Antonelli - 03 - The Judgment (20 page)

Helen’s blue-veined hand flew across the page. “Anything else?”

she asked as she snapped the notebook shut and rose from the chair. With the question still echoing in the air, she turned and walked rapidly back to her desk.

“No, I guess not,” I said to the vacant chair.

When it was time to leave, I found her hunched over the keyboard of her computer, peering intently at the monitor while her red-lacquered fingers added new language to an old form.

“I’m going to court,” I announced, my hand on the doorknob.

A furtive smile creased the corners of her mouth. “It’s a little chilly out. Better take your coat,” she said dryly, her eyes fixed on the screen.

I started to open the door and she stopped typing. “Would you drop this in the mail slot next to the elevator?” She handed me a large envelope. “It’s what you wanted me to send to Mrs. Jeffries.”

Television trucks were parked on both sides of the park that separated the county courthouse from the police department, waiting for any news they could get from either the police or the district attorney’s office. There had been an arrest, but nothing had been said about an indictment. Every journalist in town had a question they were dying to ask, and they were willing to ask it of anyone they could get to answer. One reporter, microphone in hand, stood on the sidewalk at the courthouse entrance and asked anyone who happened to walk past what they thought about the news that the killer of Calvin Jeffries had been arrested. He stopped a young blue-eyed blonde, so attractive that everyone around stopped to watch. Gazing down at her, he adjusted his tie and asked what she thought should happen to the killer of Judge Jeffries.

“Who?” she asked with a glittering blank smile that for a moment made him forget the question.

“Cut,” he said, shaking his head, as he let the microphone dan-gle down from the cord he held in his hands.

Inside, journalists prowled the hallways, talking to bailiffs, court clerks, anyone they knew who might know something they did not. On the second floor, as I was making my way to the courtroom at the end of the hall where the presiding circuit court judge took care of all the preliminary motions made before a case was set for trial, Harper Bryce caught up with me. Before he could ask me anything, I held up my hands.

“It’s not true, Harper. They did not arrest me; I’m not out on bail; and I don’t think I’m even a suspect.” I looked first one way, then the other. “But off the record, just between you and me, I did it. I swore I’d get even with him, and I did.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re in a strange mood. I wasn’t going to ask you about the Jeffries killing. I know who killed him. I mean, I know who they arrested,” he said, remembering the supposed sensibilities of defense lawyers to the distinction between guilt and accusation.

“You know?” I asked, just as we reached the courtroom.

“You have something in there?” he asked, nodding toward the door. My hand was already on the handle. “Is it going to take long?”

“What I’ve got won’t take more than two or three minutes. Depends on how long I have to wait.”

We went in together and sat in the back row. At the front, Quincy Griswald, who had taken Jeffries’s place as presiding circuit court judge, was trying to control his temper. Griswald had nothing like the brilliance of his predecessor, and the knowledge that he could never dominate a judicial proceeding through the sheer force of his intellect had gnawed at him like a worm that was slowly and painfully eating him alive.

“What’s your name?” he asked peremptorily, a contemptuous sneer on his haggard face.

The young assistant district attorney froze in mid-sentence, hesitated long enough to be sure he meant it, and then, with a slightly bewildered look in her eyes, replied, “Cassandra Loescher, your honor.”

“I ask that,” he remarked, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “because I thought we had better start with something you might actually know.”

She stared at him in a way that made it obvious that this was not the first time she had been subject to his abuse. Dropping on the table in front of her the brief she had just begun to read, she hunched her broad shoulders, planted her feet wide apart, and put her hands on her hips. “I always look forward to the opportunity to learn,” she said with cool detachment.

Narrowing his eyes, Griswald cast a sharp glance at this self-assured show of defiance. “Then learn this,” he said in a voice full of menace. “Once I’ve made a ruling, that’s the end of it. The answer was no when you first filed this last week and it is no again today. There is not going to be a continuance. Trial begins tomorrow morning, as scheduled.”

She recognized her mistake. With a deferential smile she tried to appeal to his better nature. “But, your honor, this is an unusually complicated case, involving three different defendants, and Mrs. Hall, who has been in charge since the first arrest nearly a year ago, is still in the hospital, and—”

Griswald stopped her dead. “Prosecutors are incapacitated all the time. Some of them even practice law that way. Somebody else can take her place.” With a backward flick of his hand, he waved her off, as he looked down at his copy of the docket, ready to call the next case.

She took a deep breath and pulled herself up to her full height.

“As I was saying, your honor, the state renews its motion for a continuance on the ground and for the reason that—”

Griswald bolted forward, jabbing his finger into the air. “How many times do I have to say no? Now get out of here,” he yelled at the top of his voice, “before I have the bailiff throw you out!”

The blood rushed to her face. “Yes, your honor,” she said through tight-clenched teeth. Trembling with rage, she grabbed the brief from the table and threw him a wrathful glance. She raised her chin like a flag of battle. “Thank you, your honor,” she said, and then turned on her heel and marched out of the courtroom.

I leaned toward Harper. “What was it the governor said the other night? The law has only reason to protect it?”

While Harper rolled his eyes, I started toward the counsel table in front. Griswald had just called my case.

“Yes, Mr. Antonelli?” Griswald asked as he jotted a note on a file.

I waited until he looked up and then, with a shrug, tossed my head slightly to the side. “You’re never going to believe this, your honor, but—”

“How much of a continuance do you need?”

“A month. We have a problem with a witness. The state doesn’t oppose the motion,” I reported.

He nodded once. “The case will be continued one month per defense counsel’s motion,” he announced, passing the file over to the clerk.

As soon as we were outside the courtroom, Harper badgered me for an explanation.

“It’s simple. Griswald started out as a deputy district attorney.

There weren’t as many of them then, and they didn’t get paid nearly as much as they are now. So he thinks they’re underworked and overpaid and that none of them are as good as he was. He never misses a chance to make life difficult for them, especially if they’re as young as that one was. Why? Did you think there was some interesting legal distinction between the two cases? You’ve been around as long as I have. Do you think if there had been a distinction like that, Griswald would have known it? He hasn’t read a law book since law school, and he probably didn’t read one then, either,” I grumbled. “He probably cheated his way through.”

I had gotten so caught up in what I was saying about the new presiding circuit court judge, I had forgotten that Harper was going to tell me who had killed the old one.

“Who did they arrest?” I asked, turning so we were face-to-face.

“Who murdered Calvin Jeffries?”

Twelve

_______

You could almost feel the simultaneous movement of a hundred thousand hands reaching for the remote control to change channels. In love with death, Americans could mourn collectively for victims they never knew when schoolchildren were slaughtered by classmates and that event became the central preoccupation of the national news. They would become overnight experts in every dull detail of a trial reported at second hand when someone famous was charged with murder. Calvin Jeffries, however, had been killed by someone no one had ever heard of, a man without a name, one of the anonymous hordes of homeless that, like other unpleasant facts of life, we train ourselves not to see.

The air had gone out of the balloon. For eight long weeks, the police had been under enormous pressure to make an arrest. It had reached the point where editorial writers had started to call for an investigation of the investigation. Quick to anticipate the ephemeral moods of the electorate, politicians lined up for the chance to offer their own assessments of who should be blamed and what should be done. The governor—belatedly, in the eyes of some—suggested it might be wise to bring in the FBI. Inside the investigation itself, where double shifts and weekends had become the normal work schedule, nerves were frayed and tempers were on edge as everyone wondered whose careers would be sac-rificed next as part of the ongoing cost of catching a killer.

Now the killer had been caught, and suddenly it no longer seemed that important. It was written on their faces as they stared straight into the vacant eye of the television camera, describing the arrest. After all the endless stories about possible conspiracies, hidden motives, and rumored revelations about powerful people, stories that seemed to make sense out of the murder of a prominent public official, it turned out not to have had anything to do with money, power, or sex. It was a random act of violence, committed by a poor pathetic human being who would not have known Calvin Jeffries from the proverbial man in the moon. Despite a long recitation of facts and figures purporting to show how incredibly exhaustive the investigation had been, the police were forced to admit that a single anonymous phone call had told them where the killer could be found.

His name, or at least the name he gave them, was Jacob Whittaker. They were using his fingerprints to get a positive identifi-cation. Whatever his real name turned out to be, there was no doubt he was the killer. They had found the knife, and the suspect, after all the proper warnings about his right to a lawyer and his right to remain silent, had made a full confession.

My legs were stretched out over the corner of my desk, one ankle crossed over the other, watching on the small television set I kept on a shelf in my office the murder of Calvin Jeffries become yesterday’s news. When the police finished their statement, the questions asked by reporters were all ordinary, routine; questions about whether blood was found on the knife and what kind of tests were going to be run if there was; questions about the condition of the prisoner and the time and place of his formal arraignment. After each answer, there was a dead silence before someone could think of what to ask next. The same reporters who had struggled into front-row seats, convinced this was only the beginning of one of the biggest stories they would ever have the chance to cover, were sitting back, an ankle crossed over a knee, an arm thrown over a chair, following what was said with a shrug and a yawn, and only occasionally jotting down a note to use in what would undoubtedly be the last front-page mention of a story that was now without interest.

With the droning sound of another question fading into the background, the anchorwoman appeared on screen and, with a cursory five-second summation of what everyone had just seen, turned to the other day’s news. The murder of Calvin Jeffries had now been relegated to the vast obscurity of a homicide finally solved and quickly forgotten.

I flicked the button on the remote control. Helen stuck her head in the doorway to say good night. “Someone named Jennifer called to tell you that it was not too late if you wanted to have dinner.” Helen arched her painted black eyebrows. “Well?”

she asked when I did not say anything. “Are you going to have dinner with her or not?”

“I was waiting for you to tell me.”

Her mouth turned down at the corners. “It’s after five, and after five you can do whatever you like.” She thought of something as she turned to go. “Just make sure you’re here on time in the morning.”

“Thank you,” I said after I heard the outer door shut behind her.

I picked up the phone to call Jennifer, started to dial, and then hung up. I had been fretting about it all day. I still did not know what I wanted to say. One minute I was certain I wanted to see her again; the next minute I was not sure about anything. It had taken me years to get over her. There had been times, especially that first year, when I was certain there was nothing else to live for. Sometimes I think the only thing that kept me alive was the knowledge that I would not have to live forever. It gave me a kind of detachment about myself, and I became, as it were, an observer of my own desperation. Eventually, the pain went away, but what had happened had changed me forever. I understood, and I accepted, what I was, a permanent stranger, someone who passes through other people’s lives without leaving a mark.

I picked up the telephone again, and saw myself back in college at a pay phone, dropping in quarters, deciding as the last coin rattled in that I could not do it. I told myself it was a matter of pride, but knew it was because I was too scared to hear her voice again, afraid of how much it would hurt if I did, especially because I knew what she would say. I did hear her voice, once.

It was just before Christmas, and the snow was falling thick and heavy outside in the freezing night air. She answered the phone, and I listened to her say hello, and then I listened to her voice go quiet, and then I heard her say my name, like a question, and then I hung up. I went back to my dormitory room and lay on the bed and hoped I would fall asleep and never wake up.

I dialed the number and, when she answered, felt for just an instant that same fear of being hurt again.

“Joey?” she asked, when I did not respond.

I stared down at the desk. “Yes,” I said, clearing my throat.

“It’s me. Do you still want to have dinner?”

We met at an obscure little restaurant on the west side of town and spent the next two hours trying to remember who we had been. She asked about law school and about being a lawyer, and I found I was talking about things that happened years apart as if they had taken place at the same time. I asked her about what she had done after she got married and she was talking about her life as a fashion designer before I knew she had once lived in New York. We would start on one thing and come back to another. The history of our lives became a vast circle which could be traced from any place you cared to begin.