Presumed Guilty, page 4
Dallas stood still. “Tell me now. Please.”
Cara, who had been making sandwiches in the kitchen, came to her mother’s side.
Jeff closed the door. He wore a powder blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, and a burgundy tie perfectly knotted. He was in his midforties with a full head of brown hair flecked by wisps of gray. He exuded confidence, which was exactly what Dallas needed at that moment. “I don’t want you to worry the first time you hear it. These things — ”
“What happened?”
“They say it’s murder.”
Dallas felt something flow out of her head, a sucking away like the sand under a receding wave. Cara grabbed her left arm, and that’s when Dallas knew she had almost fallen.
Jeff helped Cara get Dallas to the sofa. Cara sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulder.
“It’s a huge mistake,” Jeff said. “I saw Ron, I talked with him, he’s scared but he’s staying strong. It’s all a major misunderstanding.”
“Who was it?” Dallas said.
“The victim is a young woman named Melinda Perry. That’s all I could find out.”
Young woman?“Can I see him?” Dallas said. “Where is he?”
“They’ve got him at the men’s jail, downtown.”
She looked at the lawyer. “What’s going to happen, Jeff?”
He sat on the coffee table so he could take her hand. He was muscular and trim, with intelligent blue eyes. “Tomorrow he goes before a judge. I’ll be there with him and get the formal charge and the arrest report. Then I’ll go talk to the DA and see what they’ve got.”
Panic burst through her. “They’ve got to have something. They wouldn’t arrest him if they didn’t have anything. What could it be?”
She heard screeching outside. The sound of tires.
Jeff went to the door and pulled back the curtain.
“Man, that was fast,” he said.
“What?”
“TV people.”
Pinpricks stuck her skin. Publicity. She hadn’t even considered that. In her singular focus she thought only of Ron, and of this problem as one they could solve together, quietly. That’s the way they handled things between them, wasn’t it?
But now she realized this accusation would not be kept quiet, couldn’t be swept under their private rug. Ron was a big-time pastor with a national platform. He’d been on radio and TV, once on The O’Reilly Factortalking about the scourge of Internet porn.
He was a media darling, with his good looks and eloquence.
Now he was a target for the press — a family-values pastor accused of murder.
“Stay calm,” Jeff said. “I will do the talking for you. All right? Not you, not your daughter, not Ron. Is there anyone else in the family they could get to?”
Dallas shook her head. “Only our son, Jared, but he’s out of the county.”
“Don’t sell these people short, ” Jeff said. “Now stay here.”
He went outside, closing the door behind him. A few moments later Dallas heard his voice, firm and resolute.
“Mrs. Hamilton will not be commenting on this matter. I will be speaking for the family . . . No, we have no comment at this time . . . There has not even been a formal charge yet . . . No, there will be no further comment . . . And by the way, any entrance on this property will be treated as a trespass. So I advise you to clear out and direct all inquiries to my office.”
The muffled shouts of several voices shooting questions came next. Cara squeezed Dallas’s hand.
Dallas closed her eyes. She remembered someone telling her once that the most effective prayer on earth was Help me help me help me.
That is what Dallas prayed now. She prayed for a sign from God, something to tell her that it wasn’t true, that this whole nightmare was going to go away.
At twelve forty-five a police tow truck showed up, much to the delight of the media circus, and towed Ron’s car away.
6.
How do you look at your wife from the inside of a cage?
Do you fake it? Do you put on a happy face, like that old song says?
Do you do it so your wife, who loves you, who has known only your stability and strength, won’t freak?
Do you smile and give a little wave through the Plexiglas barrier and make some joke through the handset about your orange jumpsuit? “Like my new style?”
Do you do everything within your power to hide the clawing, voracious fear that is working your insides?
Or do you let go of your face? Let it all hang out?
Most important of all, do you let the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth flash like neon in your eyes? Do you drop all pretense and all deceit and let her read your expressions like the front page of a tabloid?
The woman who loved me with a solid, dependable love came to see me. And I could hardly look at her.
7.
The men’s jail was downtown, on Bauchet Street, just east of Chinatown and Union Station. It housed the county’s ever-increasing population of criminal defendants, those waiting for trial as well as cons serving less than a year.
It had been the temporary residence of several high-profile defendants the last few years.
Like Ron Hamilton.
Dallas was shaking when
Dallas was shaking when she got to the visitation room. It was smaller than she’d expected, with two rows of stools in front of glass partitions. A deputy sheriff told her where to sit.
The stool was hard and cold.
What was it going to be like to see Ron for the first time? In here?
Worse, what was it going to be like for him to see her? She knew she looked terrible. The shock was still fresh, had been pressing down on her for the last twenty-four hours. No sleep. She felt like bags of cement were under her eyes. Eyes that fell on her husband being led in on his side of the Plexiglas. Dressed in an orange jumpsuit. Not the blue of the regular jail inmate. Orange marked him as high security.
He sat opposite her, his features gnarled in confusion. She grabbed the handset, waiting for him to pick up.
“Ron,” she said, then found she couldn’t coax another word out of her mouth.
His voice came through the wire thin and distant. “Dallas, I’m so sorry you have to see me like this.”
“Are you all right?”
His eyes were darting around, not staying on her directly. “It’s jail. Not a place I ever thought I’d be.”
She put her hand on the Plexiglas. She wanted to push her hand through and stroke her husband’s cheek. She wanted to break through and hold him and drag him out of there and keep the world away.
“What on earth happened?” she said.
Ron pursed his lips and shook his head. “It’s not true, what they’re saying.”
What they were saying was that her husband had been “involved” with an actress in what they referred to as “adult films.” She first heard the report on the radio news as she was driving to the jail. She almost ran into another car.
But she knew it couldn’t be true, couldn’t be. She fought the information with all her will.
“How then?” Dallas said, needing to know.
“Listen to me, Dallas. I was stupid. I made a stupid mistake.”
She waited.
He looked up toward the ceiling. “I was counseling this girl, the one they found. She was in with some pretty bad people. She was scared. I was trying to help her.”
Dallas said nothing. She watched her husband’s face twitch around his eyes. He was the scared one now.
“Why didn’t you call the police?” Dallas said.
“She didn’t want the police. She was scared if she called them these people would find out and they’d do something to her.”
“Why didn’t you send her to Haven House?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “There’s just so much I don’t know.”
A large woman sat on the stool next to Dallas. She had on a sleeveless dress. Her arms jiggled as she adjusted herself. Dallas caught a whiff of body odor. The woman swore as she fiddled with her handset.
“What happened, exactly?” Dallas said.
“Jeff says not to talk. This could be monitored.”
“But you didn’t do anything.” And then, like a cockroach in the kitchen, distrust skittered across her mind. Dallas shook. Never had she experienced anything but complete faith in her husband.
Even in their worst times, when he could put on the big freeze and not talk to her for hours, she had never questioned his integrity. He was absolutely without fault in that department.
But now . . . She refused to give the thought credence. It was the stress, the surroundings, the nightmare circumstance.
“Dallas, I didn’t do anything but be stupid. They got to her, the guys she was afraid of. That had to be it.” He paused. “They’ll use this, you know. The porn people. They’ll use this to show I’m a hypocrite. All our work will be called into question.”
She couldn’t deny it. She and Ron were actively fighting the spread of the porn industry by pushing for new zoning restrictions in the city. Ron, as the front man, had been called many things by his enemies. Hypocrite would now be added to the list.
“I’ll keep the pressure on Bernie,” Dallas said. Bernie Halstrom was their city councilman, the one they had worked closely with on the zoning issue.
“Thank you,” Ron said, with what seemed heartfelt gratitude.
“How long do you have to be in here?”
“Jeff’ll move for bail, but he told me they might not give it. This is what they call a high-profile murder case. Me, imagine . . .”
“Are you all right?”
“They’ve got me isolated. That’s the way they do it. I can take it if you can . . .”
She saw his hand shake and then drop the phone. Then his head was in his hands and he was sobbing. Sobbing uncontrollably.
“Oh, Ron.” Dallas jumped to her feet, pressed her forehead to the window, hit it with her open hand.
A deputy sheriff was at her side instantly, pulling her away.
“No!” she shouted. “No, please!”
“Sit down, ma’am. You can’t touch the glass.”
She sat. Ron kept sobbing. Then he whirled away
She sat. Ron kept sobbing. Then he whirled away and stood.
“Ron, don’t go!”
Apparently he couldn’t
Apparently he couldn’t hear her. Or chose not to.
“Ron!”
“Keep your voice down, ma’am,” the deputy said. “Looks like your visit is over.”
Over.
No.Dallas steeled herself against the thought that more than this visit was over, that life as they all knew it was over and would never come back together again.
She would not let that be.
8.
Jared looked at himself in the mirror behind the bar and almost spat.
You have no job now, pal. Your little game with the crucifix didn’t really do it in the eyes of the ol’ boss. And the good Father? Well, he was about to consign you to the fires of hell right then and there.
You thought men of the cloth were supposed to be reverent in church, didn’t you? At home, didn’t your father wait to unload on you until after church, when Mom was making up the lunch?
So now it doesn’t matter when you drink, because you’ve got no job, and the only question on the table is when will the money run out?
Jared listened to himself inside his head, laughing because he was having a little dialogue up there between himself and — who knew? Somebody who knew how to drink, that was for sure.
He sat at the end of the bar this time, right by the bathrooms. He came to this little place on occasion, when he wasn’t out trying to dull the ache with items of illegal pedigree.
Nursing a double shot of Daniels was just as good tonight, and it was cold outside anyway.
Tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow he’d give another run at the VA hospital. They were giving him the big-time runaround on posttraumatic stress disorder. He knew why too — because there was a whole new wave of it.
What was the number he read? Like three hundred thousand homeless vets, about half from Vietnam. But it was growing, the numbers. Guys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. And Jared kept hearing through the grapevine that the Iraq vets had it worst of all in the head.
But not according to the VA. To them it was illness as usual. Even when some of his buddies had to take meds that could knock out a seriously ticked-off elephant.
Self-sedation with Jack Daniels was about the best he could do under the circumstances. What did that country song say? Something about when it rains, I pour? Jared smiled and shook his head. Good one, boy, go ahead. And tomorrow you can wake up tight and early.
There was a pool table in the center of the barroom with a couple of guys shooting, and a TV tuned to ESPN. Not as good as rap, but almost. The obnoxious sports heads who screamed clever phrases provided a little anesthesia.
Maybe I’ll just buy a bottle and go back to the room at the rat hotel.He’d have to clear out of there in a week if he didn’t land something to get some more money and not spend it on weed or alcohol.
He ordered another JD, worked it, looked occasionally at the TV. The images blurred into colorful splats on the screen, uniforms and graphics bleeding together, formless.
Then he saw his father’s face.
What?Couldn’t be. But there was no mistake.
Some words flashed below the face. Crime of Passion.
A squib for another cable channel, he realized.
His father was a news story.
Then, suddenly, the face was gone.
Whoa. Jared wondered for a moment if he really saw it, or if maybe it was a trick of the mind and alcohol. Maybe the voices in his head were becoming more sophisticated now, giving him altered realities, using visuals.
But then he realized he wasn’t so drunk after all, especially not after the jolt of adrenaline that blasted through him the moment he recognized his father.
Crime of passion?
He called to the bartender,
He called to the bartender, a woman with a look of thirty years’ hard experience as a mixer.
“Can you get the news for me?” he said, pointing at the TV.
She looked at the tube. “We got people want to watch the game.”
He was aware of anxiety clutching him. The weirdness of it all, having a father on the news, even if it was a father he hated. It was like the whole world had a pipeline into his life now, only he didn’t know what the pipeline was connected to.
“Just change it to the news for a second, will you?”
“I got more than you in the bar,” the bartender said.
“Just do it.”
She gave him the look she must have given a hundred thousand surly drunks over the years. “Relax. You want another drink?”
Jared stood up and raised his voice to the whole place. “Does anybody know what’s going on with this crime-of-passion story on the news?”
People stared at him. The guys playing pool looked annoyed. The three other barflies looked singularly uninterested.
“Come on, anybody?”
“Settle down, will you?” the bartender said. “You talking about that preacher?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me instead of making a scene? Sit down. I’ll get you another drink.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Guy’s some minister down in L.A. He had a porn actress on the side, then he offed her.”
Flares of disbelief shot through Jared.
“Yep,” the bartender said with a laugh, “you gotta love that town.”
9.
Wednesday morning the Ron Hamilton “Crime of Passion” story was front page in the Timesand Daily News.A small media camp was set up on the street outside the Hamilton home, waiting for Dallas to emerge.
And the phone in the house wouldn’t stop ringing. There were at least twenty messages in the voice mail now. Dallas didn’t bother to listen. Cara had her cell-phone number, and that’s all Dallas cared about.
But life had to go on, and she was not going to let the media make a prisoner of her. There was the church to look out for.
So, dressed in business casual and with all the makeup skill she could muster showing on her face, Dallas got into her Nissan Pathfinder, locked the doors, and clicked the garage-door opener.
As soon as she made the driveway she was swarmed.
Though she’d prepared herself to ignore them, it was unsettling to see cameras aimed at her and microphones poking at the window. Behind the microphones were anxious faces shouting questions at her. She nearly ran over a woman in a blue blazer and was almost sorry she didn’t.
Dallas prayed for peace and strength all the way to the Hillside parking lot, where more news vans were gathered. This was absurd. She wanted to get out and yell at these hounds to get a life and cover something newsworthy, not just some false allegation that —
False. Please oh please be false.
She was stunned that she could think such a thought. Of course it was false!
Dallas pulled around to a rear entrance and used her key to get in, unseen by the reporters.
She found the office in a tizzy. The first one to see her was Dave Rivas, their head of security. Dave, a former cop, volunteered his time. He and Dallas, in fact, had done the research that resulted in the church’s state-of-the-art system.
“Been like this all day,” Dave said. He was around fifty and always wore a black baseball cap with LAPD in white letters on the front.
“Any incidents?” Dallas asked.
“Depends what you mean.I had one guy from KTTV try to bring a camera in, but I yanked a few cords and that was that.”
“Thanks, Dave. Hang in there.”
“You too, Dallas. We’re praying hard for you.”
Dallas continued to the reception area. Three of the church secretaries were in various stages of harried activity — answering phones, peeling faxes from the machine. They didn’t even look up to see Dallas.
But Lisa Benson did. She was on a phone, waved at Dallas, said something, and hung up.
