Ring of Truth

  “Children?” was my reflex answer.

  “Maybe,” he agreed, “but maybe it’s not the children, at least not in this society anymore. Maybe it’s the men right here in this building and in others like it.”

  “Criminals, you mean?”

  “Yes. Our worst are the ’least’ among us.”

  “Murderers.”

  “Rapists. Child molesters.”

  “And why, exactly, do you think God wants us to pay more attention to them?”

  “Because they need it the most,” he exclaimed, as if that was the most obvious fact in the world. “Those of us who are already blessed don’t need any extra attention. It’s the ones who are cursed who need it. Just think about it: Isn’t that true even at the most basic level of raising children? If you’re a parent, who needs your undivided attention the most? Your problem child, of course. Even if the other kids don’t like it. Tough, they’ve already got the blessing of your love. God expects us to be generous and kind toward those who are not generous and kind. They can’t get their acts together without our help and His,- they’re not capable of that yet. But we are. And it’s not like there’s nothing in it for us, Ms. Lightfoot. When someone rises out of evil into goodness, then the rest of us are elevated, too.”

  “So you think that your calling is to serve the worst among us.”

  “Yes, those whom society perceives to be the worst.”

  “Like Stevie?”

  He sighed again. “Yes, although I don’t know if he is one of those, really. I don’t know if he’s guilty or not, though I tend to think not. The police were awfully quick to pin it on him. But his guilt or innocence is not the point, for me, although it is for members of my church who are convinced that he is not guilty. They don’t want to let a boy they think is innocent be put to death. I don’t want to let down God, who has instructed us to serve the least among us.”

  “Some people would say you are one of them now.”

  He withdrew from me in that instant. The spell was broken. It happened so quickly I felt as if a cord that tied us together tautly was cut, flinging me backward. I nearly, physically, recoiled. I hadn’t meant to be cruel or to offend him by saying what I did; if anything, I’d meant it sympathetically. But he withdrew into himself as effectively as if he had reentered a cell and locked it. The interview was over in that moment, though I asked him one more question: “How do you feel about Artemis getting off?”

  “Innocent people should get off,” he said, coolly.

  “You feel good about it then?”

  “Good? That she was accused of something terrible that she didn’t do? Good, that she was humiliated and that her life may have been ruined? Good, that a faithful wife was made to look like a whore? Do I feel good about that? No, I don’t feel good about that, Ms. Lightfoot. Artie is one of the best of us. Every day she practiced what I preach. I wish she had never heard of me or my church, that’s how I feel about Artie McGregor.”

  “Are you in love with her?”

  He stood up so suddenly it frightened me. But all he did was push back his chair, walk over to the door and bang on it with his cuffed hands, to indicate that he wanted to be taken back to his cell.

  My heart was beating hard in my chest when he left.

  It appeared I had transgressed against him. When I recovered my balance, I took a sanguine attitude, because of my experience with other people on death row. Murderers have notoriously thin skins. And not a single one of them I’d ever met would have sat still for being termed “the least.” Afterward, I looked up those verses in the New Testament and read them in full, making sure to read the same version that Wing had told me he was quoting. I discovered that he had left out a lovely and more familiar part: “I may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but if I have no love, I am a noisy gong . . .”

  It was chapter twelve that he had quoted to me. This other part was in chapter thirteen, but he had named that, too, as being—what had he called it?—his “marching orders.”

  This, too, was familiar, though I’d never heard it said so plainly as this: “Love is very patient, very kind. Love knows no jealousy; love makes no parade, gives itself no airs, is never rude, never selfish, never irritated, never resentful; love is never glad when others go wrong, love is gladdened by goodness, always slow to expose, always eager to believe the best, always hopeful, always patient . . .”

  It did not describe any murderer I’d ever known. But then, Bob Wing didn’t look or sound like any killer I’d ever met, either. When the jury found him guilty, I admired them for being able to look beyond his appearance and charisma to the evidence against him. It couldn’t have been easy. Even I, when he shut me down in that interview with him, felt for an instant as if the sun had gone out. It was very easy for me to understand how a lonely widow like Susanna Scale had fallen head over heels for her handsome minister.

  That part, at least, made perfect sense.

  * * *

  In talking to his lawyers, Bob Wing related how he went home and told his wife all about the nice woman who’d walked into the church that day.

  “What did you tell Susanna?” Tammi Golding asked him.

  “I said that a really nice woman came into our church today and that she had invited us to a party at her house.”

  “What did Susanna say?”

  “I think she may have said she didn’t have a thing to wear.”

  The lawyer chided him, “This is no joke, Bob.”

  “But it was all so normal, Tammi. Susanna was curious, she wanted to know was the new woman married, was she attractive, did she have any money—”

  “Bob, why would your wife ask you things like that unless she felt threatened by women in the church? Was Susanna jealous of you?”

  “No, Tammi! Susanna wasn’t jealous, she was a matchmaker! You know that! Didn’t she ever try to fix you up with anybody?”

  “No,” the never-married attorney said, wryly.

  “Well, I’m surprised. She was always on the lookout to fix up the single people in our church.”

  “So who’d she have in mind for Artie?”

  “Oh, Stuart McGregor, right from the start.”

  “So that was Susanna’s doing, getting them together?”

  “Yes. She called Artie and asked if we could bring along a single friend of ours to the party. That’s where Stuart and Artie met. Susanna knew Stuart was lonely since his wife’s death. And we knew that Stuart had inherited from his wife, and Susanna wanted to be sure that no woman was after him just for his money. So that’s why she wanted to know if Artie had any money of her own, that’s all.”

  “And you told Susanna that Artemis was wealthy?”

  “I told her how Pat had pointed out to me that Artie was wearing a diamond as big as my head.”

  So first came the party, for Artemis and Stuart. They got much better acquainted after that at Bob’s “grief group.” Susanna continued to attend, although she was married now. She went for the company, Bob Wing averred, and to help him. As it had for Bob and her—and with nudging from Susanna the matchmaker—attraction blossomed between Stuart and Artemis, quickly flowering into engagement and marriage.

  The two couples became friends in the process.

  Once, when Artemis got cold feet, after being persistently wooed by Stuart, Susanna counseled her to grab this opportunity for happiness, because who knew if she would ever get the chance again?

  “What do you think of Artemis?” Tammi asked Bob Wing, bluntly, practicing for the trial.

  “She’s a wonderful woman,” he said, with feeling.

  “You like her?”

  “Yes, very much.”

  “Have the two of you ever been lovers?”

  “No, Tammi.”

  “Have you ever engaged in sexual contact of any sort with her?”

  “I have not.”

  “Has she with you?”

  “Absolutely not. Not ever.”

  “Were you ever unfaith
ful to your wife?”

  “No, never.”

  “You and Artie were just friends, is that right?”

  “Yes, we’re friends.”

  Later, in the trial, Tammi Golding turned to the jury as if to say, “You see? This is a minister, for heaven’s sake, a minister who has sworn to tell the truth. Who could possibly doubt him?” But as Tammi turned her back to refer to her notes, she hoped the jury had not noted Bob Wing’s unfortunate omission of one word in his answer.

  “You were just friends, is that right?” had been her question.

  “Yes, we’re friends,” came the answer.

  But without that “just,” there remained a big gap of possibilities.

  There was also a gap in the questioning, or at least one juror later said she thought she’d noticed one. After asking Bob Wing if he “liked” Artemis Hornung McGregor, his lawyer skipped right on to a question concerning fidelity. The juror thought, at the time, that the natural next question should have been, instead, “Do you love her?” But Tammi Golding didn’t ask him that.

  Which left at least one juror wondering why not.

  Was the lawyer afraid of the answer he might give?

  * * *

  There were other problematic answers and at least one non-answer.

  “What did you and Mrs. McGregor do for the two hours you were together in her car?” Bob Wing was asked first by the detectives, then by his own lawyers, and finally by the state attorney in the trial. He wouldn’t tell the cops, but he opened up a little bit to Tammi Golding.

  “We drove around Bahia, up and down the beach.”

  “Did you stop anywhere, Bob?”

  “We had car trouble. On the highway.”

  In fact, the nursing homes they were supposed to visit that day did report that Dr. Wing had called to say they’d had car trouble. But when questioned about it, he couldn’t remember exactly where it had happened and there was no independent corroboration for the story. Tammi knew right away that she didn’t want to dwell on it in court, as it would surely sound suspicious to jurors.

  “Did you spend the time talking?”

  “Yes, that’s all we did.”

  “What did you find to talk about for two whole hours?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Bob,” his attorney told him, “you have to say. If you won’t tell me, I won’t put you on the stand, because the prosecutor is going to ask you that, and if you don’t answer, the judge is going to command you to answer, and then you’ll either have to, or you’ll be held in contempt. Look, if you talked romantically, or even if you stopped somewhere and had sex with her, that’s a hell of a lot better than leaving the jury to think that the two of you spent the time murdering your wife. So what did you talk about, Bob?”

  With a show of great reluctance, Bob Wing finally said, “Our marriages.”

  “Oh, great,” Tammi thought, but she only said, “What did you say about them?”

  “Tammi, I really don’t want to say this. It’s a breech of confidentiality. Artie told me things that she trusted me not to tell anybody else.”

  “And she wouldn’t want you to tell if your life depended on it?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “I will, Bob. What did you say to her about your marriage?”

  Later, Tammi Golding would remember how haunted his face looked when he answered her. “I told her it was failing. I should never have married Susanna, Tammi, and that’s what I told Artie. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that, but . . .”

  “But you did, and what else did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You didn’t tell her why it was a mistake? Why it was failing?”

  “No, that would have been a betrayal of Susanna.”

  “Well, Susanna’s dead. So tell me, even if you didn’t tell Artie. Why was your marriage failing?”

  “It was my fault. I didn’t love her. I never did.”

  “Why did you marry her, Bob?”

  His face twisted in what looked like grief and guilt. “I think I let her talk me into it, Tammi. She seemed to love me and she was so kind and good to me, I thought that I could learn to love her, too. Good intentions . . .”

  His lawyer said, “I can’t put you on the stand, Bob. No way I’m going to let you get up there and say these things so that Tony Delano can twist any which way he wants.”

  “Don’t you have to let me testify if I insist?”

  “Yes, but please, please don’t insist.”

  But he did, in the end. Bob Wing insisted that he just had to look the jury members in the eye and tell them he was innocent of adultery and of the murder of his wife. Most people thought it was the suicidal arrogance of a man who could not even imagine that people wouldn’t believe anything he said. The jury returned the favor by looking at Bob when the judge read their guilty verdict to him.

  * * *

  Unlike her fellow defendant, Artie McGregor took her lawyer’s advice. She did not take the stand in her own behalf. So Tony Delano never got his chance to ask her the same questions. But then, she hadn’t answered any of them for Tammi Golding, either, not even in the privacy of the law office, where nobody else would ever know.

  “Artie, what did you and Bob talk about that day in the car?”

  “I don’t remember, Tammi.”

  “Did you talk about your own marriage?”

  “It would be natural to mention Stuart.”

  “What did you say about him?”

  “I don’t recall.”

  “Did Bob discuss his marriage, or Susanna?”

  “If he did, it wouldn’t be right for me to say.”

  “Artie! Your life’s at stake here. What did you talk about?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “It must have been important for the two of you to skip those nursing homes. I can’t even imagine you doing that, Artie. You’re usually so dependable when it comes to things like that, so what in the world were you doing with Bob, or talking about with him, that would keep you away from the old folks?”

  “I felt bad about that,” was Artie’s quiet reply.

  She never even mentioned car trouble.

  At the defense table, Bob Wing and Artemis McGregor sat separated by two attorneys,- they rarely looked at one another, and when they did, they looked away so quickly that some observers thought they seemed embarrassed, and other observers thought they were trying not to show what they felt for one another. Mostly Artie sat with her head down, looking angelic, scared, and sad; Bob Wing held his head up, but he frequently flushed or paled, depending on the testimony against them. It was noted by many that he seemed most agonized by any testimony that reflected badly on the woman seated down the table from him, the woman for whom he claimed he did not kill his wife.

  When she was acquitted, he wept and looked deeply relieved.

  Artemis broke down in tears at that moment, too, a moment that followed his own guilty verdict, which he had absorbed with little change of expression. It was only for her verdict that he wept. And then, for the first time in the trial, she moved past the lawyers, toward him, and put out her right hand to touch his left arm. People standing nearby say that she looked up into his eyes, with her own eyes brimming, and whispered, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . .”

  No matter what his claims or her silence, at that pregnant moment Bob Wing and Artemis McGregor looked like two people in love.

  * * *

  Detective Jill Norman—“Norm”—thinks that Stuart McGregor was wrong to think he had watched Bob and Susanna fall in love in the grief group.

  “They didn’t fall in love,” Detective Norman scoffs. “She did. He fell in love with her inheritance. It was just what he needed for himself, since he was busy turning himself into a saint by giving away almost all of the insurance money from Donna’s death. Here came this pretty, lonely, kind of unpolished woman—just ripe for picking—and not only did she come with an inheritance of her own, but
if he got married again the church would take out one of those enormous policies on her like they did on Donna. It was a double play for him.”

  As Antonio Delano, the assistant state attorney would tell the jury with chilling effect in his closing argument, “That grief group was a perfect setup for manipulating and seducing vulnerable women, and the defendant knew it. If Bob Wing had been a spider and those lonely women had been flies, that group could not have been a more deadly trap. Sooner or later, one of them was bound to fall into it. All he had to do was string it and wait. Hold meetings regularly. Get the word out to the community. Attract new widows and divorcees, who are surely among the world’s most vulnerable and needy people.”

  Antonio spread his arms wide toward the jury.

  On paper, his closing argument sounds melodramatic, but in the courtroom that day it was so compelling you could hardly breathe for the tension upon hearing it.

  “And what did those women find at Sands Gospel Church?” Tony demanded. “Solace in their time of trouble? Oh, yes.” This was said with indignant sarcasm. “Did they find an understanding minister to counsel them? Oh, yes. Indeed, they did. Did they find in him a shoulder to cry on, an ear in which to pour their troubles, a font of advice for all the lonely aspects of their lives? Oh, yes. That’s what Susanna found when she walked innocently into the trap known as the grief group. With all her sorrow, with all her money, Susanna walked into the trap, and it closed over her.”

  Then with even greater conviction, the prosecutor turned his final argument toward the other defendant sitting at the table, separated from her alleged lover by their own lawyers. “But even spiders have mortal enemies. Male spiders are smaller, weaker than their mates, and if their mate is a Black Widow, the male himself gets caught in the trap. In this spider’s web, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we had two deadly predators. A perfect match. Perhaps he would not have carried out his awful scheme if Artemis McGregor had not come along to encourage and assist him in it, almost as if they were joined in an evil perversion of wedding vows. Till death do us part.’ Only it was Susanna’s death they sought, so that they would not have to part. We do not know which of them struck the first blow. Or the second, or the twentieth. We do not know which of them first voiced the dreadful idea: ’Let’s kill her.’ We only know they did it,” he intoned, employing one of his boss’s favorite lines to use in closing arguments in homicide cases. “We know they are guilty of her murder. Their motive was sex and money, the oldest and most convincing motives of all. Their means was a baseball bat, cruel and effective. And their opportunity was a Friday in August when they were together and Susanna was once again alone and defenseless.