Perfect Match (40 page)

She narrows her eyes. “You can have every resource in the world at your finger tips, and still never be able to prepare a child for that. The reality, as you know, is that the rules in court are not written to protect children, but to protect defendants.”

“How fortunate for you, Mrs. Frost,” Quentin says dryly. “Would you say y ou were a dedicated prosecutor?”

She hesitates. “I would say ... I was too dedicated a prosecutor.”

“Would you say you worked hard with the children you put on the stand to t estify?”

“Yes.”

“In light of those twelve convictions, wouldn't you consider the work you di d with those children to be successful?”

“No, I wouldn't,” she bluntly replies.

“But didn't all those perpetrators go to jail?”

“Not long enough.”

“Still, Mrs. Frost,” Quentin presses. “You made the justice system work for those twelve children.”

“You don't understand,” she says, her eyes blazing. “This was my child. As a prosecutor, my responsibility was completely different. I was supposed to take justice as far as I could for each of them, and I did. Anything else that happened outside the bounds of that courtroom was up to the parents, n ot me. If a mother decided to go into hiding to keep an abusive father away from her child-that was her decision to make. If a mother walked away from a verdict and shot an abuser, it had nothing to do with me. But then one d ay I wasn't just the prosecutor anymore. I was the parent. And it was up to me to take every step to make sure my son was safe, no matter what.” It is the moment Quentin's waited for. Finely tuned to her anger, he steps closer to her. “Are you saying that your child is entitled to more justic e than another child?”

“Those kids were my job. Nathaniel is my life.”

Immediately, Fisher Carrington bobs out of his seat. “Your Honor, may we t ake a short break-”

“No,” Quentin and the judge say simultaneously. “That child was your life?” Quentin repeats.

“Yes.”

“Were you willing to exchange your freedom, then, to save Nathaniel?”

“Absolutely.”

“Were you thinking about that when you held the gun up to Father Szyszyns ki's head?”

“Of course I was,” she answers fiercely.

“Were you thinking that the only way to protect your son was to empty those bullets into Father Szyszynski's head-”

“Yes!”

“-and to make sure he never left that courtroom alive?”

“Yes.”

Quentin falls back. “But you told us you weren't thinking at all at that momen t, Mrs. Frost,” he says, and stares at her until she has to turn away. When Fisher stands up to redirect, I am still shaking. How could I, who knew better, let that get away from me? I frantically scan the faces of the jury, but I can't tell a thing; you can never tell a thing. One woman looks near te ars. Another is doing a crossword puzzle in the corner.

“Nina,” Fisher says, “when you were in the courtroom that morning, were y ou thinking that you would be willing to exchange your freedom to save Na thaniel?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“When you were in the courtroom that morning, were you thinking that the o nly way to stop that clock from ticking was to stop Father Szyszynski?”

“Yes.”

He meets my gaze. “When you were in the courtroom that morning, were you planning to kill him?”

“Of course not,” I reply.

“Your Honor,” Fisher announces, “the defense rests.” Quentin lies on the godawful bed in the efficiency suite, wondering why the heat hasn't kicked in, when he's cranked it up to eighty degrees. He yanks the covers over himself, then flips through the channels on the television again. An entertainment program, Wheel of Fortune, and an infomercial for balding men. With a small grin, Quentin touches his shaved head. He gets up and pads to the refrigerator, but the only thing inside it is a six -pack of Pepsi and a rotting mango he cannot recall buying. If he's going to e at dinner, he's going to have to get dinner. With a sigh, he sinks down on the bed to put on his boots and accidentally sits on the remote. The channel switches again, this time to CNN. A woman with a smooth space helmet of red hair is speaking in front of a small graphic of Nina Frost's face. “Testimony in the DA Murder Trial finished this afternoon,” the anc hor says. “Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow morning.” Quentin turns off the TV. He ties his boots and then his gaze falls on the te lephone beside the bed.

After three rings, he starts debating with himself about whether or not to l eave a message. Then suddenly music explodes into his ear, a deafening backf ire of rap. “Yeah?” a voice says, and then the sound is turned down.

“Gideon,” Quentin says. “It's me.”

There is a pause. “Me who?” the boy replies, and it makes Quentin smile; he knows damn well who this is. “If you're looking for my mom, she's not here. Maybe I'll tell her to call you back and then again maybe I'll just forget t o give her the message.”

“Gideon, wait!” Quentin can almost hear the phone, halfway to its cradle, be ing brought back to his son's ear.

“What.”

“I didn't call to talk to Tanya. I called to talk to you.” For a long moment, neither of them speaks. Then Gideon says, “If you called t o talk, you're doing a lousy job of it.”

“You're right.” Quentin rubs his temples. “I just wanted to say I'm sorry. Ab out the whole rehabilitation sentence, all of it. At the time I really believ ed that I was doing what was best for you.” He takes a deep breath. “I had no right to start telling you how to live your life when I voluntarily walked o ut of it years before.” When his son stays silent, Quentin begins to get nerv ous. Did he get disconnected, without knowing it? “Gideon?”

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” he says finally.

“No. I called to see if you wanted to meet me for some pizza.” Quentin toss es the remote control on the bed, watches it bounce. The moment he waits fo r Gideon's response stretches to an eternity.

“Where?” Gideon asks.

Funny thing about a jury: no matter how scattered they seem during testimon y; no matter who falls asleep in the back row and who paints their nails ri ght during your cross-examinations, the minute it's time to get down to bus iness, they suddenly rise to the challenge. The jurors stare at Quentin now , their attention focused on his closing argument. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, "this is a very difficult case for me. Even though I do not know the defendant personally, I would have called her my colleague. But Nina F rost is not on the side of the law anymore. You all saw with your own eyes what she did on the morning of October thirtieth, 2001. She walked into a c ourtroom, put a gun up to an innocent man's head, and she shot him four times.

“The ironic thing is that Nina Frost claims she committed this crime in order to protect her son. Yet as she found out later ... as we all would have foun d out later, had the court system been allowed to work the way it is supposed to work in a civilized society . . . that in killing Father Szyszynski, she did not protect her son at all.” Quentin looks soberly at the jury. “There ar e reasons we have courts-because it's very easy to accuse a man. Courts hold up the facts, so that a rational judgment can be made. But Mrs. Frost acted w ithout facts. Mrs. Frost not only accused this man, she tried him, convicted him, and executed him all by herself on that morning.”

He walks toward the jury box, trailing his hand along the railing. “Mr. Carr ington will tell you that the reason the defendant committed this crime is because she knew the justice system, and she truly believed it would not protect her son. Yes, Nina Frost knew the justice system. But she used it to stack the odds. She knew what her rights would be as a def endant. She knew how to act to make a jury believe she was temporarily ins ane. She knew exactly what she was doing the moment she stood up and shot Father Szyszynski in cold blood.”

Quentin addresses each juror in turn. “To find Mrs. Frost guilty, you must f irst believe that the state of Maine has proved beyond a reasonable doubt th at Father Szyszynski was unlawfully killed.” He spreads his hands. “Well, yo u all saw it happen on videotape. Second, you must believe that the defendan t was the one who killed Father Szyszynski. Again, there's no doubt in this case that this is true. And finally, you must believe that Mrs. Frost killed Father Szyszynski with premeditation. It's a big word, a legal word, but yo u all know what it is.”

He hesitates. “This morning, as you were driving to court, at least one of y ou came upon a four-way intersection with a traffic light that was turning y ellow. You needed to make a decision about whether or not to take your foot off the gas and stop ... or whether you should speed through it. I don't kno w what choice you made; I don't need to. All I need to know-all you need to know-is that the split second when you made the decision to stop or to go wa s premeditation. That's all it takes. And when Mrs. Frost told you yesterday that at the moment she held the gun to Father Szyszynski's head, she was th inking that she needed to keep him from leaving the courtroom alive in order to protect her son-that, too, was premeditation.”

Quentin walks back toward the defense table and points at Nina. “This is not a case about emotions; this is a case about facts. And the facts in this case are that an innocent man is dead, that this woman killed him, and that she b elieved her son deserved special treatment that only she could give.” He turn s toward the jury one last time. “Don't give her any special treatment for br eaking the law.”

“I have two daughters,” Fisher says, standing up beside me. “One's a high s chool junior; the other goes to Dartmouth.” He smiles at the jury. “I'm cra zy about them. I'm sure many of you feel the same about your kids. And that 's the way Nina Frost feels about her son, Nathaniel.“ He puts his hand on my shoulder. ”However, one completely ordinary morning, Nina fo und herself facing a horrible truth no parent ever wants to face: Someone h ad anally raped her little boy. And Nina had to face a second horrible trut h-she knew what a molestation trial would do to her son's fragile emotional balance.”

He walks toward the jury. “How did she know? Because she'd made other paren ts' children go through it. Because she had witnessed, time after time, chi ldren coming to court and dissolving into tears on the witness stand. Becau se she had seen abusers walk free even as these children were trying to fat hom why they had to relive this nightmare all over again in front of a room full of strangers.” Fisher shakes his head. “This was a tragedy. Adding to it is the fact that Father Szyszynski was not the man who had hurt this li ttle boy, after all. But on October thirtieth, the police believed that he was the abuser. The prosecutor's office believed it. Nina Frost believed it . And on that morning, she also believed that she had run out of options. W hat happened in court that morning was not a premeditated, malicious act bu t a desperate one. The woman you saw shooting that man might have looked li ke Nina Frost, might have moved like Nina Frost-but ladies and gentlemen, that woman on the videotape was someone different. Someone not mentally cap able of stopping herself at that moment.”

As Fisher takes another breath to launch into the definition of not guilty by r eason of insanity, I get to my feet. “Excuse me, but I'd like to finish.” He turns around, the wind gone from his sails. “You what?” I wait until he is close enough for me to speak privately. “Fisher, I think I can handle a closing argument.”

“You are not representing yourself!”

“Well, I'm not misrepresenting myself either.” I glance at the judge, and at Quentin Brown, who is absolutely gaping. “May I approach, Your Honor?”

“Oh, by all means, go right ahead,” Judge Neal says. We all go up to the bench, Fisher and Quentin sandwiching me. “Your Honor, I don't believe this is the wisest course of action for my client,” Fisher sa ys.

“Seems to me that's an issue she needs to work on,” Quentin murmurs. The judge rubs his brow. “I think Mrs. Frost knows the risks here better th an other defendants. You may proceed.”

Fisher and I do-si-do for an awkward moment. “It's your funeral,” he mutters , and then he steps around me and sits down. I walk up to the jury, finding my footing again, like a long-ago sailor stepping back on the deck of a clip per. “Hello,” I begin softly. “I think you all know who I am by now. You've certainly heard a lot of explanations for what brought me here. But what you haven't heard, straight out, is the truth.”

I gesture toward Quentin. "I know this, because like Mr. Brown, I was a prose cutor. And truth isn't something that makes its way into a trial very often. You've got the state, tossing facts at you. And the defense, lobbing feelings . Nobody likes the truth because it's subject to personal interpretation, and both Mr. Brown and Mr. Carrington are afraid you might read it the wrong way . But today, I want to tell it to you.

“The truth is, I made a horrible mistake. The truth is, on that morning, I was not the vigilante Mr. Brown wants you to believe I was, and I wasn't a woman having a nervous breakdown, like Mr. Carrington wants you to believe. The truth is I was Nathaniel's mother, and that took precedence over every thing else.”

I walk up to one juror, a young kid wearing a backward baseball cap. “What i f your best friend was being held at gunpoint, and you had a revolver in you r own hand? What would you do?” Turning to an older gentleman, I ask, “What if you came home and found your wife being raped?” I step back. "Where is th e line? We're taught to stand up for ourselves; we're taught to stand up for others we care about. But all of a sudden, there's a new line drawn by the law. You sit back, it says, and let us deal with this. And you know that the law won't even do a very good job-it will traumatize your child, it will se t free a convict in only a few years. In the eyes of this law that's dealing with your problem, what's morally right is considered wrong . . . and what'

s morally wrong, you can get away with."

I level my gaze at the jury. “Maybe I knew that the judicial system would no t work for my son. Maybe I even knew, on some level, that I could convince a jury I looked crazy even though I wasn't. I wish I could tell you for surebut if I've learned anything, it's that we don't know half of what we think we do. And we know ourselves least of all.”