Wild Heart (34 page)

"I don't remember."

"Do you recall an occasion when, during a conversation, you detained Mrs. Darrow against her will by putting your hand on her arm?"

"No, that never happened."

"And when Mr. MacNeil interrupted you, you threatened him?"

"No."

"And that's when he said he'd 'kill you first'—if you tried to put him back in a cage?"

"I don't remember anything like that."

"No? Mr. Philip Winter observed such an incident. Shall we recall him to the stand?"

Mr. Merck objected. The lawyers argued; the judge ruled.

"Something like that might've happened," West said in the end. "But it was a long time ago, and I can't remember the details."

The judge excused him, and Mr. Osgood came back to the table smiling again.

* * * * *

O'Fallon was the prosecution's next-to-last witness.

"He was like an animal. They had to keep him in a cage at first because he was always trying to bite people. When I was with him, I always made sure I had my billy with me, for self-defense. And I never turned my back on him if I could help it."

"Why was that?" asked Mr. Merck.

"Because he gave me the creeps. He never said a word, and he had a way of staring at me, like he was a bear and I was his next meal. They had to starve him half to death before he'd eat his meat cooked—he liked it raw better. I seen him eat bugs. They had to teach him how to use the toilet. He slept on the floor even after they gave him a bed, just curled up on a bunch of blankets like a dog. He was worse than an animal."

The man on the jury had his whole mouth covered with his hand; his shoulders were stiff and his eyes sparkled with alarm. Michael wanted to turn around and see what Sydney's face looked like. But he sat still, afraid of what he might see.

He felt hatred for O'Fallon rise up in his throat like vomit. He remembered every blow, every drunken shove and filthy curse as if they'd happened yesterday. Maybe O'Fallon was right, maybe he was wild. But he wasn't an animal. Animals didn't kill their own kind, and right now he had a fierce and bloody urge to kill O'Fallon.

"Now, sir, you've testified that you didn't trust the defendant, that you were afraid of him. Did there ever come a time when your fears were realized?"

"Huh?"

"Did he ever attack you?"

"Yeah. Same night Dr. Winter fired me. It was in all the papers."

"Tell us in your own words what happened that night."

"Sure. I brought him his dinner, he didn't like it, and he tried to kill me. Come at me like a maniac, spit coming out of his mouth, growling and snarling. I was sure I'd bought it. He wrestled the stick right outa my hand, so I went for my gun. Lucky I had it or I'd be a dead man today."

"You shot the defendant during this altercation?"

"Yes, sir. I only meant to wound Mm, so I aimed for his hand. After that all hell broke loose. The professor said
I
attacked
him,
if you can believe that, and gave me the sack on the spot."

When it was time for Mr. Osgood to ask questions, the courtroom went very still. If Michael hadn't known already, that nervous, waiting hush would have told him that what was coming was going to be important. O'Fallon's lies had hurt him, and this was his last and only chance to fight back.

"What do you do for a living these days, Mr. O'Fallon?" the lawyer started off. Mr. Osgood was a little, stoop-shouldered man; when he went to stand close to the witness box, it made O'Fallon look huge. Michael wondered if that was why he did it.

"I work at an eating establishment on Twentieth Street."

"Ah, an eating establishment. Would that by any chance be the Dirtwater Saloon in the Levee?"

"Yeah, so?"

"I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind. What do you do at this
eating
establishment, sir?"

"I make sure everything's nice and quiet."

"You're the bouncer."

O'Fallon glared, then nodded.

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes."

"Thank you. You've had experience at that kind of job before, haven't you?"

"I don't remember. Yeah, maybe."

"In fact, you've had a variety of colorful positions in the past, wouldn't you say? You were a prizefighter, were you not, until a few years ago."

"Yeah, so?"

"Until that unfortunate incident in the ring with Mr. Murphy."

O'Fallon's face turned bright red. Michael thought he was going to jump out of his chair and go for Mr. Osgood's throat. "Hey, nobody ever proved
nothing
on me, see? That chump had a glass
brain,
it wasn't my fault he checked out!"

Mr. Merck jumped up and started shouting objections. The judge sustained them and told the jury not to regard the witness's last answer. He gave a warning to Mr. Osgood, who hung his head and looked sorry—but when he came over to the table to get a paper, he slipped Michael a wink.

"Now, Mr. O'Fallon, before you worked for Professor Winter, you worked for the University of Chicago, is that correct?"

"Yeah."

"In a custodial or janitorial capacity, I believe."

"Yeah."

"Tell us what you did immediately before that job."

O'Fallon narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "I tended bar in a tavern."

"What was the name of it?"

"I don't remember."

"Where was it?"

"Over on the West Side."

"What street?"

"I don't remember."

"No? Well, let me see if I can help you out. I have a copy of the employment application you filled out when you first applied for your janitor's job at the university. You wrote down that you'd last worked at McNulty's Tavern on Van Buren Street. Does that ring a bell?"

"Yeah, that's it. McNulty's, right, on Van Buren. Now I remember."

"That's the job you had
immediately
before your university job?"

"Right."

"And you're sure of that?"

"Yeah, I'm sure."

"What if I told you I have information suggesting your last job was as an orderly at St. Catherine's Asylum for the Insane? Would your answer be the same?"

O'Fallon squirmed and didn't answer. At the table to Michael's right, Mr. Merck put his head in his hand.

"And what if I told you I have a sworn affidavit from Dr. James Coleman, the superintendent at St. Catherine's, in which he asserts that you were discharged from that job for—and I quote—'a history of neglect, mistreatment, and brutality to the inmate patients'? Would you say Dr. Coleman is—Well, what would you say, sir? Mistaken? Lying?"

"Objection," Mr. Merck said weakly.

"Overruled."

"Well, Mr. O'Fallon?"

"I don't remember."

"What don't you remember?"

"Nothing about St. Catherine's."

"You don't remember working there?"

"I don't remember nothing."

"What about serving six months for assault and battery in the Chicago House of Corrections two years ago? Remember that?"

"No." He glanced at Mr. Merck in desperation, but the lawyer kept quiet.

"Do you have any kind of brain injury that might account for these memory lapses, Mr. O'Fallon? Maybe from your boxing career?"

Before Mr. Merck could object, the judge said, "All right, now," very gently, and when some people in the courtroom laughed, he didn't scold them.

"I'll withdraw that, Your Honor. And I think that'll be all. No more questions for this witness."

Mr. Merck didn't have any questions for him either.

* * * * *

On the morning of the last day of the prosecution's case, Mr. Osgood told Sydney to go home. "Better yet, go shopping," he said. "Go someplace where you can't be reached." Why? she asked, bewildered. "Just in case Merck takes it into his head to call you as a last-minute witness. I don't know why he would, but anything's possible when a lawyer starts to get desperate. I doubt he'd subpoena you, but if you're sitting twenty feet away, the temptation might be too much for him. So make yourself scarce. Because I think the last thing you want, Mrs. Darrow, is to take the stand."

She hadn't confirmed or denied that. But Osgood was a smart man, and his timely warning confirmed the suspicion she'd had all along—that he knew about her and Michael. Oh, not the particulars, but enough to realize that the outcome of her being called to testify would be one of two things: social disgrace or perjury.

So she went home, reluctantly; as hard as it was to sit through the ups and downs of Michael's trial, it was ten times harder to stay away and imagine them. But Pshe didn't miss much, they told her in the afternoon. Merck called one more witness, a zoo employee who only repeated what the others had said before, stressing the chaos and destruction Michael's "criminal and irresponsible act" had provoked.

The prosecution rested.

Mr. Osgood asked for a two-day recess, but the judge denied the request even before Merck could object to it. Sydney knew why Osgood was stalling—he wanted Michael's parents to arrive, maybe even testify, before the trial concluded. He was a good lawyer and he probably knew what he was doing, but the importance he attached to the presence of the MacNeils puzzled her. She couldn't believe it would make that much difference.

In any case, at ten o'clock the next morning, he opened the case for the defense, and his first witness was Sam.

Sydney had known about it, and she had finally agreed to it. But she didn't like it. Neither did Aunt Estelle, neither did Papa. They would have forbidden it except for one thing: Sam was dying to testify. In fact, he had put his seven-year-old foot down and insisted on it. He talked of nothing else, and he wasn't the least bit nervous; excited, but not nervous. For him the trial was like a school play in which he was one of the leads; without him, he really believed, the show couldn't go on.

"I do," he piped enthusiastically to the clerk who administered the oath. Around her, Sydney could feel a softening in the courtroom, almost a silent
Awww.
Sam had on his new argyle stockings and navy blue kneepants, a jacket, shirt, waistcoat, and bow tie—too many clothes for the warm September morning, but there had been no talking him out of any of them. In the high witness chair his feet didn't quite touch the floor. He folded his hands in his lap and stared around the room with huge eyes, clearly intrigued by his new, superior perspective. From the knees up he looked like a little grownup, sober and serious, ready to do his civic duty. From the knees down he looked like a child, unconsciously banging his heels against the bottom of his chair.

"Tell us about the first time you met the defendant," Mr. Osgood said after Sam gave his name and age. "Where were you, and when did this meeting occur?"

"I was playing in the sand and I saw him coming along with Mr. O'Fallon."

"You were at your house, and you were playing by the lake, is that it?"

"Yes, sir. And Hector saw him, too, and jumped up on him, so then Sydney and I went to talk to him, and I shook his hand."

"And Hector is—?"

"Our dog."

"And Sydney's your sister?"

"Yes, sir."

"You say you shook hands with Mr. MacNeil. Weren't you afraid of him?"

"No."

"Why not?"

Sam just stared at him.

"Hadn't you heard that he was a 'wild man,' and that he'd once been kept in a cage?"

"Yes, sir, but I wasn't scared of him." . "Why?"

He shifted a little, not prepared for this question. "Because I could just tell."

"Tell what?"

"That he was a regular man. He wasn't wild—he even had his shoes on." Gentle laughter. "I gave him my giraffe puppet to play with, and then after that we played ball. And we've been friends from then on. He didn't talk at first, so I called him Lancelot before I knew his name was Michael. We did everything together, and it was like having another big brother."

With a bemused expression, Mr. Osgood turned over several pages of his notes. Sam was getting ahead of his orderly plan of questioning, but Sydney doubted if he minded it. "Now, Sam," he resumed gravely, "did there come a time when your father asked you to help him with an experiment on Mr. MacNeil? An experiment," he went on when Sam looked blank, "that involved you and an apparent swimming accident?"

"Oh, yes, sir. Dad told me to pretend like I was drowning so he could see what Michael would do. See, he was doing these experiments to see if people are really good or really bad, and since nothing had ever happened to Michael in his life before, nothing in the world or in the city or anything, he was a perfect person to experiment on."

"Aha. Well, just tell us about this incident when you pretended you were drowning."

"Okay. Well, I jumped in off the dock and started yelling, 'Help, help, save me, I'm drowning,' and holding my nose and going under and everything, and Michael came running over and jumped in after me, but then he
sank.
So then—"