I put down the beer can.
“Where this breaks down,” I say, “is they wouldn’t expose Leigh to a conviction.”
Dan rolls his eyes.
“What conviction? Leigh’s probably in on this, too. Where do you think she came up with the story about the death threat? Bracken fed it to her. By the time he gets through with Wallace’s reputation, the jury will be glad he’s dead. Hell, he’ll probably have you giving the closing argument while he sits back and pulls your strings. The guy’s slick as pig shit. He’s got you believing he just stumbled on Wallace’s porno deal. Look at the way he had his investigator discover this a week before the trial. He made you think that weirdo broke this case himself! Bracken probably rubbed his nose in it until he nearly suffocated.”
Dan belches. I lean back in my seat to get away as far as I can.
“What do you think I ought to do?” I ask, stung by his assessment of us. Hell, he’s right. Around Bracken I’ve been acting as if I were a first-grader afraid to raise his hand to ask to go to the bathroom.
Yet Dan and I are hardly the first persons in history to be intimidated by a forceful personality. Demagogues are made, not born, and in the South it has been a specialty.
Dan says, “Enjoy the ride. You don’t have any proof anything unethical has happened. Actually, if you put yourself in Bracken’s place for a moment, there’s no funny business going on at all. After all, it’s areal stretch to think Shane Norman would murder anyone, especially if he just converted you to Christianity.
So, naturally, Chet doesn’t want to smear him, and who can blame him for that? Norman has just opened the gates to eternal life to him, and now Chet is supposed to argue he’s a murderer? Get real. Our mentality is the reason the tabloid industry is alive and well in the United States. We’re happiest when somebody is making up some dirt about the rich and famous. We tell ourselves the most improbable gossip must be true because we’re jealous and envious of their success. chet’s got to send you to San Francisco.
What other leads are there?”
Tired, I rub my eyes, wondering which of Dan’s versions makes more sense. Like any decent lawyer, he can argue both sides of a case.
“So you really think I’m off base?” I ask.
He grins.
“Hell, no. I think this case stinks worse than I do.”
Ten minutes later, I am hustled out the door by Brenda, who reappears in her robe and slippers, looking like that old Vicki Lawrence character on TV.
“I’ve got to talk to my husband before I go to bed,” she tells me, daring either of us to argue.
Having heard enough of this, I drive home, my head spinning. Dan should have written a book on the Kennedy assassination. The only person who isn’t implicated, according to him, is Billy Graham, and if I mentioned his name, Dan would have me checking his alibi, too. The problem with conspiracy theories is that they are an awful lot like the astrological predictions I read every day in the Democrat-Gazette. They have this amazing way of coinciding with our desires and prejudices. Dan couldn’t be more hostile to religion if he had been forced to watch Jim and Tammy Faye every day for the last twenty years. I realize that I’m not much different. You see all this stuff on TV and expect the worst out of everybody when the reality is that people are different.
Most of us have a line we refuse to cross. The man who preached about the work being done in Peru to help poor people wouldn’t shoot down his own son-in-law in cold blood; arguably, the greatest trial lawyer Blackwell County ever had wouldn’t orchestrate a murder.
Even if there were some benighted, bloodthirsty kingdom of heaven to gain, they have too much to lose on earth. For one thing, the risk of discovery is too great. People have a compulsion to talk. I’m living proof of the way people run their mouths. Chet has cross-examined too many informants not to know that.
When all is said and done, he wouldn’t want his kid to wake up one morning and, while looking for his baseball glove, find instead a newspaper article about how his stepfather cast doubt in his final case on all he had accomplished.
The truth is, jealousy accounts for the negative talk about Chet. No one has proved he has ever suborned perjury or arranged a single payback. So why do I feel so bad about this case? I think back to the one case Chet and I worked on together when I was at the Public Defender’s. What was the difference? He was as subtle as a steamroller, and that’s always been his reputation.
In Leigh’s case it is as if he were working with an archaeologist’s hammer, tapping here, tapping there. It could be his illness. Dan has confirmed what I have already suspected. The problem is that I don’t know what to do about it.
At home, Sarah is full of herself. Before I can tell her about San Francisco, she begins to talk about what the youth of Christian Life are doing.
“They don’t take ski trips or have lock-ins; they help a lot of people,” she says, instructing me as if I were a slow student.
“I’m not just talking about the foreign work trips. At the shelter downtown, for example, we baby-sit the kids while the parents go look for work.”
Go look for a bottle of Ripple, I think sourly.
“Is there security down there for you? Even many of the homeless won’t stay in places like that because they’re too dangerous.”
Seated on the couch with her English book, Sarah strokes Woogie until he is almost purring.
“There’re tons of kids around. But it’s not a social thing. We’re not down there to show off or hang out with friends.”
When I tell her that I am leaving for San Francisco, she becomes anxious (as I knew she would). It’s okay for her to run around, but she likes the old man to stay put.
“What for?” she asks.
“Isn’t this kind of at the last minute?”
I collect the day’s residue from the coffee table: the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, an empty Coke can, the junk mail, including a plea from Greenpeace, one of Rosa’s favorite charities, which can’t take the hint after three years of silence from her.
“That’s one of the weird things about this case,” I say.
“It’s not making a lot of sense.”
Sarah’s back visibly stiffens, as if she is daring me to fight her again.
“I’ve thought a lot about what you said about Pastor Norman. I know you can’t understand it, but a man who radiates so much joy and peace just isn’t capable of murder.”
I open my mouth to argue. Every man wears a mask at some time in his life. But do I really want my daughter to become as cynical as I am? Suddenly, I feel like an asshole. I knew I didn’t have any proof that Shane was involved, so why did I say it in the first place? Am I so weak that I have to accuse a man of murder because I am jealous of him? Obviously. How pathetic!
“You could be right,” I say insincerely.
“Sometimes defense lawyers try so hard to get our own clients off we forget other people are entitled to a presumption of innocence too.” I paste a smile on my face, wondering how disillusioned she will become if it turns out that Shane is the murderer. I don’t want to destroy her capacity for a less radical kind of faith, but I may not be able to have it both ways. Fearful she will pick up on my hypocrisy, I change the subject.
“Can you stay here, or can you find a friend?”
“I’ll call Rainey,” she says quickly.
Most kids her age would love to get their parents out of the house so they could have a party. Not Sarah. I know she is nervous about staying by herself. I came in late too many nights after her mother died for her to have a sense of security.
“You can have a friend over to stay,” I say, thinking of Sarah’s best friend. Donna Red den. Sarah hasn’t mentioned her in a couple of weeks.
“What about Donna? Wouldn’t her parents let her?”
Sarah wrinkles her nose at the thought.
“I don’t see Donna much these days. I’ll call Rainey. I saw her leaving the same time we did.”