Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

a year? Time had no meaning. One day, someone was waiting when her eyes opened. Pitts had considered sending young Asa Aldridge, who he knew was friendly with Lizzie Mull, but changed his mind. Pitts was always careful with the Mulls, culling advantages from overlooking Eddie’s operations and ignoring complaints, including from the archdiocese and the Rev. Bob Shoemaker, about Willie and Sister Angie’s “healing.” The murder and coming trial would test his indulgence, already stretched by the continued presence of the Providence in Santa Monica Bay, which he knew belonged to Eddie.

It was the morning of the twenty-fourth day (though she had no way of knowing), and the person waiting was a large man sitting sloppily with his legs spread, glancing at her from time to time while writing or doodling on a legal pad propped on his stomach. She closed her eyes, hoping he would be gone when she opened them. Who was he? How long had he been watching her? Why had they let him in? The visitor noticed the eye movement.

“Peter Federmeister,” he announced, standing and approaching the bed. “Assistant district attorney.” He held his business card for her to see and placed it on the bedside table. “I know you’re not well. I’ll be brief and to the point.”

He pulled the chair closer and sat down. He was heavy-set, middle-aged, with a square chin beginning to accumulate several satellites. His head was mostly bald with a few crisscrossing strands and he wore a rumpled brown suit and vest. His hat lay on the windowsill. He had nervous hands that wrote or doodled constantly, sign of a man who needed a smoke but knew he could not in a hospital room.

“Your husband has pleaded not guilty to murder charges,” he said. “He is plea-bargaining with us. We’d like a first-degree conviction, intent to kill, but he is holding out for second degree, maybe even manslaughter.” He looked to see if she understood, but she made no sign. “My point is this: I see your pain and suffering plainly before me. But without your help, the man who did this to you could get manslaughter or even go free.”

With her face stitched, she could make sounds, but not words. She did not like to make sounds because they were inhuman. She was ugly and pitiful and hated it. For the last two days she had been able to scrawl words left-handed, and they had brought her pad and pencil.

“We are looking for a way to show that your husband’s attack on you and Reverend Mull was premeditated. Can you help us with that? Letters, phone-calls, threats, things like that?”

“WAITING BEHIND DOOR!!!” she scribbled slowly in barely legible script.

He read and looked up at her. “Yes, but apparently he was getting ready to leave. If you’d returned later, maybe only minutes, you know what I mean. Fate. That’s bad luck, crime of passion, not premeditation. Now if there was a threat of some kind . . .”

“urder!” she grunted, the “m” impossible.

“Unfortunately, we can’t be sure the jury will agree.”

Badly wanting to fly back to the silent comfort of her blackness, she shook her head. “Rafe,” she whispered.

“What?”

She wrote again: “RAPE!!!”

Uncomprehending, he stared blankly. “Rape? But the man is your husband.”

And the tears finally came. Her poor swollen eyes overflowed with all the built-up grief and pain and fear and frustration and anger from being dead and coming back to life and lying in bed for so long and being such a mess and now being subjected to interrogation by a man who was clearly a fool. How, when nothing else on her face worked, could tears fall? Would no one ever know the truth? No, clearly not, for she could never repeat what happened to her that night. How it felt to be pinned on the cross. Her Calvary. The doctors could tell from her battered body. No one else would ever know.

Disoriented by the tears, Federmeister fell silent.

“TRIED TO KILL ME!” she scrawled in capitals, which were easier to form.

“The man is your husband. He caught you with another man. He was aggrieved.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Barton Pitts had no doubt that it would be the biggest trial of his career, the biggest in the city since the McNamara brothers were tried for bombing the Times building, with Clarence Darrow for the defense. Never had city newspapers, mainly Hearst and Chandler, sold more papers or made more money than since Willie and Angie went missing, and they went on milking the story for everything it was worth. Sex, religion, and murder—it didn’t get any better than that. As much as Pitts longed to bring Angie to court for the showdown with her husband, the newspapers privately urged him to take his time.

If Pitts had followed his instincts things might have gone better. Gil l’Amoureux was as perfect a villain as Hollywood could produce, and Pitts wanted to get on with it. But Angie was still in and out of surgery. She was to be the star witness against her husband, waiving her right of spousal privilege. Without her testimony, Gil had a good chance of getting away with murder. The newspapers were on her side for she helped them sell papers, but the airwaves were hostile. For the Rev. Bob Shoemaker, the most influential pastor in town with Willie gone, Angie was a Jezebel and, worse, had made Los Angeles a national laughingstock.

“Here in Los Angeles we take our religion seriously,” he broadcast. “Remember the Ten Commandments, which come directly from God: Adultery is as great a sin as murder.”

Pitts first learned of Angie’s plans to leave the hospital in a Times story about the coming memorial service for Willie Mull. With thousands of Soldiers arriving, they’d moved the service from the temple to the baseball park at Wrigley Field on Avalon Boulevard, a few blocks from Exposition Park where the Soldiers would set up their campground. Pitts met with Superior Court Judge Herman Anzug, and they agreed