Presumed Guilty (2 page)

Yes, Ron thought, like countless other teenagers who flooded into Hollywood. A lot of them did come with hopes for stardom, and every now and then one of them had what it takes. Melinda, on looks alone, could have been one of those exceptions. Her face held the mix of beauty and girlishness that Marilyn Monroe had early in her career.

Ron remembered watching
The Asphalt Jungle
with Dallas a couple of years ago, and how striking Monroe was in her brief appearance on screen. Almost as striking as Melinda was in person.

“I thought I could get a waitressing job or something to tide me over, but it’s rougher than it looks out there. I ended up on the street. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I thought I might have to start, you know, selling the goods.”

Ron noticed his right hand trembling. He put it in his left hand and put both hands in his lap.
“I saw this ad in one of those free papers they have down in Hollywood. Open auditions. Made all these promises, like they’d get a tape to agents and producers. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose, so down I go to this dumpy-looking place, and they have a camera set up, and when they told me to take off my clothes I figured that’s what it takes these days. I’m going to have to show myself onscreen sometime. They kept saying all these nice things and then all of a sudden they call in this guy and . . .”
Her voice trailed off in a muffled sob and it was everything Ron could do not to get up and go to her. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to hear the rest of her story. He was suddenly very afraid, but not enough to open his office door.
“They told me I could make five hundred dollars that day, right there, and all I had to do was . . . Five hundred dollars. Only I didn’t know it wasn’t five hundred all at once, until after. They said they’d give me the rest over the next couple of weeks, but that I could make more, and if it worked out and I was good enough, a lot more.”
Melinda looked at Ron, her eyes savagely probing. “I want to get out of this life. I need to get out. But I’m in so deep. I want God to save me, but I don’t know how to ask.”
Ron felt suddenly lacking, as if all his years of study and preaching and writing amounted to exactly nothing at this particular moment in time. But there was something more disturbing, he realized, muddying the counseling waters. No, polluting them. In his mind he kept seeing her, Melinda, in scenes his imagination was firing at him with involuntary vividness.
Call this off right now. Set her up with a counselor. Open the door. Get her out.
Suddenly she was up, turning her back on him and walking toward a bookcase. Her red dress hugged her form, and the form swayed —
Melinda put her fingers on the spine of a book, delicately. And then her head slumped forward and her shoulders began to shake. Ron got up.
Open the door.
He went to her, her cries rising up, anguished. He touched her shoulder.

“Hey, kiddo!” Karen, Ron’s literary agent, chirped in a goodnews sort of way. “You sitting down?”
“No.”
“You got pillows under you?”
“What is it, Karen?”
“That book deal we’ve been working on? It came through. And it’s a monster. A million for three books.”
Dallas nearly dropped the phone. “Is this for real?”
“Honey, would I kid about this?”
Joy filled Dallas to the brim. What a confirmation from God this was. Dallas had always believed in her husband and his ministry. She had prayed long and hard for it to prosper, and now God was opening doors, windows, and floodgates.
His last book was a surprise bestseller. It tackled the dangers of pornography, a subject suggested to him by Dallas. She’d seen her share of girls trying to escape what was euphemistically called “adult entertainment.” It was a hell on earth is what it was.
She also knew firsthand what a porn addict could do to a woman. It had happened to her once, long ago.
But that was in the past, God had covered it, and now Ron’s new series on prayer had sold for a million dollars. More money than they’d made in the past ten years, counting all the speaking Ron was doing now, his church salary, and the book sales to that point.
“Dallas? You there?”
“Karen, I don’t know what to say.”
“Say praise the Lord.”
“Praise the Lord.”
“Is Ron at the church? I don’t like to call him at work, but this — ”
“Oh, Karen, let me tell him.” Dallas and Ron needed something to celebrate, an excuse to put all the strains aside and laugh and be joyful. “I’ll tell him when he gets home. I’ll put some sparkling cider on ice, make it an event.”
“Do it. I’ll be getting the contract in a week or so and then we’ll go over it. Don’t go spending it all right away now.”
“Well, there is that small island I’ve had my eye on.”
Karen laughed.
“I don’t know how to begin to thank you,” Dallas said.
“Just give me one of your imitations saying it.”
“Who do you want?”
“How about Katharine Hepburn?”
Dallas always thought it was God’s sense of humor that gave her the ability to do impersonations. She couldn’t sing, draw, or play the piano, but by golly she could do Bette Davis and a whole bunch of others.
“Here it comes,” Dallas said, switching to Kate Hepburn. “I am so, so thankful. Rally I am.”
Karen cracked up. “Perfect, dahling! I’ll call Ron tomorrow. Enjoy.”
Enjoy. Yes.
Oh, God, thank you for sending this at just the right time.
Just the right time to beat back the fear hissing at her from an inner cave, the fear of growing older and becoming less attractive to her husband, the fear that sometimes clutched her when she’d nuzzle up to him at home and ask, “Love me?”
He always said yes. Or stroked her cheek. Or shook his head at her and said, “How can you ask me that?”
Never did he say, “I love you so much, I can’t even begin to tell you.”
He would never cheat on her, of course. She knew that. She trusted him completely. But she feared worse — a seepage of neglect, building up over time until it calcified into something impenetrable.
Dallas put a bottle of Martinelli’s sparkling cider in the fridge. And waited. Yes, they would celebrate. It had been so long since she and Ron had actually spent time together, intimate time. Maybe the good news would be just the thing.
It was later than normal when Ron came through the front door. Darkness was already falling over their home two miles from the church.
Dallas jumped up to greet him, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing his mouth.
He sighed and said, “I’m really tired. What’s to eat?”
Dallas tried to conceal the excitement in her voice. “Come in and sit down.”
“Huh?” Ron was already heading toward the kitchen.
“Come into the living room and sit down.”
Ron stopped, turned. “Is that an order, Captain?”
Her smile dropped. “Of course not. I just want to tell you something.”
“Can it wait? I want to grab something and go for a swim.”
“I think you’ll want to hear it.”
“Is Jared in trouble?”
“No, no. This is good news.”
“Just tell me then.”
“I want . . . how about a glass of sparkling cider first?”
Ron frowned. “Dallas, will you just tell me what the news is?”
Not the reaction Dallas was looking for. She wanted a buildup, a production. But she’d come to the point in their marriage where she could, like a master chess player, anticipate several moves ahead. If she kept up the pretense of getting him into the living room, sipping cider, she could foresee disaster. She capitulated to reality.
“Karen called,” she said. “Your deal has come through.”
“When did she call?”
“Around two.”
“Why didn’t you call me? Why didn’t she call me at the church?”
“Because I asked her not to call. I wanted to tell you myself. I wanted to make the announcement a little special. That’s what the sparkling cider was for.”
“Well, what is it? What are the details?”
“Ready? A million dollars!”
“For how many books?”
“Three!”
Ron looked at the ceiling. “Don’t you think I would have wanted to know that?”
“I wanted to tell you — ”
“You should have had her call me at the church.” He looked at his watch. “It’s too late to call her now. I wanted to talk to her.”
“You can call her in the morning.”
“Thank you. That’s not the point.”
Dallas bit down on the insides of her cheeks. “I thought the point was going to be that you and I could celebrate some great news together.”
“When it comes to the books, let me handle the business part of it, okay?”
He turned around and started walking down the hall toward the bedroom. Dallas followed him. “Can’t we just consider this a blessing from God and be happy about it? We can call Cara tonight.”
Her husband did not stop. He pulled off his shirt and threw it on the floor near the bedroom door.
“Ron?”
“Let me just go for a swim.”
“Did something happen today? At church?”
He spun around. There was an anger in his eyes, a cold fury that Dallas had never seen before. It froze her.
“Yeah, something happened at church. I didn’t get a phone call I should’ve gotten.”
That hurt as much as a slap in the face. “Please don’t do this, Ron.”
“What am I doing?”
“Being angry.”
“I’m going for a swim.”
He started to get out of his pants. She tried to understand. He’d been under a lot of stress lately with things going on at church, some fallout from the antiporn book. They were just a few miles away from the porn capital of the world, Chatsworth. But the book deal should have made him happy.
She sat on the bed and shook her head slowly. “Why didn’t we see this coming?”
“See what coming?”
“This . . . hardening.”
He slipped on his swimming trunks. “Dallas, look. I know things have been stressful the last couple of months — ”
“Stressful! We make coffee nervous.”
“Very funny.”
“Oh, Ron, can we just go away for a while and — ”
“I’m going for a swim.”
He turned quickly and strode out of the room.

Jared Hamilton took a long hit on the glass pipe, held the smoke deep in his lungs, let the music play on. Combination was everything now. A high would calm muscles and mind, while urban bass from the radio pounded his brain and kept memories at bay.

The combo was the only ritual in his life, so he treated it with a gentle reverence. It came on Fridays around four, because on that day Scott would let his crews off a little early. Scott worked them fifty plus and paid them for it. But there was nothing like a jump start to the weekend to keep up morale.

Jared had been working for Scott almost six months now. Good, steady work. Painting houses. It was a routine, and he needed routine.

So when he finished on Fridays he said good-bye to Carlos and Guillermo, the two he usually worked with, and headed off in his beat-up but running red Chevy pickup for Bautista Market on Fourth Street. It was a small, family-run operation, and they knew him there. He liked being known by them and not too many others.

He would buy a six-pack of Dos Equis and a bag of Doritos and a small jar of salsa. It was, he would sometimes think, his communion. That thought was always accompanied by an ironic smile. If his dad were to see him now . . .

He would then drive to the park on Lake Avenue. In his pickup he had a camping chair, the kind that folds into a cylindrical shape for an easy fit under the arm. He always kept a tent and bedding ready too, for he was not sure from one day to the next if he’d have a roof over his head.

He would set the chair on a nice patch of grass, in the shade of a pine tree, with the sun behind and the fields in front of him. The fields where the children played.

The games were organized, mostly. Soccer practices, baseball, volleyball. The little ones were his favorite. They still did what the adults said and were eager to please. Like he’d once been.

He would open a beer and the bag of chips. He’d set the chips on his lap and put the bottle of Dos Equis in the cup holder of the camping chair. He’d open the salsa and place the lid on the arm of the chair.

He would sip and eat until the nameless guy came with the weed. He was a friend of Guillermo’s and sold him a nickel bag. Jared would pay him and the guy would sit on the ground for a minute and want to talk.

Jared never talked.
The guy would leave and Jared would fold up his camping chair and throw it into the back of the pickup and take his beer and salsa and Doritos and grass and drive to a new place each night. Listen to music, loud.
The combo.
He was convinced it kept him from blacking out, the way he had a few times since coming back from Iraq. Yeah, keep the mind lit up and the music playing.
This night he was sitting on the hood of his truck in an empty parking lot without lights and feeling it, eyes closed, the music loud in his head and —
“. . . down, will ya?”
Jared looked up at the sudden appearance. It was dark and cold this night, and in all of Bakersfield there had to be this one guy who looked like he wanted to make trouble and looked like he could do it too. Big and beefy, with a faded Lakers jersey over his shirt.
“Look, man,” Jared started to say loudly. Yeah, the music was blaring from the stereo — the only good piece of equipment in the whole truck — but that was the right of a guy sitting in an empty parking lot off the highway.
“It’s pounding through the walls. Will ya turn it down?” The guy was big, no doubt about that, about Jared’s age, twenty-four. Bigger, even though Jared was six-one and not exactly flabby of muscle. The Marines didn’t go in for flab.
Jared put it together that the guy had come from the AMPM across the street.
Jared made no move off the hood.
“You gonna turn that down or what?” The Laker dude was wide, yes, but his belly showed the effects of a few too many breakfast burritos.
“I’m just sittin’ here, man.” Jared raised his hands in protest, all the while sizing up what it would take to put the man down. One jab to the jugular would probably do it, followed by gouging the eyes.
“If you could turn it down, that’d be cool,” Laker guy said.
“You know what else’d be cool?” Jared said, just loud enough to be heard. “I could take your head off and spit down your neck.”
At that moment Jared had a vision of it, of ripping the fool’s head right off and leaving a wound he could look into and see the lousy messed-up soul inside Laker dude.
“I’ll be calling the cops now,” the guy said, turning.
“Wait, wait, okay.” Jared slid off the hood, feeling light, reached in through the window, and turned the key. The music stopped. The silence of the night was like a blow to the head.
“All right,” the guy said. He started back toward the AMPM. Jared, without thought, went to the back of the truck and grabbed a crowbar. It was heavy and nice in his hand. It would make a major dent in the guy’s head, or his kneecap.
There was nobody in the store that Jared could see. Maybe he could lay the guy out and take a few things. Sure —
Then it was like a beautiful scene in a movie playing in his mind, the guy lying on the floor with blood all around, bright red, living color. Jared Hamilton, hero, Tarantinoesque — he’d have made a difference. To himself.
The scene was vivid.
Stuff like that kept showing in his mind ever since he got back.
The crowbar heavy in his hand.
What would his father say?
No. Who cared? It was Mom. What would she think?
In his head:
Do it anyway. That’s the combo. That would really put the bad thoughts away.