Alice & Gerald by Ron Franscell

Author:Ron Franscell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633885134
Publisher: Prometheus Books

After Gerald left, Alice showed up as promised with a folder of two dozen documents, including some letters, clippings, and legal papers. Among them were Gerald and Virginia's original divorce decree and Virginia's many letters to Alice from New Jersey. The sheaf also contained two curious lists in Gerald's handwriting: one with ten reasons why prosecutors believed he and Alice were involved in Virginia's murder, and the other with nineteen reasons his defense lawyer could use to prove he'd been framed.

TeBeest and Wachsmuth led her back to the interview room and reminded her she wasn't under arrest and could leave anytime. Alice sat at the long table, her big purse held snugly in her lap. Her shield, TeBeest thought to himself.

TeBeest, sitting beside Alice, dispensed with pleasantries.

“Alice, you left out a few things yesterday,” he said. “You didn't tell us the truth.”

Alice looked startled, hurt.

“I did,” she said.

“We know you didn't.”

“I did,” she repeated.

TeBeest leaned so uncomfortably close to her he could smell her.

“Ron Holtz.”

Alice recoiled as if he'd hit her with a hammer. She pulled her purse close, but her shield had failed her. Wachsmuth, sitting across the table, watched her eyes glaze over. Her face showed real fear.

Suddenly, Alice keeled to her left, literally falling out of her chair. She thunked against the wall behind her, catching herself with her left arm and hitting the floor with her left knee. Bracing herself, she clambered clumsily back into her chair and stammered, not knowing what to say next. In hundreds of interviews, Wachsmuth had never seen anything like it. She must have momentarily lost consciousness, he thought.

“My kids told you,” were the first words out of her mouth when her wits returned.

“It's just funny you never mentioned him yesterday,” TeBeest bored in, relentless. “You never mentioned being a nurse in Sheridan in 1974, either. You didn't mention meeting Ron Holtz in the VA psych ward, or marrying him in Colorado on September 17, 1974, or your divorce in 1975. All the other husbands and jobs, you mentioned. We know all of that, but you never mentioned any of this. Why?”

Alice was stupefied and evasive. At that moment, she could have walked out, but she didn't.

She didn't like talking about Holtz, she said, because she was embarrassed by the whole thing. As a nurse, it was unprofessional. As a woman, it was stupid.

But Holtz was her only untruth, she swore. She promised she hadn't lied about anything else. She remembered almost nothing about Virginia and her boys’ disappearance because she “didn't like to think about them” (although she recalled vividly, when asked next, about the day of John F. Kennedy's assassination).

TeBeest deliberately let Alice wonder if he had Ron Holtz's body, and he didn't let up.

He pointed out several creepy similarities between Ron Holtz's and Virginia's disappearances, mainly that two people Alice disliked had vanished completely from the face of the Earth.

Alice said nothing, just sat there silent.

TeBeest stood up and shoved his finger in her face. “Stop! You know, Alice, you insult me by lying,” he said, throwing up his hands.

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