Stealing Flowers (40 page)

How could I bare it? I dried my eyes and
vigorously rubbed my temple. My headache reappeared and I made
another rye and water. I looked out over the city, traffic was
building, everybody went on with their normal lives. I used to love
this city; no, that wasn’t actually true, I’d always hated it,
especially the speeding traffic. I returned to the roof and found
it still locked, deciding to smash the padlock, but there was
nothing at hand. In the room, nearly everything I could have used
to do it was nailed down. A knock at the door disturbed my hunt and
I answered it with yet another drink in my hand. I almost jumped
back. “Dad, what are you doing here?”

Stan walked in the room and closed the door
tightly behind him. “I see that I’ve made it on time,” he said with
great relief, almost joy shining in his eyes. “I should at least be
happy for that.” Then he flew at me and sucker-punched me in the
jaw. I fell to the floor, the glass I was holding flew across the
room, smashing. I rose and wiped the blood from my lips even as
Stan passed his white handkerchief to me. My heart raced with
confusion and fear, but not for a second did I think of striking
back.

“It’s okay to feel sorry for yourself, son,”
he said in a soft voice, “but not to this point. The trial isn’t
over. Nothing is over. Are you just going to let Lloyd Mills take
everything from you without a fight and let The Family of Truth
destroy you like they did Sally?”

“Lloyd?”

“We aren’t fools, Christian. Mary and I give
him the benefit of the doubt, but we can still cut it.” I felt my
cheeks burning. Even in this, I’d behaved shamefully. “It’s your
mother you should worry about. Sally’s death has devastated her. I
know you’re self-occupied, as you should be, but haven’t you
noticed? She’s suffering much worse than you. This would have
killed her. She loves you; don’t doubt it! There’s news! Peter has
discovered a small connection between a Japanese consortium, The
Zortichii Group, and Lloyd Mills and The Family of Truth,” he
continued. “We’ve nothing solid yet.”

“But I thought Peter–”

“You might be found guilty because
appearances have deceived the state, now you are letting
appearances deceive you. Why would you want to throw your life away
when you’re innocent? Nothing is what it appears. Which do you
think is worse, prison or a communist POW camp? For you, it won’t
be for so long, if ever. For me, many months of horrible suffering
occurred. This is why I love life with every breath, son. I’ve seen
death, and more death than you could imagine.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

He reached over and hugged me. I felt my
agony passing and wiped away my tears, then followed him out of the
room, and when we got home, he flew to Denver to pick up Susan.
What Una had told her to drop everything and come to Jersey, I
don’t know. I was standing at the door when she arrived. Mary stood
beside me. A table near the front door held several lit candles on
a silver candelabrum, giving the antechamber a warm golden glow,
but making it look as though from another time as well. Mary
dressed in a black pair of slacks with a designer mauve sweater,
and she had pinned her light hair up into a ball. She seemed much
less sad tonight.

“You look lovely,” Susan said to mom when
she greeted us. It was true. She looked the very image of a woman
who suffers and knows nothing but sorrow, but still has culture and
refinement in hand.

Stan excused himself. He seemed in a rush.
“I’m sure you’re being overly kind,” Mary said, “At my age, as Una
says, to get out of the bathroom without resorting to drink or
drugs, you’re doing fine.”

Susan laughed and it was wonderful to hear
it; I wished Mary had laughed as well, but she didn’t, only
cheerlessly excused herself. An old Righteous Brothers’ tune played
softly from Stan’s den. I couldn’t remember the title of it. Susan
glanced at a large family portrait, an oil on canvass, in the front
foyer. “Wasn’t this picture somewhere else before?”

“Upstairs,” I said.

Stan came in from his office. He looked as
though he had changed to go to work. Una came down the hallway from
the kitchen. “Can I get you some juice or something?” she asked
us.

Susan and I agreed to a juice. “Isn’t Una
nice?” she said in a soft voice when she’d left.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Stan said. “We say it
all the time and few believe us, but she’s a ferocious
industrialist who runs the whole Tappet Industrial Complex with a
ruthless hand.” He looked at his watch. “She doesn’t give me a
minute’s sleep. Gotta go! Bye.”

Susan laughed. “I don’t believe you.”

“No, it’s true,” I reassured her, putting my
hand on Susan’s shoulder and wishing Dad good-bye. “Una really does
run everything. That’s the one thing they were right about at the
trial, the rest is all lies.”

Susan laughed. Una brought our juice, and by
that time, Stan had left, then Una excused herself. We headed to
the bedroom and soon lay together under covers. I know she tried to
cheer me up with her body, but I couldn’t be gentle, and was too
rough, too fast, and too insensitive. “You seem angry,” she
whispered afterward, “and you were aggressive.”

“I missed you this week. In court, it’s
unbearable when you aren’t there.”

“I feel torn.”

“I have my parents, Una, friends, and many
supporters, and they all believe in my innocence. Still, the days
without you are the worst.”

“I won’t miss another.”

“Thanks for coming tonight,” I said softly.
“You’re truly wonderful as well as beautiful.” I hugged her again,
then we made love more gently. “I understood that Peter Burgess
took holidays in Jamaica after the bombing,” I said when we lay
quietly together later, “but apparently that was just a feign.”

Susan drew near and kissed my face. “What
happened today? Why is your jaw swollen? Why did Una insist I come
tonight?”

“I got crazy Susan,” I said shamefully. “I
got extremely depressed, it won’t happen again.”

She sighed, then began to cry. “Don’t you
know how much I love you?” she whispered.

Despite how much better I felt on Monday, we
had another bad day in court. Our expert on ballistics was
contradicted by the prosecutor several times under
cross-examination. The next day, I was to take the stand, but it
was delayed until Thursday morning. I got little sleep that night
and looked like hell. After I was sworn in, I was asked all the
questions by Brad we’d gone over together so many times. It was
quick, an hour and fifteen minutes or so. This was a calculated
attempt to distance me from the murder, by showing my compassion
and expressing my love for the Tappets. I could tell by Brad’s
reaction that I’d done well.

“Did you ever study acting, Christian?”
Denzil Burch asked when cross-examination started. “Desperate men
are cunning men. Everyone can see you’re not stupid, but are you a
person who will do and say anything to protect yourself?”

“Not stupid at all?” Brad said angrily,
rising, “we wish we could say the same of you. I’ve come to know
him. He’s brave and intelligent, decent and loving. Your honor,
Denzil is masking a speech in the form of a question.”

“I agree,” replied the judge. I’d been told
that he’d become evermore sympathetic to our side. “Mr. Burch, do
you have any questions.”

To everyone’s utter surprise, he shook his
head and we were adjourned to the next day, Friday, June 17, what
turned out to be a warm and breezy day. That morning I could tell
Brad was nervous. His closing was our last chance at pulling us out
of the hole. He rose and walked out in front of our table. He was
tanned and appeared well rested. His flawless facial features had a
hardness to them but his eyes still could be cordial. Anna
Chapati’s disappearance had become a murder investigation in
Lakewood. Susan told me that the police had found the clothes she’d
been dressed in when abducted in the backwoods of Lakewood. Brad
had told me this would help. He also told me that there were three
sympathetic jurors: A big man in the back row of the jury who was a
truck driver and had a family of his own; A young single black
woman in the front who was a teacher, and an older man beside her
with the bulging lump of a nose who was an oil rigger. Why they
were responsive, I’d no idea, but Brad believed it was because they
were all atheists and gave the cult story credence.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen,” he said
in an assured voice, “Mr. Burch will provide you with all your
options tomorrow on how to deal with Christian.” He walked over to
me and put his hand on my right shoulder looking at them with
warmth. “But this morning, I want you to think of the concept of
‘reasonable doubt.’ My friend Christian Tappet is innocent. That’s
the first thing you should know.”

He returned to the front of the table. “Mr.
Burch will tell you that the burden of proof for guilt beyond a
reasonable doubt has been met. He’ll say that he doesn’t have to
prove to you Christian’s guilt beyond all doubt. If all shadow of a
doubt had to be met in court, even the most silly, then it would be
impossible to ever get a conviction. So when Mr. Burch tells you
all this, just remember, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is proof
as close to the point of knowing a thing as absolutely as we can
get, given the type of imperfect creature we are. Some of you are
thinking that Christian is probably guilty and some of you are
thinking that this conspiracy theory of the defense’s, is a
stretch. You are saying to yourself that I’ve been around the block
and know how to muddy the water.” He took a step back. “Remember
though, ‘probably guilty,’ does not translate into ‘Guilty beyond a
reasonable doubt.’ However, some of you have asked yourself
genuinely, ‘What of the theory that some organization set up
Christian?” He stepped up beside me again. “You’ve listened to
Detective Cramer,” he said. “You heard the moving testimony of Mary
Tappet, followed then by Stan Tappet, Christian’s mother and
father. These are people of principle. They’ve been in this
courtroom with Christian every single day. They know their son
didn’t kill their daughter. So, you’re wondering, ‘Maybe it’s true.
Perhaps, after all, some organization framed Christian.’ This then,
is ‘reasonable doubt.’”

He returned to the defense table and looked
at his notes, stopping to smile at Mary and Stan. “Reasonable doubt
is something like asking this question: ‘If Christian is guilty,
why has he passed three police tests. Why would he be so
cooperative with the police? Why would some of them think he’s
innocent? Why did he take the stand to give you his heartfelt
testimony? Why has he not taken flight as the prosecution
predicted?” He turned and faced me. I thought he was doing
sensationally and was emotional, but held back my tears. “The man
to whom you sit in judgment has become a friend of mine. I’m proud
to say this. Anyone not thinking that Christian hasn’t suffered at
the death of his sister, Sally, isn’t looking at the same man as I
am. For the rest of his life, a long shadow has been cast over his
road and over his fine moral character. Reasonable doubt is the
glue that holds the jury system together. Justice is not served if
you saw all the available facts and said to yourself, ‘I know that
he’s not guilty, but the hard evidence is so overwhelming.’ This is
still a reasonable doubt and you must find him, Not Guilty.”

I grew more and more confident as he
continued. He reviewed the incident with Anna Chapati, the former
Love Israel of The Family of Truth, the accident that killed
Nakamura, and the missing or dead executives such as Graham Roberts
and Cheryl Garland. He talked of a Japanese and Swiss consortium
with corrupt ties to the South Korean government who had plans to
buy Tappets at the current, extremely reduced, market price, should
my parents sell it with Sally and I out of the picture; that it
could have meant sixty billion dollars difference in the final
price. He asked them to imagine anyone so stupid as to kill their
own sister in a manner and time so inimical to my own interest. The
speech lasted the four hours to which both sides had agreed and in
the end, I’d felt we’d won.

I slept well that night, feeling at last we
had a chance, but the next day, after Denzil Burch finished his
closing statement, I wasn’t so sure. He made me look like a cunning
conniving person who raped my only sister, lied to my parents about
my incestuous longings, and did so because I was afraid I’d lose my
inheritance. It was absurd, but on the face of it, the facts did
fit the theory.

On Wednesday June 22, when we were informed
the jurors had decided, my heart began to race and I was trembling
when I rose to face them. They wouldn’t look me in the eye. I knew
what that meant. I turned to Brad, but he just squeezed my arm. I
felt like a shadow of a person, so much had happened, and today, I
knew the worst would come. The foreman of the jurors seemed to
glance over with pity, as did the truck-driver, the young teacher,
and the homely oil-rigger. I looked down at my hands even as they
shook, then I heard the dozen or so words: “In the criminal action,
8753 - 07,” the foreman read out, “the United States of America
versus Christian Donald Briner Tappet, we find the defendant guilty
of murder in the first degree.”

Guilty! It hit me like a physical blow to
the stomach and I doubled up in pain. The endless continuation of
the nightmare that had started with The Family of Truth on that hot
July day in 1979 now came to its fruition. I felt like a specter as
the noises of the courtroom receded.

“It seems like your impeccable winning
streak is over,” I said bitterly to Brad, but my biting remark had
no effect on him.

I watched my parents, Una, and Andy
approaching from their seats. I knew that appeals would be made as
a matter of course and I’d be out of jail in two days or so. I had
heard from Brad that the papers had already been drawn up and would
be signed immediately. Brad had told me Judge Anderson believed
that professional polygraphs were seldom ever wrong except with
psychotic liars and felt I wasn’t in that category. Mary threw her
arms around me, weeping, and Andy rubbed my back in encouragement.
I nodded to Stan who was pretty grim-lipped.