When he stopped speaking the silence deepened in the large, glowing room. He stared out at the city’s lights flashing beyond the terraces, his fingers stroking the globe embracing the Snow Virgin.
Lorso thought with relief that Correll knew nothing about Aron and Ben Cadle, Davic’s “investigators” from New York. There had been no police report on the attempted hit-run in the East Chester mall. Slocum had assured him of that. Which meant the DA and Selby had figured it was a drunk behind the wheel, or some pot-head kid...
Lorso also had an uneasy feeling about Quade. He had heard things about the bodyguard he didn’t quite believe. Which was why he tested him by lighting a cigarette and dropping a match on the carpet, because that was the kind of thing you had to do, not just challenge your enemies but challenge your fears about them.
After a moment Correll shrugged and said, “Perhaps I’m at fault for not advising you gentlemen of the complexity of our problems.” His tone was almost amiable; it was apparent that the flashpoint of his anger had cooled. His glance at his watch was a gesture of courteous dismissal.
After they had gone Correll went upstairs to Jennifer’s bedroom. The walls and furniture were done in red, the bed scattered with tasseled black pillows.
The doors leading to the terraces were open and Jennifer stood outside in the fine rain, arms held in a graceful circle above her head, pirouetting with a slow, deliberate elegance. She had changed into gray leotards and tied her long hair back with a dark ribbon, and was smiling dreamily, eyes closed against the misting winds.
When she became aware of Correll watching her, she lost her concentration and balance and stumbled slightly, catching herself with a quick hand on the terrace railing.
She smiled at him and her eyes were as blank and merry as a doll’s.
Correll led her back into the warm bedroom. After a dizzying glance at the balconies below Jennifer’s room, and the sheer drop beyond them to the street and sidewalk, he closed and locked the terrace doors.
He helped her out of her soaking jersey and gently eased her onto the bed, straightened her legs and smoothed her tangled hair on the pillow.
“I don’t like you out on the terrace at night, and I don’t like you talking to the good brother when you’ve been drinking,” he said. “What did Fabius want?”
She laughed at him. “You were listening, Simon. I heard you pick up the phone. I could hear you breathing. The way some people breathe is... like fingerprints, Simon.” She laughed again, her eyes closing, the lashes dark and wet on her pale cheeks.
“I listened, Jennifer, because I thought there might be news of my mother. I have a notion Bishop Waring would prefer you to tell me if her condition is worsening.”
“No, Simon, it wasn’t that. Your mother is sleeping very quietly. Everybody is asleep now.”
“What did Fabius want to talk to you about?”
“Like little mice, that’s what you told me, and I thought that was rather dear. Little laboratory mice.” She moved her head restlessly. “Fabius has some shells, Simon, tiny pink and blue shells from Portugal. He’s making a rosary for your mother. He wanted to know if the first and last decades should be made with the pink shells...”
She was breathing slowly and deeply, the muscles of her flat stomach rising and falling in gentle contractions.
“Or what, Jennifer?” Correll asked her.
“Or the blue shells, of course, darling.”
“What does it matter? Did Fabius tell you what in the name of Christ difference it makes?”
“I forget, Simon.”
Correll took off her slippers, the thin leather soles damp and slick from the rain. She murmured drowsily as he untied her cord belt and slowly slipped the tight, clinging leotards from her legs, which were white and slack and vulnerable against the flaming red covers.
As he lay beside her slim, warm body, and studied her face for a moment, Correll was moved by the stillness in Jennifer’s expression and her lack of awareness of him, of everything around them, of everything in the world. He was grateful for the promise of oblivion she offered him, that welcoming and sustaining darkness. Reaching across her quiet body, he turned off the lights.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The day of the trial was bitterly cold. The first shoots of spring, spiky tips of skunk cabbage, were buried under a foot of snow in the bottoms of drained quarries and mica pits. The weather had been unsettling, gray days with clouds like torn and dirty curtains, followed by drenching rain and then sunlight glistening in the trees.
Casper Gideen’s body was shipped back to his hometown of Ahashie, South Carolina. East Chester police had accepted a coroner’s verdict that the deceased met his death “as the result of accidentally self-inflicted gunshot wounds.”
The Selby family attended the service at the Muhlenburg Baptist Church. They sat in the pew behind Lori Gideen and her sons. The Selbys’ floral wreath of field daisies and violets and pussy willows had been chosen by Shana.
On the morning of the trial, Shana was in the foyer when her father came downstairs. She wore a blue sweater, a gray flannel skirt and polished brown loafers. He kissed her cheek and thought that her hair smelled like flowers left in a cold room. She pulled on a coat and gloves while Selby drank a cup of coffee.
“I know Miss Brett filled you in on everything,” he told her, “but remember, the jury is just a group of ordinary, everyday citizens.”
“She told me how normal they were,” Shana said, “except for two of those big women wearing the born-again buttons.”
The jury consisted of seven whites, three blacks and two Puerto Ricans, eight men and four women. Three of the group were on welfare. All but one, at Mr. Kahn, said they believed in a Supreme Being. Their average age was thirty-four and their mean educational level that of eleventh grade.
“The important thing,” Selby said, as they went out to the car, “is to keep in mind there’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“You must think there is,” she said, “because you keep telling me that. I know Earl Thomson’s going to swear I’m lying, daddy. And I know Miss Brett is worried about Dr. Clemens, but I think he’s an old fool.”
She had spent a total of three hours with the psychiatrist, meeting with him in Dorcas Brett’s office. According to a court ruling, no tapes had been made of their conversations, and the defense expert’s notes were subject to review by both Dorcas Brett and the Selbys’ doctor, Merwin Kerr.
After the charges were read into the record, Dorcas Brett opened for the People.
In Selby’s opinion, her opening statement had an inconclusive effect. Or at least an ambivalent one. She presented her arguments logically enough, but as far as Selby could tell they failed to generate much sympathy among the jurors. Maybe it was because her manner and appearance were so at variance with the decor, the atmosphere, of Judge Flood’s courtroom, which was colonial in tone — high-ceilinged, spacious, with tall narrow windows, white plastered walls and random-width pine floors. On those shining planks, Brett’s high heels sounded with a light but insistent clatter, an almost irreverent or impertinent sound in a male atmosphere suggested by brass inkwells, rugged beams and a large mural depicting Quaker merchants and Indian chiefs greeting one another with upraised arms on the banks of the Brandywine. Cornfields and turkeys in flight stretched off beyond them to infinite blue skies.