“A good question,” I say to Sarah, wondering how long a continuance I’ll get. Now that I’m going to be in charge, I’d like to take some time and figure out some things. Judge Grider, whom I reached at home, was naturally shocked by my news. He told me to meet him in his office at eleven, after I explained what all was going on. At that moment with the police in the house verifying my story and the media and neighbors in the yard, it probably sounded as if I were having a party.
I thank Rainey and then take my daughter back to school. I am grateful beyond words that Sarah wasn’t the one who opened the door when Chet put the gun to his head. No telling what it would have done to her. I’m not really sure what it will do to me. If she had been there, I wouldn’t have been able to hide in the house until the ambulance came.
“Why’d he shoot himself?” Sarah asks, as I work my way through the traffic southeast toward her school.
Death has a way of even turning a kid’s attention from herself.
I glance over at her, wondering if Christian Life is responsible for toning down the way Sarah has made her self up. For the last couple of weeks I have noticed that Sarah was no longer wearing earrings to school or painting her fingernails. If they would let up on the dogma, maybe Christian Life wouldn’t be so bad. She doesn’t have to go to school every day looking like Arkansas’s answer to Gloria Estefan.
“He didn’t want his wife having to discover his body,” I say, deliberately misunderstanding her question, which, if I answer it honestly, will lead to another fight with her.
Naturally unsatisfied with this response, my daughter asks, “I mean, why, right before the trial was to start?”
Stopping at the last light before her school comes into view, I realize this is a wound that may never be permanently closed.
“I know you don’t want to believe this,” I say, pulling over to the curb when the light changes, “but Chet had come around to the position that Shane might have killed Art. He would have had to confront him in court, and I don’t think he could bring himself to do it. You must never discuss what I’m telling you.”
Sarah nods, her eyes bright with tears. She asks, “Then how can you do it. Daddy?”
I glance over my shoulder to make sure I am out of the line of traffic and then back at my daughter. She is biting her lip and with her right hand is twisting her luscious black hair, a familiar sign of anxiety. I have to prove Shane’s guilt to satisfy her, and unless he confesses that will never happen.
“Leigh told me just over twenty-four hours ago that she thinks her father killed her husband.”
Sarah stretches her mouth tightly against her teeth before crying, “You’ve put this into her head! She’d do anything to keep from going to jail!”
Have I? Most definitely. That day at Pinnacle Mountain I might as well have tattooed it on her hand. A red Probe whizzes by us, violating the school zone speed limit by at least twenty miles an hour.
“Would you accuse me of killing someone to save yourself?” I ask, not yet willing to admit what I’ve done.
“No!” she groans, wiping her eyes with her knuckles.
“But I’m not Leigh. They say she changed so much, even that she’s lost her faith.”
Frustrated because I have no adequate response, I wheel out into traffic.
“I’ve got an appointment with the judge,” I say harshly. For an instant I wish she hadn’t come back home. I need all the support I can get, damn it. I want to tell her that Rainey is now on my side, but this isn’t true. Like Sarah, she has come back into my life, but both are demanding something I can’t give. I’m afraid that if this case doesn’t go the way Sarah wants it to, like Leigh she will leave again, perhaps this time for good. I think I could live if I lost Rainey; something in me will die for good if I lose Sarah.
As we pull up in front of her school, my daughter commits the ultimate unthinkable act (it would be if there were any kids outside to witness it) by leaning over to kiss me on the cheek.
“I love you. Daddy,” she says shyly.
“I’ll see you when you get home.”
I fight a sudden urge to cry. I am closer to the edge than I thought. She will never touch me again if I get sloppy this close to her school. Still, I feel as if I have been given an unexpected present. I swallow hard and acknowledge the obvious: “I love you, too.”
George Glider’s chambers look less like a judge’s office than the headquarters of a successful politician. His walls are covered with photographs of himself with the Arkansas rich and famous: Dale Bumpers drapes his arm around him; David Pryor is forever frozen in the act of pumping his arm as if it is one of the nickel slots in Lake Tahoe; the late Sam Walton grins as if Grider had just told him a joke about Kmart; former Arkies Sidney Moncrief and Lou Holtz flank him as if they are escorting him to the dais to be introduced as a Razorback immortal; and, directly behind his desk, the most prized picture of all a blow-up of George with Bill and Hillary. The fly in George’s impressive caldron of political soup is that, unless they were dead drunk at the time, not one of these people could stand to be around him for over five minutes. He was one of the most obnoxious lawyers in the state to try a case against, and election to the bench hasn’t improved his personality. If judges were selected on merit instead of elected, he couldn’t obtain an appointment as justice of the peace.
But nobody with the exception of Warren Burger has ever looked more like a judge. At the age of fifty, George Grider’s handsome face, noble as a Roman patrician is crowned by a veritable bale of cotton. A former halfback for the Dallas Cowboys for two years, George looks as if he could suit up tomorrow for the season. In a room with more than six people, he is charming, affable, even witty. Behind closed doors he relaxes completely and becomes his usual snotty, arrogant self.
“You haven’t given me a legitimate reason why this case should be postponed one more day,” he says to me from behind his desk. I look at our prosecuting attorney, Jill Marymount, for help. A mistrial isn’t going to help her either. If she is pondering the possibility, I can’t tell it, for she seems to be engrossed in the details of Hillary’s dress.
“As I just explained. Your Honor,” I say, speaking slowly for George’s long-suffering court reporter, “Mr.
Bracken was going to try the case by himself. There were no plans for me to examine a single witness.”
George handles a gold-plated letter opener that he probably picked up in a pawnshop. As a former attorney for the county sheriffs’ association, he could probably provide an interesting tour of his basement.
“You just said you talked with the defendant about the case just last night,” George says, his voice a sarcastic whine that can’t be communicated on a transcript.
“She didn’t even speak to Mr. Bracken. It is quite clear to this court that you were actively involved in preparing for the trial.”
I suppress a sigh.
“I’m not asking for a long continuance just a week or so. This isn’t a case of whether my client shoplifted a Hershey bar. She could go to prison for life.”
Shifting around on a padded throne that looks comfortable enough to sleep on, Grider asks impatiently, “Why a week? You’re not telling me you haven’t been working on this case, are you, Mr. Page?”
What is it with this guy? Suddenly, I realize that Chet’s death has released him to be the bully he is. Chet intimidated lawyers and judges alike.
“I haven’t pre pared to be the lead counsel. Your Honor.”
Grider casually pokes at a cuticle with the letter opener.
“How long have you been working on this case with Mr. Bracken?”
As frustrating as it has been, it seems like a lifetime.
“About three weeks,” I say.
Cross-examining me as if I were a witness who could be pushed from one end of the courtroom to the other, he sneers, “You’re not telling me you don’t know the theory of the defense’s case after all this time, are you?”