Hide and Seek (29 page)
She pointed at him, and he staggered back, as though there were bullets in Norma’s fingers. “May God, no, may Maggie Bradford and her poor children forgive you. I sure as hell can’t. You’ve disgraced yourself, and your already disgraceful profession. You’ve nearly helped convict an innocent woman. My God, Nathan. I hope they put you in jail for a hundred years. Will you do that, Judge Sussman?”
I sat very still, tightly gripping the armrest of my chair. My cheeks were hot, and waves of light-headedness came and went.
Hold on
, I kept saying to myself.
Be calm now. This is really happening. This isn’t a dream. You aren’t back in your prison cell. You’re right here. This is real.
Then suddenly I was in Norma’s and Barry’s arms. I was shaking like crazy. We were all crying. Norma must have read my mind. “It’s
really
happening, Maggie,” she said. “We were still talking with the attorney general late last night, or we could have let you know.”
We embraced for a long time. I can’t begin to describe how it was with me, but I’ve never experienced anything close to the relief I felt that day. I was completely out of it, euphoric, but I knew what had just happened. I knew. I knew.
“Obviously I’ll have to declare a mistrial,” Sussman said to Nizhinski, his voice cutting into my consciousness, “but you may want to retry. Nothing here obviates the fact that Will Shepherd was killed and the detectives say Mrs. Bradford has admitted shooting him. We’ll have to give her time to hire a new lawyer and prepare her defense. She might even want to change her strategy. Can you tell me what you plan to do?”
Nizhinski was actually speechless for several seconds.
“This is all—well, it’s a shock,” he finally managed to say. “I don’t know what I’ll decide. I need some time to regroup, Your Honor.”
“When you do, call me,” Sussman said.
Barry spoke to the judge. “I’m not a lawyer, so I don’t know the right legal words, but do you think Mrs. Bradford could be allowed to go home?”
Sussman turned and looked at me.
“She is released on her own recognizance,”
he said.
L
IKE THE YOGI Berra saying—it was déja vù all over again. But it had to be done this way. This was our justice system, in all its glory.
Months had passed. The
second
trial was about to begin, and if anything, it would probably be more disheartening than the first. The State still believed that I was guilty of murder, and because they insisted on trying me again, so did a lot of people.
I continued to wear the scarlet
M.
I felt as though great chunks of my life were being chiseled out of me.
Probably, because they were.
And I was hurt.
I arrived at the courtroom with Jennie, Barry, and Norma. Barry and Norma were an odd couple now, but sweet and wonderful to watch. Amazingly, they weren’t too grumpy around each other.
Once we were inside the courtroom, I walked on steady legs to a familiar seat at the defense table. My new lawyer was Jason Wade, from Boston. He was an expert in murder defenses, very no-nonsense, and I liked him. Most important of all, he wasn’t Nathan Bailford, who was now a permanent fixture in my bad dreams.
Weird, weird, so very weird.
“Maggie looks so great!” I heard one of the spectators say.
Maggie!
As if we were old best friends.
“You do. You look fantastic,” Jennie whispered against my ear. It was like old times between us, only better. Jennie was one of those rare people you could stay up with all night, just talking.
I had
—only the night before. Even Allie had stayed up with us past ten. JAM was back together again.
The trial took eleven weeks.
Our tax money at work!
The same people gave much of the same testimony, though the cross-examination had a different slant, headed in a different direction.
The courtroom became increasingly hot as the summer wore on, but I didn’t mind the heat, didn’t mind the repetitiousness of the questioning, didn’t even mind the notoriety and the consant sleaze of the press.
I wanted to be found innocent. But more than anything, I wanted to be freed from the purgatory I had lived in for so long.
I
wasn’t
guilty. I was sure of that.
I
was
innocent.
I would have given everything I had just to hear those words uttered
once.
I
LEANED FORWARD to hear each and every word inside the jam-packed courtroom. Suddenly, I couldn’t force enough air into my lungs. I felt as though a dry cloth were blocking my throat. Claustrophobia was striking again.
The faces in the courtroom were becoming blurry and ill-defined. Blood pounded in my brain like small hammers. The back of my neck was sopping wet.
The twelve jury members were slowly filing into the right side of the room.
Again.
They had reached a verdict.
Again.
I could not get my breath
as the folded piece of paper was handed to Judge Sussman. He read the verdict to himself, then passed it back to the jury foreman. The procedure was necessary, I suppose, but cruel.
“Publish the verdict,” Judge Sussman instructed.
“We love you, Mom,” Jennie, sitting behind me, whispered. Norma slid her arm around my shoulder. Barry stroked my hair from the row of seats behind. My family, my friends, I couldn’t leave them again, but that was a distinct possibility now. That morning,
USA Today
had the odds of acquittal at
even
. People were actually betting on the outcome in Vegas and London.
My mouth seemed to be filled with cotton. I was numb all over. I was sitting in that courtroom, and yet somehow I wasn’t there at all.
The foreman began to speak. His voice was high-pitched, and yet surprisingly distant, as though there were a screen between him and the rest of the courtroom. There wasn’t another sound.
“We find the defendant, Maggie Bradford,
not guilty
.”
Not
guilty.
Not
guilty.
I had to close my eyes. I felt so tired and weak, and strangely, not completely relieved for some reason. I was only vaguely aware of cheers in the courtroom. People were congratulating me—Jason Wade and Norma, Jennie and Barry. Faces loomed before me like enormous balloons. The sound was as blurred as the images. Everything seemed incredibly odd and queer.
“Oh, Maggie, you did it! You won!”
How could this simple moment be so confusing to me? I was rushed from the tumultuous courtroom, enfolded in a safe cocoon of lawyers and friends and my precious family. Surrounding us were the press and fans.
Faces
were pushing microphones at me, screaming questions, begging for an autograph, even now.
Jason Wade would have to deal with them. My lawyer could answer their questions. Sign their autographs too.
I was actually
pushed
, like someone on wheels, through the cavernous foyer, then much too fast down the steps of the courthouse, and into a waiting car. Not a limo, just a regular car. I had insisted on that.
I jumped at what sounded like a gunshot. Pain pierced my heart.
The automobile door had slammed shut!
Then the “regular” car started to slowly move through the press of people who had been waiting outside for a glimpse of me, win or lose. The car floated behind an escort of police cruisers, sirens crying, revolving red roof lights casting shadows on the faces of the onlookers.
I remembered the MP car in West Point. Its light was revolving too, only there were no onlookers, and it was so cold. I remembered so many scenes leading up to this moment.
I watched out the car window. People forming the tremendous crowd clogging Broadway and Clarke Street seemed to be clapping and cheering, shouting out my name. I couldn’t relate to any of it.
I held Jennie and Allie tightly, never wanting to let go of them.
They held me back.
We were JAM again: Jennie, Allie, Maggie.
“I love you so much, Mom,” Jennie whispered and kissed me on the cheek. “You’re my heroine in shining armor.”
“And you’re mine,” I told her.
“Mommy,” Allie said, and hugged my side. “My mommy.”
“Allie.” I kissed the top of his head. “My Allie and my Jennie.”
“
M
AGGIE! MAGGIE BRADFORD!” the crowd of idiots shouted
at her car.
The murderer clapped and cheered too, pretending delight at the scene. He was concealed in the crowd choking the Bedford Village crossroads. Well concealed.
The murderer watched as Maggie’s car passed by, then finally disappeared around a street corner.
Then the murderer disappeared as well.
Hide & Seek—Again
F
IFTH AVENUE. EASTERTIME. New York City. Delightful! Absolutely the place to be, no?
The world’s most beautiful women were on parade. Primping, prancing, shopping their little hearts out.
And every one of them eminently fuckable
, Will thought.
Every one could be mine for the wooing. Some things never change. They just get better and better.
He strolled among them, in no particular hurry, early for his appointment. He was dressed in khaki slacks and blue blazer. His dyed-black hair was cut short and meticulously combed.
The Black Arrow
, he thought and smiled thinly.
Some of the women definitely looked at him—
as well they might
, he thought. He hadn’t lost much as far as appearances went. If anything, he looked even better nowadays. Dark and mysterious, right? Just the way so many women liked their fantasy lovers.
At Fifty-ninth Street, he turned east toward Park, then north to Sixty-second Street, where he disappeared into a yellowish-brown Deco building on the corner. He bought mints at the lobby’s newspaper store, and checked his appearance in the mirror.
Carefully cut dyed-black beard, blue eyes (the contact lenses were a good touch; an excellent touch), perfect tie from Liberty of London, the natty blazer. Just the right look for today’s important meeting.
Then Will took the elevator to the twelfth floor and found the office he was looking for:
Marshall and Marshall, Attorneys.
He pushed open the dark oak door. Immediately, he was treated to a wall of windows and a view of the teeming avenue below. Impressive and overstated, in the American way.
The company’s receptionist was Irish-American from her look, a smiling, auburn-haired, alabaster girl, blooming nicely in her mid-twenties. She was first class, expensive. Like the firm that employed her.
Nice decorative touch
, Will thought.
He casually rested the Mark Cross folio on her desk.
“Good afternoon, sir. May I help you?” she asked. She was more than pleasant, he noticed. Not offended by his folio invading her space. Or maybe, like a good Irish person, she just didn’t show it.
Will smiled, low-key but seductive, his charm intact. “I’m here to see Mr. Arthur Marshall. It’s about an inheritance. He’s expecting me, I believe.”
“Yes, sir.” The girl tried not to stare at the very good-looking Englishman standing before her. “Whom should I say is calling?”
“Palmer Shepherd,” said Will.
I
LOOKED AROUND the warm, familiar living room of our house and I couldn’t help beaming, almost giggling out loud.
Hooo boy!
This was the best. This was the most important thing now. The party!
A dozen of Allie’s boy and girl friends from kindergarten had come to the house for his fifth birthday. No one had declined, and that meant a lot to me, and more important, of course, to Allie.
It was a strictly old-fashioned party, which Jennie and I had meticulously planned. Games and silly hats, a birthday cake for the birthday boy, a present for every child, and lots of presents for Allie the Wonder Boy.
It was going perfectly. Barry and Norma had stopped by to help. So far, we’d had tons of laughter and fun, one minor collision, not a single tear had been shed.
Allie finally came up to me. He beckoned for me to come down to his level, his size, his turf.
I knelt so that we were face to face. As he almost always did, Allie twirled my hair around his fingers.
“Know what?” he said, and his eyes had the most wonderful twinkle. “Well, do you?”
“What? You tell me. The cake is too big for you to eat all by yourself? Okay then, share it with your friends.”
Allie laughed. He got all my jokes. I got his too.
“No, I just want to tell you the
very
best thing, Mommy. The
very
best thing is that you’re here.”
It was the happiest party, the best moment, and suddenly I was crying, and I was feeling so good that I could be there at my son’s party.
“I knew somebody was going to cry soon,” I told Allie.
He hugged me, and gave me kisses to make it better. But I was already better.
H
AVING WATCHED MY good mood at the birthday party, Barry the Manipulator took the occasion to try and lure me into the city, and up to his studio. I surprised him: I told him I’d come. I was ready for a little manipulation.
When I got to New York, Barry was hyper and excited, the way he usually got when he’d just written a good song, or completed an especially good business deal.
“You’re scaring me. You’re
too
happy,” I told him, but I was laughing. Everything seemed good to me now. I was so buoyant, and free. God, was I free!
“I have a scheme,” he said to me as we sat down beside his piano. “I’ve been scheming on your behalf.”
My good mood was a match for his. And more. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
Barry completely ignored me. “There’s a
great
concert happening up in Rhinebeck, New York, in July.”
“Barry, I read the papers. I’m not a hermit. Bedford is less than thirty miles from Manhattan. The answer is, regretfully, no. But thank you just the same.”