Conviction (19 page)

Since the lake, it’s been different with Maddie—we haven’t kissed again or even really touched, but somehow just sitting in the same room as her in class it feels different,
like the walls have loosened at their seams and expanded to make room for whatever new thing we’re holding between us. We’ve been together a lot at lunch—the guys are all over
that one—but whenever she texts or calls it’s still never just
hi
; it’s always a question about homework first. I’m not sure how to read that. Most times, though, we
wind up talking for real after that. She doesn’t press me about my dad, I think because she can sense I’d rather she didn’t; instead, we talk about baseball or new songs
she’s been working on, or about things I want to take her to do when it’s summer like river rafting two towns over in Lourdon or going on the rope swing out on the south end of the
lake. And it’s always nice—it’s like visiting some other, better life—and I think maybe the way she always starts conversations like that is just that she’s still
giving herself an out. It’s different if someone doesn’t answer your question about homework than if someone doesn’t answer your
hello
.

Mr. Buchwald comes over Saturday morning to bring new recordings and to go over the questions he’ll ask me on the witness stand. He seems animated and crisp; he strikes me as the kind of
person who enjoys working on a Saturday. He brings bagels and orange juice. I don’t have any. When I ask how my dad’s doing, Mr. Buchwald says, “Oh, fine,” which has to be a
lie. Of course he isn’t fine.

He tells me Laila’s work so far has been less than stellar. The testimony was dry, he says, not something that’ll strike any kind of emotional high point for the jury, and the woman
testifying about my dad’s car was so clearly nervous some jurors won’t read her as credible.

“Just because she was nervous?” I say. “Because I’m going to be nervous, too. And I really don’t think it’s a good idea for me to—”

“Oh, your father assures me you’re excellent under pressure.”

I don’t know whether I believe him; I don’t know if that’s what my dad would say about me. “Have you ever seen a jury get a case wrong?”

“All the time. You’d expect otherwise?” He looks amused. “A jury is not an infallible machine, Braden. Picture selecting twelve people at random from your high school and
you’ll get an idea why. I’ve long believed that there should be an IQ requirement to serve as a juror. Imagine the frustration of having hours and hours of your work dismantled by a
high school dropout who tuned you out after the first witness and simply thinks the accuser seems like a nice man.”

“Sounds pretty frustrating for you,” I say flatly, and if he catches the contempt in my tone he doesn’t let on. I’m disappointed. That was as close as I’ll let
myself get to
Screw you.

I’ll admit he’s good at what he does—he’s good with the jury and you can tell he makes the witnesses nervous, and he’s said a jury’s less likely to trust a
witness who acts afraid because it makes you look like you have something to hide. So I’ll give him that, at least. I can respect that he’s good at his job; the recordings he’s
brought me might not be aboveboard, but I can respect people who do whatever it takes to be competitive.

But when it comes down to it I don’t trust him any more than I do the prosecutor, and hearing him say that about juries, I put my finger on exactly why—this is another notch on a
résumé to him.
This
being my father’s life.

At the end of March, Laila Shah shows the jury photos of my dad’s license and registration lying on the asphalt just outside La Abra near where Officer Reyes was hit.
After Ornette, there’s nothing but orchards on either side of the road for miles and miles before the land gives way to cramped gray apartment buildings rising up over the freeway wall, and
the road is rough there and you can see potholes on the slides Laila shows. They look huge in the photographs, like craters on the moon.

After that, she calls up the county coroner, an owlish woman whose hands fly around to make pictures of her words: a cupped hand patting the back of her head when she says
basilar skull
fracture
, a curve she traces under her eye when she says
periorbital ecchymosis.
I watch her testify on Mr. Buchwald’s DVD, as ordered. Trey’s birds keep chirping the whole
time. It hurts my ears. Trey’s gone, who knows where; I only watch these when he’s not home.

Under oath, the coroner tells the jury that eight ribs were shattered and the entire abdominal cavity was distended with pooling blood, and that the autopsy revealed that parts of the colon were
found smashed inside the spleen. She pantomimes holding a scalpel. She gives the actual cause of death as asphyxiation due to torn and punctured lungs, and says
Without doubt
when asked if
the death was caused by being struck by the defendant’s car.

In his cross-examination, Mr. Buchwald harps on the physical findings—were there bones shattered by motive? Blood cells lining up to spell a note telling the coroner exactly what
happened?

After the coroner is the forensics investigator, who comes with an easel and a permanent marker to map out an illustration for the jury. The stretch of the road where the accident happened is
torn up and there’s potholes everywhere, and stretches where the shoulder disappears. The investigator has poster-size images of the road and the accident scene blocked off.

“Based on the clothing fibers and DNA traces we found, the victim was struck and fell”—he thuds the marker against the photo to punctuate—“right here, next to the
car. From there, he was dragged underneath the wheels about a foot and a half, then dragged forward again. There were four spots where we picked up samples, which makes it likely the car backed
over him and then drove forward again. But here”—he draws another X on the easel—“this time, instead of going straight forward, we found the evidence about a foot and a half
to the right.”

Laila asks what this means. The investigator caps his pen and turns away from the map he’s made, then looks apologetically to where I think the Reyes family’s sitting. “He
likely tried to crawl away before being struck again.”

The air feels thin and slippery the way it does before you black out, my lungs like mesh, and I inhale until it hurts. The investigator testifies that he found blood and hair fibers on a
four-yard area of the asphalt, that my dad’s license and registration were found nearby, and that Frank Reyes’s gun was found in his holster and with the safety still engaged. Then he
motions to someone off to the side and a photo’s broadcast onto the projector screen next to him: Frank Reyes’s body faceup on the ground, one hand over his chest and one splayed
against the asphalt, and even though it’s the last thing you’d notice about the picture, his gun’s secured in his holster, untouched.

I’m rewatching the forensics investigator’s testimony Sunday night, thinking about what might happen if the judge knew I’d seen all this, when Trey appears in
my doorway. I slam my laptop shut, and my voice comes out weird when I say, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he says back, like the greeting amused him. I can’t tell if he noticed me jump or not. “The Cortlands want to have us over for dinner. I told them you’re
coming, too.”

I clear my throat and hope my voice comes out more normal this time. “Right now?”

“Yeah. Wear something nicer, will you? Put on something with a collar at least.”

I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but I change. Kevin and Jenna live out near Kevin’s parents, near the Martinez vineyards on the west part of town, up in the foothills. From where we
live, you can either drive along the outskirts of the town—the way I like, out where there’s almost no people and even though you’ve lived here all your life you could get lost
somewhere in all the oaks and the winding roads curving into the hills—or you can cut across the main artery on Oakridge Boulevard all the way there.

Trey takes Oakridge. Traffic lights the whole way.

While he’s driving, I ask since when did Kevin care so much about what I wear. “Dinner was Jenna’s idea. It’s at Kevin’s folks’ place.”

“Oh. Those Cortlands.” I half wish I hadn’t gone with him; it feels weird going to dinner at your pastor’s house when you’ve been skipping church. But I keep that
to myself since clearly it’s important to Trey, and anyway I can’t say I love being at home by myself, either. “Yeah, Jenna said something about dinner.”

He frowns. “When did you talk to her?”

“At youth group.”

“Oh. Right.” He checks the time on the dashboard and then speeds up some, like he’s worried we’ll be late. “You know she has this blog? All stuff about,
like—diet plans, and pictures of her and Kevin on their anniversary camping trip, and crap. It’s depressing as hell. You know the only reason she even applied to college is so she could
go with him to Bethany for two years?”

“You date much in New York?”

“No.”

“How come?”

He shrugs. “No time.”

“Maybe you should get out more. Go to church sometime and meet a girl.”

“Yeah? Maybe you should write an advice column.”

Fine, whatever, I know he thinks that’s dumb. But I also think, even though he doesn’t say it, that maybe he’s lonely—that maybe he wishes things had gone differently for
him.

When we get there, Trey checks himself in the mirror before we go in. I’m about to tease him for it, but I change my mind; I don’t know why. I guess because something about him seems
different.

I wonder if maybe I’m making that up, but the transformation, once we step over the threshold into their home, is complete. Trey’s smiley and polite and pleasant—animated,
even. He hugs Pastor Stan and Mrs. Cortland, and thanks them for having us over in a voice I can only describe as warm, and hands them this bottle of olive oil he brought as a gift. He kisses Jenna
on the cheek and says hello to Ellie, who Jenna’s holding, and—this strikes me as weird—barely glances at Kevin at all.

Pastor Stan shakes my hand and says how great it is to see me, how proud of me my dad must be, and Mrs. Cortland gives me a big hug and tells me how strong I’m being. I’ve always
liked Mrs. Cortland; she’s kind and smiles a lot and doesn’t take herself too seriously. But the hug makes me weirdly guilty, like I wish I could somehow peel it off and give it back.
Maybe it’s that the last time I was here at this house, I was with my dad—it was last fall, and my dad had such a good time he loosened up in a way he almost never does with other
people. Remembering how he laughed at his own jokes, how boisterously happy it made him to feel wanted and popular and liked, a purer kind of happy than he gets when fans recognize him, makes me
ache. Thinking about him happy hurts even worse, somehow, than thinking about him sad.

After we all finish saying hellos, Trey follows Jenna into the kitchen to help her. She tries to push him away, saying jokingly, “Kitchens aren’t for men,” and when he tells
her thanks a lot, she laughs. “That’s different, Trey. You know what I mean.”

“Well, at the expense of my masculinity, then, I’d like to help.”

“Kevin and Stan are about to open some brandy. You don’t want to join them?”

“Nope. I’m at your command. Tell me what to do.”

She gives in. “Well, of course you’ll think it’s silly, but I found the most darling flower cupcakes”—she holds up a picture to show him—“because
I’m throwing a baby shower next week for Hailey Cleminger—do you remember Hailey? They’re having twins, can you believe it?—and I wanted to practice so I didn’t mess
up Hailey’s big day.”

She puts him in charge of coloring the fondant pink (I guess they’re girl twins) and cutting out petals. Trey works carefully. I’ve seen him enough to know nothing he ever does in
the kitchen is slow, but cutting frosting petals for Jenna, he’s painstaking about it. More than once, their elbows touch.

When they’re done, there’s three rows of flowered cupcakes, like a garden. Jenna sprinkles some kind of glitter stuff on the tops, then surveys them. “Do you think they look
all right?”

“They look great.”

“In the picture they were more artistic. It’s her baby shower, and I’d hate to disappoint her if—”

“What are you talking about? There’s no way she’d be disappointed. You could run a business doing this if you wanted to, you know. I mean it. You’ve
always—”

Kevin comes into the kitchen then, and Trey goes quiet. “Well,” Kevin says, raising his eyebrows at the cupcakes, “haven’t you two been busy.”

Jenna dusts her hands on her apron and smiles at him. “Don’t worry. I made a chocolate cake, too, so you boys aren’t stuck eating flower cupcakes.”

Kevin pulls Jenna toward him and gives her a kiss on her lips. “What a superb wife. Isn’t she, Trey?”

“Superb,” Trey says. He washes his hands at the sink and dries them on a towel and doesn’t say anything else.

For dinner, there’s pot roast, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and what Mrs. Cortland refers to as pioneer biscuits. There’s wine, and candles, and I think how much my dad
would appreciate this. For Father’s Day I always try to make him dinner because he loves when people cook. I wonder what he’s eating. I wonder what it’s like to go so many days
without talking to a single person who cares about you.

I sit down across from Trey and try to root myself here, in this house, with these people, and try not to leave any space in my thoughts for what I was watching before we came. Pastor Stan prays
over the meal—Trey ducks his head along with everyone else—and when we all raise our heads, Pastor Stan lifts his glass of wine.

“I’d like to propose a toast,” he says. “To the most wonderful family in the world, to our beloved friends, and”—he pauses in a way that makes me think
whatever he’s about to say is the real reason for this toast—“especially to our son Kevin, who next year will answer God’s call on his life and return to seminary. Kevin,
you make us unspeakably proud.”

There’s a silence: me and Trey absorbing that one. Pastor Stan’s beaming. “Wonderful news, isn’t it?” he says, and leans over to squeeze Kevin’s shoulders
enthusiastically. I’ll bet Pastor Stan’s the kind of dad who tells everyone
Good game, good game
even when it wasn’t. “The Lord just astonishes me daily with his
grace in Kevin’s life.”