"They won't be blatant." I am preoccupied with ATE again as Anna and I sit across from each other. "Their attack will be covert, like the FBI. And in truth, the FBI ran her off for the same reason. She was their rising star, a computer wizard, a helicopter pilot, the first female member of the Hostage Rescue Team," I rash through Lucy's resume as Anna's expression turns increasingly skeptical. We both know it is unnecessary for me to recite all this. She has known Lucy since Lucy was a child. "Then the gay card was played." I can't stop. "Well, she left them for ATF and here we go again.
On and on, history repeated. Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because you are consuming yourself with Lucy's problems when your own loom larger than Mont Blanc."
My attention wanders out the window. A blue jay helps himself to the bird feeder, feathers ruffling, sunflower seeds falling and peppering the snowy earth like lead shot. Pale fingers of sunlight probe the overcast morning. I nervously turn my coffee cup in small circles on the table. My elbow throbs slowly and deeply as we eat. Whatever my problems are, I resist talking about them, as if to voice them will somehow give them life_as if they don't have life already. Anna doesn't push. We are quiet. Silverware clinks against plates and snow drifts down more thickly, frosting shrubbery and trees and hovering foggily over the river. I return to my room and take a long, hot bath, my cast propped on the side of the tub. I am dressing with difficulty, realizing that I am not likely to ever master tying shoes with one hand, when the doorbell rings. Moments later, Anna knocks and asks me if I am decent.
Thoughts bloom darkly and roll like storms. I am not expecting company. "Who is it?" I call out.
"Buford Righter," she says.
Chapter 4
BEHIND HIS BACK, THE CITY COMMONWEALTH'S AT -torney is called many things: Easy Righter (he is weak), Righter Wrong (wishy-washy), Fighter Righter (anything but), Booford (scared of his own shadow). Always proper, always appropriate, Righter is always the Virginia gentleman he was trained to be in the Caroline County horse country of his roots. No one loves him. No one hates him. He is neither feared nor respected. Righter has no fire. I can't recall ever seeing him emotional, no matter how cruel or heart-wrenching the case. Worse, he is squeamish when it comes to the details I bring to the forum, preferring to focus on points of law and not the appalling human messiness left by its violations.
His avoidance of the morgue has resulted in his not being as well versed in forensic science and medicine as he ought to be. In fact, he is the only seasoned prosecutor I know who doesn't seem to mind stipulating cause of death. In other words, he allows the paper record to speak for the medical examiner in the courtroom. This is a travesty. To me it constitutes malpractice. When the medical examiner isn't in the courtroom, then, in a sense, neither is the body, and jurors don't envision the victim or what he went through during the process of dying violently. Clinical words on protocols simply don't evoke the terror or the suffering, and for this reason, it is usually the defense, not the prosecution, who wants to stipulate cause of death.
"Buford, how are you?" I hold out my hand and he glances at my cast and my sling, and down at my untied shoelaces and my shirttail hanging out. He has never seen me in anything less than a suit and in a setting that befits my professional rank, and his brow knits into an expression that is supposed to evince genteel compassion and understanding, the humility and caring of those handpicked by God to rule the rest of us lesser creatures. His type abounds among the first families of Virginia, a privileged, dusty people who have refined the skill of disguising their elitism and arrogance beneath a heavy aura of burden, as if it is so damn hard to be them.
"The question is, how are you?" he says, sitting back down in Anna's handsome oval living room with its vaulted ceiling and view of the river.
"I really don't know how to answer that, Buford." I choose a rocking chair. "Every time someone asks, my mind reboots." Anna must have just gotten the fire going and has vanished, and I have the uneasy sensation that her absence is about more than her being politely unobtrusive.
"No small wonder. Don't even know how you're able to function after what you've been through." Righter speaks with a syrupy Virginia drawl. "Sure am sorry to barge in like this, Kay, but something's come up, something unexpected. Nice place, isn't it?" He continues to survey his surroundings. "She build or was it already here?"
I don't know or care.
"You two are pretty close, I gather," he adds.
I am not sure if he is making small talk or fishing. "She's been a good friend," I reply.
"I know she thinks the world of you. All of which is to say," he goes on, "that you couldn't be in better hands right now, in my opinion."
I resent his implying that I am in anybody's hands, as if I am a patient on a ward, and I say so.
"Oh, I see." He continues his scan of oil paintings on pale rose walls, of art glass and sculptures and European furniture. "Then you don't have a professional relationship? Never have?"
"Not literally," I reply testily. "I have never had an appointment."
"She ever prescribe medications for you?" he blandly goes on.
"Not that I recall."
"Well, can't believe it's almost Christmas." Righter sighs, his attention wandering back in from the river, back to me.
To use a Lucy term, he looks dorky in Bavarian button-up heavy green wool pants tucked into fleece-lined rubber boots with big tread. He wears a plaid Burberry-type wool sweater buttoned up to his chin, as if he can't decide whether he will climb a mountain or play golf in Scotland this day.
"Well," he says, "let me tell you why I'm here. Marino called a couple hours ago. There's been an unanticipated development in the Chandonne case."
The stab of betrayal is instant. Marino has told me nothing. He hasn't even bothered to see how I am doing this morning.
"I'll give you a summation as best I can." Righter crosses his legs and demurely places his hands in his lap, a thin wedding band and University of Virginia class ring glinting in lamplight. "Kay, I'm sure you're aware the news of what happened at your house and the subsequent apprehension of Chandonne has been broadcast all over. I mean all over. I'm sure you've followed it and can appreciate the magnitude of what I'm about to say."
Fear is a fascinating emotion. I have studied it endlessly and often tell people the best example of how it works is to recall the reaction of another driver you have pulled in front of and almost hit. Panic instantly turns to rage and the other person lays on the horn, makes obscene gestures or, these days, shoots you. I go through the progression completely, flawlessly, Shrill fear turning to fury. "I've not followed the news deliberately and certainly won't appreciate the magnitude of it," I reply. "I never appreciate having my privacy violated."
"The murders of Kim Luong and Diane Bray created a lot of attention, but nothing like this_the murder attempt on you," he continues. "I'm supposing, then, you didn't see The Washington Post this morning?"
I just stare at him, seething.
"Front-page photo of Chandonne in the stretcher being carried into the E.R., his hairy shoulders sticking out of the sheets like some sort of long-haired dog. Of course, his face was covered by bandages, but you certainly could get the sense of how grotesque he is. And the tabloids. You can imagine. Werewolf in Richmond, Beauty and the Beast, that sort of thing." Disdain creeps around the edges of his voice, as if sensationalism is obscene, and I am subjected to an unwanted image of him making love to his wife. I can envision him fucking with his socks on. I suspect he would consider sex an indignity, the primitive judge of biology overruling his higher self. I have heard rumors. In the men's room, he won't use the urinals or toilets in front of anybody. He is a compulsive hand-washer. All of this is buzzing through my mind as he continues to sit so properly and disclose the wilting public exposure Chandonne has caused me.