Farrell was almost done. 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he said. 'I'm a defense attorney. It's what I do for a living. I defend people and try to convince a jury that the evidence in a case doesn't support a Guilty verdict.'
He drew a breath. A trial was a war. You had to do whatever it took to win it. Now he'd gone this far and there was no turning back. He had worked tirelessly to convince the good people of this jury that he was a man of honor, worthy of their trust. And now he was going to lie to them.
God help him, he had to do it.
This case is different,' he said. 'Once in a career, a guy like me gets a chance to tell a jury that his client isn't just Not Guilty, but that he's innocent.
'And that's what I'm telling you now – Mark Dooher is innocent. He didn't do it. I know you know this, too. I know it.'
Part Five
CHAPTER FOURTY FOUR
The way Dooher saw it, his acquittal should have restored him to his accustomed power, influence, and gentility. He'd been cleared of the charges, after all. That should have been the end of it and perhaps would have been, if Wes Farrell had not led the charge of rats from the ship, adding to the illusion that it was, in fact, sinking.
He supposed it was because he had never cultivated friends. The way it had always worked was that people came to Mark Dooher. Not the other way around. They had always needed something he could give them – position, money, esteem – but he did not need them. He would give no one the satisfaction.
He had been the center of Sheila's life, providing her with a house and an income and children, but even in the early years she had never been his equal. That had been tacitly understood.
And Farrell? Until the trial, Wes Farrell wouldn't have dared presume that he was on the same level as Dooher. The man's entire existence had been lived at a rung below Dooher's. His clearly defined role had always been as fawning admirer to whom Mark permitted easy access because Farrell amused him.
Flaherty – a friend? Hardly. The Archbishop was a man who needed Dooher's advice and guidance, and who paid for it. If he chose to believe that Dooher harbored any real affection for him, that was a need of his own nature, not Mark's.
Their social life had always been directed by Sheila. The occasional dinner in restaurants or at the Olympic, a night at the theater or a movie with longstanding acquaintances – that had been about the extent of it. Mark never thought he'd miss it and he didn't; at least not specifically. Dooher should have realized that Sheila's friends would shun both him and his new wife, but he didn't miss anyone's personal company.
There was an emptiness, though, a social void that filled him with a sense of isolation.
It wasn't fair and just, he thought. The ostracism was as complete as it would have been if he'd been found Guilty. He and Christina had married within a couple of months of the trial and now, between them, had no friends.
And very little business.
Flaherty had led that abandonment. Somehow, sometime during the trial, the Archbishop had lost faith in his innocence. He had taken no joy in his acquittal; hadn't even called to offer his congratulations. In the weeks after the trial, the legal work from the Archdiocese had slowly but inexorably dried up, and with it had gone the ancillary contracts from the network of agencies, charities, schools, and businesses that were one way or the other tied to the Catholic Church in San Francisco.
McCabe & Roth held on without the Archdiocesan billings for seventeen months, though the layoffs began almost immediately. First to go were the word processors. Then the attorneys began having to double up on secretaries. Next the junior associates started getting their notices. Morale went into the toilet. A splinter group of four senior partners left with their clients to form their own firm, getting away from the Dooher stranglehold.
Christina went back to work but there was a lot of barely concealed resentment about her situation. Engaged, then married to the managing partner, she was avoided by the other associates and mistrusted by the partners.
Still, she was a game fighter and threw herself into her role of reestablishing her husband's credibility. She and Mark were together for the long haul. If none of the lead attorneys would assign work to her, then she would do business development, taking prospective clients to lunch or dinner, trying to help any way she could.
She fought the guilt that she had doubted him. Her actions must make that up to him. She would stand by him when the world had let him go. It was romantic and noble and filled her with a sense of mission and meaning. They would make what her parents had made – a life built on trust.
She told herself that she did not get pregnant to save the marriage. It had always been her dream to have children, a family, a normal life. But things with Mark had gotten difficult – his moods, darker than anything she had seen in their early going. But the failure of his firm, his power dissipated, that was devastating to a man.
A few weeks ago, it had come to a head.
'Mark, please.'
'Just don't touch me, all right? It's not working. It's not going to work.'
He violently threw the covers off the bed in frustration, then stood up and immediately snatched at his bathrobe, wrapping it around him. Turning, he grabbed the comforter from off the floor and threw it back on the bed, snapping at her. 'Cover yourself, would you, for God's sake!'
'I don't need to cover myself.'
His jaw set, his angry eyes ran down the length of her body, over the protruding belly, the swollen breasts. She could not believe he could look at her like that. She loved the way her body had changed in the past eight months.
'This just isn't doing it for me right now,' he said.
'What isn't?'
'Us, if you must know. You and me. All these doubts.'
'What doubts? I don't have-'
'You don't talk about them, but I see them. You think I don't see what you're thinking? You think it turns me on to see you trying so Goddamn hard?'
'I'm not trying anything, Mark. Come to bed. Just hold me. We don't have to do anything.'
'I know don't have to do anything. I want to do something, don't you understand that? But I can't. I can't with you! Nothing's happening.'
He swore and stalked out of the room.
He hadn't felt any guilt or regret. When he got arrested, it actually played into his hands. Christina was sympathetically drawn to the grieving spouse, who was tragically and wrongfully charged with murder. She would help defend him.
It had been beautiful. He couldn't have planned it better.
But now Christina was ruining everything.
She pulled a flannel nightshirt over her head and came downstairs, turned on the reading light next to where he sat in the library, then crossed the room and lowered herself on to the couch. 'I don't want to feel like it's not working with us when we're about to have this baby. I don't like you thinking I'm not attractive like this.'
'My problem is not how you look. I said it upstairs. It's us. The way we are.'
She settled back into the cushions. Her eyes flicked to the glass next to him, nearly empty.
'Yeah, I've been drinking. I might be drinking more. Is that a problem?'
She stared across at him. 'Why are you so hostile to me? What have I done, except stand by you, support you? Don't you want this baby, Mark? Is that it?'
Defiantly, he drained the rest of his drink before he answered her. 'No, that's not it.' He got up abruptly, grabbed his glass and went over to the bar. He poured another stiff one. 'I have always dealt from power, Christina. It's the only way I'm comfortable. What works is when you want me, and I see how you look at me now.'
'I don't look at you any way, Mark.'
But he was shaking his head. 'You loved who I was when you met me, when I was running the firm, when I had a big dick…'