Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction

by Grif Stockley

  Shane’s office at Christian Life is big enough to put in a skating rink. If influence is measured by space, he’s ready to challenge Pat Robertson as head of the religious right. My office would fit nicely in the corner where he has a couch, a recliner, and a twenty-six-inch Sorry color television and VCR. It is to this area he leads me. Chet is already seated at the far end of the couch.

  “You have to see what your competition’s doing, and these days they’re on almost twenty-four hours a day,” Shane rattles on nervously as I gawk at the TV.

  Chet glares at me and looks down at his watch. I’m only ten minutes late.

  “The traffic is murder out there,” I apologize. I sit on the couch nearest the TV, and by the strained look on chet’s face, I halfway expect him to tell me he has the video of Leigh and we’re all going to watch it together.

  Both are dressed in dark blue suits I’d be proud to be buried in.

  “Have you heard anything from Leigh?” I ask Chet, gathering from his expression he has not.

  “Shane,” he says, ignoring me, “this is as hard as anything I’ve ever had to do, but Gideon has made me realize that I’m obligated to ask you some questions about your whereabouts during the time Art was murdered.”

  Shane folds his arms across his chest and gives Chet a hard stare.

  “You’re not serious.”

  Chet goes totally rigid and his head seems to disappear inside his shirt. He swallows hard and continues, “Where were you between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty the day your son-in-law was murdered?”

  Shane’s voice rises in anger.

  “You actually think I’d commit murder, Chet?”

  I look at Chet, who, in all the hours I’ve watched him, has never appeared out of control even for an instant For the first time he seems close. His eyes blink rapidly, and he stammers, “Answer my question, damn it.”

  As if he does understand what Chet is going through, Shane seems to relax. His features soften, and he smiles at him.

  “It’s okay.” He clears his throat and, trying to sound casual, says, “As best I can remember, I think I was here in the office all the time.”

  I have never really felt sorry for Chet until this moment He places his hand over his mouth as if he is about to utter something unspeakable. Finally, he mumbles through his fingers, “One of the secretaries who used to work for you says that you left the office during that period and came back right before Leigh called to say Art had been shot.”

  Shane places his right ankle across his left thigh and says easily, “It’s possible I did go out. We had a missionary from Guatemala at the church that day. I don’t know. It’s like trying to remember what you were doing before Kennedy was killed. You remember what you were doing when you heard the news, but not what you ate for breakfast that day. I could have gone a dozen places within a hundred yards of my office.”

  I wonder if I am supposed to be taking notes. This is weak. Chet said the secretary told him that Shane said he was going over to his house for a while. I glance at Chet, but he is examining his hands. I ask, “Do you’re call seeing anybody or talking to anybody during that time other than the women in the office?”

  Shane squinches his eyes and studies the ceiling for a long moment.

  “Not offhand,” he says finally, fixing his gaze on Chet.

  “You’re not going to claim in court,” he asks, his voice too loud, “that I shot Art, are you?”

  Chet, now slumped against the back of the couch, seems listless and broken. He spreads his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.

  “I may not have a choice,” he says dully.

  “Now, wait just a minute!” Shane almost shouts, leaning forward over his knees.

  “This is absurd! No jury will believe for a second that I killed my own sonin-law. As horrible a man as he turned out to be, murder never once crossed my mind. I admit I talked to Leigh about divorcing him, which may sound hypocritical as many times as I’ve preached on the value of couples staying together, but that’s as far as I went.”

  I look past Norman to the large desk that sits in front of the two windows in his office.

  “Your daughter loved the man,” I say, knowing I am baiting him.

  “She didn’t want a divorce.”

  “He was murdering her soul!” Shane retorts angrily.

  “Leigh was a precious vessel of God’s love before she met Art.”

  I glance at Chet to see how he is taking these re marks. The back of his right hand obscures his face. His eyes, an almost colorless light blue, show no emotion. I am struck by Norman’s use of the term “murdering her soul.” If he were on trial, instead of his daughter, before a jury of Christian Lifers, he might argue justifiable homicide. A father defending his child against a deadly attacker. What person would convict a man who used force to save his daughter? In Norman’s mind, Leigh’s soul is worth more than her body. It would be far easier to defend Norman than his daughter.

  “You saw that Art was destroying Leigh, didn’t you?” I ask, believing I understand for the first time that, given Norman’s worldview, murder was the only possible solution. What was it they said about Vietnam?

  We had to destroy the country to save it. In Norman’s mind, once the corruption started, there was no end to it. The pull of the world is too strong. Look what happened to his other daughters while he stood by. Once you leave, you almost never go back. The world is too seductive. When Norman doesn’t respond, I ask him a question I know he will answer.

  “What did you tell Leigh about Art’s death?”

  Shane says in a voice so detached and automatic I know he has thought it a hundred times since the day Art died, “That he got what he deserved. I won’t deny that.”

  Biblical phrases like “reap what you sow” come into my mind. Even if he didn’t kill Art, he wished him dead.

  “Since you love your daughter so much,” I say quickly before Chet can protest, “you won’t object if Chet suggests to the jury that others, including yourself, may have had a possible motive for murdering her husband.”

  Like a wounded animal, Shane roars, “You do what you have to do, but I didn’t kill him!”

  Remembering Chet’s instructions to let him do the talking, I look over at him to see if I’m in trouble. This was his speech as far as I am concerned, but from what I’ve seen so far, he wasn’t going to make it. He sits quietly, staring at Shane as if he is evaluating his sincerity.

  Finally, he says quietly to him, “It could ruin you.”

  Shane, now barely seated, yells at him, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  Abruptly, Chet stands and heads for the door, leaving me and Shane looking at each other. I scramble to my feet and chase after him while Shane hollers futilely, “Chet!”

  Out in the parking lot, his face ashen, Chet tells me shakily, “I’m going home.”

  Hunched over as he unlocks the Mercedes, he looks shockingly old, defeated.

  “Let me argue the case!” I demand.

  “I can do it! You shouldn’t have to do this!”

  “I’ll do it,” he says, almost under his breath as he arranges himself in the car. He drives away, mumbling something to himself.

  Back home, waiting for Sarah to call, I open a beer, heat up some cheese dip, open a bag of potato chips, and sit in the kitchen looking out the window at the gathering darkness. Woogie’s bowl is still half full from last night.

  “Depressed, huh?” I ask him as he stretches out on the linoleum by the window.

  “We’ll hear from her tonight.” I hope.

  Ignoring me, he places his muzzle between his paws flat on the dirty surface. I break off a chip in the thick yellow sludge that is congealing before my eyes. I couldn’t penetrate this goo if I were eating brickbats.

  Too tired to cook, I drink and think about Shane Nor man. Do what you have to do, he said. What would I have said if it were Sarah who was charged and I was innocent? I don’t have as much to lose as Shane Nor man. His
life requires that his inner and outer selves match up in a way mine do not. Yet, for all I know, preachers carry guilt inside them like everyone else, and it is only their flock that assumes that hypocrisy bur dens their consciences more than the rest of us. Do I believe he is innocent? I sip at my beer. I don’t know. I still have problems getting past the taboo of believing a minister would kill another human being. Yet, historically, the church has been as bloodthirsty as the rest of society, if not more so. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of Jews, religious zealots on both sides during the Civil War, white-supremacist religious groups, all stand as monuments to a barely restrained ecclesiastical violence. I think of the hatred I see in some of the faces of those people who oppose abortion on religious grounds. If that is Christian love in their faces, give me a secular humanist anytime. It is the look on Chet’s face that convinces me that Norman is lying.

  I get out a legal pad and begin to think about what should be in an opening argument.

  At nine Sarah calls, but it is not a satisfactory conversation. My supply of restraint is wearing thin, and the alcohol doesn’t help.

  “When do you think you’ll be coming home?” I ask, unable to wait her out even a few seconds.

  “I don’t know. Dad,” she says, not bothering to conceal her own irritation.

  “I have to decide on what terms I want to live in the world.”

  What utter crap! I can’t talk any further without exploding

  “I’m going to bed,” I say shortly, and hang up, furious at everybody I’ve ever known connected with religion. It is not as if Sarah had been forced to live in some brothel. She has had it pretty damn easy. Like about ninety-nine percent of the kids I know, she’s spoiled rotten.

  I call Rainey and unload my feelings on her.

  “I sup pose it’s just a matter of time before she will begin quoting the Bible to the effect that she has no mother or father except Christian Life. What about family values?” I complain.

  “Don’t these so-called families have anybody in them with any sense?”

  “They are talking to her,” Rainey says, sounding a little shaken for the first time.

  “They don’t force anyone to do anything.”

  “Well, I’m gonna go to the Prosecutor’s Office when this trial is over,” I yell at her, “and charge somebody with kidnapping.”

  “Which will guarantee that she won’t talk to you for years,” Rainey says right back.

  “Life is too short for that kind of resentment.”

  “Well, it’s not getting any longer this way,” I reply stubbornly. Miserable, I hang up and go to bed.

  I am at the airport waiting for Jessie St. vrain to get off the plane, when I hear my name paged over the PA.

  system. It must be Chet. No one else knows I’m here.

  “You didn’t have to come pick me up!” Jessie exclaims as she emerges from a stream of United passengers. She unnerves me by having cut her hair even shorter than it was last week. With the trial to begin tomorrow, it is not too late to suggest a wig. Of course, she would be highly offended.

  “Southern hospitality,” I say, smiling.

  “How was the flight?” Jessie is wearing loose-fitting brown pants under a green suede jacket. Her brown shoes look like the kind elves wear in animated cartoons. I hope she has something more appropriate in her bag. Her story is going to be hard enough for a jury to swallow without her looking like Peter Pan.

  “Tricky winds out of Denver,” she replies, grimacing, as she matches me stride for stride.

  “If we had been lower, I think we would have bounced into a mountain.”

  I shudder and hear my name again. Chet could have sent Daffy to get her. He and Jessie would have made a nice pair.

  “Isn’t that you,” she asks, nudging me, “being paged?”

  “I get the joke,” I say weakly, wondering what other people in the airport think of this woman. She seems equally curious, staring boldly at my fellow Arkansans, who look pretty normal to me.

  “Shoes, see?”

  “I was just kidding!” she practically shouts, crowding me into the wall.

  Chet’s message says to drop off Jessie at the Excelsior Hotel and meet him inside the courthouse at the east entrance. This can mean only one thing: the prosecutor is willing to cut a deal. We still have no idea of Leigh’s whereabouts, unless in the last half hour something has happened I don’t know about. When I arrive twenty minutes later, Chet is pacing around the rotunda as if he were sweating out the jury’s decision.

  “Jill called from her office ten minutes after you left,” he says, his voice excited for the only time since I’ve known him.

  “She wants to talk.”

  Flattered that he has waited for me, I feel obligated to point out the obvious, “It would help if we had a client to run this by.”

  Chet punches the button to take us to the third floor.

  Six months ago he would have taken the steps two at a time.

  “She’s bound to show up sometime. Did St. vrain make it in?”

  I nod as the elevator opens.

  “She’s a little weird.”

  Chet grins.

  “That’s what you keep telling me. Maybe we won’t need her.” As we ride up and walk around the corner to the prosecutor’s office, it sinks in how much Chet wants to avoid this trial. His zest for trial work is such that he almost hates to cut a deal and browbeats the prosecutors until they are practically begging him to take probation. These stories are surely exaggerated, but they prove a point: Chet isn’t afraid to go for an outright acquittal. Yet, why shouldn’t he want to plead out this case? He isn’t prepared, he is sick, and his loyalties are clearly divided.

  “Jill must be having some problems,” I whisper as we enter the suite of offices that house Blackwell County’s chief legal officer. Chet winks, as if this turn of events is too good to risk commenting on.

  Jill Marymount has proved to be a decent prosecutor in her tenure in office. She can grab headlines with the best of them, but underneath all the hype is a solid record. Unlike some prosecutors after their election, she tries cases regularly instead of relying on assistants. I had thought she had political ambitions, but the rumors have died down that she wants to run for attorney general They will be revived if she knocks off Chet Bracken. Jill sweeps through the door to the reception area, reminding me of the actress Loretta Young. She is wearing a dress instead of the suit she will don tomorrow, and she shows a mouthful of perfect teeth as if we were fans waiting for autographs. Chet, who is used to being courted in these situations, is unusually gracious, betraying his own eagerness.

  Temporarily old pals instead of old enemies, we come close to slapping each other’s backs as she escorts us to her office. Once there, she offers us coffee and serves it herself. It seems a miracle that she hasn’t heard that Leigh has disappeared, which is a tribute to the tightness of Christian Lifers in Blackwell County. From be hind her desk she says lightly, “Two against one, no fair, guys.”

  I steal a look at Chet, who is slouched in his chair. To be prattling on like this, Jill must have a hole in her case we can drive a truck through. But where is it? I can’t see it. Chet might know, but I have no idea.

  Maybe it is simply her fear of the religious fundamentalists who will be on the jury and who will surely be manipulated by someone as skilled as Chet. Jill could wind up with a goose egg and have a killer on the loose in the swankiest part of Blackwell County. Chet acknowledges the truth of her remark by saying, “When Gideon and I were growing up in the Delta, we used to say, quite innocently, “Two against one, nigger fun.” ” Jill swallows hard as if she were a child forced to swallow a tablespoon of milk of magnesia. I don’t recall the innocence of that remark, but it was a common schoolboy lament. She says, “I didn’t know you were from the same town.”

  Our solidarity established, I clarify.

  “Chet’s from Helena in Phillips County; I’m from Bear Creek in Lee.

&n
bsp; There’s not a lot of difference.”

  Jill forces a smile at us. Good old boys riding up and down Main Street, looking for someone to gang bang

  She has changed her office again since I was in here last. During the Andy Chapman trial, she had dozens of pictures of children on the walls. Now, painted a fresh eggshell blue to cover up the holes, I assume, the room seems empty and sterile. Jill says abruptly, “I’m offering you ten years and a plea to manslaughter.”

  Just a little over three years with good time. Jill’s eyes are on Chet. There is not even the slightest pre tense that we are co-equals on this case. Licking his lips, he doesn’t so much as look at me before saying, “I’ll talk to Leigh and get back to you.”

  I feel my insides bind. Chet barely let her get her words out. Is he selling Leigh down the river, or does he think she is guilty? I no longer have any idea. Now all we have to do is find her. Jill runs a hand through her thick, glossy hair. I don’t know which of them looks more relieved.

  “I’ll talk to Judge Grider and see if he has time to take a plea this afternoon.”

  Chet shakes his head.

  “Let me get hold of her first,” he says, his voice sounding hollow against the bare walls.

  “If she won’t take it, I don’t want Grider dunking she changed her mind.”

  Jill begins to write on the pad in front of her. Instead of conventional legal paper, she is writing on ledger sheets. The logic of chet’s statement is unassailable, but she frowns.

  “You’ll get back to me immediately?” she asks.

  Chet stands up.

  “Just as soon as I can,” he says, trying to sound like the Bracken of old. He is not known for giving anything away. Too bad for Jill, she doesn’t know we have nothing to give. She must wonder what I’m doing on this case. So am I. Like a slave attending his master, I pop to my feet but have nothing to say. To avoid potted-plant status entirely I remark, “What happened to your pictures? You must have had dozens the last time I was in here.”