Mistaken Identity (23 page)

Bennie stared down at the stain. Blood. It always came back to blood. She had to win this case. She had a duty, not only as Connolly’s lawyer, but maybe even as her sister. And there was one way to win. The ethics of it were arguable, but at the same time, she had an equal ethical duty to represent her client as zealously as possible. It was a thorny problem, but most were, in the law, and that’s what kept it interesting.

“Just get on with it, girl,” Bennie said aloud, and hurried to the bathroom to save Connolly’s life.

Snip, snip,
went the scissors. Bennie had bought them at a drugstore on the way over and they were more suited to construction paper than hair. She squeezed the orange handles and tried again, cutting a strand of hair near the front of her face.

Snip.
The honeyed strand fell to the sink, where Bennie had spread out the day’s newspaper from her briefcase. Her hand moved an awkward inch to the back of her head and she grabbed another hank of hair.

Snip, snip.
A chunk fell to the newspaper, and she checked the bathroom mirror. The front part of Bennie’s hair was now clipped in layers. She already looked more like Connolly, even given the difference in their hair colors. Clearing the hair from her forehead emphasized the similarity in their eyes.

Bennie looked at her reflection and imagined the way she and Connolly would look at counsel table, identical sisters, side-by-side in front of the jury. It would have to affect the jurors. Bennie knew she could get a jury to trust her; it was her greatest strength as a trial lawyer. And if she could get the jury on her side, it wouldn’t be much of a leap to get them on Connolly’s. Especially if every time they looked at Bennie, they saw Connolly. And vice versa.

Bennie chopped away, preoccupied. Her first approach to the case—hiding the fact that she and Connolly were, or might be, twins—was wrong, and untenable now that the news was live at five. If the media was flogging the story that they were twins, why not go with it? Why not turn it to Connolly’s advantage? If Bennie went public with the twin issue, played it up, then every article the press wrote and every story they printed would generate sympathy for Connolly. The buzz had to reach the potential jurors, with the trial only a week away. Suddenly the tight time frame became an advantage, too.

Bennie smiled grimly as she hacked away. It was a great plan, and there was no way the D.A. could counter it. Even if Judge Guthrie issued a gag order, the press would be off and spinning. Every “no comment” would tantalize.
Snip, snip, snip.
Bennie had disguised herself in the past, to look less like herself. This time she was disguising herself to look
more
like herself. A mask, inside out. If Connolly was her twin, the mask was Bennie’s true identity.

She made a final cut and set the scissors on the edge of the sink. Snippets of blond hair covered the newspaper and filled the basin. She admired even her crude handiwork, turning her head left and right in front of the mirror. Her head felt lighter; she felt freer.

She dived into her purse for her other new purchases, grabbed a tube of lipstick and twirled it open, revealing a rosy missile. She raised the lipstick with a schoolgirl’s excitement and applied it to her lips. She blotted like she’d seen her mother do as a young child, then reached back into the bag. Liquid eyeliner. She unscrewed the top, took the little brush, and made the first line on her left lid. The goop felt like a cold worm going on and looked worse, but she finished the job.

Bennie looked in the mirror, unsatisfied. The makeup brought a bogus liveliness to her features, but her clothes were wrong. She whipped off her jacket and stuffed it onto the empty towel rack, then opened two buttons of her cotton blouse and tucked her collar under, so that her neckline mimicked the V-neck of Connolly’s prison jumpsuit. Bennie rechecked the mirror and was almost satisfied. The clothes underscored the effect of the haircut. At trial she’d dress her client and herself to match; not identically, that would be too obvious, but in the same colors and styles.

Bennie grinned in the mirror, then quickly deflated. Something was wrong. Her smile looked too warm, too happy. Her eyes crinkled at the corners and her nose wrinkled at the bridge. Connolly never smiled that way. Her smile, such as it was, came off as cynical, hardened. Could Bennie make herself look
exactly
like Connolly?

She stepped back from the mirror, tilted her mouth down at the corners, and knit her brow deeply. She checked the mirror. Too much. She stroked her cheeks, smoothing the animation from her features. She needed her face to look slack, vaguely without affect, like Connolly. She closed her eyes and imagined how it felt to be raised with remote parents, never to find a career that satisfied her, and ultimately to be charged for a heinous crime she didn’t commit. To be on trial for her very life.

Bennie slipped deeper inside Connolly’s mind. She imagined herself discovering that she had been put up for adoption, and that as lousy as her life had turned out, she had an identical twin who became a successful lawyer. Who was chosen over her by their mother; whose success was attained through her sacrifice. Who had taken her very
blood
for her own. Bennie opened her eyes and looked in the mirror. The expression on her face was Connolly’s.

Bennie
was
Connolly.

And it terrified her.

M
ary sat in the conference room in the office, trying to concentrate on the file. It was late; the firm was empty and quiet. Judy had said she had to stop by Jenkins Law Library for research, and Mary felt lonely working on her own. Across the street, a single lighted floor in a dark office building made an illuminated stripe, like a ribbon of Correcto-tape against the black sky.

Mary’s coffee went cold as her gaze rolled restlessly over the 911 transcripts fanned out in front of her. She’d read them three times, but they only confirmed her instinct that Connolly was guilty. Mary understood the need for every defendant to have a lawyer, but it was another matter entirely to
be
that lawyer. You couldn’t graduate from parochial school and feel otherwise. There was no known cure for a Catholic education.

Her gaze wandered out the window and back again. Not only had she made her mother cry, she was working overtime to help a woman who had committed the worst sin imaginable. Try as she might, Mary couldn’t shake the feeling that God floated above the acoustic tiles of the conference room, due north of the fax machine. He was an old white God with a soft gray beard, sitting on an immense throne, like at the Lincoln Memorial. He was flanked by seraphim who had previously taught handicapped children to ride ponies. His wispy eyebrows met in consternation as he gazed down upon the bar association.

Then Mary remembered Bennie’s words.
Pretend the Connolly case is just like any other case.
An antitrust case, for example, where the criminals had manicured fingernails and thought a Glock went ticktock. Mary squared her shoulders and picked up the Investigation Interview Record, the notes that detectives took when they questioned a witness at the Roundhouse. It would tell her what the Commonwealth witnesses would say.

Q: I understand that you may have some information about the incident. Please tell me what you know about the events of May nineteenth.

A: Well, it was yesterday, and I was trying to put the baby to sleep.

Q: Go on. About what you heard.

A: I heard a gunshot. It was so loud. After I heard the gunshot, I went to my door and I saw Alice Connolly running from the house.

Mary stared at the sheet and flashed on an earlier question-and-answer, the one she had memorized as a six-year-old.
The Baltimore Catechism,
in a soft blue cover.

Q: Who made you?

A: God made me.

Q: Why did God make you?

A: To represent cold-blooded murderers and various other swine.

Mary gritted her teeth. She grabbed a legal pad, put her head down, and started taking notes. As long as she had this job, she was going to do it and do it right. It was the only way to cope with defending Connolly, and she suspected it was the only way most criminal defense lawyers defended their clients.

Without looking up.

Judy lurked inside the door of the boxing gym, reacquainting herself with the place. The sparring match staged earlier in the day was gone, and a white man pounded the heavy bag in the corner. Two black men worked the speedbags, their muscled arms pumping in deft circular motions. A janitor swept up with a long wooden pushbroom, an unlit cigarette plugged into the side of his mouth. Nobody noticed Judy, or if they did, they didn’t bother her.

She watched the boxer on the heavy bag that hung from the ceiling like a dead body.
Womp, womp, womp,
went the sound of leather on thick canvas, reverberating in the gym. The fighter’s body swiveled from side to side with each jab. The rhythm reminded Judy of the natural swing of cross-country skiing and the solitude of the boxer was like rock climbing. Odd to find remnants of her two favorite sports in a filthy gym, but Judy had the capacity to romanticize anything. Even really smelly things.

Behind her, in the corner, was a scene she hadn’t seen from the door. A short older man in gray sweats was demonstrating a classic boxing stance in front of a lineup of little kids in low-slung boxers. His skin was the color of chestnuts and his eyes a rich, resonant brown, large and lively in a barely lined face. Hair worn natural covered his neatly shaped head, with patches of gray at the temples, and he smiled easily, almost like a kid himself. “Think you can do it? Give it a try!” the man shouted to the group, and Judy walked over to watch.

The kids stepped forward and imitated the stance, their flat torsos and lanky arms ending in puffy red boxing gloves, crisscrossed with duct tape.

“Way to go, boys! That was great!” the man called out, and the kids’ chests puffed visibly. “Now, lefts up!” The kids cocked their left fists protectively. “Look like you mean it!” the man shouted. He wiped his brow and grinned at Judy. “They look real good, don’t they? They only had two lessons, these boys.”

“They look awesome!” Judy said, loud so the kids could hear.

The man returned his attention to the kids. “Now let’s see a few jabs, boys.” The kids started swinging, imitating moves from TV. “Way to be, way to be!” he called to them as they swung.

“You teach boxing, I gather,” Judy called out.

“Sure. Boxin’ gives kids somethin’ to do, teaches ’em self-esteem. I make ’em do a good deed, too, every day.” The man’s forehead wrinkled as two kids started shoving each other. “Hey, cut that out, you two. Troy! Vondel! Okay, we’re done for the night. Hit the showers!” The kids fell out of line and scampered across the worn Astroturf for the locker room. “Don’t leave the towels on the floor! Put ’em in the hamper!” he shouted after them.

“I don’t think they heard you,” Judy said, smiling.

“They heard, but they don’t listen.” The man wiped his brow on the sleeve of his sweats and extended a large hand. “I’m Roy Gaines. Everybody call me Mr. Gaines, don’t ask why. Not that I won’t tell you, jus’ I don’t remember. Jus’ started that way and there’s no stoppin’ it. So now Mr. Gaines it is.”

“Happy to meet you, Mr. Gaines. I’m Judy Forty,” Judy said, shaking his hand. It was a false name, but she was undercover. People didn’t line up to help lawyers, and she wanted to keep her connection to the Della Porta case under wraps. If she could avoid seeing Star for the next few days, she could pull it off. “You give lessons to adults, too?”

“Ha! I trained half the fighters outta this gym.”

“So you must know a lot about boxing.”

“Been boxin’ since I was a kid. Started out wrasslin’ in the schoolyard, down Georgia. Didn’t have the height nor the reach to be no professional, though. Been givin’ lessons for a long time. Ask the manager of the place, Dayvon Allen, he here in the daytime. Ask him. Ask anybody. Everybody know Mr. Gaines.”

Judy nodded. It sounded perfect. “I’d like to take boxing lessons from you.”

“Boxin’ lessons? Sure.” Mr. Gaines looked Judy up and down, appraising her. “You could do it, girl. Got the build for it. Tall, strong. Long arms. Lotsa women boxin’ now.”

“Really?”

“Christy Martin, the coal miner’s daughter? White girl, wears pink shorts, built like a truck. On a card with De La Hoya one time. Helluva boxer. Holds her own, Christy does, and there’s that Dutch girl, the real pretty one. What’s her name?” Mr. Gaines frowned in thought, then snapped his fingers, an unexpectedly loud sound. “Lucia Rijker! You see her?”

“No.”

“Well, you should.” Mr. Gaines frowned. “You interested in boxin’, you oughta watch it. Watch it all you can. Watch the men, watch the women, you can always learn somethin’. S’like anythin’ else, you gotta study it. Practice. Train. Work. Can’t be traipsin’ in here lookin’ for no diet program.”