Chapter 17 — THE SECOND STAMP

I want to be careful here, because this is the chapter where I stopped being an aggrieved husband and became a person with an obligation.

Here is what the record shows.

In 1999, Judith Vance used a notary stamp to take a house from a man who was not in the room, and protected the theft by threatening him with an accusation involving his nine-year-old daughter, and the daughter went along with it because she was nine.

In 2024, Judith Vance used a notary stamp to put a four-hundred-and-twelve-thousand-dollar lien on a house belonging to a man who was not in the room, and the daughter went along with it because —

That is the sentence I could not finish for about three weeks.

Because she was in love with Grant Mercer.

Because she was in debt.

Because she was frightened.

All of those are available and none of them are complete, and I have watched enough of this to distrust a clean motive.

What I settled on, and what I still believe, is smaller and worse.

She went along with it because she had gone along with it once before, and the first time had worked.

Nobody came for Judith in 2000. She lost a commission for five years, kept the house, raised her daughter in it, taught Sunday school in it, and got the commission back.

The lesson available to a nine-year-old in that house was: this works, and the person who says the true thing is the one who leaves.

Roy Vance said the true thing and ended up in a motel in Kingsport.

I took all of this to Alma in a folder.

She read it for twenty minutes without saying anything.

Then she said, "You understand this doesn't help you."

"What?"

"Legally. It's 1999, the man's dead, the commission was already revoked, there's no cause of action here for you." She closed the folder. "It's not evidence. It's context."

"It's the same crime."

"It's a pattern, and if I could get it in front of a jury it would be devastating, and I cannot get it in front of a jury." She slid the folder back. "But you didn't bring it to me for the case."

"No?"

"No. You brought it to me because you want somebody to tell you what to do with your wife."

I did not answer.

"Here's what I'll say." Alma took her glasses off, which she does maybe twice a year. "You've got two women in this story. One of them is sixty-one and did it twice, and she's the one you should be angry at until the day you die. The other one is thirty-four and did it once, and she was nine years old the first time she was made an accessory to it."

"You want me to feel sorry for her."

"I want you to be accurate. Feeling comes later and it's yours." She put the glasses back on. "Now. The state's notary investigator has the July 18 file. I sent them the 1999 revocation last week. A second offense after reinstatement, with a forged instrument for four hundred thousand dollars, is not a paperwork problem. It's a Class I felony and this time somebody's actually going to charge it."

Judith Vance was indicted in June.

Two counts, forgery of an instrument and uttering a forged instrument, plus the notary charges.

She took a plea in October. Twenty-four months suspended, sixty months probation, permanent revocation, and restitution I will collect approximately none of.

She was sixty-two when she stood up in that courtroom.

I went.

I sat in the back and I did not talk to anybody.

When it was over she looked back at me across the room and there was nothing in her face at all, and I thought about Corinne in the kitchen looking straight up at a camera she believed was dead, and I understood exactly where my wife had learned to do that.