'A third.' Just contemplating the state of my finances made my temples throb. There was some bureaucratic fuss until the guard produced a notary's seal, required to validate any power of attorney. Another reality tidbit overlooked in the pages of my I now realized woefully unrealistic novels.
I signed and sent the document back through. Chic's eyes caught on the note I'd included. 'What's this?'
'For Adeline.'
'Genevieve's sister? You really think she wants to hear from you?'
He unfolded the paper without asking and regarded my adolescent script.
I didn't kill your sister.
Tell me if there's anything I can do.
I'm so sorry for your loss.
He refolded the note, and it disappeared into a pocket. His look said it all.
'You get accused and you're no longer allowed to have a human reaction?' I said.
'You are, but no one's gonna believe it. If you're sincere now, you'll get chewed up. Everyone'll think you playin' to the jury pool. You're in a game. The sooner you figure that out, the better.'
'So what can I do?'
'Look innocent.'
'I am innocent.'
'Look it.'
We sat in silence for a few moments, staring at each other. The guard strode over. 'Time's up.'
Chic's stare didn't so much as tic over to pick up the guard's reflection in the glass. 'I just got here.'
'You'll exit to the right. Got it?'
Chic sucked his teeth and screwed his mouth to the side. 'Why, sho'.' And then, to me, 'Hang tough. I'm here for whatever and all of it.' He pushed back with a screech, and then his footfall echoed off the cold concrete walls.
The next morning I was summoned by my lawyers back down that ammonia-reeking hall to the Plexiglas Pavilion. They waited in their chairs, outlines bleached by strong morning light, one leaning forward, elbows resting on knees, lips pouched against the weight of the decisions to come, the other canted back in his chair, thumb dimpling a cheek, forefinger riding his upper lip. Both of their heads were bowed as if in prayer. Before their features resolved, I had a strong sense I was walking into the famous picture of JFK and Bobby taken when Khrushchev's freighters were steaming toward Cuba.
I understood their concern. I'd already proven less than pliable as a client. Despite their advice, I'd elected not to waive my right to a speedy trial. Bail had been denied, a cover-yer-ass move by the down-the-middle judge we'd drawn, cowed by mounting media fanfare. The prospect of spending maybe years locked up awaiting trial was terrifying enough to compromise my judgment on the matter. My lawyers and I had also gone a few rounds over the plea. My choices were guilty or not guilty. The temporary-insanity issue would be visited in a second trial phase only if I were found guilty.
Donnie Smith, hair tamped down from his post-gym shower, picked up right where we'd left off. 'Your pleading not guilty will antagonize the judge, the public, the press, and the court. And it's that group that decides your fate. Not just those twelve people. You have to plead guilty to help you gain credibility on the question of impaired sanity. Given the media, Harriman's gonna try the case, and you can bet she'll mop the floor with us in the guilt phase, leave you stained. We need to get to sanity quickly, with a clean slate, and without dragging you through a trial that you are unlikely to win.'
My heart felt like it was fluttering my shirt. 'But I didn't do it. And not a single fucking person believes me.'
Not the first time they'd encountered such a claim. Blank eyes. Patience, edging to impatience.
'So your position is you don't remember that you didn't kill her?' Donnie spoke slowly, as if to a developmentally delayed child.
I didn't answer. It sounded stupid to me, too. As before, each minute with them contributed to my growing fear that I had no defense. And that if I didn't want to die in a prison cell, I'd have to admit to something I did not remember.
My frustration bubbled to the surface. 'Is anyone trying to find out who really did this? Or are they all too busy playing trial games like us?'
Donnie and Terry glanced at each other uneasily.
'What?' I said, worried. 'What's that look?'
'LAPD turned over something troubling yesterday in discovery,' Donnie said. 'Genevieve called you the night of the murder at 1:08 A.M., approximately twenty minutes before her murder.'
'I was told that already.'
Donnie removed a sealed LAPD evidence bag from his briefcase. It contained a CD. 'And she left you a message.'
'Is it bad?' I asked. No answer. Agitated, I stood, walked a tight circle, sat back down again. 'That's why they changed my voice mail access.'
Donnie popped the CD into his laptop and clicked a few buttons.
The familiar voice, back from the dead, was haunting. 'I wanted to tell you I'm with someone new. I hope I hurt you. I hope you feel this pain. I hope you feel so alone. Good-bye.'
It took me a few moments to recover from hearing Genevieve. I sat there with my heartbeat pounding in my ears and my lawyers staring at me with calm concern. Her voice, the accent, those nuanced pronunciations. But the invasiveness of the message's presentation also unnerved me. The cops had heard Genevieve's last words to me before I had. The message like the rest of my life, frozen by the prosecution and available to me only secondhand hammered the final nail into the coffin of my rights and privacy.
I didn't remember hearing Genevieve's message that night, of course. The bitterness of it clashed with where I thought she and I had left things between us, but she'd been moody and difficult at times, so the tone was hardly shocking. Under no circumstances could I imagine it making me want to harm Genevieve. But, I realized with mounting dread, the message would play nicely to a jury primed on photos of her abused body.
'This shores up motive even more,' Donnie said gently. 'So we need a simple version to sell to the jury. Temporary insanity's your only way out of this. It's clean. It's self-evident. It's supported by the facts. The brain tumor did it.'
I returned his exasperated stare.
He pressed on. 'We lay out the facts, you'll walk out of here. You can worry about the rest of it from your own bed someday.' He studied my expression, finding something in it he didn't like. 'We play this wrong with what we have stacked against us…'
The thought of hard time made me feint fetal, my shoulders hunching, my shoes lifting an inch or two from the floor before I stopped my knees' rise to my chest. In the movies, no matter what, prison is the same. You go in scared, and they call you 'fish' and bet cigarettes as to how long it'll be until you cry. You cell with Bubba, and he breaks you in, and then you become hardened, dead inside, and you barter for candy bars and have to shiv some guy in the shop or his buddies will gang-rape you, and then you get gang-raped anyway just for good measure.
'You're a crime writer,' Terry said calmly. 'Allow us to help you see how this will read to a jury. Let us take you through it again.'
And they did, right from the sordid beginning. I sat in my hard little chair, dry-mouthed and stunned by as they call it on TV the preponderance of evidence. I'd known the elements, of course, but hearing them edited together into a tale of my murdering Genevieve was chilling. When my nerves settled, I had room for a single lucid thought.
I'm fucked.
My righteousness about the plea would have to dissolve under the pressures and realities I was facing. I could offer a gut sense of my innocence and little more. Nothing felt more important than staying alive, than staying free. Not even announcing to the world that I was a murderer.
When they finished, I wanted to give the answer I'd been rehearsing in my head but found myself frozen. I folded my hands on the pitted wood and stared at them, and then I heard myself say, 'I won't plead guilty to a murder I don't think I committed.'
The attorneys' heads swiveled to face each other, their worst fear realized. They appeared as shocked as I
