Stealing Flowers (38 page)

“They’re like newly hatched chicks
screeching for worms,” Una added.

One of Brad Burlington’s understudies was
waiting for me on the fourth floor and whisked me away. I remember
waving to my parents. I was pathetic, but my heart was aching. I
walked with the bailiff and the understudy into Room Forty. “Learn
to be calm,” Brad said from the defense table when he saw me, then
he hugged me. “This is a long process.”

I snuck a peak at the crowd and took my seat
between Brad and his co-defense lawyer, Jerry Becker who stood
nearly as tall as Brad. He wasn’t as tanned or relaxed as Brad, and
furthermore his clean-shaven narrow face, crowned with a short
thick crew cut, made him seem almost too young. He looked unhappy
about something as well, but squeezed my arm when I sat. I sensed
everyone’s attention. The courtroom was packed. I closed my eyes
and tried to keep the feeling of panic from overpowering me.

At eight a.m., the judge, Phil Anderson, an
older slight, perhaps even frail-looking black man, entered the
courtroom. To me, he weighed no more than one hundred and forty
pounds and had grey hair and brown focused eyes. Everyone rose and
he sat in his bench, looking at me with what I took to be
sympathy.

“Criminal action 8753 - 07,” he said softly.
“The United States of America versus Christian Donald Briner Tappet
is on the docket. I have ruled in all the motions except two and
we’ll face these two as they arise. Mr. Burch, are you ready?”

Denzil Burch rose from his seat, a heavy-set
fifty-year-old man with blue eyes. Under normal circumstance, with
his grey hair and his light-blue suit, he would have seemed a
decent-looking sort to me, but right now he appeared evil, and
looked over at me with disdain so that I shuddered. “Your honor,
Keith McCormick will be assisting me.” Keith, like his boss weighed
over two hundred pounds, but was much plainer looking. It was like
the fat attorneys against the thin ones. I turned around to look at
Mary and Stan, and one row back, I saw Susan. She threw me a
kiss.

“Bring in the jury,” the judge
announced.

“What happened to our motions?” I whispered
to Brad.

“The judge won’t hear any more from either
side,” he whispered. “He told us beforehand to stop bellyaching and
that he’d rule on any other motions as the trial progresses.”

“Good Morning,” Mr. Burch said to the jury
once they were assembled and the judge had instructed them. He rose
and glanced down one last time at his notes. “I see that you’ve
been provided with pictures. This is a typical room at The
Manhattan Grand Hyatt such as the one in which the murder of Sally
Tappet took place.” He stepped out from in front of his table, but
it was an awkward maneuver. “You were also given by Keith
McCormick, a succinct corporate portfolio of the Tappet Industrial
structure. Christian is a student of Princeton University and had
very successful years there. He has the means, the connections, the
brains and the desire to take over this massive industrial giant
from his parents.”

He stepped back to his desk to glance at his
notes again. I could see he understood what Brad called the theater
of the courtroom. “The night that Christian murdered Sally Tappet,
Mary and Stan Tappet were going to announce their retirement. We’ll
show that he knew this. Christian is an adopted child, Sally
wasn’t. This is important to keep in mind. We’ll show one of
Christian’s deepest fears: The loss of his inheritance. We’ll
explain later why he had developed this fear and why it became a
legitimate one.”

It was such a fabrication, I could hardly
believe my ears. I felt like jumping up and saying so. Again he
stepped from his desk as if to approach the jurors. “The Tappet
organization is resoundingly successful. It has factories and
production plants in over forty states and twelve countries. Every
single location, margins out pretty nicely, to quote the former
operational vice president of Tappet Industries, Hiroyuki Nakamura.
You of the jury have heard the story of Cain and Abel. This then
will be another version on this age-old theme.

“Everybody realizes that inheritances of
large corporations go bust when the siblings begin a public fight
for control of a family fortune after the death of its founders, or
in this case, retirement, you’d be surprised at how common this is.
What happens is that the lawyers, the shareholders, and the
executives get the bulk of the spoils when such a fight occurs.
We’ll show you that Christian knew this and also planned to be the
richest man on earth by the time he became forty.”

Brad shot to his feet. “Your honor, my
client had no such designs. He thinks the pursuit of money for its
own sake is morally incorrect. The press have convicted my client
in the papers. Maybe Mr. Burch thinks we should just dispense with
this procedure?”

This evoked a smattering of laughter. “Mr.
Burlington, stop being dramatic,” the judge returned in a cranky
manner. “Mr. Burch, do you have any proof for this remark?”

He nodded. “But I will withdraw it, your
honor, for now.”

“Good” the judge said. “Strike the
remark.”

“We’ll show that Christian Tappet,” Mr.
Burch said, turning back to the jury, “took his pent up rage, and
with detached chilling determination, raped and murdered his
sister. We’ll demonstrate that he had his sister’s blood on the
jacket he wore, and also that his fingerprints were found on the
murder weapon, even though an obvious attempt to wipe them away had
been made. We’ll hear from friends and relatives of the Tappets.
They’ll give testimony of Christian’s history with alcohol and
drugs which will mount up and lead to the only possible
conclusion.” He dramatically held up a piece of paper. “We’ll show
you items like this poem by Sally Tappet in her own hand just
before she was murdered. We can debate its finer points, but I want
to read some of it to you.” He came over and passed our table a
sheet. I quickly read it over,

The horns of the dark demon split our
genes,

And with the sound of beating wings to our
backs,

Beauty would gladly unite us with
has-beens,

Long-forgotten before we burned our
tracks.

No sorrow in public places,

Can wise-faces borrow, tomorrow, to gain
today:

The young die of the strangest cases,

And the old sweet-tooth, often, no decay.

The answer is harder than the query,

The quarry is snared in nets;

Many a being escapes not the least leery.

Learning most, while the sun never sets.

At night, logic is betrayed by the spark:

The loins lunge like lions at sheered
sheep,

‘Come where our stark dreams seek the
dark.’

How many stay in and learn the wisdom of
sleep?

Keep the history of religion as a private
thing,

Only the elitists know that all is
harrow.

Mass education is a harvest for the king,

And the fields worth learning are now left to
furrow.

Consider our time or the ambivalence of
comments:

‘No one commits to God in the fear that dusk
is ferried,

From break of day, and drastically reduced to
rare moments,

Late at night, where the believers are
harried.’

The leisurely loneliness of the pickled poet,
prays,

‘Refract the renowned Greek reason.’

The sunlit lake in spring, sings, as it
lays,

‘Even sovereign force submits to its own
season.’

Currency is as sleepless as a forever yawning
century,

Which mopes about like death waiting down the
hall;

Money in a church is like poppies in a
penitentiary.

The flowers of ascendancy are behind the
cemetery wall.

The recurring threat of a perpetual wet
dream,

Has all but stained the philosopher’s
pants:

Niches and locks, in their thoughts, would
seem,

Images at once, silent without marks and
cants.

I shift finally closer to Christian’s flesh,
and all his lies.

The deed to succeed is confused with
force;

I strike a match looking into his eyes,

Only to find his desires are coarse.

My nighty is crumpled with his kisses,

The bed sheets are stained with his data,

Compromising loves are the most strained of
wishes,

The body is a trespasser in a swift
regatta.

So much has changed. When I was a young
girl

I knew what I felt. Nothing was
understood.

Now there is conspiracy. Now there is a
counter-world.

I do not feel any faith. Pain is my
livelihood.

When I stop thinking of the cult, the usual
images arise:

The cottage late Saturday, and the dishes in
a heap,

Christian’s familiar touch in the dawn, the
burning sighs,

And the lonely horizontal lake, swaying us
both back to sleep.

Denzil read the last four stanzas aloud. I
could feel as though my soul was melting into my chair. “My God,” I
said to myself. More shame than I had ever felt washed over me.
Again Denzil strode to his table and held up a file-folder.

“The state will verify Christian’s sperm
inside of his sister’s body just as her blood lay on his
suit-jacket,” he said loudly, dramatically. “The same one we found
in the room. The DNA evidence against him is overwhelming.” He put
down the file-folder and sighed. “We’ll call Andy Arckon forward.
He’s practically family to the Tappets, the next door neighbor,
Sally and Christian’s best friend, but he will confirm the
long-standing rivalry between the two siblings and the
dysfunctional tumult of this family.”

He stepped over toward the defense table and
pointed to me, and then over to Mary and Stan. “A family so
disorganized that a housekeeper, who has raised both the children,
makes all the major decisions of the Tappet empire.”

I rose out of my seat, trembling and flush,
but before I could say anything, Brad grabbed my arm and forced me
to sit. Denzil gave me a quick smile and turned to face the jurors.
How he found Sally’s poem and how my blood got onto her body and
clothes was more than confusing, it was frightening; I’d long
thought about it, but couldn’t offer any reasonable
explanation.

He cleared his throat and looked over.
“You’ll come to understand that this man and Sally Tappet were
bitter enemies, hatred is not too strong a word to use. Their
distorted incestuous relationship was a powder keg, so enemies,
yes, yet drawn sexually to one another in a perverse obscene way.
The state will simply make it as easy as any jury has ever had it
in a murder trial to render a guilty verdict.” I began to weep.
Denzil pointed at me. “He murdered his stepsister and main
competitor to the Tappets’ empire,” he continued. “In the clear
light of the evidence we’ll present, you will wholeheartedly
agree.”

I was holding Brad’s arm so tight that he
was wincing in pain. I don’t think that Brad’s opening remarks, dug
us out of the pit Denzil Burch had put us in. In bed that night, I
cried myself to sleep. As the first few days passed by, I soon
learned that there were regular faces in the courtroom who weren’t
with the press or any interested party, but just wanted to see the
city’s best soap opera: a New York City trial with high-paid
lawyers and a wealthy beautiful young victim and a seemingly
greedy, ill-bred, incestuous adopted defendant. However, as the
days wore on, even when a star-witness, expert-witness, or attorney
took the stand, most of the testimony was technical and boring.
Sometimes I was lulled into sleep, because I wasn’t sleeping that
well at night.

On Wednesday, May 18 at Josh Burgess’
apartment at 214 Vermont Mall, while Josh reviewed Tappet’s audit
results and other documents made available to him by Stan and Mary,
as he had been doing for days, a tremendous explosion ripped
through the night and lit up the sky outside his window. It was
such a great detonation, Dad told me, that his front windows blew
out. His car had been blown to smithereens. The next day, at nine
o’clock in the morning, we were informed by courier that
Burgess-Veld Investigative Agency had severed its association with
Tappets and the murder investigation.

I felt betrayed, and also, I was in
disbelief. I had gotten to know Peter so well, and even Ashe and
Josh, I just couldn’t buy it. It felt like treachery, but Stan and
Mary took it relatively well, as did Brad. That should have told me
something, but as always, I judged it emotionally rather than
rationally. Instead, to me, it was as if everyone had been bit with
the idea that after all, even if innocent, my defeat was
inevitable, that The First Law of Life was more powerful that any
of the forces of goodness.

Ashe was sent to Houston Texas on another
case. Josh left for Florida to trail a banker. Peter had packed up
his wife and the new born daughter, and left immediately to
Jamaica. Ray Veld and his son, Marshal, began working on a case out
of town. They even closed the agency’s office in New York City, and
so, as the trial dragged on, I lost track of time and closed my
mind to hope. After all the technical witnesses had been called,
the police testimony followed.

Days later Denzil Burch called Andy to the
stand, and at once, it erupted into practically a donnybrook. Andy
was resistant to Denzil’s questioning. When it was over, Brad
leaned to me and whispered, “That backfired.”

I was proud of Andy, but by in large, the
evidence mounted against me. On May 25, Anna Chapati, the former
Love Israel, the one who’d had the Marilyn Monroe type body, who
was going to testify, went missing. A witness saw her being
kidnapped by men wearing ski-masks who pulled her into a van parked
on Sedgewick Street, Lakewood, Colorado. I was horrified. In my
heart, I knew that they’d killed her. It was The Family of Truth.
If they had the nerve to kill Sally, then why not Anna?