural, or if they suspected anything foul, at worst, they’d interpret his death as an act of love.”
“Something like that. But I can’t get a good read of this girl. I need to know how I’m going to go at this. Maybe she wasn’t competent because of a recent trauma from a rape.”
“Why don’t you believe her? Everything I’ve heard about Claire McCall is that she is one of the smartest women to come out of Stoney Creek.”
“I know that. But nothing adds up. Even her family is starting to question her.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“Help me. Go see her. See if you can get a read on her.”
“Get me clearance. I’ll talk to her.”
Two days later, Claire waited in a too-familiar conference room for Joanne Phillips. She peered through the window into the next room, a mirror-image space where her counselor would be allowed to sit during their interaction. A few minutes later, she heard the clunk of the electronic lock and looked up to see a dumpy, middle-aged woman unafraid to show the world her natural gray hair. She wore a navy suit and carried a leather satchel.