Stone Shadow (15 page)

Driving back to the motel that night he learned it was getting closer to King's birthday and in Texas it looked like it might be a biggie. A thirty-five-year-old maintenance man was charged with ninety-six counts of murder in the terrible Puerto Rican hotel fire. A woman in Ft. Worth had thrown her infant son out of a fourth-floor window because voices had kept whispering in her ear to do it. Back in the shop two state guys from the attorney general's office were trying to turn the Grave-digger case into a racially related series of crimes. By tomorrow they'd be color-coding graphics for a presentation. Somebody somewhere was working up a monograph filled with facts like both the names Lee Harvey Oswald and William Hackabee each contain fifteen letters—that kind of goofy shit.

Jack switched the radio off and tried to get into his ultimate cheerleader fantasy. He pictured Noel down in her spa and she calls to him and he goes downstairs and there she is standing with her back to him, wearing a little short skirt and cowgirl boots, and slowly she eases the skirt up on those great legs and ... “Mister,” she tells him, “I ain't wearin’ nothin'."

But he couldn't get into it at all. January 13 had been that kind of a bad mammer-jammer.

“
Y
ou know,” Noel Collier told Ukie's brother rather breathlessly, “I was so surprised. I probably acted like an imbecile.” He shook his head no, smiling warmly, and she had the oddest feeling—as if he was understanding and anticipating everything she said, not just being polite. “I guess you're used to that."

“Sure. Over the years. Twins do get special attention. And when we were growing up it was a bonding thing. It's just only in these later years after we quote matured unquote that we started—what else can I call it? Growing apart. Falling apart.” He gestured sadly. “I lost him years ago, I suppose."

“It happens."

“I tried for years to hang in there through his unpaid bills, the messes he'd make, the jams he'd get into. I'd try to follow around behind him with a broom sweeping up as much as I could. But then his behavior became so ... God, what do you say? Outrageous? Sick! He needed help and he wouldn't hear of it. He had the sexual problems—which I would try to talk about and couldn't understand.” He shook his head again. “I mean he's not that ugly he couldn't have women—"

“He's a good-looking man,” she said before she realized that she had just told him she thought he was good-looking too, and she blushed bright crimson, from surprise more than from the frankness of her admission.

But he didn't appear to pick up on it and said, “He wanted to be an entertainer for a while and he tried a fling at that. That was really the downfall. He was working these awful strip clubs and topless places and I caught his act—if you can call it that—a time or two and the crowds were a bunch of drunks waiting to see naked girls and they wouldn't listen to him, and he wasn't funny. And the odd thing is, he used to be a kind of charming guy and funny in conversation, you know, and he sort of went off the deep end. He just fell apart.

“And you know how it is—when it's someone you care for. I don't know if you've ever been around when somebody you really cared about just began to disintegrate before your eyes but it's a paralyzing experience. You want to help but you can't, you know?"

“I do, I think. I watched a marriage partner with the same kind of a perspective. Someone I had cared a lot about in the beginning...” Before she knew it she was telling him all about herself. It was the oddest sensation, Noel the defense lawyer putting herself on hold, so drawn to this man just as she was his brother. Wanting them to know each other well. To understand the shared secrets. To be able to help in a meaningful way.

And they talked on and on, both of them pouring themselves out to the other. Learning they'd each grown up in the homes of foster parents, Noel and her brother close to theirs, calling them and thinking of them as Mom and Dad. Neither at the poverty level but none of the lot ever having much materially. Each of them totally at home in their respective skins. Comfortable with life and sharing that marvelous gift with their sibling brother, in each case.

He wanted to know, “Noel, do you think that Bill—and I'm asking this in confidence of course—I don't even admit the possibility to anyone else—but do you think that he could have become so mentally unstable that he actually might have committed those terrible crimes they say he did?"

“The burden of proof will be on them, the prosecution, to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he in fact so did. But because he told the Scannapieco woman he did or at least had buried them, perhaps speaking figuratively, the fact that he's an accessory in a mass-murder case leaves us very few viable options."

“Those being?"

“Those being that we can either plead him insane at the time of the homicides in the hopes of averting a death sentence, which is obviously the mandatory sentencing if there's a finding of guilty on even one count, or we can try the case—pleading him not guilty—and attempt to convince a jury that sufficient doubt exists as to your brother's guilt.

“Wouldn't that be all but impossible?” He leaned forward, his scent reached her and it was like a fine wine to her.

She suddenly caught herself and yanked her mind back into gear. “It probably seems that way, Joseph, but the great thing about the fairness and equity of our system of jurisprudence in this country is that the prosecuting attorney must prove the accused is guilty, as I said, beyond a REASONABLE doubt. What is a reasonable doubt? Even you and I, privy to as much inside case data as we are, we aren't sure of either his guilt or innocence, are we? Not really a hundred percent SURE. I don't happen to think he did the crimes. I think he's innocent. You THINK he's innocent but absolute certainty—that requires a lot of faith, information, and unswerving confidence in your own beliefs. One of my jobs in the courtroom is to create an atmosphere where that degree of faith takes more than a little effort. I do that in many ways, from the manner in which we select our jurors to the way in which..."

And as he gazed into Noel Collier's beautiful, soulful eyes, hearing the words and feeling the sincerity and sensing the intelligence she brought to bear as she began to lay the case out for him, Joe Hackabee began to think for the first time that the case against his brother might not be so open and shut after all.

They decided they'd have dinner together and continue their meeting, and she said he should plan on a grueling, late-night session, to which he agreed without a hint of guile. On her part she was having to fight to deal with the alien sensation of wanting a stranger. The soft speech patterns. The smooth sophistication of this suave man was getting to her. For one thing she'd been so unprepared for an identical twin, but to have him look and act as if he'd just stepped off the cover of Gentleman's Quarterly—the feelings were bubbling inside her.

He looked like the kind of executive who you'd expect to see getting out of the elevator on the fortieth floor of the Southland Center looking rich, Powerful, impeccably groomed. So self-possessed there is no doubt he has the gifts of success. Noel was attracted to soft-spoken, talented, super-powerful men, often older than she. She liked super-achievers. Joe Hackabee was a type she understood. One of the urbane-but-warm Houston Rich.

She should have spent the mealtime poring over Ukie's life. Picking Joe's brain of every relevant detail and scrap of memorabilia, but what she did was talk about herself And for some reason it was suddenly vital that this stranger know every fact about her failed marriage.

“Bill was my husband's name. Bill Chase. Bill Chase gave his name to a naive young gal named Noel Collier Chase in a picturesque and glorious church called Centenary Francis Street Methodist. It was Easter week. A small but memorable event. Small in that there were only three of us there for the tying of the knot. Minister John Jamison Kisner, an old puppy dog of a guy I still recall wit affection, William Chase, and little
moi.

“No witnesses. Like a good hit-and-run. A marriage like an accident. My foster parents were dead and his folks weren't having any of it. Great and auspicious start. Memorable in that Bill'd been so nervous he'd perspired roughly three pints of white, Anglo-Saxon, Princetonian, Protestant perspiration.

“Very upper-class guy. Lots of money. Honey, I'm talkin’ OLD money and BUCKETS of the stuff. He fell in love with the face and the bod and unfortunately nothing else. But he was so sex-mad hot for me he told his mammy and pappy to jam it, and first thing you know we were down on our knees in front of my minister, all alone in front of that pulpit, and both of us scared witless and the descending wrath of his parents that seemed to loom over the wedding. But we got hitched anyway. Bill and his little white-trash snip of a wife, I'm sure they thought.

“The honeymoon lasted two years. Not the trip to the islands but the romance of it. You know that courtship period you always hope will stay hot for thirty years?"

“Yep,” he said, tilting his head, “remember it well, had one myself once."

“Okay. So about two years and we just woke up one morning and the whole thing was over. We decided we liked each other a lot and in the way of couples everywhere we stayed together—but married in name only.” She grimaced.

“Bill had become ... Why am I telling you all this, Doctor? Oh, well. He'd become silly. His affectation for the British behavioral modes no longer seemed classy and elegant. His affected British wardrobe just seemed tiresome and he was becoming a ludicrous figure to me in some ways, no matter what I did to try and avert those sorts of feelings. It was like we were trying to make each other despise the other. I was a sort of outrageous chick, I guess, although you'd never believe such a thing of me now.” She smiled ironically at Joe, a quick little zinger as she looked up and saw that great smile.” And my penchant for the let's call it Bedroom Adventure had become somewhat disgusting to Bill I later learned. We'd begun to grow apart. Sex had become a rather habitual kind of thing, and that's what the relationship had really been based on.

“As I said, he came from these real monied people up in Wisconsin, a family that had what he always called a cheese empire. And I had started teasing him about being Mr. Cheese, and the disdain I'd always felt for his snobby, elitist relatives I was now starting to feel for my husband. And of course each of us could sense the marriage going. And we just fell apart slowly.

“We became so different at the end. He like restrained statements of stylish sex, not tight trousers and Fredericks of Hollywood nighties. I liked real men, not poseurs in leather-elbowed smoking jackets with pipes they never lit, talking about Newport or some new island watering hole with a bunch of stuck-up old rich assholes. I hated all his friends and he hated mine. And then my career went wild, and I started getting so much press and all, and that was the end. Kind of soured me on the marriage thing for a while. But that's all old news now.” She sighed and started to apologize for monopolizing the conversation. But she realized, that she'd told Joseph Hackabee more about herself than she'd told some guys she'd slept with.

She couldn't believe she'd confessed to having a penchant for Bedroom Adventure, and done everything but hang a sign out advertising her marriageability.

Suddenly the awareness of her total turn-on had her blushing prettily right down to her shoes and she looked up to see Hackabee take a sip of water, then lean over close to her ear and say, “Well, I guess this means my favorite leather-elbowed smoking jacket goes to Goodwill.” And he smiled his gorgeous smile into her eyes, and it was a beginning.

S
he'd never felt like this before. Never so totally open to anyone. Something magical, corny-sounding or not, was flowing between them. They had lingered over dinner as much as they dared, but the serious nature of Ukie's plight had cast a dark shadow over the conviviality that would otherwise have captured the remainder of the evening.

The drive out to Highland Park seemed to take forever. He was following her in a rented car. She'd offered to chauffeur him of course, but he wouldn't hear of it. She could tell he was delighted by her house, which pleased her.

“Gee,” he said jokingly, shaking his head as he took in the vast expanse of rooms, white walls, paintings, sculpture, objets d'art, and eclectics. It was breathtaking. “Maybe someday you'll be able to afford something nice,” in this cute, soft voice. It hit her just right.

“I know,” she confided back to him, “this squalor can really get depressing."

“So empty of objects. Is it always this bleak or did you just move and you haven't unpacked yet?” There was something everywhere you looked. A visual barrage of antiques and Deco and Nouveau and classical and impressionist and neorealist and minimalist all assaulting the eyes in a strangely pleasing hodgepodge that was so unexpected. The overall effect dazzling yet comfortable.

“No. It wouldn't be this bleak but I have a lady who comes in once a week and bleaks it for me."

“Yes.” He made a
tsk-tsk
sound. “Well, save your pennies. It won't always be this bad."

“That's a comfort.” She laughed. “Seriously,” she asked in a soft, smiling voice, “think it's too ostentatious?” She realized his answer was rather important to her.

“Matter of fact, what I think is"—he moved close to her—"that what you have is one helluva house. It's the most
beautiful
thing I've ever seen."

And he was speaking very low and she felt like he was talking about her, not the house, and she felt like an absolute, utter idiot when he didn't kiss her right then and there, but turned and just walked around admiring things, and she stood there trembling, waiting for him to take her in his arms and knowing that he wanted her too.

It was with the greatest effort of will that she wrenched her mind back to business, after all the man's brother was a mass-murder suspect, and she began going over Ukie's childhood.

When he talked about the closeness of their early years, before they'd started to draw apart, he could sense how special the conversation was to her. She seemed to be identifying so strongly with everything he told her. It was almost as if it was making her high. She was positively owing. Her eyes sparkling. Bright, like a cocaine edge. Switched on.