Presumed Guilty (4 page)

tell me?”
“When was this?”
“A few hours ago.”
“Do you know where they took him?”
“No.”
Dallas clutched the phone. Jeff said, “All right, don’t worry, I

can find him. Is there anything else you can tell me?”
“Nothing. I can’t believe this, Jeff.”
“I’ll find out what’s going on.” His voice was warm and calming.

“If he calls you, tell him not to talk to anyone.”
“Will he?”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.”
“Tell him he’s not to say anything, and I mean anything, to anybody. I’ll see him as soon as I can.”

The three of them — Jared, Guillermo, and Carlos — were working a church, a little white Catholic number northeast of Bakersfield. A new coat of white on the inside, around the stained-glass windows, patching cracks.

Guillermo and Carlos had the radio blaring that salsa crud, and at every break Jared had to listen to somebody spouting Spanish.
At least it muted the voices in his own head.
So yes, he was crazy. Jared agreed with Guillermo on that much. But not crazy for talking trash.
“That’s what I said.” Jared pointed with his brush at the crucifix. Jesus hanging on a cross and set on the little altar. “He’s no help to anybody. He’s hanging there. It’s just a stupid statue.”
“You’re the stupid one, man.” Guillermo didn’t say it viciously, but Jared could sense a bubbling beneath his surface.
Didn’t matter. Jared felt a compulsion to speak. The thoughts were like bile wanting to burst out of him of their own accord, and he would let them.
“What’s with people looking at statues, huh? Thinking there’s anything there?”
Carlos, who was forty or so and smaller than the other two, dipped his brush in a paint can and said, “Shut up and work.”
“You want some?” Jared put his hands out, challenging.
“Crazy,” Guillermo said. “In a church, talkin’ trash about Jesus.”
Jared walked a few steps on the drop cloth toward his coworkers. “Listen to what I’m saying, genius. People are better off not knowing anything, instead of coming into a church and worshiping Jesus statues.”
A voice on the radio shouted something in Spanish
.
“Come on,” Guillermo urged. “You bring down bad stuff on everybody, you keep talking that way.”
Jared let the words fly. “You afraid of God? That what you’re afraid of? Because of a stupid statue?”
“Hey — ” Carlos pointed at Jared.
Now it wasn’t the radio noise rattling around in Jared’s head but something else, voicelike, pounding. He didn’t know what this was, but it was urgent and angry. Spitting angry, and something had to be done to show these stupid —
“Get back to work!” Carlos yelled, but Jared was already going down the aisle, the noise beating inside his head, and he had his brush up.
He heard Guillermo say, “What’s he doin’?” but it barely registered in the chaos of his brain.
Now Jared focused in on Jesus, on his face, looking down. Jesus nailed, a statue. Was this what they were afraid of?
With one swipe of his brush, Jared covered Jesus’s face in white paint.
“No!” Guillermo shouted.
And Jared thought,
I know how to bleed too, Jesus.
When he turned around, he saw his two coworkers staring, but not at him. At the door.
Jared looked over and saw a priest standing there, shock all over his face. And next to him Scott, the boss man, about to go ballistic.

“Cara, it’s me.”
“Hi, Mom. Guess what? I’m getting a promotion at the bank.
Today I — ”
“Cara, listen to me.”
“What’s wrong?”
Dallas tried to make her hand relax its grip on the phone but
couldn’t. “Your dad’s in trouble.”
“Trouble? What do you — ”
“He was arrested.”
Cara’s gasp jabbed through the phone. “Why?”
“I don’t know, but the police came to the house this morning.
They took him away in handcuffs. They wouldn’t even tell me.” “Mom, Mom, are you all right?”
Dallas swallowed hard. “Will you start praying — ”
“Mom, I’m coming over.”
“You don’t have to — ”
“I’ll be right there.”
Dallas felt trapped in a fog, seeing little, hearing nothing, until
Cara came and threw her arms around her and held her. Dallas
returned the embrace around Cara’s taut body. Her daughter, at
twenty-seven, still looked like the tennis player she’d been in high
school. But her face, under the short blond hair, was worried. “Mom, you have got to tell me what’s going on. I can’t believe
Dad would be arrested for anything.”
Dallas shook her head. “All I know is what I told you. They
arrested your father, just took him away like a common criminal.
Why would they do that?”
“Have we got a lawyer?”
“Yes. Jeff Waite. He’s going to see your father this morning.” “Is he good? Because we have got to have the best.” “Oh, yes, he’s good. He’s done pro bono work for the church.” Out of habit, Dallas patted her daughter’s shoulder. It was the
calming move. Cara had always been a bit of a control freak, an
imposer of order. Dallas had spent more hours than she could count settling her daughter’s nerves. Now Cara was here to return the
favor.
Cara said, “Have you talked to Jared?”
Dallas shook her head. “I don’t know where he is.”
“Does he have a cell phone?”
“The old number doesn’t work. He must have let it go.” “Probably didn’t pay his bill.”
“Do you know any of his old friends? People who might be in
touch with him? I’m afraid of how this is going to hit him.” “I can try to think of someone.”
“Please do.”
Cara took her mother by the arm and sat her down in her favorite chair. Dallas felt lumps in it. It was getting worn.
“How about some lunch?” Cara said.
“I can’t eat.”
“Yes, you can,” Cara insisted, echoing the words Dallas must
have said a thousand times to her daughter during her bouts with
sickness or distress.
It was a disquieting juxtaposition. Cara was the mothering one
now, and Dallas the little girl. But she did not want to be little, or
helpless, or paralyzed. She wanted to help Ron. Now.
And couldn’t.

Jefferson Waite arrived just before noon. He hardly had a foot in the door when Dallas asked him what was going on.
“Let’s go into the living room,” Waite said.
Dallas stood still. “Tell me now. Please.”
Cara, who had been making sandwiches in the kitchen, came to her mother’s side.
Jeff closed the door. He wore a powder blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, and a burgundy tie perfectly knotted. He was in his midforties with a full head of brown hair flecked by wisps of gray. He exuded confidence, which was exactly what Dallas needed at that moment. “I don’t want you to worry the first time you hear it. These things — ”
“What happened?”
“They say it’s murder.”
Dallas felt something flow out of her head, a sucking away like the sand under a receding wave. Cara grabbed her left arm, and that’s when Dallas knew she had almost fallen.
Jeff helped Cara get Dallas to the sofa. Cara sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.
“It’s a huge mistake,” Jeff said. “I saw Ron, I talked with him, he’s scared but he’s staying strong. It’s all a major misunderstanding.”
“Who was it?” Dallas said.
“The victim is a young woman named Melinda Perry. That’s all I could find out.”
Young woman?
“Can I see him?” Dallas said. “Where is he?”
“They’ve got him at the men’s jail, downtown.”
She looked at the lawyer. “What’s going to happen, Jeff?”
He sat on the coffee table so he could take her hand. He was muscular and trim, with intelligent blue eyes. “Tomorrow he goes before a judge. I’ll be there with him and get the formal charge and the arrest report. Then I’ll go talk to the DA and see what they’ve got.”
Panic burst through her. “They’ve got to have something. They wouldn’t arrest him if they didn’t have anything. What could it be?”
She heard screeching outside. The sound of tires.
Jeff went to the door and pulled back the curtain.
“Man, that was fast,” he said.
“What?”
“TV people.”
Pinpricks stuck her skin. Publicity. She hadn’t even considered that. In her singular focus she thought only of Ron, and of this problem as one they could solve together, quietly. That’s the way they handled things between them, wasn’t it?
But now she realized this accusation would not be kept quiet, couldn’t be swept under their private rug. Ron was a big-time pastor with a national platform. He’d been on radio and TV, once on
The O’Reilly Factor
talking about the scourge of Internet porn.
He was a media darling, with his good looks and eloquence. Now he was a target for the press — a family-values pastor accused of murder.
“Stay calm,” Jeff said. “I will do the talking for you. All right? Not you, not your daughter, not Ron. Is there anyone else in the family they could get to?”
Dallas shook her head. “Only our son, Jared, but he’s out of the county.”
“Don’t sell these people short,” Jeff said. “Now stay here.”
He went outside, closing the door behind him. A few moments later Dallas heard his voice, firm and resolute.
“Mrs. Hamilton will not be commenting on this matter. I will be speaking for the family . . . No, we have no comment at this time . . . There has not even been a formal charge yet . . . No, there will be no further comment . . . And by the way, any entrance on this property will be treated as a trespass. So I advise you to clear out and direct all inquiries to my office.”
The muffled shouts of several voices shooting questions came next. Cara squeezed Dallas’s hand.
Dallas closed her eyes. She remembered someone telling her once that the most effective prayer on earth was
Help me help me help me.
That is what Dallas prayed now. She prayed for a sign from God, something to tell her that it wasn’t true, that this whole nightmare was going to go away.
At twelve forty-five a police tow truck showed up, much to the delight of the media circus, and towed Ron’s car away.

How do you look at your wife from the inside of a cage?
Do you fake it? Do you put on a happy face, like that old song
says?
Do you do it so your wife, who loves you, who has known only your
stability and strength, won’t freak?
Do you smile and give a little wave through the Plexiglas barrier
and make some joke through the handset about your orange jumpsuit?
“Like my new style?”
Do you do everything within your power to hide the clawing, voracious fear that is working your insides?
Or do you let go of your face? Let it all hang out?
Most important of all, do you let the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth flash like neon in your eyes? Do you drop all
pretense and all deceit and let her read your expressions like the front
page of a tabloid?
The woman who loved me with a solid, dependable love came to see
me. And I could hardly look at her.

The men’s jail was downtown, on Bauchet Street, just east of Chinatown and Union Station. It housed the county’s ever-increasing population of criminal defendants, those waiting for trial as well as cons serving less than a year.

It had been the temporary residence of several high-profile defendants the last few years.
Like Ron Hamilton.
Dallas was shaking when she got to the visitation room. It was smaller than she’d expected, with two rows of stools in front of glass partitions. A deputy sheriff told her where to sit.
The stool was hard and cold.
What was it going to be like to see Ron for the first time? In here?
Worse, what was it going to be like for him to see
her
? She knew she looked terrible. The shock was still fresh, had been pressing down on her for the last twenty-four hours. No sleep. She felt like bags of cement were under her eyes. Eyes that fell on her husband being led in on his side of the Plexiglas. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit. Not the blue of the regular jail inmate. Orange marked him as high security.
He sat opposite her, his features gnarled in confusion. She grabbed the handset, waiting for him to pick up.
“Ron,” she said, then found she couldn’t coax another word out of her mouth.
His voice came through the wire thin and distant. “Dallas, I’m so sorry you have to see me like this.”
“Are you all right?”
His eyes were darting around, not staying on her directly. “It’s jail. Not a place I ever thought I’d be.”
She put her hand on the Plexiglas. She wanted to push her hand through and stroke her husband’s cheek. She wanted to break through and hold him and drag him out of there and keep the world away.
“What on earth happened?” she said.
Ron pursed his lips and shook his head. “It’s not true, what they’re saying.”
What
they
were saying was that her husband had been “involved” with an actress in what
they
referred to as “adult films.” She first heard the report on the radio news as she was driving to the jail. She almost ran into another car.
But she knew it couldn’t be true, couldn’t be. She fought the information with all her will.
“How then?” Dallas said, needing to know
.
“Listen to me, Dallas. I was stupid. I made a stupid mistake.”
She waited.
He looked up toward the ceiling. “I was counseling this girl, the one they found. She was in with some pretty bad people. She was scared. I was trying to help her.”
Dallas said nothing. She watched her husband’s face twitch around his eyes. He was the scared one now.
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Dallas said.
“She didn’t want the police. She was scared if she called them these people would find out and they’d do something to her.”
“Why didn’t you send her to Haven House?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s just so much I don’t know.”
A large woman sat on the stool next to Dallas. She had on a sleeveless dress. Her arms jiggled as she adjusted herself. Dallas caught a whiff of body odor. The woman swore as she fiddled with her handset.
“What happened, exactly?” Dallas said.
“Jeff says not to talk. This could be monitored.”
“But you didn’t
do
anything.” And then, like a cockroach in the kitchen, distrust skittered across her mind. Dallas shook. Never had she experienced anything but complete faith in her husband.
Even in their worst times, when he could put on the big freeze and not talk to her for hours, she had never questioned his integrity. He was absolutely without fault in that department.
But now . . . She refused to give the thought credence. It was the stress, the surroundings, the nightmare circumstance.
“Dallas, I didn’t do anything but be stupid. They got to her, the guys she was afraid of. That had to be it.” He paused. “They’ll use this, you know. The porn people. They’ll use this to show I’m a hypocrite. All our work will be called into question.”
She couldn’t deny it. She and Ron were actively fighting the spread of the porn industry by pushing for new zoning restrictions in the city. Ron, as the front man, had been called many things by his enemies.
Hypocrite
would now be added to the list.
“I’ll keep the pressure on Bernie,” Dallas said. Bernie Halstrom was their city councilman, the one they had worked closely with on the zoning issue.
“Thank you,” Ron said, with what seemed heartfelt gratitude.
“How long do you have to be in here?”
“Jeff’ll move for bail, but he told me they might not give it. This is what they call a high-profile murder case. Me, imagine . . .”
“Are you all right?”
“They’ve got me isolated. That’s the way they do it. I can take it if you can . . .”
She saw his hand shake and then drop the phone. Then his head was in his hands and he was sobbing. Sobbing uncontrollably.
“Oh, Ron.” Dallas jumped to her feet, pressed her forehead to the window, hit it with her open hand.
A deputy sheriff was at her side instantly, pulling her away.
“No!” she shouted. “No, please!”
“Sit down, ma’am. You can’t touch the glass.”
She sat. Ron kept sobbing. Then he whirled away and stood.
“Ron, don’t go!”
Apparently he couldn’t hear her. Or chose not to.
“Ron!”
“Keep your voice down, ma’am,” the deputy said. “Looks like your visit is over.”
Over.
No.
Dallas steeled herself against the thought that more than this visit was over, that life as they all knew it was over and would never come back together again.
She would not let that be.