Defiled Read online

  Sally arrived with Tony’s Scotch refill and put her hand on my shoulder. She asked if my tuna melt, untouched, was okay, and I told her it was fine.

  Tony wiped his mouth with his napkin and sipped his Scotch. He pulled a piece of notepaper out of his pocket and referred to it as he said, “Ms. de Castro had plenty of other things to say. You abused your wife physically, mentally, verbally, and sexually.” He waited for rebuttal.

  “Got her list from a Hollywood divorce manual?” I said sarcastically.

  “You restrained her during arguments, grabbed her shoulders, and shook her. You called her names, yelled at her.”

  It was true that I had defended myself against Carrie’s physical assaults, and I had called her the c-word in response to being called the a-word. So what?

  Tony prattled on. “You forced her to have unwanted sex.” The lawyer glanced at me with a boys-in-the-locker-room sneer, then continued, “Pressuring your wife into unwanted sex is rape, even within a marriage.” I reacted with a dismissive huff, so Tony referred to his notes again. Not looking at me, he sheepishly said, “Your wife claims you coerced her into committing shameful sex acts. She says you’re a sex addict and should go to rehab.”

  Shameful? I suppose, but they were Carrie’s idea. “She complained to her counselor about our sex life and the counselor told her there’s no such thing as sex addiction.” My lawyer looked doubtful, so I said, “The American Psychiatric Association refused to include it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in both 2010 and 2012.”

  “Odd that you should know that. De Castro also gave me a list of demands, says your wife will want the country house and the furniture, alimony of course, plus her car and legal fees and life and health insurance.”

  I was flabbergasted. “I’d have to make her car payments?”

  “You signed for it. According to de Castro, all the debts are in your name.”

  “Well of course they’re in my name. She couldn’t get credit at a fruit stand.”

  With a big smile, Tony said, “I did win one point with de Castro: no temporary alimony. Just use the money as you did before the divorce was filed. Because you’re sharing the money, the judge will see you as a cooperative defendant.”

  I threw my napkin down atop my congealing tuna melt. “I don’t want to be a cooperative defendant. I’m a plaintiff in my own divorce filing.”

  “I’m not too excited about your counterclaim, Randle, tell you the truth. What evidence do you have?”

  “I have financial records. Every penny of debt was either spent by her or on her. She’s like a car thief who sees the keys in a Beamer and can’t resist taking a ride.”

  “Drop them at my office. Do you have any proof that she’s been fooling around?”

  In March and April, the clues had piled up like flotsam on a deserted beach. “Back in the spring she used gas like she had a pipeline to Saudi Arabia. Wouldn’t tell me where she was going. There were long, unexplained absences. Wouldn’t tell me where she had been or with whom.”

  I took a breath, and Tony said, “It’s all circumstantial, Randle.”

  “She got a Brazilian wax job that I wasn’t supposed to discover.”

  He grinned. “I won’t ask how you ‘discovered it.’”

  And what about Mother’s Day? I surprised her with a large yellow diamond on a thick platinum chain with matching earrings. We both knew she didn’t deserve an extravagant gift. I had hoped it would prompt a confession or an apology and an offer to repair the relationship. Or she could have declined the gift in a dignified admission of her guilt. She did none of the above. She had worn the diamonds the day the process server came to serve me.

  I said, “What would you think if your wife was doing this stuff?”

  “Cheating on me, but the judge expects to see naked pictures and hotel receipts.”

  “Can we subpoena her cell phone records, see who she was texting?”

  Tony looked at me over a forkful of salad. “I’m not sure.”

  “Check it out. See if we can subpoena her email records too.”

  “I’ll see.”

  “The legal system has to let me defend myself, Tony.”

  Tony hurriedly scooped leaves into his mouth as though he had to eat them all before he could swing a golf club. Chewing, he said, “The good news is that your marriage was short and there were no children. My partners tell me that despite what the law allows, a childless wife doesn’t get permanent alimony until she’s been married for ten years. However, you established a very high standard of living for your wife that you’ll have to maintain for the alimony period.”

  “So if a man treats his wife badly during the marriage, he can get a better divorce deal than if he treated her well? That makes no sense.”

  Tony raised his arms in an exaggerated shrug. “Makes perfect sense. The divorce laws are designed to encourage the parties to mediate, settle, and go their merry ways.”

  “Total crap. The laws are obsolete, designed to protect stay-at-home moms in the 1950s.”

  “The law allows you to walk away from a lifetime commitment, Randle. If we issue subpoenas and file a Baker Act petition, this is going to be a war.”

  “We have to file the Baker Act petition.”

  Tony waved a hand in front of me. “The document you wrote is excellent, but it paints an ugly picture of your marriage, my friend.” I just nodded, so he continued. “Melissa will transcribe it onto a deposition form, and you’ll have to sign it and swear to it.”

  I nodded again.

  “My partners tell me it’s not difficult to get an order to have someone examined. The unknown is the outcome of the examination. They can hold her for up to seventy-two hours to perform the examination. Then the psychiatrists have three choices: They can declare her sane; they can order outpatient care; or they can detain her for in-patient care. If they do order detention, it is for a period of not more than six months during which she may get well.”

  “People with her issues don’t ‘get well.’”

  “You’re convinced she’s insane, but it’s harder to convince the shrinks, especially state-funded shrinks. The shrinks like to prescribe drugs and let the crazy ones walk around free. If she’s institutionalized for three years or more, it becomes grounds for divorce and you can walk away not owing her a cent. Otherwise, your current divorce progresses normally.”

  “If she’s institutionalized, wouldn’t alimony be forgiven? She wouldn’t need support if she were a ward of the State.”

  Tony shrugged. “I suppose.”

  “Do it, Tony. I’ll stop at your office on the way home and sign the deposition.”

  “Your divorce will take a lot longer if we take steps like this.”

  “Now you’re the one who’s being naïve. They’re not going to let anything happen fast.”

  “You’re probably right.” Tony considered me like any professional would consider an amateur. “Don’t send me anything more from your known email account. I should have told you before to delete your old email account and its history and open two new ones: one for our privileged communications, and one for any friends you’ll have left after the divorce. Delete all your social media accounts too—they’re poison. Do it today.”

  “You’re making me nervous. I don’t have any social media accounts, and all my emails are innocent.”

  “Trust me on this one. You want to be invisible. No leaks to the other side.”

  A cold shiver of fear bounced up and down my spine. For the past couple of months, I had locked my office door when I was away, but the lock was the simple doorknob type, easy enough to pick with a large hairpin. About a year ago, we agreed to be open with one another and shared our passwords. I nodded, dazed.

  Tony leaned back in his chair, sated and exhausted by the effort. “This is going to be expensive. I can’t give you any breaks on fees and expenses, Randle.”

  “Don’t worry about the money, Tony. There’ll be plenty
after the settlement.”

  My lawyer pushed his chair away from the table. “Want to take care of lunch, or you want me to put it on my monthly invoice?”

  “I’ll take care of the check.”

  “Wonderful, less work for me. I won’t charge for my time; I’d have stopped for lunch anyway.”

  “You’re all heart, Tony,” I said to his back as he rushed off to meet his golfing partners.

  Sally appeared with the check. “Thanks for taking good care of us today,” I said.

  “My pleasure,” she said with a hand on her hip. “I work weekdays, so I’m always here if you drop in for lunch.” She winked at me.

  Disgusted, I hustled out of the club. I pulled the Bronco to the end of the driveway and waited to see if the van would reveal itself. The kid was nowhere in sight, but I took Alternate Route 19 to Dolphin Beach instead of Gulf Boulevard, where he may have been hiding.

  Following Tony’s instructions, I opened a new email account that I would use only for privileged communications. I decided not to close my old personal email account because it was too much of a hassle to notify friends and credit accounts to use a new email address.

  From my secure email account, I wrote Tony a note about Carrie’s mental health history. Attached to the note was Carrie’s application for employer-sponsored medical insurance in which she listed her counselors and psychiatrist and all the drugs she had been taking when we got married.

  Next, I went to work on the property inventory that Tony had to submit on Friday. As I listed possessions that obviously were mine, it depressed me to realize I had been a guest in my own home, sequestered in a few spaces Carrie had ceded to me. I felt as though I were in a TV news scene of survivors picking through the ruins of their homes after a devastating tornado—an attempt to salvage a bit of a life that was gone forever. The approach I took with the division of property seemed fair to me: Each list represented half the value of the contents of our two homes. Of course, I listed for myself the things she had stolen from the beach house. When I was done, I emailed the inventory to Tony.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  On Tuesday, I packed an overnight bag, climbed into the Bronco, and headed for Atlanta. I hated the whole commercial airlines experience: park at the Tampa airport; get mugged by the TSA; wait in the gate area; endure delays and cancellations; squeeze into a seat too narrow for the average human being; suffer through boring airplane conversation; traverse the Atlanta airport; rent a car; return the rented car; reverse the process. As a result, I often made the seven-hour journey to the company’s home office in the comfort of my Bronco, making and answering phone calls, being productive.

  As I proceeded through Tampa and into the countryside toward Cortes County this morning, I scanned the southbound lanes for a red Jaguar convertible. Pathetic. No red Jaguars were out for a spin.

  Driving was hazardous, visibility reduced to a few yards, the windshield drenched in the spray from the big rigs. I drove carefully, stayed in the slow lanes, and made it impossible for the white panel van to conceal its presence. The van had picked me up on Gulf Boulevard in Dolphin Beach as I exited my neighborhood by the only route available. Apparently, the kid had camped in the Walgreens parking lot and waited for me to make a move.

  Irritated that Carrie was figuratively looking over my shoulder, I called Melissa, and Tony Zambrano agreed to take my call. No golf in this weather.

  “Carrie’s private investigator is violating my protective order again,” I said when Tony picked up the phone.

  He cleared his throat. “What you have to do is call the cops, get them to come out and identify the PI, check his license and so forth, and measure the distance from your home to his van.”

  “It’s not like that. I’m driving to Atlanta for business meetings, and he’s on my tail like a dog in heat. Can you call the cops to get him off me?”

  “I believe I-75 is a public thoroughfare,” Tony said sarcastically, “but I can check if you want me to.”

  “The judge can’t issue a warning or something?”

  “Your word isn’t proof of anything, Randle. You seem to have trouble with the legal concept of proof.”

  “Don’t be a prick, Tony.” I hung up on him.

  The white van peeled off at the first Ocala exit. No doubt the kid wanted to ensure I wasn’t heading for the country house to harass my wife. If I really wanted to sneak up on the country house, I could just drive north until he gave up, then turn back south and do whatever I wanted. The kid was either a rookie or an amateur.

  After checking into the Hilton Hotel at Technology Park, just a couple of blocks away from the company office, I called Jerry Louks, the company’s technical guru, and told him I needed some technical advice. Jerry and I had collaborated on many projects and spent many an evening together at Atlanta’s finer watering holes. We made an incongruous pair, as Jerry was the perfect caricature of a techno-weeny, complete with horn-rimmed glasses and a pocket protector, while I’m tall, dark, and handsome. Well, I’m tall.

  “You married guys kill me,” Jerry said. “Surfing porn and getting infected with viruses. Do you know how many viruses I remove in an average week?”

  “It’s not a virus, Jerry. My wife has filed for a divorce, so I want to do a background check on her, see if she’s got any skeletons in her closet.”

  “Sorry to hear that, bro, but you should have done that before the ceremony.”

  “I know, Jerry. There are online sites that pop up whenever you Google someone’s name. Can I use one of those to see who she was before I married her?”

  “Sure, easy enough, but most of them are scams.” He gave me the URL of a site he trusted.

  I keyed in the URL, searched for “Carrie Marks,” and got hits in Oregon and Nebraska, but not Florida.

  “Try her maiden name. These sites are slow to update files.”

  “Which one?” I said. “She’s been Tomkins, Dickson, Simmons, and Marks. Like a law firm.”

  “Damn, bro, wasn’t that a clue for you?”

  I didn’t have a smart retort, so I kept my mouth shut and searched for Carrie Simmons. A page popped up with a familiar picture I had taken of Carrie as we were preparing to go out for her birthday. I had rented a stretch limo to take a bunch of her friends on a tour of Ybor City nightclubs. At a club with a live band, we danced together until Carrie turned it into a raunchy performance. Her movements became so suggestive that I abandoned her on the dancefloor, embarrassed to be near her. Other men had then left their dates to join her, three and four of them at a time. When the set ended, she returned to our table overjoyed that she had been the center of attention.

  “We’re done here,” I had said, and jerked her out of her seat.

  “I’m having fun!” she had screamed as she tried to twist out of my grasp.

  People at nearby tables had gawked at the scene. Her “twentysomething” son, Travis, who had cowered in shame, grabbed her other arm and together we’d dragged Carrie out of the club, kicking and screaming.

  The incident was not unusual. When I took her to nightclubs, there was always a risk she would go home with someone other than me.

  The site claimed to store everything there was to know about Carrie Simmons, including marriages, divorces, relatives, home addresses, phone numbers, and criminal records. I had to pay to get the report. In seconds, I was prompted to download a twelve-page PDF file.

  As I scanned the report, I found familiar information—father: Harlan Tomkins; mother: Annabelle Tomkins; sister: Connie Tomkins; son: Travis Dickson; the address where she had lived when I met her and her phone number at that time. Further down the page it listed ex-husbands as Chance Dickson and Philip Simmons—men I knew about—and a third guy named Richard Puralto with an address in Pinellas Park.

  “It lists an address and a guy I never knew about—Puralto,” I said, trying the name on my tongue. “Is he another ex-husband?”

  “Maybe not a husband, Randle. Maybe they co-owned the h
ome.”

  Nonetheless, history she had never divulged. I scanned the rest of the report and found nothing very useful. The other phone numbers were old, the criminal records merely traffic tickets, and the court records listed two divorces, but not a third from Richard Puralto.

  “There’s nothing else in the report, but I also want to be sure she isn’t snooping on my email.”

  He whistled. “Do you have your machine with you?”

  “No, just my work computer.”

  “Next time you’re up here, bring me your machine and I’ll have a look.”

  “Can’t you just tell me how to do it?”

  “Too complex, bro. If you want to smoke her out, send some phony emails and see if she reacts.”

  Interesting. “Good idea. I’ll bring my box next time.”

  “I drink single malt Scotch.”

  “I know that, Jerry.”

  Inspired, I gave Jerry’s idea a test drive. Maybe Carrie was still friends with her ex-husband Phil Simmons. She had often praised him for his romantic charm, and I wasn’t certain she had gotten over him. He also lived far enough away to explain her gasoline consumption. I wrote Tony a note from my old email account, the one Carrie knew about.

  Hi Tony,

  I’ve figured it out: She’s having an affair with her ex-husband, Phil Simmons. Can you put Fred on his tail, get those naked pictures and hotel receipts you need?

  Randle

  I should have felt better, but lethargy and loneliness engulfed me. Too lazy to go out for dinner, I fell asleep in my clothes watching something forgettable on TV.

  At three a.m. my cell phone rang and woke me from a disturbing dream. Jamie and I were staying in what seemed to be a barn. Glenda’s father and brother were there, and they were armed with shotguns. Outside the barn door, an angry group of hoodlums called for me to come out of the barn, but Glenda’s father blocked the door and threatened to shoot them.

  Disoriented and frightened, I answered the phone ready to tell a wrong-number caller to go to hell and then saw that it was my security company.