I can't speak for other males, but the hardest thing for me in these situations is knowing who works for the store and who doesn't. Customers and salespeople look exactly alike. I try three people before I hit on an actual storeperson. I ask her if she can help me.
“Unless you want to try something on.”
My guess is that she's used that joke on the last five hundred males that she's encountered in this department, so I smile a semi-appreciative smile, and ask if she knows where Betty Anthony is. She does.
“Betty! Customer!”
Betty is standing at the cash register, finishing a sale, and she motions that she'll just be a minute. I nod that I'll wait, and in a few minutes she comes over. She's in her early sixties, with a pleasant face and a slightly tired smile. She'd like to be off her feet, and she deserves to be.
“Can I help you?” she asks.
“I'd like to talk to you about your husband.”
She tenses exactly as Wally had when I mentioned Denise. That's apparently my mission, to go around the state and reopen old wounds in people that deserve better.
Finally, she nods, slowly, the nod of someone who has been expecting this visit, and who has been dreading it. I instinctively feel that if I can find out why, I'll have found out everything.
Betty agrees to have a cup of coffee with me, and I wait the thirty-five minutes until she is finished with her shift. We go to a small diner down the street, the kind with little jukeboxes on the tables that never work. I tell her that I'm representing Willie Miller, and watch for her reaction.
There isn't any. She has no idea who Willie Miller is, and can't imagine what her husband could possibly have to do with him. It's not good news.
I tell her about the picture, and my suspicion that there is something about it that has changed a great many lives, possibly Mike's included.
She tells me that “Mike had many friends. He was the kind of person that people naturally liked.”
Then I tell her that the woman Willie is accused of murdering is Denise McGregor, and I think I see a small flash of fear in her eyes, which she quickly covers up.
Her response is that “Mike was a wonderful man, a terrific husband and father. He loved his work.”
Platitudes like this aren't going to do it for me; I know I have to somehow pierce this armor. “Look, I'm defending a man on trial for his life. I think you have information that can help me, but maybe you don't. The only way I'm going to find out for sure is by being direct.”
She nods her understanding, but seems to cringe in anticipation. This is not going to be fun.
“Why did your husband take his own life?”
For a moment I think she is going to cry, but when she answers, her voice is clear and strong.
“He was a very unhappy man. Haunted, really.”
“By what?”
“I loved my husband very much,” she evades, “but I couldn't really help him, at least not the kind of help he needed. And now all I have is his memory, and I'm not going to destroy it. Not for you, not for your client, not for anybody.”
Sitting across this table from me is the answer; I can feel it, I know it. I have to go after it, even if it means badgering a woman who is clearly suffering.
“Something happened a very long time ago, something I believe Mike was a part of. But whatever it was, it's over. It can't be changed. My client shouldn't lose his life to protect the secret.”
“I can't help you,” she says.
“You won't help me.”
She thinks for a few moments, as if considering what I'm saying. Then her eyes go cold and she shuts off, as surely as if somebody flicked a switch. The window of opportunity has shut, leaving me to wonder if there's anything I could have done to keep it open. I don't think so; I think this decision was made a long time ago.
“I'm not going to argue with you,” she says. “You're not going to get what you want here.”
One last try. “Look, I know you want to protect your husband's memory … his reputation. Believe me, I want to do the same thing for my father. But a man's life is on the line. I need to know the truth.”