After an exhausting repetition of all the evidence he has considered and an explanation of the applicable laws of the Kingdom of Belgium, with perspiration beading on my face and soaking my back against the chair, I close my eyes tightly and hear his every word clearly articulated in the auditorium of my head.
“The evidence presented of the forensically validated entries in the diaries of Dr. Vincent Bergeron establishes that on the balance of likelihood Azikiwe Olyontombo could not have been present in Kigali at the time of the deaths of the four nuns, and further it calls into question the testimony of the witness, Idi Mbuyamba. Legitimate doubt is raised about the truth of the state’s primary witness. Considering the aggregate of the evidence presented, it is this inquiry’s opinion that it is unlikely that a finding of guilt beyond reasonable doubt could be established at a trial in a court of law. In view of this, it is the opinion of this inquiry that there is not sufficient evidence to proceed with a trial of Azikiwe Olyontombo. Dr. Olyontombo, you are free to go home.”
I must have been holding my breath because I feel the wind rushing out of me, and I’m unable to stop an instantaneous flood of tears. I cry uncontrollably, in gasping pants. The courtroom erupts in commotion, and several photographers take advantage of the confusion to scramble around in front of us where they shouldn’t be and snap photos. A gavel is banging, and I sob through it all, finally gaining a measure of composure with several large breaths. Anna is clutching me and crying and laughing at the same time. After a few moments of watching her and savoring her extreme emotion I extricate myself from her grip and rise to stand. The entire room quickly comes to a hush.
“Your Honor,” I say, “I want to thank you for your honest and fair decision.”
No sooner do I get the words out of my mouth than a loud shout comes from the seating behind me, “You guilty fucking bastard … you deserve to die!”
Judge Gelineau bangs his gavel, but the courtroom explodes in tumult a second time. Two security officers rush toward us and take Anna, Bart, and me by the arms, leading us out through the entrance the judge used. We convene in the judge’s chamber where I am able to shake his hand and properly thank him. It can’t have been an easy decision for him, not with the public and the politicians all pressuring him to send me to jail for life. On his advice, we decide that I should not go out to face the press, or more specifically, the public. Bart will act as envoy and speak on my behalf. This will probably be best for the next few days, until tempers cool and things calm down. The judge arranges for us to be taken out through the prisoner docks and escorted home in an unmarked police car. I would have preferred to hold my head high and walk right out the front door, but I know that this would not be safe. Before leaving the judge’s chambers I lift up my leg and rest my foot flat on the seat of a chair. My pant leg slips up, exposing the monitor still fastened to my ankle, and I patiently wait for it to be removed.
Before we’re even out of the courthouse Anna is busy with her phone, sending an email to Vincent. We’re not sure where he might be or how long it might take before he accesses a computer to read it, but we definitely owe it to him to be the first one that we notify. Within seconds of sending it off Anna’s phone rings.
“Vincent,” she cries joyously. “Just a minute, let me put you on speaker.”
“Congratulations, Alfred.” Vincent sounds just as happy as we are feeling. “Justice is properly done.”
“We can’t thank you enough, Vincent. It wouldn’t have happened without you.”
“I’m going to hold you two to your promise.” He chuckles. “A visit here in Africa, soon.”
“Count on it, my friend. We’ll be there,” I say.
A second call comes in right after we say goodbye to Vincent. “It’s Steve,” Anna says. “Steve, you’re on speaker with us both. We just got the decision.”
“I know. Congratulations. CNN just reported it. Fantastic news. What’re your plans? Are you coming right home?”
“We’ve some things to wrap up here, but we’ll be back in a few days,” Anna says. “Steve,” she pauses, “thank you. You’re a rock.”
“We’ll celebrate when you get home.”
Finishing that call, Anna begins tapping in another number. “I’ve got to call Daddy.”
I agree. “Yes, call him right now.”
We climb into the waiting police car as the call goes through.
“Daddy, we’re coming home.” Anna starts to cry as the words come out. “Yes. We did it. It’s all over.” But Anna is crying too much to talk anymore and hands me the phone.
“Eldon, it’s Alfred. Anna’s a little excited here.”
“You won, Alfred?” he asks.
“I didn’t win anything, sir. There was nothing to win. Just something to prove.”
“Congratulations, Alfred. Well done. When will you two be coming home?”
“In a few days,” I reply. “We’ll let you know. Please give my love to Ruth.”
It does hurt a little bit that Eldon doesn’t offer any apology, doesn’t say he’s sorry for having assumed I was guilty. But Anna and I have already talked about this. We don’t expect it from anyone when we go back. We know that everyone—our friends, the partners in my practice, our relatives—will all be happy for us, but no one will ever want to admit that they had given up on me. This call with Eldon is just my first direct experience with it, and it stings. But I’ll get used to it; we’ve agreed to take the high road and not begrudge anyone.
Back in the apartment, while we wait for Bart to arrive, we start firming our plans to return home. We had been careful about making solid commitments, but now we can get on with it.
“Anna, we missed our honeymoon trip to Saint Martin, and it’s already the middle of March. Do you think we should go to Le Mont-Dore for our anniversary?”
Le Mont-Dore was the little mountain ski village that Anna and I had traveled to when we first started dating. It was where she lured me in and then trapped me, as we jokingly told our friends. It has special meaning for us because it’s where we first made love and spent a whole enchanted weekend in bed. We’ve been celebrating it over the years as one of our anniversaries and always said we’d go back someday, but never had the opportunity.
Anna is sipping wine as I make the suggestion.
“We could either rent a car or take the train. It’s only about eight hours away,” I say, while she thinks.
“We’ve told Mom and Dad that we’d be coming right home,” she finally says.
“Do we really owe them anything right now? A few more days won’t matter.”
“Then why don’t we just go to Saint Martin?” she asks.
“We don’t have anything with us for a beach vacation.”
“They have nude beaches there; we don’t need anything.”
I’m not sure if she’s serious or joking, until she can’t help but smile and starts to laugh.
That night the media has a field day with Judge Gelineau’s decision. It has been soundly lambasted in Parliament, and the public is solidly unified in condemning it. Despite the professional opinions of several forensic handwriting experts that Vincent’s diaries are genuine and could only have been written during the relevant dates back in 1994, no one wants to believe it. It leaves the murders of the Four Sisters of Peace unsolved, and everyone would have preferred to have put it all to bed by locking me up. We try to avoid the fracas over the next couple of days while we tidy up things here and finalize our plans for our trip to the Caribbean, but it is impossible to escape. The crowds are still assembling each morning outside our apartment to protest, and the media is hounding us to do interviews.
Bart strongly advises against any media contact for a few months, until things quiet down. “In fact,” he says, “put your phones away, don’t even look at your computers. You both deserve a break. Just get on that plane in the morning and for
get everything for a few weeks. Start right now.”
“Hear, hear.” I raise my glass in a toast.
We are having one final drink together before leaving Brussels. Bart has provided sure guidance thus far, and I take this advice to heart, ceremoniously shutting down my cell.
We couldn’t be much happier as we carry our bags out the front door and load them into the car that Bart has arranged to take us to the airport. This whole messy chapter in our lives is at last over, and we can finally move forward. We’ll fly from Brussels to Paris and then direct to Saint Martin, where we’ll totally escape everything. With the jinx of my childhood sins hopefully put to rest forever, Anna and I are both floating as we climb into the car. She slips into the back seat and slides across behind the driver, and I climb in beside her. The car pulls away, directed through the crowds on our cordoned-off street by the policemen who have been stationed there. Spring is close in Brussels, and there is a hint of it, a crisp freshness blowing in the air. The sun has been in and out, playing peekaboo from behind the billowing gray clouds all morning, but right now it’s radiant, contributing to our giddiness.
Two blocks away I twist around toward Anna to look behind us through the back window of the car, taking one final look at my Brussels prison. Glad to be leaving it behind I turn back, leaning over to kiss Anna’s smiling face beside me. I pay no attention to the car that has slowly gained on us in the lane directly to our left until I am just about to kiss Anna’s cheek and vaguely notice two black men, one in the front passenger seat and another in the back, looking at us. In one swift synchronized moment both men raise stubby automatic assault rifles to their open windows and blast in a single continuous barrage, emptying their magazines into the side of our car in a matter of seconds before speeding off.
The whole incident happens so fast that by the time my brain processes what is going on it’s over. Anna screams while we’re thrown violently forward into the back of the front seat, our car slamming to a dead halt, ramming into the bumper of the bus stopped ahead of us. The horn blares loudly. An airbag is pinning our driver to his seat, and Anna slumps sideways into me. I reach around her needing to comfort her and instantly recognize the sticky wetness on my hands.
“Oh God, no!” I scream. “No … no … no! Anna? Anna?”
I turn her slightly to see her wounds. The left side of her head and neck have several small punctures, each is bleeding a trickle. I keep talking to her, “Anna … Anna … can you hear me, Anna? Come on, Anna … speak to me.”
I am desperately willing her to life when she opens her eyes and looks at me with a soft smile. In the depths of her gorgeous blue eyes I can see her life evaporating right before me. Her breath is in short quick gulps, and with the last of it she asks, “Freddie … Freddie … are you okay?”
I wait, wanting another breath to come from her, imploring one with sheer willpower, but there is none, and her eyes go milky and sink.
I don’t notice that the doors of the car have been flung open and a crowd has gathered around. Someone is reaching in with a hand on my shoulder. “Sir … sir … are you okay?”
Anna’s last words play over and over in my mind. “Are you okay? Freddie, Freddie, are you okay?” Even as she lay dying in my arms, Anna was concerned for me. Her thoughts were for my well-being, not for herself. Mortally wounded, she was still worried about me. What a curse I am. My angel taken, because of me. Will there never be an end to the death around me?
Denver
The great open fields of Kansas lie below me, and I scan them absentmindedly, watching one approach and then pass beneath out of view, sighting another one and following it until it too disappears beneath the wing. The last several months of my life have been a hellish nightmare, but there are no possible words to describe the past few days. The shock and total loss leave me empty of a soul, with no will to continue. I will bury Anna as she deserves, in the small family plot next to our treasured little Stephanie on the farm her father owns, with the peaks of the Rocky Mountains forever looking down on them both.
Steve said he’ll meet me at the airport. He was her friend and partner at work, our friend, and the only one who stood with us through this whole ordeal, the only one who now remains and seems willing to talk to me. He called me immediately after the shooting saying that it had been reported almost instantly on the cable news in America. I’ve tried repeatedly, but her father won’t return my calls. I’ve tried her brother with the same results.
In the couple of days directly after Judge Gelineau made his decision, the media in Belgium was relentless, milking the story as much as they could, egging on the public and the politicians. Despite the ruling, I was vilified, guilty, and being allowed to literally get away with murder. The American press was slightly kinder, but the damage to my reputation was done. Anna and I had planned to work around it, just enjoy our trip to Saint Martin, and then deal with things.
I remember little of the actual events in the immediate moments after the attack—lots of people, police, ambulances—but I very clearly and distinctly remember shouting at the emergency workers to let me lift her from the car. I took her in my arms for one last time and hugged her tight to me, oblivious to the blood that spattered us both. She was smiling as she slept there in my arms, like she always did, so peacefully smiling in her sleep, this time forever.
The police made me lay her on the gurney and then pried my fingers from her one at a time. They took me to a safe house while they tried to figure out who might have done this. We all knew it could have been any one of the many groups that despised me. It could have been a couple of lone crackpots, but I am certain in an instinctive way that it was the long tentacles of Idi. Of course, there is no way to prove that, and the police have almost no concrete leads to go on. But I feel in my marrow that Idi was settling his account, as he had once vowed he would.
The police kept me in protective custody for ten days, not even allowing me to see Anna’s body until it could be released to take back home. I was alone with little to do except regret, and I regretted a lot. I regretted the path I chose when I was so much younger, regretted not letting the crocodiles take me rather than submitting to Idi. I regretted not killing him during any of the many chances I had to do so. I regretted having killed so many innocent people while under Idi’s spell. I regretted killing Father Savard. And then I especially regretted trying to pin the blame on Idi, knowing that if I hadn’t made that mistake the four good sisters and Anna would all still be alive. None of this would have ever happened if I had chosen differently at any one of those times. I regretted letting Anna get too close, I regretted not having pleaded guilty so there wouldn’t have even been an inquiry, I regretted letting her sit on that side of the car, I regretted my whole pathetic life.
I tried desperately to reach Vincent. He needed to know what had happened, and I needed to hear his voice and consolation. But he was away on the circuit of his village routes, and now I am almost back home and about to bury Anna and he doesn’t even know she’s dead yet.
When I exit the customs area Steve is waiting for me, as he said he would. He greets me solemnly. “I’m so sorry, Alfred … so very sorry.”
“Thanks, Steve. You were a good friend to her. You’ve been good to both of us. Thank you.”
The funeral is four days later, and Eldon and Ruth have sent word through Steve that they don’t want me at the wake. I understand. Virtually everyone blames me and my troubles for Anna’s death, and there will be very few people there who would care to see me, anyhow. But I have Steve ask them to please let me attend the funeral. Please.
Steve and his wife drive me down to Colorado Springs for the funeral in the same church that Anna attended as a child. I sit with them and the others from the law firm, away from Anna’s family, as they requested. She was my wife, so I could have laid out all the rules. I could have had the service in the manner of my choosing, but out of deference t
o them I let them do as they pleased. It is a tragic loss for them as well, and they certainly weren’t contributors to Anna’s death like I was. The only thing I wanted was for her to be buried alongside our little angel, and of course Eldon and Ruth wanted the same, so I made no comment about any of it.
At the grave site I stand at the back of the congregation and cry what few tears I have left. It takes all my will to hold back, biding my time to spend a few private moments with the two loves of my life after everyone else leaves. As the ceremony finishes and the gathered turn to leave, the family walks in my direction and Anna’s mother steps toward me. “I’m sorry, Alfred. She loved you, and I know that you loved her.”
Ruth moves forward and hugs me, reaching up to kiss me on my wet cheek.
“Thank you, Mom,” I reply. “I’m sorry, too.”
My father-in-law steps in beside his wife. “You son of a bitch,” Eldon says. And that’s all he says before taking his wife firmly by the arm and turning his back on me.
The next few days I spend alone in the house, going through Anna’s things. Touching everything, smelling everything, remembering everything, trying to save whatever small pieces of Anna are left. Anna and I, together, went through this very same exercise with Stephanie’s things just five months ago. We had each other for comfort and commiseration; this time I do it alone.
I don’t have a practice to go back to. The first day, while I waited in protective custody for the authorities to prepare and release Anna’s body to me in Brussels, I received an email from my partners in the practice. It had been date stamped and sent late the night before Anna was killed. I’m sure that the way things happened that next day they must have regretted the unfortunate timing. I didn’t regret not having opened it sooner since it would have just dampened our excitement of leaving Brussels. Basically, the email informed me that they had voted to buy out my share of the practice; the publicity surrounding my circumstances was taking its toll on business and they could no longer afford my negative impact.
Truth, by Omission Page 31