Shatter My Rock (15 page)

“They’re
downsizing,” he tells me, and I know not to ask anything more.

Until
now, I have been able to ignore the elevated conversation taking place behind
us, but suddenly my interest is piqued. There is another prisoner here charged
with murder, and his case has just gone to the jury. I lean back and eavesdrop,
catch a glimpse of my soon-to-be fate. And what I learn speaks more to the
psychological toll of a murder trial than the logistics, the defendant and his
visitor both plagued by agitation.

“I’m
not bringing Ally here anymore,” I think I hear Tim say, the words so final
they catch me. Reluctantly, I tune back in. “It’s too much.”

The
selfish part of me wants to declare myself the ultimate victim, the one robbed
of a brother and a father, a mother and a son, a husband and a daughter—and now
my freedom, which matters little in the grand scheme. But Tim is right. “Tell
her I love her,” I say. “And that I miss her. That I think of her every minute
of every day.”

These
words seem to soften the wall between us. “You can still beat this,” Tim says,
a note of hope creeping into his voice. But I can’t help noticing that he has
shifted from the collective
we
to the singular
you
, an
unmistakable sign that I must now go it alone.

I
smile and nod, blink back the tears that are starting to well.

Tim
checks the clock, but this time instead of wishing it would slow, I imagine he’s
praying for its speedy progression. The sooner he gets away from me the better.

Ricky
has been on my mind lately—in my wakefulness and in my slumber, but especially
in the space between. I remember his crooked little smile, how it pulled to the
left where he’d lost three teeth in a row. I remember the playful way he’d
taken to calling our father “Paw” after Jed Clampett on
The Beverly
Hillbillies,
Ricky’s favorite TV show for most of his short life. I
remember the forlorn look in his eyes when I would rush off to school and he
would stay behind, an education low on the priority list for a child who
wouldn’t survive to make use of it. Back then, the powers that be didn’t
appreciate how the peer interaction may have enriched Ricky’s life in ways we,
his family, could not. But our mother knew this instinctively, and when Ricky
was well enough, she’d bundle him up—overdress him, really—and haul him off to
the baseball field to watch the healthy kids play. In the stands, Ricky would befriend
the players’ younger siblings, who were too small yet for their own turns at
bat.

These
are some of the details that stick with me about my brother, memories I cling
to for fear of negating him.
What was Ricky’s life worth?
I wonder.
What
is mine worth? And Owen’s? Is it length that matters? Or quality? The kind of
person one was? One’s accomplishments? How much one has loved?

By
now I am the last to remember Ricky. When I am gone, he will be too. But I will
live on in Ally, at least for a while. And she in her children, if she should
so choose, the path to immortality carved straight through the womb.

Jenna
has been on my list of approved visitors since day one, but it takes four and a
half months for her to brave the trip to the Genesis County Jail. In that time,
we have not uttered as much as a syllable to each other. But I have wanted to,
and now I can.

“How
are you doing?” she asks with a hesitant smile as she sits, her gaze traveling
from my skunky-looking hair to the pouches under my eyes.

I
smile back with confidence, attempt to put her at ease. “Better than you’d
expect.” I glance around the visitation area, which is now so familiar it seems
like home. “It’s not so bad here.”

“The
drive up was nice, except for the traffic,” she says. She rolls her eyes, and I
can’t help wishing interstate traffic was my biggest concern.

“How’s
work?” I ask. This is a sore subject, since I’ve been fired—justly or not. But
Jenna and I relate to each other through our connection at Hazelton United, the
birthplace of our friendship.

“They
hired a real bitch to take your place,” she tells me. “Straight out of the
Mean
Girls’ Handbook.
”

“That’s
weird.” HR-types tend to be warm and fuzzy, relatively speaking anyway.
“Where’s she from?”

Jenna
shrugs. “Some manufacturing plant. A seafood processor, maybe? I haven’t really
been paying attention.”

I
don’t want to bring this up, but someone must. “I heard you talked to Rudy—and the
State’s attorney.”

She
nods. “I had to.”

“How’d
it go?” I am not so much fishing for information as trying to reassure myself
that the collateral damage I’ve inflicted does indeed know some bounds.

She
picks at her cuticles, thinks a while before responding. “There was nothing I
could do. They already knew about Eric.”

I
search the visitation area for unwelcome ears. “What do you mean?”

“About
Cincinnati,” she says, as if she has a clue. “And the photograph.”

But
not about Owen?
I
think.
They haven’t yet uncovered the truth about him?

“That
wasn’t me.”

“I
know. That’s what I told them.”

“What
else?”

“They
asked a lot about the baby,” she says. “The same questions, a million different
ways.” Already, she sounds exhausted, but I need more.

“Did
Rudy help?” I know from Zoe that her ex has been working with potential witnesses
in Rhode Island, prepping them for interviews and, eventually, to testify at
trial.

“Yeah.
Especially with the stuff about
that night.
”

There
is no doubt that both Jenna and Carson will be called upon to deliver minute-by-minute
accounts of our time aboard
Lucy in the Sky.
“I’m sorry about…all of
this,” I say.

She
waves the apology away. “You didn’t do anything. Don’t be silly.”

We
fall into a spell of silence. Eventually, I say, “Tim moved to Providence.” She
has been so supportive about everything else that I risk trusting her with my
heart. “The house is on the market.”

Her
expression reflects surprise but also something else: a kind of sad knowing.
“Didn’t he tell you?”

I
shake my head. “No. What?”

“It
burned,” she lets me know gently. “Arson.”

“Our
house?” I have managed to prepare for the loss of such a treasured place by way
of the standard sales process, but this is different. If what Jenna says is true,
we will never be able to buy back those happy memories, however slim the chance
of such a thing happening may have been. “Someone burned it?”

She
nods. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“Who
would…do that?” I ask, not expecting an answer.

But
I get one. “They arrested two people, actually: a retired schoolteacher and her
thirty-year-old niece. A bunch of witnesses spotted them fleeing the scene.”

Anyone
who would commit arson in our neighborhood either wants to be caught or has
acted so rashly as to qualify for a defense of temporary insanity. “How burned
is it?” I ask, hoping these women have left my family something to claim, at
least. Then again, maybe Tim has already emptied the house of anything worth a
damn.    

Jenna
frowns. “It looks pretty bad—sort of like a crispy, hollow shell.” She winces.
“Sorry.”

I
have a good idea why these strangers have done this, but still I ask, “Did they
give a motive?”

“Probably
about what you’d expect. There’s some graffiti on the side of the garage that
survived.”

There
is no need for me to inquire further. Without an ounce of imagination, I know
what these women meant to communicate. Something like:
Die, baby killer
—or
a similarly worded equivalent.

I
stare into space, let this turn of events sink in. Then I say, “It’s been cold
outside lately, huh?”

I
have been in jail for eleven months now: summer; fall; winter; spring; and back
around to summer again. But tomorrow is the beginning of the end, the first day
of testimony in my murder trial. Whatever the outcome, I will be moving on from
this place, the odds of my destination split between the Maine Correctional
Center and home, wherever that may be.

I
shuffle in for my final meeting with Zoe and Paul, the purpose of this visit to
polish my story in case I should decide to take the stand. Zoe says the choice
is mine, but I remain hesitant, unsure whether, in the long run, I may do more
harm than good.

“You
ready?” Zoe asks without looking at me, her nose buried in yet another colossal
three-ring binder. She smiles at the papers and shakes her head. “Nineteen
hours ‘til blastoff.”

It
has not occurred to me to ask this before, but suddenly I must know. “Am I your
first murder case?”

She
chuckles. “Actually, yes. But I’ve done five manslaughters. They’re not all
that different.”

“I’ve
got one under my belt,” Paul informs me with a bit too much glee. “A domestic
violence homicide up in Effingham. Guy kicked his wife’s skull in and blamed it
on the dog. Said Fido tripped her down the stairs.”

“So
you lost?”

“He
was guilty.”

“But
you lost?”

“Public
defenders don’t get a choice,” he tells me. “They take what they get. There was
no helping this guy. He wouldn’t accept a plea. And he was
guilty
.”

“That’s
justice, I guess,” I say.

Zoe
steers us back to the task at hand. “Let’s go over your testimony again.”  

And
again,
I think.
And again. And, for good measure, once again.

I
sigh. “All right.”

This
is Paul’s cue to outline what we have, after a lengthy process of elimination,
settled on as our version of events in Owen’s death. And it goes something like
this:

Following
a night of heavy drinking, I awoke between three and four a.m. to the sound of Owen
crying.

So
far, true.

Not
wanting to wake Tim, I took the baby above board for some air.

Also
true.

Owen
and I settled in on the aft deck, where I fed him.

Mostly
true.

This
is where the stories diverge. I am to claim that I likely passed out—although I
do not remember doing so—and rolled onto Owen, inadvertently suffocating him. When
I came to, still in a daze, I failed to notice he wasn’t breathing. On my way
back to the stateroom, I slipped, and he went overboard.

The
alcohol was responsible, primarily. All else was an accident. A tragedy, for
sure, but one that defies blame. And if blame must be assigned, I am guilty of
nothing more than child endangerment. Or perhaps felony neglect. Certainly not
murder. Certainly not the premeditated killing of my own baby. Because why
would I do such a thing anyway? It didn’t make sense. Or so the story went.

“What
about Eric Blair?” I ask, because this is where the prosecution will trip me up.

“Let
us worry about him,” Zoe says. “Okay?”

I
wish it were that easy. “Shouldn’t I…?”

“No,”
she says. “You shouldn’t. That cretin has enough skeletons in his closet to
sink a saint. Any jury in their right mind would discount him at first sight.”

I
wonder if my lawyer is truly this confident or is displaying false bravado for
my sake. Either way, her tough talk puts me tenuously at ease. “Good,” I say,
praying she is right. Because although I don’t know where the prosecution
intends to go with Eric Blair’s testimony, the potential damage could be catastrophic.
Not only could he serve up my motive, but in the process, he could reveal the
truth about Owen’s conception. A truth that, even now, only he and I are privy
to. A fact so disturbing it may be the final straw in my marriage, Tim already
stretched to his limits and beyond.

If
I had been able to sleep the night before my trial, I’m sure I would have had a
nightmare. So the insomnia was a blessing, in some strange way. A blessing that
left me foggy-minded and in the grip of a migraine by the time the jurors filed
into the courtroom.

The
judge in my case is the Honorable Merle Parsons, or so the engraved nameplate
that stares out from the bench proclaims. Charlotte Tupper, the young assistant
attorney general who interviewed me at the state police barracks, is my
prosecutor. Beside her at the prosecution table is her helper-monkey—a rancid,
old deputy State’s attorney with an alligator-skin face and highwater trousers.

My
position at the defense table seems unnecessarily exposed, too much the center
of the battle about to transpire. But Zoe displays no discomfort whatsoever,
her posture as impeccable as any West Point grad’s, her charcoal-gray dress nipped
and tucked in all the right places, her spirit exuding an aura of calm control.
“Relax,” she tells me with a little pat of my hand. “We’re in good shape here.”

I
offer her a weak half-smile and steal a glance over my shoulder. The first day
of trial is crucial, evidenced by the fact that a number of Tim’s relatives
have trekked up from Rhode Island to sit in support of me. The benches behind the
prosecutor overflow with law clerks, reporters, and the morbid curiosity of
strangers.

Part
of me wishes to switch sides, join the quest to punish the guilty party in my
baby’s death. But who would that be? Me? Eric Blair? The farmer who sold Bob
Evans that tainted cantaloupe? Or maybe the God who allowed this whole evil
thing in the first place?

As
the formalities get under way, I pick a volume from the seemingly endless
shelves of law books ringing the courtroom and nail my gaze to the gold
lettering on its spine. Then I concentrate on a low-level hum that emanates
from the bowels of this building—probably a quirk of the ventilation system—until
it washes almost everything else away.

“Ladies
and gentlemen of the jury,” Charlotte Tupper begins, “good morning.” Even my
migraine is not enough to overcome her incisive voice, its cool certainty
poised to demolish me. “This is not an easy case. I will tell you that at the
outset. But it’s an important one. Important because you good people have the
chance to deliver justice for Owen Fowler, an innocent nine-month-old baby who
was heartlessly murdered at the hands of his mother, the defendant, Claire
Fowler.”

In
my peripheral vision, I notice the prosecutor pointing my way. But I doubt the
jurors need such visual direction. Already, I feel their eyes on me.

“As
this case progresses, you will hear from witnesses who will explain what
happened to baby Owen in the early morning hours of May 28, 2011. And what
those witnesses will tell you is this: Baby Owen was alive until approximately
three-thirty a.m., at which time he was asphyxiated. Suffocated, the State will
prove, by the defendant, with a simple deck pillow aboard a yacht belonging to the
defendant’s coworker, Ms. Jenna Dearborn.”

The
mention of the yacht is designed to distance me from the jurors, squelch any
sympathy they may feel, paint me as an elitist. And on some level, I am sure it
will succeed.

“After
baby Owen was suffocated, he was dumped into the ocean by the defendant, who
concocted an incredulous slip-and-fall story before alerting her husband, Tim
Fowler, to the baby’s fate. It was the defendant’s frantic husband who dialed
911, but it was too late. Claire Fowler already knew this, however, because baby
Owen had been dead a minimum of three hours, the medical examiner will testify,
before the 911 call was even placed.” The prosecutor points at me. “And
she
killed him.”

The
slightest hint of an eye roll hits Zoe’s face, but she swiftly controls it. In
short order, she will get a crack at the jury too.

Ms.
Tupper continues, “The difficulty with this case is not the evidence, ladies
and gentlemen; the State has ample proof, as you will see, to show beyond a reasonable
doubt that Claire Fowler murdered baby Owen. In fact, the defendant admits the
infant was in her arms when he went overboard—only she wants you to swallow the
same lie she told police on the morning of May 28th: that baby Owen
accidentally drowned. The facts of the case are in direct contradiction to this
story, however. According to the medical examiner’s report, the cause of baby Owen’s
death was asphyxiation
unrelated to
drowning. And his manner of death
was
homicide.
” She pauses, shakes her head and repeats, “
The manner
of baby Owen’s death was homicide.
”

Someone
behind me sighs, drawing a frown from Judge Parsons.

“And
what possible motive could the defendant have for committing such a heinous
crime, you ask? The answer is twofold and as old as time itself: lust and
greed. Claire Fowler was having an illicit affair, a dalliance over which she
was willing to toss aside her marriage and abandon her children. An affair that
would have cost her handsomely in court had she been ordered to pay for baby
Owen’s support and medical care—not to mention the alimony that, in all
likelihood, would have been awarded to her stay-at-home husband, Tim. The
brutal truth here is that, in the defendant’s estimation, baby Owen was simply too
expensive. And thus he had to go.

“Like
I said, this is a difficult case—not to prove, but to accept. Claire Fowler is
a wife and mother, to the untrained eye an upstanding citizen, some would even
say a role model, yet she has killed her baby in cold blood. And as hard as
these facts are to accept, they are nonetheless the truth of this case and the
reason you must find her guilty of murder in the death of baby Owen. I trust
that, when all of the evidence is in, you will do just that. Thank you.”

As
soon as Judge Parsons gives her the okay, Zoe pops out of her chair as if it’s
spring-loaded, her three-inch heels no match for her eagerness. She stops directly
in front of me and, not unlike Charlotte Tupper, begins by saying, “Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen of the jury.”

I
cut my eyes to the jury box for the first time but don’t allow my gaze to
settle. Instead, I snap a mental impression, a rough-hewn overview. An image
that turns out looking like a
Where’s Waldo?
search, populated by vastly
more than twelve faces that each resemble the haunting subject of Edvard
Munch’s painting,
The Scream
. 

“I’d
like to start today by agreeing with something my colleague, Ms. Tupper, just
told you: This is a difficult case. It’s a difficult case for my client, Mrs.
Fowler, who has suffered the most painful loss imaginable—the death of a child.
It’s a difficult case for my client’s husband and twelve-year-old daughter, who
have not only lost one family member but stand to lose another right in this
courtroom. It’s a difficult case for you, the members of the jury, who are
being asked to send an innocent woman to prison on the basis of faulty evidence
and ill-considered, erroneous conclusions.” 

For
no discernible reason other than my still-untreated migraine, a wave of nausea
surges through my gut, threatens to turn day one of my trial into an explosive
event. I shut my eyes, breathe in though my nose and out through my mouth.
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

“For
every so-called fact the State intends to present in this case, one of our
witnesses will testify to an equally legitimate—and innocent—explanation of
things. Explanations that, when you hear them, you will recognize as the truth.
Because Claire Fowler is not guilty of this crime; she
did
not—
would
not—kill her precious baby boy. And the only tragedy greater than what has
already transpired here would be for you fine folks to send this innocent
mother to prison. I implore you not to do that. I implore you to listen
carefully to the evidence and then conclude, as I’m sure you will, that there are
two sides to every coin—two sides that, in this case, add up to more than a sufficient
amount of reasonable doubt. Why does this doubt exist? The answer is simple:
Claire Fowler is not guilty. Please find her as such.” Zoe shoots the jury a
snappy little nod and a smile. “Thank you.”

If
my count is correct, my lawyer employed the word
innocent
three times,
and the phrase
not guilty
twice, in her succinct opening statement. I
can only pray that this repetition will hold sway with the jurors, bubble up in
their minds at the crucial time, slip the key into the lock of my cell and set
me free.         

Zoe
settles back in beside me as Ms. Tupper prepares to call her first witness,
Carson Dearborn. Such a start to the State’s lineup leaves me to assume it will
proceed against me in chronological order.

Tim
and Ally are not permitted in the courtroom until closing arguments, as they
are witnesses in my case. The same goes for Jenna. But when court recesses for
lunch, I catch sight of all three of them in the hallway as the courtroom doors
drift closed behind one of the prosecution’s law clerks.

Distraught,
I
think.
Empty.
This is how my husband and daughter appear. Even Jenna’s
countenance has turned uneasy. I form my lips into a smile, try to meet Ally’s
eyes for a moment before the door clamps shut. Too late.