Pleasantville (33 page)

“I don't know what their relationship was,” Moore says.

“Did you check the phone records for the Hathorne campaign office?”

“We declined to get a warrant.”

“Why?”

“I didn't think it was pertinent to our investigation.”

“You didn't think it was pertinent to investigate why the victim called the defendant in the days leading up to her death?” He presents it as a given fact, which is what trips Moore up, his eyes going blank, as if they're scrolling through reams of information about the case in the back of his head. He shifts in his chair.

“I, uh, don't know that she did that.”

“You found a number of items in the victim's purse, didn't you?”

More shifting. “Yes.”

“The pager, of course.”

The thing with his tie again. “Yes.”

“Some cosmetics, a wallet, a little money?”

“Yes,” Moore says, glancing past Jay to Nichols. Behind him, Jay can hear the faint squeak of Nichols sitting at the edge of his chair. Jay walks to the clerk's desk beside the bench, reaching into the evidence box for state's exhibit no. 37, the BBDP flyer. He walks it to the witness stand, laying it faceup on the banister.

“This was also among the victim's belongings, wasn't it?”

Moore pushes the sheet of paper an inch or two away from him. “Yes.”

“If the victim had knowledge that these flyers, disparaging Axel Hathorne, were circulating around Pleasantville, wouldn't that be a reason she might have reached out to Mr. Hathorne's campaign manager, Neal, to let him know?”

“Objection, speculation.”

“Overruled,” Keppler says.

“I never said she called him,” Moore says.

“Well, you wouldn't know because you didn't check.”

After getting the detective to repeat, for the fifth or sixth time, that law enforcement found no physical evidence that tied Mr. Hathorne to Alicia Nowell and her murder, Jay sits down, telling the judge and the witness he has no further questions. Maxine Robicheaux, in the gallery, is staring at Jay, sudden doubt on her face. When Keith Morehead leads her and Mitchell out of the courtroom, she seems turned around, lost, even in the few steps it takes to get from her seat to the door. At the close of court, Nichols again asks for some heads-up as to whether Jay is planning to call any witnesses or mount a defense at all. Jay is cagey, knowing he doesn't owe the prosecution a look at his playbook, the thing he has planned for day one of defense testimony.

“I want
to go after Parker.”

“Absolutely not,” Sam says.

It's after six o'clock, and they have all gathered in Jay's office on the eve of what they believe will be Nichols's announcement the following day that the state is resting its case. Sam even brought over a bottle of Macallan from his personal collection, so confident is he that they are that much closer to putting this
whole awful thing behind them. Eddie Mae, who stayed long enough today to see Ellie off safely with Evelyn and Ben, passed out paper cups, and helped herself to a couple of swallows. Neal hasn't held back either, downing three shots in as many minutes. Only Jay and Axel have refrained from drinking this early in the day, or this early in the judicial process, for that matter. Vivian stayed outside on the front porch, smoking a cigarette. Through the windows of the front parlor where they're gathered, Jay can see her hugging herself against the night air. A few doors down, music is pouring out of the Diamond Lounge, a lick of blues guitar followed by a long harmonica note, a wounded man's howl.

“I'm willing to give in on A.G., and anything else he might say on the stand,” Sam says. “I'm willing to forgive him
anything
if he comes through for Neal, but I think it's a grave mistake to turn this into a crusade, especially when we're so close to a win. When this is over, and Neal is acquitted, we can walk back into the mayor's race, heads held high, knowing we didn't sling mud.”

“That's not your decision to make.”

“Neal,” Sam says, turning to his grandson.

Neal, warmed by the whiskey, is sweating. His skin looks dewy and flushed, as if he'd run a mile, as if he's warming up to get back into a fight. “I don't think we need it,” he says, nodding at his grandfather in agreement.

The candidate is leaning against the armrest of one of the room's chairs, his long legs splayed out so far in front of him that the argyle design of his socks is visible. He has his arms crossed. “I feel that I, of all people, ought to abstain from a vote, given that it's my campaign Dad is trying to protect, and the fact that I pushed for this, the injunction and all of it, putting Neal on the line. But let me ask, isn't my brother's testimony enough?”

“All we need to do is dismantle the eyewitness's story,” Neal says.

“And A.G. does that.”

“Parker on the stand just confuses the issue,” Sam says.

Axel stands. “Or worse, like we're making this all about politics.”

“It
is
about politics,” Jay says. “She sent that girl into Pleasantville with an agenda. And here's your chance to air it in open court, what they're doing.”

“Reese Parker isn't the reason that girl was killed,” Sam says.

“You do understand what I'm telling you?” Jay says. “They put a mark on Pleasantville, a test case for the rest of the nation. Some of the biggest names in this city, in this state, including Cynthia Maddox, your supporter, they are funneling money into Wolcott's campaign, not because they want her to win, but because they're willing to fund Parker's work to win the next election and the one after that. If you don't make this plain right now, you will lose, understand? Not just the mayor's race. But everything you fought for during the past forty-plus years. The power of your vote, the power of Pleasantville, you will lose it all.”

The room falls silent.

Axel lowers his head, looking queasy. Neal turns to his grandfather, everything, for him, hinging on Sam's reaction. The man himself clenches his fists at his sides, his dark eyes narrowing behind his spectacles. “Which is why we need to get back out there and fight,” he says, “just like we always have.”

“Pop is right,” Neal says, nodding vigorously, too vigorously, Jay thinks.

“I'll handle Cynthia,” Sam says.

Neal crosses to Jay, putting a hand on his attorney's shoulder, standing so close that Jay can see the dots of sweat above his lip, can smell the whiskey on his breath. The fear is still
there, in the quivering of his lower lip, the searching look in his desperate, bloodshot eyes. “Just get A.G. on the stand.”

Jay spends the rest of his evening at St. Joseph's, where Rolly is up and eating well, thanks to Marisol, who, thank god, really was just going for a cup of coffee. Tonight she brought him ceviche and a T-bone from Tampico, a cantina around the corner from his house in the Heights. He's sitting up in bed, a robe over the bandages and a paper napkin tucked up under his chin. His black hair has been freshly washed and braided, also thanks to Marisol. She's watching
Jeopardy!
on television, her butt in the hospital room's only chair and her bare feet resting on the edge of the bed, near Rolly's waist. Her man awake and alert, she's dressed herself accordingly, in a tight sweater and black jeans. She said hello to Jay when he walked in and not much else. Rolly washes down his steak with a swig from a contraband bottle of Negra Modelo. He snatches the napkin from beneath his chin and wipes his mouth with it. “So what do you want to do?”

“You know what I want to do.”

“Then what the hell are you doing here, man?”

“Well, you
were
shot,” Jay says.

“My own damn fault.” Rolly sits up, using his fists to adjust his position in the bed and wincing from the residual pain in his left shoulder. “But if that earns me a window of grace, let me say my piece now. You think you can handle it?” He looks at Jay, a cockeyed grin forming across his plump, almost ladylike lips. “We're friends, right? I mean, we can call each other that?”

“Yes, sir,” Jay says, smiling faintly.

“I like you, man, I might even love your ass,” Rolly says. “But anything I owed you for shit you've done for me, I paid back years ago. That ain't why I'm here. I don't need your money, I got a job, a good one. That ain't it either. Hell, I'd pay
you
just to see you this up and at it again, this, I don't know,
alive
again,
man. This is you, Jay, this is where you belong, stirring shit the fuck up. And what I did
not
do all this for,” he says, gesturing at the white walls of the hospital room, the monitors, and, yes, the bandages, “is for you to come all this way only to half-ass it. Parker, her crew, they're tromping on your legacy too, shit you and your boys marched for.” He stares down the length of the hospital bed to Jay, who is standing with his head down slightly, his hands tucked into the pockets of his pants, still in the suit he wore to court today.

“It's just the way this works,” he says to Rolly; “it's his game to play, his life. He's my
client
, man.”

“Then counsel him, Counselor.”

Hours later,
just after midnight, the telephone on Jay's bedside table rings, echoing throughout the house. Having just dozed off after a late-night conference at Neal's house, Jay doesn't pick up until the sixth ring. “You son of a bitch,” Reese Parker hisses in his ear, before hanging up, never bothering to identify herself, not that she needed to. He was expecting her call. Though Neal and Sam didn't know it, Rolly either, Jay had actually filed a subpoena two full days ago for her to appear in Judge Caroline Keppler's courtroom. He'd had his eye on this moment all along. He hangs up the phone and rolls back to sleep.

Word of Reese
Parker's expected presence in the courtroom must have gotten out. The 181st District Court is more packed than it was on the morning of opening statements, with a few spectators waiting out in the hallway to see if they might get a spot, if someone faints maybe in the unusually hot courtroom, leaving an extra seat for the next person in line. Johnetta Paul is here; the county clerk, Wayne Duffie; and a few other names on next month's ballot. There are reporters, of course; lawyers from neighboring courtrooms, come to watch; and the families on both sides. The entire Hathorne clan is in the front row of the gallery, behind Jay's client. Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux sit somberly, staring straight ahead, as Nichols stands and announces, just as Jay had expected, “The state rests, Your
Honor.” Keith Morehead, their spokesperson and ardent supporter, has been pushed to the other side of the courtroom because of the overcrowding. He is sitting today beside Ellie, who is behind her father, taking notes for her government class. She and the principal and Mr. Jensen worked out a deal: for a heaping dose of extra credit, Ellie will take notes and deliver a report to the class when the trial is over. She's taken her role seriously, borrowing some authentic-looking steno pads from Lonnie. The pastor smiles at her, patting her on the leg for her good work. Jay can hear their whispers behind him. He looks at his client, seated beside him. It's his last chance to change his mind. But Neal just nods. Behind him, Sam sits with his arms folded. He was not present last night when Jay showed up on Neal's doorstep, when he'd asked him, point-blank, why he was interested in politics in the first place, what any of this meant to him if it wasn't about protecting the work of men and women of his grandfather's generation. “Any gratitude you owe Sam is for that, not for taking you in,” he said, alluding to the family secrets. “You have to do what
you
think is right.”

And when Neal had grown quiet, chewing on his bottom lip, Jay said to him, stoking a buried rage, “You really think you would have been charged if Sandy Wolcott weren't running for mayor, if Parker weren't involved?”

“Mr. Porter?” the judge says.

After a perfunctory motion to dismiss the case for insufficient evidence, which Keppler denies, Jay is free to start. “The defense calls Reese Parker.”

Nichols is on his feet too. “Your Honor, may we approach?”

Keppler waves them both forward.

There's a low murmur rolling through the courtroom. Lonnie is watching the commotion from the last row of the gallery. At the bench, the D.A. makes clear his objection to this witness. “On what grounds, Mr. Nichols?”

“Relevance, for one.”

“The victim was working for Ms. Parker when she was assaulted,” Jay says. “I expect this witness to shed light on why she was in Pleasantville.”

“Sounds relevant to me,” the judge says.

Nichols looks stunned. “Based on what evidence?”

“Well, let's let the woman take the stand and find out.”

“He's trying to bring in stuff that has nothing to do with this trial.”

“If she knows anything about the girl's last hours, it does,” Keppler says.

“He's been picking at this for weeks now,” Nichols says. “Ms. Parker has repeatedly said she never hired Alicia Nowell, that the girl wasn't one of hers.”

“You know, for someone who claims he didn't know this witness was going to be called, who claims he had little time to attempt to interview her, you sure do know a lot about the inner workings of your boss's campaign,” Keppler says, eyeing him over the rims of her glasses. “Bring her in,” she says, before nodding to her clerk to find someone to come check on the heating system.

Reese Parker dressed up for this.

She pressed a suit, tamed her blond, overprocessed, almost white hair into a chic sweep off her face. She put on panty hose and pinned a demure brooch to her lapel, a small star, glistening stones in red, white, and blue: rubies, diamonds, and tiny sapphires. She raises her right hand, smiling through her oath. All the way up until she's plopped her considerable heft into the swiveling witness chair, she never stops smiling. “Good morning, Mr. Porter,” she says, addressing him before he's even looked up from his notes on the lectern.

“Spell your name please,” he says.

“R-E-E-S-E P-A-R-K-E-R.”

“And where are you employed, Ms. Parker?”

“I am currently doing some consulting work for the Wolcott for mayor campaign.” She glances at the jury, another smile for the ladies in the first row, as if she imagines she might as well try to pick up a few votes while she's here.

“For how long?”

“The campaign hired me six months or so before the general election.”

“And what are your duties with the campaign?”

“I consult.”

“On?”

The smile again. “Well, I wouldn't want to give away any trade secrets.”

“Objection, Your Honor,” Jay says. “Witness is being unresponsive.”

“Sustained,” Keppler says coolly.

“You strategize, oversee media buys, raise funds, that sort of thing?”

“Sure.”

“Go over policy?”

“Yes.”

“Print campaign literature?”

Here, Parker hesitates. “Something like that.”

Jay notices she keeps looking over his shoulder toward someone in the back of the courtroom. Dabbing at his forehead, he turns slightly to scan the faces behind him, his eyes landing on Cynthia Maddox. She's in a winter white pantsuit. Of everybody in the courtroom, she has the seat closest to the exit sign. She's made no show of her presence, pointedly sitting herself behind the back of most of the reporters in the courtroom, watching the proceedings silently. The heat across his forehead spikes. “Ms. Parker, have you heard of an organization called America's Tomorrow?”

Parker blanches, her skin going nearly as white as her hair.

Biting through another stiff smile, she says, “Yes, I've heard of it.”

“Is it a political action committee?”

“I believe so.”

“You do any consulting work for them?”

“Objection, relevance,” Nichols says.

“Sustained.”

Keppler shoots Jay a look from the bench.

He'll have to come at this a different way.

Jay walks across the well between the lectern and the clerk's desk, reaching into the box of evidentiary material for exhibit 37, the flyer. As he did with Detective Moore, he lays the flyer in front of the witness chair. It's on his walk back to the lectern that he again catches sight of Keith Morehead. In the front row of the gallery, positioned just to the left of Neal, their faces are almost side by side, though Morehead is a few inches behind the defendant. Jay can't believe he never noticed it before, the stark resemblance, the same nut brown skin and the hooded eyes. If he had to guess, he would put the difference in their heights at no more than an inch, and if either one of them was standing on a dark street corner, he might easily mistake one for the other.

The heat spreads down the sides of his neck, across his damp chest.

“Is there a question, Your Honor?” Nichols says.

Jay swings back around, stumbling slightly, flustered by a sudden, creeping suspicion. He leans against the lectern to steady himself, staring at his own handwritten words jumping across the legal pad in front of him.

“Have you seen that flyer before, Ms. Parker?”

Parker surprises him by answering, right off, “Yes.”

“And that's because you wrote it, isn't that right?”

“Objection, leading.”

“Sustained.”

Jay, out of the corner of his eye, watches Morehead next to his daughter.

“Did you write that flyer, Ms. Parker?”

Here Parker chuckles softly, at Mr. Porter's innocent misunderstanding, her look to the jury says. “No, no,” she says. “I just, you know, during a campaign, stuff gets around. I'd heard these were circulating. I'd seen it.”

“Are you telling this court, under oath, that you are not the author of this flyer connecting Axel Hathorne to a bayou development project that would, according to that sheet of paper, negatively affect the residents of Pleasantville?”

Parker's eyes narrow ever so slightly. “No.”

“No, that's not what you're telling the court, or no, you didn't write it?”

“I didn't write it.”

“But you paid for it, right?”

“Me?”
Parker says, carving her answer with a scalpel. “No.”

“That's right. America's Tomorrow paid for it.”

“Objection, Your Honor. Is he testifying now?”

“Sustained.”

“Are you aware that the political action committee America's Tomorrow wrote a check in the amount of three hundred and eleven dollars to print up eight hundred of these flyers?” When she doesn't answer, he says, “Ms. Parker?”

“Objection, Your Honor, lack of foundation.”

“I have the invoice right here. I'm happy to move it into evidence.”

“That's usually how this works,” Keppler says.

During the time it takes the clerk to stamp the back side of Jay's copy of the Prince of Prints invoice and write the evidence number and case file ID on it, Parker has started to breathe
more heavily. She is sitting too close to the microphone, and her ragged breath is amplified across the courtroom. Finally, Jay shoves the invoice in front of her. “Were you aware that the PAC, America's Tomorrow, paid over three hundred dollars to have that flyer printed?”

She smiles tightly. “That amount, no.”

In the jury box, one of the men in the front row frowns. He's not the only one who looks slightly confused. But to Jay, it's as good as a confession. He's ready to ask the question more directly. “Are you, at present, doing any consulting work for the political action committee America's Tomorrow?”

“Objection, relevance,” Nichols says. “We went over this, Your Honor.”

“Overruled,” she says, peering over her glasses.

Jay looks at Parker. “Answer the question.”

She takes so long to say the word that when it finally comes, it is just an echo of what the courtroom has by now already guessed. “Yes,” she says flatly, pushing her chin out in defiance, shooting a cold look across the room at Jay.

“And did you oversee the creation of this flyer?”

“I didn't write it if that's what you mean.”

“No, that's not what I mean.”

The courtroom falls silent for a few seconds.

Overhead, Jay hears the clicking of the broken heating system.

“Did you, Ms. Parker, participate in the creation and distribution of this flyer disparaging the intentions of mayoral candidate Axel Hathorne, who is an opponent of the woman whose campaign you're working on right now?”

“Can you define ‘participate'?”

“Why don't
you
?”

Finally, Parker sighs.

She's grown huffy and impatient.

This is stupid, she might as well be saying. “It was my idea,” she says, perfectly happy to take credit for the maneuver. At the state's table, Nichols lowers his head. Neal turns and looks at his grandfather, behind him, as if he needs Sam to confirm that he actually just heard what he thinks he heard. Sam appears stunned. Parker is unrepentant. “I've done better, and I've done a hell of a lot worse. It's politics.” She shrugs, as if this was the most elementary thing in the world and of absolutely no consequence. “I didn't kill anybody,” she says, looking pointedly across the courtroom at the defendant.

“Are you aware that the victim had one of those very flyers in her purse when she was killed?”

Maxine Robicheaux has a hand on the bar in front of her, gripping the wood.

Parker considers this for a second. “At the time she was killed, no.”

It's another equivocation, and everyone, from row one of the jury to Judge Keppler to Nichols himself, has grown tired of it. Jay actually turns to look behind him, to see if Bartolomo and the other reporters are taking good notes.

And that's when he sees the two empty seats in the front row.

Directly behind him, to the left of the Hathornes, there's a harrowingly hollow space where, just moments ago, two people were sitting: Keith Morehead and Elena Porter. He was about to ask Parker the next question, the answer to which had set this trial in motion: had Reese Parker hired Alicia Nowell to distribute those flyers in the neighborhood of Pleasantville? But he can't get the words out, feels his throat choking on the rising bile of fear clogging up his speech, scrambling his thoughts. He thinks of Morehead putting his hand on Ellie's knee, and feels ill. His back to the judge, the witness, he scans the courtroom from corner to corner looking for his daughter. When his
eyes meet Lonnie's in the back row of the gallery, she sees something in his face that makes her stand and intercept him by the doors. Behind him, the judge calls his name. He ignores her, ignores everyone. “Ellie,” he says to Lonnie. “Where's Elena?”

“She walked out.”

“And Morehead?”

“He was a few steps behind her,” she says. “What's wrong?”

But when the moment comes to put a name to his panic, he finds he can't.

He instantly starts to doubt himself, the madness of what he's thinking.

“Mr. Porter?” Judge Keppler says. “What's going on here?”

“I have to find her,” he says to Lon, to anyone within earshot.

He glances at the judge. “I'm sorry,” he says, before shuffling out of the courtroom. She is standing at the bench now. “Just what do you think you're doing, Mr. Porter? You'll need to return to this courtroom immediately–”

He hears nothing but the door swinging closed behind him.

He's already in the hallway, looking left, looking right.