It had been nearly two years now that Frank had been out on bail.
“The wheels of justice grind slowly,” the judge at the bond hearing had told him. “But, Mr. Howard, you’ll find that once they get started, they grind very effectively.”
Now that his murder trial was starting, Frank was afraid that he’d find out the hard way. But it wasn’t as if the past two years had been some sort of picnic.
Days after his arrest for soliciting the murder of Nancy Howard, Frank was sued by his boss, Richard Raley. Frank’s lawyer, Arch McColl, had called the charges “preposterous.” But Frank had known better—and, in the end, a panel of arbitrators had ruled against him, in the amount of $8.5 million in actual and putative damages.
“Good luck getting that money,” is what Frank had thought at the time. “It’s long gone.”
He decided that he would file his own suit against Raley. And, of course, Frank had even bigger problems to solve.
First, he and Nancy had had to tell the children about his affair. There was no hiding it after the arrest, not once the news channels had gotten ahold of Detective Wall’s warrant.
Then Frank had had to contend with Nancy.
At first, she didn’t believe the charges. Nancy simply could not imagine a world in which Frank would want her dead, much less a world in which he would actually act on the notion. Lying in bed late at night, she’d look over at Frank and try to stop her thoughts from spinning. But once the thought had been planted, it grew and grew, until it had overwhelmed all the others: Could this whole business, insane as it sounded, be true? Once she had caught herself wondering, she couldn’t stop. And once that happened, Nancy found herself in a dark place. A place where, for the first time, her faith in the Lord and her love for her husband seemed like they would fail her. Filing for divorce was the only thing that she could do, she’d said with tears in her eyes. Try as she might, she couldn’t see another solution.
It had split the family apart, and not just in the obvious ways. The more convinced Nancy became in regards to Frank’s involvement in the shooting, the more convinced their daughters seemed to be in regards to Frank’s innocence. Learning about their father’s affair had been hard. But the leap from love affair to murder plot seemed, to them, absurd. Like Nancy, in those first few days after Frank’s arrest, the kids couldn’t imagine a world in which their father would do such a thing.
Unlike Nancy’s, their faith seemed to be shatterproof.
It was the one true comfort Frank had had during those long months leading up to the trial. No matter what, his kids stood by him. And when the time came for Brianna to marry her fiancé, Nancy had written the court and asked that the conditions of Frank’s bail be amended so that he could attend the ceremony and walk his daughter down the aisle.
Suzanne was gone, out of Frank’s life for good. He hadn’t seen her since she’d driven him to the airport on the night of Nancy’s shooting. She hadn’t called him—not even once—after reading about his arrest. Suzanne’s daughters had not even known that Frank was married. Now they knew everything, including the fact that Frank had become the prime suspect in the attempted murder of his own wife.
Meanwhile, Billie Earl Johnson was sitting in jail, preparing to testify against Frank. In exchange, he’d gotten what seemed to him like a good deal from the government: A twenty-four-year sentence for drug trafficking, but no charges in relation to the plot to kill Nancy Howard. He’d have to give up some friends, for sure. But then Billie wondered—did he really have any friends?
Caged in his cell, Billie had had plenty of time to think. He thought about Stacey, and Dustin, her idiot son. He thought about Michael Lorence, the stranger Dustin had glared at, back in that biker bar in East Texas. At some point, Lorence had been a cell mate of Michael Speck’s. A man close enough to trust, but far enough from Billie to keep suspicions at rest, in case he had been caught.
But Lorence had not been caught. And unlike Dustin, he’d actually had it in him to go through with the shooting. He had gone to Nancy Howard’s house, along with Speck. And there, in the Howards’ garage, he had pulled the trigger. The best part had been, he and Speck had agreed to the shooting for a measly $5,000 a piece.
The worst part, of course, was that they had failed to actually kill Nancy Howard.
* * *
As for Frank, he’d done all that he could to win in the court of public opinion. He still had friends in Carrollton. Men and women who knew him from church, knew his children, knew in their hearts that he’d never be capable of such a crime. They pinned the blame on burglars, vagrants, spree killers—anything made more sense than the idea that Frank had set out to kill his own wife. Those friends had packed the court at his bond hearing, ready to testify about his good character. They were why he was free now, Frank supposed. While out on bond, he’d gone on the news shows, licked his lips, and cried. His daughters had come onto the programs, too, speaking in their father’s defense. Even Nancy, who’d finally landed on the side of believing in Frank’s involvement, was careful not to come out and say it on camera.
“I believe he had relationships with the kind of people who would do something like this,” she’d say. “But I’m going to let the jury make the decision on whether he called the shot.”
Now, with the trial set to begin, Frank’s lawyers told him they were hopeful. He was an upstanding, churchgoing man. Most of the witnesses lined up against him were criminals, testifying in exchange for more lenient sentences during their own upcoming trials. You never knew, they told Frank. But his chances were solid.
Even at his most hopeful, Frank wasn’t so sure.