by Diane Capri
I slammed down the phone.
Frank would report my non-response as a “no comment,” and it was just as well. If I’d offered my comments, they would have done both me and George more harm than good.
Feeling, in every sinew of my lawyer’s body, that the best defense is always a strong offense, I tried to work up some righteous anger.
Talking to myself, I said out loud, “What business does Robbie Andrews have trying to put another nail in George’s coffin? And what the hell was George doing the night Andy was killed?” I was on a roll now, so I kept giving myself the pep talk. “A secret meeting with the President of the United States? Come on! How likely is that?”
Of course, I wanted to kick myself for ruining George’s alibi. I had only myself to blame for the fact that everyone in Tampa knew George hadn’t been home with me in the early morning hours when Andrews was killed, anyway. Why did I say that he’d gone jogging to all those people at the Blue Coat? It was information I couldn’t have been compelled to disclose because of the marital privilege, if I’d kept my mouth shut.
But, at the time, I’d thought there was no harm in it. I realized after George’s arrest that what I hadn’t known last Saturday morning might very well hurt us both now.
“Come on, Willa,” I said to my reflection in the mirror as I ran the blow dryer. “George didn’t commit murder.”
But one of the others he’d been with could have done it. Presidential aides have done worse and lived to tell about it. I could name a few who are still in prison.
Trying not to get distracted from the plan I’d made for myself sometime during the night, I dried my hair, applied minimal makeup and dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved, cotton shirt.
I slipped on the flat shoes I hadn’t worn since our condolence visit to Deborah on my way out the door, drove Greta over to the club and entered the dining room, prepared to face the lion in his den.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 9:00 a.m.
January 27, 2000
JUST AS I’D HOPED, George was seated, fully dressed, having breakfast with the Wall Street Journal.
The relief I felt to find him there, right where he should be, in the first place I looked, was palpable. He looked so perfect this morning. He’d rested well. He was shaved, dressed as he always is, and eating his usual breakfast. George’s steady behavior was comforting. Predictability isn’t always a bad thing.
“Good morning, George,” I said, loud enough to get his attention away from the financial pages. Mindful that the wait staff was no doubt watching and unsure of his reaction, I didn’t go over and kiss him. But I certainly wanted to.
He lowered the paper and smiled at me. My heart melted. He folded the paper, stood up, gave me a kiss, “Good morning, sweetheart. Breakfast?” He held the chair so I could join him across the table for two. “I tried to call you last night for dinner, but apparently you weren’t home.”
He said this without an ounce of accusation in his voice and once again I accepted how much bigger a person he is than I am.
“I was home. I saw the machine blinking, but I thought it was just reporters, so I didn’t pick up the messages.” I settled into my chair, placed the napkin on my lap, and accepted a cup of coffee. “I did try to call you around seven for the same reason,” I said, inviting him to explain his whereabouts.
He didn’t.
“I’m sorry I missed you,” he said. I heard genuine regret.
The waiter came by to take my order. I asked for a three egg ham and cheese omelet with toast, orange juice and coffee. George raised an eyebrow. Usually, my breakfast consists of coffee with cream. George is the big breakfast man.
“I didn’t have dinner last night; I’m famished,” I explained to him. I wanted to keep on the right track, not get off into any kind of bickering. I came here to convince him to come home and I focused on that goal.
So I asked him about the stock market, always good for a half hour’s friendly conversation. Since George left the bank, he’s paid more attention to his investing. He says it’s the perfect occupation: very lucrative, you’re your own boss, and you can do it in your pajamas.
I’ve tried to follow his stock tips, but I don’t devote enough attention to it. He’s always twenty-five to thirty percent up at the end of the year and I lag around ten percent. Not that we’re competitive about it. Much.
We discussed his recent stock moves through breakfast and when the waiter had removed the dishes and freshened our coffee, George waited for me to come to the point in my own good time. Surprisingly, I found it hard to begin. I’d never been in this position before and I wasn’t used to apologizing.
“George, I’m sorry we fought yesterday,” I told him. Insufficient as an apology for what had happened, but true. “I’d like you to come home.”
Again, he raised his eyebrow at me, in a gesture so like Harry, our Labrador, I almost laughed.
“I’d like to come home, Willa, but I just don’t think I should,” he told me.
My heart sank. I had hoped he’d reviewed the situation and come to the same conclusions I had.
“Don’t look so crestfallen,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t want to come home.”
He placed his hand over mine on the table and continued sincerely. “It’s just not good for you to have me there at the moment.”
He’d thought this through, maybe even rehearsed his speech. “The spillover publicity won’t be good for your career and you’re edgy and nervous about my arrest.”
I pulled my hand away and put it back in my lap.
“Think about how the CJ will use this against you, if he can,” he continued. “It’ll be better for you if we live apart until this is over.” He sounded so calm, so reasonable, so stupid.
As with many other discussions we’ve had in the past seventeen years, he wouldn’t be persuaded to change his mind. No matter how wrong he was. He’d decided to do this for me, whether I wanted him to or not.
His actions reminded me of that old story about the young couple who wanted to give each other a meaningful present. Each of them gave up the one thing the other loved best to get something neither cared about.
“I’m sure you believe you’re doing the right thing. And I won’t tell you it’s easy for me to see you on the news and in the papers and have everyone we know willing to believe you’re a murderer,” my voice caught on the unfairness of those accusations.
“Thanks for your concern, Darling,” he said dryly.
I felt chagrined and I might have even blushed.
“You know what I mean,” I faltered and lowered my voice. “Have you considered how bad it looks for you to have moved out of our house? People will think that I believe you killed him and that’s why you left. They’ll think I have no faith in your innocence.”
I was distraught and almost pleading by this point. I knew how juries viewed a faithful wife and how they viewed an unsupportive one. Regardless of how George and I became separated, State Attorney Drake would feel more confident of winning if he could convince the jury that George’s wife had deserted him.
But he remained undeterred. Like trying to push a determined elephant. I leaned forward, trying to make him feel how wrong he was, how much I was right about this. “They’ll think that if your wife won’t support you and stand by you through this crisis, I must know that you’ve done something wrong. Don’t you see? If you don’t come home,” I said, blinking furiously, “People will convict you before you’re even indicted.”
The course of public opinion has never mattered to George. He feels his true friends will stand by him, will know his true character.
As for the rest of the world, George just doesn’t care what they think. For himself, anyway.
On my behalf, he was ready to choose pistols at twenty paces over the smallest perceived slight.
In this instance, I knew, public opinion mattered. Maybe it always does.
We d
iscussed the situation for a while longer but he wouldn’t budge.
“I can’t move back to our flat, Willa,” he said, as his final word on the matter. “Not until this whole issue is resolved. I just won’t put you in that position.”
“Regardless of how I feel about it?”
“Regardless of how you feel about it,” he parroted. “This is my decision to make, Willa. I’m doing what I think is right.”
George has a lot more faith in the judicial system than I do, because he doesn’t see all the times when it fails. He did not expect to be indicted or convicted. He wasn’t even considering the ramifications to himself or to me, and he would not turn from his course.
He believed he was protecting me by leaving me until justice prevailed and he could return home, vindicated. Seventeen years of experience in this marriage convinced me that he’d stay the course, no matter how it hurt both of us. He thought his decision was the right thing to do.
Men can be so stubborn.
Awareness forced me back into the chair and kept me silent in the face of his determination. Now, I understood that if George was convicted of murder, he would divorce me. He didn’t realize divorce was an option right now because he didn’t think he could be convicted. But I knew otherwise. Unless something dramatic and unexpected happened, he would likely be convicted.
And George would never allow me to be tied to a husband in prison.
Now that I realized fully what was at stake, our life together, and George’s very existence, I knew what I had to do. I was a good lawyer once. Maybe even had the makings of a great lawyer, then. I’d won many cases during my career, but never one so important to me.
So I stopped trying to convince him to return home and steered the conversation instead to the evidence against George. Since no human can be in two places at once, I started with the biggest question.
“George, I have absolute faith in you. You know that. But Drake obviously doesn’t. Let’s just tell him where you were when Andy was killed, he can check it out, and this will all be over.” I took his hand across the table.
“It’s not that easy, sweetheart.”
“Why not?”
“Because I gave my word. I said I would not disclose that information.”
“Even to me?”
George looked right into my eyes and gave my hand a little squeeze. “All these years, you’ve never wanted to get involved in politics. Now that you’re on the bench, you’re supposed to be politically independent. I won’t compromise that and I won’t let you compromise it.” His stubbornness might kill us both. “You’ve kept many professional secrets from me and I’ve respected that. You have to respect my decision. I gave my word.”
Holding down my anger at his pig-headed single-mindedness now, I accused, “So it was something to do with the confirmation.” He said nothing. “Alright, then. How did your gun get to be a murder weapon? Maybe if we know that, Drake will still let you go. It’s the only real evidence they have against you.”
“I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did.” I must have looked skeptical because he said, “Really. I would. I haven’t seen that gun for a while.”
“Well, where was it the last time you saw it?”
He let my hand go, sat back in his chair, and said, “On that, I’m still checking.”
Exasperated now, I cross-examined him, the long-buried skill surfaced. “You don’t remember?”
“I’m not prepared to discuss that just yet,” he said.
The food I’d eaten with such relish now sat like lead in my stomach. I could keep confronting him, but his will was stronger than mine.
I’d lost too many arguments with him in the past. I knew not to start up about something so important when he held way more information than I did.
So I gave it up for now and turned our conversation to other things, trying to end on a pleasant note. I had other battles to fight and I would need his help later.
What I knew that George refused to accept was that Drake had a deadline. He needed to find enough evidence to present George’s case to a grand jury for indictment, and, as a practical matter, he had to do it within the next three weeks. After that, we could insist on an Adversary Preliminary Hearing where testimony is taken and evidence presented and the judge determines whether there is sufficient evidence to indict George.
But Drake would move quickly. He had momentum now and he’d want to take advantage of it.
I felt as if I had a bomb strapped to my back with a fairly short fuse. Drake’s deadline was now our deadline. We had less than three weeks to convince Drake that he could never try George for murder and win. Could we do it?
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 9:30 a.m.
January 27, 2000
BACK IN MY CHAMBERS, before I took the bench, I got out my Florida Bar Journal directory issue and looked up Florida’s best criminal defense attorney, Olivia Holmes. Olivia could be the poster child for the idea that names determine destiny. Could it be mere happenstance that she bore a feminized version of the moniker of one of the greatest American jurists of all time, Oliver Wendell Holmes?
I knew that she lived in Miami, but Olivia also had offices in Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville, Jacksonville and Tallahassee. Today, I reached her in the Tampa office, on the third try. I made an appointment to meet with her at Minaret early afternoon.
I put the receiver down slowly, wondering if I’d done the right thing. Olivia Holmes had never tried a case in my courtroom, which wasn’t surprising since there just aren’t that many female trial lawyers in Florida, let alone that many doing federal criminal trial work.
Besides that, it takes an iron will and a strong level of self-confidence to hold a man’s freedom in your hands and know his life depends on your skill and judgment. Not many lawyers have the stomach for it. I don’t.
Olivia and I had had a distant professional association over the years. We hadn’t been friends, partly because neither George nor I could agree with Olivia’s politics.
A criminal defense attorney usually justifies the work of put ting criminals back on the street by believing she’s serving the judicial system. Some go so far as to claim that it’s an honor to do so. They believe the prosecution must always prove its case, or lose. They believe they are guarding basic constitutional rights that must, at all costs, be guarded.
Criminal defense lawyers believe that drivel about how it’s better to let a thousand guilty men go free than to jail one man who is innocent. I’ve seen too many families and victims of the guilty defendants who go free. For them, philosophy rings hollow.
All of that stuff sounds good in theory. The problem is that theory and reality are so far apart. These days, a truly innocent man is rarely, if ever, brought to trial.
It’s hard enough to get the guilty ones arrested, tried and convicted. If they are arrested, they usually plea bargain. If they go to trial, they’re usually guilty. And when the defense attorney puts them back on the street, they commit another crime and we do the dance again. The recidivism rate is astronomical and the justice system is losing ground every day.
A criminal defense attorney is necessary, but not heroic. They aren’t crusaders or protectors of the American way.
At least, I hadn’t thought so before. Like so many people before me, as soon as I needed a good criminal lawyer to defend my husband on a bogus charge, I bent my principles.
It’s the age-old problem of being an American lawyer: we know the difference between right and wrong and good and evil but we also see the similarities.
I was counting on the system’s frailties to help George, not to hurt him. I hoped to avoid an indictment and prevent a trial. I wanted a lawyer who had beat Drake many times before.
Once Drake had his ego on the line by going to the grand jury and indicting George, there would be no way to avoid a trial.
I absolutely believed George was not guilty of murder, but his chances of winning at t
rial against a determined prosecutor were slim, indeed. Drake had the advantage of the full force of government resources, solid forensic evidence, a high-profile victim, a well-known defendant, and Robbie Andrews had provided the public with a strong motive.
I knew George would never kill because of an assault to his ego, but jurors would believe it. Men have killed for less. If we got to the point of trial, we’d need Olivia Holmes and a team of horses to pull George out of the muck.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Tampa, Florida
Thursday 10:00 a.m.
January 27, 2000
WHEN THE NEWTON TRIAL resumed, it seemed more trivial to me than ever and I was barely aware of it.
My thoughts returned to George again and again as Newton began his case in chief by calling his expert witness to the stand. There would be no surprises, since the famous psychiatrist, a specialist in treating criminal psycho-sexual disorders, was previously deposed and had fully explained his opinions.
Listening only with half my brain, I heard the expert testify that Mr. Newton’s sexual preference, whatever it was, was a private fact that had been publicly disclosed. He said disclosing Mr. Newton’s sex life was offensive and objectionable to all reason able people of ordinary sensibilities and could not be of any legitimate concern to the public.
Further, he said, unless Mr. Newton admitted he was a homosexual, which he most certainly had not, labeling a person “homosexual” without his consent denies a basic human right: the right to self-identity.
Most of it was above the jury’s head, steeped in history and philosophy. The short of it was, though, that personal relationships are private matters and ought to stay that way. Most of us in the room agreed with that, except, presumably, Mr. Tampa herself. And her employer.
