Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (32 page)

I point out, trying not to sound too combative, “You weren’t the last child to fly the coop.”

For the first time, Mary Patricia concedes, “And I wasn’t the favorite.” She adds, however, “But Daddy wouldn’t talk Hector into killing Art.”

“He wouldn’t have to,” I say, seizing on her earlier comment about her father’s ability to influence other people.

“Hector would get the idea.”

There is a respectful pause while she apparently considers the possibility.

“I just don’t see Hector capable of murder.”

I drop the subject, myself troubled by the timing of the events. How would this old man know things were flying apart at this particular moment? Nobody has accused him of being a peeping Tom. He did say it was odd that Leigh didn’t wave. But that was all.

“What about Leigh?” I ask.

“What do you see her capable of?”

There is no hesitation in Mary Patricia’s voice.

“If Leigh were angry enough,” she says, “she could have killed him. Leigh has Mother’s temper, but she’s incapable of killing someone in cold blood.”

mrs. Norman has been forgotten in all of this. Both quintessential Southern women. All that repressed anger beneath a boozy surface. Leigh could have had a snootful to try to relax that morning and simply exploded.

Her mother’s baggage. Maybe Jill’s offer of ten years for manslaughter is about right.

“Does Leigh drink?”

Mary Patricia answers, “Not unless Art was teaching her.”

Perhaps he was. We talk for a few more minutes, but I get nothing useful except a promise that she will call me if she hears from Leigh.

I call Chet to run my latest theory by him, but Wynona tells me he had already taken a painkiller and is in no condition to speak to me. I think to myself that this case is turning into a joke. No lawyer, no client, only a single, flaky witness from California. I mope around the kitchen looking for something to eat and decide the easiest thing to do is to open a can of soup. I am beginning to have some real doubts about myself both as a lawyer and as a father. Nothing I say or do seems to make a difference. Chet apparently has no confidence in my abilities to handle this case. Perhaps he has been in touch with my old employers. Mays & Burton, who fired me. Granted, I didn’t give my bosses anything to write home about, but I wasn’t given much to work with either. As I open the pantry to look for the chips, the phone rings, startling me out of my growing self-pity.

“Is this Mr. Page?” It is a foreign voice, perhaps Japanese and barely understandable.

In no mood for telemarketing, I bark, “If you’re selling something, you better tell me right now.” Wow.

What am I going to do hang up on them?

I hear the sound of someone clearing his throat.

“There is a young lady in our motel who is asking for you. I’m afraid she is very drunk. Room 104 of the Delta Inn. Would you please come get her?” This last sentence is more of a command than a request, and the line goes dead. Leigh, obviously. Grabbing my keys off the shelf by the phone, I race out to the Blazer. It could be Sarah. Or even Jessie St. vrain. The way the day has gone, it would be just my luck.

The delta inn is on 1-30 almost halfway to Benton.

Since its parking lot is shielded from the highway, the motel offers a twenty-five-dollar-a-night sanctuary to adulterers and others who have a reason to hide their automobiles. Leigh’s father claims his church members have cruised every motel parking lot in Blackwell County, but I can see how someone in a hurry would have missed Leigh’s maroon Acura, which is not parked in front of the rooms but is wedged between two pick ups across from the motel restaurant. I park right in front of room 104 and knock on the door a full thirty seconds before Leigh opens it and staggers back four feet to sit on the bed.

“Don’t take me home,” she says, her voice slurred and low.

“I won’t,” I promise, but I have to get her out of here before I throw up. The tiny, moldy room smells overpoweringly of mildew and bourbon and the remains of some kind of Mexican dinner that looks more than twelve hours old. A half-empty six-pack of Cokes, an empty bottle of Old Crow, and a clouded plastic glass sit on top of a dresser that looks as if it has survived a couple of fires. An entire bottle would have blot toed me. I marvel how Leigh managed to give my name to the manager. It is hard to believe such a beautiful woman can look so terrible. Matted, damp hair frames her face, which is swollen I assume from crying and alcohol. She appears to be in a stupor, and from the phone by the bed, I dial Rainey’s number.

“I need some help,” I say when she answers the phone.

“I’ve just found Leigh dead drunk in a motel, and I need a woman’s touch in sobering her up for the trial tomorrow.”

Rainey responds immediately.

“Bring her over here.”

Taking a look at the dried vomit on Leigh’s sweatshirt, I gag before I can get out, “We’ll be there in half an hour.”

I feel like a gangster hauling an unconscious body out to the Blazer as I struggle to support Leigh’s weight in the darkness. Fortunately, there is nobody else around as I half-drag her out to the Blazer. I feel keenly selfconscious about how this must look: a middleaged guy forcing a drugged young woman into a car. She is surprisingly solid; and, to my consternation, the image of her dancing nude for the camera forces its way into my mind as I help her lie down in the backseat. There is nothing visually attractive about Leigh at the moment. I go back in, looking for any personal belongings, but find only her purse. I know myself well enough to realize that calling Rainey was the best decision I’ve made in a while. At moments like this, she has always been there for me, even when she is furious at me. It hasn’t been too many months since my face was turned into mincemeat while I was working on a case. I was in worse shape than my present passenger in the backseat, but I pried myself loose from soft asphalt in a honkytonk parking lot and headed like a homing pigeon for Rainey’s, where she patched me up enough to allow me to go home and face my daughter.

I stop in front of the office and run in to pay the bill and tell the man at the desk that it may be tomorrow or the next day before we pick up the car. With his distinct Asian features and his black dressing gown that could cover the side of a barn, he looks like a finalist from a sumo wrestling championship forty years ago. A rerun of the “Cosby Show” flickers on an ancient black and white TV in the corner next to a huge green safe, and I wonder briefly what odyssey has brought this man to the desk of the Delta Inn.

“I think you called me about the young woman in 104,” I say over the voice of one of Cosby’s TV daughters, whose problems never got this seedy.

“I’m taking her home.”

He shoots me a look of pity.

“Is the room all right?”

he asks in a heavily accented voice. What the hell, I think. Henry Kissinger still sounds as if he just got off the boat, too.

“I think so,” I reply, not really having checked it out.

How much damage could anyone do to the Delta Inn and not be justified in calling it a part of a demolition effort?

“You send me the bill if there are any problems with it, okay?” I hand him a card, as if I were the manager of a rock group that regularly trashes hotels.

“You a good rawyer?” he asks, studying my card.

Poor guy. What a crap shoot You get one, and he’s dead on his feet of cancer. I nod ambiguously. This man has probably been a citizen for longer than I’ve been alive, yet he’ll go to his grave thinking he can be deported because he can’t say his
‘s.p>

“I need a divorce,” he confesses, near tears as he hands me a bill, showing an amount owing of fifty cents for two phone calls.

“My wife—she run off with one of the maids.”

I can’t say that I blame her.

“Give me a call next week,” I say, fishing from my pocket two quarters and the room key. Somehow I don’t think I’ll be able to give up taking civil cases when Leigh’s trial is over.

On the drive to Rainey’s, Leigh stirs in the backseat but says nothing I can understand. Alcohol. It may be playing more of a role in this case than I thought.

Leigh, out from under the parental thumb, may indeed be a hooch hound like her mother.

Rainey is waiting outside and helps me walk Leigh into her house.

“This is my friend Rainey,” I say to Leigh.

“She’s very discreet.”

“Hi, Rainey,” Leigh says, giggling loudly.

“Are you his girlfriend?”

“Just friends,” I say, taking Rainey off the spot. I am grateful for the darkness.

“Have you called her father?” Rainey asks as she opens the door.

At this reference to the man who has loved her longer than any other male, Leigh opens her eyes and tries to pull away from us. I tighten my grip on Leigh’s arm and reassure her, “No, and I’m not going to.” To Rainey behind Leigh’s head, I mouth the words, “I’ll tell you later.”

Rainey’s house, as always, is spotless. As much as she has been gone lately, I don’t see how she has even had time to water the plants that abound is the Hving room. I have spent many pleasant hours here and feel a wave of nostalgia wash over me as Rainey walks Leigh into her bathroom.

“I’m putting Leigh in the shower,” she says.

“You go to the kitchen and start some coffee.”

Damn. Not even a little peek. I take a final look at Leigh before her transformation begins. Her stomach heaves beneath her sweatshirt as if she is about to be sick. Not exactly what I had in mind. I close the door behind me and make a right turn back into the living room on my way to the kitchen. If I bad turned left, I would have walked into Rainey’s bedroom. She and I must be the only two single heterosexual adults in the country who have professed romantic love to each other, meant it, had the opportunity on many occasions, but have never followed through. I remember the night I thought she was taking me to her bedroom and she opened the door onto a Ping-Pong table and proceeded to beat my brains out. Though we have played many games since that night and I have come close on occasion, I have never beaten her a single time. Some things just don’t seem meant to be.

While I wait for the coffee to drip, I sit down at the kitchen table and worry that Leigh won’t sober up enough to be able to discuss Jill’s offer of a plea bar gain. We led Jill to think it was under active consideration but by the end of the day her patience was growing thin.

Twenty minutes later, Rainey escorts a shaky but much improved-looking Leigh into the kitchen. In Rainey’s white terry-cloth robe, her dark wet hair gleaming under the bright light, Leigh looks like a bedraggled teenager who has paid the price for downing an entire bottle of Southern Comfort. I hand her a cup of coffee as she smiles uncertainly at me.

“What are we going to do about clothes?” I ask Rainey. From her neck down Leigh looks almost fetching in the robe, which barely comes to her knees, but she is hardly dressed for a court appearance.

“We’ve been talking about that,” Rainey says, flashing a Dillard’s credit card and what I assume is a shop ping list at me.

“I’m going to run to the mall for Leigh.” It is a foregone conclusion that Leigh will not be calling her father tonight.

I look at my watch. It is just before eight, and the mall closes at nine.

“You better hurry,” I say.

Rainey, whose salary as a social worker goes for her mortgage and not her clothes, grins.

“They may be getting in a little overtime tonight.” In the background I can hear Rainey’s washing machine in the utility room and realize that underneath Rainey’s robe, Leigh can’t be wearing much. She is a good five inches taller and fifteen pounds heavier than Rainey.

As soon as I hear me screen door close, I tell Leigh about Jill’s offer.

“You could be out in just over three years with good time,” I say, thinking about the women’s unit at Pine Bluff.

“I’ve been down there. It’s not as bad as it could be.” Who am I kidding? Prison is prison even if they let you get your hair done. Leigh’s hands shake as she brings the coffee to her lips. She needs something to eat.

“You think you could eat some toast?” I’m not much of a cook, but I can handle bread if there is a toaster around.

Leigh swallows, giving herself time to think.

“Why should I plead if I’m not guilty?” she asks finally.

The implication of Leigh’s remark is that she is innocent, but this is susceptible to more than one interpretation. The answer to her question is more complicated than my response, but out of habit, I give the short version.

“I’m not saying you should, but you have to consider the following facts: you’ve lied about your whereabouts, and the prosecutor will have a field day with it; you were overheard arguing the night before the murder, and so far as we know, nobody, including the police, has found a shred of physical evidence that any one else is a suspect. And three years and four months at your age is a lot more tolerable than spending the rest of your life in prison.” Plus the fact that your lawyer is knocked out with a pain pill for the night instead of pre paring your defense and will be out on his feet by three tomorrow afternoon if he lasts that long. But I do not mention this last extremely crucial fact. Why? Out of habit? Lawyers protect each other as much as doctors do. It is as reflexive as an eye blink and happens at least as often. I find a loaf of wheat bread in the freezer next to a Ziploc bag of chicken breasts and lay it on the counter to thaw. When I was a child in eastern Arkansas, the idea of freezing a loaf of Wonder Bread must have been heretical, since I was never privy to the phenomenon until I moved to the center of the state as an adult. What are bread boxes for? As warm and moist as the Arkansas Delta is, I’m surprised bread didn’t turn into penicillin right before our eyes.

Leigh stares into her coffee. I’ve never seen her face so sad. I’m certain there is something more she is not telling me. She says quietly, “Will you call Mr. Bracken for me?”

I nod but say, “Let me ask you a question first. Were you and Art drinking that morning? You don’t seem to handle alcohol very well.”

“No,” Leigh says, a little too abruptly.