In Doubt

by Drusilla Campbell

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Defense Attorney Sophie Giraudo is about to open a new legal practice in her hometown of San Sebastian, California, when the beloved governer is shot and seriously wounded during a celebration in the town park. The only thing more shocking than the crime itself is the identity of the would-be assassin: a seemingly gentle teenager named Donny. Driven by her desire to understand what could make a person with no history of violence suddenly commit such a terrible act, Sophie reluctantly agrees to take him on as a client, knowing that, at least, it will bring her some income. But soon she realizes that she also has personal motivations for taking the case: a desire to prove to her overbearing mother that she is not the reckless and self-destructive tennager she used to be, to prove to her ex-husband, who happens to be the prosecuting attorney, that she can win her case, and to prove to herself that the traumatic events of her adolescence no longer define her. As she digs deeper into Donny's past, Sophie begins to suspect that he might not be the cold-blooded killer everyone thinks he is. Does Donny's narcissistic mother really have her son's best interest in mind? Is Donny's mentor who runs Boys Into Men, a program for disadvantaged youths, the altruistic man he claims to be? Is Donny a deranged murderer, or a victim of his circumstances acting out of desperation? As Sophie races to uncover the truth, she is forced to come to terms with her past and to fight for what she knows is right...even if it means risking her reputation and possibly her life.

Release date: August 26, 2014

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 387

Sample

1

For a long time he believed that everyone felt as he did. He assumed that the constant clench of his stomach was part of being human—like the burn behind his eyes and the dreams that woke him, wringing wet and trembling. In school he began to understand that he was different, others were not as he was. Eventually he named what he felt: anger.

One morning a few months after he had left school and begun working at Roman’s Gardens he became aware that the anger had subsided and become no more troubling than a mosquito bite. He felt a new freedom, and for almost two years he was happy.

But now the anger was back and during the hiatus it had put on muscle. His time in the gardens had freed something in him. A fantasy of liberation had slowly taken shape. As the line separating his dream and his reality became harder to distinguish, he was often frightened by where his imagination took him. He swore off violent thinking, but the fantasies drew him back. When he imagined what he could do, what he might do, the tightness in his gut relaxed a little.

Though the revolver was an inanimate metal thing, it felt warm and alive in his hand, a natural extension of himself with connections to his arm and back and shoulders. After he left the garden and moved home, the first thing he did every morning was check to see if it was still where he’d placed it in his bottom dresser drawer, swaddled in a white T-shirt. Since he’d installed locks on the door and windows, his bedroom was perfectly secure, but there was always a possibility that she had found her way in and taken it while he slept.

He tenderly unwrapped the gun, flipped the cylinder and counted six bullets, then laid it on his pillow. The innocuous T-shirt’s metallic odor emboldened him as he pulled it over his head. After checking the safety, he tucked the revolver in the waist of his jeans as he’d seen done on television. Pulled down, his shirt covered it. The steel was hard and warm against his bare skin, a part of him.

Looking at his reflection in the mirror on the closet door, he did not see a handsome seventeen-year-old with his life before him. Looking back at him he saw the anger, which had become like a friend, an ally in an interminable battle.

2

Hey, what’re these for?” Carmine Giraudo stood in the middle of his sister’s office surrounded by cardboard boxes in various stages of unpacking. He held out a set of three keys on a plain silver ring.  “What’s the car key? Not your 4Runner.”


“I’ll take them,” Sophie said, reaching.

“First tell me whose car this belongs to.”

“I don’t remember.” Sophie shook her hand in his direction. “Just give them to me, okay?”

Laughing, he held the keys above her. “You got something going on I should know about, shortcake?”

“Don’t I wish.”

“A beach shack down in Malibu? A hot little car hidden in a garage somewhere?” He tossed her the keys. “I know you’ve got secrets; I just haven’t figured out what they are yet.”

“And you never will.” He thought she was kidding.

Sophie laid the key chain in the lower left drawer of her desk beside two glasses and the bottle of Dewar’s she kept there.

“Maybe you’ve got a storage unit in LA. Is that where you hide the bodies? An old car and a couple of castoff lovers?”

Tuning her brother out, Sophie stood, hands on her hips in perfect imitation of her mother and grandmother, surveying the jumble of furniture and boxes, tilting stacks of unread magazines and journals, legal books, and miscellanea cluttered around her. The office suite smelled of fresh paint, and the big items—a new carpet, her two desks, the file cabinets, bookcases, couch, and chairs—were in place. Tomorrow someone would come and hang blinds on the windows that overlooked the courthouse corner of Mission Park. She could manage the rest on her own.

“You must have lots to do, Carmine. It’s almost time.”

“What’s so secret about a set of keys?” He was hurt that she would not confide in him.

“I’ll tell you when I’m old. You can drag the truth out of me then. My dying words.”

He sucked in the corner of his mouth and looked at her sideways, their grandmother’s skeptical expression. She gave him the same look back.

“Suit yourself, shortcake.”

She pretended not to notice the nickname they both knew she hated. She had always wanted to be tall and willowy, a runway model instead of short and curvy like every other woman in the Giraudo and Marsay families. She had once made the mistake of telling Carmine that in her next life she would be six feet tall, athletic, and flat chested. A Valkyrie. He had never forgotten.

Though she had trained herself not to react to his goads, it was hard to trust someone—even a brother—who thought it was good, clean fun to poke fun at her for the pleasure of watching her flinch. Her ex-husband, County Prosecutor Ben Lansing, had also been a tease, though in the beginning his jibes had seemed good-natured and affectionate.

Carmine said, “You can sit with me and Jeannie.”

“I’ll watch from up here.”

“Are you pissed about the key thing? I didn’t mean anything.” He looked so innocent. “You’re welcome to your secrets.”

“I’m on edge, Carmine. That’s all. I’ve got so much to do.”

“You’ve got a lot on the line here.” He looked around the office. “It’s a nice place, Sophe, but I don’t see how you’ll ever make enough—”

“And thanks for the good wishes.”

“You’re gonna have to work like a motherfucker to make the rent.”

“Really?” She slapped her forehead lightly. “I thought I was getting it for free.”

“Jeez, you’re bitchy. No wonder you never get a date. You scare ’em all away.”

Like their mother, Carmine thought being family excused rudeness.

“Listen,” he said, “I want you to be a success. I’m hoping you’ll be a famous criminal lawyer and get a movie made about your life. But not all your cases are going to be big ones like Orlando Cardigan. It’s not like there’s a lot of crime in SanSeb.”

Did her brother really think she was unaware that her defense of Orlando Cardigan’s son had been almost a fluke: a big retainer and her fee at the end paid on time? Cardigan had taken a chance on her because she had once been a kick-ass prosecutor. And now, because of her success defending his son, she had been able to move from a dismal cubbyhole next to a supermarket parking lot to this suite in one of the town’s historic buildings, near the courthouse and overlooking Mission Park.


She shared a general receptionist and copy machine with four other attorneys, but her three-room suite had its own small outer office and, off it, another space the size of a walk-in closet. She had already hired a fledgling paralegal, Clary, and eventually she hoped to generate enough business to hire an associate and a full-time investigator. Right now she was doing her own bookkeeping and housekeeping, and whoever was in the office answered the phone.

Even with the furniture in place, the pictures hung, and the packing boxes disposed of, her office would probably always be untidy. She might have changed addresses, but she was still Sophie Giraudo.

  

From the window she watched the courthouse corner of the park fill up, but she wasn’t thinking about the gathering crowd. She loved her brother, but he knew how to get to her. She couldn’t stop thinking about the keys stowed in her desk drawer. What did it mean that she had held on to them after all these years? What would Carmine say if he knew where and how she’d come by them?

Her brother had followed the rules all his life and never seemed to mind being under the controlling thumb of their mother. In contrast, Sophie had fought her way out of her mother’s womb in a difficult thirty-two-hour labor, almost strangling herself on the umbilical cord in the process. Ever since, she’d been in some state of mutiny, often her own worst enemy. Carmine was like their easygoing father, content to go along, letting the women in his life run the show. Contentment and self-satisfaction seemed to be part of her brother’s DNA in the same way that rebellion, risk taking, and self-doubt were essential to hers.

In a few minutes Carmine would be in the middle of the party to celebrate Governor Maggie Duarte’s birthday. Known and liked by everyone, he had a wide circle of friends, remembered names and faces, and could shake hands like a politician. As the high school senior guidance counselor and athletic director, he was frequently called upon to shepherd and chaperone school groups, and today he was in charge of getting the glee club through the crowd and into place on the risers. A senior girl with a scholarship to Juilliard would sing the national anthem.

The old glass in the sash windows tinted Sophie’s world a cool underwater blue and slightly rippled her view of Mission Park, a four-block rectangular expanse of grass and trees and playgrounds with a creek running through it. Like almost everyone in SanSeb, Sophie regarded the park as the heart of their big, thriving town. Too many coats of paint had long ago sealed her windows shut, but the vents at the top were open, letting in the fragrance of carne asada from grills set up in the street in front of the courthouse. The congregation of St. Mary and All Angels would soon be selling chili bowls, hot dogs, and tacos for a buck apiece, a steal on this special occasion. Flags—stars and stripes and golden bears—flew from rooftops and hung from the windows of the buildings around the park. An immense banner across the front of the courthouse declared HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MAGGIE! in case there was a soul in town who didn’t know the reason for the festivities.


Though her family had known the governor since she was a little girl, Sophie’s parents, Anna and Joe Giraudo, had chosen to remain at home. Apart from Carmine, Sophie saw no one she knew in the crowd, which was not surprising considering how rapidly San Sebastian’s population had grown in recent years. It was sometimes hard to recognize it as the quiet Central Coast town in which she had been born and brought up.

In recent years, the town’s mild climate and its location near the coast and midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles had made it attractive to the mostly affluent newcomers. They had remodeled the Craftsman and Victorian houses along Diamond Back Street and St. Ann’s Road or built mansions in the oak-studded hills and down the long, sloping plain to the sea. There were new condos and apartments out by the university and along Peligro Creek they had displaced the struggling five and ten acre ranches. SanSeb’s tax base had almost tripled in the last ten years, making the stores on Maine and Mission Streets more interesting and expensive than in the old days, when every shop owner knew Sophie by name. As a lawyer, she was well-known and respected, but she had never been popular like Carmine. The gene for easy friendship had been left out of her DNA. She had a crowd of acquaintances, but her only true friend was Tamlin, whom she’d known since high school.

Orlando Cardigan had become something of a friend over the course of his son’s trial. Before Will’s trouble, she’d known Orlando only by reputation, as one of a consortium of benefactors who had raised the millions required to repair the Mission San Sebastian and restore the gardens around it. The abandoned canneries along De Anza Creek had been demolished, and the old buildings replaced by sleek, clean industries surrounded by more gardens and landscaped parking. Enrollment at the university was up, a new community college was under construction, and all of this was good.

The small town of Sophie’s childhood had become a big town and might even be a city one day. Maybe then she would feel less cornered by her identity: Joe and Anna Giraudo’s rebellious daughter, Carmine’s sister, Sandrine’s granddaughter, Delphine Marsay’s great-granddaughter.

Sophie watched the crowd in the park grow: a trio of men dressed like Spanish friars, a conquistador, women in ruffled Mexican costumes, picnickers with blankets and folding chairs, strollers and excited dogs straining on their leads. Moving in and out among the townspeople, unrecognized, there had to be undercover agents and law enforcement officers because no matter how popular Governor Maggie Duarte was in some parts of the state and especially in her hometown, there were other places where the enmity against her was voluble, and violent rhetoric blurred the lines between free speech, hate speech, and criminal threat.

Not only was she the state’s first female governor; she was the first Mexican American governor and an outspoken advocate for minority rights, immigration reform, free choice, and higher taxes for the top one percent. In California, no one was neutral about Maggie.

3

Floating in the unanchored waters between sleeping and waking, Iva Devane dreamed of a voice, a softly sexless voice repeating the same badgering demand.     


Open your eyes, Iva. See, see.


She obeyed and saw that she was alone, again. Beside her, the bed was cold. Riga, a large brindled Cane Corso, rested her jowly muzzle on the edge of the bed and stared at her. You beautiful creature, she thought, reaching out to touch her. My guardian angel.


A mile away an excited coyote pack yipped after prey. Beneath Iva’s hands, the dog’s skin rippled.

Until recently Iva had been an easygoing woman who slept through the night without stirring, but recently a bony restlessness had elbowed its way into her dreams, where it jabbed her constantly. Even during the day, discomfiting emotions surfaced and demanded her attention: uneasiness, dissatisfaction, doubt. She wanted to talk about this with Roman, but he rarely had time for a serious conversation. Half-asleep, she dropped her defenses and the truth rolled in: she was tired of waking up in a cold bed and no longer wished to share her husband with a gang of adolescents who doted on him, fed off him, and competed for his favor. For a little while at least, she wanted his undivided attention. Tears warmed the orbits of her eyes, ready to fall, only awaiting permission.

  

She didn’t cry.

She pushed the bedcovers back and sat for a moment on the edge of the bed. Beneath her feet, the cold hardwood floor reminded her that although Roman’s Gardens was already wild with new growth, it had been a cool and unpredictable spring. She walked to the window and looked through the sheers at the yard between the house and the largest barn. In dawn’s gray light, the greenhouses, damp with dew, shimmered like silver. Behind them, the bunkhouse and sheds were shadows without detail.

During their first years on the property, before the house was restored and modernized, Roman had built an apartment for them at the back of the barn. It was called the clubhouse now. It happened occasionally that he fell asleep back there. The sign on the door, BOYS ONLY—NO GIRLS ALLOWED, was a joke at the same time that it was not. Iva stayed away because Roman said boys who had never had anything to call their own needed a place where their privacy was respected. A flat space outside the clubhouse door had been cleared and laid with asphalt for a basketball court. Last year, lights had been installed at more expense than Iva had been comfortable with, though Roman had argued her over to his side, reminding her that lonely boys, angry and confused and wayward boys, any and all kinds of boys, could not resist a ball and a hoop.


Each year, Roman’s training and education program, Boys into Men, enrolled youths from troubled homes who disliked school and resented authority. Some of these were day boys who worked from nine to five and returned to their homes at night; others lived in the bunkhouse. Both groups were paid a minimum wage. A few favored boys lived in the house, and when they weren’t learning the nursery trade, Iva prepared them for the California high school equivalency exam, a job she found challenging because they were rarely motivated to learn. She despaired of their vulgarity and abysmal ignorance, but Roman told her to be patient.

She fed them and taught them and did their laundry. Roman counseled and consoled them and was the father none of them had ever had. He taught them to play basketball whether they wanted to learn or not because basketball focused the mind, taught teamwork, and was a game they could play all their lives. Boys into Men gave them a start in the world.

  

She went back to bed and pulled the blankets up under her chin. In the rafters a spider had slung a web between two beams. Once she would have attacked it with a broom, but lately she’d lost heart and could not be bothered. It was easier just not to look at it. Her favorite of Roman’s boys, Donny Crider, had confided once that his mother obsessed about housecleaning. Mrs. Crider supported the two of them by running a day-care center out of their home, and as Donny described it, she followed the children with a damp rag, wiping their fingerprints off the walls and doorjambs. She wouldn’t tolerate a cobweb or finger smudge, not one, not anywhere in the house.

The other boys called Donny pretty girl and from the kitchen window she had watched them grab their crotches and make kissy-faces at him. Iva had complained to Roman, but he said the taunting would toughen Donny. She thought that was harsh, but if there was one thing her husband knew, it was boys.  


“You’re awake.” Roman entered the bedroom, carrying a tray. “I brought your breakfast.”

“I should get up.”

“Stay where you are. You’ve been running yourself ragged lately.”

Maybe overwork explained her peculiar mood.

He propped an extra pillow behind her back.

She said, “You didn’t come to bed.”

“I was up before dawn. Cobb had another nightmare. I found him out on the porch bawling his eyes out.”

“Is he okay now?”

“I fixed pancakes and he ate the whole stack, half-asleep. You know how the newbies are. Homesick as all hell, but I don’t know for what. His mother’s a jailbird.” Roman cupped Iva’s cheek. “How did you sleep?”

She didn’t complain, but he knew. This man knew everything about her.

He chuckled. “I should teach you to play basketball. It’d help you unwind, get the kinks out.”

“I was thinking about Donny,” she said, deflecting the conversation from herself. “I wish you’d reconsider, Roman. Couldn’t you stretch the rules a little this one time? Poor Donny.” To have such a selfish mother.

4

One day during the previous week Iva had been supervising the boys while they took a reading comprehension test, a simple two pages about a man and a motorcycle, which she’d let them read and then asked them to summarize for her. Donny Crider had just that week received notification that he had passed his general education exam, the equivalent of high school graduation, and for this reason he no longer attended class but worked a full day in the gardens. It was a significant milestone, and Iva was pleased and proud of his achievement but sorry for herself. He had been the bright spot in her teaching routine.


It was late in the morning of a mild, blustery day and she was dividing her time between the boys in the dining room and making soup in the kitchen when she heard the dogs barking. Looking out the window over the sink, she saw them tugging on their chains as a woman got out of a car, slamming the door. She had smooth dark hair and wore a well-pressed and tailored denim pantsuit, sturdy shoes, and plain gold earrings that gleamed across the yard. Immediately Iva thought she was a real estate agent.

At least once a week, agents dropped by on fishing expeditions, the dollar signs flashing in their eyes as they imagined the vast gardens flattened, dozens of homes and hundreds of apartments rising in their place. She was about to go out and tell the woman that they were not interested in selling when Roman came around the corner of the barn, yelling at Riga and Laz to stop their infernal noise. Donny was behind him. He stopped when he saw the woman.

She ignored Roman. Iva heard her say to Donny, “I told you to be home yesterday. We had an arrangement. I had to leave the sweeties with the neighbor. You know I don’t like that. You made me come all the way out here.”

Iva hurried onto the front porch. She heard Roman saying hello, saw him smiling. For a moment she wasn’t worried.

“It’s always a pleasure,” he said, “when a boy’s family pays us a visit.”

“This isn’t a social call, Mr. Devane. I’m taking Donny home.”

“Oh, I hope you’ll reconsider that.” Roman had a wide smile and large gleaming teeth. “We’ve been working on a project. One of the greenhouses has a tear in it, and with a breeze like we’ve got going today, it’s only going to get worse. How ’bout I send him home after we get the job done?” Roman looked over at Donny, who was crouched between the two mastiffs, his hands resting on their muscular shoulders. “You can catch a bus, can’t you? Maybe Mr. Gotelli’ll give you a ride.”

“He didn’t tell you, did he?”

“Tell me what, Mrs. Crider?”

“He’s through here.”

Iva stepped off the porch. “You can’t mean that. Why?”

Elena lifted her hand to smooth her hair. On her wrist she wore a watch designed to look like a bracelet. Iva knew that it was gold, like her earrings.

“What’s the point? He has his GED.”

“He lives here,” Iva said.

“His home is with me, Mrs. Devane. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve done for him, but he has responsibilities.”

“Mrs. Crider,” Roman said, “your son is doing so well at the gardens. He’s very talented—”

“At what? Digging?” She laughed. “Donny, come here. Now!”

When Riga and Laz were puppies, Roman trained them using the same kind of obey-me-or-else voice. Donny patted the dogs, and then, as if his legs wouldn’t work unless his shoulders led the way, he slouched across the yard. It was not the way he’d walked that morning when he left the house after breakfast to work in the greenhouses or yesterday when he loped out to the truck, his tool belt bouncing on his hip, on the way to set up the fruit stand out on the road. He passed Iva with his eyes down. Behind her, she heard him clomp up the porch stairs and the squeak of the screen door as he opened it.

Elena was saying something to Roman in a lowered voice. Iva hurried closer.

“I don’t want to make trouble for you, Mr. Devane. I’d just as soon Donny didn’t know anything about this.”

“What kind of trouble?” Iva said.

Elena ignored her. “We could have avoided all this if he’d left when he was supposed to, but you know the way he is. Not the most reliable boy.”

“He’s been a good worker for me, Mrs. Crider.”

“I haven’t got a complaint in the world,” Iva said.

“I’m sorry to see him go. I wish you’d reconsider.”

“Please,” Elena held up her hand. “I don’t want a scene.”

“Why would . . .