Vanished (23 page)

“May I remind you, ladies,” he barked down at them, “this is not a social event, or an amusing matter. Now,” he looked over the rest of them, “does anyone here have a health problem that would hinder them from being sequestered?” The elderly black woman held up a hand, and Morrison looked down at her with a warm smile. “Yes? Your name please, ma'am?”

“Ruby Freeman.”

“Yes, Mrs. Freeman?”

“It's my legs. I got terrible arthritis. It hurts me all the time.” She looked up at him sadly.

“I can see that.” He nodded sympathetically.

“Some nights, I can't hardly move. And my daughter … she takes care of me. … I help watch her baby while she works.” The woman started to cry as she said it …”If I don't go home to her …she can't go to work … we won't eat …her husband was killed at the factory where he worked …” The saga of despair seemed to go on forever.

“We understand. Perhaps your daughter could find someone else to help her for a short time. But Mrs. Freeman, do you feel you might be in too much pain to do the trial justice?”

“I think so, Your Honor. You don't know what a terrible suffering arthritis is until you have it. I'm eighty-two years old, and I've had it for twenty years, and it's almost killed me.”

“I'm very sorry to hear that. And you may be excused. Thank you for coming here today,” he said courteously. No one else raised their hand, so he continued. But the first juror was so nervous, she asked to be excused too. She said she had gallstones and her English wasn't so good, and her husband was very sick, and he needed her. She and her husband were citizens, but they were both German. And before she could tell him any more, Judge Morrison excused her. The Chinese girl with the braids spoke no English at all, and she was excused too. And the two young girls giggled through most of it, and the judge admonished them again. But then Bill Palmer stood up and began questioning the jurors, and after him Tom, and very quickly, the jurors began falling by the wayside.

The two middle-aged men were both businessmen and they stayed. Both were married and had grandchildren of roughly the same age as Teddy. The man with only one leg said he was forty-two, had lost his leg in the Great War, and he sold insurance now for Travelers Insurance. The young black man worked for the post office in the day, and played trombone at Small's Paradise at night, and said he didn't have time to get married, and everyone laughed. And the two young girls were excused because the judge said they couldn't behave. Both were twenty-two, neither one was married and they seemed to think it was a game, and their removal served as a warning to the others. The middle-aged woman who kept staring at Malcolm and Marielle was a secretary and had never been married either. She lived in Queens, and it was impossible to read if she was sympathetic to Charles or not. All she could seem to do was stare at the Pattersons, and once the judge had to remind her to keep her attention on the proceedings. As a result, the defense excused her in the end, as well as the two men who'd come after her. But both sides kept the two alternate women. Which left them eight seats to fill, and it took the next four days to fill them. And in the end, it was a very interestingly mixed jury. The two middle-aged men with young grandchildren were still on, although Marielle had been sure that Tom would want to get rid of them, because they might be too sympathetic to the prosecution. It had become fascinating to second-guess the attorneys. And had it been a trial about anything else, it might actually have intrigued her. Both the veteran with one leg, and the young black musician were kept on. And the last man was of Chinese origin and a professor of economics at Columbia University. The rest of the jurors, as well as the two alternates, were all women.

The youngest of them was older than Marielle, and had three children of her own, but all of them were much older than Teddy. There was a woman who had been a nun for thirty years and had recently relinquished her vows to come home and take care of her dying mother. And when her mother had died, she had decided not to go back to the convent again, but she was not married. There were two women who were friends and were on the same jury by coincidence, both were schoolteachers in the same school, and neither was married, and then there were three women who seemed very plain, were married, had no children at all, and were all either secretaries or employees of large corporations. One had worked for an attorney for a brief time, but she said she had no special knowledge of the law, and neither attorney objected. It was, for all intents and purposes, a jury of Charles's peers, and a group of supposedly normal, decent, fair people.

It was Friday, just before noon by then, and the judge ordered the jury to go home, tie up their affairs, and enjoy their last weekend, because starting on Monday they would be sequestered. He ordered them not to read any newspaper stories about the case, or listen to the radio over the weekend.

He recessed the court then until Monday morning, and Marielle was surprised by how exhausted she was, just by the process of five days of jury selection. It had seemed endless, listening to people's tales and watching the lawyers decide to bounce or keep them. As she and Malcolm stood up, Charles was led away to spend another weekend in jail, and Tom Armour walked past her with no sign of recognition.

The FBI men took them home, and Bill Palmer came to see Malcolm that afternoon. They spent a long time in the library, but they never included Marielle, and she had coffee in the living room with John Taylor. There was no news at his end, but at least it was a relief to talk to someone sympathetic after the difficult week it had been. Every time Marielle had moved an inch out of the courtroom, Bea Ritter had pounced on her and begged her to see her. She called later that afternoon, and Marielle didn't take the call. She was too drained to deal with her or listen to her pleas on Charles's behalf. And Marielle did not want to help her.

“She's quite a girl,” Taylor remarked. “She must be crazy about him.”

“Some people feel that way about him.” Marielle smiled. She had no secrets from this man. “I did once. But then again, I was eighteen then.”

“And now?” John Taylor looked worried, but not about the case, as Marielle smiled.

“I'm a lot smarter now.” But that didn't mean she wished the death penalty on him either, if he didn't deserve it. She was still having a hard time with that, and the FBI had been able to shed no new light on the case. There had been a sighting in Connecticut earlier that week, a little boy who supposedly looked just like Teddy. But like all the other leads they had had, when it was checked out, it turned out to be bogus.

“You look tired.” Taylor spoke softly as she poured him a second cup of coffee.

“It's been a rough week.”

“Not nearly as rough as next week's going to be, and the week after.” He knew what was coming, he knew the people involved. The U.S. Attorney was a tough son of a bitch and he wanted to win this case. He knew the whole world was watching, even FDR, and he wasn't going to let the defense win, no matter what it cost him. And Armour was tough too, but in a cleaner, crisper way, he went right for the gut, and then he destroyed you. And the kinds of things they were going to drag up and remind her of, weren't going to be pretty. “Are you ready for it?” He worried about her, as resilient as she was, she was frail too, and he hated to see her go through that kind of pain. He remembered what it had been like when she told him about Andre. But she was holding up fairly well, considering the fact that she had gone three months without Teddy. “Whatever happens,' he tried to warn her now, “don't let them frighten you …don't let them make you feel it's your fault.” He knew that was the ghost that haunted her most, and had for years. “You know it isn't.” He tried to reassure her.

“I wish Malcolm felt that way too. He still blames me for everything. For bringing Charles back in our lives, and costing us Teddy.”

“You didn't want that any more than he did.” What a fool the man was, and he didn't like him any better when he swept through the hall a little while later with Bill Palmer. John was talking to one of his men and Malcolm snapped his fingers at him like a dog, which didn't sit well with John Taylor.

“The U.S. Attorney is going to need some help from you, Mr. Taylor,” he said. He had very little respect for him. He certainly hadn't been very effective in finding Teddy. “We need some information.”

“About Delauney?” Palmer nodded.

“Why don't we go talk somewhere?” the attorney suggested, but when they did, Taylor didn't like what he heard. It was smear campaign stuff, ugly business about the past that had nothing to do with Teddy, and Taylor objected. The attorney wanted him to help dig up facts about Marielle and Charles that he knew would be painful to her.

“What does that have to do with this?”

“It's character stuff for chrissake, man. Don't get prissy on me now. We're talking about winning.”

“Winning what? The conviction of an innocent man, or actually nailing the guy who did it? If he's guilty, you don't need this kind of shit, Palmer.”

“If you don't get it for me, someone else will.”

“Is that what this case is about now? Get him at all costs? And what about her? What are you going to do to her with this?” It had to do with Andre's death in Geneva and her time in the sanatorium afterward and Taylor knew, as Palmer did, that if Charles was guilty, they didn't need it.

“Mrs. Patterson is not my problem, Taylor. And her own husband wants it. Look, if it's no good to us anyway, we won't use it.”

“How nice,” Taylor said sarcastically, thinking to himself that he liked Tom Armour's tactics better. He was a lot cleaner. And he couldn't believe that Patterson was willing to sacrifice her just to nail Delauney. But Malcolm was convinced Delauney had kidnapped and killed his son, and he was willing to do anything to get Charles convicted. Maybe in some ways, Taylor told himself as he started making the calls, you couldn't blame him. At least if he got the information himself, he could figure out Palmer's next move and he could warn her what was coming. But what he didn't know was that Malcolm was making calls too, and he was going after the big stuff.

The weekend passed too quickly for her. And on Monday morning, they were back in court, and the trial began in earnest.

The following week, the opening statements seemed
very dry, compared to their friendlier remarks previously to the jury. But some of the ugly things the two attorneys said were also very effective.

In his opening statement, the U.S. Attorney assured the jury and the courtroom at large that what they were dealing with here was very certainly a kidnapper, maybe even a baby killer, a man who had assaulted women in the past, killed men without batting an eye, a liar, a Communist, and a threat to all Americans. He told them that little Teddy Patterson had been torn from his parents' home in the middle of the night, in the dark, and the people who cared for him had been chloroformed and bound and gagged and might easily have been killed as well, and the child had disappeared without a trace, never to be seen again, and was probably dead, buried somewhere in a ditch, in a field, but for those who loved him, gone forever.

Marielle clutched her chair as she listened to the words, and he seemed to drone on for hours about what an evil man Charles had always been, what a sweet man Teddy would have become, and how we had all been robbed because this one child had died, and for nothing. And if it was true, if he was never to return, then Marielle had to agree with him. But it was still so painful to believe him gone for a lifetime.

Tom Armour's statement to them was only slightly more reassuring. He told them that Charles Delauney was a decent, honest, in some ways deeply troubled man, who had lost his own son nine years before, in fact his unborn daughter too, his entire family, and knowing how great the pain of that had been, he would never have hurt any child, or taken any man's children from him. He had fought honestly in the Great War and in the fight in Spain since then. He was no Communist. He was a man who believed in freedom. Educated, intelligent, decent, yet heartbroken by the shattering of his youthful dreams, he was admittedly misguided in some of his behavior, or even his words, but this was not a man who could kidnap anyone's son. And the defense was going to prove that he hadn't. Furthermore, he reminded everyone, Mr. Delauney was on trial for kidnapping here, and not for murder. And if the jurors listened to the evidence carefully, he was sure they would acquit him. As he spoke to them, Tom Armour walked slowly before the jury, looking each one in the eye, speaking directly to them, not in a condescending way, but as equals, as friends, making sure they understood and believed him. He was masterful at what he did, and it was fascinating to watch him. He also explained to them that the U.S. Attorney would be presenting his case first, from beginning to end, and Tom would be cross-examining his witnesses, of course, but he would not present his case until the prosecution had completed theirs. And he reminded them again that it was up to the prosecution to
prove,
beyond a reasonable doubt, that Charles Delauney had kidnapped the Patterson boy, and if the prosecution could not convince them of that, whether they liked Charles or not as a man, they had to acquit him. But Tom assured them that by the time he finished his case, they would understand that he had been wronged by these charges.