Ring of Truth (22 page)

What a generous gesture, I'm thinking, for Jenny to keep the boring old boat bag with its mundane contents and to give the glamorous, glittery rings to her pal. But canny Jenny quickly dashes any such idealization of herself.

“Yeah. I was afraid my mom would find out.”

“My mom would never search my room,” Nikki says.

“She must trust you a lot,” I surmise.

Nikki, the quiet, timid one, grins. “I don't know. But I always keep it clean so she won't have any excuse to mess with my stuff.”

The girls giggle, and I am left with the impression that in my manuscript I made Nikki Modesto a little too good to be true. Like everybody else, I fell for those big brown innocent eyes that are now dancing with even more mischievous glee than Jenny Carmichael's blue eyes are.

“You two are a pair,” I inform them.

They fling themselves at me, and I get sandwiched in a furious hug.

“How did you end up with one ring, Jenny?” I ask her.

“Oh, when I found them?” she says. “I took two of them out and put them on, but one of them dropped off my finger. Nikki let me keep the other one, since I let her have all the rest.”

“Wait a minute. Are you saying this pouch was in the canvas bag?”

“Oh, yeah,” she says, confidentially. “It was all there.”

My heart gives a lurch at that moment, because I am thinking:
What's Artemis going to think when she opens the bag and her rings aren't there? And, more urgently, what's she going to do?

It's great, it's sweet that the girls are back together. But now I'm left with their strange and mysterious treasure. Nine rings. Just like in J.R.R. Tolkien's classic trilogy of fantasy novels with its famous poem with that ominous last line . . .
“One ring to find them all, and in the darkness bind them.”

It strikes me that the rings provide me with the perfect bait to go fishing again, but not so carelessly as last time. In fact, forget fishing. This time I will set something more like a bear trap. And nobody's going to get hurt. It's just my reputation that may take a beating.

“Deb?” Using my cell phone in my car, I catch her at work, at the Bahia Beach newspaper offices. “How would you like to have an exclusive story about a murder that happened in this city last Friday night?”

Susanna
14

There are several interviews left on the tape in my car's stereo, and so, on my way to meet Deb at the
Sun-Journal,
I play the next one. It begins with me asking defense attorney Tammi Golding the same question I asked her client, Bob Wing.

“Why Steven Orbach, Tammi? Out of all the killers on death row, why would you and Bob and the church pick him to save?”

Her answer is more practical, if not necessarily any more convincing than Bob Wing's was. “Because it was a rush to judgment, Marie. Consider: a young woman gets killed. There's a known murderer on the premises. The cops are over-eager, especially since the victim is related to one of their own. Voilà: they've got their man.”

“Well, lord, they'd be remiss if they
didn't
suspect him, Tammi,” I hear myself say on the tape. “Wouldn't they?”

“Sure, any reasonable person might have suspected Stevie, but strange things do happen, you know. It is possible to have a convicted murderer on the premises of a crime he didn't do. And last I checked, in this country you still aren't supposed to be convicted for a crime you didn't do, no matter how numerous or heinous the previous ones you did do. And every citizen ought to be grateful for that. Or some time when they're in Kmart they could find themselves arrested for a crime just because they happened
to be standing there when one is committed, and the cops run them through the computer and find out they have a previous arrest on a parking ticket. ‘Ah-ha,’ the cops say, ‘here's a proven criminal, let's arrest her for this one, too.’ That's not the way it's supposed to be. There is, theoretically, a presumption of innocence until proven guilty.”

“Didn't they prove that Stevie killed her?”

“They may think they did. We don't.”

“So, basically, you think Stevie Orbach is in jail because he killed his mother,” I say slowly, trying to understand what she's telling me. “You think that because he did that, his guilt in Allison's death was just assumed. And that since they couldn't keep him in prison on the one murder, because he was a juvenile at the time, they'd just keep him on the other charge. Well, Tammi, a lot of people wouldn't object to that very much; that'd be just fine with them. A guy kills his mother, he shouldn't get out anyway. That's how their thinking goes. He gets arrested and sentenced to death for a later murder he didn't commit . . . so what?”

“I hope these are rhetorical questions, Marie.” On the tape, I can hear a wry smile in her voice. “ ‘So
what,’
you ask? So is this still America or not?”

“I believe it is, even here in Florida. But, Tammi, it's also true that in America, if you've got the evidence, you'll likely win the case. Regardless of whether the cops rushed it . . . didn't they prove it, ultimately?”

“Reasonable people could disagree.”

“Wasn't it his semen?”

“Yes, it was.”

“So he raped her.”

“Not necessarily, Marie. I will stipulate that they certainly had sex.”

“She was drunk, Tammi. You call that consent?”

“I'm not calling it anything, including rape. We have semen, but no sign of struggle or injury.”

“But his hair and fiber—”

“All over her. Yes. That happens when people have sex,” she says, dryly. “But they never found any of his hair or any fiber in her apartment, and that's where she died.”

“Really? Not in his rooms?”

“No. Really.”

“How'd the prosecution get around that, Tammi?”

“They didn't have to. He had some screwy defense attorney who allowed Stevie to allude to his previous conviction, so then the prosecution could pounce on it.”

“But he did it as a juvenile. Can that be revealed in court?”

“That's been one of our grounds for appeal, but we always get turned down on that, because the higher courts say it didn't turn the verdict. They say the preponderance of the evidence would have convicted him anyway.”

“Tammi, my mind registers what you're saying, but I'm still snagged back there on the dead mother. Stevie is one hell of an unsympathetic cause célèbre.”

“American justice is built on protecting the least among us.”

“That's what your minister told me, too, in his way.”

Again, I hear a smile in her voice. “In his way, yes.”

“But what about Allison's poor parents, Tammi? They just want Stevie to get what they believe he justly has coming to him. This crusade of yours just kills them.”

Her tone is acid. “I hear that crap all the time in deathpenalty cases. People whine, ‘But what about the family? They'll feel better when he's dead.’ My answer to that is—okay, then let's kill him today. And then we discover tomorrow that he didn't do it. So how is that going to make the family feel, hm? Where's their vaunted peace of mind
then?
Where's the comfort in knowing that they pressed for the execution of an innocent man . . .
and
. . . that whoever really killed their loved one is still at large. I'd like somebody to explain to me how
that
will make a family feel better.”

“Stevie's no innocent, not really.”

“Let me tell you something, Marie. I know of a study done of kids who've killed a parent. In the cases that were analyzed of kids up to their late teens, they couldn't find a single incident that wasn't preceded by years of severe child abuse. Not one, unless there were drugs involved, or the kid was older. You think young kids kill their parents for fun? Casually? For no reason? Kids
love
their parents, in spite of everything; they're dependent on their parents and they'll defend their parents; they'll fight to go back to bad parents, just because that's the only mom or dad they've got. It has to be horrible at home before a kid will murder a parent, Marie. Listen, Stevie was fourteen when he killed his mother. She was a known abuser in a big way. Maybe he's a monster as a result of that, although I personally don't think so. I think he's a young man who killed the sadistic guard of his own personal prison camp. Lots of prisoners of war might have killed their guards if they'd had a chance, and we'd throw them a ticker-tape parade. We know they're not a danger to anybody else in society. So maybe Stevie didn't kill Allison, and wouldn't ever have killed anybody but his mother.”

“But the sex . . .”

“She was seventeen and drunk. Stevie was twenty-one, and he'd also been drinking that night. It makes them young and horny and stupid, but it doesn't mean he killed her.”

“Okay, then who killed her?”

“That
is what the cops were supposed to find out.”

“What does Bob's arrest do to your efforts on Stevie's behalf?”

She sighs, and it's quite audible on the tape. It's an uncharacteristic gesture of discouragement on the part of this normally indefatigable attorney. “It's over. We haven't quite exhausted all of our legal appeals, but we're out of money in our defense fund. I'm working nearly for free, but there are a lot of other expenses. Artie would throw in some money, but her husband says they've got her legal defense to pay for. I can't argue with that, since I'm one of the ones they're paying. Plus, the death-penalty committee at the church voted to divert the funds away from Steve to
Bob. Against Bob's furious objections, I might add. Before this happened, Bob was supposed to see the governor to plead our case for Stevie, but that's dead, too. Name me a governor—a politician—who would even be seen shaking his hand now and I'll show you somebody who'll lose his next election. Or hers.”

“What about the other death-penalty projects in the country?”

“They've got their own backlog of cases.”

“So it's over for Stevie?”

“Notwithstanding a miracle, yes.”

“Please forgive me for asking an infuriating question, Tammi, but how do you feel about that?”

She doesn't snap at me as she might do. “I feel . . .” She stops, then starts again. “I feel guilty. Guiltier than Stevie, that's for damned sure. And as a citizen of this state, so should you.”

“If some supporter of the death penalty had thought this up, and murdered Susanna, and framed Bob, they could hardly have come up with a better way to shut you down, could they, Tammi?”

The tape plays her bitter laughter. “Don't think I haven't lain awake considering that possibility, Marie. In one of my more desperate moments when I was preparing for trial I even thought about floating that in front of the jury.”

“Just out of a general philosophical curiosity, what's it going to take to end the death penalty in this country, do you think? The death of a provably innocent person?”

“That's what they say, but personally I think it will take more than that. I think most people don't care if an evil person gets killed by mistake. They're just glad he's dead and that he can't hurt anybody anymore. Justice be damned, they'll say, this is a higher justice at work. So if Ted Bundy, say, had
not
been guilty of the murders for which we killed him, who gives a shit? He killed plenty of other girls. He's better off dead and we're better off with him dead. Oh, there's the question of the
real
killer, but that's another story.

“No,” she said, “the kind of case I think we need—God forgive me—is the execution of a person who never did anything wrong. And as crummy as this sounds, it's probably going to have to be a white person, probably a white man, specifically. A good white man would be the ideal innocent person to execute by mistake.
That
would change things.”

“Like Bob Wing?”

“God help us, yes. When we inject our three different chemicals into him on the day he dies, we
will
be executing an innocent man, Marie. Trust me on that. But it won't make any difference if I can't prove it.”

“If somebody else confessed to the crime,” I suggest.

“Which is going to happen any day now,” she retorts, “I'm sure.”

“Well, at least you got one of your clients off.”

There's a silence on the tape and in my car all those months later, I think I remember a certain guarded look on the lawyer's face. Even at the time, I wondered if she really believed in Artie's innocence as much as she believed in Bob's. “I'll be honest, Marie. It's not so much that I got her off as it is that without any physical evidence Tony Delano didn't get it on.”

“You're glad she was acquitted, though.”

“Of course!” It comes so quickly that it sounds forced. “You know what they say about half a loaf . . .” She leaves the rest unspoken . . .
is better than none.

“Tammi, the evidence against Bob is so strong. And yet I get the impression that you really do believe he didn't do it. What is it that convinces you in the face of all that evidence?”

“I believe him,” she says, simply but with conviction ringing in her voice. “I believe that they weren't having an affair, I believe that he didn't place that baseball bat in his house, I believe he didn't rape or kill his wife. I know him and I know he couldn't ever do those things.”

Well, lawyers have been known to be wrong about their clients.

“Tammi, why don't you sound as convincing when you talk about her innocence as when you talk about his?”

“I don't?” She sighs. “Oh, dear. Off the record? Maybe it's because, going into the case, I didn't know her very well, and you know what? I still don't. She didn't cooperate very well, Marie. If you can describe a woman as the strong, silent type, that's her, even though everybody says she used to be the life of the party. Well, she's not anymore, let me tell you. I think she's hiding something, and she may go to her grave with it before anybody finds out what it is.”

I have pulled up into the newspaper's parking lot several minutes ago, but I've been sitting here in the sun so I could hear the whole interview. I didn't interview Stevie Orbach for my book because it wasn't his story and I didn't need him in it. It was just one chapter, after all. But now I'm feeling an urge to interview him, too. Maybe I could add a scene to my book, something about what it's been like for him to have people devoted to saving him, and to have his “savior” end up there on death row with him. It might give me an unusual glimpse into Bob Wing's soul; maybe even the key to his passion for his lover, whom he may never see again. I'll have to do this interview myself, though. Deb's too young and inexperienced to be sent off to chat up rapists.