Lavender Blue Panties Ch. 04

Ambulances passed me as I sat in my pickup on the muddy shoulder of The Miles Farm Road.

To say that I was suffering from shock or in a traumatic state would be an understatement.

The emergency vehicles had all loaded filled and zipped body bags in front of the farm house and crept slowly onto the farm road without emergency lights or sirens. And each of the three mordant vehicles moved almost indolently to the intersecting with numbered farm road and turned slowly toward the Interstate.

"Were they all dead?" I asked the state trooper standing near the open window of my pickup.

"Can't say," he answered laconically, his back tensing as he grew taller.

"The three in those ambulances were in body bags..." I persisted. "Weren't they?"

"Let's get my questions answered before we get to yours," the trooper answered. He smiled tactfully and leaned on the base of my driver's side window.

"My name is Steve Harvey," I said, "as it says on my driver's license." I paused and added, "And that's my correct address."

"Mr. Harvey, we are ten miles from town and about a hundred yards from a crime scene," he said with slow deliberation. "And we discovered you sitting here when we arrived."

We both glanced away for a moment before he finished with, "Do you want to tell me about it?"

"I am interested in the number of casualties in that farm house," I stated flatly, "because I am certain my wife is one of them."

"Go on," he prompted softly.

"I followed my wife out here about seven o'clock," I said. "She was stopped by two men who patted her down at the gated driveway and escorted her into the house."

"Why did your wife come here?" he asked in practiced conversation mode.

"I don't know."

"Why did you follow here?" the trooper asked, making notes in a leather bound book.

After hesitating and staring toward the flood lighted front yard of the farm house, I answered, "I had learned this afternoon that she was cheating."

"Do you have a weapon on your person or in your vehicle, sir?" he asked, continuing in the quiet, detached mode.

I shook my head "no" and he asked me if I would step out of the pickup. He employed the word "please."

As a man in a business suit approached, the trooper turned to him and gave a brief summary of my responses. The man in the suit studied my driver's license for a moment before motioning toward an unmarked vehicle near the intersection.

Within an hour I was sitting in a 12 by 12 interrogation room at the sheriff's office. But my interrogators were not local cops. I'm still not sure who they were.

Repeatedly I asked for information about my wife, and they ignored my questions until I refused to continue discussing my life with them.

"Everyone in that house was dead or dying, Mr. Harvey," the aggressive questioner finally declared. "Eleven dead or wounded were transported to either the medical examiners lab or the emergency room."

Turning to the woman who had appeared in the doorway, he asked if she could inquire about my wife's fate.

"I'll call the ER again," she said. "I know that three women and two men of the 11 victims were transported to various hospitals."

As the woman walked away, the senior cop turned to me once more. He wasn't pleased with my answers to his questions, though I had told him everything that I knew.

At the end of another 30-minute grilling, I relaxed and told them either to charge me or

I was walking out. Ridiculous, I know, but my ploy got results.

"I doubt that you will walk out, Mr. Harvey," the senior cope laughed. "But you can call your lawyer if you think that's necessary."

"I am my lawyer," I said wearily. "And after cooperating with you for five and half hours, I'm ready to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus."

They knew that they could not prevent my performing the necessary legal tasks to defend myself.

Though I did not practice criminal law, I was not unsophisticated in that particular vernacular of voodoo jurisprudence.

All of the interrogators left the room without further comment. It was 3:30 a.m., and I was feeling the first ravages of exhaustion.

Just after 4 a.m., the door opened, and I was relieved to see a friendly face. Jerry kinder was an Assistant District Attorney, the first and only home based authority I had seen all night. Though not golfing buddies, we were friendly acquaintances from as far back as college.

"Your wife was shot twice in the chest, Steve," the assistant DA said solemnly. "But according to the surgeons who worked on her at Municipal Hospital, the wounds are not life threatening."

"Could you give me a lift to the hospital?" I asked Jerry, moving toward the door.

Holding up his hand as a warning that I would not like what came next, he explained slowly and succinctly that Julia could see only her doctors and her attorney."

Julia was facing several federal and state indictments, but the shocker was Jerry's revelation that he would be filing murder charges against her.

Very soon I realized that Julia's predicament had drawn interest from the far corners of the earth, especially the cracks and crevices where heavy financial muscle resides. Lawyers representing umbrella investors, hedge funds and various venture capitalists crammed into almost every hotel room from San Francisco to Monterey.

It soon became common bar room and curb side chit chat that Julia and her lover, Jeffery Alexander were deeply into "Big Fecal Matter," as my friend Jenkins put it.

Jenks and my daughters, Julie and Helena, attended the trial with me every day and noted each condemning shred of testimony. As one hooded witness had said from the witness stand, "We were playing with stacked deck worth $400 million from which we could skim at least $100 million once the medical center began take shape. You see, the cap price being thrown about in the preliminaries was inflated by about 30 per cent."

For sure, my sweet Julia was playing in deep feces, and by the estimate of witnesses, Julia' vote on the board of directors of the hospital district would be worth $5 million. Jenks, a veteran professor of history, was a wealth of information and a fountain of expertise in explaining to a mediocre lawyer like me how anything in the world could command a price of $300 or $400 million.

Of even more brain busting significance to me was the question of how three community volunteers could so easily tap into the monstrous booty and become essential players in the monumental fraud.

Jenks devoted several hours during the trial to explaining the intricacies of financing such a bloated political monstrosity.

Once I understood the financing, Jenks began to lectures, over gallons of beer and tons of pizza, detailing how the scam worked. Jenks was more than a mentor during this period. I needed a reliable friend with his expertise if for no other reason than my sanity was threatened every day and night.

More than once during the frightening and condemning testimony of Julia's associates, Jenks insisted that sail with him a his girl friend on San Francisco Bay. I was both surprised and puzzled when I first boarded Jink's 50-foot sailing vessel. Luxury beyond my wildest imagination oozed from the ambiance of the spacious salon and the comforts of the six state rooms.

Then Jink's introduced me to expensive and perfectly sculpted friend and bunk mate. Stacy was of a species beyond my pay grade, and I enjoyed listening to her stories gathered over 15 years as a stewardess or flight attendant, depending on her story.

"If I were one to betray my integrity Stacy," I told her late one night during a drinking bout in the boat's salon, "I would punch your number and hope that you would answer the call of a mediocre lawyer who was hard pressed to maintain his sex appeal at 39 not to mention attempt to shed a few years in a brazen deception."

I liked Stacy perhaps too much; for that was the only time in all our years that Jenks had shown me his dark side. We were drunk, and I don't remember Jenks' verbatim admonishment. But I found bruises on my arm where he squeezed while telling me to display less charm in her presence.

My second conclusion when I first saw Jenks' marvel of a floating delusion of grandeur was that I did not know Jenks in any sense. Stacy had informed me with obvious admiration for Jenks that he had paid $220,000 cash for the boat and another $20,000 for added luxuries once they had taken possession.

"I was there, Steve, the night he handed over the brief case full of hundred-dollar bills," she boasted before staggering away to bed.

Though the days during the trial seemed hang agonizingly forever, the mechanics of trial craft functioned perfectly. Jerry told me later that the transcript had been so perfected that he doubted seriously if the appeal specialists would find sufficient basis to file any challenges.

Among the painfully prodding questions was the urge to inflict as much pain as possible on Jeffery Alexander. Fortunately for both Jeffery and me, the trial and the disconcerting aftermath prevented me from responding to the urge to kill, maim or at least humiliate the bastard. Revenge would become a primary topic one day, I was certain; but, in the interim, I would apply my energies to making a living and surviving.

Finally, the last piece fell into place, and the trial ended in an anti climax. The blood thirsty vultures who had fed on the sleaze and degradation in the end were denied and orgiastic fix; for everyone knew after the first week that Julia would be convicted.

DR.JULIA HARVEY FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER

Julia was sentenced to serve 25 years in a state correctional institution.

Jenkins said it best. Julia seemed cursed or maybe born to lose, he said as she was led away by sheriff's deputies, her delivery to state prison scheduled tomorrow afternoon after completion of her mandatory physical.

During the three weeks of listening to the incredible evidence, my daughters and I sank into a zombie-like state of corporeal denial. Witnesses for the state drove stakes through the heart of a mindless, cold killer.

Julia, who had never touched a gun, was depicted as having held a 9 mm Ruger to the heads of her three co-conspirators, the hospital district's most powerful executive officers.The evidence was factually compelling, so perfectly orchestrated. And apparently the jury members assessed it as irrefutable; for they returned a guilty verdict within four hours.

Even Jerry Kindle, the prosecutor, stood stupefied as the jury foreman read the verdict. Jerry had expected at least a week of fierce deliberations. He admitted to me later that even though the evidence was verified and justifiable from every perspective, he found it simply to "orchestrated."

The word "orchestrated" stuck in my consciousness.

"Perfectly orchestrated" popped up many times during the three weeks of the smoothly produced trial. All of the TV talking heads seemed mesmerized by the phrase, though they considered a

verification of Julia's guilt.

Listening to the six reputable strangers, who claimed to be eyewitness, convinced our daughters beyond the proverbial "shadow of a doubt."

Their mother was a monster, they announced to me at the end of the first week of testimony.

"Mother murdered those people as if she were swatting mesquitos," Helena sobbed during lunch after a morning session the that Friday of the first week.

When I found myself defending Julia, even scolding Helena for her lack of trust, I pulled myself up short, sensing that appeared to be a wimpy fool. Julie, our oldest daughter, only studied me with what seemed to be a mild contempt.

"Daddy, you can't have any confidence in her after what she did to you," Helena hissed.

"I would not trust Julia to handle my money or honor my marriage vows, girls," I said coldly. "But I would stake my life on the proposition that she could never commit murder."

My girls expressed their contempt for me to an uncomfortable degree when we met the day after I visited Julia in her cell at the county jail. It was the day before the deputies were to transport her to a "Correctional Facility For Women"

somewhere out in the Central California desert.

Jerry had arranged the unconventional face to face meeting. When he called to confirm the time for the visit, I perceived that he more than simply uncomfortable with the outcome of the trial, a very unusual reaction by any prosecutor,

As I entered her cell, Julia wanted to embrace, but I held her by her shoulders and studied her face. The absence of the zest for life was most apparent. Eyes that view the world as a magnificent cathedral of wonderment and beauty had become dulled and vacant.

"Will you permit me to say simply that I'm sorry, Steve?" she asked after several minutes of awkward attempts at conversation.

"I didn't come to forgive or permit atonement, Jules," I said evenly but without rancor.

"I see," she said, her voice suddenly flat. "Very well. Then why did you come?"

"I don't know," I answered. "I truthfully don't know."

"You owe me nothing," she stated laconically.

"Let's just say that I understand that you are going to a terrible place," I said,"and I want you to know that You can consider me as a source of support."

I wanted her to call me or write any time she needed a permissible favor or other resources.

"Why haven't the girls come?" she asked hesitantly.

"I haven't seen them since the day of the verdict," I told her.

"No. Is there a problem between them and you?" she asked.

I smiled and said,"Now I see the perceptive Julia I've always know and..." I said, stammering to a halt.

"I know," she said, and tears filled her eyes.

"Just a small matter of opinion and disagreement," I said, attempting make light of the girl's having declared me a wimp.

"What happens to me next?" she asked as I prepared to leave.

"The appeal, I presume," I answered.

The jailer opened the cell door and passed into the corridor. I turned when I heard her last words.

"Steve?"

"What?" I asked.

"My lavender blue panties! They won't let me wear my lavender blue panties where I'm going."

TO BE CONTINUED