Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

They ate, they conversed, they made love, by rote and necessity. They smiled a lot. Bill constantly found himself presampling and censoring each word and thought before uttering it. And when the need was upon him and he was able to muster the courage to reach out to her, he never failed to sense the momentary, slight stiffening of her flesh, the small sigh of resignation, the dutiful submission. It was all false. Both knew it. And in that knowledge the full measure of his loss was most painfully realized.

Their days and nights became computerized. Court from nine to four, cocktails and dinner, out mainly, from five to nine, the long walk home, and bed by ten. Weekends were spent in Westport with Ivy. They would drive up in a rental and stay at Candlemas Inn, the three of them.

Bill had agreed to the boarding school, but he didn’t like it. He hated seeing Ivy in uniform, her beauty camouflaged, shorn of individuality. Yet she seemed to love it. She had been readily accepted by the other girls and in three weeks had already made two “best friends.”

To date, newspaper accounts of the case had not traveled much. After the initial arrest and booking, which earned a second-page spot in the New York Times, the courtroom progress received minimal attention from the press. What coverage there was of the jury selection generally found itself in the back end of both the News and the Post . The Times printed an occasional squib. Connecticut papers ignored it entirely.

The time would come, Bill knew, when the case would rip its way into the headlines of newspapers around the country. For there was no doubt in Velie’s mind of the defense’s intention to put the issue of reincarnation into the record, although he would try to convince the court to rule it inadmissible as a viable defense. But by then the harm would have been done; the floodgates of publicity would have been opened.

Knowing what lay ahead of them, Bill had leveled with Sister Veronica Joseph, mother superior of Mount Carmel Parochial School for Girls, the day they had admitted Ivy, thus preparing her for the avalanche of publicity to come. While her bland expression had undergone a slight constriction of anxiety, she was quick to find the strength within her faith to cloak her shock and temper her misgivings with mercy. Bill saw her hand go instinctively to the large silver crucifix attached to a rope of black beads which fell from her habit as she softly intoned, “The poor child. We shall do everything possible to shelter her from the calumnies of the outside world.” Which, Bill thought, was a quaint, yet certainly correct way of putting it for all of them.

It occurred to him to speculate on what calumnies he might expect from his colleagues at the office when the bombshell burst. Pel Simmons had been genuinely concerned and more than fair in letting him take a leave of absence for the duration of the trial and with no disruption in the flow of his semi-monthly paychecks. It was an indication of his faith and trust in Bill, a lovely way of saying, “I like you, I want to keep you in my company.” Of course, Pel wasn’t aware of anything beyond what he had read in the newspapers and what little information Bill had vouchsafed him, which was precious little.

Soon, Bill glumly reflected, there would be one hell of a jarring note, one diamond-bright cog in Pel Simmons’ quietly purring nondescript machine to fuck up the works. It would mean his job, ultimately. Not quickly—there’d be no pink slip stapled to the paycheck—it would take a year or so to phase him down and out . Don Goetz would move into his slot, reluctantly, of course, hating like hell to depose the master, flushed and angry at the injustice of it all, at the same time feeling the soft leather of the Eames recliner edging closer while his eyes sought the restful and mysterious silences of the Motherwell.

And that would be it. He’d be out! On the street! Pounding the pavement, avoiding dogshit. Thump! Thump! Thump! His heart was playing handball against his chest. Pods of perspiration glistened on his forehead. Was he having a coronary? That would cap it. To drop dead, right here in the courtroom, in the presence of the nearly picked jury. He wouldn’t mind. It would help Velie’s case. Elicit sympathy. Guarantee a conviction. Put the prick away for the limit.

Bill studied Hoover through a haze of sweat droplets clinging to his eyelashes, rendering an image that was blurred, distorted, and malevolent. Like a jungle animal, the son of a bitch had padded into his life and had quietly devoured all he possessed and prized—family, career, the love and respect of his wife, all that really mattered.

He could feel the flexing of his skin at the corners of his mouth and knew he was smiling. It always happened when he hit bottom, when his depressions and despondencies became intolerable. It was then some inner survival mechanism switched on, and a smile came to the rescue. And with the smile, an accompanying thought: If I’m destroyed, so will you be, you bastard!

Scott Velie wheeled around to the bench.

“This jury is acceptable to the State, Your Honor.”

“Very well,” Judge Langley said, keeping things moving. “The bailiff will swear in the jury.”

Janice saw Hoover look up from his pad and turn to the twelve men and women, who rose in a body and faced the bailiff at the far end of the courtroom.

Reading from a sheet of paper, and in a voice that was low and grave, the uniformed man tremulously intoned the prescribed litany.

“Do you solemnly swear that you shall well and truly try and true deliverance make, between the people of the State of New York and the prisoner at the bar, whom you shall have in charge, according to the evidence and the laws of this State.…”

Hoover’s face radiated purity and innocence as his twelve peers, whose duty and responsibility it would be to decide the guilt or innocence of one Elliot Suggins Hoover “beyond a shadow of a doubt” of the charge of “feloniously, willfully, and with malice aforethought” kidnapping one Ivy Templeton, were sworn in.

Watching Hoover watching the jury, the bland exterior enveloped by a will of tempered steel, pursuing the ends of his own self-interests with no apparent care or awareness of the mischief and malice of his acts and no shred of concern for the irreparable harm he was doing them, Janice knew that with all of Velie’s confidence and Bill’s assurances, it would be Hoover’s single-minded obstinacy that would prevail in the end.

It was at this sepulchral moment that Janice knew they would lose the case.

“…So help you God?” The bailiff looked up from his paper toward the jury.

The organlike chorus of “I do’s” vibrated throughout the partially filled courtroom.

“Be seated,” Judge Langley instructed the jury and, turning to counsels’ tables, asked, “Are both sides ready to proceed?”

As Velie and Mack affirmed that they were, Judge Langley’s eyes flicked up at the wall clock. “It’s ten past eleven, Mr. Velie,” he said in an offering voice. “If you wish a continuance until after the lunch break before making your opening remarks—”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” Velie interposed. “I’m sure I’ll be able to conclude what few remarks I wish to make to the jury well before the noon break.”

“Very well,” Langley said, somewhat nettled. “Proceed.”

Scott Velie commenced his prepared speech as he sat, holding in abeyance his moment for rising, which was timed to occur at the delivery of a key sentence halfway into his brief statement. He began by swinging his chair around to the jury box and facing his twelve fellow citizens with an air of easy confidence. His voice was subdued, conversational, aimed at alleviating whatever tension might exist among them and putting them at their total ease.