The Testament (47 page)

“Two times I guess.”

“So about forty times?”

“I guess. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?”

“Not to me. Did Mr. Phelan take his clothes off when you guys did it?”

“Sure. We both did.”

“So he was completely naked?”

“Yes.”

“Did he have any visible birthmarks on his body?”

When witnesses concoct lies, they often miss the obvious. So do their lawyers. They become so consumed with their fiction that they overlook a fact or two. Hark and the guys had access to the Phelan wives—Lillian, Janie, Tira—any one of whom could have told them that Troy had a round purple birthmark the size of a silver dollar at the very top of his right leg, near the hip, just below the waist.

“Not that I recall,” Nicolette answered.

The answer surprised Nate, and then it didn’t. He could’ve easily believed that Troy was doing his secretary, something he’d done for decades. And he could just as easily have believed Nicolette was lying.

“No visible birthmarks?” Nate asked again.

“None.”

The Phelan lawyers were stricken with fear. Could another star witness be melting before their eyes?

“No further questions,” Nate said, and left the room to refill his coffee.

Nicolette looked at the lawyers. They were staring at the table, wondering exactly where the birthmark was.

After she left, Nate slid an autopsy photo across the table to his bewildered enemies. He didn’t say a word, didn’t need to. Old
Troy was on the slab, nothing but withered and battered flesh, with the birthmark staring out from the photo.

________

THEY SPENT the rest of Wednesday and all day Thursday with the four new psychiatrists who’d been hired to say that the three old ones really didn’t know what they were doing. Their testimony was predictable and repetitive—people with sound minds do not jump out of windows.

As a group they were less distinguished than Flowe, Zadel, and Theishen. A couple were retired and picked up a few retainers here and there as professional testifiers. One taught at a crowded community college. One eked out a living in a small office in the suburbs.

But they weren’t paid to be impressive; rather, their purpose was simply to muddy the water. Troy Phelan was known to be erratic and eccentric. Four experts said he didn’t have the mental capacity to execute a will. Three said he did. Keep the issues dense and tangled and hope those supporting the will would one day grow weary and settle. If not, it would be up to a jury of laymen to sift through the medical jargon and make sense of the conflicting opinions.

The new experts were paid well to stick to their convictions, and Nate didn’t try to change them. He had deposed enough doctors to know not to argue medicine with them. Instead, he dwelt on their credentials and experience. He made them watch the video and criticize the first three psychiatrists.

When they adjourned Thursday afternoon, fifteen depositions had been completed. Another round was scheduled for late March. Wycliff was planning a trial for the middle of July. The same witnesses would testify again, but in open court with spectators watching and jurors weighing every word.

________

NATE FLED the city. He went west through Virginia, then south through the Shenandoah Valley. His mind was numb from nine days of hardball probing into the intimate lives of others. At some undefined point in his life, pushed by his work and his addictions, he had lost his decency and shame. He had learned to lie, cheat, deceive, hide, badger, and attack innocent witnesses without the slightest twinge of guilt.

But in the quiet of his car and the darkness of the night, Nate was ashamed. He had pity for the Phelan children. He felt sorry for Snead, a sad little man just trying to survive. He wished he hadn’t attacked the new experts with such vigor.

His shame was back, and Nate was pleased. He was proud of himself for feeling so ashamed. He was human after all.

At midnight, he stopped at a cheap motel near Knoxville. There was heavy snow in the Midwest, in Kansas and Iowa. Lying in bed with his atlas, he mapped a trail through the Southwest.

He slept the second night in Shawnee, Oklahoma; the third in Kingman, Arizona; the fourth in Redding, California.

________

THE KIDS from his second marriage were Austin and Angela, twelve and eleven respectively, seventh and sixth grades. He’d last seen them in July, three weeks before the last crash, when he took them to an Orioles game. The pleasant outing later turned into another ugly scene. Nate had drunk six beers at the game—the kids counted because their mother told them to—and he drove the two hours from Baltimore to Arlington under the influence.

At the time, they were moving to Oregon with their mother, Christi, and her second husband, Theo. The game was to be Nate’s last visit with them for some time, and instead of dwelling on good-byes Nate got plastered. He fought with his ex-wife in the driveway while the children watched, all too familiar with the
scene. Theo had threatened him with a broom handle. Nate woke up in his car, parked in the handicapped zone of a McDonald’s, an empty six-pack on the seat.

When they met fourteen years earlier, Christi was the headmistress of a private school in Potomac. She was on a jury. Nate was one of the lawyers. She wore a short black skirt on the second day of the trial, and the litigation practically stopped. Their first date was a week later. For three years Nate stayed clean, long enough to get remarried and have the two kids. When the dam started cracking, Christi was scared and wanted to run. When it burst, she fled with the children and didn’t return for a year. The marriage endured ten chaotic years.

She was working at a school in Salem. Theo was with a small law firm there. Nate had always believed that he ran them out of Washington. He couldn’t blame them for fleeing to the other coast.

He called the school from his car near Medford, four hours away, and was put on hold for five minutes; time, he was certain, for her to lock her door and collect her thoughts. “Hello,” she finally said.

“Christi, it’s me, Nate,” he said, feeling silly identifying his voice to a woman he’d lived with for ten years.

“Where are you?” she asked, as if an attack were imminent.

“Near Medford.”

“In Oregon?”

“Yes. I’d like to see the kids.”

“Well, when?”

“Tonight, tomorrow, I’m in no hurry. I’ve been on the road for a few days, just seeing the country. I have no itinerary.”

“Well, sure, Nate. I guess we can work something out. But the kids are very busy, you know, school, ballet, soccer.”

“How are they?”

“They’re doing very well. Thanks for asking.”

“And you? How’s life treating you?”

“I’m fine. We love Oregon.”

“I’m doing well too. Thanks for asking. I’m clean and sober, Christi, really. I’ve finally kicked the booze and drugs for good. Looks like I’ll be leaving the practice of law, but I’m doing really well.”

She’d heard it before. “That’s good, Nate.” Her words were cautious. She was planning two sentences in advance.

They agreed to have dinner the following night, enough time for her to prepare the kids and fix up the house and allow Theo to decide what his role should be. Enough time to rehearse and plan exits.

“I won’t get in the way,” Nate promised, before hanging up.

________

THEO DECIDED to work late and skip the reunion. Nate hugged Angela tightly. Austin just shook hands. The one thing he vowed not to do was gush about how much they’d grown. Christi loitered in her bedroom for an hour as the father was reintroduced to his children.

Nor would he bury them with apologies about things he couldn’t change. They sat on the floor of the den and talked about school, and ballet, and soccer. Salem was a pretty town, much smaller than D.C., and the kids had adjusted well, with lots of friends, a good school, nice teachers.

Dinner was spaghetti and salad, and it lasted for one hour. Nate told tales from the jungles of Brazil as he took them on his journey to find the missing client. Evidently, Christi had not seen the right newspapers. She knew nothing of the Phelan matter.

At seven sharp, he said he had to go. They had homework, and school came early. “I have a soccer game tomorrow, Dad,” Austin said, and Nate’s heart almost stopped. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been called Dad.

“It’s at the school,” Angela said. “Could you come?”

The little ex-family shared an awkward moment as each of them glanced at the other. Nate had no idea what to say.

Christi settled the issue by saying, “I’ll be there. We could talk.”

“Of course I’ll be there,” he said. The children hugged him as he left. Driving away, Nate suspected Christi wanted to see him two days in a row to examine his eyes. She knew the signs.

Nate stayed in Salem for three days. He watched the soccer game and was overcome with pride in his son. He got himself invited back to dinner, but agreed to come only if Theo would join them. He had lunch with Angela and her friends at school.

After three days, it was time to leave. The kids needed their normal routines back, without the complications Nate brought. Christi was tired of pretending nothing had ever happened between them. And Nate was getting attached to his children. He promised to call and e-mail and see them soon.

He left Salem with a broken heart. How low could a man sink to lose such a wonderful family? He remembered almost nothing of his kids when they were smaller—no school plays, Halloween costumes, Christmas mornings, trips to the mall. Now they were practically grown, and another man was raising them.

He turned east, and drifted with the traffic.

________

WHILE NATE was meandering through Montana, thinking of Rachel, Hark Gettys filed a motion to dismiss her answer to the will contest. His reasons were clear and obvious, and he supported his attack with a twenty-page brief he’d worked on for a month. It was March 7, almost three months after the death of Mr. Phelan, not quite two months after the entry of Nate O’Riley into the matter, nearly three weeks into discovery, four months before the trial, and the court still did not have jurisdiction over Rachel Lane. But for the allegations of her attorney, there’d been no sign of her. No document in the official court file had her signature on it.

Hark referred to her as the “phantom party.” He and the other contestants were litigating against a shadow. The woman stood to inherit eleven billion dollars. The least she could do was sign a waiver and follow the law. If she’d gone to the trouble to hire a lawyer, she could certainly subject herself to the jurisdiction of the court.

The passage of time was benefiting the heirs greatly, though it was hard for them to be patient while dreaming of such wealth. Each week that passed with no word from Rachel was further proof that she had no interest in the proceedings. At the Friday morning meetings, the Phelan lawyers reviewed discovery, talked about their clients, and plotted trial strategy. But they spent most of their time speculating why Rachel had not made an official appearance. They were enthralled with the ridiculous notion that she might not want the money. It was absurd, yet it somehow managed to surface every Friday morning.

The weeks were turning into months. The lottery winner was not claiming her prize.

There was another significant reason for putting pressure on the defenders of Troy’s testament. His name was Snead. Hark, Yancy, Bright, and Langhorne had watched their star witness’s deposition until it was memorized, and they were not confident of his ability to sway jurors. Nate O’Riley had made a fool out of him, and that was only in a deposition. Imagine how sharp the daggers would be at trial, in front of a jury made up primarily of middle-class folks struggling to pay their monthly bills. Snead pocketed a half a million to tell his story. It would be a hard sell.

The problem with Snead was obvious. He was lying, and liars eventually get caught in court. After Snead stumbled so badly in the deposition, the lawyers were terrified of presenting him to a jury. Another lie or two exposed to the world, and their case was down the toilet.

The birthmark had rendered Nicolette completely useless as a witness.

Their own clients were not particularly sympathetic. With the exception of Ramble, who was the scariest of all, each had been handed five million dollars with which to get a start. None of the jurors would earn that much in a lifetime. Troy’s children could whine about being raised by an absent father, but half the jurors would be from broken homes.

The battle of the shrinks would be hard to call, but it was the segment of the trial that worried them the most. Nate O’Riley had been shredding doctors in courtrooms for more than twenty years. Their four substitutes could not withstand his brutal cross-examinations.

To avoid a trial, they had to settle. To settle, they had to find a weakness. Rachel Lane’s apparent lack of interest was more than sufficient, and certainly their best shot.

________

JOSH REVIEWED the Motion to Dismiss with admiration. He loved the legal maneuvering, the ploys and tactics, and when someone, even an opponent, got it right, he silently applauded. Everything about Hark’s move was perfect—the timing, the rationale, the superbly argued brief.

The contestants had a weak case, but their problems were small compared to Nate’s. Nate had no client. He and Josh had managed to keep this quiet for two months, but the ruse had run its course.

FORTY-EIGHT
_____________

D
aniel, his oldest child, insisted on meeting him in a pub. Nate found the place after dark, two blocks off the campus, on a street lined with bars and clubs. The music, the flashing beer signs, the co-eds yelling across the street—it was all too familiar. It was Georgetown just a few months ago, and none of it appealed to him. A year earlier he would’ve been yelling back, chasing them from one bar to the other, believing he was still twenty and able to go all night.

Daniel was waiting in a cramped booth, along with a girl. Both were smoking. Each had two longneck bottles sitting on the table in front of them. Father and son shook hands because anything more affectionate would make the son feel uncomfortable.