“He ain’t gonna make it,” Payne says.
Great neighbors, I think miserably. More are standing in their yards watching the excitement. They probably think I killed one of the women I have brought home from time to time.
“You better wait for the police, Mr.
Page,” the female EMT tells me.
“They should be here any second.”
Moses nods as if that’s a load off his mind. I’m surprised he and Payne don’t have me spreadeagled against my car. Woogie, my watchdog and protector, begins barking furiously behind the screen.
“He’s still alive?”
I ask as she moves off.
Without turning around, she shakes her head and calls, “Barely.”
Payne says, “They ought to just take him to a funeral home.”
As they pull off, two squad cars roar around the corner and pull up in front of the house. I feel a numbness spread through my body. Well, at least, I think, as I go over to them, escorted by Moses and Payne, I won’t have to try the case today. Chet accomplished that much.
Since I must give an endless statement to the cops, who seem relatively satisfied that Chet’s gunshot was self-inflicted (they say the tests may be back from the crime lab before the morning is out), it is eight o’clock before I get to St. Thomas, only to find that Chet was pronounced dead fifteen minutes earlier.
“You couldn’t have done anything for him,” Rainey whispers to me in the corridor outside the emergency room after I confess how I vomited in the sink and waited inside the house until the ambulance came.
“He didn’t have a chance.”
Thank God. I was terrified that there was something I might have done to save his life. Rainey pats me on the shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
“No, but at least I’m alive,” I say, my mind replaying the moment Chet squeezed the trigger.
“Where is Leigh?”
“I left her at my house,” she says, looking at me solicitously.
“I just called her a few minutes ago. She’s okay.”
I go up to Wynona and Trey, who are in the waiting room seated beside Shane Norman and presumably other members from Christian Life. As soon as I see Shane, I begin to feel anger building inside me. Why?
He didn’t kill Chet, but suddenly I am convinced that Chet would still be alive this morning if he had never met Norman. Though I can’t put it into words and realize instantly how irrationally I am thinking, I know that Shane is somehow connected with chet’s decision to take his life. This is hardly the time for a confrontation, and I force myself to concentrate on Wynona’s face, which is a mixture of shock and disbelief. Trey, the poor kid, is crying so hard he is hiccuping. I put my arms around them both, unable to think of a single word that is appropriate. After a few moments, Wynona pulls me off to the side and whispers in a choked voice, “Did he say anything at all?”
“No,” I say, not up to admitting to her that I actually saw him pull the trigger, although I have told the police.
“I was just opening the door to come outside.”
“He left a note for me and Trey,” she gasps, “but all he says is that he loves us and that God would forgive him.”
I look down at her ravaged face, realizing she is working over in her mind the same question I am. Why did Chet choose to kill himself the morning the trial was to start? What did he know that he didn’t tell me?
I glance at Shane, who is now comforting some old lady. He is wearing the earnest, compassionate expression of the professional caregiver. With Trey right be side her, it is not the time to ask, but I murmur, “Do you think it was related to this case?”
“I just don’t understand,” she says, wiping her eyes.
“You know how much this case meant to him.”
Trey looks at me blankly, eyes red and swollen. I can’t say to him that his stepfather was notorious for having no friends, no associates, no permanent employees other than a secretary whom he reputedly replaced regularly. The truth is, I have no idea what he really thought about this case. Though finally he seemed to accept the possibility that Shane was involved in his son-in-law’s death, I can’t be certain of it. Did he kill himself because he couldn’t bring himself to accuse the man who brought him to Christianity? I don’t know. At best I was to be nothing more than an ill-prepared emergency backup. At worst I was being used in some way I can’t fathom.
“He was the best lawyer I ever saw in a courtroom,” I say. It is trite, but I know it will mean something to Trey for as long as he has a memory.
Some of the most heartfelt tributes I heard made to Rosa after her death were in situations equally awkward. I look up and see Shane coming toward me. I extend my hand, wondering if he can sense my hostility.
His bloodshot eyes suggest he had a long night, too.
Wynona and Trey drift back to the sympathetic faces around them, and Shane, dressed in the expensive blue suit I saw him preach in, demands.
“Why didn’t you call me last night when you found Leigh?”
I had expected a question about Chet and, nonplussed I stare at him. For the first time it hits home that, for the moment at least, I and I alone am Leigh’s lawyer.
“She didn’t want you to know.” My words come out sounding more prickly than I intend. Nothing will be accomplished by pissing off Shane Norman. It was Shane who retained Chet, not Leigh. I do not tell him his daughter has begun to take seriously the notion he may have killed her husband.
“You can’t represent someone if she doesn’t trust you.”
Shane draws back from me and says levelly, “You were only chet’s assistant.”
I look about the room at the group of mourners. I do not see a single other lawyer present. I keep my voice low.
“Leigh’s an adult; she can make that decision for herself.”
Shane somehow smiles as he says, “I insist that you tell me where my daughter is.”
If I didn’t feel the same way he does, I’d have less sympathy.
“I’ll tell her,” I say truthfully, “you want very much to see her.”
For the second time since I have known him, I see a glimpse of Shane’s anger. With his back to the members of his congregation, his eyes narrow and his jaw tightens.
“I wouldn’t get too high and mighty, Mr. Page.
There are ways of dealing with people like you.”
Who are people like me? I wonder. Lapsed Catholics Solo practitioners who will take any case they can get? Or fathers of confused teenagers? Clearly, this is a threat, but of what kind? I resist the temptation to ask if he is going to have me killed, too, but just barely.
“I’m sorry,” I lie.
“I know how upset you are.” Under the circumstances, he can’t be a friend, but I surely don’t want him as an enemy.
He turns and walks back toward Wynona and Trey and the members of his church. Though I cannot see his face, I am sure he is smiling once again. At this moment Sarah walks through the double doors, her eyes searching for mine. I have never been so glad to see anyone in my life.
“Rainey called the school,” she says, hugging me.
“Dad, are you all right?”
I turn and, out of the corner of my eye, see Rainey smiling at me.
“Yeah,” I manage and feel my cheeks wet, “but I’m sure glad to see you.”
“Poor Dad,” she says, her voice hoarse with emotion, “it must have been awful for you.”
I guide her outside into the sunlight so I can take a deep breath. Though she is wearing the jeans and a blue sweater I’ve seen a dozen times, she looks great. Happy to milk a little sympathy, I say, “It was pretty bad.”
“I’ll move back home this afternoon,” she says, with no trace of sullenness in her voice, “if you want.”
I want. I nod gratefully.
“And I’ll keep my mouth shut.” This isn’t the way I would have liked for her to make the decision, but I am learning fast that I control very little these
days.
“For about ten minutes,” she says, her red mouth forming a familiar smirk.
I must seem okay for her to make a smart-ass remark.
If I had really looked shaky, she would have been too scared. Just seeing her has restored my spirits. Between her and Rainey I may make it through this week. I motion through the glass for Rainey to come out.
“Rainey’s been a big help,” I say, thinking of last night and this morning.
Sarah watches as Rainey nods and starts to come toward us.
“When has she not?” she says, her tone matter-of-fact.
“I can’t believe y’all aren’t married.”
I jam my hands in my pockets to keep from saying something stupid. We are covering a lot of territory this morning. If Sarah knew I had gone out to a club the night before last to pick up a woman, I’d hear no end of it.
“Well, let’s get poor Mr. Bracken buried first,” I say, knowing this remark will bring her up short.
As Rainey pushes open the door, Sarah asks solemnly “When is the trial postponed to?”
I wink at Rainey to let her know everything is okay.
It is apparent she hasn’t told Shane that Leigh is at her house. I wonder if she has finally begun to have her own doubts about Shane. Either that or she is being extremely loyal to me. Perhaps both.
“A good question,” I say to Sarah, wondering how long a continuance I’ll get. Now that I’m going to be in charge, I’d like to take some time and figure out some things. Judge Grider, whom I reached at home, was naturally shocked by my news. He told me to meet him in his office at eleven, after I explained what all was going on. At that moment with the police in the house verifying my story and the media and neighbors in the yard, it probably sounded as if I were having a party.
I thank Rainey and then take my daughter back to school. I am grateful beyond words that Sarah wasn’t the one who opened the door when Chet put the gun to his head. No telling what it would have done to her. I’m not really sure what it will do to me. If she had been there, I wouldn’t have been able to hide in the house until the ambulance came.
“Why’d he shoot himself?” Sarah asks, as I work my way through the traffic southeast toward her school.
Death has a way of even turning a kid’s attention from herself.
I glance over at her, wondering if Christian Life is responsible for toning down the way Sarah has made her self up. For the last couple of weeks I have noticed that Sarah was no longer wearing earrings to school or painting her fingernails. If they would let up on the dogma, maybe Christian Life wouldn’t be so bad. She doesn’t have to go to school every day looking like Arkansas’s answer to Gloria Estefan.
“He didn’t want his wife having to discover his body,” I say, deliberately misunderstanding her question, which, if I answer it honestly, will lead to another fight with her.
Naturally unsatisfied with this response, my daughter asks, “I mean, why, right before the trial was to start?”
Stopping at the last light before her school comes into view, I realize this is a wound that may never be permanently closed.
“I know you don’t want to believe this,” I say, pulling over to the curb when the light changes, “but Chet had come around to the position that Shane might have killed Art. He would have had to confront him in court, and I don’t think he could bring himself to do it. You must never discuss what I’m telling you.”
Sarah nods, her eyes bright with tears. She asks, “Then how can you do it. Daddy?”
I glance over my shoulder to make sure I am out of the line of traffic and then back at my daughter. She is biting her lip and with her right hand is twisting her luscious black hair, a familiar sign of anxiety. I have to prove Shane’s guilt to satisfy her, and unless he confesses that will never happen.
“Leigh told me just over twenty-four hours ago that she thinks her father killed her husband.”
Sarah stretches her mouth tightly against her teeth before crying, “You’ve put this into her head! She’d do anything to keep from going to jail!”
Have I? Most definitely. That day at Pinnacle Mountain I might as well have tattooed it on her hand. A red Probe whizzes by us, violating the school zone speed limit by at least twenty miles an hour.
“Would you accuse me of killing someone to save yourself?” I ask, not yet willing to admit what I’ve done.
“No!” she groans, wiping her eyes with her knuckles.
“But I’m not Leigh. They say she changed so much, even that she’s lost her faith.”
Frustrated because I have no adequate response, I wheel out into traffic.
“I’ve got an appointment with the judge,” I say harshly. For an instant I wish she hadn’t come back home. I need all the support I can get, damn it. I want to tell her that Rainey is now on my side, but this isn’t true. Like Sarah, she has come back into my life, but both are demanding something I can’t give. I’m afraid that if this case doesn’t go the way Sarah wants it to, like Leigh she will leave again, perhaps this time for good. I think I could live if I lost Rainey; something in me will die for good if I lose Sarah.
As we pull up in front of her school, my daughter commits the ultimate unthinkable act (it would be if there were any kids outside to witness it) by leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.
“I love you. Daddy,” she says shyly.
“I’ll see you when you get home.”
I fight a sudden urge to cry. I am closer to the edge than I thought. She will never touch me again if I get sloppy this close to her school. Still, I feel as if I have been given an unexpected present. I swallow hard and acknowledge the obvious: “I love you, too.”
George Glider’s chambers look less like a judge’s office than the headquarters of a successful politician. His walls are covered with photographs of himself with the Arkansas rich and famous: Dale Bumpers drapes his arm around him; David Pryor is forever frozen in the act of pumping his arm as if it is one of the nickel slots in Lake Tahoe; the late Sam Walton grins as if Grider had just told him a joke about Kmart; former Arkies Sidney Moncrief and Lou Holtz flank him as if they are escorting him to the dais to be introduced as a Razorback immortal; and, directly behind his desk, the most prized picture of all a blow-up of George with Bill and Hillary. The fly in George’s impressive caldron of political soup is that, unless they were dead drunk at the time, not one of these people could stand to be around him for over five minutes. He was one of the most obnoxious lawyers in the state to try a case against, and election to the bench hasn’t improved his personality. If judges were selected on merit instead of elected, he couldn’t obtain an appointment as justice of the peace.
But nobody with the exception of Warren Burger has ever looked more like a judge. At the age of fifty, George Grider’s handsome face, noble as a Roman patrician is crowned by a veritable bale of cotton. A former halfback for the Dallas Cowboys for two years, George looks as if he could suit up tomorrow for the season. In a room with more than six people, he is charming, affable, even witty. Behind closed doors he relaxes completely and becomes his usual snotty, arrogant self.
“You haven’t given me a legitimate reason why this case should be postponed one more day,” he says to me from behind his desk. I look at our prosecuting attorney, Jill Marymount, for help. A mistrial isn’t going to help her either. If she is pondering the possibility, I can’t tell it, for she seems to be engrossed in the details of Hillary’s dress.
“As I just explained. Your Honor,” I say, speaking slowly for George’s long-suffering court reporter, “Mr.
Bracken was going to try the case by himself. There were no plans for me to examine a single witness.”
George handles a gold-plated letter opener that he probably picked up in a pawnshop. As a former attorney for the county sheriffs’ association, he could probably provide an interesting tour of his basement.
“You just said you talked with the defendant about the case just last night,” George says, h
is voice a sarcastic whine that can’t be communicated on a transcript.
“She didn’t even speak to Mr. Bracken. It is quite clear to this court that you were actively involved in preparing for the trial.”
I suppress a sigh.
“I’m not asking for a long continuance just a week or so. This isn’t a case of whether my client shoplifted a Hershey bar. She could go to prison for life.”
Shifting around on a padded throne that looks comfortable enough to sleep on, Grider asks impatiently, “Why a week? You’re not telling me you haven’t been working on this case, are you, Mr. Page?”
What is it with this guy? Suddenly, I realize that Chet’s death has released him to be the bully he is. Chet intimidated lawyers and judges alike.
“I haven’t pre pared to be the lead counsel. Your Honor.”
Grider casually pokes at a cuticle with the letter opener.
“How long have you been working on this case with Mr. Bracken?”
As frustrating as it has been, it seems like a lifetime.
“About three weeks,” I say.
Cross-examining me as if I were a witness who could be pushed from one end of the courtroom to the other, he sneers, “You’re not telling me you don’t know the theory of the defense’s case after all this time, are you?”
I study Bill Clinton’s face. Judging by his expression, he knew what price he was paying to run for public office. Were this not a murder case, I’d risk a snide comment What theory? So far as I know, there wasn’t one.
“I’m not saying that. Your Honor.” I blurt, “Mr.
Bracken was dying of cancer. He was in a great deal of pain and was on medication to control it. He wasn’t able to prepare properly for this trial.”
Grider nods as if I have conceded the matter.
“If Mr.
Bracken was too ill to try this case, I assume he would have informed the court. Unless you’re prepared to tell me as an officer of the court that you weren’t hired to assist Mr. Bracken on this case, I’m denying your motion for a continuance and we’re beginning this trial to morrow morning, is that clear?”
Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction Page 27