Where Nobody Dies (34 page)

I walked over to Dawn, who still sat motionless. “It's over,” I said, a little numb myself. “It's over.”

The cops were a flood of blue. In the maelstrom, I saw Button shepherding Marcy Sheldon. Her face was pinched with anxiety, but there was no sign of tears.

My eyes followed her over to where Dawn sat, her lips working, her body still. Looking into her niece's deathly pale face, Marcy asked, her voice steady, “Are you all right, honey?”

Dawn looked up, her eyes slowly focusing on the figure in front of her. “I'm fine,” she said in a small voice. Suddenly, without a sound, her face crumpled. She turned and buried her head in her aunt's stomach, her chest heaving with sobs. Her arms went around Marcy's waist, and she hugged as tightly as though the tiny woman were a life preserver.

Marcy's façade cracked. Looking down at the sobbing child, she burst into tears herself, hugging Dawn and crying incoherently. They began to rock together, a keening sound coming from them. Out of the wailing, I heard the words I'd longed for Marcy to say: “I love you, Dawn. I'll never send you away.” Dorinda had been right. The dam had burst, and the flood of love that poured out filled my heart with hope and my eyes with unshed tears.

I turned toward the Lucentis. Nilda's face was tear-streaked too, and she pulled her arms away as a uniformed cop tried to put handcuffs on her. Art reached out but was restrained in a curiously soothing gesture by Detective Button. “No,” Nilda moaned. “I can't go to jail, I can't.” There was a desperate undertone to her protests.

Near tears himself, Art Lucenti turned to Button and asked a question I couldn't hear. Nilda was still sobbing. “I'll die,” she said. “I'll die in jail. Art, help me. Please help me.” She reached out her arms, only to be restrained by a bluecoat.

Button pursed his lips and nodded. As the uniformed cops parted, Art walked over to his wife and reached out his arms for one final embrace.

It happened as a blur of sound and motion. A muffled bang, a body falling in slow motion. A look of utter astonishment on the face of a young cop. Pain and then a smile—an incongruous genuine smile—on the face of Nilda Vargas Lucenti. Inarticulate grunts and hands reaching toward the tottering body. Scuffling feet rushing toward the man with the gun. A look of inexpressible sadness on Art Lucenti's face as he lifted the gun to his mouth and pulled the trigger.

28

“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them,” my mind quoted, “but not for love.” In the week since I'd seen Art Lucenti's head splattered like a watermelon across the floor of his headquarters, I'd thought a lot about love.

Love had started it all. Harry Sheldon had loved his little Linda as no man should love a daughter. He'd created a woman whose need for love was insatiable, who made childishly enormous demands upon an adult world that finally refused to play.

Love had sucked me in; only my feelings for Dawn Ritchie had induced me to look for Linda's killer. And yet I couldn't escape the knowledge that my withholding of Aida Valentin's criminal record had put Dawn in danger. It had probably caused the Lucentis' deaths as well; the thought that they had chosen death over disgrace was only partial compensation for the guilt I felt.

Now it was up to love to redeem itself. I hoped, for Dawn Ritchie's sake, that love would be strong enough for the job.

I wasn't at all sure I was strong enough. My palms itched with sweat, and my heart pounded. My own office library suddenly seemed a strange and slightly sinister place. I hadn't been this nervous since the day I'd first stepped into a courtroom.

Maybe it was because I'd known Dawn's family too long and too well to expect a miracle. Or maybe I'd finally understood that it was one thing to theorize glowingly about mediation and quite another to make it work. Underlying everything was the sick feeling of apprehension I'd had since the Lucentis died—as though everything I touched was bound to turn to death and failure.

Marcy Sheldon seemed to share some of my doubts. “Do you really think they'll come?” she asked for the third time. I wasn't up to answering again, so Mickey Dechter replied reassuringly, “They said they would.”

“Daddy will,” Dawn asserted, adding the age-old incantation of childhood: “He promised.”

The library door opened. Dawn's face became a huge grin. “Daddy,” she exclaimed happily, “you came!” Turning to her aunt, she said, “I told you he'd come.”

Jail hadn't mellowed Brad Ritchie. He slouched into the room, his face wearing its usual defiant pout. On seeing Dawn's joyous welcome, his eyes dropped as though he'd been accused. Then he raised his head and smiled at his daughter with a boyish charm I'd never seen before. “For you, baby,” he said simply.

As Brad settled into his chair, his muscular legs sprawled in front of him, I felt a surge of hope. He might still look like a high-school kid bent on defying the teacher, but the fact remained, he was here. Whatever baggage he'd brought with him, he'd made the trip.

Which was more than could be said for his mother. The empty chair between Marcy and Mickey seemed to mock my plans for the session even as Brad's presence gave me hope. I'd learned enough from my partner the social worker to realize that Ma Ritchie, by coming late—or, perhaps, not coming at all—was making her first move in the dominance game she would play with Marcy Sheldon. The only question was whether she would play that game here in my office or save it for court.

Mickey Dechter and I had planned the seating arrangements as though we were hosting a summit meeting. We'd deliberately put Dawn between Brad and Marcy, hoping to foster a sense of sharing. Our decision was vindicated almost immediately, as Dawn glanced shyly from father to aunt, seeming to will them to accept the larger symbolic meaning of the fact that she sat between them. Brad smiled affectionately at her, acknowledging Marcy with a brief nod. Marcy looked away, uncomfortable. Then she fumbled for a cigarette, looked back at Brad, and managed a wan smile.

Marcy was dressed, as usual, in a petite man-tailored suit, but a scarf at the throat and a softer shade of lipstick added a new femininity. But the difference in her went beyond clothes. There was a less rigid look to her posture and a new grace to her gestures. At times, a tentative smile crossed her features, only to disappear at once, like the Cheshire cat's.

The library door opened and Viola Ritchie bustled in, filling the air with breathless apologies. In order to avoid the appearance of Brad and his mother ganging up on tiny Marcy Sheldon, we'd seated Mrs. Ritchie between Marcy and Mickey Dechter. Without so much as a pause in her flow of words, the older woman walked to the empty chair, tipped it, and began dragging it over to where Brad and Dawn sat.

The best-laid plans and all that. Mickey and I shared rueful smiles and tacitly agreed not to press the point. It was enough that Mrs. Ritchie was here.

“I'd like to start,” Mickey began in her curiously soothing voice, “by welcoming everyone and thanking you all for coming.” I smiled at this Southern touch. “Cass and I appreciate it and we promise to do everything in our power to make it worth your while. I think I ought to start by saying a few words about what mediation is—and what it is not.” She looked at each person in turn as she spoke, her candid eyes seeming to invite an equal candor.

“Mediation is not a substitute for the Family Court proceedings that some of you are already engaged in,” she said. “The judge will still have the final say as to the custody matter. However,” she went on, looking first at Mrs. Ritchie and then at Marcy, “the fact remains that no matter what happens in that courtroom, each of you has a unique role to play in the life of our young friend here.” The special smile Mickey gave Dawn was returned with a relaxed confidence I'd never seen the child display in court.

“What we'd like to accomplish here,” Mickey went on, “is to try to work out accommodations between the parties so that, whatever happens in court, no one feels cheated and everyone's needs are taken into account. It's in the best interests of everyone, but especially those of Dawn, that we work together as much as possible. Which brings me,” she added, “to another statement about what mediation is
not
. We are not here to practice therapy, by raking up the past or opening old wounds. Our one objective is to discuss the issue of Dawn's custody and visitation.”

For some reason I couldn't fathom, Mickey's calm, reasoned words—which had Marcy nodding in unconscious agreement and even Brad looking receptive—were making me increasingly nervous. At first I couldn't figure out why, but then I began to notice a strange feeling. I found myself—surely for the first time in my professional life—wishing there were a judge in the room. I was an advocate, trained to represent one client to the best of my ability, trained to present my case before the court and then wait for a verdict. However committed I might be in principle to mediation, the truth was I felt ill at ease, as though my legal skills were worse than useless in this new forum I'd chosen.

It was Ma Ritchie who came to my rescue. “I'm not sure,” she said uncertainly, “that I really ought to be here without my lawyer.”

I jumped in gratefully, eager to play the role I knew so well. “We discussed that, Mrs. Ritchie,” I pointed out calmly. “I said that your lawyer was welcome to be here, but that this was just a preliminary discussion. Everything that's said here will be confidential. If there is some kind of agreement by the end of the session, your lawyer and I will draw up a formal stipulation. You won't sign anything or commit yourself without his okay.”

I continued telling Viola Ritchie what she already knew. “I talked to Mr. Kretschmer,” I reminded her, “and he was willing to let us go ahead without him.”

“Well, all right.” Mrs. Ritchie feigned reluctant agreement, but the complacent smile on her face told me she'd never intended to leave the session. “I'll stay—for my granddaughter's sake.”

Mickey Dechter resumed her opening remarks. “Each of you,” she began, her voice deepening, “will continue to be a part of Dawn's life—and therefore of each other's lives—for a long time to come, regardless of the outcome of the court proceedings. I'd like to hear from each of you as to why you feel Dawn should live with you. Everyone will have a chance to talk, so please don't interrupt. Who'd like to go first?”

There was only the tiniest pause before Marcy Sheldon's businesslike voice filled the room. I had the usual sinking sensation I experienced whenever my client took the stand, going beyond my ability to shield him from hostile questions. I felt like an anxious mother watching her toddler's first steps, hoping that she wouldn't fall down and cut herself on broken glass.

Professionalism has its uses. Marcy gave the same slick, well-organized, crisply presented performance she would have shown a prospective client with a million-dollar account. And yet, the sidelong glances she gave Dawn were anything but cold. “I used to think,” she concluded, looking straight at me, “that being the best at what I do was the most important thing in the world. It was my highest priority, and it got all my energy and attention. Now,” she explained, her well-manicured hands twisting together in the only sign of nerves she'd shown, “I've found something more important to me than being the best. I can still be good—damned good—and work a lot less. The energy and time I free up will go into only one thing—making a good home for Dawn.”

It was a nice speech. But I began to suspect, looking at Dawn's unmoved face, that it wouldn't be enough. I recalled sitting in Dawn's bedroom the night Linda's body had been carried out of my house. Dawn had been ready to cast aside everything and everybody she knew and loved in order to follow Brad to almost certain poverty in Miami. Now that he was free to petition for her custody, wouldn't Dawn's first choice be life with her adored father?

Mrs. Ritchie thought so. She went for the jugular with her opening statement: “Now that my son's been cleared of his wife's murder,” she announced confidently, “there's no reason Dawn can't live with us.” She went on to paint a rosy picture of home life. Hot meals, church on Sunday, freshly laundered clothes hung on the line to dry; it all sounded too good to be true.

It
was
too good to be true, I decided, as I listened to Ma Ritchie's honeyed voice. Her dangerous tongue conjured up an impossible “Little House on the Prairie” version of family life. And yet, to a twelve-year-old raised by a selfish mother, separated from a flawed but loving father, it must have sounded like heaven. Especially since Mrs. Ritchie was careful to emphasize the time Brad and Dawn would spend together, the things they would share. By the end of her recitation, Dawn's eyes were shining with anticipation. Marcy Sheldon, noting the eager look on her niece's face, sat plunged in gloom.

But there was something wrong with the picture. Marcy's wasn't the only long face at the table. Brad Ritchie seemed to sink lower in his chair as his mother wove her spell.

I thought about Willy Loman. Like Ma Ritchie, the salesman had lived on dreams, building impossible futures for himself and his sons. I had the feeling that, like Willy, Viola Ritchie was long on dreams and short on realities.

“And that's why I'm sure,” she concluded, “that Dawn will be perfectly happy living with us.”

“Us?” I challenged, finally seeing the flaw in Mrs. Ritchie's gem of a presentation. Turning to Brad, I asked, “Were you really planning to live with your mother for the next six years? Till Dawn's eighteen?”

Brad looked uncomfortable. Glancing first at his daughter, whose eyes pleaded with him, and then to his mother, whose whole face was a demand, he mumbled, “For a while. Till I get my act together.”

“And then?”