The Currency of Time Ch. 02

"They cannot be probative, of course, but many suspects in criminal cases take them simply to bolster their claims to innocence. If Mrs. McCarthy were to take such a test, it would at least add weight to her claim to be telling the truth. And it would show she was not afraid to take the test."

"Why not just take a lie detector test, Deirdre," I asked her, her gaze drawn to me like iron filings to a magnet. "What have you got to lose? As Bailey said, if you want a divorce you'll probably get one no matter what I do. If I could really believe your story, I might...be willing to walk away."

"There will be no lie detector tests," Bailey said.

She stared at me with what seemed like real regret in her eyes.

"Why can't you believe me? Let me go so we can both get on with our lives."

"I can't believe you because you've told so many lies."

"Mr. McCarthy! I'll ask you to remember that this meeting was called in part for your benefit, to allow you to work out a reasonable settlement that otherwise could very well cost you many thousands or more in legal fees to resolve. Any more comments along those lines and we'll have to reconsider continuing."

Wilkes had obviously taken to the bad cop part with glee and enthusiasm. I stood up and pushed back my chair as Teller also stood up.

"Gentlemen, it's been real. See you in court. Real court."

Bailey motioned to me to sit.

"Mr. McCarthy, Billy, let's keep our heads. We won't do anyone any good if we let emotions run rampant. Everybody sit down. We may have to discuss some sensitive issues, we probably will, but I think we all realize that everyone is going to save a lot of money and hurt feelings by getting as much done today as possible."

He did a pretty good job of smoothing things out, but I had the advantage. I knew I could climb on the table and piss on his head and they wouldn't let me walk out. They needed me and my agreement more than I needed anything from them.

"Now, Mr. McCarthy, while my associate might have been a little strident, there really is no need to be talking about lying. No matter who might have lied about what, it won't make any difference in a divorce case."

"But you see, that's where you're wrong. My wife has lied about some important things. Things that hurt. And if you want to know why I'm in no mood at all to be cooperative, or reasonable, it's because I'd like to expose those lies."

"Mr. McCarthy. No matter how much pleasure it might give you to bring up dirty laundry from your marriage, it doesn't serve any good purpose -"

"It serves the purpose of keeping me here. You invited me. And the longer I'm here, the more certain I am there's something you want from me. Let's get everything out in the open."

He leaned over and talked briefly to Wilkes in a whisper.

"Alright, Mr. McCarthy, we'll give you room to run. Perhaps if we can get these issues into the light, we may be able to save everyone a lot of grief. Go ahead."

I picked up my cell and hit the number three. Then I sat back and waited, watching Deirdre's face, staring from Bailey to Wilkes to the silver haired attorney to a female lawyer. But never at me. Never at me.

Five minutes later Earl Wilson walked in. He carried a briefcase and was dressed in office casual, a pair of grey dress slacks, polished black shoes, and a white dress shirt without a tie. He walked back to me and sat, swinging the briefcase up onto the table.

"This is Mr. Earl Wilson, Wilson Investigations. I'd give you his qualifications, but I'm pretty sure you've already used him or gone up against him. When I came back into the country and found out about Deirdre's accident, I was curious. She is headstrong and reckless, but I'd never known her to be careless in her driving. I knew her father had her trained as a young teenager by the best defensive drivers in the world.

"Not that he was concerned about her joyriding, but the daughter of anyone worth that kind of money always has to be alert to the possibility of kidnapping or terrorist assaults. During our marriage we did some driving and I could honestly say that she was a better driver than me, and I'm not bad."

As I spoke she lifted her gaze again and stared. She knew I knew.

"So I employed Mr. Wilson to look into the accident and my wife's behavior in general before and after the accident. I'll let him continue."

Wilson had snapped open his briefcase and took out papers and photographs.

"I studied the accident report and associated accident and injury photographs. For some reason the photographs and diagrams were difficult to find. I was even told that they were misplaced or lost. However, I was able to find them and made copies, which I have for your inspection if you'd like.

"The very first thing I noticed was a contradiction between the accident report and the photos of damage to the car and injury to Mrs. McCarthy. The police report stated that Mrs. McCarthy was the driver and alone in her car at the time of the accident. The accident occurred on Interstate 95 entering Jacksonville from St. Augustine. It appeared that Mrs. McCarthy lost control of her vehicle at a relatively high speed and slammed into a power pole on the side of the highway."

He tapped his fingers on the polished wood and looked from Bailey to Wilkes, a slight smile playing on his face. Bailey looked like he was about to snarl and Wilkes like he was about to have a violent intestinal attack. Both of them knew what was coming.

"If you examine the photographs of damage to the car, the major portion of the damage was to the right front, not the driver's side which would be the case if it had run head-on into the power pole. It looks, in fact, that the driver tried to take evasive action to swerve to the left. And the majority of the blood and other evidence of the collision was on the right, passenger side.

"I submitted the data to two different accident experts, and they both agreed that there was no human way that Mrs. McCarthy could have suffered her injuries if she was driving the vehicle. She had to be in the passenger side at the time of the accident."

"I'd say that only proves that you used the services of two low level so-called 'experts'," Bailey said. "I'm not an accident reconstruction expert, but I've handled enough of these cases to imagine several ways in which a driver could be bounced around and suffer those same injuries"

"And, in any case, what difference does this make to anything we're talking about," Wilkes added."

I made a gesture to Wilson and he prepared to continue. As I did I looked at Deirdre and I could see it in her eyes. She looked like an animal whose pursuers were closing in, closing off all avenues of escape.

I didn't say the words in the increasingly quiet conference room, but I felt like she hadto have heard my thoughts.

"You fucking bitch. Why did you have to lie? If you'd just come to me and been honest, we could have done this the easy way."

Wilson leaned forward on the table and folded his hands in a mock prayer.

"Since it seemed virtually certain that there had been two people in Mrs. McCarthy's vehicle, I became curious about how the police report said nothing about a second person. I talked to a lot of people. I found a police communications official who told me the accident had originally been called in as involving two individuals. But within a few hours any mention of a second person seemed to have been forgotten.

"Now, Mrs. McCarthy was taken to Baptist Medical Center and there was no record of another patient being brought in from an automobile accident at about the same time. But, I checked other hospitals, and I found out that a Julian Gutman had been brought into University Medical Center at about the same time. Curiously enough, he sustained injuries including a broken rib and facial lacerations of the type an exploding air bag on the driver's side would have caused.

,Wilson looked from Bailey to Wilkes and he couldn't keep the smile off his face.

"Now, normally, any time a patient is brought in from an accident, a police report is written. But, for some reason, I couldn't find any report on Gutman's accident. The only way I could imagine that happening was if someone was willing to spread a lot of money around to see that no reports were filed. To avoid embarrassment to all concerned. And it would take a LOT of money and pull in high places. Because if it were to come to light, the officers in charge would be in deep shit with Sheriff Knight. Unless the orders on how to handle it came from him, and in that case you're looking at a major political scandal."

For once Bailey and Wilkes had nothing to say.

"And as a matter of interest, Julian Gutman..."

"Is the asshole who seduced a 17-year-old, got her pregnant leading to an abortion, and took a million dollars from her daddy to go away and never come back," I chimed in.

"And then as soon as daddy was gone, he crawled back and started working on her again."

I tried to get her to look at me but she refused. It didn't matter.

"Not much mystery about who was driving her car, is there?" I said, to make the point clear. "Or what they were doing? Or really, who spent all that money and used all that influence to make Julian disappear from the story?"

"You're coming very close to slander, to actual defamation of character," Wilkes said. "You're not dealing with public figures. You even suggest that our firm conspired to break the law, and you'll be lucky if you're left merely broke."

I almost laughed out loud.

"If I didn't know how good an investigator Mr. Wilson is, I might be trembling a little bit, but whatever he comes up with will be rock solid. And I think he can come up with enough evidence to cause you a lot of heartburn, so let's hold off on the legal huffing and puffing. Mr. Wilson, would you continue?"

"Yes, sir. Well, I acquired enough confirmation about Mr. Gutman's injuries and more information about Ms. McCarthy's condition - information that wasn't in any medical records. I found a nurse who said she and others who treated Mrs. McCarthy when she was brought in noted the - unusual - nature of her injuries."

Wilson stopped for a moment but no one was going to ask.

"Mrs. McCarthy did suffer facial injuries and there was a fair amount of blood, but in cleaning her injuries the attending nurses found another substance mixed with it. The nurse who told me the story said it was fairly obvious what the substance was, but to be thorough the nurses took samples and had it tested. The substance was male semen. The nurses said it was - a direct quote - all over her face."

Deirdre had a naturally rosy complexion that any Irish lass would have been proud of, but now her complexion flooded a deeper red. But she said nothing.

With a smile on my face, I asked, "Wilson, that would seem very unusual, wouldn't it? Did the nurses have any ideas on how her face might have wound up splattered with semen?"

Without breaking a smile, Wilson said, "Well, there was some speculation that there was a divine incident and an angelic being somehow ejaculated all over her face during the accident. Or, an attendant in the ambulance might have done the dirty deed, without the two other staff including one female paramedic also in the ambulance, having any idea what happened. OR, Mrs. McCarthy and Mr. Gutman might have been having sex in the car prior to the accident.

'I'll leave you gentlemen to decide what the consensus of opinion was among medical personnel."

He leafed through another packet.

"Following the discovery that the two of them had been together that night, I started backtracking them. Fortunately Mrs. McCarthy's own security people have GPS trackers installed in all her private and corporate vehicles for protection in case of kidnapping or terrorism. These of course are not open to public review, but by a series of fortunate coincidences I was able to access them and they showed the two had spent some time at Neptune's Cave, a lounge on St. Augustine Beach."

He smiled as he discussed the 'fortunate coincidence' which I knew had to piss off Bailey and Wilkes. He was very good at finding out things that he wasn't supposed to know anything about. The only thing he was better at was wiretapping.

"I was able to find witnesses who observed the two of them being - very intimate - while they were there for several hours. And they were seen to leave the establishment together, very inebriated, and allegedly returning to Jacksonville, where Mr. Gutman was living in a condo purchased for him by Mrs. McCarthy."

"Enough," Bailey said, and while he wasn't loud, he silenced the room.

"We've already discussed the fact that none of what you've said can be proven and regardless, it makes no difference at all to a future divorce. I'm not going to comment on whether Ms. Lancaster might have had a relationship with Mr. Gutman. Because, if she did, it would be a matter of no importance. Adultery carries no weight in the modern world where children are not a factor and support or alimony is not a factor."

He reached out and grabbed Deirdre's hand in a gesture of support.

"Again, there may be differences of opinion as to the memory loss she's suffered. But regardless of what you believe, it doesn't affect her request for a divorce. So, despite all of the extraneous issues you've brought up, the central issue we have to settle is how we can most painlessly bring your marriage to an end."

"I guess you weren't listening when I said I don't want a divorce and I'll fight you as long as I can to keep my wife from running around with the piece of shit who got her pregnant when she was underage and then ran like a scared rabbit when her daddy waved money in front of him. Even if I didn't love her, I'd fight a divorce just to piss him and her off."

"Is it worth spending the kind of money you'll have to spend to piss off your ex-wife?"

"Money is not going to be a problem for me."

Wilkes gave me a knowing look and said, "So you're planning to soak your ex-wife because she's wealthy. In a marriage of only two years, when the partners spent the majority of that time apart, I don't think you could expect a substantial settlement of any kind."

"No, I just want what's due me if Deirdre insists on this divorce."

"What is due you!?" Wilkes said in apparent disbelief. Of course, he knew better but all good lawyers have to have the acting bug. A lot of them might have made it on the silver screen if they hadn't had to take such a big pay cut to become movie stars.

"Yes, Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Bailey, what is due me. The real reason we're here today. We can continue playing games, but I know what's at stake. I've always known. We can do this for hours, but why not cut to the chase?"

"If you're familiar with why we're here, why go through all this," Bailey said, pointing to Wilson and Teller.

"I wanted to see if at some point she could look me in the eye, if she had any kind of conscience left, if the girl I thought I knew was still alive in there. The answer is obvious, now."

Both Teller and Wilson looked at me curiously. They had played their parts, but they didn't know the end game here.

"I feel like I came in here in the middle of a movie," Wilson said, "and I thought I knew the plot of the whole story."

"Do you mind?" I asked Bailey. He shrugged.

"This whole meeting has never been about Deirdre wanting a divorce and my refusing her, or about this amnesia that's she's claiming. I always knew the amnesia was faked, and I would have given her a divorce at any time, but she wouldn't divorce me if she could - the way things are now."

"How could you know?"

For once she stared at me without lowering her gaze. And just for a little while, I saw the woman I'd known.

"It was simple, Deirdre. When I came back, you acted shocked as if you'd never seen me before. You knew who I was, because obviously people would have shown you my picture. But you said you'd never seen me in person.

"Your father told me, though, when he first asked me to watch out for you that you'd had a huge crush on me in your early teens. I didn't notice you at all, but you noticed me. You might not have remembered our dating or our marriage, but you wouldn't have completely forgotten a guy you'd had your first big crush on.

"And when you seemed to have completely forgotten about me, I knew the amnesia wasn't real. From there it was just a matter of investigating and placing enough bugs in various locations to pick up clues."

I turned my attention back to the legal army at the other end of the table. I stood up and paced.

"What I couldn't figure out at first was WHY Deirdre would fake amnesia. As you pointed out, gentlemen, I couldn't stop her from divorcing me if she really wanted to. And, quite honestly, Deirdre, once I found out that you were screwing around with that piece of shit Gutman, I would have let you go."

I walked up behind Deirdre who stiffened but did not move. The silver haired younger attorney started to rise but Bailey shook his head and motioned from him to stay in his seat.

"It's okay, Matt."

I placed my hands on her shoulders and gently tightened my grip. She refused to look around at me.

"But when I realized it was Gutman you were cheating with, everything fell into place. I knew why you'd come up with the amnesia plan. It was pretty smart. It's not going to work, but it was clever and it showed imagination. I knew it had to be your idea. Gutman was too fucking stupid to come up with something like this."

"I usually like those murder mysteries where the detective gathers all the suspects together in a room and lays out the plot, but I have to admit, I'm still completely in the dark," Wilson said. I had a feeling that some of Bailey's staff were also completely lost.

"I really don't know what the hell is going on,"

My dramatic gesture of stepping up behind Deirdre and laying my hands on her shoulders was backfiring. I could feel the heat of her skin under my fingers and I could remember what that fair flesh had felt like when it was skin to skin. Keeping my fingers from stroking was getting harder and harder, and I wasn't sure I was going to be able to release her. Even knowing what she'd done to me, there was a tactile memory of our nights together that was getting stronger and stronger.

"It's because you don't have all the facts, Wilson. The most important of which is that Mr. Lancaster was concerned that our marriage have a good chance of succeeding and so he placed some pre-nuptial provisions on the marriage. Legal provisions that both Deirdre and I had to agree to and sign."

"Simply put, for every year of the marriage, I was to be given one million dollars in a settlement in the 10th year of the marriage. We could divorce or not after the 10th year, but the money would go into an account for me. If the marriage ended through Deirdre's infidelity, I would receive an automatic $10 million payout. If the marriage ended prior to the 10th year for any reason other than MY infidelity, I would receive $10 million."

There was a notable stillness in the room. The mention of a $10 million divorce penalty would tend to do that anywhere other than Hollywood - or the Hamptons.

"Now, a $10 million marriage penalty, which Lancaster obviously put into play to try to keep his daughter from falling prey to fortune hunters while she was married, might have had a deterrent effect of most people, but not Deirdre. She has always been a very spoiled rich little girl and I knew that she'd probably pay it without blinking an eye to find happiness with Gutman."

That soft flesh under my fingers could have turned to warm stone.

"But Julian Gutman, he's another story. Julian came from a lower middle class family and a million dollars is serious money to him. $10 million ... I doubt he can count that high. And the thought of me walking away with $10 million of what would have been HIS money after he married Deirdre must have burnt his ass up."