Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction (30 page)

“Why didn’t she stay,” I ask, looking at my watch, “and argue with me?”

Rainey says gently, “Because you don’t fight fair.

You use guilt, condescension, self-pity every emotion she’s never been able to deal with when you’re in the picture.”

Not to mention hitting her. Parents. We ought to be killed at our children’s birth to give them a chance.

“I

hear you,” I say, but I probably don’t As Darryl Royal, the long-retired coach of the Texas Longhorns, used to say about his football team, “You dance with what brung you.” As I drive out to the Christian Life complex, I meditate on what “brung” me thirty years ago out of eastern Arkansas. When my sister and I got into trouble as children, invariably we would be called in for a lecture at the foot of my parents’ bed. Her Reader’s Digest condensed book lying on her chest, our mother would take off her glasses and sigh, “Children, how did I fail you? I’m so sorry. For you to be acting this way, I must have failed you in some way. Your father’s going to be so disappointed.”

Our part read: “No, Mother, you didn’t fail us. We’re just horrible children, and we feel so bad.” Did we? As I fight the five o’clock traffic, which begins earlier every year, I try to think back on how I felt, but it has been too long to recapture the precise feeling of shame that I had let them down in some unforgivable way. To Sarah’s credit, she has moved beyond that What was it she said?
won’t let you guilt me! I wanted to turn her into a little me. Page & Page, attorneys at law. Fat chance. At this rate, I’ll be lucky if she lets me come to her wedding.p>

Shane’s office at Christian Life is big enough to put in a skating rink. If influence is measured by space, he’s ready to challenge Pat Robertson as head of the religious right. My office would fit nicely in the corner where he has a couch, a recliner, and a twenty-six-inch Sorry color television and VCR. It is to this area he leads me. Chet is already seated at the far end of the couch.

“You have to see what your competition’s doing, and these days they’re on almost twenty-four hours a day,” Shane rattles on nervously as I gawk at the TV.

Chet glares at me and looks down at his watch. I’m only ten minutes late.

“The traffic is murder out there,” I apologize. I sit on the couch nearest the TV, and by the strained look on chet’s face, I halfway expect him to tell me he has the video of Leigh and we’re all going to watch it together.

Both are dressed in dark blue suits I’d be proud to be buried in.

“Have you heard anything from Leigh?” I ask Chet, gathering from his expression he has not.

“Shane,” he says, ignoring me, “this is as hard as anything I’ve ever had to do, but Gideon has made me realize that I’m obligated to ask you some questions about your whereabouts during the time Art was murdered.”

Shane folds his arms across his chest and gives Chet a hard stare.

“You’re not serious.”

Chet goes totally rigid and his head seems to disappear inside his shirt. He swallows hard and continues, “Where were you between nine-thirty and eleven-thirty the day your son-in-law was murdered?”

Shane’s voice rises in anger.

“You actually think I’d commit murder, Chet?”

I look at Chet, who, in all the hours I’ve watched him, has never appeared out of control even for an instant For the first time he seems close. His eyes blink rapidly, and he stammers, “Answer my question, damn it.”

As if he does understand what Chet is going through, Shane seems to relax. His features soften, and he smiles at him.

“It’s okay.” He clears his throat and, trying to sound casual, says, “As best I can remember, I think I was here in the office all the time.”

I have never really felt sorry for Chet until this moment He places his hand over his mouth as if he is about to utter something unspeakable. Finally, he mumbles through his fingers, “One of the secretaries who used to work for you says that you left the office during that period and came back right before Leigh called to say Art had been shot.”

Shane places his right ankle across his left thigh and says easily, “It’s possible I did go out. We had a missionary from Guatemala at the church that day. I don’t know. It’s like trying to remember what you were doing before Kennedy was killed. You remember what you were doing when you heard the news, but not what you ate for breakfast that day. I could have gone a dozen places within a hundred yards of my office.”

I wonder if I am supposed to be taking notes. This is weak. Chet said the secretary told him that Shane said he was going over to his house for a while. I glance at Chet, but he is examining his hands. I ask, “Do you’re call seeing anybody or talking to anybody during that time other than the women in the office?”

Shane squinches his eyes and studies the ceiling for a long moment.

“Not offhand,” he says finally, fixing his gaze on Chet.

“You’re not going to claim in court,” he asks, his voice too loud, “that I shot Art, are you?”

Chet, now slumped against the back of the couch, seems listless and broken. He spreads his hands in a gesture of hopelessness.

“I may not have a choice,” he says dully.

“Now, wait just a minute!” Shane almost shouts, leaning forward over his knees.

“This is absurd! No jury will believe for a second that I killed my own sonin-law. As horrible a man as he turned out to be, murder never once crossed my mind. I admit I talked to Leigh about divorcing him, which may sound hypocritical as many times as I’ve preached on the value of couples staying together, but that’s as far as I went.”

I look past Norman to the large desk that sits in front of the two windows in his office.

“Your daughter loved the man,” I say, knowing I am baiting him.

“She didn’t want a divorce.”

“He was murdering her soul!” Shane retorts angrily.

“Leigh was a precious vessel of God’s love before she met Art.”

I glance at Chet to see how he is taking these re marks. The back of his right hand obscures his face. His eyes, an almost colorless light blue, show no emotion. I am struck by Norman’s use of the term “murdering her soul.” If he were on trial, instead of his daughter, before a jury of Christian Lifers, he might argue justifiable homicide. A father defending his child against a deadly attacker. What person would convict a man who used force to save his daughter? In Norman’s mind, Leigh’s soul is worth more than her body. It would be far easier to defend Norman than his daughter.

“You saw that Art was destroying Leigh, didn’t you?” I ask, believing I understand for the first time that, given Norman’s worldview, murder was the only possible solution. What was it they said about Vietnam?

We had to destroy the country to save it. In Norman’s mind, once the corruption started, there was no end to it. The pull of the world is too strong. Look what happened to his other daughters while he stood by. Once you leave, you almost never go back. The world is too seductive. When Norman doesn’t respond, I ask him a question I know he will answer.

“What did you tell Leigh about Art’s death?”

Shane says in a voice so detached and automatic I know he has thought it a hundred times since the day Art died, “That he got what he deserved. I won’t deny that.”

Biblical phrases like “reap what you sow” come into my mind. Even if he didn’t kill Art, he wished him dead.

“Since you love your daughter so much,” I say quickly before Chet can protest, “you won’t object if Chet suggests to the jury that others, including yourself, may have had a possible motive for murdering her husband.”

Like a wounded animal, Shane roars, “You do what you have to do, but I didn’t kill him!”

Remembering Chet’s instructions to let him do the talking, I look over at him to see if I’m in trouble. This was his speech as far as I am concerned, but from what I’ve seen so far, he wasn’t going to make it. He sits quietly, staring at Shane as if he is evaluating his sincerity.

Finally, he says quietly to him, “It could ruin you.”

Shane, now barely seated, yells at him, “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Abruptly, Chet stands and heads for the door, leaving me and Shane looking at each other. I scramble to my feet and chase after him while Shane hollers futilely, “Chet!”

Out in the parking lot, his face ashen, Chet tells me shakily, “I’m going home.”

Hunched over as he unlocks the Mercedes, he looks shockingly old, defeated.

“Let me argue the case!” I demand.

“I can do it! You shouldn’t have to do this!”

“I’ll do it,” he says, almost under his breath as he arranges himself in the car. He drives away, mumbling something to himself.

Back home, waiting for Sarah to call, I open a beer, heat up some cheese dip, open a bag of potato chips, and sit in the kitchen looking out the window at the gathering darkness. Woogie’s bowl is still half full from last night.

“Depressed, huh?” I ask him as he stretches out on the linoleum by the window.

“We’ll hear from her tonight.” I hope.

Ignoring me, he places his muzzle between his paws flat on the dirty surface. I break off a chip in the thick yellow sludge that is congealing before my eyes. I couldn’t penetrate this goo if I were eating brickbats.

Too tired to cook, I drink and think about Shane Nor man. Do what you have to do, he said. What would I have said if it were Sarah who was charged and I was innocent? I don’t have as much to lose as Shane Nor man. His life requires that his inner and outer selves match up in a way mine do not. Yet, for all I know, preachers carry guilt inside them like everyone else, and it is only their flock that assumes that hypocrisy bur dens their consciences more than the rest of us. Do I believe he is innocent? I sip at my beer. I don’t know. I still have problems getting past the taboo of believing a minister would kill another human being. Yet, historically, the church has been as bloodthirsty as the rest of society, if not more so. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of Jews, religious zealots on both sides during the Civil War, white-supremacist religious groups, all stand as monuments to a barely restrained ecclesiastical violence. I think of the hatred I see in some of the faces of those people who oppose abortion on religious grounds. If that is Christian love in their faces, give me a secular humanist anytime. It is the look on Chet’s face that convinces me that Norman is lying.

I get out a legal pad and begin to think about what should be in an opening argument.

At nine Sarah calls, but it is not a satisfactory conversation. My supply of restraint is wearing thin, and the alcohol doesn’t help.

“When do you think you’ll be coming home?” I ask, unable to wait her out even a few seconds.

“I don’t know. Dad,” she says, not bothering to conceal her own irritation.

“I have to decide on what terms I want to live in the world.”

What utter crap! I can’t talk any further without exploding

“I’m going to bed,” I say shortly, and hang up, furious at everybody I’ve ever known connected with religion. It is not as if Sarah had been forced to live in some brothel. She has had it pretty damn easy. Like about ninety-nine percent of the kids I know, she’s spoiled rotten.

I call Rainey and unload my feelings on her.

“I sup pose it’s just a matter of time before she will begin quoting the Bible to the effect that she has no mother or father except Christian Life. What about family values?” I complain.

“Don’t these so-called families have anybody in them with any sense?”

“They are talking to her,” Rainey says, sounding a little shaken for the first time.

“They don’t force anyone to do anything.”

“Well, I’m gonna go to the Prosecutor’s Office when this trial is over,” I yell at her, “and charge somebody with kidnapping.”

“Which will guarantee that she won’t talk to you for years,” Rainey says right back.

“Life is too short for that kind of resentment.”

“Well, it’s not getting any longer this way,” I reply stubbornly. Miserable, I hang up and go to bed.

I am at the airport waiting for Jessie St. vrain to get off the plane, when I hear my name paged over the PA.

system. It must be Chet. No one else knows I’m here.

“You didn’t have to come pick me up!” Jessie exclaims as she emerges from a stream of United passengers. She unnerves me by having cut her hair even shorter than it was last week. With the trial to begin tomorrow, it is not too late to suggest a wig. Of course, she would be highly offended.

“Southern hospitality,” I say, smiling.

“How was the flight?” Jessie is wearing loose-fitting brown pants under a green suede jacket. Her brown shoes look like the kind elves wear in animated cartoons. I hope she has something more appropriate in her bag. Her story is going to be hard enough for a jury to swallow without her looking like Peter Pan.

“Tricky winds out of Denver,” she replies, grimacing, as she matches me stride for stride.

“If we had been lower, I think we would have bounced into a mountain.”

I shudder and hear my name again. Chet could have sent Daffy to get her. He and Jessie would have made a nice pair.

“Isn’t that you,” she asks, nudging me, “being paged?”

“I get the joke,” I say weakly, wondering what other people in the airport think of this woman. She seems equally curious, staring boldly at my fellow Arkansans, who look pretty normal to me.

“Shoes, see?”

“I was just kidding!” she practically shouts, crowding me into the wall.

Chet’s message says to drop off Jessie at the Excelsior Hotel and meet him inside the courthouse at the east entrance. This can mean only one thing: the prosecutor is willing to cut a deal. We still have no idea of Leigh’s whereabouts, unless in the last half hour something has happened I don’t know about. When I arrive twenty minutes later, Chet is pacing around the rotunda as if he were sweating out the jury’s decision.

“Jill called from her office ten minutes after you left,” he says, his voice excited for the only time since I’ve known him.

“She wants to talk.”

Flattered that he has waited for me, I feel obligated to point out the obvious, “It would help if we had a client to run this by.”