Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests (15 page)

“Indeed.” A murmur went around the courtroom. Was she going to reel off the names? Whom would she name? “Whose name did you
see?”

“Goody Nurse’s name, sir. And Tituba, and Mr. Burroughs, and Goodman Proctor…”

Judge Saltonstall said, “Can you read, Abigail?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“But then how—”

If ever a scream could have actually curdled blood, the scream uttered by Mercy Lewis at that moment would have done it. Under
his wig, Waitstill Winthrop felt his back hairs rise. The girl was on her feet, pointing at the ceiling.

“See!” she shouted. “See where she sits on the beam!” Every eye flew to the roof beam. “There she sits with the black man
talking to her and a little yellow bird sucking between her fingers. Come down, Goody Nurse! Come down!” It was so dark overhead
that seventy devils might have been perching on the beam without being seen. Still, Winthrop almost thought he saw them himself,
the witch, the Devil, the yellow bird, and all. He looked away, at Goody Nurse’s face. A single tear trickled down her withered
cheek.

“See!” Mercy Lewis shouted. “See where the black man speaks in her ear!”

“The black man!” the girls all moaned. “The black man! Oh! He speaks in her ear!” The judges all fixed their gazes on Goody
Nurse. She rolled her eyes upward, and shortly the girls did too, clear up into their poor young heads, so that only the whites
were showing. Out of their chairs and onto the floor they tumbled, jerking their limbs and screaming.

“What does this black man say to you?” Judge Stoughton roared at the old woman. “Who is he?” The girls fell silent.

“I know nothing of it. There is no black man. How can I be sitting on the beam? You see that I am here before you.”

“Impudence,” Judge Hathorne muttered.

“You are bewitching these girls,” Judge Stoughton said. “Can you deny it?”

“I do deny it. I am as clear as the child unborn. I am a Christian woman, Your Honors. I have been a good churchgoing woman
my whole life long.”

“How do you account, then, for the sufferings of these girls?”

“I cannot account for it. It may be that the Devil afflicts them in my shape.”

This was an interesting point of law. What had Bernard said about it? The judges put their heads together to consider whether
the Devil could assume the shape of an innocent person.

“No,” Judge Hathorne said. “He cannot. The Lord God would never permit it.” Certainly He would never punish an innocent person
so, by allowing her to be suspected of witchcraft.

Everyone knew that the Bay Colony’s recent difficulties—Red Indians and godless Frenchmen ravaging the northern settlements
and shipping, the men who governed our colony embroiled in English politics and helpless against the French and Indian assaults—had
at their root some fault in the people’s Christian worship, a prayer too languid and a faith too dim, perhaps, or more likely
a frontal attack by the Devil himself, aided by witches. The news that the colony’s troubles were caused by a coven meeting
in a pasture in Salem Village was greeted in Boston almost with relief. But the all-powerful God would have to permit such
a thing to happen, explicitly, for reasons of His own. The alternative interpretation, that the men of Boston had misgoverned
through their own lack of competence, was unthinkable.

And here sat Goody Nurse, the Devil’s own weapon, a spearhead aimed at the very heart of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth. An innocent
woman? “Unthinkable,” Winthrop repeated to himself.

Judge Nathaniel Saltonstall, whose education was less well grounded in Puritan theological principles than that of the other
judges, frowned and shook his head. “Gentlemen, it seems to me—”

“She bites me! She bites me!” The Putnam girl pushed up her sleeve and held out her little white arm, marked with cruel red
toothmarks. “Oh, Goody Nurse, don’t bite me so! I tell you, I never will sign the Devil’s book!” She fell in a fit. They all
fell in fits. The judges’ argument was forgotten.

____

W
HEN THE JURY
had finished its deliberations over the fate of Rebecca Nurse, they returned a verdict of not guilty. The old woman began
to pray and give thanks to God, and the Nurse family embraced one another. Winthrop was startled by the verdict. The case
had seemed plain to him, as it had to all the judges except for the bothersome Judge Saltonstall. But Winthrop supposed the
Salem jurymen knew best. By the grace of God he would at least be able to return to Boston now and put this case behind him.
The acquittal of Goody Nurse might very well mean the end of the witch business.

After a silence long enough to take a breath in, the girls began screaming and howling. Half of them fell to the floor, and
the other half staggered toward the defendant, moaning, “Goody Nurse, Goody Nurse,” and holding their hands out in front of
themselves. Before they could reach her, they were struck flat down to the courthouse floor as if by an invisible hand. A
horrible spectacle. Judge Winthrop was all over gooseflesh.

Judge Stoughton beat his gavel. “Blindfold the defendant!” The bailiffs grasped Goody Nurse’s hands and put a blindfold around
her eyes.

“Now bring the girls to her.”

One by one the afflicted children were led to Goody Nurse. A bailiff held her hand out to touch them. When they were touched,
the malevolent energy that had entered them through the witch’s eyes flowed back into her hand again and the girls were healed.

Judge Stoughton said, “I would not impose upon the jury, but I wonder whether you gentlemen have sufficiently considered this
case.”

“We believed so, Your Honor,” the foreman said.

“I wonder whether you have considered something Goody Nurse let slip. You will recall that she greeted the confessing witches
as people who had been among her group. I found that telling.”

The jurymen glanced nervously at one another.

“I charge you now to retire and reconsider your verdict,” Judge Stoughton said.

____

W
HEN THEY CAME
back, it was with a verdict of guilty. Judge Stoughton lost no time in pronouncing Rebecca Nurse’s sentence, as clearly prescribed
in Bernard’s
Guide to Grand-Jury Men
. “You shall be hanged by the neck until dead, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

The bailiffs led her away, a crushed woman. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was saved from her evil designs, Winthrop supposed,
and now the courts must deal with the other witches. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. The day was very warm
for June.

As the crowd began to file out of the courtroom, little Ann Putnam jumped up and began to shout, “Judge Stoughton! Judge Stoughton!
I must speak!”

“Yes? What is it?”

“In my fit last night my seven little Putnam cousins, the dead ones, appeared to me in winding sheets, with napkins over their
faces.” The people stopped leaving. The whole room fell completely silent. Every soul in the place, even the Nurse relatives,
riveted his attention upon the girl. “They said a witch had murdered them. They cried out for vengeance. They said I must
come to you and tell you.”

“Vengeance against whom?” Judge Stoughton said. The crowd held its breath. Winthrop awaited the girl’s words with mild interest,
but not with the fascination of most of the spectators, since he knew no one in Salem.

“Mistress Winthrop,” Ann Putnam said. “Judge Waitstill Winthrop’s wife. Ah! She afflicts me!”

BY JOEL GOLDMAN

E
very day is a knife fight. That’s what I tell my lawyer first time I meet her.

“Travis,” she say to me, “what am I supposed to do with that?”

“Shit, girl, you my lawyer. You figure it out.”

We in a room at the jail where prisoners meet wit they lawyers, a guard watchin’ through a window make sure I don’t climb
inside her pants and escape. Hard floor, hard chairs, hard everything.

Her name Elisabeth Rosenthal, Public Defender. She don’t look like much. Hit me’bout at my shoulders. Black hair cut short
and tight. Wearin’ black pants, black shirt, hangin’ loose. If the girl got a shape, she hidin’ it.

“You a lesbian?”

She cross her arms. “Yeah.”

“Jew?”

“Two for two.”

“So I got a Jew dyke for a lawyer. This shit is fucked up, man.”

“Yeah, well, don’t feel bad. Looks like I’ve got a black client who hates Jews and gays. I guess we’re both fucked.”

I look at her, girl smilin’, maybe playin’ wit me. “You sayin’ you hate blacks?”

She shake her head. “I’m saying that we are what we are. I don’t have a problem with it, but if you do, get over it. Johnnie
Cochran is dead.” She shove a paper across the table. “Take a look at this.”

Court paper say I killed this dude Diego Hernández. Call it capital murder and say they wanna give me the needle. I read my
name. Travis Runnels. I like the way it look, big heavy black letters.

“Way it is,” I say.

“For now. We’ll see what the jury says.”

“What about a deal?”

She shake her head, not askin’ how come I want a deal if I’m innocent. “No way,” she say. “The DA is running for re-election.”

I seen his ads on TV. Kevin Watts. He say vote for me’cause I lock the niggas up. And the man a brother.

“What if I’m convicted?”

“You appeal. If you get the death penalty, the appeals can last ten to twelve years. Even if you lose, at least you win for
a while.”

“Can I win an appeal?”

“Depends on what happens at trial. If the judge screws up or I screw up, you might get a new trial.”

“Whuju mean, if you screw up?”

“The Constitution guarantees you the right to effective assistance of counsel. I don’t have to be perfect or the best. I can
make mistakes, but I have to be just good enough that you get a fair trial.”

“What’s your track record?”

She take a deep breath, look at me hard. “I lose most of the time.”

“How come?”

“Most of my clients are guilty.”

“I’m innocent.”

“Of course you are.”

She don’t smile or nuthin’. Girl’s a fuckin’ puzzle.

“Ain’t you afraid you get me off, I go out and do it again? If I done it in the first place.”

“I have nightmares about that,” she say, sittin’ across from me, lookin’ at my file. She put the papers down. “On the other
hand, if you go to prison, you might kill someone inside just because he looks at you the wrong way. Or you might get shanked
in the shower because you’re not in love with someone who’s in love with you. There’s a lot that can happen in your life I
can’t do a damn thing about, but this case isn’t one of them.”

She say all the right shit, but that don’t mean she can get it done. “You jus a PD. What chance I got wit you?”

“Your only chance. The State has a witness that will testify you threatened to kill Diego Hernández before he was found carved
up like a Christmas goose. The cops found a knife and Diego’s blood in your car when they picked you up at your mother’s house.
Plus, you’ve already done time for armed robbery and manslaughter that was pled down from murder two.”

I lean back in my chair, lift the front legs off the floor, rock back and forth like that shit don’t mean nuthin’. “I hear
all that. You got a job to do. You jus wanna know how hard it gonna be.”

She puts her hands on the table, gets in my face, her eyes on fire. “That’s right, Travis. I want to know how hard it’s going
to be to save your life.”

I put my chair down. Stand so she lookin’ up at me. “Like I tole you. Every day is a knife fight.”

____

I
MEET WITH
Elisabeth the night before the trial. She give me a hundred-dollar suit to wear so I don’t look like I’m guilty wearin’ prison
clothes.

Then she say the first thing gonna happen tomorrow is the lawyers pick the jury. She say she gonna tell the jury she only
want people who can be fair, but she tell me she only wants jurors who don’t trust cops and will feel sorry for a brother
that was abused when he was a kid and never caught a break. Most of all, she say, she want jurors who don’t like the death
penalty.

“So you gonna lie to the jury.”

She wearin’ honey-colored glasses halfway down her nose, make her face soft. She take’em off. Her eyes are dark gray and she
got bags under’em color of wet newspaper.

“It’s not a lie,” she say. “It’s how I define fair.”

I put my hands up. “You gotta lie, I can respect that.”

She don’t argue, jus act like she don’t hear me.

“The jury wants to know what happened,” she say. “If I can create reasonable doubt in their minds about the DA’s version,
you’ve got a chance.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“You say you were at your mother’s when Diego was killed. She backs you up. It’s a lousy alibi, because everyone knows a mother
will lie to save her child. But if the jury likes your mother, they might buy it.”

I think about what she say.

“My momma a good woman even if she like her wine too much. Can’t nobody not like her.”

“Well then, I’ll have to talk with her and make certain she hasn’t been liking her wine too much when she testifies.”

____

E
LISABETH LEAN OVER
to me after the judge swear in the jury, so close I can smell her. Soap. No perfume. She say the jury okay, but she say it
the way I say,
Good evenin’, Officer, nice to see you
. Seven women, five men. Four black, six white. Two Mexican. I look at them. They look away.

Kevin Watts, the DA, make his openin’ statement to the jury. Brother talks whiter than Jay Leno. Wears a suit cost ten times
the one I’m wearin’. Calls me a drug dealer. Says I cut Diego on account he don’t pay me for some crack I sell him. Says I
didn’t jus cut him. Says I tortured him, cut out his eyes, and cut off his dick. That’s why he say I deserve the needle. Makes
me a bad motherfucker if I done it, that’s for damn sure. I ain’t sayin’ I did or I didn’t, but man don’t pay, man gets cut.
Way it is.

Elisabeth, she tell the jury the DA got no proof I done nuthin’. She say everythin’ circumstantial and I got an alibi. My
momma gonna testify I was watchin’ TV at her house when Diego got hisself murdered. She don’t talk as long as Watts, and she
don’t get worked up like he did neither. I was on the jury, I ain’t believin’ her. Girl sure as hell not perfect or the best.