I didn’t wake up until the police arrived. I don’t know exactly how much time elapsed, but it had been time enough for Regina and Virgil to escape. After I had fainted, Frank had carried me up to one of the bedrooms. Leaving it, with one of the policemen gripping my arm, I was certain that it was Regina I had shot. Not until I got downstairs and saw Vivian smiling in the chair did I remember what had happened. Everyone was gathered in the living room. The two women were crying softly, sitting in their original places on the sofa. I leaned against the bar, with Frank and Gloria on either side of me.
Everyone, including the police, seemed to be waiting for something. Something turned out to be someone. The chief or the captain or whatever they call themselves arrived and took in the situation with one officious glance. He looked at Vivian dispassionately, then at me the same way. One policeman began to explain to him and finished with a long sigh of familiarity before he added, “Some family reunion, eh?”
Only two of the bullets had struck Vivian. The other two were found in the arm and the leg of the white chair. This, my lawyer told me, might prove beneficial to my plea of temporary insanity, but I can’t remember the reason he gave. I can’t even recall the trial in any sequential fashion. The wheels of justice move through verbal muck, advancing one day and sticking the next, while the people in charge argue over whether to push or pull. And my lawyer, Mr. Bates, informed me in no uncertain terms that my demeanor in the courtroom was adding extra weight to his load:
“Mrs. Mattison, I do appreciate the fact you are level-headed and cooperate with the court, but for credibility’s sake your image in there has to coincide with the circumstances of our case. The jurors look more concerned than you do, and that is never a good sign. Your daughter’s disappearance and her refusal to surface is extremely damaging. And I don’t have to tell you what McPhee’s testimony is doing for the prosecution. You’ve got to show some kind of reaction to things that are said, some expression. Otherwise, it’s going to be uphill all the way to the end.”
It was uphill until very nearly the end. Leo, Jack, Tom, the two wives, two of Frank’s other brothers—all of them denied Vivian was Frank’s mother. Frank, the prosecution contended, had manufactured the lie to delude me, he had defiled his retarded sister and driven her to suicide, and he had taken advantage of his daughter as well—hence her fear to show herself. Gloria’s account of Vivian’s admission and Regina’s conversion pleased Mr. Bates: her frustration and rage coming out in tears (something I was incapable of all through the trial), she gave a vivid picture of Vivian’s smug assurance and contempt. Although it made colorful copy in the papers, it ultimately would carry very little weight with the jury, for the simple reason that Gloria was outnumbered. One thing I had in my favor—and a very small thing, Mr. Bates assured me—was that Leo had waited almost an hour before calling the police, time enough for Regina and Virgil to disappear. But it was Frank’s car they had taken and Frank could not figure out how they had got his keys. The car was found abandoned fifty miles south of Ridgeway.