The photo caption: “Attorney Jay Porter Accuses Wolcott of Misconduct in Murder Charge.”
The article, written by Gregg Bartolomo, gives the unfortunate impression that Jay is working for the Hathorne campaign, rather than doing everything he can for his client and for the parents of Alicia Nowell, who deserve more from the top prosecutor than having their daughter’s murder used as a political pawn. The sloppy reporting is infuriating but not wholly unexpected. Lonnie last night had warned Jay of as much, guessing the Chronicle’s editorial slant, and they both suspected Reese Parker of leaking all kinds of information to the press. (Lead sentence, paragraph two: “Sources inside the district attorney’s office say there is enough evidence for a conviction. . . .”) Lon practically wrote the story off the top of her head while she helped dress his wounds. He’d staggered into the house a little after eight, blood staining the front of his white shirt–after first calling Lonnie from the driveway to make sure he could get from the back door to his bedroom without his kids seeing. At breakfast this morning, he tells them he took a fall, delivering the news offhandedly while passing a plate of eggs. Ellie stares at him across the table, and Ben stops eating, complaining of a sudden stomachache. “Come on,” Jay says. “We’re late for school.” He shoves the newspaper into the trash on their way out.
They ride with the radio off.
Twice in the car, Ben asks if Jay, his last remaining parent, is sick, mistaking the bumps and bruises for a different kind of pain. “I’m fine, son,” Jay says, reaching across the front seat for Ben’s hand. He’s actually better than fine. He woke up this morning feeling strangely, yet powerfully, numb, not so much unable to process the pain across his cheek and jaw as indifferent to it. Standing over his bathroom sink at dawn, staring at the blood-crusted aftermath, he found the darkest center of the blackest bruise and stuck his middle finger straight into it, feeling nothing that a year without his wife hadn’t overprepared him for. What, after all, was a scratch on the surface of a body that had already been hollowed out? He looked at his hands, at his shirtless torso, in the bathroom mirror. He saw his whole body anew, imagining grief, of all things, as a kind of superpower. This, he thought, looking at the abrasions across his brow, the swelling of his lips and cheek, this is the least that I can endure. It was like powder in a bullet, this knowledge. He felt inexplicably, undeservedly free. And he owed it to somebody to do something with this, didn’t he? Do it for them. He heard his wife’s voice and understood, more than ever, what she meant.
“I’m going to be fine,” he says to his son.
When Jay arrives at the civil courthouse at eight thirty sharp, Gregg Bartolomo is waiting outside. “You set me up,” he says acidly, the second Jay starts up the walk and into the building. Jay is not surprised in the least to see him here. Bartolomo is at his heels the whole way, hovering behind Jay in the line for the metal detectors, the two men removing their watches, the change in their pockets. “You should check your facts next time before you rush to print whatever Reese Parker feeds you,” Jay says as he passes through the parallel walls of the metal detector, reaching for his belongings in the dingy plastic cup on the other side. “You ought to be spending your time talking to Alonzo Hollis.”
“I already did.”
Jay pauses, a few feet from the bank of elevators, watching as Bartolomo puts on his watch and the belt the deputies made him remove. “I’m not a bad reporter,” he says to Jay. “But I am a gratefully employed one. My editor told me to drop it, so I dropped it. Nothing about Hollis ever made the final cut of any of my stories. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t do my job. Honestly? They’re going to play this story the way they want it played,” he says. “Unless . . .”
“Unless what?”
“I can get an exclusive interview with you or your client.”
“No comment.” Jay turns and walks toward the elevators, sliding into one and watching, with pleasure, as the doors close on Gregg Bartolomo’s face.
He presses floor six for the clerk’s office.
Eddie Mae is in rare form when Jay arrives later that morning. She’s dressed for the occasion, for her new status as secretary–“no, legal assistant,” she says–to a man on the front page of the city’s only newspaper, with a murder trial no less, her very own Johnnie Cochran. “Don’t call me that,” he says. She’s wearing a slim skirt, tight across the waist but otherwise demure, and a cream-colored blouse, and her hair actually appears to be her own. It’s a soft, silvery gray, with a shallow spray of curls in the front and an egg-size bun pinned at the back. “Cynthia Maddox called,” she tells him. “Twice.”
“Cole’s willing to talk,” Cynthia says when he gets her on the phone.
“I’ll bet he is.”
“But it has to be now.”
“Where?”
“Houston Club.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And, Jay, listen–”
He hangs up.