Acts of Love (11 page)

“Hello, Julia.”

“Hello.”

“I appreciate your coming back. This won't take long. Miss Leder, if you'll wait outside, Julia and I will go into my office.”

Sandy smiled encouragingly at Julia. “I'll be right here where you can see me.”

Sergeant Jefferson led Julia into the glass-walled office and shut the door. “Would you like a Coke?”

“No, thank you.” She sat down on the edge of a brown vinyl chair with a strip of electrical tape across a tear.

“How have you been, Julia? Have you been all right?”

“I'm okay.”

“Good. I'm sorry to have to make you go over all this again, but I was just a little confused about one or two things, and I was hoping you could help me out.”

“Fine.” Julia bristled at the note of condescension she detected in his voice.

“That's good. Now, the other day, you told me all about your weekend with your father. What I want to know is, on the way home, did your father seem particularly angry or upset to you?”

“He was angry a lot.”

“But did he say anything to you about your mother?”

“I don't remember.”

“Do you remember what they fought about when you got home?”

“She didn't want to get back together with him. He wanted to, but she said no.”

“And what did he say then?”

“He said she had another thing coming to her.”

“I want you to think hard, Julia. How far away from your father were you standing? Was it this far?” He moved three feet away. “Or this far?” He came a foot closer.

“About like that.”

“So it would only have taken you a second to jump on your father. You must have startled him. Maybe that made the gun go off. It wouldn't have been your fault. It wouldn't have been anyone's fault. Is that what happened, Julia?”

“No,” she answered firmly, “I told you. I jumped on him after the gun went off. After. I swear.”

“Did you see your father aim the gun at your mother?”

“Yes.”

Sergeant Jefferson looked at her closely. “You're absolutely certain? You saw your father aim the gun purposefully at your mother?” He saw the first inklings of tears through the cracks in her voice, and he made note of it in his little pad. It was one of the things they were supposed to be newly attuned to: mood, demeanor. Jefferson, along with the rest of the Hardison police, had joined the forces of three neighboring counties for a sensitivity-training seminar that the local politicians had made much noise about, afternoons spent in cloistered auditoriums during which they were lectured by people who had never worn a badge about such things as role playing and victims' rights. Still, this was Jefferson's first murder case, and he wanted to cover his bases. “You're certain?”

“Yes. He aimed it at her head.”

Jefferson walked around his desk and knelt by Julia's chair. “I'm sorry. I had to ask.”

“I tried to stop him, but it was too late. I never wanted to go hunting, anyway. I never wanted that stupid old gun.” Her eyes watered but did not spill.

“It's okay, Julia. We're done for the day.”

She blinked hard and nodded.

He escorted her back to where Sandy stood waiting for them.

“What's going to happen to him?” Julia asked before they reached her.

“Your father?”

“Yes.”

“I don't know. The courts will have to decide that.”

Sandy took a step forward. “Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“She's a real little trouper,” Jefferson said, patting Julia's shoulder.

“I know. Julia, will you wait here for a minute? I want to have a word with Sergeant Jefferson.”

Julia watched as the adults stepped a few feet away from her and huddled, so that she could not hear them, even when she inched forward.

“You're the children's legal guardian?”

“Yes.”

“Bad business.”

“Would it be possible for me to see Mr. Waring?”

“I take it this is personal and not official newspaper business?”

“Yes.”

“No reason why not. I'll call over and tell them you're coming.”

 

T
ED
W
ARING SAT
at the wooden table in the pea-green holding room staring at a single long crack in the wall, which revealed a deeper level of pea green, and a deeper one behind that. The only thing he truly craved was light.

There were no glass barriers for visitors to press their palms longingly against while they spoke into telephones on either side, no electric doors that swung silently and irrevocably shut. That, he imagined, would come elsewhere, later. If he was unlucky. Or unwise. Anyway, they hadn't moved him yet.

His face, unshaven, weary, was a kaleidoscope of shadows, gray on gray, blurring his deep-set eyes and his hollowed cheeks. The guard who stood against the wall behind him, his arms crossed over his ample belly, watched Ted run his hands over and over the sides of his head, with its disarray of thick, dark hair, his fingers twitching. People developed tics here.

“I just wanted to see you for myself,” Sandy said, “to let you know that you're not going to get away with this.”

“I loved her, Sandy.”

“I don't want to hear it.”

“How are the girls?”

“How do you think they are? They're devastated.”

“Will you bring them to see me? Please.”

“You're out of your mind.”

“I need to talk to Julia. Let me just see her,” he insisted.

“You think you can intimidate her into lying for you?”

“It was an accident. Can't you see that? Can't anyone see that? What kind of monster do you think I am?”

“Don't forget, I know you.”

“That cuts both ways, doesn't it?” He exhaled, exasperated. “Look, I don't care what you believe. The truth is, Julia jumped on me. I don't know what she was thinking, but she jumped on me. And somehow, the gun went off. She must have knocked into the safety bolt, I don't know. All I know is, that's what happened.”

“You're full of shit.”

“Let me talk to Julia. She's scared and confused, that's all.”

Sandy glared at him in disbelief.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he asked angrily.

“Me? I'm not doing anything to you. You did this all by yourself.” She leaned forward. “She was my sister, Ted. My sister.”

“Sandy?”

“Yes?”

“Tell the girls I love them, okay? Just tell them I love them.”

She stared at him without expression, turned, and walked away.

 

“D
ON'T BOTHER GETTING UP
. You got another visitor,” the guard informed him. “You're some popular guy, huh?”

Harry Fisk walked in. He was carrying a soft mocha leather briefcase, wearing a suit that he hoped looked more expensive than it actually was (he read men's fashion magazines on the sly, studying the pictures and then hiding them in the trash as if they were pornography), and a tie loosened in the style he had decided soon after law school would best signify what a hardworking, no-nonsense kind of guy he was. He had first met Ted four days ago, after Ted had called the only lawyer he was acquainted with, Stuart Klein, who had been handling his divorce. “Beyond me,” Klein had said, “totally beyond me, Ted,” and gave him Fisk's name and number. Fisk was, by all accounts, a comer. He was known for handling some of the messier business of recalcitrant state representatives in Albany, inconvenient women, muddy financial deals that they didn't want to use the family lawyers for. He was the closest you could get to a fixer in Hardison, New York. Luckily for Ted, Fisk figured this case would be a good, headline-grabbing career move. Their first meeting had been a rather clean exchange of information, each taking the other's measure, trying to discern from the tenuous house of cards of facts and theories set on the table before them how the other played.

Ted began to rant loudly before Fisk had gotten a foot into the room. “Why would I kill her? That's what you've got to get them to consider. I wanted her back. I loved her. I still loved her. Hell, we had made love just a couple of nights before.”

Fisk calmly got out his yellow pad and set himself up before he looked directly at Ted. “Anyone see you?”

“Anyone see us making love? What are you, crazy?” Ted uncrossed his legs. “People saw us at the school play together that night.”

“I see.”

“Ali was an Indian.”

Fisk, who was childless, nodded blankly.

“I told Julia,” Ted added.

“You told Julia you had sex with Ann?”

“I told her I loved Ann.”

“When did you tell Julia this?”

“The night before. When we got home Sunday night, we were going to all go out to dinner together. Like a family. Just like a family.” He looked away, back to the crack in the wall, the gradations of pea green. “I don't know what happened. It just went wrong.”

“First of all, as even the most casual reader of the papers is sure to know, love, much less sex, is hardly a valid murder defense. On the contrary, I don't know which one is worse.” Fisk regarded him coolly. “Be that as it may, what it comes down to is your word against Julia's. And I don't have to tell you who most juries are going to believe, given the choice between a fresh-faced motherless kid and…you. A lot of people are talking about your temper. Your neighbors are just dying to tell the police how often they heard you and your wife going at it.”

“If every married couple in America was arrested for arguing, there'd be a damn lot of empty houses in this country.”

“You're not in here for arguing with your wife, my friend. You're in here for manslaughter. You had a blood alcohol level of over .300. Your fingerprints were all over the gun.”

“Of course my fingerprints were all over the gun. I was holding it when it went off, for Christ's sake. But it wouldn't have gone off if Julia hadn't leapt at me.”

“We're going to have to defuse Julia's testimony. Why do you think she's lying?”

“She blames me for everything. The separation. Everything.”

“I need more than that, Ted. Give me something hard. Something I can play ball with. Has she been in any kind of trouble? Anything we can use?”

Ted looked at his lawyer distastefully. “She's my kid.”

“I know she's your kid. I also know you're sitting in jail looking at a helluva lot of time. And you're not going to serve it in this little country outhouse, either.”

Ted stared at him another moment. When at last he spoke, his voice was steely, harsh, and remote. “She's been seeing the school shrink. She's been having a rough year. Smart kid, don't get me wrong, but she's been failing a lot of classes. She didn't use to be that way. Something happened, I don't know. It's her attitude. She fights with other kids. Ignores her teachers. Maybe she's a little nuts, who knows? Yeah, maybe she's a little nuts.”

“Good,” Fisk said, smiling. “That's real good.”

“Just get me the fuck out of here. I can't do anything locked up in here.”

“The bail hearing is set for tomorrow.”

Ted ran his hands through his hair and nodded.

 

T
HE
C
HRONICLE
WAS HOUSED
in a low, flat cement building two miles outside of town, on Deerfield Road. The staff, many of whom still resented the move made six years ago from the large white Victorian house downtown, called it the Bunker, and it did, in fact, look as if it had been built to withstand manmade and natural disasters. The move had been part of an expansion plan when a loosely formed corporation bought the paper from the family who had owned it for three generations. At the time, commuters from Albany were moving farther into the county, advertising was up, and profits seemed assured. In the last few years, though, with two plant closings and lowered real estate prices, hopes were somewhat dimmed. Still, the
Chronicle
remained the source of news for much of the county, which tended, like other upstate areas bound by mountains, to distrust sources outside its borders.

Sandy parked her car in the lot behind the Bunker and walked quickly through the main reception area, where Ella, sitting behind the desk, eyed her with the flinty anticipation that sudden notoriety, no matter what the cause, can elicit. She moistened her lips and leaned forward, waiting for Sandy to acknowledge her as she did every morning, however briskly, so that she could, if only by raising her eyebrows a certain way, show that she sympathized, that she understood, and thus claim a small tentacle of the story as her own. But Sandy walked past without looking up, and Ella, left alone with all that concern, answered the ringing telephone with a short “What?” instead of her usual “Good morning.”