The Reckless Oath We Made - Bryn Greenwood Page 0,131

sister. She was our father’s daughter. I was guessing she hadn’t spoken to the police at all.

CHAPTER 50

Charlene

Gentry had always been a problem for the courts. When he was three, and bumped from foster home to foster home, because no one could handle him. When he was eleven, and had his knightly misadventure.

I’d thought that was behind us, but after he was arrested, we lived it all over again. Every morning when I looked around the breakfast table at Bill, Trang, and Elana, I wondered what we would do as a family. Maybe the worst part was trying to maintain communication with Gentry, when he was in Arkansas, and we were trying to hold our lives together. Phone calls were impossible. He would answer questions, but only if I asked the right ones. He wrote letters, but they told me nothing about how he was coping. I didn’t want empty reassurances. I wanted to know the truth, and Gentry’s truth filtered through Middle English and bounced off Gawen told me nothing useful.

According to our lawyer, Gentry was still a problem for the courts.

“Obviously, they won’t want him to take the stand. The feds haven’t even subpoenaed him for Barnwell and Gill-Trego’s trials,” Ms. Howell said. She had come highly recommended by a church member, and I generally thought she was wonderful, but it soured my stomach every time she said Trego. As we learned more about the investigation, it was clear Zhorzha knew nothing about how those men escaped from prison. However innocent she was on that front, she was directly responsible for Gentry being a party to the deaths of three men, albeit none of them good men, and none of them innocent. Zhorzha was the reason Gentry was in jail, waiting to go to trial.

“Wouldn’t it be risky for him to testify anyway?” Bill said. After years of my nagging him to lose weight, he finally had. Now I worried the stress was killing him.

“Only for the prosecution,” Ms. Howell said.

“How so?” I said.

“Gentry? Gentry?” Ms. Howell leaned across the table and tapped her pen in front of him. He nodded. “Can you tell me about how you know LaReigne Trego-Gill?”

“Certs. She be the elder sister of Lady Zhorzha Trego.”

“And what’s your relationship with Zhorzha?”

“I am her champion. I am sworn to protect her.”

Ms. Howell smiled when she turned back to me. I never knew how to take those smiles, pitying but kind. I took hers in silence, because we needed her help.

“If he testifies, there are a few possible outcomes. One: The jury doesn’t understand him or the jury finds him funny. Two—and this is the one the feds are worried about—the jury sees an earnest young man with a disability, who is being prosecuted for what is essentially a good deed.

“Furthermore, because he was injured, it might be difficult for the prosecution to argue that what he did wasn’t self-defense. We may end up negotiating for an obstruction of justice charge or a mayhem charge. Worst-case scenario, manslaughter.”

“Is there any way to get them to lower his bail?” I let Bill ask, even though we’d stayed up a ridiculous number of nights trying to figure out how to scrape together the bond money. We couldn’t.

“Not while he’s charged with three counts of murder. They know they can’t convict on that, but it keeps him locked up until the trial.”

Just hearing it said—murder—made me sick.

I held out hope that we could reach a plea deal that would allow Gentry to serve his time in a mental health facility. Anything to keep him out of prison. While he was awaiting trial, he was housed at the county jail, but several times they took him to a diagnostic facility to assess whether he was competent to stand trial. Of course, he understood what he’d done was against the law, but according to Ms. Howell, the prosecutor worried there might be room for a diminished capacity plea, because of his voices.

In the end, I wouldn’t have to hear murder again, because Ms. Howell negotiated a plea deal. One count of obstruction of justice and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, which meant Gentry wouldn’t have a felony on his record. As part of that deal, Gentry would go to the state hospital, rather than to prison.

Bill and I went down to Arkansas together to meet with Ms. Howell and Gentry, who looked terrible in his orange jail scrubs. His hair was getting shaggier every week, and he clutched