The judge’s eyes clicked to the face of a well-known TV reporter, then back to the woman. "Why don’t you leave Dare-I-us in jail for a while?"
"Don’t dare do that," the woman said.
"Why not?"
"Just don’t dare."
"Okay. Sit down. Dare-I-us, are you gonna show up for the trial?"
"I sure will, Your Honor."
"All right. Bail’s set at one thousand dollars, and you’ve got the young lady to thank for it."
"Thank you, Your Honor."
As Logan left, the judge said, "Call the next one," and the bailiff called out, "Audrey McDonald."
"Here, Your Honor," Glass called back.
The woman who’d gotten the bail reduced on Darius Logan wedged herself down a line of spectators, out to the center aisle, and headed for the door. As she passed, she saw Del, and Del said, quietly, "Quick pregnancy."
"Shush," she said, and was gone. Del looked at Lucas and said, "Didn’t have any kids last week."
"It’s a miracle," Lucas said, turning to sports.
Audrey McDonald sat hunched in her chair, her back to Lucas, as the hearing routine broke around her, speaking only two words: "Not guilty."
"Your Honor, Mrs. McDonald’s attorney has offered Mrs. McDonald’s house as security for her appearance, and the state has no objection to that. As you may know, the circumstances around this particular incident could lead to a change in the charges against Mrs. McDonald…"
And a while later, it was all done. Audrey waited as Glass talked to the assistant county attorney over a few details, then said, "We’ve got to sign the papers and then I’m going to talk to the press. If I don’t, they’ll be parked outside your house, hassling you…"
She liked that, the press, though her face was determinedly grim.
"… I don’t really expect you to say anything," Glass was saying.
"I’ll talk to them, if that will keep them away," Audrey said.
The press caught them outside the courthouse, at the curb, where Helen Bell was waiting in her car. Glass made a short speech about spousal abuse, said he anticipated that all charges would be dropped, then asked Audrey if she wished to answer questions.
She bobbed her head. "Did you kill your husband, Mrs. McDonald," a woman reporter blurted.
She bobbed her head again. "Yes," she said weakly. "I couldn’t… I couldn’t… He was hurting me so bad…" She touched the bandage on her scalp and peered at the camera lens. "Oh, God…" A tear trickled down her cheek. "God, I miss him. I’m so sorry…"
"Why do you miss him?"
"He was my husband," she wailed. "I wish he could come back… But he can’t." She seized Glass’s arm. "I can’t…" She gasped.
"All right, all right," Glass said. "She’s really weak. She’s got to go. I’m pleading with you all. If you have any sensitivity, leave her alone."
"Mrs. McDonald…"
Then she was in the car and Helen was driving them away. "My God," Helen said. "My God, Audrey…"
"Just take me home."
"No, no. You’re coming to my place."
"No. I want to go home," Audrey said. "Helen, please don’t argue with me. Just take me home. Please. I just want to turn off the phones and get some sleep."
And back at the courthouse, Lucas said to Glass, "Quite a performance."
Glass was staring after Helen Bell’s car, turned to Lucas and said, "The last thing I expected."
"You didn’t prep her?"
"Hell, no. I figured she was such a sad sack, we couldn’t lose. I didn’t think we was gonna get Greta Garbo. Did you see that tear?"
"I didn’t get that close."
"A real tear," Glass marveled. "Ran right down her cheek, and it was the cheek that was turned toward Channel Three. Tell you what, Lucas-if I lose this case, I’m gonna want to borrow one of your guns, so I can shoot myself."
The house was silent: Audrey entered, listening for the footfalls of Wilson’s ghost. She heard creaks and cracking that she hadn’t heard before-but she’d never before listened. Helen came in behind her, tentatively. "You’re sure you’ll be okay?"
"I’ll be okay," Audrey said, peering around. The police had been through the place, and though they hadn’t been deliberately messy, the house looked… disheveled. "I hope the police didn’t steal anything."
"Do you want me to come over tonight?"
"No… no. I’m going to take a couple of pills and try to sleep. I just really need to sleep, I haven’t slept since before… before…"
"Okay. If you’re sure you’ll be all right."
"Do you, uh… You used to take Prozac," Audrey said. "Do you still use that?"
"Well, sure. Could hardly get along without it," Helen said.
"Do you think it would help? In the next few days?" Helen shook her head. "I don’t think it’s for your kind of problem, honestly. I could give you a few and you could try them, but I think a doctor could give you something better."
"Maybe if I could just try a couple. If I don’t sleep tonight…"
"Sure. We’ll talk tomorrow."
When Helen was gone, Audrey prowled through the house, already planning: she’d bundle up his suits, dump them at Goodwill and get a tax deduction. She got a notepad and wrote: "ACCOUNTANT/Taxes and Deductions," and under that, "Suits." Wilson had all kinds of crap she’d want to get rid of, starting with that XK-E. She wrote "Jag" under "Suits." And he had a whole wall full of bullshit awards and plaques-chairman of this charity in 1994, director of that community effort in 1997. All worthless: straight into the garbage can, she thought.
So much to do.
Audrey really did hurt from Wilson’s beating, and from her own enhancements to the damage. The scalp wound, in particular, felt tight, like a banjo head, its edges seeming to pull against the stitches. After half an hour of cruising through the house, she went up to the bedroom, set the alarm clock for nine P.M.,and tried to sleep.
But sleep, she found, wouldn’t come easily. Too many images in her head, a mix of plans and memories. If Wilson had only landed the chairmanship, none of this would have happened. She’d believed in him from the start, and the belief had only begun to falter after Kresge got the top job six years earlier. Kresge was a technocrat, and brought in other technocrats like Bone and Robles. They had no respect for family name, for fortune, for breeding or society. All they knew was how to make money. Wilson, running the mortgage division, which had always been one of the pillars of the bank, was suddenly out on a limb.
She didn’t know that sleep had come, but it must have. The clock went off: she sat up, a bit groggy, realized that the room was dark. She groped around the bedstand, found the clock, and silenced the alarm. Then she touched the light and swung out of bed.
A little tension now. She went straight to the shower and stood under it, breathing deeply, flexing the muscles in her back and shoulders. Stiff. When she got out of the shower, she downed four ibuprofen tablets, then dressed: black slacks, a deep red sweater, and a dark blue jacket over the sweater. She found a pair of brown cotton gardening gloves, and pulled them on. The best she could do for nighttime camouflage. Now for a weapon.
The police had been all through the house, but she remembered that when the closet rod broke in the front closet a year or so earlier, Wilson had tossed the broken dowel rod up in the rafters of the yard shed, where it lay with other scrap wood. She found a flashlight in the kitchen, let herself out the back, and walked in the dark to the shed. Inside, she turned the flash on. She could see the scrap wood overhead, but couldn’t reach it. The lawn tractor was there, and she stood on the seat, stretched to push the wood around, and saw the two pieces of the dowel rolling to one side. She got both of them down. One was a little more than six feet long, including the split; the other a little more than two feet long, including the sharp split end.