Rabid (73 page)

George Grossberg, standing straight despite the sparking pain in his neck, called Malcolm Hay to the stand.

Heath Sheldon riffled through his documents and found the single mention of Malcolm Hay as a character witness for Leila Faris.

Crap. Leila’s testimony was fine just as it was.

No one had even deposed Hay before the trial.

Malcolm entered the courtroom and saw Leila huddled in the back row and the priest sitting in the front, looking guilty.

After the usual rigmarole about his being a Scot and a couple of unprovoked, filthy glances from the court reporter who was pissed about trying to transcribe his testimony through his Scottish burr, Malcolm was duly sworn in.

Not that he gave a whit about this whole pig circus.

The prosecutor, the blonde lady attorney, asked him if he knew anything about Leila Faris and Dr. Conroy Sloan having an affair.

Malcolm’s eyelids rolled up, and his eyebrows dropped. “Och, no, that’s slander, t’is. She’d’ve had none of that. My buddy O’Malley fancied her.”

Georgina smiled and nodded. “Did you ever see anything about their relationship that suggested it was more than a mentor-mentee relationship?”

“No, never. Och.”

Heath Sheldon decided not to ask Malcolm Hay any questions. His not knowing about their relationship didn’t mean that it hadn’t existed. Leila had admitted it. Shortening his time on the stand would do just as much good as any discrediting he could have pulled off.

Malcolm didn’t remember seeing the thin stripe of red Porsche tail lights driving away from Leila that night when Conroy had returned from the NIH study section.

Even if he had remembered Conroy’s black Porsche, Malcolm wouldn’t have ratted Leila out.

That was nobody’s business but her own, t’was.

~~~~~

George Grossberg sat at the prosecution table, holding his head in his hands, while Georgina Pire stated for the record that the prosecution rested its case.

~~~~~

Chapter Twenty-One

Bev kneeled before the niche of the Virgin Mary.

The clicking of the Rosary beads comforted her. The hollow church was quiet.

She had to pick up the girls from Lydia’s soon. Christine insisted on knowing what had happened at court, who had testified, what they said, why the judge had upheld or overturned objections.

Dinah preferred denial and chittered about cartoons.

The church door clunked open behind her. A swath of light climbed over the blue-robed Virgin.

“Bev? Is that you?” Dante’s voice rang though the church.

She twisted around and sat on the floor.

He walked up the center aisle and around to the Virgin’s niche. He spun and settled on the floor beside her, leaning against the wall, knees bent. “You finished with the lawyer quickly.”

Bev said, “He was busy. He had papers to file.” She fiddled with the black Rosary beads and dribbled them onto the floor.

“There isn’t much trial left. I testify, then your medical expert, then you, and that’s all.”

“And then I go to jail. Laura is in our will as getting the girls if we both died. She said she’ll take them for me, but I can’t bear to leave them.”

Evening sunlight reflected from the polished pews and touched Dante’s face with gold. His skin was the color of the honey oak of the crucified Christ behind the white-draped altar. Both had strong, Mediterranean features.

The Christ’s face was haggard with suffering. Dante’s eyes were gathering similar lines.

He said, “If Laura can’t take the girls,” and his voice held a note of panic, “if something happened, I would take care of them.”

This was odd. “That’s nice of you.”

He glanced up at her. “There are American schools in Roma. My apartment is too big for just me. I have too much money, professor’s salary, Monsignor’s stipend, family money. They could come back to America for university.” He looked away, over the church pews. “If they needed me, I would be there for them.”

She touched his hair, so silky and black. Damp strands of it fell through her fingers. “You’ve thought about this.”

He tucked his mussed hair into place with his fingers. “If they need some place, they are welcome. I would, or, it would, or, I don’t know.” He couldn’t seem to finish a sentence. He sank both of his hands into his hair. “They would be taken care of. I would take care of them.”

“Don’t you travel? Isn’t this what you do, go different places, help people?”

His head rested on his crossed forearms. “I don’t know what I do.”

“You’ve helped Luke. Laura says so.”

“Have I?” His voice wove around his arms and lost itself in the thin air over the pews.

“I’ll leave the girls with Laura,” she tried saying the words, “when I go to prison,” and she didn’t choke or vomit. “I think you need to help other people.”

Dante covered his face with his hands. His voice was a far-off trumpet. “It’s too hard.”

She stroked his hair. “Kids like Luke need you.”

He nodded, though his hands still covered his face.

~~~~~

Dead Doc’s Lover Says Suicide

by: Kirin Oberoi

Today in the case of the State vs. Beverly Sloan, in a devastating blow for the prosecution, Leila Sage Faris acknowledged she was one of four mistresses of the deceased Dr. Conroy Robert Sloan and that he had threatened to commit suicide the night he died.

This devastating blow for the prosecution was the capstone of Faris’s otherwise mostly uneventful testimony, which reiterated that she was at Conroy Sloan’s recently rented apartment near UNHHC before Beverly Sloan arrived, that she waited outside, that no one else went in for some time, and that she then returned to the apartment and found Conroy Sloan on the kitchen floor, unconscious and bleeding from a knife wound.

One minor addition to her anticipated testimony was that Monsignor Dr. Dante Maria Petrocchi-Bianchi, a Catholic Jesuit priest temporarily attached to the Sloans’ parish Our Lady of Perpetual Help, appeared outside the apartment and waited and entered the apartment with Faris.

Monsignor Petrocchi-Bianchi is scheduled to testify for the defense.

~~~~~

Another insomniac night pacing the rectory.

Two nights before, Dante had slept in Leila’s bed, and then she testified.

Last night, he had paced with his arms wrapped around his chest, holding his cell phone in case she called. He called her at home and on her cell. His body groaned with loneliness as his footfalls thumped the whitewashed wood of the rectory floor.

That morning, Dante had donned his full ecclesiastical regalia—Jesuit black cassock and Monsignor’s red-piped cape and stole—and at court he had sworn on the Bible that he would tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God.

No lightning struck him.

Heath Sheldon started with a windy explanation to the jury that since Monsignor Dr. Dante Maria Petrocchi-Bianchi, SJ, MD, PhD, was in fact a doctor (and a psychiatrist at that) and a priest (and a Vatican Monsignor and a Jesuit at that) some of his communications were privileged.

The judge, a curvaceous black woman, instructed the jury that they should not interpret Dante’s refusal to answer any question as being positive or negative, or that he even knew the answer. She smiled at him, and her slim smile reminded him of Nyla, a Parisian college student of Nairobi descent.

Heath Sheldon nearly bowed to Dante. “Dr. Monsignor Petrocchi-Bianchi, what was your relationship with the deceased?”

Heath Sheldon asked many questions about Conroy Sloan, and Dante answered what he could, when he could. Equivocating, meandering Jesuit theology had prepared him to answer such tedium with alacrity and evasion, and it did not require much attention.

Heath Sheldon read questions from his chair beside Bev. She clicked through her beads, praying the Rosary. Fragile skin clung to her skull and slate shadowed her tired eyes.

Sheldon asked, “Do you know if Conroy Sloan was having an affair with Leila Faris?”

Dante settled his hands in his lap. “I could not answer that.”

Dante watched the oak double doors behind the gawking spectators and checked his cellular phone for messages during breaks, but Leila didn’t call.

And now, he paced the rectory floor again, another insomniac night, heartsick.

~~~~~

Leila collected a few personal effects from the lab that afternoon while the conservators stripped her flat uninstalled the Parisian plaster, and packed the Tiffany chandelier, the antique furniture, the tapestries and the art in acid-free paper-lined, humidity-controlled cartons. By the time she got home, the only things left would be what she needed to survive the next few days: dog accoutrements, a sleeping bag, and her computer. She would spend her last days in New Hamilton camping out in her apartment, drinking goodbyes, caulking nail holes, and printing her final thesis copies.

The newspaper was lying outside the lab door, innocuous as an empty syringe. She considered ditching it, but that was juvenile.

The paper pile on her desk was two feet high. Conroy’s slovenly desk habits were communicable. She began sorting the pile into keepers and trash.

Joe slapped the newspaper on the table by her desk. The page was open to a short commentary about her testimony. “You and Dr. S.?”

She nodded and tossed academic papers into a huge trash can beside her desk. Technicolor papers swished into the trash bin, evidence of her highlighter habit.

“Why?”
Joe’s deep eyes rolled.

“Just because.”

“Then why
me
? I thought we were friends.” He scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

Leila tossed out a sheaf of outdated journal papers. “It just happened. It was nothing.”

Joe stared into the lab. “Did he leave Beverly for you?”

Leila resumed trashing paper. “He knew I was graduating this summer. He knew that I wanted to postdoc at Columbia.”

“Then
why
?”

In Leila’s hands, Conroy’s lab notebook fell open to a scan of a gel with random bands like schizophrenic dimmer switches.

She said, “His rabies virus test was inconclusive.”

She pressed his cold notebook to her chest.

She said, “Conroy was raving, howling, gibbering, moon-barking
mad
.”