Guilty Wives (36 page)

THE PRESIDING JUDGE
looked stately but slightly uncomfortable in his red robe. He and the other judges listened attentively as the prosecutor, Maryse Ballamont, completed her formal recitation to the court.

“I will ask the accused to please rise,” said the presiding judge. As before, his French was translated through our headphones into English.

Serena, Bryah, and I had been seated with our lawyers at the table outside the cage where defendants normally sat. Technically, they could have placed us inside the cage, as they had previously. But it would have been a pure formality, and a tacky gesture under the circumstances.

The presiding judge nodded to each of us respectfully. “There is a principle deeply embedded in our republic’s consciousness that it is far better for the guilty to go free than to convict even a single innocent person. There is nothing more offensive, no greater harm that a government can inflict against an individual, than to imprison her wrongly. Ms. Gordon, Ms. Schofield, Ms. Elliot: the French Republic owes you an apology.”

I closed my eyes and inhaled deeply and let those words wash over me. Words I thought I would never hear.

“On motion of the prosecution and with the consent of the defense, the court finds unanimously that the newly discovered evidence has demonstrated beyond any doubt that the accused are not guilty of the crimes as charged in the transfer judgment. The accused are to be released from custody at once. This court is adjourned.”

The courtroom erupted in applause. Serena, Bryah, and I held hands and then broke down into tight embraces and then, finally, inevitably, into violent and joyful sobs. So much passed between us in those moments. We had each fallen so far and so hard, our lives turned entirely inside out, only to unexpectedly come out the other end in one piece.

In one piece, but not unscathed. Each of our children had, in a very real sense, lost their mothers, only to regain them at the expense of their fathers. Katie Mei, for over a year, had only a father, and now in an instant her mother was back and Simon was dead. Bryah’s boy suffered the same result.

And my Richie and Elena—teenagers, both of them, since Elena had her birthday last month: I tried to tell myself that it was different for them, because they didn’t live with Jeffrey, they’d been at boarding school, they were more emancipated than Bryah’s and Serena’s young kids. But it was a reach, I knew. They were old enough to understand that their father had been part of a horrific crime and had done what still, after all this time, seemed utterly unthinkable—he had framed me for it. They had believed in my innocence, and even if they hadn’t, no doubt they would have stood by me anyway. But now it was different. They knew their father was guilty, and at least part of the crime he’d committed was against me—and, in that sense, against them as well.

And I couldn’t leave myself out of the list of casualties, either. I was alive and I was free and I was reunited with my children. But I didn’t kid myself. Something like this changes you. It breaks you into pieces and puts you back together, but the sum total is different. I felt like a car that had been in a violent collision—you can get it to run again, but it’s never quite the same.

It would be a long time, I knew, before the bitterness left me. A longer time still before I could trust anyone again. I didn’t want the book deals offered to me. I didn’t want to sit down with
60 Minutes
or
People
magazine for an exclusive interview. I only wanted the one thing I couldn’t have—my life, before all this happened.

Richie and Elena came through the barrier and laid themselves gently against me. I cupped their heads and fought back more tears. We’d been together three days now, since the French flew them to Paris and put all of us together in a hotel in the Latin Quarter. That, I thought, had been decent of Durand. Technically, I was still a convicted felon, so the compromise was that they made me stay under police guard while we ordered room service and watched pay-per-view movies on DCRI’s tab.

Over Richie’s and Elena’s heads I saw Giorgio Ambrezzi and Dan Ingersoll in the gallery. I felt a squeeze of my heart when I thought of Linette, the love of Giorgio’s life, dead not because of anything she did but because of me. I couldn’t have done this without Giorgio. I never could have escaped from prison. Colonel Durand seemed to understand this on some level, judging from comments he’d made to me, but there was no direct proof of Giorgio’s complicity and, in any event, Durand clearly lacked the appetite to pursue the matter. All’s well that ends well, or something like that.

Dan Ingersoll had been more than a government official doing his job. He’d been my friend. He’d gone to bat for me as much as he could and, according to Durand, it had been Dan’s idea to bring Jeff and Simon to the embassy so Durand could plant recording devices in their cell phones.

He was pretty cute, too. He’d mentioned to me more than once over the last three days that his time in Paris would be ending soon, that he’d be back at the Justice Department in D.C. by next summer.

I smiled at him, he smiled back at me, and I realized that these tiny little encounters and interactions and things, just
things
in life, were what I missed most.

Now that the court had adjourned, the cameras were flashing feverishly. I found it rather invasive, but at least the coverage of me had flip-flopped from negative to positive. And after everything I’d been through, having a few cameras in my face was like a walk in the park.

“It’s going to be like this for a little while,” I told Richie and Elena, as we began to navigate our way through the reporters and paparazzi.

“You deserve it, Mom,” Elena said. “They spent a year tearing you down as some bad person. Let them build you up for a while now that you’re a hero.”

I stopped and looked at Elena. Those weren’t words my eleven-year-old would have spoken, before I was arrested. But they were the words of the thirteen-year-old standing before me.

I had missed those crucial fifteen months, terrifying and confusing and exhilarating times that Elena had endured without her mother. I would make up for it as best I could now. If they wanted to stay in boarding school in Connecticut, that’s where I was going to move. If they wanted to return to Georgetown, so be it.

“Hero?” I laughed. “I’m no hero, kiddo. I’m just a survivor.”

Richie planted a kiss on my cheek. “You’re
our
hero, Mom,” he said.

It wouldn’t be the last time today that I smiled through tears.

THE WALK THROUGH
the basement of the Palais de Justice brought back a flood of emotions and memories so violent, so overwhelming, that I had to remind myself to breathe. I also had to remind myself of my newfound status.
You’re free, Abbie, it wasn’t a dream.
I would always equate France with my captivity, with my utter degradation, with a period of time when everything was stolen from me.

I will dream about this dungeon, about JRF, about my interrogation at DCRI—all of this—for the rest of my life. No matter how fiercely I scrub my teeth, I will always taste it. No matter how tightly I shut my eyes, I will always see it. No matter how low the temperature on the air-conditioning, I will always feel the rabid heat of cell 413.

The escort guard stopped at the cell.
“Voulez-vous aller à l’intérieur?”
he asked me.

I shook my head no. I would stay on this side of the cage.

Jeffrey was sitting on a bench that was fixed to the wall, hunched over, his elbows on his knees. His hair was greasy, his face unshaven, his white shirt stained with sweat at the armpits.

The last act that Colonel Bernard Durand performed before he resigned his post was arresting Jeffrey at the hotel where he was staying, near the U.S. Embassy. I’m told that Jeffrey took it bravely, that he handled himself well.

“We’re leaving today,” I said.

He nodded. “The kids didn’t come with you?”

“You couldn’t possibly expect them to.”

Jeffrey rubbed his hands together. He had to appreciate how terribly he’d betrayed his family. “This might sound pathetic, Abbie, but none of this was my idea. I went along with it. I did. But I didn’t come up with the idea, and I didn’t plan it or execute it. I went along for the ride. There’s a difference.”

“You’re right,” I said. “It does sound pathetic.”

He didn’t answer. He was totally and completely broken.

“You got your lawyer?” I asked.

He nodded. “He thinks we might be able to fight it. There’s not—not a lot of direct proof.”

That was probably true. Simon and Colton were dead, and Christien was still on the run. Simon and Colton had admitted to plenty on the tape that Durand had recorded, but Jeffrey hadn’t admitted to a thing. Clearly he knew about their involvement, but knowing they did something and being a part of it were two different things.

Damon Kodiak was under arrest for perjury. Thus far, at least as far as I knew, he wasn’t talking. But even if they could get him to talk, he’d already told me that he had no knowledge of Jeff’s involvement.

Ironic, I thought. Jeffrey’s incompetence and cowardice might ultimately be his saving grace.

“You’re going to deny you were part of the lookout at the harbor?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. “What do
you
think I should do?”

“Hey, my name’s Abbie, not Dear Abby.”

For just a moment, Jeffrey’s face brightened. It was an old line of mine, back when we were dating, when we were madly in love and life was full of doors that were open, not closed.

“I still love you,” he said. For the first time, he turned and looked at me. “I never stopped. I know what I did. The affair. But I didn’t do that because I didn’t love you. I did it because I was afraid you’d stop loving me.”

I turned away. “I’m not going to do this, Jeffrey. You made a decision and you betrayed me. And then you made another decision and you betrayed me and your children. You stole their
mother
away! Don’t expect me to ever forgive you for that.”

A long silence hung between us. Maybe this is why I came here, to say these words to him, just one long-overdue scolding before I went back to America and rebooted my life. Or maybe there was a small part of me that simply wanted to see him behind bars.

“I know what you did,” he said. “The phone call from the new French president? My lawyer told me. That was…thank you, Abbie.”

I shrugged. “He asked me if there was anything he could do for me.”

“And you asked him to show me mercy,” he said. “I don’t deserve that.”

“No, you don’t.”

But he was still the father of my children. And if there was a possibility that the fracture between Jeffrey and the kids could ever heal, I had to try to make that happen. I was so tired of seeing things torn down and destroyed. I wanted to see things grow.

I moved quickly back through the claustrophobic hallway and chose the stairs over the elevator. I ran up and out of the Palais de Justice and kept running until I was crossing the bridge over the gorgeous Seine.

I wanted things to be better. And the first step was going home.

Many thanks to Daniel Morro of the Department of Homeland Security, currently assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, for advice, insight, and observations on Paris and the French criminal justice system. He and his wife, Kathleen Morro, were incredibly gracious answering our questions and helping us explore the wonderful city of Paris.

Thank you to assistant U.S. attorney Laura Ingersoll, who served as the Department of Justice’s attaché to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, for spending many hours explaining the substantive and technical details of a French criminal trial. Arnaud Baleste,
capitaine de police
for the Brigade Criminelle in Paris, was very generous with his technical and practical observations about murder investigations in France. When necessary, this novel took some creative license on certain details, which should be attributed to the authors alone.

Thank you to the following for allowing a tour of the Dwight Correctional Center near Dwight, Illinois: David Eldridge, former chief of staff to the director of the Illinois Department of Corrections; Sharyn Elman, the department’s chief public information officer; and Sheryl Thompson, the warden at Dwight. Thank you for all the questions you answered and the insight you provided. Although a women’s prison in Illinois differs substantially from the fictional prison depicted in this novel, and none of the horrors depicted herein bear any relation to Dwight, the information provided was tremendously helpful.

THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB CHASES A MOVIE STAR WHO MIGHT BE A SERIAL KILLER.

FOR AN EXCERPT,
TURN THE PAGE.