Presumed Guilty (13 page)

When Dallas got to Jeff’s office, he did not greet her with a smile. His normally crisp white shirt was wrinkled and his desk a mess of files and papers. He looked more like a law student stressing over finals than a successful trial lawyer.

Which was only going to make it harder to trip the land mine that Lisa had revealed a couple of hours before.
“I saw Ron,” Jeff said immediately. “He doesn’t want to plead out. Says he did not kill the girl and that it would be a lie to plead guilty to anything.”
“So what does that mean?”
“It means . . .” A pained look flashed across Jeff’s face. “Please sit down, Dallas.”
The heavy weight of her heart forced her into a chair.
“There’s no easy way to tell you this,” Jeff said.
Him too?
“Just tell me. Straight out.”
Jeff closed his eyes. “I’m thinking of withdrawing from the case.”
“What?”
“Dallas, listen carefully. I am obligated to represent a client with zeal. That’s what the code of ethics says. That requires a certain trust, on both sides. When things happen that destroy trust, the zeal that’s supposed to be there fizzles. I won’t be doing Ron any favors by continuing to represent him.”
“What happened? What did he say to you?”
“It’s what he didn’t say. I have the feeling he’s holding back something, not being up front with me.”
Dallas stared at him.
Just wait.
“Ron originally lied to the police, and he lied to you and me about whether he had sex with Melinda Perry.”
“Yes, he did, and he’s sorry for that. I really believe he is and — ”
“I think he’s still lying.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But I have a terrible feeling he’s lying to you too, Dallas.”
Dallas clenched her teeth. She couldn’t fight it any longer. “He is holding back, Jeff.”
He sat on the edge of his desk. “What do you know?” “I had coffee with Lisa Benson today. She told me the prosecutor wants to interview her and Bob.”
“Did she say why?”
“Boy, did she.” Dallas rubbed her right temple, which felt like an earthquake’s epicenter. “She found out that Ron had an affair.”
“Someone other than the victim?”
Dallas nodded. “About a year ago. I remember the woman. Her name was Amy Shea. Does that name ring a bell?”
Jeff shook his head.
“You’d probably remember her if you saw her. She was a striking woman. I never got to know her real well. It’s easy to come and get lost at Hillside. But that’s that. Will this hurt the case?”
“It may. If the prosecution finds her, she could be called as a witness to establish a pattern in Ron’s life. Regardless, this is another example of Ron’s not being up front with us.”
Dallas took a couple of deep breaths, and they felt like the last gasps of a drowning woman.
“Jeff, won’t you stay on? I can’t imagine getting another lawyer.”
He hesitated, then said, “All right, Dallas. For you I’ll do it.”
She almost cried then but managed to make it out of the office with her eyes dry. And then she drove to the ocean.
She parked along Pacific Coast Highway near Point Dume, then walked down to the sand and sat and just looked.
She’d grown up in California, always lived near the coast. She couldn’t imagine not having the ocean near her.
At least until now.
Now she thought what she might do. Sell the house and buy some place in the South. A place that was not California, where she could start over, out of any limelight.
She had no husband now. She was not married to Ron Hamilton after all, but a phantom, a liar, a shadow man.
He was sick in a deep, spiritual way. Well, she didn’t have to share that sickness.
Divorce. Everyone would understand. No one on earth would accuse her of selfishness or abandonment. Not after this.
She thought about praying but decided not to. Right now she didn’t want to hear the voice of God. That was tiring. She didn’t want to pray for herself, or Ron. Let him pray for himself, if he had any faith left.
It was almost noon. She could sit here all day, watch the waves, let the world go on without her. No Jared, no Ron. Give up and not fight it anymore.
She remembered another beach, near Big Sur, where she’d stopped after thumbing out of L.A. to get away from Chad. It was twilight and she was wearing a long cotton dress and she kicked off her shoes and waded into the water, toward the gentle waves.
There’d been a split second there, as her dress got soggy with brine, that she thought she might just keep going, get beyond the waves and let the current take her out, then under. Give it all up to a beautiful cleansing and rest and absorption into peace. Chad had made ground meat of her soul, and this seemed a perfect place and time to dump the whole mess.
And then she began to weep.
She didn’t know how long she wept, but suddenly a man, an older man in a bathing suit, was in the water next to her asking if she was okay. He had gray hair on his chest, a gray moustache, and a nice smile.
Stammering something, nodding, she returned to the shore and sat on the dry sand and cried some more. When she finally stopped she looked around, and was completely alone in the oncoming darkness. She ran to the road and caught another ride, this one all the way into San Francisco.
Now, looking out at her beloved ocean, hearing waves hitting sand, she wept again, and thought about the heaviness of water.

As I got busier, as my writing and speaking invitations grew, as Hillside began to burst and began a new building program, as I started on the radio, as I spent more time in my office than at home, how could I not have expected my spiritual life to atrophy?

I did not read the Bible much, except to find verses to pin on my sermons. My sermons were no longer about the power of God, the good news of redemption. When people came to my services — MY!! — I wanted them to feel that I — I!! — was giving them words of comfort for their “felt needs.”

I was not searching the Word so it could search me, nor was I praying as I ought, with a passionate longing.
Not like when I was preaching on the streets of San Francisco, when I had no choice but to depend on the power of God, on the power of his Word.
When I first came to Hillside, the pastor I was replacing, Roger Vernon, took me aside and asked me what the most crucial thing to do was, and I said, “Pastor the people.”
“More crucial,” he prodded.
I said I didn’t know what was more crucial than that.
And he said, “Where does the word
crucial
come from?”
I shrugged.
“It comes from the word
cross
. That is what you must do. Preach the cross of Christ, make it the center of everything you do, first and foremost in your own life.”

“What is it, Dallas?” Ron, on the other side of the Plexiglas, frowned. He looked like he’d aged five years. “Why don’t you say anything?”

“I’m trying to gather my thoughts,” she said. She’d been trying to gather them for the past three days, since learning about his other affair.

“What is it? Something’s wrong. Jared?”
“Jared is a topic for another time.”
Ron shook his head. “You seem so distant, Dallas.”
“Do I?”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do.”

How like a little boy he looked now, knowing he was in trouble but not knowing the details. “Please talk to me, Dallas.”
“Before I do, I want to lay down some ground rules.”
“Rules? What are you — ”
“Just listen. If you want me in here again, you will listen now, okay? Nod if you understand.”
He nodded.
“Good. The first and most important rule is this. You will not lie to me. Ever again. And I mean ever. Do you understand that?”
“Dallas, I wish you’d tell me — ”
“
Do
you understand that?”
“Of course I do. If you’re still angry about what I did, I thought that — ”
“Quiet. You’re still listening to me. The second ground rule is that you are to speak to me directly and not try to hide behind words. I want direct answers and admissions. Is that understood?”
“I guess so.” He was looking worried now, and Dallas felt a pang of sympathy for him. She had never talked to him this way. He had always been the leader, the authority in the family. He looked truly pained that she was talking like this.
Tough.
“Here it is, Ron. And I want you to think very carefully before you answer. Because if I sense any evasion whatsoever, then I am out of here. For good.”
Ron blinked, then nodded his agreement.
“I know about Amy Shea,” Dallas said.
For at least ten seconds, Ron did not move, didn’t even twitch. Dallas kept her eyes trained on him, not giving an inch. She was not going to soften. Not this time.
Ron looked down. “She came to see me once. She was going through a divorce and said she needed spiritual counsel. I tried to give it to her. I honestly tried to tell her to keep her marriage together.”
Dallas almost snapped at him but stayed quiet.
“She asked me if I’d meet with her again, and I agreed. Only she said she wanted to meet at her place of business, and could I do that. She was running a pretty successful boutique in Malibu. So I went. I thought seeing a little more of her life would give me good insight into her problem. Stupid mistake.”
Dallas felt the heat of humiliation in her, pushing upward toward her tear ducts. Still, she remained silent.
“She insisted on taking me to lunch, to show her appreciation. I told her I didn’t think that was a good idea. Honest, I did. I knew it wasn’t. But . . . I just went.”
What wasn’t I giving you, Ron? Why did you feel the need?
“We had lunch at this place by the beach, looking out at the ocean. She was, I guess, in her element. I was the fish out of water. But then she started talking about my preaching, about how she thought I was a natural for television, about this and that, and I just got caught up in it.”
Nothing like the power of flattery from a beautiful woman. Men, in some fundamental ways, are so weak.
“We went back to her boutique. She told the other girl there that she wanted to close up early. Amy locked the place up. And that’s when it happened.”
“In the
boutique
?”
Ron nodded, looking down.
“How long did it go on?” Dallas said.
“A few weeks. Then I stopped it.”
“Why?”
“Because” — he looked into her eyes — “I couldn’t handle the guilt. And because I love you.”
The words did not melt her heart, and that was surprising. For so many years Dallas had fed hungrily on those words, which came less and less frequently from Ron’s lips. Now they were nearly unpalatable.
“One more question, Ron.”
He waited.
“Were there any others?”
“No. I give you my absolute word.”
“Was it me?” she said. “Was I lacking in some way? Did I — ”
“No, Dallas, no. Please believe me.”
She tried to.
“Now I have a question for you,” Ron said. “What?”
“Will you forgive me?”
She stared at him, wondering if she could.

Saturday morning and her head was about to explode.
I’m a Hindenburg waiting to happen
, Dallas thought as the walls of her house crowded in around her.

She’d already turned away one reporter who’d come knocking at the door like a Jehovah’s Witness with three thousand questions.
She had to get away. And in Los Angeles that always meant hopping in a car and driving as far as you wanted. Alone.
She grabbed her purse and went.
She got to the freeway and was relieved that no news vans were following her. She headed east toward Pasadena with the radio tuned to the classic-rock station. A nice blast from her past. She’d always liked the music of the seventies. She didn’t want to think about anything but driving and listening and being anywhere but home.
At least the day was clear. The San Gabriel Mountains on her left were looking fine. Nothing ever bothered them, except a few brushfires now and again. Or floods sometimes, which caused the mountains to shed muddy skin, sloughing it into the yards and swimming pools of the homes foolishly packed below.
She remembered the first time she’d seen these mountains as a little girl when her mother had moved them here. They drove over the Sepulveda Pass and looked down on the Valley where the San Gabriels merged with the Santa Susanas. And it seemed like a wonderland then, a land of adventure, a place where she would meet wonderful friends and where, one day, she’d become a famous singer. All this was years before meeting Chad McKenzie and learning that dreams were kid stuff, and sometimes deadly.
She’d had a different dream when she moved back here with Ron. A dream of new beginnings and a marriage that would be a permanent and glorious thing. Moving back to Los Angeles then

Dallas merged onto the Foothill Freeway, and as she did she found she was crying. She wiped the tears with the back of her hand. The rock station was playing “Love the One You’re With.” She punched the
off
button. This time, the music was no help.

Maybe it’s me
.
Maybe I wasn’t a good enough wife or mother. Maybe I just blew it. And maybe all that stuff from Ron about loving me and wanting forgiveness is just the last gasp of the dying man who really doesn’t care. Maybe we’re better off without each other.

She drove on, through Pasadena, and then past Sierra Madre and Duarte. Towns where normal life was happening, to people who weren’t her.

She saw the 605 Freeway coming up, and her inner geography kicked in. The 605 south would take her to El Monte, La Puente.
And Pico Rivera, infamous of late as the town with the Star Motel.
Don’t do it. Leave it alone. Keep driving. Find a movie theater. See a comedy. But don’t torture yourself by —
She took the 605 south.
When she got off in Pico Rivera she pulled into a Shell station next to a pay phone. She got out and looked in the Yellow Pages and found the address for the Star Motel, which didn’t do her a lot of good, not knowing where the streets were.
But the nice young man at the counter told her, in his New Delhi accent, that the street she wanted was just two blocks away.

The Star looked like it had been built in the fifties, the golden age of motels in Los Angeles County. But the years had not been kind to it. The exterior was done up in weather-beaten white with a muddy aqua trim. The letters spelling out
Motel
on the roof were red and accented with neon lights that, in the sunshine, looked superfluous and ugly.