The Unbidden Truth (26 page)

“Dr. Makino, in your opinion, would you say all those hairs came from the same person?”

“No.”

When Barbara finished with Dr. Makino, Mahoney struggled to find a weakness in his testimony and ended up stressing the similarities of the hairs, they were all black, straight, not dyed. Dr. Makino was imperturbable and agreed that the outward similarities might lead one to assume the hairs all came from the same person, but all he could say was that they were similar, but not identical. They had not all come from the same person.

S
aturday was perfect, misty and not very cold, with fog wreathing the Coburg hills and the buttes that were the north and south landmarks of Eugene. Bailey came promptly at one o'clock, and they all loaded up and headed out to Shelley and Alex's house where they met Bailey's guard, Carl Zimmerman, and his dog Jackie, a huge German shepherd that took his duties seriously, snarling and showing fangs until proper introductions were made. They hiked in the wet woods and found three perfect Christmas trees. Darren said no when Todd pointed to a cedar that was twelve to fifteen feet tall. No tree in the house taller than he was, Darren said firmly. After the trees were safely deposited near the house, Barbara eyed the hills again.

“Now I'll take my hike,” she said.

“You mean that wasn't enough?” Carrie asked. She had asked earlier if there were bears, and her apprehension about the woods and forest was apparent.

“Nope,” Barbara said. “That was warm-up time.”

“Mind if I tag along?” Darren asked.

“Think you can keep up?”

“I can try.”

“And promise not to talk?”

“I'll try that too.”

“Okay then. Let's do it before it gets too rainy.”

The mist might more properly have been called rain or at least drizzle by then, and she didn't care. The woods smelled mossy and green and vibrant. The ground was spongy, not too muddy, and the trails Alex and Shelley had made were ideal. She set a brisk pace until the path got steeper.

Darren didn't say a word until they stopped at an outcropping of lichen-and moss-covered boulders. “Is it all right if I worry about you?” he asked then.

“Only if you don't mention it,” she said.

“Deal. But I do.”

She looked out over the valley below them, the sprawling house with lights haloed by mist and fog, everything indistinct and without edges, one thing merging with another. “Isn't it beautiful,” she said softly.

“All it needs is a pagoda,” he said.

She looked at him in surprise. She had been thinking of Japanese paintings. “I'd put a stream in front of the house, not way over there.”

He laughed. “You're a creature of the forest, aren't you? Did you notice that it's raining?”

“So it is. It's also going to get dark very soon. Time to head back. Did you bring dry clothes? I did.”

“I'll stand by the fire and steam,” he said. Then he laughed. “Actually I brought other clothes and made Todd bring some along, but I bet he hasn't changed yet.”

Frank and Dr. Minnick were busy in the kitchen when they got back to the house. Bailey looked them over with disgust and shook his head. “You guys are crazy,” he said.

They had a bountiful meal of ham with sweet potatoes and baked apples, green beans, salad and corn bread. Not a gourmet haute cuisine meal, Dr. Minnick said, but filling. It was wonderful, they all protested, almost simultaneously. Then Shelley stood up and tapped her spoon on her wineglass.

“You might wonder why I gathered you here together,” she said, blushing furiously. “We have an announcement to make, Alex and I. We're engaged. We're getting married in April.”

Dr. Minnick brought out champagne and there were toasts and a lot of laughter, but Barbara could not help the pang of regret she felt. Something of it showed, and Alex said, “She will keep working, you understand. One of us has to.” No one had told Darren and Carrie that Alex was the mysterious, anonymous X whose cartoons appeared in national magazines and whose comic strip was syndicated in hundreds of newspapers. There was more laughter.

They didn't stay late; Barbara pleaded work to do, and they were all tired from the trek through woods in the rain. When they got back to Frank's house, Barbara went straight up to her office, Frank to his study, and Carrie went to the piano and played softly.

She never had felt the lack of family so much. She had been an outsider all her life, always looking in, never really a part
of any family. She could share their meals, join in with their laughter, but always with the awareness that they shared secrets, things no outsider could ever fathom. She yearned for Carolyn to come and whisper secrets to her.

She had come to think of that other little girl as her invisible twin who knew things she wouldn't divulge, and who stayed away most of the time, returning with tantalizing hints only to vanish again. Even as she yearned for her return, she feared it. She had to keep reminding herself that none of those memories in her magic box were real, they were make-believe, fantasies, part of her delusional bout with insanity.

She realized she had been playing faster and louder variations on her song to Carolyn Frye and she stopped abruptly.

 

Sunday afternoon Frank and Barbara spent several hours preparing Carrie for the ordeal she would face testifying in her own behalf.

“I hope to finish my witnesses this week,” Barbara said when they finished. “You'll be the last witness, and if all goes well that should be on Friday. We'll have closing statements on Monday, and then it's up to the jury.”

Carrie nodded mutely. She looked exhausted. Frank had taken the role of prosecutor and had proved to be a tough one, possibly tougher than Mahoney would be.

“Are you sleeping okay?” Barbara asked. “If you want to see a doctor, get a mild sedative, or a tranquilizer, we can arrange it.”

“No!” Carrie said, shaking her head.

Belatedly, with regret for her hasty words, Barbara remembered Carrie's phobia about doctors. “You wouldn't even
need to see anyone, in fact, if you want something to ease the tension.”

“I'm all right,” Carrie said.

“Well, if you change your mind, whistle. Another week, Carrie. Hang in there.”

 

On Monday morning the wind changed, the fog dispersed and the sun even came out for a short time. It was a good omen, Barbara thought. Luther Wenzel was the only one of the family in court that morning, apparently their own personal court recorder.

Barbara's first witness was Mrs. Alexis O' Reilly, who had been married to Joe Wenzel from late 1975 to 1980. She was fifty-two, probably a little heavier than she had been when married to Joe, but pleasant-looking with big brown eyes and pretty brown hair that curled around her face.

After her brief history had been given, Barbara asked, “When you married Joe Wenzel, were you both working?”

“Yes. He was very busy and I had a new job at Sacred Heart Hospital.”

“At that time was he drinking a great deal?”

“No. A social drink now and then, maybe a drink before dinner, not much more than that.”

“Would you describe your marriage with Joe Wenzel as a good one?”

“For the first year or two it was very good. We were building a house and picking out furniture and curtains, things like that. We were having a good time with it all.”

“Then what happened?”

“I don't know for sure. In the summer of 1978 things just changed. I never did understand why. He stopped working,
for one thing, and for several weeks he drank very heavily. When I tried to get him to pull himself together and go back to work, he said he had retired, that he never intended to work again. In early September he wanted to go to a rock concert up in Seattle, but I couldn't get off work, so he went alone. He had never done that before. After that he went off alone a lot, to Las Vegas, or a rock concert somewhere, or Miami. He began to follow the horses and go to wherever they were racing. I couldn't take off to go with him, so he went alone.”

“Was he still drinking heavily?”

Mahoney objected. “This is irrelevant, Your Honor. Joe Wenzel is not on trial.”

“Mr. Larry Wenzel brought up his lifestyle,” Barbara said. “I'm trying to find out what that lifestyle really was.”

Laughton overruled.

“Did Joe Wenzel continue to drink heavily?” she asked again.

“No. After a few weeks that ended. He drank more than he had early on, but not really heavily.”

“Would you call him an alcoholic?”

“Not after a few weeks. He never drank enough to black out or anything like that.”

“When he was drinking was he ever abusive to you, physically abusive?”

Alexis looked shocked at the idea and shook her head vigorously. “Never. What he did when he had too much to drink was use gutter talk, really vulgar talk, but he never got physical.”

“Do you know if he had a handgun when you were married to him?”

“Yes. It made me nervous and he kept it locked up in a desk drawer.”

“When he said he didn't intend to return to work, did money become an issue? Were you concerned?”

“Yes. I told him he had to work because I didn't make enough money to pay our mortgage, and he laughed. A few weeks later he had me sign papers that meant the house was to become property of the corporation. He said we'd never have to worry about the mortgage. We had more money than ever without the mortgage payment, insurance and taxes and all.”

“Did you try to get him to seek help of any kind after he changed so drastically?”

“Yes. I wanted him to see a doctor, but he wouldn't do it. I talked to his brother Larry about it and he said to be patient, that Joe had been through times like that before and he would snap out of it.”

“Did he snap out of it?”

“No. If anything it got worse, and he was gone more and more.”

“How long did that go on, Mrs. O' Reilly?”

“Like I said, it started in the summer of 1978, and in January of 1980 I had to leave him. I couldn't take it any longer.”

“During the time you were married to Joe Wenzel, did you ever see him wear a wrist brace, or did he complain about wrist pain?”

“No. He was as healthy as a horse when I knew him.”

When Mahoney did his cross-examination, he asked, “Did it occur to you at the time that your marriage might have been the cause of his change in behavior?”

“Of course,” she said. “That was the first thing I thought of, that something had gone wrong between us. But I decided
that was not true. Whatever happened to him had nothing to do with me.”

Mahoney asked if she agreed that a bad marriage could change people, and she said yes, but she was adamant about her own marriage not being at fault in this instance.

 

Tiffany Olstead was five feet ten, languorous and heavily made up, as if she hated being forty years old and wanted to cling to thirty forever. Her story echoed Alexis O' Reilly's. Joe had told her he was retired, and he would take her around to see the world, but all she ever saw were horses, roulette wheels and blackjack tables.

“When he was drinking or at any other time, was he ever physically abusive to you?” Barbara asked.

“No. He would slouch down in a chair and talk dirty, that's all.”

“Was he an alcoholic?”

“I don't think so. He drank a lot, but it didn't seem to have much effect. He didn't pass out or anything like that. He didn't drink when he gambled.”

“Did he ever complain about a bad wrist, or wear a brace on his wrist?” She said no.

“Did you ever see a handgun when you were with him?”

“He had one that he kept in a desk drawer. I asked him what for and he said varmints.”

“Did he ever work when you were together?”

“No, he was retired. When he wasn't traveling or something, he played with his music tapes or read racing newspapers. No work.”

“Did you and Joe socialize with his brother and his wife?”

“I never even met them,” she said.

When Mahoney asked if her marriage to Joe had worked out, she said with a shrug that neither of them got what they had bargained for. She had left him after eighteen months.

Over vehement objections from Mahoney Barbara called a travel agent who had arranged Joe's trips for the past five years. He furnished a record of Joe's various trips. There were a lot of them and they were all for first-class flights and four-or five-star hotels.

 

Before Barbara could call her next witness, Mahoney asked the judge for a conference in chambers. In the sparsely furnished room a few minutes later, he said he would move that the testimony of the travel agent be stricken. “We know there was an irregularity in the relationship of the brothers,” he said. “We stipulated that there was no call to go into it at this trial. Joe Wenzel is not on trial, and his brother and brother's family are not on trial. All of this is extraneous. She's throwing out not just a red herring, but a whole school of red herrings in an effort to confuse the jury. Hints and innuendoes, that's all she's showing, not a shred of proof of anything.”

“Why don't you bone up on the law?” Barbara said coldly. “Your job is to prove my client is guilty, and my job is to show reason enough to question what you offer as proof. I don't have to prove diddly. Everything I've done to date is relevant to my showing there is more than enough doubt that you and your investigators have done your job. You see that pattern as well as I do. Joe Wenzel was into blackmail, pure and simple.”