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parents .
    His entire family was by his
bedside when he awoke early the following morning but he would not utter a word
to any of them.  Then he tried to flee his bed and had to be sedated
again.  He floated in and out of consciousness, whispering his son’s name
from time to time but it was only when Detective Black Jack appeared that Sam
had, for a few minutes at least, shown any interest in what was being said
around him.  Michelle’s mother, Laura Kent, arrived that afternoon without
Michelle’s father, James, who later spoke to Sam briefly at the funeral, then
never spoke to him again.  Michelle’s sisters, Sally and Cindy, both
married and living on the East Coast, just made it to the funeral.  James
Kent would blame Sam for his daughter’s terrible death and later suffer a fatal
cardiac arrest, the result of bitterness and reproach he could not curtail .
    Sam would wonder about the
funeral for many years to come and he was convinced that it was there,
alongside his wife’s fresh grave that he would cease to embrace the faith he
had in human nature and inverted his attitude toward life .
    Sitting in the wheelchair
above the black pit into which they were about to lower his wife’s lifeless
body, paying little attention to the words being spoken, he tried to envisage
her as he knew her, but couldn’t.  Her final pose overshadowed every
memory he had of her: her body, violated; her flesh ashen; life so cruelly
drained out of her.  He could not erase the memory, nor could he continue
to view mankind as he had his entire life .
    Before they married, Michelle
had once told him that what she loved most about him, was his no-nonsense, reckless faith in people.  Sam believed it to be
true.  He did not deem himself naive or unseeing but he never wished to
doubt people’s motives. He knew, of course, that deceit existed all around him,
but in his personal dealings with people he believed he could overcome
intrinsic suspicion with simple straightforwardness.  To women and men
alike, he believed in speaking God’s honest truth, presenting himself as is,
with no hidden agenda.  People would naturally become skeptical of such
simplicity but would seize such quality once convinced it was sincere.  He
had his eccentricities and scruples with society but he lived with a naive
sense of security that basic mankind was good and bad things did not happen to
people who functioned honestly.
    He knew it to be his mother,
Diane, who instilled that trust in him.  She had been an educator all her
life, teaching kindergarten, elementary school, high school, and college, and
it was her extraordinary presence, conveying patience and leniency, that most
influenced his childhood.  His father, Stewart, had become a judge when
Sam was still a toddler and that had taught him diplomacy and compromise at a
very young age.  He had mostly gotten his way with both his older brother
and younger sister employing those inherited virtues and had later coasted through
life in similar fashion.  A family friend had once told him that she
thought he was the most balanced of the Baker children, his brother being
overly ambitious and his sister overly anxious to please .
    Besides the grievance and
sense of loss, Michelle’s rape and murder left him wondering what evil nature
existed in humans ready to commit such acts to other humans who did them no
harm. The tragedy had a profound effect on what followed. Refusing to go back
to his house, his parents, sister, and brother took turns lodging him during
the first few weeks following his release from the hospital.  He became
weary and aloof, practically unreachable.  He sat brooding for days,
cocooned in his misery.  His law firm colleagues came by, several old
college friends, Michelle’s sisters and mother, and even Albert Sweeny, senior
partner at the firm, suggesting Sam would be better off keeping himself busy at
work. But Sam had retreated into a state of mind so withdrawn, no one, not