“That’s why I need to talk with you. We’ve only got one chance. And frankly, it’s not much of a chance. But we’ve got to take it.”
She turned away. “I still can’t talk to you.”
“If it’s because you’re working, I can come back-”
“No. It’s not that. I just… can’t talk to you.”
“Carrie, Ray’s life is literally on the line here. If we-”
“Are you listening to me, Ben?” The sudden increase in volume took them both by surprise. “I’m not saying I won’t talk to you.” Her eyes rose until they found his. “I’m saying you don’t want me to talk to you.”
“So what do you think?”
They had traveled in silence for the first ten minutes of the drive downtown, and Baxter thought that was long enough. “Do you believe Sheila?”
Mike didn’t mince words. “No.”
“You’re kidding.”
“She’s holding something back. Or flat out lying.”
“Really. Well, tell me this, super-sleuth. What possible motive could Sheila Knight have for lying about whether her deceased best friend was sexually molested?”
Mike thought a long time before answering. “When they were young, Erin and Sheila were nearly inseparable. They spent lots of time together. As Sheila said herself, she was a frequent guest at Erin’s house. She came over for play dates, study nights, birthday parties.” He paused. “And sleepovers.”
“So you did break up with Ray,” Ben said. “And you did it for a reason. A reason other than the fact that he’d been convicted of murder.”
After Carrie made some excuse to her supervisor, they’d left the store and begun strolling down the sidewalks of the outdoor mall. It was a gorgeous Tulsa day, and the bustling human and vehicular traffic gave them a feeling of anonymity. “It’s been so long.”
“But there was something else.”
“Yes. Even before he was arrested. After our engagement.”
Ben felt an aching in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t like the direction this was taking. But he had to press on. “What happened?”
“It’s not good.”
Which might explain why Ray hadn’t wanted Ben to talk to her. “Still-”
“It won’t help your case.”
“Let me be the judge of that.”
“I’m telling you-”
“I know you’re trying to help me, Carrie. And trying to help Ray. Or not hurt him, at any rate. But if I don’t make a breakthrough soon, we’re going to go down in flames at the habeas hearing. And if I have to swallow some bad information to get to that breakthrough-so be it.”
Carrie looked away. Her eyes were fixed somewhere above them, in the clouds. “He hit me.”
Ben closed his eyes. “Ray?”
“Yeah. We were at a club. I don’t remember what the row was about. I think maybe I didn’t like the way he ogled the chick at the next table. Something real important like that. Anyway, we’d probably both had too much to drink. Tempers flared. We took it outside.” She shook her head. “That was my mistake. If we’d stayed inside the club, it never would’ve happened. But once we were alone in the parking lot…”
“How bad was it?”
“Bad enough. I mean, he only actually struck me twice. But it hurt like hell. Big black bruises. The doctor said he almost dislocated my jaw.”
Thank God the prosecution never found this witness, Ben thought.
“ ’Course I told the doctor I had fallen down the stairs or something stupid like that. But I don’t think he believed it for a minute.”
“Was Ray… sorry?”
“Oh yes. Immediately. He picked me up off the gravel and held me. Stroked me. Said he didn’t know what came over him. But that didn’t change anything.”
Ben touched her arm gently, steering her toward Queenie’s, a popular sandwich emporium.
“That’s when I should’ve broken off the engagement. But I didn’t. I already had so much invested in Ray. So much time and energy and love. I kept telling myself, it was just a one time thing. Just an accident. It will never happen again.”
“And did it?”
“No. But there was never a chance. Two days later, he was arrested.”
“And he hasn’t been free since.”
“Right.” Carrie’s eyes dropped. Her blunt-cut blonde hair hung like a veil around her face. “I tried to be the support he needed. But the memory wouldn’t go away. How could I forget what he had done? How he had… violated me. My trust. And then, in the courtroom, when I heard him accused of all those horrible things…”
Ben could see where this was going. And as she had predicted-he didn’t like it.
“After I heard them accuse Ray of that atrocity, I kept saying to people, ‘Not my Ray. He couldn’t do that.’ But I had seen him lose his temper. I had seen him be… violent.”
“Carrie, I don’t want you to think I’m making light of domestic violence, but there’s a big difference between what he did to you in that parking lot and what happened to the Faulkner family.”
“I know. I know.” She clenched her hands together, pressing them against her chest. “But after that, I could never be certain. That’s why I broke it off with him, eventually. I felt like a heel. I know all our friends thought I was being faithless. Bailing out when the going got tough. But I simply couldn’t be sure. And if I couldn’t be sure-I couldn’t be with him.”
She brushed her hair back. Ben could see the pain this conversation was causing her, deeply etched in every line of her face. “I could’ve been faithful to a man on death row-I really could’ve,” she said, as if pleading her case to an imaginary court. “But not if I suspected he was guilty.”
Long after dark, Ben tossed his briefcase into its designated spot by the coffee table and collapsed onto the ratty sofa that was the centerpiece of his living room. What a day. He was bushed. All he wanted to do now was rest. And as it happened, for once, he had managed to get inside the house and make it up to his room without being confronted by tenants who couldn’t make their rent, without having Joni assault him with a host of bills and maintenance problems, without even having Giselle purr and whine and demand immediate attention. For once, they had all just left him alone.
He missed them.
A sad state of affairs, he told himself, when you’re dependent upon coworkers and fussy felines for social interaction. Hadn’t he resolved that he was going to get out, that he was going to start having a life? That he was going to be more like Christina and less like himself? Of course, he’d been swamped with this Goldman habeas work. It was as dire as a case could be-life and death in the truest sense. He had to give it his full attention, he had to work long hours.
But that was just an excuse and he knew it. Yes, this was an important case, and yes, he wanted to do everything possible to help Ray, to prevent a horrible injustice. But when had it ever been any different? He always had some big case going, some crusade that demanded his full devotion. Because when all was said and done, working long hours at the office was preferable to coming home and being… alone. Again.