Vanishing Acts

  "Judge, that's completely prejudicial," I say. "We're talking about a scuffle years ago, one which is completely irrelevant to the charge at hand."

  "Irrelevant?" Emma stares at me. "Did you happen to notice whom your client was beating up at the time?" She hands me a copy of the old assault charge--the same one I skimmed when I got it during discovery, figuring it had nothing to do with this case. My eyes hone in on the victim's name: Victor Vasquez.

  Six months before Andrew absconded with his daughter, and three months before his divorce, he beat up the man who would later marry his ex-wife.

  Which, actually, does go toward motive ... namely revenge, if your wife is screwing around with a guy before you're even out the door.

  The judge gathers the papers on his desk into their file. "I'm going to allow it," he says. "Is there anything else, Counselor?"

  Emma nods. "Your Honor, I think it's clear to all of us that Mr. Talcott hasn't noticed up a formal necessity defense. That leads me to believe that he's going to run this trial as an all-out slander of Elise Vasquez."

  It's exactly what I'm planning to do.

  "I'd like to say on the record that I truly hope this doesn't turn into a smear campaign of the victim, just because counsel doesn't have anything redeeming to say about his own client."

  The judge fixes his gaze on me. "Mr. Talcott, I don't know if they allow character assassination in the courtrooms of New Hampshire, but you can be assured that we certainly don't allow it here in Arizona."

  "Regular assassination, though, would be a different story," I murmur under my breath.

  "What was that?" the judge asks.

  "Nothing, Your Honor." Andrew is guilty as hell of kidnapping, but there must be ways around that. It's the way defense law works: You always plead not guilty, when what you really mean is guilty, but with good reason. Then you talk to your client and he gives you details from his sorry life that will win the sympathy of the jury.

  Assuming, that is, that those details from your client's sorry life don't thwart you at every turn. I think back to what the nursery school teacher said about Andrew threatening to take his daughter; to Emma's smug expression when she handed me Andrew's old assault charge. What else hasn't he told me that might screw this case up even more?

  "You've got thirty days to pull a rabbit out of a hat, Counselor," Judge Noble says. "Why are you still standing here?"

  When Andrew walks into our private conference room at the jail, I glance up. "Let's add this to the list of things you ought to mention to your attorney, who is trying his best to get you acquitted: that your prior conviction for a bar fight just happened to involve your wife's future husband."

  He glances up, surprised. "I thought you knew. It was right there on the record at the arraignment."

  "You feel like enlightening me any further?"

  He stares at me for a long moment. "I saw him," he confesses, his voice cracking. "I watched him touching her."

  "Elise?"

  Slowly, Andrew nods.

  "How did you find out there was something going on?"

  "Delia had drawn a crayon picture for me on a piece of scrap paper. I was hanging it up in my office at the pharmacy when I happened to notice there was writing on the back. I thought it might be something important, so I turned it over ... it was a letter Elise had been writing to someone named Victor. I was still married to her. I loved her." He swallows. "When I asked Dee where she got the paper from, she said the drawer next to Mommy's bed. And when I asked her if she knew anyone named Victor, she said he was the man who came over to take a nap with Mommy."

  Andrew gets up and walks toward the door, with its tiny streaked window. "She was in the house. She was only a baby." He stands with his hands on his hips. "I came home early from work one day, on purpose, and caught them together."

  "And you messed him up so bad he needed sixty-five stitches," I say. "Emma Wasserstein is going to use that whole episode to explain why you turned around and kidnapped your daughter six months later. She's going to say it was a premeditated act of payback."

  "Maybe it was," Andrew murmurs.

  "Do not say that on the stand, for God's sake."

  He rounds on me. "Then you make up the story, Eric. Give me a goddamned script and I'll say whatever you want."

  It would be enough, I realize, for any defense attorney: a client willing to do whatever I say. But it's different this time, because no matter what facade I build over the truth, we'll both know there's something hiding underneath. Andrew doesn't want to tell me more, and, suddenly, I don't want to hear it. So I pick three words from the quicksand between us. "Andrew," I say heavily, "I quit."

  Fitz is trying to make fire. He's put his glasses down on the dusty ground, and has positioned them in direct line with the sun, to see if they'll ignite the crumpled ball of paper underneath the rims. "What are you doing?" I ask, unraveling my tie as I approach the trailer.

  "Exploring pyromania," he says.

  "Why?"

  "Because I can." He squints up at the sun, then moves the glasses a fraction to the left.

  "I told Andrew I quit," I announce.

  Fitz rocks back on his heels. "Why'd you do that?"

  Glancing down at his combustion experiment, I say, "Because I can."

  "No you can't," he argues. "You can't do that to Delia."

  "I don't think it's healthy to have a spouse who looks at you and thinks, 'Oh, right, he's the guy who got my father locked away for ten years.'"

  "Don't you think it's going to hurt her more when she finds this out?"

  "I don't know, Fitz," I say pointedly, thinking that this is the pot calling the kettle black. "Maybe she'll find out what you're doing first."

  "Find out what?" Delia says, coming out of the trailer. She looks from me to Fitz. "What are you doing?"

  "Trying to talk your fiance out of being an asshole."

  I scowl at him. "Just mind your own business, Fitz."

  "Aren't you going to tell her?" he challenges.

  "Sure," I say. "Fitz is writing about the trial for his paper." Immediately I feel like a jerk.

  Delia steps back. "Really?" she says, wounded.

  Fitz is red-faced, furious. "Why don't you ask Eric what he did today?"

  I've had it. First the hearing in chambers, then the argument with Andrew, and now this. I tackle Fitz to the ground, knocking his glasses to the side as we scuffle on the dirt. Fitz has gotten stronger since the last time we've done this, which must have been ages ago. He grinds my face into the pebbles, his hand locked on the back of my neck. With a jab of my elbow in his gut, I manage to get the upper hand, and then my cell phone begins to ring.

  It reminds me that, in spite of how I'm acting, I'm not some stupid adolescent anymore.

  I frown at the unfamiliar number. "Talcott," I answer.

  "This is Emma Wasserstein. I wanted to let you know that I'll be adding a witness to my list. The man's name is Rubio Greengate. He's the guy who sold your client two identities back in 1977."

  I walk around to the back of the trailer, so that Delia won't hear. "You can't spring this on me now," I say, incredulous. "I'll object when you file the motion."

  "I'm not springing anything on you. You've got two weeks. I'll have the police reports of the interview we've done with him on your desk by tomorrow morning."

  This means that the prosecution has established a witness to tie Andrew to the abduction--and for reasons I've never understood, juries hang on the words of witnesses, even when their accounts aren't accurate. I open my mouth to tell Emma that I could actually care less, that I'm excusing myself from this case starting immediately, but instead I only hang up the phone and walk back to where Delia is now standing alone.

  She looks like she has been stung, like she is still smarting. And why shouldn't she? It's not every day you find out that someone you trust has been lying behind your back; for Delia, this is becoming commonplace. "I told Fitz to go to hell," she says quietly. "I said
he could quote me on that in twenty-point type." She turns to me. "I should have realized that if he came all the way out here, it was because he had an agenda."

  "For what it's worth," I say, "I don't think he wanted to write this story any more than you want to see it written."

  "I told him things I haven't even told you ... God, Eric, I took him with me the last time I went to see my mother." She pushes her hair off her face. "What else is wrong?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Fitz said you had something to tell me. Is there something wrong with my father's case?"

  She is staring at me with those beautiful brown eyes, the same ones I remember from a thousand moments in my life: the summer Sunday when I showed off by jumping off the high dive at the town pool; the February vacation when I broke my leg skiing; the night I made love to her for the first time.

  To the left of her foot, the paper that had been beside Fitz's glasses bursts into flame.

  "There's nothing wrong with his case," I lie, and I don't tell her that I'm giving up, either.

  Nighttime in Arizona is an embarrassment of riches. Sophie and I sit on the roof of the trailer, wrapped in a blanket. I show Sophie the Big Dipper, and Orion's Belt, and a winking red star. She is more interested, though, in locating the alphabet. Just this morning I found one of my depositions on the kitchen table, covered with multiple streams of the letter B. "Daddy," she says, pointing. "I see a W."

  "Good for you."

  "There's another W, too."

  The moon is full tonight, and when Sophie points at the stars I can clearly see the trio: W-O-W. To my surprise, when I spell out the letters, she tells me what the word is. "Ruthann taught me," Sophie says. "I know wow and cat and dog and yes."

  As she settles back in the V of my legs, I realize that if someone stole Sophie away from me, even if that person was Delia, I would search for her forever. I would turn over every single star, if that's what it took to find her. But by the same token, if I knew that someone was going to steal her away from me, I guarantee you that I'd take her first and run.

  Suddenly Sophie stands up and bends over, so that her head is between her legs. She looks up at the sky from this vantage point while I panic about her falling off the top of the trailer. "Did you know," she says, "that WOW, upside down, is MOM?"

  "I guess I never noticed."

  Sophie leans against my heart. "I think it's like that on purpose," she says.

  Sometime after midnight Delia climbs up to the roof of the trailer and sits down cross-legged behind me. "My father's going to go to jail, isn't he," she says.

  I gently lay Sophie down on a bed of blankets; she's fallen asleep against me. "You can't ever tell in a jury trial--"

  "Eric."

  I duck my head. "There's a good chance."

  She closes her eyes. "For how long?"

  "A maximum of ten years."

  "In Arizona?"

  I slip my arm around her. "Let's deal with that when and if it happens."

  With the moon watching like a hawk, I run my hands over the river of her hair and the landscape of her shoulders. We slip into my sleeping bag together--a tight fit--and she slides over me, her legs pressed the length of mine and her skin slick. We are attentive to silence--Sophie is asleep a few feet away--and that changes the tenor of the act. Without words, the other sensations expand. Sex becomes desperate, secret, precise as a ballet.

  We move, while coyotes pace the desert and snakes write in code across the sand. We move, while the stars rain down on us like sparks. We move, and her body blooms.

  Then we turn onto our sides, still linked, too close for anything to come between us. "I love you," I whisper against her skin. My words fall into the tiny divot at the base of her throat, the pockmark left behind after a sledding accident.

  But Delia has had that mark ever since I met her, at age four. The sledding accident would have occurred beforehand, when she was living in Phoenix.

  Where it doesn't snow.

  "Dee," I say urgently, but she is already asleep.

  That night I dream of running on the surface of the moon, where everything weighs less, even doubt.

  Andrew enters the private attorney-client conference room. "I thought you quit."

  "That was yesterday," I reply. "Listen, that scar, on Delia's neck ... it didn't come from a sledding accident, did it."

  "No. It was a scorpion sting."

  "She was stung by a scorpion on her throat?"

  "She got stung on the shoulder, but by the time Elise found her, she was already in bad shape. At the hospital, they tried to intubate her, but couldn't do it the regular way, so they cut a hole in her windpipe and put her on a ventilator for three days until she could breathe on her own again."

  "What hospital did you bring her to?"

  "Scottsdale Baptist," Andrew says.

  If Delia had been brought into a hospital in 1976 for a scorpion bite, there will be records: written proof that in her mother's solitary care, this child had been harmed. If it happened once, there was every chance it would happen again. And that might be enough justification for a jury to understand why a protective father might run off with his little girl.

  I gather up my papers and tell Andrew I'll be in touch. Then I race into the parking lot behind the jail, where I turn the air-conditioning on full blast and call Delia on my cell phone. "Guess what," I say when she answers. "I think I know why you're afraid of bugs."

  Scottsdale Baptist Hospital is now Scottsdale Osborn. An administrative assistant who has been following the kidnapping on local news channels has given Delia her old hospital records in return for an autograph. We sit down together in an archive closet, surrounded by walls of files with the colorful confetti of routing tabs. Delia opens the folder, and the musty scent of the past rises up from the small stack of paperwork. I watch her scan the pages, and wonder if she realizes she's fingering the dime-size hollow at the base of her throat.

  "You read it," she says a moment later, shoving the folder at me.

  BETHANY MATTHEWS. Date of Visit: 11/24/76.

  History: 3 y/o WF brought in by mother following questionable scorpion sting to L shoulder approximately 1 h PTA. Pt c/o pain to L shoulder as well as difficulty breathing, nausea, and double vision. Mother reports patient has had intermittent "jerking" of her arms as well as two episodes of non-bloody, non-bilious emesis. No LOC, no chest pain, no bleeding.

  PMH: None

  Allergies: NKDA

  Tetanus: UTD

  PE: 128/88 177 34 99.8 98% on RA 20 kg. Anxious, agitated 3 y/o in moderate distress.

  HEENT: Horizontal nystagmus, PERRLA, copious salivation, OP clear

  Neck: Supple, non-tender, no LAD, no thyromegaly

  Lungs: Slight rhonchi bilaterally, slight incr. WOB, no retractions

  CV: Regular, tachy, no m,r,g

  Abd: s/nt/nd/+bs

  EXT: 2x3 area of erythema on posterior left shoulder, no ecchymoses, no bleeding. 2+ distal pulses x 4

  Neuro: Alert, anxious, horizontal nystagmus to L side, dysconjugate gaze, facial droop on L side, gag reflex not intact. 5/5 strength x 4 extremities, sensitive to light touch except at area around envenomation, occasional opisthonos

  Laboratory data: WBC 11/6 Hct-36 Plt 240 Na 136 K 3.9 Cl 100 HCO3 24 BUN 18 Cr 1.0 gluc 110 Ca 9.0 INR 1.2 PTT 33.0; Urinalysis Sp Gr 1.020, 25-50 WBC, 5-10 RBC, 3+ BAC 1+ SqEpi, +nitrite, +LE

  ED decision-making: Pt presented to ED with s/s consistent with severe envenomation. After receiving 2 mg versed i.v. the patient was initially improved, but became agitated when Dr. Young attempted to remove the patient's clothing in order to fully assess her. Antivenin was unavailable. Additional doses of versed were ineffective, and the decision was made to sedate and paralyze the patient for intubation. Because of the copious secretions, orotracheal intubation was impossible, and a needle cricothyrotomy was performed successfully. The patient was then admitted to the PICU and underwent a subsequent tracheostomy by peds general surgery. P
t ventilated for 3 days. Urinalysis also revealed a urinary tract infection, and the PICU team has been notified of this finding.

  "I don't understand what it says," Delia murmurs.

  "You couldn't breathe," I say, skimming the notes. "So the doctors made a surgical opening in your throat and hooked you up to machines that breathed for you." I read further down the page:

  ED social worker was requested because mother presented as intoxicated; father notified.

  Here is proof, in black and white, that medical professionals thought Elise Hopkins was so drunk she was unable to take care of her child.

  Delia turns to me. "I can't believe I don't remember this."

  "You were young," I justify.

  "Shouldn't I have at least some sense of being in a hospital for a few nights? Of breathing with a ventilator? Or of fighting the doctor? I mean, look at what it says, Eric. I had to be sedated."

  She gets up suddenly and walks out of the closet, asking the administrative assistant where the pediatric ICU ward is. Determined, she gets into the elevator and heads upstairs.

  It looks different, surely, than it used to. There are bright murals of aquariums and Disney princesses on the walls and rainbows painted on the windows. Children tethered to IV poles navigate the halls with their parents; babies cry behind closed doors.

  A candy striper gets off another elevator and pushes past us, her face hidden by a bouquet of balloons. She brings them into the room opposite us; the patient is a little girl. "Can we tie them to the bed," she asks, "and see if I float?"

  "I didn't have balloons," Delia murmurs. "They weren't allowed in the ICU." She crosses in front of me, but she might as well be a thousand miles away. "He brought me candy instead ... a lollipop shaped like a scorpion. He told me to bite it back."

  "Your dad?"

  "I don't think so. This is crazy, but it was someone who looked like Victor. The guy my mother's married to now." She shakes her head, bewildered. "He told me not to tell anyone he came to visit."

  I scuff my shoe on the linoleum. "Huh," I say.

  "If I got bitten in 1976, my parents were still married." Delia looks up at me. "What if ... what if my mother was having an affair, Eric?"

  I don't answer.

  "Eric," Delia says, "did you hear me?"

  "She was."

  "What?"

  "Your father told me."