An Accidental Life (27 page)

Alice Hamilton had read about it in the paper yesterday. Just a short article on page seven of the
Times-Picayune
about the trial of Dr. Charles Vicari. The article wasn’t terribly clear, it mentioned an abortion that had gone wrong and that the infant had died, and then the reporter outlined the Supreme Court decision in
Roe v. Wade
in 1973 and that was all.

But that name had gripped her. Doctor Charles Vicari had been indicted for murder. The name had jumped off the page as if the three words were written for Alice Hamilton, or perhaps since he’d emerged from her past, for Alice Braxton. It had taken a minute for the information to travel across the synapses in her brain and rise to the conscious level.
Look here, Alice! This is for you.
It was a name she’d been praying she’d forget for over two years. The phone call a few months ago should have alerted her, she realized. But she’d forgotten all about it. Until now.

Luckily she’d been sitting down when she came across the story. It had transformed an ordinary day into a nightmare. There she was in her own home, minding her own business—relaxing, reading the paper, and eating breakfast—and then . . . the invasion.

But even more shocking, another name had startled her, too. The prosecutor for the district attorney’s office was Peter Jacobs. She recognized Rebecca’s husband’s name immediately from her file. This was too close—way too close. Someone could be searching for her now.

So, here she sat at her kitchen table with yesterday’s paper folded to that article and a decision to make. She sat gazing through the window at the elm tree, thinking about what should come next. She’d had a difficult time maintaining composure yesterday at work. Alice decided she had to find out exactly what was going on in the trial.

So she’d called in sick today—and now sat in her kitchen fighting off a tension headache and wringing her hands. She’d never thought she would cross Charles Vicari’s path again, and she really did not want to see him now.

She read the article over again once more, and then called for directions to the courthouse. Hanging up the phone, she went into the bedroom, looked into her closet, and pulled out her best dress.

Leaning toward the mirror, she powdered her face and added some lipstick, and then dressed. When she was ready, she called a taxicab. Then she picked up her black straw hat from the dressing table, a small hat that she’d clung to for thirty-seven years. The hat had net veiling, a half-veil that she could lower over her eyes, or push back, up over the brim, according to her mood. She’d noticed that when she pulled down the veil, people seemed to leave her alone. As if she’d suddenly become invisible. She didn’t care that the hat was out of style, old-fashioned. She’d long ago decided that she’d earned the right not to care.

Standing before the window while she waited for the taxi, she watched people across the street entering and leaving Ciro’s. When the taxi arrived she put on the hat, and pulled on her short white gloves, picked up her pocketbook and left the apartment, locking the door behind her. There was nothing for it but to do it.

She told the driver that she was going to the courthouse in Gretna, across the river from downtown, and he shook his head, but then said all right. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. At the courthouse she’d find a place to sit in the back of the room and find out what was going on. And whether this trial would change her life. Again.

Her head ached and her stomach churned as they rode from Oak Street to Carrolton, Carrolton to St. Charles Avenue, then a few miles down, around and up the ramp onto the freeway and across the Greater New Orleans Bridge to the courthouse in Gretna. Exiting the highway, they turned right on Huey Long Boulevard and eventually drove through a pretty area of creole cottages and shotgun houses. This was a wide street separated by a broad neutral ground; plenty of green grass and a tunnel of old oaks.

Close to the levee guarding the city of Gretna from the Mississippi River, past a small town square situated between an old post office building and a one-room red train station, she could see the courthouse. The front of the building was made of green glass, as described to her by the woman on the phone who’d given her directions. Just behind the tower was the hulking Parish Prison. The driver hooked a U-turn and stopped.

She paid and thanked the taxi driver, even though he failed to come around and open the door for a lady. Then, standing on the sidewalk, she halted and took measure of the place. At last, clutching her pocketbook in one hand, she walked up the steps, opened a door and went inside. There, again she halted, and looked about. Crowds of people dressed in business suits rushed past, peeling off right and left, moving fast. Ahead she saw a bank of elevators, with people pushing toward them.

Pulling the net down over her eyes, she moved forward. To her right she spotted a desk with a sign that said
Information
. A gentleman in uniform sat behind it.

He looked up. “May I help you, ma’am?”

“I’m here for the trial of Dr. Charles Vicari,” she said. “The paper said it’s starting this morning.”

He ran his finger down a list then looked up. “That would be courtroom 404, Judge Calvin Morrow.” He stood, pointing as he gave her directions.

She thanked him and headed off. She would locate a seat in the back of the room, in a corner away from the light, but close to the door. And she would make certain not to stare at Charles Vicari or Eileen Broussard, because she believed that it is true that people can feel your eyes on them when you look too long.

There was a crowd in front of the elevators, but when she walked up, a kind young man stepped aside, allowing her to enter. As they ascended she told herself that no one ever had to know that she’d come here, and that even if the doctor or Eileen spotted her in the courtroom, there wasn’t much chance they’d recognize her after almost three years.

Entering the courtroom, she realized she was early. The seats were only half-filled, and most people had crowded toward the front. She spotted Vicari immediately, sitting at a table with someone else on the other side of a railing. His lawyer, she guessed. She looked about, but didn’t see Eileen Broussard.

Then, holding her pocketbook tight against her chest, Alice Jean Hamilton slipped into the last bench in the rows running down toward that railing. She sidled down to the end, beside the wall, in the corner. She put the purse down beside her. Lifted the veil. Removed her gloves. And then she began to wait.

At the front of the courtroom, sitting at the prosecution table, Peter and Dooney were settled in and, along with everyone else, waiting for the judge to arrive. To his right Peter could feel Dooney’s tension building, the same simmering cauldron of fear and excitement inside that still hit him on the first day of every big trial. He glanced down at the evidence boxes on the floor. Those were Dooney’s responsibility. Still, he always checked. And all was well.

His own briefcase, slim and sleek, made of the finest leather with gold fixtures, was on the table before him. It was a birthday gift from Rebecca a few years ago. He smoothed his hand over the leather, and the worry that shadowed his thoughts lately rose again. He forced it away. She’d begun working at home, writing that brief for her partner, Bill Brightfield, and that seemed to have pulled her out of the angst that had first taken hold when the doctor ordered bed rest. Rebecca and the baby were fine, the doctor had said. They’d be okay.

Suddenly the door behind the bench opened. Peter glanced up, his heart racing. But only the bailiff appeared. So he settled back again and dropped his eyes to the court reporter, Michelene, sitting before her machine with her hands on her lap. She glanced up and Peter caught her eye and winked. She smiled. Michelene had worked in the courthouse as long as Peter could remember, long before he’d ever arrived, he supposed. She’d seen almost everything, he knew. But he bet himself that this case would be something new even to her.

To Peter’s left, Vince McConnell conferred with his client. He wore a suit that Peter recognized as a custom fit, not off the rack. Rebecca had taught him how you could tell. Beside him, Charles Vicari also looked dapper in a neat dark gray suit. He also wore a crisp white shirt. And a silver and black striped tie. If a jury were impaneled, Peter guessed that Vicari would have toned down the sartorial effect.

He turned and saw that behind him, on the other side of the railing, the courtroom was filling up. The
Times-Picayune
had run a brief story about the start of the trial on page three yesterday, but it hadn’t contained many details. Even so, he was surprised not to see more press in court this morning, particularly the local press. He turned back again, knowing that his hope that most of the media would stay away through the entire week was probably futile.

With a sigh, Peter folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes, running through his opening argument again. Beside him Dooney began weeding through files in the big briefcase on the floor beside her. The courtroom was well insulated from outside noise, but behind him the ambient hum of the gallery rose and fell. Minutes passed, five, then ten.

Suddenly the door behind the bench clicked open. Peter jumped and opened his eyes just as the bailiff’s voice rang out.

“All rise. The Twenty-Fourth Judicial District, Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, is now in session. The Honorable Judge Calvin Morrow, presiding.”

Everyone stood when the judge entered in his long black robe. The clerk of court announced commencement of the case,
State of Louisiana v. Charles Frank Vicari
, and Alice saw the stir of excitement at the two long tables on the other side of the railing.

When everyone around her sat down, she sat too, thinking of that phone call from Chicago, and then, yesterday, the article in the paper. Her first instinct when she’d read it had been to give notice to Dr. Matlock and flee. But now she was glad that common sense had prevailed. No one here had even glanced her way. She had a nice job, even if it was a little boring, and a nice apartment too, a place that felt like home. Too much to lose to panic yet, she told herself.

Not yet.

And then those doubts that had nagged her since the last phone call rose again. The State’s investigator had been in Chicago asking about her. She told herself there was no reason to worry—unless Rebecca Downer Jacobs somehow made the connection between Alice in Chicago and Dr. Matlock’s Alice. The irony of Rebecca’s pregnancy and her husband’s prosecution of this case at the same time struck her and a thought popped into her mind. Rebecca had been ordered by the doctor to stay at home. Still, she turned and looked about, craning her neck. That was one independent young lady, she’d realized during Rebecca’s first visit to the office. Scanning the other spectators in the gallery, she was relieved to find her absent. Then she settled back against the hard wooden bench to watch what was happening up front.

On the other side of the rail, two men and a woman were clustered around the judge’s high desk, to his right—her left—speaking in tones too low to hear. Once in a while one of the lawyers would dart over to the clerk’s desk, or back to the long tables, and then would return with papers that the judge would read for a moment and hand back.

Then suddenly things changed. As if they’d all heard the same dog whistle, all three lawyers about-faced and headed for the two tables, two to the right, and one on her left, where Vicari waited. The one on the right must be the prosecution, she realized. And the man was Peter Jacobs. The judge pounded the gavel and the murmuring in the galley diminished as he demanded order in the courtroom. When everyone was quiet, the judge announced that opening statements would now commence.

She watched as Rebecca’s husband stood, straightening some papers on the table with a kind of last-minute urgency. He was handsome, she thought. A little under six feet tall, well dressed. He strode to the lectern in the center, before the judge. Peter walked in a confident manner, head up, shoulders back. And then he gripped the sides of the lectern and looked up at Judge Morrow.