If I'd Killed Him When I Met Him…

“Leave that aside for now, then. So, you’re planning to argue about the legal definition of the word person?”

“Right. And I thought I’d bring in some expert witnesses to testify to Porky’s intelligence and his ability to communicate. My argument is that sentient beings should be considered persons, even if they’re not our species. After all, if we ever have to deal with any extraterrestrial races, this question will come up.”

“I don’t think bringing up the possibility of flying saucers will strengthen your case, Bill.”

“Okay, maybe not. Anyhow, what do you think of my argument?”

“It’s interesting,” said A. P. Hill. “I can’t say that I can envision a local judge going along with it, but stranger things have happened.”

Edith appeared in the doorway. “I’ve got bad news,” she said. “Do y’all want to finish your breakfast drinks before I deliver it?”

“No,” said Bill, gulping the last ounces of lukewarm cocoa. “We can take it.”

“One of your clients is dead.”

After a moment of uncomprehending silence, A. P. Hill said, “It’s Eleanor Royden, isn’t it? I was afraid she might try to kill herself when she fully realized what she had done.”

“No, it’s not Eleanor,” said Edith cheerfully. “She’s probably busy right now answering all the proposals of marriage that she’s been getting in the mail. No, the deceased is one of Bill’s clients. Miri Malone. That’s why I interrupted you. I don’t think you’ll need all that dolphin defense strategy.”

“Miri is dead?” said Bill. “How? What happened?”

“She drowned at the Sea Park in Florida.”

“She drowned. But that’s impossible! She worked with sea mammals. She was a professional.”

Edith handed him a message slip bearing Rich Edmonds’s name and telephone number and a scribbled message. “You can call him back if you want to. He told me that Miri Malone’s nude body had been found in the dolphin tank, and that the coroner’s office is calling it an accident.”

“What does Rich think?” Bill squinted at Edith’s hastily written message. “What does conj- vs mean?”

“He agrees that her death was an accident,” said Edith. “But he has a better idea of what happened than the coroner does. He thinks Miri was in Porky’s tank on a conjugal visit, and that she ran out of air before they’d finished.”

A. P. Hill shook her head. “Only you, Bill.” She sighed.

“That’s terrible,” said Bill. “Miri was a very nice person. A little strange, I’ll admit, but maybe she was a pioneer in animal rights. Which reminds me-what’s going to happen to Porky?”

“Apparently, nothing,” said Edith, whose cheerfulness was untouched by the tragedy. “According to Rich Edmonds nobody seems very concerned about the dolphin as a threat to human life. He’s as friendly as ever. He did all his shows yesterday, and his appetite is good. The park put a female dolphin in with him to cheer him up, and it seems to be working.”

“That does it!” said Powell. “I’m having tuna fish for lunch.”

“I wonder if I should go on with the lawsuit,” said Bill.

‘You can’t very well petition for a marriage when the bride is dead,’ Edith pointed out. “Unless you’re really going to expand the concept of civil rights.”

“No, no,” said Bill. “I meant the case about whether or not Porky is a person. I was mapping out an argument to free him-”

“I think you’d better drop the entire matter, Bill,” said A. P. Hill. “In the best interests of the dolphin.”

“Why?”

“Think about it. Do you really want to prove that Porky is a person after he’s been involved in the death of Miri Malone? As an animal he has no rights or responsibilities, and he can’t be held liable for his actions. But what if you make the court rule that he is a person, and then they charge him with murder?” She shrugged. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“Fish jails,” murmured Edith. “That would be expensive.”

“You’re right,” said Bill. “Miri wouldn’t want Porky to suffer for her death. Maybe we should just leave things as they are.”

“Had Miss Malone paid you?” asked A. P. Hill.

“Not yet. I hadn’t billed her.”

“In that case, partner, the matter is closed.”

Several months later A. P. Hill had her day in court with Eleanor Royden. Powell had tried to balance her instinctive defense attorney’s delaying tactics against the need for a speedy trial to minimize the damage done by Eleanor’s relentless press conferences. “I’d rather defend O. J. Simpson,” she said in a moment of desperation. She hadn’t meant it, though. She was only tired, and exasperated, and above all frightened that her best wouldn’t be good enough to save Eleanor Royden.

The trial lasted the better part of a week- neither side had the funds or the patience for a lengthier battle. Eleanor was vilified by the prosecution as a bloodthirsty shrew who murdered her victims out of spite. A. P. Hill retaliated by presenting the Roydens as a selfish, shallow couple who delighted in tormenting Jeb’s ex-wife. Witnesses described the same incidents from opposite points of view: he was a monster; she was a monster. It all depended on whom the witness identified with, or, in the cases of some of the middle-aged women, it depended on whom the witness was afraid to be identified with. Some affluent wives apparently thought that Eleanor should be belled and cowled like a leper. She was dangerous: she threatened the well-being of all of them. A few courageous souls (most of whom were divorced) hailed Eleanor as a terrible prophet of feminism, who could single-handedly stem the tide of trophy wives and midlifecrisis divorces, but most people treated the case as a bad joke-nothing that need have any bearing on their lives.

Now all the hours of testimony, the psychiatric evaluations, and the media circus surrounding the trial had wound down to one focal point: a spotlight on A. P. Hill for the defense. She looked more pale and waiflike than ever in her navy-blue suit and sensible low-heeled pumps; her hair chopped into a straight bob covering her ears; and her lip gloss smeared on in haste, after she had finished throwing up in the courthouse ladies’ room. She looked as insubstantial as a pond reflection beside her client. Eleanor Royden’s newly tinted blonde hair shone like a helmet in an upswept coiffure, and her black silk dress reminded no one of bereavement. Perhaps its solemnity was marred by its low neckline and the diamond necklace at her throat. Eleanor’s makeup was vivid, and reapplied at short intervals, in case a photographer should be aiming at her with a telephoto lens. She had watched the entire proceedings with bright-eyed interest, and a cheery briskness that suggested that this was someone else’s trial. Perhaps it was A. P. Hill’s. She was growing thinner by the day as the circles under her eyes deepened.

Eleanor sometimes smiled at the jurors, or nodded in sympathetic agreement with the judge’s ruling, but A. P. Hill remained impassive, as if her life, not Eleanor’s, depended on the verdict. Now she tottered to the front of the courtroom to begin her summation. The jurors were watching her, expressionless, while Eleanor gave her a grinning thumbs-up sign that almost sent her back to the ladies’ room.

A. P. Hill took a deep breath and began. “I’m here to defend Eleanor Royden, not necessarily to praise her. I hope that Jeb and Eleanor Royden do not become the symbolic middle-class couple of the Nineties, because as a nation we deserve better role models than these two shallow, selfish, alienated creatures. But I do think they should have stayed together-because they deserved each other.

“The prosecution has gone to great pains to show you how heartless Eleanor Royden was to have shot her husband and his new wife while they slept, and of course I can’t stand up here and say that anybody, any victim, deserves to die, but…” She paused here, and shook her head. “I’d have to say that Jeb and Staci came close.

“The legal community here in Roanoke knew Jeb Royden as a capable attorney, a good friend, and a community leader. They all told you what a nice guy he was-and so he was-among his equals. But there was another side to Jeb Royden that his colleagues, his fellow officers of the court, never saw: Jeb the bully; Jeb the adolescent, addicted to self-gratification; Jeb the domestic tyrant, whose arrogance knew no bounds.

“Jeb Royden made a lot of money. He thought that made him important-certainly more important than fluffy blonde Eleanor, whose very food and clothing came from his bounty. He thought he was entitled to have his own way in all things because he was the one who mattered. Eleanor didn’t matter. She was just another one of Jeb Royden’s possessions, as bought and paid for as his sports car. And as replaceable.