The phone rings again, but I shake my head.
“Were you really seriously thinking about getting married to this woman?”
He turns his back on me and picks it up.
“I’ve got to see if it’s Olivia.”
I watch as the anxiety on his face changes to irritation. He says brusquely, “I have no comment,” and hangs up. What is going through his mind? If he is not in on this, it won’t take him long to figure out a woman has made a royal fool out of him. But what if they’re both innocent? After all, Olivia hasn’t even been charged. I’d just as soon blow my money at the dog races in West Memphis as bet on that possibility at the moment.
As if he can make the phone cease to ring by ignoring it, Andy walks back to his chair and sits down.
“As you know,” he says, answering my question, his voice ironic, “it’s not illegal.”
No, but murder is, I want to shoot back at him. I struggle to contain my anger at my growing sense that this case is out of control.
“For God’s sake, Andy,” I say urgently, “if you and Olivia decided to end Pam’s life, now is the time to tell me. I can make a deal for you with the prosecutor that will keep you from spending the rest of your life in prison. Jill Marymount needs your testimony to charge Olivia.”
Like a child taking a dose of milk of magnesia, Andy squinches his eyes shut in distaste and swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork. Lawyers are often no more than messengers; yet there is an art to delivering bad news. Too bad I haven’t mastered it. Is he wincing at the truth and preparing to accept it, or is he offended by the thought that I can believe him to be guilty of plotting to kill a helpless child? Squinting at me, he says in a choked voice, “Neither she nor I wanted Pam to die!”
I begin to roll up Yettie Lindsey’s statement into a scroll until I realize what I’m doing.
“How can you be so sure about her?” I ask him as the phone begins to ring again.
“It wasn’t too long ago when Olivia admitted to both of us in my conference room that Pam’s death was a relief.”
Andy looks over at the phone and lets it ring.
“That’s a natural reaction anybody would have,” he says, but I think I detect a note of uncertainty in his voice. For all I know, however, he may be trying to con me.
“She loved Pam.”
The damn phone.
“People are murdered every day,” I say loudly as if I can drown it out, “by family members who love them.”
Andy is oblivious to the ringing now. He shakes his head. “Not to get their child’s money.”
Still thirsty, I stand up and walk back into the kitchen for another glass of water, thinking this motive is not all that rare.
“Maybe it wasn’t for the money,” I call from the sink, not believing myself for a minute.
“Maybe Olivia simply couldn’t stand Pam’s suffering any longer.”
I look up. Andy has followed me into the kitchen. He says, “And talked me into electrocuting her. That’s what you want me to admit, isn’t it?”
“Is that what happened?” I ask.
“No, it’s not,” Andy says resolutely.
“It was an accident.
If you can’t believe that, I don’t want you representing me any further.”
I turn off the nozzle. The ice cubes have shrunk to the size of aspirin. What the hell? It’s not cold, but it’s still wet. I drink anyway, pleased to receive this ultimatum. I’m not so jaded by the system that it doesn’t matter whether my client professes to care whether I believe in his innocence. Do I believe in his innocence? I don’t know. But now is not the time for a lecture on the lawyer’s role, for I can’t afford to lose him as a client. I set the glass down on the counter, which doesn’t have a crumb on it. Andy may be a murderer, but he’s clean.
“If you tell me you’re not involved,” I lie, “I believe you, but you can’t expect me to be so certain that Olivia hasn’t set you up. I know you can’t accept that as a real possibility right now, but it’s something I have to keep in mind.”
I watch in amazement as Andy comes over to the counter and takes my glass and puts it in the dishwater. If my watch had emotions, it wouldn’t be any more compulsive.
“How could she have set this up?” he asks, either implicitly entertaining the thought or carrying out the role of trying to con me.
I have been wondering this since Jill Marymount told me she was charging Andy. Looking for a cooler spot, I go sit down over a vent at a small table across from the dishwater.
“Did she have access to the device” I will not say “cattle prod”
“that electrocuted Pam?”
From a cupboard under his sink Andy takes a sponge and wipes the counter.
“I don’t see how she could have without my knowing about it,” he says, needlessly rinsing out the sponge.
“I kept it in my office.”
“Easy,” I say, feeling with my hands the surface of his table. He keeps it as well polished as my own breakfast table.
“She obviously was out there quite a bit at this time. Getting a key duplicated takes about two minutes. It would have been simple for her to slip in and remove most of the insulation from the handle before you shocked Pam.”
For good measure, Andy swipes at a spot on the handle of the cabinet above the counter. The guy is a one-man cleaning service. If he runs out of money (which doesn’t seem likely), we can barter our services until he goes to jail. He shakes his head.”
“What keeps your theory from making sense is that electrocution doesn’t automatically result just because the handle isn’t well insulated. In order for that to occur, Pam has to make contact with the device at two points of her body.”
Andy’s face is in profile to me as he continues to work on the cabinet. I can’t really see if he understands the implication of what he has said: Olivia needed his help to kill her child. I spell it out for him.
“And guess who was holding the device when Pam came into contact with it? The prosecutor is going to argue that you and Olivia were in this together
Finally, Andy puts down the sponge and faces me.
“But if Leon had held on to Pam the way he was supposed to, she never would have been able to grab the handle.”
“And Leon testified that he had no idea how hard Pam was going to resist when she was shocked. Jill Marymount will argue you knew how much it was going to hurt Pam, and knew she would fight like an animal to grab the shock stick to keep it away from her. He had no idea how strongly she would react, and you did.”
Andy’s expression grows sullen.
“I told Leon it would really hurt her and make her try to pull away. He just let her go.”
I look down at the table and see the outline of my own glum reflection. I seriously doubt that. Pam was a big kid, and though she couldn’t have been too terribly strong, all that mass when the electricity began to flow through her would be hard to hold down unless you knew what to expect.
Leon isn’t likely to want to take the rap for a child dying.
We can’t expect him to admit it was his fault.
“I doubt if he’s going to say that, Andy, given his testimony at the probable cause hearing.”
Andy sighs. He knows we have an uphill battle. He bends down and places the sponge underneath the sink. Neatness counts, but I’m afraid it won’t keep him out of prison. I turn the talk to our more immediate problem: the bond hearing tomorrow. As I discuss the likelihood of the judge’s requiring a significantly higher bond, there is a knock at the door.
Maybe it is one of the blondes in her bikini wanting to borrow a cup of sugar, but somehow I doubt it.
“You don’t make any comment, okay?”
He nods, and I open the door to face a television camera.
Ah, the media. My client is innocent! What else do defense attorneys know how to say?
