An Accidental Life (46 page)

Through the window she could see the Christmas lights strung along the edge of Ciro’s roof—red, yellow, green, and blue—flashing on and off in the darkness. They were the big, old-fashioned kind. She thought perhaps she might put up a little tree this year. She could find one small enough to string the lights on her own. She’d never had a tree of her own before, but she could buy one down in the French Market, she thought, and she could carry it home on the streetcar. Woolworths on Magazine Street would have ornaments, or maybe the hardware store on Oak near the river.

Then Alice smiled to herself, thinking of Rebecca’s description of that village they’d stayed in, in Italy. She thought of Rebecca and Peter there on the narrow curved beach, picturing it all. The name of the town was Positano, she remembered, and it was on the Amalifi Coast. She’d written everything down just for fun and then had looked it up. She’d seen pictures, so she could dream with some precision.

Smiling, she thought of those pictures; the blue sky and the white houses climbing the cliffs, the green vines shading the winding walkways, the sea spread wide before the mountains, rippling water sparkling in the sunshine. And she imagined the small green islands just offshore, seeming to float on top of the magical sea, the magazine had said.

Laying warm under the blanket and the quilt on the soft mattress on a rainy night, Alice spread her arms and imagined herself floating, floating in that sea. One by one her muscles seemed to melt. Minutes later, to the sound of the thunder outside—
out there
—she drifted off to sleep, still envisioning the islands and the gloss of gold that falls over the water at dusk in that Italian light.

52

The air was clear and fresh
after last night’s storm. The sun was just rising as Peter parked his car in the lot across from the Royal Orleans Hotel in the center of the Quarter. Grabbing his briefcase from the passenger seat, he slid out of the car. It was six thirty in the morning and the parking lot was almost empty. The attendant walked up and Peter paid him, adding a couple of extra bucks because it was going to be that kind of day. He had a feeling that even the tough old judge might crack, once he heard Abby Gordy’s story from Alice and her parents.

He stopped at the corner of Chartres and St. Louis to let an empty mule drawn carriage move slowly down the still deserted street. The driver, hunched under his wide-brimmed straw hat and barely holding the reins that were draped across his fingers, looked at him. “Mornin’,” he said.

“Good morning,” Peter replied as wagon, man, and mule rolled on toward Jackson Square to wait for tourists. He crossed Chartres and headed toward the main entrance to the Royal Orleans in the middle of the block. Across Toulouse the beautiful, but vacant, Wildlife and Fisheries Building loomed with Victorian majesty. The magnolia trees around it had been planted in 1908 when the white marble mansion was a courthouse.

The tall doorman saw him coming and opened the door with a tip of his hat. Peter nodded in an absent manner, scanning the block-long lobby for Dooney and the Gordys as he walked up the inner steps. Immediately he saw them seated in the spacious parlor area on the rise to his left.

Dooney waited in a chair beside a deep-cushioned sofa, upon which sat a man and woman. And then, suddenly, he stopped and caught his breath. Between them stood a small child, a little girl with two brown ponytails tied up with yellow ribbons over her ears. She stood with one hand planted on each parent’s knee as she looked about. Seconds passed, and then he tore his eyes from Abby. He needed to focus this morning, to make a decision quickly about which parent would make the best witness.

The man nearest Dooney was Kenneth Gordy, he supposed. As Peter studied the group he judged the father to be around forty years, or so. He exuded self-confidence as he sat quietly, arms spread over the back of the sofa watching his wife, Suzanne, while she talked to Dooney.

Suzanne kept one hand on Abby’s shoulder. She appeared younger than her husband. She wore a floral print skirt and a white blouse. But it was the child that pulled his eyes. The toddler’s head tilted back as she looked upside down at her mother, then, laughing, she reached up to touch her mother’s chin with her finger. Suzanne looked down at her and laughed.

He was stunned that they’d brought Abby with them.

Dooney looked up and, spotting him, lifted her hand. He smiled and waved and walked over to the group, still watching Abby from the corners of his eyes. She backed into her mother’s skirt as he grew closer, one finger now hooked in the corner of her mouth. Her skin was the color of butterscotch and her eyes were wide as he approached. Kenneth Gordy stood. He shook Peter’s hand and introduced his family.

Suzanne remained seated, but she watched Peter carefully, assessing. She nodded when they were introduced and said hello. Her voice was soft and low—not the best voice for the witness stand. Abby ducked her chin and looked at him from under her lashes. She had inquisitive eyes, as bright as a little bird’s. Her cheeks were pink, like the summer roses growing wild in the backyard on Octavia.

As he took a seat in a chair nearby, Dooney said that Alice would be here soon. She suggested they all have breakfast in the hotel restaurant on the Royal Street side of the lobby. It was quiet there this time of day and they could talk.

Suzanne bent and told Abby to say hello to Mr. Jacobs, that he was the man they’d come all this way to see. After a few stubborn shakes of her head, and urging by her mother, Abby obeyed in a small, tentative voice. Kenneth picked her up by her waist, surprising her as he lifted her high and plopped her down on his knee. His daughter laughed then, a bubbling giggle that ran up and down the high scales. Then she flung one arm around her father’s neck and leaned back against him, watching Peter.

Dooney’s eyes met his.
Can we put her on the stand?

He shook his head. Calvin Morrow would view that as theatrics. They were already pushing their luck; there wasn’t a chance.

Alice arrived just then. She sat on the sofa beside Suzanne and Suzanne put her hand in Alice’s while they talked. Peter noticed that Alice’s eyes seemed almost glued to Abby. Everyone agreed that they could get to know each just as well other over eggs and toast, crispy bacon, hot buttered biscuits, and pancakes for Abby.

As Dooney herded them all toward the restaurant at the end of the lobby, Peter glanced at his watch. It was seven a.m. In two hours court would convene.

Rebecca had decided that she would take a taxi to the courthouse in Gretna and watch this day unfold in Judge Calvin Morrow’s court. After Mac had left at two thirty in the morning, she’d informed Peter of this decision. There was no way that she would miss this, she told him. Not with Alice on the stand, and the Gordy family coming all this way to testify.

And Peter hadn’t attempted to argue. In fact, he’d looked a little pleased. After the last ultrasound, Dr. Matlock had said that she and the baby were doing fine, the previa was marginal, and she just needed to take things easy. And as Rebecca had pointed out, sitting in a courtroom for a few hours wasn’t exactly hard work.

She’d woken after Peter left to meet the Gordy’s and Alice. She brushed her teeth, and showered and dressed, slipping on a dark blue skirt and a loose white blouse that hung to her hips. Sitting before the mirror she put on a little makeup, a swish of blush, a swipe of neutral lipstick. Then she called a Yellow Cab, and went downstairs to wait.

She would sit in the back row, on the aisle, she decided. Close enough to the door that when nature called, as happened frequently these days, she could answer.

After watching Kenneth and Suzanne Gordy all through breakfast, Peter decided that, of the two parents, Kenneth would be the most effective witness. The father and child had a special relationship; she’d sat in his lap most of the time and they’d talked constantly, long conversations during which sometimes her eyes would go wide and she’d burst into paroxysms of laughter.

She reminded him that he would soon be a father. Gatsby or Daisy? He smiled. Maybe a daughter would be all right.

Abby, Suzanne, and Alice rode in Dooney’s car from the hotel to the courthouse in Gretna, and Kenneth rode with Peter so that Peter could prepare him for what was ahead. He went over the chain of proof they would establish to show that Abby was the infant that Alice had brought to the NICU. From there they would move quickly through the months when Abby was in the incubator, recovering and growing, until the day the Gordys had taken their new child home. Abby had been in NICU for four months—she’d fought every minute for her life, Kenneth Gordy said. And despite living in Cincinnati, little Abby had had her parents with her every minute of that fight—sometimes one, sometimes both.

He warned Kenneth that he would see Charles Vicari in the courtroom, and noted the tight flex at the corners of the father’s mouth at the mention of the name. Kenneth’s thoughts were reflected in the narrowing of his eyes, the tense muscles, the deepening of the two vertical lines between his brows while they talked. During the silence that followed this warning, Peter wondered if Kenneth would have the strength to face Charles Vicari in that courtroom, knowing that the man would have let their daughter die.

They’d discussed this discreetly at breakfast, but now, as they drove through the Quarter, then down St. Charles Avenue to the interstate and over the Greater New Orleans Bridge, Peter pounded his point home in as gentle a way as possible. Kenneth should not look at the defendant. He should keep his eyes on Peter.

Peter and Kenneth met the others in the witness room. Mac was already there and the door was closed. Dooney had called Shauna from the hotel, and said that the legal assistant was on her way, that she would take care of Abby in the witness room while her parents were in the courtroom. Suzanne expressed some doubt at this plan. Perhaps she should stay with Abby?

But Peter wanted Suzanne sitting front and center in the courtroom. If Kenneth Gordy’s testimony left any room for doubt, he was determined that Calvin Morrow would be aware of the child’s mother sitting right before him. He’d considered bringing Abby into the courtroom too. But thinking of his own child, he’d decided against it. Protect Abby from eyes in the courtroom, and the press, and from any possibility of confusion for a toddler who’d already been through so much. Who knew how events play out in our minds over a lifetime.

Still. The prosecutor in him grumbled; he’d have loved to have the child sitting alongside her mother in the courtroom. As a poor substitute, he asked Kenneth to stop and give his wife a hug on his way down the aisle when he was called so that Judge Morrow would realize who she was. Mother-love radiated through Suzanne’s entire being, and he wanted Morrow to see that, a constant reminder to the judge of the crime committed against her daughter by the defendant, and that—as with Baby Chasson—what had happened was no accident.

Dooney had worked with Alice last night on the questions that Peter would ask this morning. She only had to tell her story. Alice, in the way of efficient nurses everywhere, had remained calm and unemotional during the session and said that everything would be all right. Dooney was certain that Alice would be a good witness.

But Alice, too, was warned not to look at the defendant.

53

“All rise.”

Peter stood, sensing the full fury of the occupants of the defense table this morning.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw Rebecca taking the seat that had been saved for her in the back row, near the door. Molly had said that she would sit with Rebecca, just in case. As she sat down, she spotted him and waved. He waved, and turned back, facing the empty bench.

Dooney reached across the table and squeezed his arm. He shot her a smile.

Over his shoulder, Peter saw the courtroom quickly filling. The press was here in full force today—the
Picayune
, the
Baton Rouge Advocate
, the
Houston Chronicle
, and a reporter he recognized from the AP. Word had gotten out, he supposed. He met the
Times-Picayune
reporter’s eyes and nodded. The man had covered every day of the trial, and if he was honest, he’d be the one to put it all together and write the real story today.