Protect and Defend (83 page)

Some wonderful lawyers and law professors further helped me frame the issues, and plot the course of the Tierney case: Erwin Chemerinsky, Leslie Landau, Stacey Leyton, Deirdre Von Dornum, and, especially, Alan Dershowitz. In preparation, I devoted many hours to a study of the case law; with allowances for a lay audience, I have tried to accurately portray the legal issues and their possible resolution. Here, I should note a change for narrative purposes: unlike most state courts, in the wake of the
Simpson
case the federal courts imposed a ban on television. But my guess is that this ban will not last, and my novel, set in the future, so provides.

There are times when characterization requires more than the exercise of sheer imagination. With his military background, including the impact of kidnapping and imprisonment, Senator Chad Palmer is such a case. Many thanks to those who helped make Chad Palmer who he is: my fellow novelist and valued friend Secretary of Defense William Cohen, NATO Commander General Joseph Ralston, Air Force Vice Chief of Staff General Ed Eberhardt, Colonel Ron Rand, Colonel Bob Stice, Colonel Rowdy Yates, Major J. C. Connors, Larry Benson, Dick Hallion, my cousin Bill Patterson, and my friend Bob Tyrer. I am particularly privileged to have spent time with two former prisoners of war, whose experiences
were critical: General Charles Boyd, USAF (Ret.), and Colonel Norman McDaniel, USAF (Ret.).

Finally, others helped me fill in the gaps. Assistant District Attorney Al Giannini introduced me to ninhydrin, Mason Taylor’s undoing; Drs. Ken Gottlieb and Rodney Shapiro assisted in shaping Kyle Palmer and Mary Ann Tierney; and Editor in Chief David Talbot of
Salon
magazine helped me think through the journalistic issues raised by Kyle’s past, although for himself David might well have concluded that there were sufficient grounds to preserve Kyle’s privacy. And literature published by Common Cause, the preeminent public interest lobby, helped provide the background for certain observations about money in politics, as did a reading of the case law on that subject.

One of the needs of any novelist is to share the madness. My talented assistant, Alison Porter Thomas, outdid herself on this book: her detailed, perceptive, and sometimes just plain persistent editorial comments challenged me daily to do better—and, thanks to Alison, every day I did. To give me a further overview I relied on my friend and agent, Fred Hill; my dear friends Anna Chavez and Philip Rotner; and my partner in life, Laurie Patterson. And my splendid publishers, Sonny Mehta and Gina Centrello, not only overcame their initial reservations about the concept of this book, but endorsed the finished novel with an enthusiasm which was both heartening and affirming. All have my warmest thanks.

Feeling the gun against the nape of her neck, Joan Bowden froze.

Her consciousness narrowed to the weapon she could not see: her vision barely registered the cramped living room, the images on her television—the President and his fiancée, opening the Fourth of July gala beneath the towering obelisk of the Washington Monument. She could feel John’s rage through the cold metal on her skin, smell the liquor on his breath.

“Why?” she whispered.

“You wanted him.”

He spoke in a dull, emphatic monotone.
Who?
she wanted to ask. But she was too afraid; with a panic akin to madness, she mentally scanned the faces from the company cookout they had attended hours before. Perhaps Gary—they had talked for a time.

Desperate, she answered, “I don’t want anyone.”

She felt his hand twitch. “You don’t want
me
. You have contempt for me.”

Abruptly, his tone had changed to a higher pitch, paranoid and accusatory, the prelude to the near hysteria which issued from some unfathomable recess of his brain. Two nights before, she had awakened, drenched with sweat, from the nightmare of her own death.

Who would care for Marie?

Moments before, their daughter had sat at the kitchen table, a portrait of dark-haired intensity as she whispered to the doll for whom she daily set a place. Afraid to move, Joan strained to see the kitchen from the corner of her eye. John’s remaining discipline was to wait until Marie had vanished; lately their daughter seemed to have developed a preternatural sense of
impending violence which warned her to take flight. A silent minuet of abuse, binding daughter to father.

Marie and her doll were gone.

“Please,” Joan begged.

The cords of her neck throbbed with tension. The next moment could be fateful: she had learned that protest enraged him, passivity insulted him.

Slowly, the barrel traced a line to the base of her neck, then pulled away.

Joan’s head bowed. Her body shivered with a spasm of escaping breath.

She heard him move from behind the chair, felt him staring down at her. Fearful not to look at him, she forced herself to meet his gaze.

With an open palm, he slapped her.

Her head snapped back, skull ringing. She felt blood trickling from her lower lip.

John placed the gun to her mouth.

Her husband. The joyful face from her wedding album, now dark-eyed and implacable, the 49ers T-shirt betraying the paunch on his too-thin frame.

Smiling grimly, John Bowden pulled the trigger.

Recoiling, Joan cried out at the hollow metallic click. The sounds seemed to work a chemical change in him—a psychic wound which widened his eyes. His mouth opened, as if to speak; then he turned, staggering, and reeled toward their bedroom.

Slumping forward, Joan covered her face.

Soon he would pass out. She would be safe then; in the morning, before he left, she would endure his silence, the aftershock of his brutality and shame.

At least Marie knew only the silence.

Queasy, Joan stumbled to the bathroom in the darkened hallway, a painful throbbing in her jaw. She stared in the mirror at her drawn face, not quite believing the woman she had become. Blood trickled from her swollen lip.

She dabbed with tissue until it stopped. For another moment
Joan stared at herself. Then, quietly, she walked to her daughter’s bedroom.

Marie’s door was closed. With painstaking care, her mother turned the knob, opening a crack to peer through.

Cross-legged, Marie bent over the china doll which once had been her grandmother’s. Joan felt a spurt of relief; the child had not seen them, did not see her now. Watching, Joan was seized by a desperate love.

With slow deliberation, Marie raised her hand and slapped the vacant china face.

Gently, the child cradled the doll in her arms. “I won’t do that again,” she promised. “As long as you’re good.”

Tears welling, Joan backed away. She went to the kitchen sink and vomited.

She stayed there for minutes, hands braced against the sink. At last she turned on the faucet. Watching her sickness swirl down the drain, Joan faced what she must do.

Glancing over her shoulder, she searched for the slip of paper with his telephone number, hidden in her leather-bound book of recipes.
Call me
, he had urged.
No matter the hour
.

She must not wake her husband.

Lifting the kitchen telephone from its cradle, Joan crept back to the living room, praying for courage. On the television, a graceful arc of fireworks rose above the obelisk.