Antonelli - 03 - The Judgment (54 page)

The judge exchanged a quick, worried glance with the bailiff, who immediately started to move toward the witness stand.

“It’s all right, Elliott,” I said, trying to calm him as I moved another step forward. The bailiff looked at me, then looked at the judge. Bingham hesitated, then held up his hand to let him know he could stop.

I was not through with Elliott yet. There was something more I had to have.

“How did you do it? How did you get Jacob Whittaker to kill Jeffries? How did you get Chester—Billy—to kill Griswald? How did you talk them into doing it?”

He looked at me like I was a fool. “I gave them something to live for. I gave them something to die for. I gave them something to believe in.”

“What did you give them to believe in, Elliott? What did they believe in so much they were willing to kill for it?”

“They believed that evil really exists, that evil people really exist, and that if you don’t stop them they’ll keep doing evil things.” He paused and a smile crept across his mouth. “They’re insane, remember?”

Our eyes were locked together. I took another step toward him.

We were now not more than an arm’s length apart.

“You admit you ordered them to kill Jeffries and Griswald?”

He laughed. “Ordered them? I didn’t order anyone to do anything. We had a trial, just like you’re having now.” He looked around the courtroom. “Or perhaps more like the court proceeding they held when they had me committed. I made my case the way any good lawyer would: I was clear, logical, and persuasive, just the way you are. And then, at the end of it, they reached a verdict, and after they reached a verdict they passed sentence.

They carried it out. I had nothing to do with it.”

His eyes glittered with self-satisfaction, but he was not finished yet. There was something more he wanted to say, something important.

“So you see,” he began, “I did change the past.”

That is when it happened, that dreadful, pathetic beating together of same-sounding words, worse—far worse—than when I had heard it before.

“I did change the past … last … fast … mast.” The words came in short staccato bursts, faster and faster. He began to choke, and he tore at his collar, pulling it away from his throat as if that was what was blocking his breath. His eyes bulging, he tugged at his collar harder and harder as he staggered off the witness chair, stumbled and started to fall. I caught him with both hands and as I fell back under his weight the bailiff rushed in to help.

He must have dreamed about it, seen it in his sleep, gone over it a thousand times in his mind, planning every motion of his hands, every movement of his feet, until it had all become as instinctive as a dance. I was right there, holding him, trying to help him, and I never saw it happen. Suddenly, I was clutching at nothing and Elliott was standing free, waving the bailiff’s gun.

“Quiet!” he demanded as the courtroom dissolved into chaos.

“Quiet!” he shouted again, but panic had taken over. People who had come to watch were trying to hide, throwing themselves onto the floor between the benches, some on top of others who had gotten there first. Elliott aimed the gun toward the back and fired off a round. Everyone froze.

“Now,” he said, holding the gun steady, “I want everyone to listen to me very carefully.” His voice was surprisingly calm. “Very slowly, and starting with the first row, I want everyone to leave—

everyone sitting out there,” he said, nodding toward the spectators’ benches. “Now,” he said. “Very slowly, just like you were leaving church after a wedding or a funeral. One row at a time.”

They did as he told them, one row at a time, looking back at him, afraid he might change his mind before they got out the door. When they were all gone, he turned to the twelve terrified people in the jury box. Gesturing with the gun, he ordered them into the jury room.

“You go with them,” he said, nodding at both the court clerk and the court reporter.

When they were out of the room, he turned to the bailiff and ordered him to take the defendant back to the jail.

“Go with him, Danny,” I said when he appeared reluctant to leave me alone.

There were only three of us left: Bingham, Loescher, and me—

the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney.

Elliott moved across the front of the courtroom and leaned against the empty jury box, the gun dangling down from his hand.

“Shall we bring the jury back in and have a trial of our own?”

Elliott asked, looking at Loescher. “Or do you think I’ve ade-quately prosecuted the case against Calvin Jeffries and my wife?”

Cassandra Loescher was one of the few who had not panicked when Elliott began brandishing the gun. She had risen straight to her feet and stayed there, glaring at him as if he had offered an insult instead of a threat to her life. She refused to answer, and when he repeated the question her only response was to look at him with even greater contempt.

Her silence made him angry and I tried to get his attention.

“What do you want, Elliott?” I asked, taking a tentative first step in his direction. He warned me away with his eyes.

“You can’t get out of here,” I told him, trying to sound calm and self-assured. “And even if you could, what then? Would you go kill your wife? Is that what this was all about—to get out of the hospital so you could kill her yourself?”

“Kill her?” he exclaimed feverishly. “I don’t want her to die; I want her to live forever. I told you all before,” he cried, as he waved the gun in the air, a dark, menacing look in his eyes. “I came to court to make the record, the record of what happened, the way you do when you want to appeal a case you should never have lost. Kill her? I want her to live knowing that everyone knows what she is and what she did!”

I was too angry, too tired, too worn out by everything that had happened to feel any fear.

“Then why are you doing this? You made your record—you changed the past. Everyone knows. What else is left to do?”

His eyes were on fire. “To finish what I started twelve years ago.”

“What you started … ?”

“When I came to your office that day, when I was going to …”

Then I knew, not just what he was going to do, but what he had always intended to do, and in a strange way it made sense.

“Don’t,” I said reflexively, but I knew there was nothing I could do, nothing that was going to make him change his mind. It was too late. It had always been too late.

He pointed the gun right at me. “It’s time for you both to go,”

he said, glancing up at the judge and then across to the prosecutor.

Loescher turned to go, but Bingham refused to leave. “It’s my courtroom,” he insisted.

Elliott seemed surprised. “Jeffries would already be out the door,”

he remarked. He looked at me to see if I agreed and then looked back at Bingham. Stretching his arm straight, until the gun was as close to my head as it would go, he asked him again to leave.

“I would be very grateful if you would go.” He said it with a kind of respect, the way he must once have thought every judge was supposed to be addressed.

Bingham, still reluctant, looked at me.

“It’s all right,” I assured him. “I’ll be fine. You better go.”

We were alone, and Elliott took a position in front of the bench, just below where Bingham had been sitting. Gesturing with the gun, he had me move to the far end of the counsel table, closest to the empty jury box and farthest from the double doors at the back. We stood like that, facing each other, and for what seemed like forever did not say anything at all. Everything in that quietest courtroom was now so quiet I could have sworn I could hear the thoughts that were passing through Elliott Winston’s mind.

“There’s no reason to do this, Elliott.”

He looked up at the clock. “Four forty-four. We’ll wait one more minute: four forty-five.”

I stood there, helpless, staring at the barrel of the revolver, and from somewhere deep in my subconscious recalled the story Anatoly Chicherin had told me about Dostoyevsky waiting in front of a firing squad, waiting for the order to fire, knowing with absolute certainty it would be the last word he would ever hear.

“Don’t do it,” I begged. “What happened twelve years ago was an accident. It wasn’t a crime.”

For an instant he looked like the Elliott Winston I had known at the beginning, the bright, eager young man with the wife he loved and the children he adored, his whole life in front of him, certain that nothing bad would ever happen.

He shook his head. “It wasn’t a crime?” He smiled. “It wasn’t what I intended.”

I heard the clock strike four forty-five. “Don’t,” I begged again.

The gunshot exploded in my ear, and then there was nothing but silence, silence everywhere. Then I heard it: the sound of feet running, rushing, and the sound of voices, a huge, animal roar, and then the sound of the door at the back of the courtroom behind me crashing open.

I looked up just in time to see Elliott, tranquil and unafraid, smile at me as he lowered the gun which he had just fired into the air.

“Don’t,” I begged again, turning toward the door as the police began their assault. No one heard me, but it would have done no good if they had. The sound of that single gunshot had been the signal for Elliott’s own execution. He lay there, at the base of the bench, his eyes open, blood trickling past that strange smile that was still on his mouth.

Two police officers tried to help me out of the courtroom.

“Elliott Winston didn’t come to my office to kill me,” I told them. “He came to kill himself. This time he let someone else do it for him.”

The two officers exchanged a glance. Neither one of them had any idea what I was talking about.

Thirty-one

_______

Though I had told her all about it before, I told her again, trying to remember everything just the way it had happened.

“Bingham meant it when he said it was his courtroom,” I said as the Porsche moved easily through a wide sweeping turn. Jennifer’s eyes were fastened on the road. Her hair flew back behind her as we picked up speed.

“He had everyone back in court the next morning. ‘Mr. Antonelli,’ he said, ‘do you have any other witnesses you wish to call?’

” ‘No, your honor,’ I replied. ‘The defense rests.’

“Then he looked at Cassandra Loescher. ‘Does the prosecution have any rebuttal witnesses it wishes to call?’

“She shook her head. ‘No, your honor.’

“He turned back to me. ‘Does the defense have any motions it wishes to make at this time?’

” ‘Yes, your honor. The defense moves for a directed verdict of acquittal.’

“Bingham looked at Loescher the way he does when it’s your turn to say something.

” ‘The prosecution does not object,’ she said with a slight nod.

“That was it, all of it. Five minutes and it was over. Bingham thanked the jury and told them that while he did not think any of them would ever forget what had happened, he hoped they would also remember that justice had been done and an innocent man had been set free.”

We raced down a straight stretch of road, the engine screaming, and Jennifer lifted her head and smiled as the wind rushed past us.

I kept on talking. “Sometimes I think about Elliott and the things that happened to him and the things he did.”

Sinking low behind us, the October sun turned the fields and the vineyards and the orchards brown and orange, dark green and black, the last colors of autumn before the winter rains turned everything a damp, dismal gray.

“Sometimes I think about those people out there, the ones who live under the bridges, the ones who don’t have anywhere to call home. Sometimes I wonder if they’re everywhere, all the time, but we only take notice of them at night, because that’s when we’re most vulnerable and most afraid. Sometimes I wonder if there are any more of them out there, ones that Elliott knew in the hospital.”

After a while I stopped talking, and just watched the road in front of us, glancing across every so often at the face that had haunted me all my life, glad we were once again together.

“There was one good thing that came out of this. Danny won’t be homeless anymore. You were right about Howard Flynn, when you said he thought of Danny as his son. Howard took him in, gave him a home.”

It was getting dark, and we had been gone all afternoon. Jennifer was tired. I helped her out of the car and held her by the arm as we walked to the door. The light was on inside.

“Good evening, Mr. Antonelli. Did Jennifer enjoy the drive?”

the nurse asked as I let go of her arm. “See you next week?” she asked with a kindhearted smile.

“Of course,” I replied. I watched them walk down the corridor together, hoping until they disappeared around the corner that Jennifer would look back, remember finally who I was, and call my name.

Outside, in the cool night air, I opened the door to the Porsche and then, before I got in, glanced down the street toward the opposite end of the three-story brick building and remembered the first time I had come here, to the state hospital, to see Elliott Winston.

I drove through the darkness on my way back to Portland. To keep my mind off Jennifer, I turned on the radio and a few minutes later, after the music stopped, I heard the news. Asa Bartram had been killed, stabbed to death outside his office, in the street next to his car.

• Cover
  
• Acknowledgments
  
• One
  
• Two
  
• Three
  
• Four
  
• Five
  
• Six
  
• Seven
  
• Eight
  
• Nine
  
• Ten
  
• Eleven
  
• Twelve
  
• Thirteen
  
• Fourteen
  
• Fifteen
  
• Sixteen
  
• Seventeen
  
• Eighteen
  
• Nineteen
  
• Twenty
  
• Twenty-one
  
• Twenty-two
  
• Twenty-three
  
• Twenty-four
  
• Twenty-five
  
• Twenty-six
  
• Twenty-seven
  
• Twenty-eight
  
• Twenty-nine
  
• Thirty
  
• Thirty-one