Chapter 12 Peregrine Falcon #4
The theory, he went on, was that then she went on the lam because she thought the police would be after her.
They’d given up on that idea as a little too convenient.
The other top candidate was Jack, out of jealousy, but why then when this had been going on for a long time?
Maybe Cary killed Emil and then himself.
But the timing was wrong: Those insurance policies had been around for nearly a year.
Sam reached for my hand. “But none of those felt right. Felicity quit at the strip club long before any of this. Cary and
Emil knew that she didn’t have an exclusive relationship with either of them. They might indeed have been jealous, but why
would it all detonate during Christmas break? These were family men. It didn’t compute.”
Sam’s personal theory was that Felicity crossed somebody who was scary or crazy. He said he believed that it was some “nutter”
who had a fantasy relationship with a woman he’d spoken to once, at a grocery store, or at a strip club. Both of us could
see the merit of the other possibility: If Felicity wouldn’t talk about it, it was because she was scared. Somebody threatened
to kill her if she told—or her little brothers, or Ruth. Felicity knew that the likelihood of her being acquitted was good;
Sam was shocked that she was even charged based on what they had, which was not much more than that she knew both men well.
So, while she probably wouldn’t go to prison, she would rather have faced prison, seven or eight years of her life before
she could even apply for parole, than risk talking about whoever she believed was really responsible. That was what Sam sometimes
believed. Other times, he thought she just genuinely had no idea.
I sat on a stone bench near the bridge watching the huge eagles ride the air, their great wings like shaggy old coats. I ate
the ridiculously thick cheese-and-brown-bread sandwich I’d bought at one of Wisconsin’s ubiquitous roadside cheese “cottages,”
along with two bags of taco chips.
Since Sam and I had broken up, I’d been drowning my sorrows in taco chips.
Nell said I reminded her of our dad, who, when the bag got close to empty, would tip his head back and funnel chips into his open mouth.
“Dad likes to get the chips out of the way,” Nell would invariably say.
I’d finally told Nell about what happened with me and Sam, pretending that he was just one of those men who was solitary by nature.
She’d never met him but was as sympathetic as a good sister should be, her only qualm that she might have been able to wangle an internship from his firm.
Thinking about my father and his chips made me long for him.
I wished Patrick were here. I wasn’t sure why. I wanted my dad.
That was when it started, a feeling of unease that crept over me, the premonitory sense that something was very near and very
wrong. It churned my guts and made me grateful I’d purchased two stomach-settling Cokes, not one, although until today, I
hadn’t drunk a Coke for ten years.
Animals can tell where trouble is afoot. They don’t have to think it over, although Felicity would have said that they do
discuss it, sending warnings in their own tongue: look out, take cover, a storm, a hawk, beware. It doesn’t always work; sometimes
the threat is already upon them, but they are guided by instinct invariably, in the way humans have forgotten how to be. We
have those instincts too, and experts on personal safety say that they are almost always right. Sometimes, we override those
instincts. Always, when we do, it’s a bad idea. Think of every time that you have done that . . . every ride you took with
a sketchy guy because it was just so late and nobody else was around. Every time you decided to hit the snooze button because
there was plenty of time before the exam. Every time you knew full well that you hadn’t left yourself time and you ignored
the weather. How did that work out? You look back on that time as a near miss, when you were lucky to pass the test, keep
the job . . . keep your life.
That unease crawled on me as I ate the last bites of the sandwich and neatly folded the wrapping.
There was a single white cloud above, the size of a continent, but white and benign.
It did not portend a storm. I put one of the sweating Coke cans against my sun-basted forehead.
I watched the eagles. They mated for life.
They didn’t get distracted by old tales or the tail feathers of new raptors. They were one-eagle kind of birds.
My phone rang then.
It was my mother. The jury was back. It had been not quite three hours. I was, of course, just a reporter and there was no
way that the verdict would wait for me. So I asked Miranda to be my eyes and ears and she promised she would. As it turned
out, everything had to wait on Israel Ronson, whose car broke down and who had to wait for an associate to pick him up on
the beltway, which was suddenly clogged with traffic. Sam knew better than to go far. He didn’t expect a verdict so soon,
but had hunkered down with a book in a local coffee shop. His was a five-minute walk.
I would later hear that he told someone that it was a myth that a fast verdict was a guilty verdict. A jury coming back quickly
often meant that the members understood everything and didn’t have any questions.
Still, I ignored the speed limit, as I had that night in Chicago with the woman in labor. I wished I had a gumball to slap
on the roof of the car. Barns and cows flashed past like images in a child’s flip-book. When I was ten minutes out, my phone
rang again: my mother. I couldn’t bring myself to answer. Where would Felicity’s arrow fly when she left the courtroom this
evening? Would she go out for celebratory drinks with her stripper sisters, then back to her luxe condominium with the blue-tiled
pool? Or would she be pointed toward a thousand other women as the occupant of her own eight-by-twelve cell at Manoomin Correctional
Facility in Fond du Lac?
The sun had just begun its long summer descent over Lake Mendota when everyone again assembled in the courtroom.
My mother and Claire held hands. Sam held Felicity’s right hand and Angela held her left hand.
I clasped my own hands together, scrutinizing my own emotions.
Did I want her to go free if she had done this thing?
I did. I did not. I whispered to Felicity with my mind: Promise to be good, I whispered. Promise to walk the high path.
Judge Martin addressed the jury forewoman, juror number eleven, a college track coach. “Madam, has the jury reached a verdict
on which you all agree?”
“We have, Your Honor,” said the forewoman, and I knew for sure when she reached out to grab a corner of the jury box and the
woman next to her steadied her briefly by supporting her elbow.
“Please give me the verdict.”
The bailiff handed the innocuous mustard-colored rectangle to the judge, who opened it.
“Miss Wild, please rise.” Felicity stood, Sam and Angela pressing in beside her. “I will now read you the verdict.” The forewoman
closed her eyes. “On the first count, we, the jury, find the defendant, Felicity Claire Copeland Wild, guilty of first-degree
intentional homicide as charged in the information. On the second count, we, the jury, find the defendant, Felicity Claire
Copeland Wild, guilty of first-degree intentional homicide as charged in the information.” The judge removed her reading glasses.
“Do you understand this verdict, Miss Wild?”
“I . . . do . . . ” Felicity stammered and then staggered against the table in front of her.
Sam tried to put an arm around Felicity’s shoulders but she struggled free.
“Please no!” she cried out. “No! I didn’t do this!
” In a lower voice, choked with what I assumed were tears, because I could not see her face, she added, “Your honor, please listen. I may not be innocent, but I’m innocent of this!
” Finally allowing Sam to take her elbow and hold her up, Felicity began to tremble violently, twisting her head wildly to the left and to the right. She called out, “Mom!” and “Reenie!”
Almost gently, the judge said, “Compose yourself, Miss Wild.”
Now unsteady on my own legs, I reached for the back of the bench in front of me, my notebook and pen clattering to the floor.
Sam flinched at the sound. I glanced over at my mother and my aunt. Miranda and Claire held each other close, their foreheads
touching.
Then another of those things happened that you never believe in a novel, from the same deck as those many phony instances
in which the beleaguered heroine curls her fingernails so tightly into her palms that her hands begin to bleed. I heard a
voice calling “Wait! Wait! Just wait a minute!” and it honestly took me several seconds to realize that it was me. But I wasn’t
ejected from the courtroom for my disorderly outburst because it was all over. I caught a brief glimpse of Jack Melodia just
as he turned away and left the courtroom through the main door. Then my mother came to my side and, with Claire trailing behind
us, we walked down the stairs and out into the honeyed afternoon light, to the sidewalk where that absurdly blonde woman was
saying, “This is Sally Zankow outside the Dane County courthouse, where former escort Felicity Wild has been found guilty
in a swift verdict . . . the sensational trial of a gifted biology student who inexplicably gave up a bright future . . .”
I left my mother and ran into Sally on purpose, jostling her so hard that she nearly dropped her mic. I said, “Oh, I am so
sorry.” But I was not.