Defending Jacob (31 page)

“I’ll miss my fifteen minutes of fame,” he said. He grinned, oblivious and blithely brave, as only a kid can be.

Laurie looked horrified.

“That’d be a real shame,” I grumbled.

“Jacob, let’s hope you have your fifteen minutes of fame for something else.”

We all went quiet. Silverware clinked on plates.

Laurie said, “I wish that guy would turn off his engine.”

“What guy?”

“That guy.” She gestured with her knife toward the window. “Don’t you hear him? There’s a guy sitting in his car out there with the engine running. It’s giving me a headache. It’s like this buzz in my ear that won’t go away. What’s the word for that, when you get a buzz in your ear?”

“Tinnitus,”
I said.

She made a face.

“Crossword puzzles,” I explained.

I got up to look out the window, more curious than concerned. It was a big sedan. I couldn’t make out precisely what model. Some oversized end-of-the-American-auto-industry crap four-door, maybe a Lincoln. It was parked across the street, two houses down, in a dark area between streetlights where I could not see the driver at all, even in silhouette. Inside there was a dot of amber light like a star as the driver took a drag from a cigarette, then the little star winked out.

“Probably just waiting for someone.”

“So let him wait with the engine off. Hasn’t this guy heard of global warming?”

“Probably an older guy.” I was inferring from the cigarette, the idling engine, the aircraft-carrier-sized car—all habits that belonged to an older generation, I thought.

“Asshole’s probably a reporter,” Jacob said.

“Jake!”

“Sorry, Mom.”

“Laurie, why don’t I go talk to him? I’ll tell him to turn it off.”

“No. Who knows what he wants? Whatever he’s up to, it can’t be good. Just stay put.”

“Honey, you’re being paranoid.” I never used words like
honey
or
sweetie
or
dear
, but the gentle tone seemed necessary. “It’s probably just some old geezer smoking a butt, listening to the radio. He probably doesn’t realize he’s bothering anyone leaving the engine running.”

She frowned skeptically. “You’re the one who keeps saying we have to keep our heads down, stay out of trouble. Maybe he wants you to come out there and try something. Maybe he’s trying to bait you into it.”

“Laurie, come on. It’s just a car.”

“Just a car, huh?”

“Just a car.”

But it was not just a car.

Around nine I took out the garbage: one plastic barrel of trash, one awkward rectangular green bucket of recycling. The recycling bucket was sized in such a way that it could not quite be carried in one hand comfortably. Your fingers always began to cramp halfway up the driveway, so that carrying both items to the sidewalk in one trip involved a fast-waddling race-walk out to the street before the recycling spilled all over. It was not until I had put the barrel and the recycling bucket down and arranged them neatly side by side that I noticed the same car again. It had moved. This time it was parked a few houses away from ours in the other direction, again across the street. The engine was off. No firefly of a burning cigarette inside. The car might even have been empty. It was impossible to tell in the dark.

I peered into the dark to make out some details about the car.

The engine came on, then the headlights. The car had no front license plate.

I began to pace toward it, curious.

The car backed away from me slowly, like an animal sensing a threat, then it backed away fast. At the first cross street, it did a quick, expert turnaround and drove off. I never got closer than twenty yards. In the dark, I could not make out anything about the car, not even the color or the make. It was reckless driving on such a small street. Reckless and good.

Later still, after Laurie had sensibly gone to sleep, I sat watching Jon Stewart with Jacob in the living room. I had spread myself across the couch with my right foot propped on the cushion and my right arm dangled over the backrest. I felt an itch, a faint sensation of being watched, and I lifted the blind to peek out again.

The car was back.

I went out the back door, through the neighbor’s backyard, and emerged behind the car. It was a Lincoln Town Car, license plate 75K S82. The interior was dark.

I walked up slowly alongside the driver’s door. I felt ready to knock on the glass, to open the door, pull the guy out of the car, to pin him down on the sidewalk and warn him to stay away from us.

But the car was empty. I looked around briefly for the driver, a man with a cigarette. But I was being a fool. Laurie was making me paranoid too. It was just a parked car. Probably the driver was in one of the adjacent houses sound asleep or screwing his wife or watching the tube or doing any of the things normal people do, the things we used to do. What had I really seen, after all?

Still, better safe than sorry. I called Paul Duffy.

“Counselor,” he answered in his old laconic way, as if he was pleased to hear from me, pleased and not surprised, even after months of silence, at eleven-thirty on the eve of opening statements.

“Duff, sorry to bother you.”

“No bother. What’s wrong?”

“It’s probably nothing. I think there might be someone watching us. He’s been parked outside all night.”

“It’s a man?”

“I’m not sure. I didn’t see him. Just the car.”

“You said ‘him.’ ”

“I’m assuming.”

“What was he doing?”

“It was just a car parked out front of the house with his engine running. This was around six, dinnertime. Then I saw him again around nine o’clock. But as soon as I started to walk toward him, he turned around and took off.”

“Has he threatened you in any way?”

“No.”

“Have you ever seen the car before?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Deep breath into the phone. “Andy, can I give you a piece of advice?”

“I wish somebody would.”

“Go to bed. Tomorrow’s a big day for you. You’re all under a lot of pressure.”

“You think it’s just a parked car.”

“Sounds to me like it’s just a parked car.”

“Would you do me a favor and run the plate? Just to be sure. Laurie’s really stressed. It’d make her feel better.”

“Just between you and me?”

“Of course, Duff.”

“Okay, give it to me.”

“It’s Mass. plate number 75K S82. It’s a Lincoln Town Car.”

“All right, hold on.”

There was a long silence as he called it in. I watched Steven Colbert with the sound muted.

When he came back, he said, “That plate belongs on a Honda Accord.”

“Shit. It’s stolen.”

“No. It hasn’t been reported stolen, at least.”

“So what’s it doing on a Lincoln?”

“Probably just borrowed it, in case somebody noticed him and reported the plate to the cops. All you need is a screwdriver.”

“Shit.”

“Andy, you need to call this in to Newton P. D. It’s still probably nothing, but file a report and at least get it on the record.”

“I don’t want to do that right now. The trial starts tomorrow. If I report it, it’ll find its way into the news. I can’t have that. It’s important we seem normal and stable right now. I want that jury to see a regular family, just like them. Because we
are
just like them.”

“Andy, if someone’s threatening you …”

“No. No one’s threatened us. No one’s actually done anything. You said yourself, it looks like just a parked car.”

“But you were worried enough that you called me.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with it. If the jury hears about it, half of them would think we’re full of shit. They’d think we’re faking it to drum up sympathy, like we’re trying to play the victim in all this. No drama. Anything that makes us look odd, untrustworthy, phony,
strange
, makes it harder to get them to say
not guilty
.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“Maybe you could send a cruiser by without filing a report? Just move him along, scare him off. Just so I can tell Laurie she doesn’t have to worry.”

“I better do it myself, otherwise there’ll have to be a report.”

“I appreciate it. There’s no way I can ever pay you back.”

“Just get your kid home safe, Andy.”

“You mean that?”

A pause.

“I don’t know. This whole thing just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s just seeing you and Jacob at the defense table. I’ve known that kid since he was born.”

“Paul, he didn’t do it. I guarantee it.”

He grunted, unconvinced. “Andy, who would be watching your house?”

“The victim’s family? Maybe some kid who knew Ben Rifkin? Some nut who read about the case in the paper? Could be anyone. Did you guys ever follow up on Patz?”

“Who knows? Andy, I have no idea what’s going on over there. They’ve got me in a friggin’ public relations unit. Next thing, they’ll have me riding up and down the turnpike giving speeding tickets. They pulled me off the case as soon as Jacob got indicted. I half expected them to investigate
me
, like I was in some kind of cover-up with you. So I don’t have much information. But there was no reason for them to keep going after Patz once they charged someone else. The case was already solved.”

We both considered that in silence a moment.

“All right,” he said, “I’ll be by. Tell Laurie it’s okay.”

“I already told her it’s okay. She doesn’t believe me.”

“She won’t believe me either. Whatever. You go get some sleep too. You two won’t make it like this. It’s only the first night.”

I thanked him and went upstairs to climb in bed with Laurie.

She lay curled up like a cat, her back to me. “Who was that?” she murmured into her pillow.

“Paul.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said it’s probably just a parked car. Everything’s okay.”

She groaned.

“He said you wouldn’t believe him.”

“He was right.”

W
hat was Neal Logiudice thinking when he stood up to deliver his opening statement to the jury? He was keenly aware of the two unmanned cameras on him. That much was clear as he meticulously buttoned the top two buttons of his coat. It was apparently a second new suit, not the same one he had worn the day before, though today’s suit was the same hip three-button style. (The shopping spree was a mistake. He tended to preen in his new costumes.) He must have imagined himself as a hero. Ambitious, sure, but his goals matched the public’s—what was good for Neal was good for everyone, except Jacob of course—so no harm in that. There must have been a rightness too in seeing me at the defense table, literally displaced. I don’t mean to suggest there was any sense of Oedipal payback in Logiudice’s head that day. Anyway, he gave no outward sign of it. As he arranged his new coat and stood for a moment plumping for the jury—the two juries, I should say, one in court, one on the other side of the TV cameras—I saw only a young man’s vanity. I could not hate him or even begrudge him a little self-satisfaction. He had graduated, grown up, he was finally The Man. We all have felt such things at one time or another. Oedipal or not, it is a pleasure after long years to stand in our fathers’ place, and it is a perfectly innocent pleasure. Anyway, why blame Oedipus? He was a victim. Poor Oedipus never meant to hurt anybody.

Logiudice nodded toward the judge (
Show the jury you are respectful …
). He glared balefully at Jacob as he passed (…
and that you are not afraid of the defendant, because if you do not have the courage to look him in the eye and say “guilty,” how can you expect the jury to do it?
). He stood directly in front of the jury with his fingertips resting on the front rail of the jury box (
Close up the space between you; make them feel you are one of them
).

“A teenage boy,” he said, “found dead. In a forest called Cold Spring Park. Early on a spring morning. A fourteen-year-old boy stabbed three times in a line across the chest and tossed down an embankment slick with mud and wet leaves, and left to die facedown less than a quarter mile from the school he’d been walking to, a quarter mile from the home he’d left only minutes before.”

His eyes roamed across the jury box.

“And the whole thing—the decision to do this, the choice—to take a life, to take this boy’s life—it only takes a second.”

He let the phrase hang there.

“One split second and”—he snapped his fingers—“snap. It only takes a second to lose your temper. And that is all you need, a second, an instant, to form the intention to murder. In this courtroom it is called
malice aforethought
. The conscious decision to kill, however quickly the intention forms, however briefly it is in the murderer’s mind. First-degree murder can happen just … like … that.”

He began to pace the length of the jury box, lingering to make eye contact with each juror as he passed.

“Let’s think about the defendant a moment. This is a case about a boy who had everything: good family, good grades, beautiful home in a wealthy suburb. He had it all, more than most, anyway, much more. But the defendant had something else too: he had a lethal temper. And when he was pushed—not too hard, just teased, just messed around with, the sort of thing that must go on every day in every school in the country—but when he was pushed a little too far and he decided he’d had enough, that lethal temper finally just … snapped.”

You must tell the jury the “story of the case,” the tale that led to the final act. Facts are not enough; you must weave them into a story. The jury must be able to answer the question “What is this case about?” Answer that question for them and you win. Distill the case down to a single phrase for them, a theme, even a single word. Embed that phrase in their minds. Let them take it back into the jury room with them, so that when they open their mouths to discuss the case, your words come tumbling out
.

“The defendant snapped.” He snapped his fingers again.

He came to the defense table, stood too close, purposely disrespecting us by invading our space. He leveled his finger at Jacob, who looked down at his lap to avoid it. Logiudice was entirely full of shit but his technique was magnificent.