Ed mumbled something that might have been, "Okay."
Teresa counted backwards. "Ten...nine...eight... you're starting to come back now, Ed."
"Uh huh."
"Seven ... six...five...four..."
"With you in a second." The mayor yawned and rubbed his hand across his mouth.
"Three... two ... one. Wake up, Ed."
The man opened his eyes. "Oh, god," he said. "Fuck. My own doing ... my own undoing..."
"I'm sorry, Ed. Truly I am. But you know what this means."
Ed nodded, his eyes full of sadness. He couldn't cry just yet. He wanted to look Teresa in the eyes, to connect with her, as if that touching of souls could bring him some salvation. Of course, her blindness made this impossible. He looked toward her anyway.
"It's the water."
* * *
The city dissolved into scandal, one festering mess after another. Ed gave the CIAO agency a direct order to investigate the water supply, as well as the waste management of the garbage burning plants that had supplied jobs and electricity for the past three years.
Not surprisingly, the plants were also supplying toxic waste. They had simply been dumping it into the local river, the source of the city's drinking water. Pregnant women who drank the water gave birth to misshapen or stillborn babies. Children who played in ditches, and city workers who directly processed water and sewage, developed a grotesque skin disease. The federal government became involved, and lawsuits multiplied like Virginia jackrabbits.
At the center of the maelstrom was Ed. The city that had once trusted him and looked to him for leadership now turned its back on their favorite son. To make matters worse, blind Teresa had done her duty. Patient confidentiality cannot be maintained when the therapist knows the patient has killed someone; and she turned him in.
The mayor was on trial for murder.
* * *
At the trial the judge banged her gavel. "Order! Order!"
The lawyer repeated the question. "When did this take place?"
Ed mopped his brow with a handkerchief. "I was a sophomore at the University of Iowa. It was spring, spring of my sophomore year."
"What date would that have been, sir?"
"2005." There was a noisy gasp throughout the courtroom. People again began talking loudly and the bailiff cried for order. The bedlam made Ed's head spin.
When things calmed down, the judge made it clear that she would start throwing people out if they didn't shut up. "Proceed!" she snapped at the attorney.
"Are you aware, sir, that your predecessor Lance Reyes disappeared in the spring of 2005?"
"Irrelevant!" shouted Ed's lawyer.
"Overruled!" directed the judge. Sotto voce she said, "Get to the point."
"Lance Reyes disappeared while traveling alone in the spring of 2005. His itinerary took him directly through Iowa, on I-80, exactly where the murder took place."
Ed wiped his face again. His hankie didn't have a dry place left. "It couldn't have been him. The man I struck was a cyclist."
"Lance Reyes was on a biking trip! "
Ed fainted.
When he came to, he was in his cell. Jocelyn was seated beside him where he lay on the narrow cot.
"Ed?" She looked worried, though whether for him or for herself was difficult to tell. The scandal of the toxic waste in the city's water had been hard on their marriage. Now it seemed Ed had killed her former husband. How much could one woman take?
Ed swam up through the layers of damask. "Why didn't you ever tell me Lance was on a bike trip, when he disappeared?"
Jocelyn looked confused. "I did tell you. You've seen the old pictures. He loved cycling."
"No, I ..." Ed shook his head. "You said he was on a road trip."
She nodded. "Right. You know, cyclists do that. They get on their bikes and they go on the road." She gestured with her fingers, mimicking the motions of travel.
Ed sighed. What she had taken for granted that he understood had been stuffed back into his subconscious. It didn't matter now.
A guard tapped on the wall. "You gotta go back in there, sir."
Ed hunched his shoulders. He looked as if he'd been struck with a ten-pound hammer. Even if he were proven innocent now, his political career was over when it had barely begun. He resigned himself to his fate, and followed the guard.
Despite the ceiling fans and air conditioning, the courtroom was close. Too many bodies were pressed into the space. Ed looked miserable as he took his place beside his lawyer.
The prosecuting attorney called Sergei van Zant to the stand.
"Who is that?" Ed murmured.
His lawyer whispered back, "CIAO agent from the former administration."
"I do," van Zant was saying.
"Mr. van Zant, did you know Mayor Reyes?"
"Yes, in one capacity or another, I worked with him or for him for ten years."
"So you know what he looked like."
"Yes, of course."
The mean, wicked, nasty attorney held up a large picture. He showed it to the witness and then to the courtroom. Ed gasped. It was a picture of a man wearing a bike helmet and sunglasses.
The attorney threw Ed a pointed look, but directed his questions to the man on the stand. "Is this your former boss?"
"Yes, that's him."
"Tell the court what happened on March 20, 2005."
"Lance -- Mayor Reyes -- was on a road trip. He liked to do this every year," van Zant explained. He licked his lips. He looked terrible, as if he himself were guilty.
"Go on."
"He didn't want any CIAO agents with him, he hated having us follow him around. He used to say that all the time, 'Quit following me around.' He told us to leave him alone, let him take a vacation in peace."
"But you didn't."
"No. I wanted to protect him anyway."
"So what did you do?"
The man sighed. "I fucked up, okay? Can't we just get to the point and say I fucked up?"
"Clean up that language!" barked the judge.
"Answer the question, civilly please." The prosecutor was unruffled.
"I followed at what I thought was a discreet distance. Lance took a road that was under construction, which at the time I thought was smart, because the road was closed, so there were no cars on it. But this, this idiot, here --" van Zant pointed at Ed, obviously thinking of a different name "-- took the road too.
"I don't know what he was thinking. Anyway the next thing I know, I come up over the hill, and there's this guy stuffing my boss and his bike into the back of his SUV."
The volume in the gallery rose and the judge shouted for order. The prosecuting attorney very painstakingly instructed the witness to identify Ed as the person he had seen. Then he resumed his questions.
"Did you yell? Try to stop him?"
Sergei van Zant was weeping. "I told you I fucked up!"
The judge slapped her gavel and shouted but the man's torrent of words continued.
"... I was a coward. I ran. I've been hiding in fucking Iowa in the fucking cornfields for the past, six, fucking, YEARS!! "
"You're outta here!" bellowed the judge.
In an unusual show of compassion, the bailiff gave Sergei a Kleenex as he left the stand. The witness blew his nose and dabbed at his eyes. "This is what I hoped would never happen."
The rest of the trial proceeded fairly quickly. Ed was cooked. He had admitted striking and killing the cyclist and getting rid of the body. And a witness who had nothing to gain had now identified said cyclist as former mayor Lance Reyes.
Ed wondered if a different set of decisions would have allowed him to wiggle out of this mess. Maybe a different lawyer would have been better. Maybe he should have run to Canadia, where all that Canadian bacon came from. But escape from his fate seemed unlikely. They led him away to his cell.
Fortunately, he did not have to stay there. Posting bond was relatively easy for the politician. They put an electronic bracelet on his ankle, and told him he could go home.
But his home was not much of a haven. His wife looked at him with eyes full of pain, sorrow, even anger. Despite the tide of emotions, there was not much to say. Ed apologized, sincerely, for everything. He had made some heinous mistakes. That was his only defense.
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