The Confession (18 page)

She didn’t laugh.

“You and I—we got married too quickly. I did the same with my first husband. So I have to ask myself what was I drawn to. If there’s part of me, just below the surface, that wants nothing more than to be humiliated. That seeks self-destruction.”

“I understand,” I said. “I have urges, feelings. I think things of which I am not altogether proud.”

My face did something then. It went slack, I think. It became ugly and blank and I felt another part of me peering out. Elizabeth’s eyes widened, and she backed away, and there was an instant then, perhaps, one of those extrasensory moments in which everything unexpressed between two people lies exposed, unfiltered. All that stuff hidden beneath knowing glances, unrecognized by the conscious mind, it was all there for a second, naked on the table. Just as quickly the instant passed. I smiled.

“I understand if you don’t want anything to do with me. But I have one thing to say. I don’t know if you will believe me—but it was over between Sara and I. That’s the truth of it.”

“You were with her at the party.”

“No. Not until I saw you and Minor together. Then I wanted to make you jealous.”

I remembered again that moment at Stinson, three years back, with the gulls cawing and the waves crashing. There’d been an instant then when things could have gone either way. When she had looked at me, knowing who I was, knowing down deep, but unable to resist. This was different. She was fearful. I put my hand on her forearm. My grip was loose, gentle. “We can change things,” I said.

“No.”

Overhead the birds burst from the wire. All of a sudden. All at once. They cawed and griped their way across the sky. Her eyes met mine again, and beneath the fear I saw her confusion, her guilt. I saw in her eyes the admission maybe that the trouble between us wasn’t my fault alone. And I saw desire, too. Then her eyes want vacant. She pulled away from me and I followed her up the hill.

Later that night I stood by the side of my bed, undressing, looking through the window toward the town below. I could hear the sea. The adjoining door was closed, and Elizabeth was on the other side. After our walk, we’d eaten dinner together in the little restaurant next to the hotel. We hadn’t talked much, but she’d been gentler toward me, I thought, and I told myself things were not over between us. After dinner I’d taken her upstairs and kissed her on the cheek and felt a small tremble shake through us both—but once again she’d withdrawn.

There was still something between us unfulfilled. Something waiting to happen.

Now I finished undressing and lay down on the bed. I heard the ocean outside. I heard Elizabeth on the other side of the adjoining door, settling in for the night. Then it was quiet. The moonlight fell through the window, and the clouds gathered and dispersed and then gathered again. I thought of Elizabeth in bed, in her nightgown, listening to the same roiling and crashing of the ocean, and I imagined her face: her eyelids, her soft skin, her neck, her hair silver as the moonlight.

Sometimes these lands of things, these trials, they bring people together.

I stood up.

I padded across the carpet. I listened. Nothing came from her room, no sound at all. I put my hand on the doorknob.

I held my breath. I wondered if she could hear me or perhaps see the shadows of my feet, blocking the light at the bottom of her door. I wondered if she lay there waiting for me, listening. Was she really afraid of me? Did she want me? I closed my eyes. I stared into that darkness inside of me.
I am innocent.
I turned the knob.

It was locked.

I went back to bed and lay listening to the sea, imagining the dark boats on the gleaming water, seeing them rock back and forth next to the pier, knocking one against the other, ropes dangling over the side, dipping into that sea. Then I followed, plunging into sleep.

The next morning, we met for breakfast in Jamie’s room. Her suite was more dramatic than either of ours, with a balcony overlooking the ocean. The breeze, though, carried too much of a chill to keep the doors open, and the glass was covered with gauze. Jamie sat in a winged chair with her legs tucked beneath her, casual, almost attractive in her oversized sweater, her black tights and white headband. Her features were sharp, her hair unruly. She was an amorphous woman, but underneath the surface there was something constant: something hard and glossy and insect-like.

Elizabeth sat on the other side of the table in a hardback chair. She wore a cotton blouse, open at the collar. The morning light was pale, without color—and she sat there in that stiff chair, vulnerable and a little bit wary, her lips

turned in a wry expression I’d seen a hundred times. She had a touch of pink on her lips and her skin was luminous in the pale light.

“All of us have some decisions to make here,” said Jamie. “Given the nature of the evidence the police have in their possession, this is going to be a hard case.”

There was a natural antipathy between the two women. They’d met briefly the night before we’d driven down. Part of their conversation had had to do with Minor Robinson, or so Jamie had told me in the car.

“No one’s pressed charges yet,” said Elizabeth.

“They will.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Well, there’s the tie. They haven’t proved it belongs to your husband yet, but . . .”

“I left it behind,” I interjected. “At the party.”

“How did it end up at Sara’s apartment, do you think?” Jamie crossed her legs. Uncrossed them. She leaned back and studied me through those black eyes, and I remembered the stories I’d heard about the way she grilled her own clients, deciding whether or not to take their case.

“I don’t know, but I didn’t have the tie on when I left. Barbara Wilder saw me. She can tell you.”

“Regardless, we still have to contend with the sperm analysis—and the DNA report.”

“I don’t understand,” said Elizabeth.

A smiled creased Jamie’s lips. Her tongue darted out, and the smile vanished. “You better tell her.”

“Tell me what?”

I glanced toward the window, struggling for the words. The sky through the gauze curtains seemed an infinite gray, vague and empty, and I couldn’t find anything there to help me.

“The DNA,” Jamie said at last. “When the tests come back, there’s a good chance they’ll get a match. Your husband’s sperm, in Miss Johnson’s vagina.”

Elizabeth tilted backwards, lifting her chin, and I saw confusion in her blue eyes.

“The arbor,” said Jamie.

The confusion heightened, then disappeared, giving way to something else.

“Out at the arbor? You and Sara?”

I saw her disgust.

Whatever gains I had made the night before, I felt them slipping away. Meanwhile Jamie studied the pair of us, enjoying the moment: seeing me exposed, Elizabeth undone. Such voyeuristic pleasure—indulged at the client’s expense, emotional or otherwise—was common enough in attorneys, I knew, though few would admit the fact.

“Let me explain what we’re up against.” Jamie directed herself at Elizabeth. “In a murder trial, to get a conviction, the prosecution has to prove the defendant had the opportunity to commit the crime, as well as the means, and motive.” Jamie leaned forward, excited, and Elizabeth leaned away, growing paler in the pale light. Her blue eyes were as blue as I had ever seen them, and her features more delicate. “If the tie belonged to your husband, then it implies he had the means. And if the semen is his, it implies opportunity.” Jamie was in many ways the opposite of my wife, with her harsh accent, her angular body, her crass, burnished looks. “Then there’s the matter of motive. That’s the other question the prosecution must address. Why would he kill her?” Turning to me, Jamie raised her eyebrows in mock bemusement. “There’s a number of motives prosecutors look at in a case like this. We’re going to see them all bandied about in the press. The prosecution will leak them out. You can count on it.

“The first thing they’ll suggest is personal interest. Profit. What did you stand to gain from her death?”

I shifted in my seat.

“Nothing,” I said. “How could I have anything to gain?”

“Maybe she was holding something over you. Threatening to tell your wife, ruin your marriage. They’ll say that. Your wife has money. You killed to protect your stake.”

“That’s not true.”

“The second is jealousy. Sara was leaving you. You didn’t want to see her go—and you killed her in a fit of passion.”

“No.”

“And third,” she said, staring at me dead-on. “Pleasure.”

“What are you saying?”

“You killed her for the pleasure of it. Because you enjoyed the act itself. I guarantee—well see all of this, all over the papers. Unless Minor Robinson decides to drop this business.”

Elizabeth shifted uneasily. Her wryness was gone and her self-assuredness, and I did not understand why. Her complexion reddened. It happened when she was embarrassed, or angry, or placed in a position that she felt unfair. She had Irish skin, and her face flared. I wondered why Jamie was doing this. She was trying to drive a wedge between Elizabeth and me, but I didn’t understand why.

“But that isn’t likely, is it Elizabeth? Your friend, Mr. Robinson, isn’t likely to relent.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Elizabeth crossed her legs and for a second I saw the Tulane girl in her, nose up, not so different than a photo in the album at Golden Hinde, in which she lounged self-consciously on the front porch of her Sophie Newcombe sorority some twenty-odd years before.

Jamie had brought up Minor deliberately, I realized. “Okay, let me tell you something,” Jamie said. “This is going to be a taxing ordeal. Along the way, the details from your life are going to end up in the media. It’s going to be draining emotionally and financially.” Jamie smiled, and Elizabeth’s color deepened. “I know you two have had some troubles lately. So what I need to know, Elizabeth. Are you willing to do this, or do you want to bail out?”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“For now: be the good wife. Or at least avoid consorting with the enemy.”

Jamie kept on smiling. It was a soapy smile, unctuous, full of foam and froth. The kind of smile you could scrub the floor with, and the walls, and the toilet, and it would still be there when you were done, grinning up out of the washcloth. “Also, there’s something else I want you to think about,” she went on. Her eyes grew small and scarab-like. “It has financial consequences. If your husband is convicted, Sara’s relatives will file a civil suit seeking financial restitution. They’re going to go after every cent you’ve got.”

“No,” I said.

I stood up suddenly, and they both looked at me.

“No,” I gestured fiercely, sluicing the air with my hand, a theatrical gesture, absurd and overblown, but I couldn’t help myself. “I don’t want my wife to lose her estate on account of me.”

Jamie sighed, and Elizabeth glanced away, not believing me, thinking maybe I was in on this from the start. “Elizabeth,” I pleaded.

She would not look at me.

“There are two ways your wife could protect herself,” said Jamie. “First, she could divorce you. That would protect her money in the event you are convicted. But, if she filed for divorce now, it would be ruinous to our case. As your lawyer, I would fight those proceedings tooth and nail. There are certain facts, certain indiscretions. I would bring them out. It would be very ugly, and very public.”

Elizabeth reddened more fiercely—and it occurred to me what was underneath the surface between the two women. I should have realized it earlier perhaps. Jamie was goading her about Minor Robinson, threatening to make those rumors part of the case.

“The other alternative is to make some kind of agreement about the deposition of the money now. For Jake here to sign away his long term interest in your estate. Provided, of course, that you establish a defense fund right away.” Jamie’s eyes shone with a hard glitter. She was securing her fee, I understood now, making sure the money would be set aside in advance. In turn, Elizabeth’s estate would be protected should I be convicted. Elizabeth didn’t say a thing. She cast her eyes to the floor, holding her silence.

“But you don’t need to decide this now.” Queen Jamie smiled. “Let’s enjoy our breakfast.”

The three of us left town together in Jamie’s Mercedes, working our way back through the little communities along the Russian River—small towns that flooded every winter in the seasonal rains—towns full of gay yuppies and redneck hippies and meth freaks who hid out in slanted, decaying cabins built fifty years before by weekend anglers and escapees from the city. There was little talk in the car, just the pale hiss of the tires and the rush of the wind as Jamie wove along the black road through the redwoods.

Elizabeth’s animosity was palpable, and more than a little of it was directed at me.

We put in at a gas station in Monte Rio. I no longer wore the mustache or the dark glasses, but the disguise did not seem to matter so much anymore. I got out to stretch my legs. The counter girl was young, maybe fifteen, dressed in a tie-dye shirt and leather sandals. She smiled in a quirky way, how girls at fifteen smile sometimes, aware of their sex, and she dropped her shoulder. I asked her where the mineral water might be, and she led me around to the cooler and I brushed up against her there by accident.