Act of God (45 page)

“Yes.”

“What happened when you told him you couldn’t discuss it?”

“He became… frustrated,” the doctor replied. “And then the, harassment started. At first, he would call me at the clinic.
After a few days of trying to reason with him, I just refused to come to the phone, so then he began calling me at home, at
all hours of the night, demanding that I talk to him about his wife. I tried to tell him that the discussion he needed to
have was with his wife, not with me, but that just made him angry. So finally I had to tell him that if he didn’t stop calling,
I would call the police.”

“So, by the time you told him to stop calling, he was angry?”

“Yes, I’d say so. Very angry.”

“And to the best of your recollection, when did these telephone calls take place?”

“Last November,” Neff replied.

“Now, without going into detail, or abrogating any doctor-patient confidentiality, did you have occasion to see the defendant’s
wife on a medical matter, prior to these telephone calls? Say, in September of last year?”

“Yes, I did.”

Brian turned to the bench. “I’d like these telephone logs entered into evidence, Your Honor,” he said.

Bendali nodded. “So ordered.”

“Thank you,” the prosecutor said to his witness. “That’s all I have.”

“These telephone calls that annoyed you so much, Dr. Neff,” Dana said, rising as Brian sat. “When you told my client you felt
he was harassing you, did they stop?”

“Yes.”

“You didn’t have to call the police, or try to dissuade him further?”

“No.”

“So my client may have been desperate for help and begging for information, but he wasn’t irrational, or intimidating, or
anything like that, was he?”

“Well, he was angry.”

“So you said. Did he threaten you? Did he threaten to harm your family?”

“No.”

“And after that week in November, did my client ever attempt to telephone you again?”

“No.”

Dana contemplated the witness for a moment. “Do you think he held you personally responsible for something in connection with
his wife?”

“I think, by his actions, he made that perfectly clear,” the physician replied.

“Your house wasn’t bombed, was it?”

“No, of course it wasn’t. But Hill House certainly was.”

“Yes, two and a half months later,” Dana acknowledged. “And if I remember correctly, you weren’t at the clinic that day, were
you?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I wasn’t.”

“That’s right. You were at home. As a matter of fact, you were at home all that week, with a bad case of the flu, isn’t that
so?”

“Yes, well, maybe your client didn’t know that,” Neff suggested.

“All it would have taken was one phone call to find out, wouldn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“You suppose?” Dana fingered a piece of paper. “Doctor, are you acquainted with a woman by the name of Maureen O’Connor?”

“Yes, I am,” he replied with a puzzled frown. “She’s a patient of mine.”

“Well, Mrs. O’Connor is willing to come here and testify, if necessary, that on the Monday before the bombing, she called
the clinic to speak to you, and was told that you were out with the flu, and had canceled all your appointments for the rest
of the week. Now, let me ask you again, would it have taken anything more than one phone call to determine that you were not
at Hill House?”

“No, I guess not,” he conceded.

“And yet, Dr. Neff,” the attorney continued, “you were perfectly willing to let this jury believe that it was my client’s
anger at you that prompted the bombing of Hill House, weren’t you?”

“What the jury believes is up to the prosecutor,” the physician declared. “All I said was the defendant was very angry.”

“Yes, you did say that,” Dana granted, thoughtfully. “You lost a lot of good friends that day at Hill House, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did,” he replied.

“And you’d like to believe that the police did their job, the way police are supposed to do it, and caught the right man,
wouldn’t you?”

“Sure I would.”

“It wouldn’t bring your friends back, of course, but it would mean at least some kind of closure, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And those of you who are left could start putting the whole tragedy behind you, and begin getting on with your lives, couldn’t
you?”

Neff blinked several times. “Yes,” he said.

“Doctor, do you blame yourself for the bombing of Hill House?”

He sighed. “Maybe, a little,” he said, his voice catching a bit.

“Enough to want to help hang an innocent man?”

“No, of course not,” he said. “I would never want to do that.”

“All right then, after the telephone calls ended, did you have any further contact with my client?”

“I did,” he replied after a slight pause.

“Can you tell us what that contact consisted of?”

“About two weeks later, I got a letter from him.”

Brian shot a look at Mark Hoffman, who shrugged in response.

“Will you please tell the court what the gist of that letter was?”

“As I remember, it said that he and his wife had finally been able to talk, that they had gotten into counseling, and that
he had faith things would work out. He apologized for his harassment, hoped I understood, and thanked me for not reporting
him to the police.”

“Did this letter sound like someone who was so consumed with anger that he was going to go right out and plant a bomb?”

“No, I guess it didn’t,” he answered.

“Or did it sound like someone who had suffered a severe shock, but was trying to come to grips with it in as adult a manner
as he could?”

“Well, yes,” he said, with a nod. “I’d have to say that it did sound a little like that.”

“Thank you,” Dana said. “I have nothing further.”

“Why didn’t we know about that letter?” Brian barked at his associate.

“He never said anything about it,” Mark replied. “And we never asked.”

“Ayres sets them up, and McAuliffe knocks them down,” Paul Cotter’s caller observed.

“Well, that’s what a defense attorney does,” Cotter responded.

“Yes, and she does it very well, doesn’t she?” the caller said. “Perhaps even better than any of us realized.”

“I have good news,” Sam declared at the dinner table that night. “We’ve come to terms on the Pioneer Square building.”

Dana’s eyes widened. “Really?” she gasped. “It’s ours?”

“As soon as all the paperwork is done.”

“Oh how wonderful! How scary! We have to tell Judith. I can’t believe this! Let’s invite her to dinner on Sunday, and just
drop it on her then.”

At ten o’clock on Friday evening, Tom Kirby knocked at Judith’s door.

“Oh my God, where have you been?” she cried. “They said you’d checked out. I’ve been going crazy.”

“Sorry,” he said. “It was a last-minute thing. I didn’t have a chance to call.”

He looked different. His hair was neatly cut, he was cleanshaven, he was dressed in a jacket and tie, and his shoes were polished.
But Judith hardly noticed.

“Where were you?”

“I was in Los Angeles,” he told her. “I was down there lining up a job.”

“You took a job… in Los Angeles?” she asked blankly.

He sighed. “Look, I told you it was only a matter of time before I moved on,” he said. “Well, it’s time. Truth is, if it weren’t
for you, I would’ve been gone long ago, and this job, well, it’s too good to pass up.”

“Oh.”

“Come on, don’t say it like that. It’s who I am. You knew that. I was always up front about it. And we had some good times
together.”

“When do you go?”

“Well, that’s the hard part,” he said. “I’m getting back on a plane tonight, in a couple of hours as a matter of fact. I have
a cab waiting.”

“Tonight?” she gasped. “Well, I mean, I suppose that’s wonderful for you, if it’s what you want. But what about us? What am
I going to do when you’re gone?”

“Oh, well, that’s part of why I’m here,” he said, pulling an envelope from his jacket pocket. “I’m sorry things didn’t work
out the way you wanted between us, but here’s something that should make it a little easier.”

Inside the envelope was a check for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. His publisher had been ecstatic over the story,
standing over Kirby’s shoulder and reading as the reporter wrote. He had not balked at the price.

“What’s this for?” she whispered, although with a sickening jolt, she realized she already knew.

“For your story,” he said.

“You didn’t, you couldn’t have,” she cried. “I told you that in confidence.” But she knew it was futile, because she could
see it all now, the whole three months, and what it had really been about.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “From what you’ve told me, I don’t think Dana will mind helping you out. It’s not as if she did anything
illegal. It’s a good story. It makes her more human. It’ll be out in the next issue of
Probe
magazine.”

“I see,” she said. It was as though someone had shot her through the heart, only instead of falling down dead, she was standing
up dead.

He put his arms around her and pulled her against him. “Where’s Alex?” he asked.

“He’s spending the weekend with a friend,” she said automatically.

“Tell him I said goodbye.” Then he kissed her hair, and was gone.

Judith stood alone in the foyer, hearing his footsteps fade down the front path, and stared, unseeing, at the check in her
hands.

J
udith pleaded illness on Sunday, declining the invitation to dinner at the McAuliffe house, flat out refusing to allow Dana
to come over with chicken soup, and intimating it was too much for her even to talk on the telephone.

“It must be one of those flu bugs,” she told her best friend of more than thirty years. “And I won’t have you catching it.
You have to be in court every day, with all your wits about you.”

“Well, I have something to tell you,” Dana said. “Something very exciting that I know you’ll want to hear.”

“That’s nice,” Judith replied weakly.

“No, I mean something really important,” Dana said. “And I don’t know how much longer I can keep it to myself. So promise
you’re going to get over this soon.”

“Sure, I promise.”

They agreed that they would get together as soon as Judith was feeling up to it. By then, Judith reasoned, the latest issue
of
Probe
would be on the newsstands, the dinner invitation would likely be withdrawn, and the friendship would be damaged beyond repair.
Part of her wanted to speak up, to warn Dana
about what was coming. But another, bigger part of her was in denial.

“You can invite your friend Tom if you like,” Dana suggested.

“No,” Judith said dully. “He won’t be around. He’s… well, he’s gone out of town… for a while.”

On Monday, the prosecution put Zach Miller on the stand. He was an attractive young man, Allison Ackerman noted, in the mold
of military officers, and his uniform was freshly pressed.

“What is your relationship with the defendant, Lieutenant Miller?” Brian asked.

“We’re friends,” Zach replied. “We used to be roommates.”

“Did this friendship continue past the time of the defendant’s marriage?”

“Yes.”

“At the beginning of November, last year, did you have a series of conversations with the defendant concerning his wife?”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to be a little more specific than that,” Zach replied. “Corey and I have had a lot of conversations
about his wife, since before she was his wife.”

“All right, Lieutenant,” Brian replied, easily. “Did you have occasion to discuss Mrs. Latham’s abortion with the defendant?”

“Yes, I believe we did.”

“Will you please tell the court the substance of those conversations?”

Zach sighed. “A couple of days after he got back from his last patrol, Corey told me that Elise had had a miscarriage while
he was gone.”

“Did he indicate to you how he felt about that?”

“Yes. He said he was sick at heart. And he looked it, too.”

“And subsequently?”

“About a week after that, he told me that Elise didn’t have a miscarriage, after all. She had an abortion.”