Act of God (14 page)

Elise sighed. “Whatever.”

“In the meantime, I know I don’t have to tell you, he’s going to need all the support you can give him.”

“Sure, whatever you say,” Elise replied. “I’ll be there for him.”

“A prison perspective is always a little warped,” Dana told her. “He’s isolated, literally cut off from the world he knows,
and from everything and everyone in it that he cherishes. More than anything, he needs constant reassurance that you’re still
on his team.”

“I’ll go down to that awful place whenever I can,” Elise promised. I’ll sit there. I’ll smile. I’ll make jokes. I’ll tell
him how beautiful the roses used to be. What more can I do?”

“Is that what you think he needs?”

“Is that all this is about—what Corey needs?” Elise inquired. “Well, what about me? Maybe I have some needs, too, you know.”

“I know how lonely it must be for you, as well,” Dana assured her, glancing over the black dress.

“Oh, you don’t know anything,” Elise cried. “I only wish it was about being lonely.”

Dana peered at her. “Are people making it tough for you? Here in the neighborhood? At the place where you work? Is the media
bothering you? I can help with that, you know.”

“Look, being the wife of an accused terrorist isn’t exactly a day at the beach, you know what I mean?” the young woman retorted.
“My whole life has become public property, to be pawed over by anyone with the price of a tabloid. I get letters. I get phone
calls. All day, all night. It never stops.”

As if to emphasize her words, the telephone shrilled suddenly, and Elise jumped as though she had been shot.

“Let me,” Dana said firmly, already reaching for the receiver. “Hello?”

“Murderer!” an anonymous voice shrieked in her ear, and hung up.

“Are they all like this?” the attorney asked. “Calling you a murderer?”

“Half of them,” Elise replied wearily. “The other half call me the wife of a murderer.” She shuddered. “Oh God, I hate this
place. I want to get out of here, go somewhere where nobody’s ever heard of me, and start all over again. Only there
is
no place where nobody’s ever heard of me anymore, is there? It’s the lead news story all across the country—maybe even around
the world, by now. So, I guess you could say that I’m just as much in prison as Corey is.”

“I see,” Dana murmured.

“No I don’t think you do, Ms. McAuliffe,” Elise shot back. “I had an abortion. My family is Catholic, and I had an abortion.
Do you have any idea what that means? My parents were never supposed to find out about it, but the newspaper people and the
television reporters just couldn’t wait for the chance to tell them every gory detail. Now they treat me like I’m a leper.
My own family. I begged them to let me come home, just for a while, until this gets sorted out. You know what they told me?
That I’d made my own bed, and now I could lie in it. So maybe I need some support here, too.”

Dana contemplated her next words, as a little knot began to form in the pit of her stomach. “If it’s any consolation,” she
said finally, “I was raised Catholic, too.”

“Well then, maybe you do understand,” Elise conceded. “I’m only twenty-seven years old, for God’s sake. My life is over, and
I don’t even know what happened to it.”

“Look, Corey’s defense may be my primary concern here,” the attorney said, “but I want you to know that I’m available to you,
too. Anytime, for any reason. Even if you just want to talk.”

“Yeah, okay, sure,” Elise acknowledged, her voice dull,
her glance drifting past the conversation and out the window toward the street where other people were going about their daily
lives as though everything were right in the world.

Dana considered the young woman. Her big green eyes, highlighted by just the right amount of mascara and shadow, were blank.
No, not blank, exactly, the attorney decided, more like—empty.

“Do you think this whole situation could be anything other than a horrible mistake?” Dana asked. “What I mean is, do you think
your husband might possibly have set that bomb?”

“First the police, and now you.” Elise shook her head slowly. “No, I don’t think he did. I can’t believe I could be married
to anyone who would do such a horrible thing, and not know it. But how could I be sure to an absolute certainty?”

“Did you tell the police that Corey was here with you that night?”

“Well, yeah. We watched the ten o’clock news, we had some cocoa, and then we went to bed, just like we always do on weeknights.
The police say I can’t give him an alibi because I was asleep, but I would’ve woken up if he’d gotten out of bed. I always
have before, like when he got up in the middle of the night sometimes to go to the bathroom.” She bit her lower lip. “I used
to get so mad at him for messing up my sleep when he did that. And now I’d give anything just to have him do it again.”

Dana nodded, thinking how typical the reaction was. It was exactly how she had felt when Molly’s father first left. “And there
was nothing in his behavior during the weeks before the bombing,” she probed, “that seemed strange or a little different or
just out of place to you?”

Elise shrugged at that. “He took the abortion hard,” she admitted. “And of course I made it worse by lying to him in the beginning.
But then he seemed to be okay with it.” She paused
for a moment. “I don’t really know what you mean by strange behavior,” she said finally. “I mean, how would I have recognized
if he did anything different? Sure, we’re married and all that, but when you come right down to it, the truth is, I hardly
know him.”

Dana climbed into her car and sat there, with her hand on the key, for several moments. She was going to need Elise Latham
as a witness, really the only alibi witness Corey had, for whatever it might be worth. And unless she was very, very careful,
it could turn into a nightmare.

O
nce Corey Latham’s name had been released to the media, it was only a matter of hours before the white frame house that had
for thirty years sat quietly at the end of a tree-lined street in Cedar Falls, Iowa, became the center of a maelstrom.

“Please leave us alone,” Dean Latham tried to tell the horde of media people who swarmed across his front lawn and his wife’s
flower beds, mangling her azaleas. “We have nothing to say.”

“But this is your chance to tell the world your side of the story,” they replied.

“We have no story,” he corrected them. “We’re just parents, and we’re devastated that anyone would think our son could commit
such a crime.”

“Have you talked to him?” someone asked. “Did he tell you whether he did it?”

“He doesn’t have to tell us anything,” Dean said with quiet dignity. “Now please go away.”

The local police tried to help, but other than pushing the crowd off the Lathams’ property, and making sure that the road
was kept clear, there was really very little they could do. It was the people of Cedar Falls who came to the rescue.

“Those folks in Seattle just plain don’t know what they’re doing,” members of the community said earnestly, as they physically
inserted themselves as a barrier between the cameras and the Latham home. “If they knew Corey the way we do, they would know
he could never do such a thing.”

“I’ve known that boy since he was born,” the minister of the United Methodist Church said. “They don’t come any finer.”

“That boy has been a role model since the day he stood up and walked,” declared the congressman who had sponsored him to Annapolis.

“I have no problem with Cedar Falls being known as the home of Corey Latham,” the mayor of the city was quick to add. “He
has always been a credit to this community.”

Barbara Latham’s hands were shaking so hard she could barely pack the clothing laid out on the bed into the two suitcases.
The long morning hours she had spent ironing were lost in her clumsy efforts to cram everything in. She took a deep breath
and tried to relax. Dean would be home at any moment and was relying on her to have everything ready.

She had arranged for a taxi to take them to the airport in Waterloo, reasoning that it would make no sense to disrupt anyone
else’s day for such a short distance. Their plane was scheduled to land in Seattle at four-thirty in the afternoon, but because
this was Friday, they would not be able to see Corey until the following evening.

Her son locked up in jail for a horrendous crime he couldn’t possibly have committed, with a mere hour allotted for visiting
just three days a week. The very idea of it was almost more than Barbara could bear. She had prayed every moment
since the news had come that the police would realize their terrible mistake and free her son.

It seemed an eternity, but it was really only three days since Dana McAuliffe had telephoned. The attorney tried so hard to
be encouraging, but Barbara knew an arrest for a capital crime was not something one could easily dismiss.

“Corey’s a tough kid,” Dana had said, “and I think he’s holding up well, under the circumstances. But he’s probably going
to be indicted sometime in the next two weeks, and that’ll be difficult for him. He tells me there’s a very strong bond between
you. So, I was thinking, if you can arrange it, seeing you would really help him get through this.”

“We’ll come as soon as we can,” Barbara promised.

They were leaving Cedar Falls buoyed by an outpouring of support, from family and close friends, as well as the entire community.

“Give him our love,” Corey’s sisters directed their parents.

“Tell him we’re praying for him,” the local druggist and his wife told them.

“We’re one hundred percent behind him,” the high school principal assured them, taking it upon himself to speak on behalf
of the entire staff and student body.

“Go with peace of mind,” the neighbors came by to say. “We’ll look after everything for you here.”

The flight to Seattle was uneventful, for which both Dean and Barbara were most grateful. They found the hotel they booked
to be clean and impersonal, and within walking distance of the jail. They ate an early dinner and went to bed, hoping to sleep.
But the bed and the city noises were unfamiliar, and each lay awake, trying not to move, lest they disturb the other.

To keep their minds occupied, the Lathams spent Saturday walking around the city in a droning rain, doing things they
remembered doing from earlier visits, but without much enthusiasm. The gaggle of media people who had followed them from Cedar
Falls trailed along behind them, cameras clicking, questions flying.

“Now I know how Princess Diana must have felt,” Barbara said to her husband.

They went back to the hotel and tried to nap, but both were showered and dressed an hour before it was time to leave for the
jail. Dean turned on the television, only to find the local news reports filled with the latest rehash of the case. They even
caught a segment about themselves, backed by shots from Pioneer Square. They looked like a pair of cornered animals.

Dana McAuliffe met them in the lobby of the hotel, walking right over when they stepped from the elevator, as though she knew
them.

“Your son looks very much like you,” she told Dean.

She steered them past the media people and into a waiting cab, although the King County Jail was barely a ten-minute walk
away.

“You’ll probably be a little shocked by Corey’s appearance,” Dana cautioned them. “You haven’t seen him for a while, and being
in jail is not exactly a nurturing experience. But I don’t think
he
realizes how much he’s changed.”

Barbara nodded. Without actually coming right out and saying it, the attorney was preparing them for what they would find,
and asking them to be careful of their reaction. In a very professional but gentle way, she wanted them to help her protect
Corey. Barbara liked her immediately.

“You told us he was going to be indicted,” Dean said as the taxi pulled up in front of Freedom Park. “How do you know that
before it happens?”

“Because the reality of the grand jury is that it comes from the presumption of guilt, not innocence,” Dana replied. “It’s
strictly a one-sided show, put on by the prosecutor, for the purpose of establishing a prima facie case, which means there’s
enough evidence to allow the state to proceed to trial.”

“Is there enough evidence?”

“On the surface, probably, or Corey wouldn’t have been charged in the first place,” the attorney conceded. “But please keep
in mind that it’s a long way from an indictment to a conviction.”

They hadn’t seen him since the wedding, but it was clear that Dana was right. They could see it through the Plexiglas wall,
the moment he shuffled into the visiting room with his shackles and his escorts. He had lost weight. His face was drawn from
lack of sleep, there were dark circles under his eyes, and his skin, popping with acne, had an unhealthy gray cast to it.

Barbara ached to put her arms around him, and hold him, and assure him that this nightmare would soon end. It was all she
could do to keep from crying out, She glanced at her husband; he was fighting back tears of his own.