The Girl Next Door (4 page)

Nina knew what was coming next, and she dreaded it.

“Of course, the victim of the murder for which you were convicted and sentenced cannot
speak for herself, but we do have someone here to make a statement on her behalf.”
He looked up into the rows of seats. “Mr. Avery?”

Patrick rose to his feet and walked to the front of the room. He sat down in the empty
chair. He was dressed in a perfectly tailored pinstripe gray suit, a dazzling white
shirt, and a gray silk tie, which was his work uniform as an investment banker on
Wall Street. Patrick made a huge salary at his job, and he liked to flaunt it. He
always dressed expensively, drove a Jaguar, and had filled his enormous house with
expensive antique furniture and paintings. He was stockier than he had been in high
school, but was still fit-looking. His curly hair was prematurely gray, his face tanned
and his expression grim.

“And you are …” said Whelan, though he knew perfectly well.

“I am Patrick Avery. The victim was my mother, Marsha.”

“And the prisoner is your father …” said Whelan.

“That’s right,” said Patrick.

“And, Mr. Avery, can you tell us how you feel about the possibility of your father
being paroled at this time, in light of your experience, the loss of your mother.”

Patrick smoothed down his tie and the color rose to his face. “I remain firmly against
it. I don’t believe that Duncan is sorry for what he did, or feels any responsibility.
It’s admirable that he helped that guard, Officer Mazurek, and kept him from bleeding
to death. Apparently, he had no such second thoughts about my mother. He destroyed
our family and he took my mother’s life away from her. She’s never seen our …” Patrick
voice began to tremble, and he stopped to compose himself. He took a deep breath.
“Our children were deprived of their grandmother. My sister and brother and I were
deprived of our mother. I respectfully ask that you deny this man any leniency. He
did not show any to us. Our loss is permanent.”

There was a murmur, as always, among the board members after Patrick spoke. He made
a forceful witness. Whelan motioned for them to be silent, and then Patrick was excused.
He did not look Duncan in the eye, but went back to his seat and sat down beside Gemma,
who grabbed his hand.

“Now, we would like to speak to the prisoner. Mr. Avery, we have your request for
parole here before us. Now, it says that if you were to be granted parole, you would
have a place to live with your daughter, Nina. Is that right?” Duncan nodded slightly
and looked back, for the first time, at Nina. Nina smiled at him.

Whelan looked in Nina’s direction. “Is that right, Miss Avery?”

“That’s right, sir. I have a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
I have plenty of room for him.”

“Special permission would have to be granted for you to live outside of New Jersey,
but because of the proximity of Manhattan, this would not seem to present any problems
in
terms of fulfilling your obligation to meet with your parole officer and so forth.
Now, as to work … Mr. Avery. You no longer have your medical license.”

Duncan cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was soft and difficult to hear.
“A former … colleague of mine, Dr. Nathanson, runs a medical clinic in Newark where
I would be employed as a paramedic. There are plenty of jobs I can do there that don’t
require a medical license.”

“Yes, I see we have an affidavit from Dr. Nathanson to that effect. Board members,
do you have any questions for Mr. Avery here? Miss Davis?”

A black woman with her hair skinned back into a bun, wearing black-rimmed glasses,
nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have a question. Mr. Avery, as your son who
spoke here has stated, you have never accepted responsibility for this crime, despite
your conviction. And consequently, you have never expressed any remorse. Now, this
lack of remorse on your part makes me question whether it would be safe to release
you into society again. What can you say to me about that, Mr. Avery?”

Duncan sighed. “The same thing I have always said, Miss Davis. I can’t accept responsibility
for a crime I didn’t commit. Parole or no parole.”

“That’s it?” she said.

“I’m afraid so.”

“You were found guilty, sir,” she reminded him sharply.

“It was a mistake,” he said.

The woman made a soft clucking sound and shook her head slightly as she made a note
on the paper in front of her. “I’m finished with him,” she said.

“Any other questions?” Whelan asked.

The other board members shook their heads.

“All right,” said Whelan. “We need to confer a few minutes
about this. Can I ask all of you to wait out in the corridor? Bailiff, please take
the prisoner to the holding cell.”

Duncan glanced back at Nina, and she smiled at him with a confidence that she did
not feel. It always came down to the same thing—her father’s refusal to admit his
guilt. But how could he do that, even to be free? He didn’t do it. He couldn’t say
he did. As Duncan was led away, Nina walked out to the corridor.

She went over to the water fountain to get a drink. Patrick walked up behind her.
Nina took her drink and straightened up. “All yours,” she said to her brother.

Patrick had a drink as well. Then he straightened up also and looked sadly at her.
“How you doing?” he asked.

Nina nodded. “Okay, good.”

“How’s Keith?” he asked, referring to the man with whom Nina shared an apartment.
“Still in L.A.?”

“Yeah. HBO ordered four more episodes after they saw the pilot.”

“Great. How about you? Are you still doing that Inge play?” Patrick asked.

“No, that closed,” said Nina. “But I just got a callback for a Eugene O’Neill Off
Broadway.”

Patrick smiled wanly. “Another fun evening at the theater.” Patrick did not share
his sister’s taste for serious, family-centered dramas.

Gemma walked over and joined them. She was still incredibly thin and still dressed
exclusively in drab colors, although her clothes now had expensive designer labels.
Her smooth, parchment-colored complexion was etched with tiny lines, but she still
didn’t bother with makeup. Gemma’s hair was cut short in a fashionably spiky style.
She still looked like a college student, although she was now a professor, wife, and
mother. Her only obvious concession to their wealth were the various rings
she wore and twisted nervously on her fingers. She’d always worn rings, but these
sparkled with real gems. Nina reached out to embrace her and felt Gemma’s bony shoulder
blades poking through her gray cashmere sweater.

“How are the kids?” Nina asked. Patrick and Gemma had twin boys, Simon and Cody, who
were seven years old.

Gemma shrugged. “Always fighting.”

“Tell them I said hi. How’s your class schedule this year?” Nina asked.

Gemma stared at Nina and then at her husband. Patrick had shoved his hands in his
pockets and was jingling change. “We
are
out of touch,” said Gemma. “Didn’t you know that I resigned?”

“You quit teaching?” Nina asked.

Gemma nodded. “A few months ago. One of my mother’s colleagues sent me all the research
she was working on before she died. I decided to organize and catalog all her work
and put it into a book. Try to get it published.”

Nina knew that Gemma’s mother had died when she was about five. She’d been a scientist
who was doing research on genetics in an isolated Andean village when she died in
a hiking accident.

Gemma had come to live in Hoffman with her father, an airline pilot, and his second
wife, a woman who ran a bridal shop called Your Perfect Day. That marriage had long
since ended, and Gemma’s father was married for a third time and now lived in Arizona.
“Gemma, I think that’s wonderful,” said Nina. “It’s such a great way to honor your
mother’s memory.”

“That’s what I thought,” said Gemma. She glanced warily at her husband.

“I don’t think Patrick agrees.”

Patrick jingled the change in his pockets impatiently. “I don’t care. If that’s what
she wants to do, that’s fine.”

“Not that I can get much done with those boys around,” said Gemma.

“You’ve got full-time help, for God’s sake,” he snapped. “What am I paying Elena for?”

Gemma flinched slightly and looked around the crowded corridor. “Did you hear from
Jimmy?” she asked, changing the subject.

“He said he might come, but you know Jimmy and stress,” said Nina.

Gemma nodded. “He seems to be staying straight.”

“Still living with the Connellys,” said Patrick with exasperation in his voice. “He’s
thirty years old. I wish he’d find himself his own place to live.”

“I talked to him the other night and he sounded okay,” Nina said. Jimmy had battled
drug and alcohol addiction, but with a lot of help from the family who had taken him
in, he had straightened out. Now he was an avid bodybuilder, and had a steady job
working at a store that sold flooring. He’d also become quite religious, often attending
services three times a week. Nina thought Patrick’s judgment was, as usual, unnecessarily
harsh, but she didn’t say so.

A silence fell among them. Despite their differences about their father, the three
siblings had maintained their relationship over the years. It was never easy. They
had been separated after the death of their mother and their father’s incarceration.
Patrick went off to college; Jimmy went to live at the home of their mailman, George
Connelly, whom Duncan had asked to look after Jimmy; and Nina was taken in by her
mother’s aunt, Mary. The house on Madison Street was sold to pay for Duncan’s defense.
Their father was a topic they simply avoided whenever possible. But today it wasn’t
possible.

“Look,” said Nina. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in there …”

Patrick took a deep breath and gazed up at the ceiling.

“But if they decide … in his favor this time …”

“That’s a big if,” said Patrick sharply.

“If they do,” Nina continued, “I want all of us, the children, everyone, to try and
make peace with one another. Patrick, he’s never seen his grandchildren …”

“Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,” Patrick said coldly.

“Patrick, please,” said Nina. “Can’t you try?”

Patrick glared at her and shook his head. “I will never understand you, Nina. How
can you still believe in him? What does it take to make you see the truth?”

“How can you
not
believe him?” she cried. “How can you judge him like that? If it were me, would you
judge me that way?”

“That’s different. You’re a good person, Nina. I know for a fact that he is not. How
could you have sat through his trial and have any doubt? For God’s sake, he was sleeping
with the woman next door …”

Nina thought ruefully of Brandon’s mother, Sheila. After the affair was revealed in
the newspapers, the Ross family moved away. Sheila came back to testify for the prosecution
at the trial, saying that Duncan was in her bedroom, right next door, on the night
of the murder. By her account, at least a half hour elapsed from the time Duncan slipped
out of her bedroom to the time she heard the sirens on the arriving police cars. She
testified that Duncan often talked about how unhappy he was in his marriage.

“Okay,” Nina said. “He committed adultery. Nobody’s denying that. But it’s not the
same as murder.”

Patrick shook his head. “And at your insistence we spent every last penny from the
sale of the house to hire lawyers, and their detectives, to try to exonerate him.
And where did it get us? Well, let’s see. We found out that he’d seen a lawyer behind
Mom’s back about getting a divorce.”

Nina shook her head. “That’s no proof. That doesn’t mean he would kill her.”

“You’re just kidding yourself, Nina,” Patrick said. “I’ll tell you a fact. We know
for a fact that when Duncan ‘found’ his wife dying, he did not even call nine-one-one.
He did not try to get any help for her.”

“He was about to when I walked in,” Nina insisted. “And what about the money from
her pocketbook? They never found it.”

“It was probably in Duncan’s pocket,” Patrick scoffed. “That burglar theory didn’t
fool the jury. That was just a brainstorm he had, to try to make it look like an intruder.
Nina, his prints were on the knife, they’d had a huge fight that afternoon, and she
told a woman at the Art League that he had threatened to kill her. How can you believe
in him in the face of all that? He’s playing you for sympathy. You can’t even see
it. It makes me hate him all the more.”

A court attendant opened the hearing room door and looked around. Spotting them by
the water fountain, she gestured for Nina, Patrick, and Gemma to return. Without answering
her brother, Nina led the way back into the hearing room. They went back to their
opposite sides of the room, like boxers going to opposite corners, Patrick’s angry
questions still ringing in Nina’s ears like landed blows. How could she ever make
him understand? Of course, she’d had her moments of doubt about Duncan. Of course,
she’d wondered. She was only human. But there was no way Nina could ever convince
Patrick to believe in their father, because it came down to a question of faith.

Arnold Whelan waited until they were seated and Duncan Avery was escorted back in.
Then he turned to Duncan and peered at him over the top of his half-glasses. Nina’s
heart felt like it was being squeezed in her chest. She tried to read the expressions
of the board members, but they were poker-faced.
Please, God, she thought. Please. He has suffered so much. Please, let him have his
life back. Let me have him back in mine while there’s still time. “Mr. Avery,” said
Whelan.

Nina held her breath.

“The board has voted to grant your request for parole …”

Nina gasped, and then her heart soared. It was over. He was free! She could hardly
believe it. She was going to be able to bring him home and give him back his life.
From across the room, she heard a groan, and when she turned to look, she saw Patrick
pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead, as if he were trying to quell a migraine
or staunch a bleeding wound.