One
Indigo Bunting
Passerina cyanea.This small cheery singer is a bird on a long journey, migrating over 1,200 miles each way from eastern North America to northern South America and back. The male’s brilliant azure color is considered one of the most beautiful plumages; but it’s all an illusion, literally a trick of the light. The feathers are not really blue at all but only appear to be because of diffraction around the structure of the bird’s feathers, scattering all except indigo, the blue light, resulting in a kaleidoscopic shift from black to blue to turquoise as the angle of light changes. Without the benefit of light, the bird’s coloring is as drab as charcoal.
Women on trial for murder don’t wear pants.
In a simple navy blue shirtwaist dress, Felicity stopped just short of the door of the courtroom as the sheriff’s deputy removed the shackles around her wrists. If I hadn’t been staring at the door, hoping for a first glimpse of her, I would have missed that very real, very ugly moment. By the time she took her seat at the defense table, she looked like the homecoming queen she was once, not like an escort who killed two clients in cold blood. Dark hair brushed her chin in an angled bob. Huge glasses that matched her dress framed her strange amber eyes.
For a moment, I was reminded of what Leo Tolstoy said,not about all happy families being alike, but about how amazing is the delusion that beauty is goodness. Soon, everyone in this crowded courtroom and beyond would see that this was no delusion. Everyone would see what I saw—that beautiful Felicity was indeed good.
I would make sure of it.
“Please rise,” said the bailiff as the judge, a short, buxom woman, her auburn natural skillfully tipped with platinum highlights, swept in. “The court of the Second Judicial District, criminal division, is now in session, the Honorable Maria Brent presiding... State of Wisconsin versus Felicity Claire Copeland Wild, cause number... Miss Wild is here present in court with her attorney, Mr. Damiano...”
I opened the dark pink leather folder embossed in gold withFuchsia: The Journal of Culture. Culture, indeed. Culture atFuchsiawas formally designating “captivating coral” as the color of the season. At this moment, being fromFuchsiaembarrassed me, and that wasn’t entirely fair to the publication, which did do serious journalism along with the froth. After all, my editor had green-lighted this story, despite her strong reservations. AtFuchsia, we’d run stories about the wage gap, critical issues in women’s health, and how sexual harassment wasn’t just for twentysomethings. This, however, was different, a salty brew of true crime and memoir for which I would be, as my father would say, punching above my weight. Serious journalism was what I set out to do, like my mother before me, but I slid instead into an easy job, penning marshmallow prose about purses. Felicity had set out to be a scientist, a wildlife biologist studying birds. Like arrows shot in the dark, both of us had gone wide of the target.
Judge Brent told Felicity her rights. “Miss Wild, you have the right to the presumption of innocence, which means the state bears the burden to prove you are guilty of this offense beyonda reasonable doubt, which does not mean beyond any doubt, but beyond the doubt that a reasonable person might have...”
I drifted in and out of the recitation, staring at Felicity’s attorney, an elegant, compact guy whose bold chin and dark eyes would not have been out of place in that lavish photo feature we’d done about corporate class, and at Felicity, whose calm demeanor astonished me.
“Count one alleges that the defendant on or about December 31 in Dane County, the state of Wisconsin, did willfully, unlawfully, deliberately with premeditation and with malice aforethought kill and murder Emil Laurent Gardener, a human being... on or about January 4, did willfully... Cary Elias Church.”
Judge Brent then said, “The maximum possible penalty on count one is life imprisonment. Miss Wild, do you understand that penalty?”
Felicity murmured, “Yes, Your Honor.”
It was just like in the movies. I was just a fashion reporter. I knew nothing about covering a trial.
But I knew Felicity.
She was once my best friend. She had once saved me. Had she not, I would have been sitting exactly where she was now—accused of murder, except that in my case, there would have been no doubt of my guilt. It was irony in the first degree.
Now I would repay that old debt. I would dig deep into her shadowy present life and our shared past. I would find out how the brilliant biology student who seemed poised to take on the world gave up all her bright dreams to become a sex worker. If there was a truth that could set Felicity free, I would find it. For I knew that she was not capable of murder just as surely as she knew that I was.
“The maximum possible penalty on count two, the willful murder of Cary Elias Church, is life imprisonment. Miss Wild, do you understand that penalty?”
Finally, the judge said, “Mr. Damiano, how does your client plead?”
Her lawyer nodded to her, and Felicity, her voice low and assured, said, “Not guilty, Your Honor.”
As she spoke, I studied her. She was still so beautiful. But what had I expected? A twitchy, hollow-eyed flat backer with skin the texture of a cantaloupe? She was barely twenty-seven, just like me, and she came of good stock, sturdy, attractive Anglo-Saxons, the sort of generic white people who used to monopolize Hallmark TV movies. We were built to withstand cold precipitation.
A fast flurry of discussion then ensued about setting a trial date, some months out, and then, suddenly, everyone else was standing and gathering up their things. I had no idea that an arraignment for such a serious charge could take fifteen minutes.
“What’s going on? Why is it over so fast?” I asked the reporter next to me. She was easily in her sixties, with the face of a grizzled bartender framed by golden Cinderella curls. “People said arraignments take hours.” She gave me a withering side-eye and I could hear her thinking,Loser.
“They do, usually.”
“So why is this different?” I glanced down at the police report secured to her clipboard. I asked, “Where did you get that?”
“I asked for it. Anybody can get one if the cops feel like giving it to you that particular day. It’s public record.”
“Don’t you have to file some kind of request?”
“Only if they try to wriggle out of it. Honey, are you a reporter?”
My cheeks burned. I’d blushed more in this half hour than I had in four years of high school. “I am. But for a fashion magazine.”
