"You haven't had a drink in twelve days?"
"Not even a beer."
By his twelfth day of sobriety, Frank ran two miles before he threw up. He pushed up (twenty-five times), pulled up (fifteen), sat up (twenty-five), and jumped jacks (fifty). His strength and stamina were coming back; his mind was working better; he felt alive again. But he still fought the cravings. Every minute. Of every day.
"I'm proud of you, Daddy."
Frank fought his emotions. Men who aren't fathers think dads want their children to make them proud. Not true. A dad is always proud of his children. What he really wants is his children to be proud of him. But how could Frank's children be proud of him when he wasn't proud of himself? He had killed a girl. He was as much to blame as Bradley Todd.
"You look good. Have you lost weight?"
"Ten pounds."
His daughter threw the tennis ball far down the beach. Rusty raced to fetch it. It was the first Sunday in November, only five weeks until the trial, and the defense team had gathered at the beach bungalow to prepare his son's case for trial. And to play poker. On the porch around the table sat Dwayne, Chuck, and Chico trying to take Billie Jean's sand dollars; but she had learned more than stripping in her prior life. She was also a card shark.
"I'm writing a novel," Becky said.
She had returned home from Wellesley and completed her degree in English and creative writing at Texas State University in San Marcos thirty miles south of Austin. She studied under Denis Johnson and Tim O'Brien, two National Book Award winning authors teaching at a public college in Texas.
"What's it called?"
"The Autobiography of Rebecca."
"What's it about?"
"A dysfunctional family. The father is a famous criminal defense lawyer in Houston, but he becomes a drunken beach bum after he wins an acquittal for a star college athlete charged with rape and murder only to learn that he was in fact guilty and then he kills again. The mother is a former beauty queen turned social climber who divorces him and marries a billionaire oilman only to see him lose everything when the gas market collapses. The son is a star football player who's always gotten all the family's attention and now finds himself accused of rape and murder. And the father finds himself faced with the same case again—but this time it's his own son who claims innocence."
"So it's fiction?"
"Of course."
"And who is Rebecca?"
"The daughter who never got any attention. Who was the perfect child who helped keep the peace between the mother and father. Who's still trying to figure out where she fits in the family."
Frank reached over to her and put his arm around her shoulders. He pulled her close.
"Right here."
She wiped tears from her face.
"You were the perfect first child. You raised yourself. It seemed that you didn't need much attention."
"I did."
"I'm sorry. I tried to be a good dad, to both of you. There was just so much I didn't know. But I love you, Becky. I've always loved you."
"As much as William?"
"Yes. He just seemed to require so much attention, like he sucked all the air from the room."
"He's bigger than life."
"Not anymore. Life reached up and pulled him down into the muck where the rest of us live."
"I wish it hadn't."
"I know, honey."
They walked on the sand and inhaled the sea. They thought of William, her brother and his son, and now alleged rapist and murderer.
"The Autobiography of Rebecca … I like that. So does the story have a happy ending?"
"I don't know yet."
They returned to the bungalow to find a fifth player at the poker table on the porch: Ted, with his shoes and socks off and his trouser legs rolled up. They stood on the sand as Ted tossed sand dollars into the pile in the center. They all put their cards down; the four men threw their hands up. Billie Jean scooped the pile of sand dollars to her side. Dwayne stood and trudged down to the sand.
"She cleaned me out. I gotta dig up some more money."
"She's a good poker player," Frank said.
"Is she a good lawyer?" Becky asked.
"She will be."
"You were."
"Past tense."
"You can be again."
"I know I disappointed you. I'm sorry."
"You didn't disappoint me. You could never do that. I hurt for you because you disappointed yourself."
"You were always the smartest member of the family."
"I know." Her expression turned serious. "She's in Hungary now. Mom."
"Covering the Eastern Bloc."
"Father—"
"I like 'Daddy' better."
"Sounds dumb for a grown woman to call her father 'Daddy'."
"Not to her daddy."
She smiled.
"Daddy—"
Now he smiled.
"—I understood about you and Mom back then. You two just didn't fit together. I always felt sorry for you."
"Why?"
"Because she was getting what she wanted from you, but you weren't getting what you needed from her."
"What's that?"
"Love."
"Did I mention that you were always the smartest member of the family?"
"Yes. Do you think she can give you what you need?"
"Your mother?"
"Billie Jean."
"She's too young for me."
"You're not too old for her. She's interested in you."
"How do you know?"
"I'm a woman."
"You are, aren't you?"
They watched Billie Jean deal cards as if she were manning a table in Vegas.
"I'd better head back to Houston," Becky said.
Frank hugged her and told her he loved her. Dwayne walked up with a handful of sand dollars; they watched Becky up to her car and waved when she drove off.
"Got a text from Herman Jones, the Austin detective on the case," Dwayne said. "Said I should come see him. Soon. He must have something."
"What?"
"Whatever it is, it ain't good for William."
Dwayne returned to the poker game. The alcohol on Dwayne's breath gave Frank pause; he inhaled the lingering scent. He really wanted a drink. But he waved Ted down to his office. They shook hands.
"Ted."
"Frank, sorry to hear about your son. UT's lost two in a row without him."
"So how's your case going?"
"Better."
"What happened?"
"I filed the motion for recusal."
"And?"
"The judge went apeshit. Called counsel into chambers, screamed at me like I was in grade school."
Frank grunted.
"Then he broke down and started crying. Talked about his son. He apologized. Ordered the prosecutor to hand over all evidence. They were hiding a surveillance tape."
"And it proved your client was innocent?"
"No. He was guilty, Frank. Surveillance camera caught the crime. He did it. He killed the agent. They weren't hiding exculpatory evidence—they were hiding incriminating evidence to surprise us at trial. After my client took the stand and cried and claimed innocence, they would show the tape on the big screen and the jury would see him shooting the DEA agent pointblank in the face. They'd give him the death penalty for sure. When I confronted my client with the evidence, he laughed."
"He laughed?"
"Yeah. Because I believed him. He's a seventeen-year-old stone-cold killer, and I bought his bullshit."
They walked in silence through the sand.
"I wanted to believe him, Frank."
Ted paid Frank's $50 fee and left. Frank sat on the porch step and stared at the sea. Two thoughts fought for prominence in his mind: one, could his son possibly be feeding his father a line of bullshit as Ted's client had fed him? And two, was the D.A. playing the same game with Frank as the Feds had played with Ted? Was the D.A. hiding incriminating evidence in plain sight? He finally answered his questions: no and yes.
His son was innocent. The D.A. was guilty. The investigators had downloaded all the content from William's laptop and phone. They had found Dee Dee's phone number on the phone. The D.A. knew it would be a damning rebuttal to William's testimony in court:
"I swear I never met her."
"Then why is her phone number on your phone?"
A jury of middle-aged men and women would not understand the ways of young men and women. That hooking up was considered normal. That girls were happy to be subs, to be texted for sex. That sex was no more an emotional commitment than a peck on the cheek after a date back in their time. The jury would sentence William Tucker to death.
The law requires that the district attorney disclose all exculpatory evidence to the defense; it does not require that the district attorney disclose all incriminating evidence. That's why the D.A. had left William's laptop and phone in his room. The phone contained incriminating evidence: the victim's phone number. The D.A. was required to allow Frank access to the phone, which he did, but not to lead Frank through the hundreds of phone numbers and point out the girl's number. That was Frank's job. The D.A.'s plan was to surprise the defense with her phone number at trial. Most bad prosecutors hide exculpatory evidence; this prosecutor was hiding incriminating evidence that would inflame the jury and assure the death penalty. Hiding evidence in plain sight, right there on the phone. All Frank had to do was find it.
He realized then that there was more to find.
"Chico, what'd you find on the laptop?"
"Nothing much. Video clips from his games, videos of girls stripping—"
"At strip clubs?"
"Dorm rooms, his and theirs. And homemade porn."
"William?"
"Yep."
Salacious but not incriminating or admissible. There was more to be found.
"Check the phone again. We're missing something."
"There's nothing more, Frank."
"There's something more."
"What?"
Frank's mind processed the evidence they had and the evidence the D.A. must have had in order to be so assured of his son's guilt. It finally came to him—it should have come to him when they found the phone, but his mind was too clouded by whiskey.
"How many photos are on his phone?"
"Hundreds, maybe a thousand."
"Her photo is on his phone. That's why the cops left the phone. The D.A. is hiding incriminating evidence in plain sight."
Billie Jean had driven down to Rockport a few days after the arraignment with her draft subpoena. She had done a good job. Frank had approved it, and she had filed it. That day she had driven down early with the results of the subpoena: DNA test results, autopsy report, trace evidence report, and a CD of the football game. The DNA test results showed conclusively that William's blood was on Dee Dee's body. The autopsy report showed that Dee Dee had been forcibly raped, that cause of death was strangulation, and that time of death was between midnight and 2:00 A.M. The trace evidence report showed no other evidence recovered from Dee Dee's body—no semen, no skin tissue, no saliva, no one else's blood.
Frank had looked over the discovery then he and Billie Jean had walked the beach while waiting for the rest of the defense team to arrive. She was easy to talk to. It had been a long time since he had talked with a woman. His only conversations with Liz had been about what he could afford for her to buy and the kids' schedules the next week. Money and parenting, not life and love.
They were now back at the bungalow. Chuck studied the game tape on William's laptop. Chico browsed the hundreds of photos on William's phone. Dwayne reported on their investigation in Lubbock. He held his cop pad in his left hand and a Sharpie in his right.
"Dwayne," Chico said, "why do you always carry that Sharpie?"
"Oh, this was my trademark back in the day, when I was the top homicide cop on the Houston PD."
"Trademark?"
"Yeah, like that TV homicide cop always sucked on a Tootsie Roll Pop."
"Magnum?"
"No. He was a PI. The bald guy."
"Bruce Willis?"
"No, the one—"
They could go on forever, so Frank steered the discussion back to the Lubbock trip.
"So you met this Cissy girl?"
"Oh, yeah. Most of the players and cheerleaders back then, they've already graduated and moved on. We could spend months and more money than we got tracking them down. No need to, they can't take William's blood off the girl's body. But we found Cissy Dupre."
He recounted their conversation with Dee Dee's roommate, all the way through Dee Dee meeting William Tucker at the Dizzy Rooster.
"He said he had never met her," Frank said. "But he did since her number was in his phone."
"And now the D.A.'s got a witness to say they met that night at that bar. And that they groped each other like … what did she say, Chuck?"
"Horny high schoolers. She saw them heading to the back of the bar, they disappeared, then she saw William later, puking. Couldn't put a time on it."
"Where?"
"Right there in the bar."
"He didn't say he was sick."
"You know, Frank, when I was in the Army, the lifers, they always said they puked after their first kill."
"Where was Dee Dee when he was throwing up?"
"Cissy said she never saw her again."
Frank considered the news. So far, all the news had been bad. His son's blood on the victim and the victim's number in his son's phone. But the worst news was that his son might have—
"He lied, Frank," Dwayne said.
"I can't believe that."
"Believe it," Chico said.
He turned William's cell phone so they could see the screen, on which was a color image of Dee Dee Dunston with a "Dizzy Rooster" sign in the background.