Gideon - 02 - Probable Cause

by Grif Stockley

  “These ought to be in a museum.”

  She goes to the wall with the rich kids and adjusts a frame that has begun to tilt to the left.

  “Some of them were. When people learn of my interest in children, they send them to me.”

  There is a knock at the door, and Kerr Bowman enters, carrying a file. Men working for women. It is still a rare sight in the South—especially in the law business. Kerr smiles at me as if I were best man at his wedding.

  “Hi, Gideon,” he says and pumps my hand for the second time in twenty-four hours.

  “Nice to see you again!” Maybe he is running for something, too. All this friendliness is beginning to make me want to gag.

  “Would you like to sit down at my workbench?” Jill says, ignoring Kerr’s glad-handing. Kerr, her expression implies, is like a gorgeous but brainless secretary, nice to look at but not to be taken seriously.

  For the first time I notice her desk. A “workbench” it isn’t. I sit down at one of the loveliest pieces of furniture I ‘we ever seen. Most lawyers’ desks are as functional and ugly as the floor of a public men’s room. This looks like a French antique from the seventeenth century. The ornamentation on the sides is so delicate I can’t imagine how she got it in here without breaking it. This is a desk a king’s mistress would bend over when writing her lover. As I sit down across from her, I run my fingers over the surface. I’m not much on decorating, but I love wood.

  “This is exquisite,” I acknowledge.

  This woman, I’m starting to realize, is a cut above the usual occupant in this office.

  “Thank you,” Jill says simply, and takes the file Kerr had handed her. She looks down at it.

  “I don’t know how much you know about the death of the child. Have you seen a picture of her?”

  “Not yet,” I admit. I should have asked for one from the mother, but I may not have wanted to see it.

  Jill hands me a five-by-seven-inch black-and-white.

  “The back says it was taken a couple of years ago.”

  I take the picture and study it. I don’t know what I was expecting, a freak maybe. But Pam, though not pretty by a long shot, is not hideous either. My guess is that she was in restraints at the time this picture was made. Her shoulders are square to the camera, but since it is mostly of her head I can’t be sure. Her brown hair, with bangs almost to her eyebrows, is combed. She seems to be grimacing rather than smiling. Her teeth are her worst feature.

  As strapped as the state is, I guess I shouldn’t expect to encounter the work of an orthodontist. Since I know she is retarded, I think from the picture it is obvious. But I’m not sure I would know otherwise. Fourteen is not the most attractive age for any kid, and there were plenty of round-faced girls this slow-looking in Sarah’s high school yearbook. There is no resemblance at all to Olivia. What I want is a picture of Pam after she was dead, to see if her face is swollen or bruised from blows she might have inflicted on herself before shock was applied. That is the photograph I want the jury to see, so it will understand why shock was necessary.

  This is no autopsy report. The decision to treat the death as a crime obviously has come in the last few days. The body had been cremated. A statement signed by Travis Beavers, M.D.” the doc who pronounced Pam dead, concludes:

  “Apparent fibrillary contraction of heart secondary to electric shock.” There are straightforward statements from Andy and the others present about the accident. I learn Olivia and the social worker were watching behind a oneway mirror. The damage comes from a statement by a psychologist by the name of Warren Holditch, who is identified as a member of the staff at the Bonaventure Clinic, a psychological consulting and testing group in Blackwell County.

  Holditch, a Ph.D.” rips Andy a new one with each sentence.

  I scan it hurriedly, but even a cursory reading tells me Andy is in trouble. I ask Jill for a duplicate of the file, and she tells me I am looking at my own copy. Evidently, she is waiting for a reaction from me, but until I have studied the report of Holditch and done some research of my own, she won’t get a peep out of me. I smile and tell her thank you and get up to leave.

  Jill is studying me as if I were one of the photographs on her wall.”

  “You’re not going to be able to blackmail this office this time around,” she says, her voice sweet and innocent like that of a child announcing she is ready to be tucked into bed.

  I stand up straight and pretend to look at one of the pictures on the wall to give myself time to think of an appropriate comeback. I know she is referring to the Hart Anderson case. I want to stick it to her in the worst way, but down the road I will have to deal with her office many times, and I manage to bite my tongue. I turn back to her and say brusquely, pretending anger I don’t feel, “Of all people, you ought to be aware there was more than one side to the way the Hart Anderson case got dealt down. You were in this office then.”

  She doesn’t blink.

  “Don’t waste your time asking for a deal, Gideon. You won’t get one.”

  I leave her office then but manage not to slam her door. A tough bitch if there ever was one. Why had I ever thought of her as a schoolteacher?

  julia, dressed today like a circus clown, in green polka-dotted pants and a ruffled orange collar like crepe paper around a lime top, greets me loudly as soon as I enter the reception area.

  “Last night on TV I saw you and that black dude who fried that poor kid,” she says, her tone almost respectful for the first time.

  “None of the dudes on our floor who call themselves attorneys have ever even been in a commercial.

  The phone’s been ringing off the wall for you, and it’s not even nine o’clock.”

  I rest the box of junk I have picked up from Mays & Burton on the edge of the reception desk as I pick up my messages.

  As crude as she is, Julia at least is honest. The receptionist at Mays & Burton, a young woman I had considered a friend, just treated me a few minutes ago as if I had joined a leper colony instead of having taken a client they never would have represented in the first place.

  “Good for business, huh?” I say, fishing out four messages from my slot. Three are from women and one is from a guy at the county jail. Nothing beats free advertising.

  She nods, unwrapping a stick of Juicy Fruit.

  “Yeah,” she advises, and begins to work the gum vigorously as if it were a piece of candle wax.

  “Listen, if you’re gonna be on TV, you gotta get some decent suits. Those pants yesterday were so shiny you could of signaled a cruise ship into dock with ‘em.”

  From one clothes horse to another, I think, glancing down at her to see if she is serious. She smiles magnanimously, as if she had given me a sure tip on the ninth race at Oaklawn in Hot Springs.

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I say.

  “Maybe there’ll be enough money for both of us.”

  A puzzled look comes over her face, making her mouth look like the dot at the bottom of a question mark.

  “That woman’s here to see you,” she says, pointing with her pencil to the corner of the waiting room.

  I follow her eraser. A slightly built young woman is eyeing me anxiously, “You’re Mr. Gideon Page,” she says, rising and coming toward me. She is in her late twenties, attired in baggy jeans, flip-flops that most people wear only around the house, and a black T-shirt that obscurely reads in script, “Let Being Be!”

  Buoyed by the prospects of new clients and the absence of hostility from Julia, I want to say something really atrocious like “the one and only,” but manage instead, “And you are… ?”

  “Mona Moneyhart,” she says, staring up at me with pale blue eyes the size of dinner plates. “My husband is suing for divorce. Can I talk to you right now? I have a summons.”

  I mouth to Julia to hold my calls. Let being be? What the hell does that mean? Maybe this is how young, rich society matrons dress these days. Her last name sounds promising anyway.

  “Nice to m
eet you,” I say, picking up my load.

  “You want to follow me back to my office? We can talk there.”

  Like a proud parent, Julia smiles happily as if she is seeing us go off on a first date. “Would you like some coffee, Ms.

  Moneyhart?” she chirps.

  I can’t believe my ears and don’t dare turn around. Julia offering to get coffee? Am I in the right office building?

  “No, thanks,” my potential client says in a barely audible voice and then asks me shyly, “Would you like for me to get you some?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, noticing Mrs. Moneyhart is no taller than a large child. How bad could she have been? And why divorce her? It might be easier to wait until she vanishes entirely.

  “Thank you, Julia,” I call over my shoulder.

  In my office she flips on my light switch for me and clears a spot on my desk. I’m tempted to ask her to fluff up my chair and take off my shoes.

  “Have a seat,” I tell her, “while I read this.” This will be my first divorce case ever. At Mays & Burton the firm specialized in personal injury cases, and at the Public De fender’s Office, of course, we just had purely criminal cases, so I’m flying by the seat of my pants. I didn’t take domestic relations in law school; now, I wish I had. What courses did I take? Did I really go? I leaf through the complaint and summons and then force myself to go through it carefully. It looks straightforward enough: her husband wants custody of their three children, possession of the house, temporary child support, attorney’s fees, and court costs. Three children?

  How can this woman have had one? Her pelvis is so narrow I can’t imagine how she could have given birth to even a credit card.

  “I got the summons last week,” Mrs. Moneyhart says, still on her feet. She has edged around my desk and is hovering over me.

  I put the papers down on my desk.

  “I can read this better if you’ll just relax a little and sit down.”

  Nervously patting her stringy brown hair, which is tied by a red ribbon behind her head, Mrs. Moneyhart whimpers apologetically in a wispy tone, “Sorry.” She sighs and flops back to the chair.

  “I know you’re upset,” I say, wondering how to calm down this woman. She is beginning to get on my nerves.

  Perched on the edge of her chair, Mrs. Moneyhart begins to cry.

  “He wants a divorce because he thinks that I deliberately burned rats in the oven! That’s not fair!”

  I put the papers down and rub my eyes. Is this really my first divorce client? She better have some cash. I lean back in my chair and try to keep from sighing audibly.”

  “Did you,” I say, not believing I’m asking this question, “accidentally burn some rats in your oven?”

  She pulls up the bottom edge of her tee shirt and wipes her eyes, revealing a milky-white waist no bigger than one of my thighs. For an instant I think she is going to pull her shirt over her head. I’ve got to get a box tissues for my desk, or I’ll end up being charged with some kind of sex crime.

  She sniffs, “They must have started getting in through the back somehow. It was real cold this winter.”

  I close my eyes. I don’t know much about ovens, but mine doesn’t have a special entrance for rodents. When I open my eyes again, Mrs. Moneyhart is on her feet once more, edging closer to my desk. I am beginning to feel claustrophobic.

  “How could that possibly happen?”

  Mrs. Moneyhart interlaces her fingers and holds them up in front of me.

  “My theory is that this screw that held this metal strip around the base in the back came out,” she says, nicking her index finger at me, “and they worked in that way. Anyway, when I took out the pan there were these two humongous rats up to their necks in blueberry muffins, just cooking away. Steve said that was the last straw.”

  I can imagine. If she gets any closer, I think I will start screaming.

  “I don’t think,” I say honestly, “that I’m going to have the time to help you.” Nobody has that kind of time.

  Abruptly, she pulls up her T-shirt again and snatches a wad of bills from under her bra, which I can’t help noticing is black. Her chest, already frail, visibly shrinks as she showers them on my desk. There must be a thousand dollars in fifties.

  “I knew it was coming to this,” she says, her voice a shrill giggle, as she stands over me again, “so I cleaned out our cookie jar at the bank the day he moved out.”

  I suppose she means her bank account. I think of the check I wrote on the Blazer this past weekend to Allstate Insurance.

  No wonder they’re all smiling in their commercials. I’ve got to find some health insurance now, too.

  “If you will just go take a seat,” I say, unable to take my eyes off the money, “I’ll check my calendar.”

  An hour later I don’t know much more than I did to start, but. God forgive me, neither does my client. I don’t even own a set of Arkansas statutes yet, so I can’t do much more than listen and nod wisely. For his grounds for divorce, her husband’s complaint alleges only the barest legal conclusions, “general indignities,” as if his attorney, a man I’ve never even heard of, is too embarrassed to be more specific.

  Try as she may, Mrs. Moneyhart, who has somewhat grudgingly consented to again trying to remain seated, can’t think of a single thing her husband has done to merit us filing a counterclaim. No affairs, no abuse, a good job, great in bed, her husband seems only guilty of bad judgment in having married a fruitcake.

  Doodling on a yellow pad (since she has given me nothing to write), exasperated, I ask, “Can’t you think of anything bad about him? Doesn’t he have some annoying habit?”

  Mrs. Moneyhart adjusts the ribbon holding her hair, tightening her skin in the process.

  “Well, he’s started” she be gins to nod shrewdly “to complain a little about my cooking.”

  After another fifteen minutes of mostly fruitless inquiry (she is happy to share custody of the children), I promise to call her the next day after I have contacted her husband’s attorney to see how serious they are. Actually, I need the time to look up the divorce statutes. As I stand beside her waiting for the elevators (I want to make certain she gets on), I have to ask, “What does your T-shirt mean?”

  Carelessly, she looks down at the fading white script, which now that her money is gone, lies flat against her chest. In a voice obviously offended by my ignorance, she says, “Surely you’ve heard of Martin Heidegger?”

  I stare at my client’s chest. I called a plumber once by the name of Marvin Heidelman, but the only thing he talked about was money.

  “I guess I haven’t,” I say nervously, wondering if she is going to demand her money back.

  “The philosopher, silly,” she says and reaches up to kiss my cheek as the elevator door slides open. Five men in business suits watch as Mrs. Moneyhart waves goodbye at me.

  “I know you’ll rip his balls off for me!” she hollers as the door closes.

  Sweating profusely from nervous exhaustion, I go back inside the glass doors, now remembering Heidegger’s name from an introductory course in college. My philosophy professor (he was probably quoting another professor) once said Heidegger spent his entire life meditating on the philosophical concept of Being. And now I know his conclusion after a life’s work: Let Being Be! I can live with that. Despite her T-shirt I don’t think Mrs. Moneyhart is going to be quite so tolerant. At her desk, Julia is holding up Mrs. Moneyhart’s file by two fingers. She must have been looking at it. She says solemnly, “We’ll call this one the rat-burner case.”

  It is only mid-mo ming but I feel as if I have been at work a week. I can’t wait to start returning phone calls. A cattle-prod killer and a rat burner. I’m off to a great start.

  “Mr. Page?”

  I nod. The girl speaking to me must be one of Sarah’s dorm assistants. She is wearing a red T-shirt and looks serious and responsible. I have brought the Blazer around to the dorm to pick up Sarah and now am trying to find her in the crush of
girls and their parents. I squint at the girl’s name tag. Jenny Lacey.

  “I just wanted to say how much I like Sarah,” she says, smiling.

  “She’s doing fine.” “I ‘m glad to hear it,” I tell this child as if she were Sarah’s physician instead of a college student somewhere. Actually, this news is not unappreciated. Since I have been up here on the campus of Hendrix College for the parents’ session to learn what Governor’s School is supposedly all about and to take her home for a three-day break, Sarah has been uncharacteristically anxious.

  “It must be quite an experience,” I say, eager to confide in the girl in order to gain information about my daughter.

  “She’s written some interesting letters.”

  At the session this morning for parents, a panel of her teach ere stressed that they were not trying to break our children down! The man next to me leaned over and whispered that it was nice to know we haven’t sent them off to a concentration camp.

  Jenny, whose dark eyes are magnified by lenses framed in red, says blandly, “It can be a real eye-opener. Sarah’s handling it pretty well though.”

  I nod but look around for Sarah. Handling what? Have they told her she has terminal cancer? One of her social science teachers, a guy who teaches at Southern Arkansas University during the year, smugly told us that after three weeks many of the kids were beginning to learn how to justify their prejudices in a rational manner. As solemn as owls, the parents (myself included) eagerly moved our heads up and down in unison as if he had announced that a cure for AIDS was imminent. I wondered but did not have the courage to ask if there was some inconsistency in this statement. Can a prejudice be justified rationally? I got a C in a course in formal logic in college, so I kept my mouth shut.

  I see Sarah by the door waving at me and I catch up with her as she says fervent goodbyes to friends she has known for three weeks at most. She will be back in three days, but she is behaving as if she is departing on a jungle expedition and is not expected to survive. She insists on driving but then falls silent until we are on the main drag in Conway.