“Yes, sir,” I say, feeling a knot begin to form in my stomach.
“I take it the court won’t be in recess for Mr.
Bracken’s funeral tomorrow afternoon?” I ask, my voice high with disbelief.
“Lawyers die every day, Mr. Page,” Grider snaps.
“There are far too many delays in the system already.”
Jill, in a berry-and-white-striped blouse and blue skirt, is more casually dressed than she would have been if we had gone to trial. She says, “Your Honor, my office, as you know, had many cases with Mr. Bracken.
I would appreciate it if the court would recess for the funeral. Some of the witnesses are from Christian Life and may want to attend as well.”
As soon as the words are out of Jill’s mouth, I realize that Shane will conduct Chet’s funeral. How am I going to accuse him of murder on the same day he prays over the body of the man whom he hired to defend his daughter? The last thing I want is Shane Norman pontificating that day, but it is too late. Changing his mind (he knows he would be criticized), Grider says gruffly, “It’s the taxpayers’ money, but if that’s what you want, I’ll recess the trial tomorrow afternoon. I am announcing to the press, however, that the Prosecutor’s Office asked for this recess so it could make sure that the man who had beaten it so often was really dead.”
Grider’s delivery of this zinger is so deadpan that Jill doesn’t know whether he is serious or not When I smile (there is a lot of truth in his statement) and Jill does not, Grider says to her, “Jesus Christ, I’m kidding, okay?”
In the hall next to Grider’s office, Jill, speaking in a slightly lower tone, says, “By the way, I’m not renewing the offer of a plea bargain.”
I wait until a couple of lawyers pass. Somehow the media has not gotten wind of this meeting or they would be standing on top of us. My hopes of some major flaw in her case disappear completely. She was purely and simply scared of Chet. Obviously, she isn’t afraid of me.
“You could have kept it open till Christmas,” I say, with more confidence than I feel.
“She didn’t shoot him.”
Jill looks unusually attractive. Her mane of thick dark hair in the last few months has developed a streak of white that is particularly striking. She says, with a tolerant smile, “Who did?”
Despite a natural antipathy for prosecutors, I can’t dislike this woman. She doesn’t have a killer instinct like some of her predecessors.
“I don’t know,” I reply innocently.
“I thought that’s why we had police.”
She shrugs, tossing her hair, and revealing more of the streak of white.
“I didn’t expect you,” she says dryly, “to tell me your case.”
I draw an imaginary line across my lips as if I had something to conceal. What case? I think, as I head down the hall.
During the afternoon, as I am struggling feverishly to get ready for the trial, Dan wanders into my office. He is wearing the first bow tie I’ve ever seen him in, which he undoes, as he stares out my window.
“Have you heard the gossip?” he asks, his voice far off and distracted.
I look up from my desk from the draft of the opening statement I’ve been working on. People who have necks the size of Dan’s shouldn’t wear bow ties. It looks like a stave about to pop off a beer barrel.
“That I’ve subpoenaed Elvis to testify?”
Dan whips off the tie and wipes his face with it.
“There’s crap going around,” he says wearily, “that you killed Chet.”
I stare at him in disbelief.
“The cops didn’t even take me down this morning.”
“Of course not,” he says.
“It’s not coming from Jill’s office. She and the cops have already issued a statement that their investigation has concluded Chet killed himself.”
My surprise is quickly turning to anger.
“So who’s putting that shit out?” I demanded.
“I don’t know,” my friend says, absently rubbing his tie on my window ledge.
“A bailiff told me it was going around. You think it could be your friend Shane?”
I look hard at Dan to see if he is serious. He shrugs, as if to say. Who else could it be? This makes no sense.
Even if Shane is implicated, surely he wants his daughter free. I will run this by Leigh when I go by to see her at Rainey’s in a few minutes to talk about her case.
“Maybe it’s my old firm of Mays & Burton,” I say, thinking of the client I stole from them after I was fired.
“They never sued me for taking Andy Chapman from them, but they always wanted to get even.”
Dan nods, “Hell, you know lawyers. It could be somebody who’s jealous of you getting tapped by Chet to work with him. It could be our old boss Greta. She wasn’t a big fan of yours either after the Hart Anderson murder.”
Enemies, I think, wearily, supporting my face with both hands on my desk. Every decent lawyer has a million.
And I haven’t even begun to count disgruntled clients.
“It could be my old rat-muffin divorce client.
She’ll go to her grave convinced I should have given her money back.”
Dan pats his stomach, thinking of my client who served her husband a rat in a pan of blueberry muffins.
“You should have brought in those muffins she fixed you and Sarah,” Dan says, still unable to forgive me for throwing out an entire pan she brought over to my house one morning.
Who else could it be? For all I know, Jason von Jason is putting up flyers all over Blackwell County warning people to keep their dogs penned up while I am still loose on the streets. I shove my papers into my briefcase and stand up to leave.
“How’s this for the beginning of an opening statement?” I say and in a parody of Richard Nixon, intone, “I am not a murderer. And neither is my client.”
Dan laughs, a pained expression on his face.
“A real confidence builder, all right.”
Shooing Dan out in front of me, I hurry from my office, wondering what Chet Bracken would make of this latest twist. From almost the beginning of his illustrious career, he was dogged by rumors that he meted out retribution to those who wronged him. Unfortunately, they were true. I rack my brain, trying to think if I offended him in any way. As paranoid as I’m becoming, I wonder if this rumor, too, is some kind of a payback by Shane Norman.
As I knock on Rainey’s door, I hear the panel of a van being slammed shut. I turn and see a cameraman and Kim Keogh, a reporter for Channel 11, hurrying up the walk. I have carelessly allowed myself to be followed.
This morning, when I had come out of my house after talking to the cops, I had faced cameras from two of the three local stations and a half dozen reporters, and had refused all comment, letting the police handle the questions Had I known someone was trying to smear me, I would have talked.
“Gideon!” Kim shouts, practically breaking into a run.
“Wait!”
I shudder at my thoughtlessness. I briefly became involved with Kim during my last big ease. She is a lovely blonde, whose main asset as a reporter has been her sheer doggedness. Each of us knows things about the other that won’t make the ten o’clock news. At this moment, Leigh opens the door and I mumble, “TV camera,” and rush by her and shut the door.
Leigh, who has been in touch with me by telephone throughout the day, understands instantly and leans against the wall and sighs, “I was afraid they’d find out I was here.”
“If you think today is bad,” I say, wondering how to handle Kim, “wait until tomorrow. We’ll need a battering ram to get you through them.” Kim knocks hard on Rainey’s front door. Knowing her, she will want some kind of exclusive interview. I make a snap decision.
“Let me talk to her. She knows you’re here.”
Leigh nods, panic setting in as it begins to hit her what the next few days will be like. Aware that Chet Bracken wouldn’t have talked to the press, I open the door and s
tep outside.
Kim is wearing a blue jade cotton knit dress with enough jewelry to open her own pawnshop. With the cameraman standing coyly off to the side, she begs, “Let me just talk to her for a minute. If you don’t, every media person within ten square miles will find out she’s here.” The neighbors are going to love this.
“Is it true she’s been hiding in the Delta Inn, too drunk to get out of bed?”
How could she possibly know that? I wonder, my mind racing.
“Kim, I’ll promise not to talk to any reporter except you about Chet’s suicide if you’ll leave and keep your mouth shut,” I say, “but I can’t comment on the case.”
Giving me a wintry smile, she turns to her camera man and nods.
“Okay, Roger.” He moves in almost on top of me as Kim asks, “Mr. Page, we’ve heard reports throughout the day that Chet Bracken’s death was not a suicide and that you were involved. Would you care to comment on that?”
I feel as if I’m being interviewed by a female Geraldo. Kim knows the police and the prosecutor do not consider me a suspect.
“That’s ridiculous!” I say, my voice trembling.
“It’s an outrage for you to even suggest that. The police have already issued a statement that Mr. Bracken’s wound was self-inflicted.”
“Tell us what happened, then,” she says, her voice cool and professional. But her right hand, holding the microphone a few inches from my face, shakes slightly, betraying her excitement.
Damn her. It was hard enough to tell the cops. Looking into the sun, I feel my throat become scratchy and I fight to stay in control. I shouldn’t have to describe how a man shot himself.
“I saw the lights of Mr. Bracken’s car turn into my driveway, and as I opened my front door I saw him point a pistol at his head and fire.”
“Did you go help him?” Kim asks, before I can even clear my throat.
“I ran to call an ambulance,” I say, hating all reporters at this instant. I can’t admit that I was too sick to my stomach to go see about him. It is all too much.
Tears come to my eyes, and before they can slide down my cheeks, I turn and hurry back into the house. I wish Rainey were here. She would understand what I am feeling.
Before I slam the door, I hear Kim call, “Great stuff, Gideon!”
Inside, Leigh, her eyes wide with astonishment, asks, “What did you say?”
I rummage through my pockets and come up with a wadded-up tissue to wipe my eyes. I feel terrible. The memory of Chet holding the gun against his head un winds like a tape that can’t be stopped. Why did he do it? I don’t even know why I’m crying. My cowardice?
For Chet? Trey and Wynona? There is no good way to exit this life. No matter how much or how little we’ve had, most of us want more. “To get her to agree to leave, I spoke on camera about seeing Chet shoot him self,” I say, sinking down on Rainey’s sofa.
“I guess I’m just feeling it.”
Leigh, wearing a pair of Rainey’s sweats that come to just below her knees, sits opposite me on a chair that has recently been recovered.
“They’re just vultures!” she says indignantly.
I think of Kim Keogh, who lives only a few blocks from here, or did, a few months ago. The night we made love, her apartment walls were covered with pictures of movie stars. She was vulnerable and insecure about her ability as a reporter, and her naked ambition had an innocent quality to it. Yet, she has become hard.
Great stuff, Gideon. She wouldn’t have said that a few months ago. Maybe I’ve played a part in the process.
“Competition and ethics aren’t in the same food group,” I say, trying to joke my way onto another subject. I open my briefcase and take out a legal pad.
“We’ve got to talk about your testimony tomorrow some more, okay?”
Even as Leigh says, “Sure,” her guard goes up.
“I called my father and told him I was okay, as you suggested. I didn’t tell him where I am. He wants me to meet him tonight to talk.”
“Not a good idea,” I reply quickly. I’ve got to persuade Leigh to let me argue that her father could have killed her husband. If she meets with him, that may not be possible.
“You left home for a reason remember?”
Leigh brushes her hair back from her face, raising her right breast beneath Rainey’s too-tight warmup top.
“He sounded so forlorn.”
I bet he did. Shane is running scared. Chet might not have been able to bring himself to argue that his pastor was a suspect, but I sure as hell can.
“Fathers are good at that,” I mutter, searching for my pen. After a certain age, guilt is the only weapon we have left.
“Leigh, I’ve got to argue in court that he may have been the one to kill Art.”
As I feared, her spine stiffens as if an electrical current were passing through it.
“I can’t do that.”
“We have to,” I argue.
“You don’t have a chance at an acquittal right now.”
“What about the man Art cheated?” she pleads.
“Art was afraid of him.”
I have begun to doodle aimlessly on the pad but stop myself.
“I’ll argue that, but there was no forced entry, so it’s weak. I’m going to call as a witness the investigator from San Francisco to give the jury an excuse to acquit if they want to, but it’s a long shot.” Leigh is not averse to lying, I remember, but then most people aren’t if the stakes are high enough. I have told a few myself.
Leigh’s right hand flies to her mouth and she mumbles “I’ll probably have to admit Art filmed me naked.”
I almost snap my pen in frustration. It is as if we are back to square one.
“This isn’t going to be pretty!” I yelp at her.
“Unless you want to sit there smiling while you receive a life sentence, you’re going to have to accept the fact that you’ve got to be prepared to tell the truth, no matter how painful.”
Leigh bites her full lower lip in anguish.
“It will destroy my father!”
I lean forward with my elbows on my knees.
“Not if he’s the man you think he is,” I argue.
“You won’t be the one arguing to the jury that your father may have come over while you went to the church; I will. He’ll blame me, not you.”
Leigh swallows hard.
“But what if he’s innocent?”
“He’ll forgive you,” I promise her.
“He’s not on trial.
There’s no evidence to convict him. If someone saw him or knew something, they would have come forward by now.”
Her voice hushed, Leigh asks, “Why do you think Mr. Bracken killed himself?”
Wearily, I lean back against the sofa, knowing I may never understand what was in Chet’s mind when he pulled the trigger. It is possible that his only motive was to spare Wynona and Trey (and himself) the final weeks of agony. He had said the cancer was all over him. He didn’t want to die knowing he hadn’t prepared for his last case. Yet, maybe he had made a promise he couldn’t bring himself to keep. Would he have told Wynona the truth? It is not difficult to believe that under the pressure he must have been feeling he simply broke at the prospect of covering up the biggest deception in his life.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
“He told me his body was riddled with cancer. For many people that is reason enough.”
Leigh winces as the thought occurs to her.
“Daddy will bury him, won’t he?”
I look at the scores of books neatly lined up on Rainey’s bookshelves. With all the wisdom they supposedly contain, they can’t answer a single question on this case.
“I’m sure he will,” I say, watching for her reaction. My mind has run wild with theories that I can’t begin to confirm.
“It has occurred to me that possibly Chet knew about your father’s involvement and gave him a promise he realized he couldn’t deliver.”
Leigh, who
has been rubbing Rainey’s hardwood floor with her tennis shoes like a child, jerks her head up with instant understanding.
“You think Mr. Bracken knew Daddy killed Art but had told him that he could get me off?”
Mr. Bracken again, I note. Chet, who was famous for getting to know his clients better than they knew them selves, never warmed up to Leigh.
“Possibly.”
Leigh’s face becomes stiff with fear. “Why wouldn’t Mr. Bracken tell somebody that Daddy had killed Art?”
Her eyes are enormous. It is as if she realizes for the first time her situation.
“Shame,” I suggest.
“If your father told Chet he was guilty in the context of an attorney-client relationship, Chet should never have agreed to represent you, because he was ethically fore closed from using information that could have exonerated you. But his ego was so enormous by this time, he thought he could get anyone off. He didn’t count on his cancer flaring up again. Don’t you see? Nothing can prevent me from arguing your father is a suspect.”
Leigh takes a deep breath, as if she needs help to absorb what I am saying.
“Maybe if Daddy really did kill Art,” she ponders, “he’ll confess now.”
I write the word “denial” on my pad. If Shane is like most people, he will shut his eyes and hope that a jury could not possibly bring back a conviction. After all, Leigh is innocent, and the case is circumstantial. He doesn’t realize that accusing someone is half the battle.
Regardless of the presumption of innocence, juries start off every trial believing that a prosecutor wouldn’t have charged someone who is innocent. However, if Norman is the Christian he says he is, guilt will turn him inside out. Even if he can rationalize killing Art, he could never let his daughter go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit. And yet, as a way to punish Leigh, perhaps he could. She had turned away from the church, had let herself be debased by lust.
“Don’t count on it,” I say, wondering if it’s worth confronting him again.
“Preachers are more comfortable judging than being judged.”
Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction Page 28