A Death in Canaan (25 page)

“Did you listen to the questioning of Peter Reilly by Trooper Mulhern?” Catherine Roraback asked.

“Yes, I did,” Shay said.

“Did you make any comments regarding what should or should not be in that statement?” she asked.

“I took Trooper Mulhern aside and I told him what points should be in the statement,” Lieutenant Shay said. He said he knew that the evening questioning had been recorded.

“Have you listened to that recording since that time?” Miss Roraback asked.

“Yes I have,” he said.

“Lieutenant Shay, did you at any time alter the tapes?” she asked.

“No, ma'am,” he said.

Again Catherine Roraback asked that the evening tapes be played in court. “Is it important that we hear them?” Judge Armentano asked wearily, sounding as if he hoped she'd say no, not really. But Miss Roraback said, emphatically, that it was important, and she talked of “the flavor, the background, the atmosphere” of the questioning that she wanted made known.

Mr. Bianchi objected vigorously. “The best evidence is the testimony of the people who were there and not reliance on an electronic gadget,” he insisted. The judge thought about it. “What harm does it do to hear the tapes?” he mused aloud, not seeming to expect an answer, and he said then that he would hear the tapes in a private room at police headquarters, with the accused and counsel present, but with the public and press not invited. John Bianchi looked slightly mollified, and the rest of us looked disappointed.

After the decision to play the tapes, there were more bits and pieces of testimony. Altogether, there was a fragmentary, piecemeal quality about the hearing that Joe O'Brien, who had covered court cases for years, said wasn't at all unusual for this kind of thing. Mickey and Marion Madow testified, each telling what they'd said and done the night Barbara died, how they'd seen Peter and waited for him. Marion wore her best coat, a curly chinchilla, and when she stepped outside the courthouse into the frosty sunshine, carrying a book and a newspaper and a shoulder bag, she looked very chic and confident. Somebody said she must be Peter's lawyer.

Barbara's cousin June looked distraught and wan, too thin in her navy blue suit with pink piping around the collar. She testified that after the various calls during the day, she'd finally called Mrs. Kruse that Saturday night, around 8:30, thinking Peter might have gone next door. Sometime after that, June said, she'd called the barracks again, and when she asked whether Peter needed a lawyer, the trooper had said, “It wouldn't be a bad idea.” Around 2
A.M
. Sunday, someone from the barracks called her and told her Peter was under arrest and was getting a public defender.

In the marble hall outside the courtroom, I introduced myself to Lieutenant Shay. “I can't comment on the case,” he said, “but I'm very impressed with Catherine Roraback.” I told him about the piece I was doing and that I was interested in what the people in the community were doing for Peter. “Believe it or not, I think it's a nice gesture on the part of his friends,” Lieutenant Shay said. I said I believed him.

Backstage, I asked to see Judge Armentano. He was leaning against a desk, smoking a cigar. I said I'd like to come back and hear the tapes on Monday. He said I couldn't, but he said it pleasantly, and we chatted for a few minutes. I told him what I was writing, and he said he thought there were more interesting cases to write about. He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the courtroom. “A first offender, it's usually just a family thing,” he said casually. I was appalled, and later on I described the incident to Don Jackson, a former
Life
writer who had written a book called
Judges
. Don didn't seem at all surprised. “The presumption of innocence is a charade,” he said. “Most judges presume guilt.”

Across the street at police headquarters, I tried to talk my way into the polygraph room, but Sergeant Kelly said the room was in use. I said I would come back tomorrow, but he said the room would be in use then, too. The day after that? I asked, and Sergeant Kelly laughed. He let Jim take his picture though. Jim had come up from New York to take pictures for my article. For a mild-mannered financial analyst, brand new to photojournalism, he had ambitious plans. He intended to get pictures of John Bianchi, Jim Mulhern, and Lieutenant Shay at his desk. He wanted pictures, inside and out, of the house where Barbara died. And, beginning at 6
A.M
. Monday, he would be working on a picture of Peter in handcuffs, by staking out the entrance to the Litchfield jail.

I wished him luck, and took the train back to New York. I called my editor, Steve Gelman, and we talked about the story. When Judge Armentano had called all four members of the press corps back to his chamber that December day in Litchfield, to discuss how a reporter might properly report a pretrial hearing, he had said, “Use your own judgment.” So I did.

The last two weeks of January dwindled away, a deceptive lull. Then two things happened, two very different things that were, in a way, equally astonishing.

When my article appeared in the February 8 issue of
New Times,
with large chunks of Peter Reilly's polygraph test, a woman named Jacqueline Bernard called the magazine office in New York. Somebody there gave her Jean Beligni's number, so Mrs. Bernard, a stranger to all of us, called East Canaan. She told Jean she had read the piece and would like to bail Peter out of jail. “How much do you need?” she asked. “Oh my God,” Jean said. “Forty-four thousand dollars.” Mrs. Bernard said she didn't have the cash, but she had some stocks that she could use as collateral for a bank loan. She said she'd send the check as soon as she could. Jean called me with the news. “Oh my God,” I said. Then Jean called Father Paul. He said, “Holy mackerel.”

Almost simultaneously, word came from Judge Anthony Armentano, down in Hartford, that Peter Reilly's confession was admissible evidence in court. “There may have been some repetitive, suggestive questioning, or the planting of ideas, by the state police,” he wrote. “If such existed, and the court does not so find, such questioning, planting, or circumstance did not deprive the defendant of due process.” He pointed out that Peter had been given a chance to sleep and had been given dinner. And he said that the tapes he'd heard—the polygraph tapes and the later tapes—depicted Peter as “a very intelligent, articulate, calm, alert individual who displayed no emotional anxiety, distress, or despondency during his interrogation.”

It was like two halves of a good news/bad news joke. Peter was getting out of jail, but he was about to be tried for murder, and his confession would be used against him in court, where it would be heard by the jury and by the new judge, John Speziale, Jean Beligni's cousin.

9

Peter came out of jail by the side door, carrying a big cardboard box labeled COFFEE CAKE. All his belongings were in it, his clothes, a few books, and his radio.

He put the box in the trunk of our car and turned to Catherine Roraback. “So long, Peter,” she said. She shook his hand and put her other hand on his shoulder. “Have a good weekend, and stay out of trouble.” She smiled at him, and Peter grinned. Geoff Madow, who was carrying Miss Roraback's briefcase, grinned too.

“So long, Pete,” a voice called from a barred window, and Peter looked up. He squinted in the sun and waved, but he could see nothing, because the jail windows had the kind of glass that let people see out, but not in. “That sounds like Merv,” Peter said, and waved again. He had shaken hands with everybody in the jail when he left and had even found a certain pain in this departure. In the nearly five months he'd spent in jail, Peter had made friends. There were two men, especially, whom he'd liked: a drummer who had taught him something about music theory and an accountant, accused of embezzling, who had helped Peter with his bookkeeping homework.

A few reporters clustered near the car. One of them asked Peter how he felt. “It's a good feeling to be out of jail,” Peter said, “but I won't be happy until they catch the right person.”

“It was unbelievable,” Peter said in the car, shaking his head. “It was just unbelievable to be able to step out of the courtroom and not have some clown with me. To be able to say, ‘Tell Miss Roraback I'm out in the hall, having a cigarette.'” He shook his head again. “I can't believe I'm out.”

“How the heck did you stand it?” asked Geoff.

Peter shrugged. “You just get up, and sit around, and sit around some more,” he said.

It was a marvelous feeling to be driving Peter home. Mickey and Marion had been at court in the morning, for all the talking and the signing and the assorted paperwork that accompanied the release of a prisoner on bond. Then Catherine Roraback and Peter Reilly and Peter Herbst came out of the courtroom, and everybody seemed to be shaking hands with everybody else. The judge came out and took the bench.

“What are the plans of the accused?” he asked Miss Roraback.

“He'll be residing with the family of Mr. and Mrs. Meyer Madow in East Canaan, Connecticut,” Miss Roraback said. Peter stood next to her, tense and pale.

“Is there any doubt in your mind about his appearance in court?” the judge asked.

“No, your honor,” Catherine Roraback said.

John Bianchi looked reluctant. “He doesn't have the family roots that we would be most happy with,” he said, “but I know the Madows to be good, solid citizens.”

The judge asked Marion, in the spectators' gallery, to stand up. He looked earnestly at her.

“Is there any doubt in your mind about his appearance in court?” the judge asked.

“None whatsoever,” Marion said, very firmly, and smiled a little.

I half-expected that court would be called off for the rest of the day then, as we used to get surprise holidays in grade school once in a while. But something important—the questioning of prospective jurors—had begun, and the voir dire continued all afternoon, as though nothing extraordinary had occurred.

Even Anne knew something had. She knelt between Jim and me in the front seat of the car and regarded Peter in the back with considerable interest. I was absolutely elated, but now that he was in the car, I didn't have much to say. It seemed wrong, and somehow in poor taste—if there was such a thing as bad or good taste in murder—to start flinging questions at him. I thought there'd be time for that later, so I looked out the window and occasionally half-turned my head to watch him looking out the window.

He had a remote, detached expression on his face, which people who knew him well seemed accustomed to. His eyes were a clear hazel, and sometimes it was difficult to detect what he was thinking, or feeling, by looking into them. He seemed very cool, very contained. “He was always an odd child,” Mrs. Kester, the Falls Village librarian, said. “I've known Peter since he was six, and he was not given to talking,
ever
.”

We stopped by our house first, before going to the Madows', so I could change Anne's clothes. Jim opened Cokes, and Peter and Geoff followed me into the living room. Jim's guitar was on the far side of the room, behind the sofa, leaning against the wall in its dark blue fabric case, but Peter picked it out at once. “Is that a guitar?” he asked, only it wasn't a question.

I don't remember what he played, but I remember standing in the doorway between the living room and the hall, watching him from the back. His head was bent over the guitar, the light from the glass bottle lamp behind the sofa shining on his hair, long and silky, with bright highlights in it. I remembered what he'd said on the tapes, when I'd first heard them in December—about his music, his band. “Music's my life.” I was suddenly struck with amazement, as I stood there watching him, Geoffrey looking at me from across the room. He's here. He's really here. Peter Reilly is out of jail.

He could have played all night, but people were waiting, so we piled back into the car again. We skimmed along Route 63, heading for East Canaan. A washline was strung across the back in the Parmalees' yard, with some tires lying up against the small front porch. The Dickinson house looked closed and quiet, and in a moment we were speeding past the Kruses' place. There were no more warning signs around the little white house, and the ropes were down. The house was silent, its small windows glinting with dirt in the late afternoon sun. There was no sign of life. Peter glanced at the house. “I wonder who lives there now?” he said.

“Nobody,” I told Peter, but I didn't say anything more. I'd been inside the house, and I didn't know what else to say to him about it. When I was working on the article, interviewing the Kruses, Mr. Kruse had taken down the house key from its hook in the kitchen and we'd gone next door. It was an awful place, smaller, dirtier, more depressing than I had imagined. I stood in the living room, looking into the bedroom, and I couldn't help looking up at where the top bunk would have been. The bunk was gone, of course. Everything was gone, except for a space heater in the corner of the living room, the old two-burner stove in the kitchen, next to the small basin that Barbara had used as the sink. I walked through the bedroom where Barbara died and looked into the dark little bathroom and the rear room with the door leading out. There was very little to see in the house, but there was much to feel and imagine. I didn't stay long; the house had a cold, sour smell, and although it had been a bitter January day outside, I was glad to be out. In the several years he'd lived there, though, none of Peter's friends had heard him complain about the place. He just seemed to accept it as home, as he had accepted so much about his life, including his name and the fact that he had no father.

Soon we were in Canaan, at the four-way stop at the Arco station, across from St. Joseph's, turning onto Route 44, to Locust Hill Way. The car turned up the hill and pulled into the driveway.