Guilty Wives

by Patterson, James; Ellis, David

  “Of course not.” Jules pondered a moment. Finally, he flipped a page in his notepad. Moving on to another topic. “The name of this film you were shooting was?”

  “Overboard.”

  “Ah. Overboard. And the film company was Mirastar, I believe?”

  “Mirastar Entertainment, yes.”

  “You had a…ten-movie contract with Mirastar.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Overboard was your last of the ten.”

  “Correct.”

  “It was with Mirastar that you made these ‘Charm’ movies, yes? Three’s a Charm, Four’s a Charm, Five’s a Charm.”

  “Yes.”

  “And also…let me see.” Jules checked his notes. “Renegade, Beat of an Eye, Last Man Standing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Action movies, yes?”

  Damon inclined his head. “I suppose you could call them that, yes.”

  “Mr. Laurent,” the presiding judge chimed in. “Is this necessary?”

  “I will…get to my point, Mr. President. Many thanks.”

  Jules focused again on Damon. “Mr. Kodiak, you were…in negotiations for another contract at the time of the murders?”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “You are forty-seven, Mr. Kodiak?”

  “Thank you for reminding me, Mr. Laurent.” More chuckles from the gallery. I didn’t know he was that old. He was sure holding up well. I would swear to that under oath.

  “I mean no disrespect, sir. But is it fair to say that…that a man of your age will find it more difficult to…star in action movies?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, then could we agree that your more recent movies have been less popular at the box office?” Jules picked up a piece of paper. “Or should I read you some figures?”

  “The answer to your first question is yes,” Damon said with some ice.

  “All right, then. You were in the midst of negotiations with Mirastar. And others as well, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And would I be correct in saying that the money that was being offered was…less than the money in your previous contract?”

  Damon was no longer deriving any enjoyment from this conversation. “You would be correct.”

  Jules waited a moment. He wanted to be sure he had everyone’s attention. He certainly had Damon’s.

  “And in the midst of this negotiation, Mr. Kodiak, did you think it would help your negotiating position, or hurt it, if the moviegoing public knew that you’d been on a yacht with the president of France at or near the time he was murdered?”

  “I must object.” Maryse Ballamont shot to her feet.

  “I wasn’t on that yacht,” said Damon. “I wasn’t!”

  “Of course you weren’t.” Jules was done. He thanked the witness and took his seat. I caught Damon’s eye as he looked about the courtroom. He held my stare for a split second before he shook his head and looked away.

  CHAPTER 51

  ANOTHER CRAPPY JAIL cell, another restless night of sleep. Despite what I thought was an effective cross-examination by Jules, the online media coverage was brutal after Damon’s testimony. Joseph Morro’s New York Times blog said that “Ms. Elliot’s alibi, which had always felt like quite a stretch, was obliterated today by Mr. Kodiak, who seemed almost amused at the idea.” (This from the reporter who told me the night before that he thought I was innocent.) The Paris paper Le Monde said that my alibi sounded like “the fantasies of a frustrated, deranged housewife.” A daily online poll in Le Monde now had 82 percent of respondents believing we were guilty. A similar poll in USA Today, which I had hoped would be a bit more favorable, had 71 percent believing us guilty.

  The next morning, following a “shower” that consisted of running water through my hair at a sink and scrubbing my armpits with hand soap, it was time for court. I was once more put into the back compartment of the oversized gendarmerie vehicle, the restraints placed again on my wrists and ankles. The gendarmerie assigned to my security treated me, as always, with some reverence given my celebrity, but even they had grown chillier toward me as the evidence had come in, blow by blow. At least we didn’t have to obey the stoplights, so our cavalcade of three vehicles—one in front and one behind—made good time on the narrow Paris streets.

  I heard them as soon as we crossed over the Seine, the hostile chants of the protesters waiting to greet us. “La mort aux meurtrières!” they cried. Death to the murderers. I peered through the window at the swollen throngs lining the streets, straining against the police barricades, shaking their fists in the air and holding signs that did not exactly speak well of the four of us on trial.

  “Anyone ever hear of the presumption of innocence?” I mumbled.

  Before the words were out of my mouth, everything began to unravel.

  The sounds came in quick succession, two thumps against the side of the rear cabin, where we sat. Someone had thrown something at the car. Then the unmistakable crash of glass shattering on the hood of the vehicle, and then the explosion. Through the slit in the plastic between us and the front cabin I saw a cascade of orange-red flame snake across the windshield.

  Our vehicle veered sharply to the right and abruptly stopped. I was pitched forward on the left-side bench, thrown as far as the momentum of the sudden stop had carried me against my wrist and ankle restraints. The guards fell into each other and started shouting to one another and to the front cabin.

  One of the guards pushed me back up to a seated position, where I sat, helpless, as the guards frantically readied their weapons. One of them was on his radio, urgently trying to get direction from his superiors. Through the narrow back window I saw several fireballs on the street topped with thick black smoke. I saw people spilling over the barricades. I saw French troops in riot gear, late in reacting, advancing on the crowd with shields up, batons raised, and in some cases rifles poised at the shoulder.

  But there weren’t enough of them, and they hadn’t been prepared for this. Protesters scattered like cockroaches in all directions.

  Some of them ran directly toward our vehicle.

  “Nous devons sortir d’ici!” one of the guards shouted.

  He was right. We were sitting ducks. Our vehicle was on fire and the protesters were headed for us.

  We had to get out of here.

  CHAPTER 52

  THE CARGO DOOR of the vehicle burst open and armed gendarmes jumped in. My restraints were removed and I was carried out of the vehicle by guards on either side of me. In the open air, the smell of burning gasoline filled my nostrils and the chaotic shouts of the turbulent crowd drowned out the thumping of my pulse.

  Through the blur of activity, people dashing madly about and shouting and colliding violently with riot police, it was clear that I was being steered toward the rear vehicle in the convoy, which thus far was intact. But between the vehicle and us were a half dozen men, wild-eyed in their rage, who now had me in their sights. The riot police, trying to intercept them, fired on them. Two of the protesters took shots to the chest and fell backward. One of them ran from the riot troopers and hurled an object at me, a brick that hit one of the guards to my left. He fell to his knee and I went down with him, as he was holding my arm. On the ground, I picked up the brick because I figured I should have a weapon of my own. The guard pulled me to my feet and we tried to navigate forward.

  Another man, shouting wildly, tackled the riot police head-on, lunging at their shields and receiving swats from their batons for his trouble. The noise had grown deafening, the movements of the people a dizzying collage of desperation and rage…

  But then there was the man who stayed just outside the immediate fray, who, for a split second, seemed not to move at all, despite the turmoil around him. That was the man who, by his stony pose, drew my attention. That was the man who lifted his shirt and revealed a gun.

  He widened his stance and drew the weapon from his waistband. I was unable to speak but my arm
was working fine. By the time he was raising the gun, I had thrown the brick at him. It grazed his shoulder, startling him more than anything, but it was enough to throw off his aim. The gun went off in the air while he regained his balance. Then one of the gendarmes fired and hit him. Blood splattered from his midsection and he dropped to the ground. Riot troopers converged on him, separating him from the gun, flipping him over, and cuffing him.

  The bloodshed seemed to scatter the remainder of the protesters from the immediate area and I ran, with the two guards, to the rear vehicle in the convoy. They pushed me into the backseat, did a quick U-turn, and floored it.

  I looked back through the rear window. Flames on the street, one vehicle on fire, several protesters lying prone, others still battling the riot police.

  “You are…safe,” said the guard next to me, panting, as we sped away.

  “Safe?” For now, maybe. But I was beginning to wonder if I was even going to make it through this trial alive.

  CHAPTER 53

  I DIDN’T KNOW where I was, which somehow seemed fitting under the circumstances. This gave new meaning to the term “undisclosed location”; it wasn’t even disclosed to me.

  I knew this much: I was at a French military compound, and I was in some kind of stockade made of twisted wire that, I was told, would cut me if I tried to grab it.

  I was alive and relatively intact. Given the attempt on my life, my physical injuries were comparatively minor—abrasions on my knee when I fell and more serious cuts to my wrists, which I suffered when our vehicle had jerked to the right and thrown me off my seat, straining me against the handcuffs. Some military doctor had dressed the wounds on my wrists with gauze and tape.

  “You okay, Ms. Elliot?” It was Dan Ingersoll, the Department of Justice attaché to the U.S. Embassy. He was dressed in a nice blue suit—courtroom attire, as he’d attended every day of the trial. He addressed me formally, which is pretty much the way he’d related to me over these many months while I awaited trial. He’d visited me several times each week, making sure I was being kept secure and fed and not being stripped of all those nice human rights that diplomats look out for. That was his job, to make sure I was being afforded basic dignities while I awaited trial. And he’d limited his conversations with me to those topics.

  Still, his formality aside, Dan seemed to genuinely care about my predicament. On the rare occasion when I lodged a complaint, he followed up on it for me. If I had a question, he got the answer. If I just needed to vent, he was an attentive listener.

  His eyes moved to my bandaged wrists. I knew what he was thinking. “From the handcuffs,” I explained. “I’m not suicidal.”

  “Ah.” He nodded.

  “Where am I?” I asked.

  “An air force base in Creil,” said Dan. “About thirty miles north of Paris. No more random jail cells. They’re keeping you guys on a military base from now on. You’ll be flown to and from court in a military helicopter.”

  I didn’t know if that meant my accommodations would be better or worse. I suspected the latter.

  “Who tried to kill me, Dan?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “They don’t know too much about him. He was twenty-two. Dropped out of Sorbonne University. He was a political supporter of Devereux. Apparently he had some psychological problems.”

  “You’re using the past tense,” I said.

  “He was killed.” Ingersoll sighed. “Three dead, in all. Thirty-some wounded. I think they arrested like sixty people or something.”

  “I saw at least three people get shot,” I said.

  He shook his head. “The riot squad used rubber bullets. Nonlethal. Only the guards escorting you had weapons with real bullets. They killed the guy who tried to shoot you. Another guy died from a baton blow. A third guy, an older man, died from cardiac arrest.”

  I shuddered. Three dead, more than thirty wounded. I closed my eyes and dropped my head. The list of casualties from our fun little weekend continued to grow.

  “Oh, and the New York Yankees called,” Dan added. “They saw the video of you hurling that brick and they want to sign you to a minor-league contract.”

  I tried to manage a smile. I appreciated his attempt at levity.

  “It was your basic Molotov cocktail,” Dan explained when I asked him what had caused the fires. “Fill a bottle with petrol, tie a rag around the stopper, soak it with alcohol, light the rag, and toss the bottle. Homemade incendiary devices. They’ve worked for centuries.”

  “They worked today.”

  He smiled for some reason, then grew serious. “We’ve been in touch with the interior ministry about the safety of you and Ms. Schofield. And they’re on the same page with us, Ms. Elliot. What happened today was a black eye for them. They look out of control when something like this happens. And governments don’t like to look out of control. Especially new ones formed after their last president was assassinated.” He drew a breath. “Your safety will be guaranteed,” he assured me.

  Something told me he enjoyed that paternalistic role. I was willing to bet he had a daughter.

  “During the trial, you mean,” I said. “My safety will be guaranteed during the trial. But not afterward.”

  Dan didn’t debate me. What could he say? Look what these people did while I was surrounded by armed escorts. Imagine what would happen when I was alone in a prison cell, or out in the prison yard.

  Don’t think that way, I told myself. Once trial resumed next week, we had our defense. We had several weeks’ worth of evidence. We would testify. Our experts would testify about evidence being planted and hotel key cards duplicated. Our husbands would testify that, whatever our faults, we weren’t murderers.

  We hadn’t begun to fight. We still had our defense. There was still a chance.

  “Don’t give up hope,” I always told my children. I had to keep reminding myself to follow that same advice.

  CHAPTER 54

  I AM DROWNING in a sea of boiling water, my flesh tearing from the bone. I try to cry out; nothing escapes from my mouth but a desperate whisper. When my head goes back underwater I see the wavy images of my children, Richie and Elena, above me. They are calling to me, offering a hand to me, but I don’t want to reach out for them; I’m afraid that the water will scald them. Go away now, I silently plead with them. Go away before you get burned—

  I popped up in bed, sucking in deep breaths of air. A man was standing at the door of my cell, raking a metal key across the wired bars.

  Still pulling myself out of the dream, out of that water, I blinked through bleary eyes.

  The man opened the cell and approached me. He was dressed all in black. I could hardly make him out at all.

  “Get up,” he said.

  I got out of bed and he led me by the arm out of the cell. Another man, also in black, was waiting out there and followed behind us. I struggled to keep up with the man pulling me forward. I was hardly awake and my socks had no traction on the slippery floor. We walked down two flights of stairs. Then he led me into what appeared to be another cell. It was pitch-black, but I sensed it wasn’t empty. I could hear labored breathing and noticed a smell I couldn’t quite make out. The smell of fear—

  The lights went on. Bryah, Serena, and Winnie were each sitting in a different corner of an unfurnished cell, each wearing a gray gown like the one I was provided. We glanced at each other, squinting with bewilderment. They looked like I assumed I did—bloodshot eyes, hair all over the place, roused from the depths of sleep.

  A few minutes passed in silence. None of us spoke. None of us understood. Then we all turned as we heard the echo of footsteps on the concrete floor.

  Colonel Durand—Square Jaw—entered the room. He stopped in the middle and looked around at the four of us. He studied each of us with something close to amusement. Then he began to stroll about the room casually, nodding his head and cupping his chin with his hand.

  “Winnie Brookes killed the president. This is…beyond debate, of co
urse. The rest of you? You knew of the scheme to blackmail, but that is all. You did not intend any murder. You played a role in concealing it, but this was…afterward. As for Winnie, it was not her intention to commit murder. She…snapped? Snapped. There was no plan. No…premeditation. A blackmail scheme that…went bad.”

  Durand stopped and looked around at each of us.

  “Is that a question or a statement?” I asked.

  “A statement,” he answered. “A statement that each of you will make when court resumes on Monday. And then the trial will end. Monday, the trial ends.”

  Monday? “No,” I said. “We have weeks’ worth of testimony ahead.”

  Durand shot me a confident look and ambled over to Bryah. “What I have described is quite like the statement that you signed, Ms. Gordon.”

  “You tricked me,” Bryah spat.

  He wagged a finger at her. “No more of that. You cooperated previously and you will cooperate once again. You will state what I have just described.”

  “In exchange for what?” she asked.

  “Ten years,” he answered. “The prosecutor will recommend ten years of prison. And the court will accept that recommendation.”

  “How could you possibly know that?” I called out.

  Durand ignored me and walked to the corner where Serena sat. “Ms. Schofield. I say the same to you. You also previously signed this statement. You will also receive ten years.” He opened his hands. “Ten years is a gift. Your children will still be young when you are released.”

  Serena and Bryah were still, but their faces had grown intense.

  “Ms. Brookes.” Durand turned to Winnie. “The evidence against you is…quite overwhelming. You are facing a certain life sentence. You are quite fortunate that France does not have the death penalty.” He rolled his hand. “But now you will receive forty years because of the absence of intent. A long time, yes, but preferable to life. You will still have good years left.”