Temporary Sanity (21 page)

Even a defendant with no priors runs a risk when he testifies. The stakes are highest when the crime charged is a violent one. If the accused is angry-and almost all of them are-then the prosecutor need only get under his skin, provoke an outburst. One flicker of rage from the defendant during trial and the Commonwealth is one giant step closer to a conviction.

In Buck Hammond’s case, this is my greatest fear.

It’s not that Buck is an angry man. He’s not. His manner is calm, resigned. He rarely speaks unless asked a question. Even then, he pauses and thinks-often for an unnaturally long time-before he answers. When he does, his voice is always the same, low and steady.

I’ve spent dozens of difficult, tedious hours with Buck during the past six weeks. I’ve asked him questions he couldn’t answer, a few that made his eyes fill. But I’ve never seen a trace of anger in him. Not even when he talks about Billy. And that, more than anything, is what worries me.

I’m afraid Buck has buried his rage, pushed it so deep into himself that no one-not even he-can see it. I’m worried that the stress of testifying, speaking publicly about all that happened to Billy, will be more than Buck can bear. I’m afraid that his fury has been pent up too long, that once it’s tapped it will boil over into the courtroom.

I’m scared as hell that Buck Hammond will erupt in the witness box.

Harry’s not worried about buried rage, though. He’s worried about Stanley.

“You can’t let him get to you,” Harry says as I join them. He and Buck are seated at an old, stained card table in the middle of a small meeting room. They both look comfortable, relaxed.

“Who? The little guy?” Buck arches his eyebrows. He’s surprised to learn he should worry about the little guy.

Harry laughs. “Yeah. The little guy-the one with the big head and the mouth to match.”

Buck looks up to see if I share Harry’s concern. I nod silently as I hang my parka next to Harry’s on the coatrack.

“Okay.” Buck shrugs. “So I won’t let him get to me.”

Harry shakes his head. “It’s not that simple. Stanley gets to everybody. Even people who aren’t on the hot seat.” Now it’s Harry’s turn to look my way. He wants backup.

I cross the small space between us and nod again.

Four metal folding chairs surround their rickety table. I wipe a layer of dust from one of the remaining two, then settle on it. “Harry’s right, Buck. Stanley would like nothing better than for you to explode in front of the jury. He’ll do everything he can to make that happen.”

“Explode?” Buck’s expression suggests he can’t fathom such an event.

“Yes-explode.”

I lean back in my chair and stare at Buck. He needs to take this to heart. “If you get mad, even for an instant, then Stanley has everything he needs for closing argument. You killed Monteros, Stanley will tell the jury, because you’re out of control.”

Buck shakes his head, but I keep talking. “You could kill again, Stanley will argue. You could take the law into your own hands yet again. You could become a vigilante. The jurors will worry about that.”

Buck’s eyes move from me to Harry, then down at his hands on the table. He’s silent.

“Look,” Harry says, “the bottom line is this: Stick to the script.”

Buck looks up again. “The script?”

I’m glad he asked-so I don’t have to.

“That’s right, the cross-examination script.”

Buck turns to me and I turn to Harry. I didn’t know we had a cross-examination script. I wonder who wrote it.

Harry stays focused on Buck. “If Stanley’s question calls for a yes or no answer, give him one. And give it loud and clear. If we don’t like the way it sounds-the way Stanley phrased the particular question-we’ll clean it up on redirect.”

Harry points his pen at me when he says this, as if it’s certain that I’ll clean up whatever mess Stanley makes.

“But if Stanley gives you room to talk”-the pen moves from me to Buck-“you only know three topics.”

“Three?” Buck looks as if this news makes him smarter than he thought he was.

“That’s right,” Harry says. “You know all about Billy before June nineteenth: the funny kid he was; how he was growing like a weed; the names of his best friends; how he loved fishing and the Red Sox.”

Buck closes his eyes, sways from side to side on his folding chair.

“You know what happened to Billy on June nineteenth.”

Buck stops swaying, but his eyes stay closed.

“And you know you had to stop Monteros-for Billy.”

Buck opens his eyes and nods, but says nothing.

“If Stanley tries to get you to talk about anything else-I don’t care what the hell it is-you steer the discussion right back to the script. Three topics. That’s it. You know nothing about anything else.”

Buck nods again, but Harry isn’t satisfied. “In particular,” he says, “you know nothing-less than nothing-about the insanity defense.”

For a few moments all three of us are quiet. Finally, Buck breaks the silence. “I know it’s a crock.”

“Goddammit!” Harry slams both fists on the table and an overloaded ashtray jumps into the air, three butts slipping over its sides. Its dark green beveled glass is chipped in about a half dozen places. This table has been slammed before.

Harry leans close enough to Buck to whisper, but he’s almost shouting. “Do you think maybe that enlightened opinion of yours is something you shouldn’t mention in the courtroom?”

Buck rubs his eyes, then leans forward on his elbows toward both of us. “I’m sorry. Really. I know you’re trying to do your job. And I’m grateful. It’s just…”

He swallows hard, drops his head and stares at the table. “I won’t say that tomorrow. I swear.”

“If you do, you’ll regret it. Your wife needs you. Remember that.” Harry waits until Buck looks up at him, then leans forward and lowers his voice. “Maybe-just maybe-these jurors want to let you walk. And maybe they see the temporary insanity defense as the only way they can do that. Take it away from them, pal, and you might throw out your only shot.”

Unlike me, Harry has always thought the temporary insanity plea was Buck’s best bet. True jury nullification, he says, is rare. And he’s right. For our jurors to return an outright acquittal, they’ll have to be willing to say that the law in this particular case is just plain wrong.

Rare is the juror willing to adopt that notion. Rarer yet is the juror willing to say so. The odds of an entire panel taking that route are slim. Even I have to admit that.

If the jurors accept the temporary insanity plea, on the other hand, they can have it both ways. They can send Buck home, spare him an eternity at Walpole, even though they acknowledge he committed the crime. They know he’s not innocent, but they can find him not guilty-the law allows that.

There is an important distinction between the word
innocent
and the phrase
not guilty. Innocent
means they’ve got the wrong guy; the accused didn’t do it.
Not guilty
is broader than that. It may mean the accused did it but has a legally recognizable excuse. Despite the media’s insistence to the contrary, there is no such verdict as
innocent by reason of insanity. Not guilty
is as good as it gets.

“I understand,” Buck says, dropping his hands to his sides.

“Honest to God. I do.” He leans back in his chair, looks exhausted.

“Are we finished?”

“No,” Harry says, “but almost. There’s one more thing I want to talk about.”

“What’s that?” Buck looks as if he can’t believe there’s a topic we haven’t covered.

“Your hunting rifle,” Harry says.

Buck nods. “The rifle…”

Harry jumps up from his chair, both hands held out toward Buck to silence him. “I said
I
want to talk about it.”

Buck looks surprised. I’m not. I know exactly what Harry’s doing.

“I want to tell you about a client of mine,” Harry says.

Buck turns to me, question marks in his eyes.

“Listen,” I tell him. “This is important.”

And it is. There are probably a hundred reasons why I wanted Harry here tonight, a hundred points Harry knows how to cover that I don’t. This one, by far, is the most important.

“My client,” Harry says, walking toward the wall, “is a two-bit hood. He’s got a record his mother isn’t proud of, but it’s all pretty low-level stuff.”

Harry turns and pauses to make sure Buck’s listening. He is.

“Then one night he shoots a guy-kills him. Says it was self-defense. Swears it was. The guy came out of nowhere, he says, with a knife. Mad as hell about a woman. Tried to slit my client’s throat.”

Harry walks slowly toward our table again, hands thrust into his pants pockets. Buck watches, his expression blank.

“The Commonwealth-in the person of Attorney Geraldine Schilling-doesn’t buy it. My client’s no stranger to the system, don’t forget. She doesn’t buy much of what he says. So she charges him with first-degree. Premeditated.

“The arresting officers take him to the station and book him, then lead him to the interview room. The cop asking the questions wants to know about the handgun, where it came from.

“What my guy should do is keep quiet. He shouldn’t say a word until I get there. But he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He talks. He tells them he had the gun in his pocket, in the inside pocket of his jacket.”

Harry pulls his chair out from the table and flips it backward before he sits.

“The next question the cop asks is important. Everybody in the room-except my guy-knows how important it is.”

Buck shifts in his seat and looks my way for a moment before turning back to Harry. He’s wondering what any of this has to do with him, I’m sure.

“The question the cop asks is:
Do you always carry the handgun? Or did you just happen to have it with you on that particular night?

“Remember,” Harry says, “I know this guy. He probably isn’t a murderer, but he’s a hell of a good liar. He thinks it over. He decides the cops-not to mention the judge and jury-probably don’t like guys who carry guns. Especially guys who aren’t licensed. So he tells them he almost never carries it. It was a fluke. He just happened to have it in his jacket pocket that night.”

Buck shrugs. “So?”

“So,” Harry says, “the Commonwealth’s case just got a hell of a lot easier. My two-bit hood just handed them premeditation.”

Buck’s gaze lingers a moment on Harry, then moves to me. He’s still, silent.

“So,” Harry continues, “I thought you might find that interesting.”

Buck’s eyes leave mine and return to Harry. He nods, slowly. He gets it.

“On June twenty-first, where did the hunting rifle come from? Where did you get it?”

Buck shakes his head. “Do you think…?”

“I don’t think anything.” Harry leans over the seat back, his eyes holding Buck’s. “I’m asking a question.”

For a moment, no one speaks. The room is still.

“From my rack,” Buck says. “I have a rack in the truck. I keep it there.” He leans back on two legs of the chair. “Always.”

Harry stands and bangs on the metal door. “You’re ready,” he says. “Get out of here. Go to sleep. You need to be clearheaded tomorrow.”

The guard appears instantly and ushers Buck out the door, leaving it open for Harry and me.

I lean in the doorway and watch them walk down the brightly lit corridor while Harry packs up his old schoolbag. The guard’s head is turned upward toward Buck, the two of them exchanging comments as if they’re buddies, on their way to a ball game, maybe.

Harry and I have known from the beginning that Buck should testify. In this particular case, it’s critical that the jury hear from him. If he had opted to keep quiet, we would have done our level best to change his mind. But that wasn’t necessary. From day one, Buck insisted he would take the stand, insisted he would tell the jurors what happened that morning, from where he stood in the shadow of the airport hangar. And he never wavered from that decision, never needed a push from us.

I’m glad. Glad it’s Buck’s decision. Glad he’s so sure about it. It’s Buck, after all, who will live with the outcome.

It’s almost ten o’clock by the time Harry and I reach Cape Cod Hospital. Neither one of us has had dinner, and we’re both soaking wet. Snow melts on our hair and eyelashes and trickles like little rivers down our faces as soon as we enter the building. We stomp our feet and bang our briefcases on the inside mat, hoping to leave at least some of the slush and snow in the lobby.

Two security guards eye us from the front desk, then exchange wary glances. It’s plain from their expressions that they don’t like what they see. And I don’t blame them.

Harry looks like an unusually well-fed refugee. Shin-high work boots and an old tan coat hide his suit. A day’s worth of salt-and-pepper stubble covers his cheeks and chin, and dark half-moons underline his bloodshot eyes. He’s either a man on a mission or he’s a nut.

I don’t need a mirror to tell me I look every bit as bedraggled as Harry does. Even my soul is tired.

One of the uniformed guards listens to Harry tell our story and checks both our IDs. The other one rides the elevator with us to the third floor, clutching a two-way radio. He faces his reflection in the elevator doors throughout the ride. He doesn’t look at us, doesn’t speak.

Geraldine sits in the small waiting area outside the intensive care unit, writing in a notepad. It’s a rare sight, Geraldine in a chair. She looks no different now than she did at nine o’clock this morning. Her dark gray suit and starched white blouse are unwrinkled. Her black spiked heels and smoky nylons are flawless, relentless snowstorm or not. And every blond hair is in place. I don’t know how she does it.

She stops writing as we approach, removes her glasses. Her arched eyebrows say she wasn’t expecting company. “Good of you to drop in,” she tells us. “But His Honor isn’t receiving guests at the moment.”