“Gentlemen, I hardly think we’re trying this case here,” Carl Shepp said ponderously. He stood up. “Vern, I’d appreciate your cleaning up those other details we mentioned and bringing the file over to my office in the morning. Dave and I will go over it and make a recommendation as to the specific charge.”
They moved me to a cell. It was surprisingly large and clean, with heavy steel casement windows, a bed and chair bolted to the floor, a sink and toilet, a steel shelf for personal possessions. Journeyman followed me in. The door was slammed shut and locked and Journeyman was told to sing out when he wanted out.
I lay on the bed. I don’t think I’ve ever been so tired. It felt good to get my bare feet off the cold floors. Journeyman went over and looked out the window, hands in his hip pockets, black suit jacket hiked up.
“If you got two dollars or two million, you get the same effort from Journeyman,” he said. “But it’s nice to know. What have you got?”
“I make eight thousand. I’ve got at least seven thousand equity in a house, a car worth about five hundred and about twenty-one hundred savings.”
He came over and stood by the bed and looked down at me. “Paul, did you kill that woman? Now don’t answer right away. What would happen if lawyers in this country didn’t defend guilty folk? Whole judicial system would go to smash. I’ve seen a hell of a lot. If you killed her, it won’t prejudice me against you, boy.”
“I didn’t kill her. If I had, I’d tell you. It happened exactly the way I told them downstairs.”
“That story is no damn good,” he said.
“It’s the truth. It has to be good.”
“Being the truth doesn’t make it good. Being the truth doesn’t make it useful. That’s the damnedest sorriest story I ever heard. I can’t take a thing like that into court. You want to get out of this or don’t you?”
“I want to get out of it.”
“All right, then. Anything else we could use. The gun jammed. You were trying to free it. It was pointed at her head. You’ve been scared so bad you’ve been lying ever since.”
“No,” I said.
“Everything went black and when you woke up, there she was.”
“No.”
“It was a suicide pact and you lost your nerve.”
I got up off the bed. I’ve always been mild. I didn’t feel mild then. I don’t think I’ve ever talked louder to a human being. “No! None of that stuff. Because you know what it means? It might possibly get me in the clear, or a short sentence or something, but it gets the two of them all the way in the clear. Can’t you understand that? They plotted it and did it and they want to get way with it. If I get clear I’ll have to go after them and kill both of them. If I get a short sentence it will be the same. They thought I was a damn white mouse. I’m not. The only thing I’ll go into court with will be the truth, and if you don’t want to take the case, somebody else will.”
He waited a long time, until I had cooled down. “You just better think it over, Paul. Stick with this and the whole sovereign state of Florida is going to fall on your head like it fell off a cliff.”
“So I can’t—”
“Shut up. Your story is so wild they’re going to bring down some people to give you some tests and make sure you’re sane enough to try. Do you want to save yourself, or do you want to be some kind of martyr. Don’t answer now. Think it over. I’ve got some checking to do. I’ll see you sometime tomorrow.”
After he left and I was alone I knew that he was both right and wrong. Right in that it was my testimony against theirs, and I was the introvert. They were the extroverts. On the stand I would sweat and stammer and shake, and should I say the sun would rise tomorrow, it would sound like a lie. Jeffries, rugged, clean-cut, saddened, manly, would convince them. I knew in advance how Linda would be. As my wife she could not be forced to testify against me. But she could volunteer her testimony. She would try to make it look as though she were standing by me. And would damn me, while she smiled sadly.
I wondered why I had not thought of all this before — of how justice and truth are so unpredictably subject to the stage presence of the accused. I knew that Linda and Jeff had thought of it.
Waking up from an illusion is always painful, and often something that takes a long time. My awakening from the illusion of Linda had been painful, but quick. It had happened in a fraction of a second, during that moment after her contrived faint when she put her hands on my arm and I had looked into her eyes. Living with evil does not make it more apparent. I could now look back over the years of Linda and see all the things that I had misinterpreted because I had looked at them through the distorting glass of my own gratitude to her.
That night it was a long time before I could get to sleep.
After the morning meal I was told that Linda had come to visit me and had brought things for me. My first impulse was to tell them to have her leave the things and go. But I was curious about her, about how she would carry it off. Visiting me was something she had to do to preserve the illusion of the story the two of them had plotted.
She came with clothing over her arm, with cigarettes and magazines and the portable radio. She wore a plain dark dress and very little make-up. The jailer was very courtly with her.
“Now you can go right in, Mrs. Cowley, and I’ll be back in a half-hour. That’s all that’s allowed.”
I sat on the bed and watched her. “Dear, they told me you could have clothes, but no belt or shoelaces, so I brought the slacks that don’t need a belt, and your moccasins. Here’s the socks and underwear. I’ll just put them right here on this shelf. I guess the cigarettes and magazines can go here too.” She put the clothing on the bed beside me and sat down in the single chair, smiled briefly at me and dug into her purse for her own cigarettes.
“I’ve been talking to Mr. Journeyman, dear. The county is having two specialists come down from Tampa to examine you. They should be here this afternoon, they say. I think it’s for the best. You haven’t acted like yourself for months.”
“Keep right on. It’s almost amusing, Linda.”
“I’ve let everyone know, dear, that I’m going to stand by you no matter what you did. It was a terrible thing, but you were ill, dear. You didn’t know what you were doing. I’m not going to permit myself to be annoyed or hurt by the fantastic tale you’ve been telling them about me.”
I looked at her soft tan throat. I could reach it in two quick steps.
“I suppose Jeff is heartbroken,” I said.
“He’s had a terrible shock. The funeral will be on Saturday, in Hartford. We’ve both had a terrible time with the reporters. They’ve been so persistent.”
“But they got your story, of course.”
“You can’t just refuse to say anything,” she said, a bit smugly. “Jeff is leaving tonight with the body, by train. He’ll have to stay up there a little while. There are a lot of legal details, I understand.”
“The will, I suppose.”
“Yes, and the trust funds. That sort of thing. You’d understand more about that than I would, Paul.”
“Where are you staying?”
“I’m still at the cottage. The rent is paid so I might just as well stay there, don’t you think? Or would you rather have me here in town, dear?”
“You’re incredible, Linda. Incredible.”
“I’m only doing what I think is right,” she said. “They say that if these men from Tampa say you are sane, the trial will be in January. I think you ought to talk to Mr. Journeyman about our own financial arrangements, dear. He could probably arrange about having somebody up there put our house on the market and sell the car and so on. We’ll need money to fight this thing, dear, if they say you are sane.”