He said nothing.
“I don’t like it that you’re unhappy.” She rested a hand on his leg. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you.”
He was thinking of that instant eight years ago, at the Croyton trial, when he had turned his blue eyes, blue like ice, on prosecutor James Reynolds, to intimidate, to make him lose his concentration. But Reynolds had glanced his way and snickered. Then turned to the jury with a wink and a sour joke.
And they had laughed too.
All his efforts were wasted. The spell was broken. Pell had been convinced that he could will his way to an acquittal, to make the jury believe that Jimmy Newberg was the killer, that Pell was a victim too; all he’d done was act in self-defense.
Reynolds, laughing, like Pell was some kid making faces at adults.
Calling him the Son of Manson…
Controllingme!
Thathad been the unforgivable sin. Not prosecuting Pell—no, many people had done that. Butcontrolling him. Jerking him about like a puppet to be laughed at.
And not long after that the jury foreman had read the verdict. He saw his precious mountaintop vanishing, his freedom, his independence, the Family. All gone. His whole life destroyed by a laugh.
And now Reynolds—a threat to Pell as serious as Kathryn Dance—would go underground, be far more difficult to find.
He shivered in rage.
“You okay, baby?”
Now, still feeling like he was in a different dimension, Pell told Jennie the story about Reynolds in court and the danger he represented—a story no one knew.
And, funny, she didn’t seem to think it was so odd.
“That’s terrible. My mother’d do that, laugh at me in front of other people. And she’d hit me too. I think the laughing was worse. A lot worse.”
He was actually moved by her sympathy.
“Hey, lovely?…You held fast tonight.”
She smiled and made fists—as if displaying the tattooed letters,H-O-L-D F-A-S-T.
“I’m proud of you. Come on, let’s go inside.”
But Jennie didn’t move. Her smile slipped away. “I was thinking about something.”
“What?”
“How did he figure it out?”
“Who?”
“The man tonight, Reynolds.”
“Saw me, I suppose. Recognized me.”
“No, I don’t think so. It sounded like the sirens were coming, you know,before you knocked on the door.”
“They were?”
“I think so.”
Kathryn…Eyes as green as mine are blue, short pink nails, red rubber band around her braid, pearl on her finger and a polished shell at her throat. Holes in her lobes but no earrings.
He could picture her perfectly. He could almost feel her body next to him. The balloon within him began to expand.
“Well, there’s this policewoman. She’s a problem.”
“Tell me about her.”
Pell kissed Jennie and slipped his hand down her bony spine, past the strap of her bra, and kept going into the waistband of her slacks, felt the lace. “Not here. Inside. I’ll tell you about her inside.”
Chapter 37
“I’ve had enough of that,” Linda Whitfield said, nodding toward the TV, where news stories about Pell kept looping over and over.
Samantha agreed.
Linda walked into the kitchen and made decaf coffee and tea, then brought out the cups and milk and sugar, along with some cookies. Rebecca took the coffee but set it down and continued to sip her wine.
Sam said, “That was nice, what you said at dinner.”
Linda had said grace, apparently improvised, but articulate. Samantha herself wasn’t religious but she was touched by Linda’s words, intended for the souls of the people Daniel Pell had killed and their families, as well as gratitude for the chance to reunite with her sisters and a plea for a peaceful resolution of this sad situation. Even Rebecca—the steel magnolia among them—had seemed moved.
When she was young, Sam often wished her parents would take her to church. Many of her friends went with their families, and it seemed like something parents and a daughter could do together. But then, she’d have been happy if they’d taken her to grocery shop or for a drive to the airport to watch the planes take off and land while they ate hot dogs from a catering truck parked near the fence, like Ellie and Tim Schwimmer from next door did with their folks.
Samantha, I’d love to go with you but you know how important the meeting is. The issue isn’t just about Walnut Creek. It could affect all of Contra Costa.Youcan make a sacrifice too. The world’s not all about you, dear….
But enough of that, Sam commanded herself.
During dinner the conversation had been superficial: politics, the weather, what they thought of Kathryn
Dance. Now Rebecca, who’d had plenty of wine, tried to draw Linda out some, find out what had happened in prison to make her so religious, but the woman might have sensed, as did Sam, that there was something challenging about the questions and deflected them. Rebecca had been the most independent of the three and was still the most blunt.
Linda did, though, explain about her day-to-day life. She ran the church’s neighborhood center, which Sam deduced was a soup kitchen, and helped with her brother and sister-in-law’s foster children. It was clear from the conversation—not to mention her shabby clothing—that Linda was struggling financially.
Still, she claimed she had a “rich life” in the spiritual sense of the word, a phrase she’d repeated several times.