Jude

by Kate Morgenroth

  “I …” She seemed to struggle with the answer. “I wanted to make a difference. It sounds so naive now, but I thought I could do something.”

  “Do what, exactly?”

  She looked down into her lap, then up again, smiling a little self-consciously. “See that justice was done, but at the time I had no idea what that meant. I had visions of sending all the bad people off to prison—of making the world safe.”

  “And so you took a job in the DA’s office.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what happened?”

  “After two years of prosecuting misdemeanors I requested to work in the section that dealt with domestic crimes. It wasn’t a popular place at the time, so I got to handle a lot of cases.”

  “And how did that go?”

  “I did well there. I was able to convince many of the women to press charges, and we won a good number.”

  “And were you happy?”

  “I thought I was doing what I had set out to do. So yes, I suppose I was happy.”

  “But then something happened that would change everything, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I fell in love,” Anna said.

  Jude couldn’t detect any emotion in her voice.

  “His name was Anthony Arvelo, and he was a police officer who worked with me on a domestic violence case. The woman refused to press charges, and her husband killed her a few months later. Anthony was the one who called to tell me what had happened. He suggested that we go out for a drink, I said yes, and that was how it began.”

  “How did it end?” Comfort asked.

  “He hit me, and for six months I let him. And for those same six months I was telling these women—my clients—that they had to press charges if they wanted anything to change, that they had to be strong and stand up for what they knew was right. It was the same speech I’d been making for years, and I kept making it, even when Anthony started hitting me where people could see. My coworkers didn’t suspect anything. My coworkers bought my cover-up stories, but my clients knew. They looked at me and knew.

  “Looking back now, I don’t know how I did it. How I had the nerve to sit there and say those things to them, with a broken arm, with a black eye, and with a wedding ring still on my finger. It’s not so surprising that I got fewer and fewer cases to try. They listened to my speech and thanked me politely but said they didn’t want to press charges.”

  “What changed things for you?” Comfort asked.

  “Actually, it was one of my clients. I got the case of a woman who had been married for thirty years; her husband had been hitting her for twenty-nine. He was a banker, and she was a housewife. They’d had four kids, two boys and two girls, but the kids were all grown up and moved out. She might have gone the rest of her life living with her husband and taking the beatings, but at Thanksgiving the wife of her oldest boy showed up with a broken collarbone and a bruise on her cheek.

  “When I started to give this woman my usual speech, she looked at me and said, ‘You can save your speeches for someone who needs them. When I saw my daughter-in-law, I decided.’ And she pulled a loose-leaf binder out of her bag and handed it over. Inside she had gathered all her hospital visits, years of family photographs, diary entries, all meticulously ordered. ‘Is it enough?’ she asked me.

  “That’s when I began compiling my own file, because I had found out a few weeks earlier that I was pregnant, and as much as I could rationalize it away for myself, I couldn’t do it for my child. Less than a month later I filed charges against Anthony.”

  “How did you go for so long?” Comfort asked.

  “That’s not a question I ask myself anymore. At the time it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. Isn’t it strange how the worst things in your life so often turn out to be the best? Or at least the most important. Because of that whole situation I finally understood something about justice. Justice isn’t what they’d like you to believe. It isn’t cool and impartial. It requires courage … and sometimes sacrifice. When I got out of school, I thought that justice was just about convicting the criminal. The problem is that those criminals aren’t isolated. They are part of the fabric of our world, and that means that you’re punishing somebody’s father or somebody’s husband … or somebody’s son. And sometimes it’s your own.”

  “You were the one who discovered your son’s involvement, isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you chose to go to the police with that information.”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that a difficult decision?”

  “It was the hardest thing I have ever done.” As she said it, she looked at Jude, and if he had been in a room alone with her, he wouldn’t have thought of his promise to Harry, or the possibility that the plan might fail and it all would have been for nothing. None of that would have mattered. If they’d been alone and she had looked at him like that, he would have told her the truth.

  THEY BROKE FOR lunch and reconvened at two, but the courtroom was packed a full half hour beforehand. No one wanted to lose his or her seat for the cross-examination. The noise level was louder than normal, but when the judge banged the gavel, an almost immediate hush fell over the room, as if everyone had stopped in mid sentence.

  Maria rose. She’d spent lunch talking to Jude, so he had an idea of what she was going to ask, but he was as anxious as everyone else to hear the answers.

  During Anna’s morning testimony Comfort had not asked about Jude’s birth or his kidnapping by his father or his reappearance fifteen years later. Maria started by taking Anna through these events. When she had established the facts, she returned to the material of the morning—then she started with her real questions.

  “You testified that soon after you were married, your husband started hitting you—isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Anna acknowledged.

  “And he continued to hit you regularly until you separated and pressed charges?”

  “Yes,” Anna said again.

  “And why was it you didn’t say anything before that?”

  “I was ashamed. It’s a common feeling among abused wives.”

  “But you of all people should have known that there was nothing to be ashamed of,” Maria pointed out.

  “I know. But I was anyway.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t scared that it would affect your career?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Besides, if anything, it helped my career.”

  “Yes, it did, didn’t it.” Maria nodded. “Just like this trial is helping your career. It seems like a trend. Sacrificing the people around you to your career.”

  “Objection,” Comfort hollered, jumping up in protest. “Is there a question here?”

  “Ask a question, Counselor,” the judge said to Maria.

  “Did you put your husband on trial, and now your son, in order to advance yourself in your chosen profession?” Maria asked obediently.

  “No, I did not,” Anna denied hotly.

  Maria merely regarded her for a moment, and in the resulting silence Anna’s denial sounded a little too harsh. A little too emphatic.

  His lawyer was very good, Jude thought. Too good. If he had actually given her something to work with, they might actually have had a chance. However, in trying to help him, she was undermining the point of his sacrifice.

  After a long pause Maria chose a new angle of attack. “I wanted to clarify something you said in your testimony,” Maria said. “Tell me if I understood you correctly. I believe you indicated that your husband’s abuse changed you in a profound way. Is that an accurate statement?”

  “Yes, I said that.”

  “And you were an adult at the time that it happened.”

  “I was in my late twenties.”

  “So would you say that it could have an even greater impact on a child?”

  “I’m sure it would.”

  “So when Jude was restore
d to you when he was fifteen, did you ever ask him if his father had hit him?”

  “No. No, I didn’t.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Because I couldn’t do anything,” Anna said, and her voice was so low that you could see the people on the benches straining forward, as if the extra few inches would help them catch her words.

  “You couldn’t do anything, so you didn’t want to know?”

  “But I did know,” Anna said. “I didn’t have to ask.”

  “So you knew that it had happened. You lived with your husband for one year, and it changed your life. Jude lived with him for fifteen. What do you think it did to him?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Because you never asked.”

  “No, I never asked,” Anna said. “I probably should have, but it was too hard, too painful. I didn’t want to face what he must have gone through, so I didn’t ask. You can judge me for it if you want to. That’s your right. My reasons are not excuses. Circumstances are not excuses.”

  “That’s a rather harsh view, don’t you think?”

  “Look around. It’s a harsh world.”

  “Well, it has been for Jude,” Maria said.

  Comfort stood up. “Objection.”

  Before the judge could answer, Maria said, “Withdrawn. I have no more questions.”

  The prosecution’s case ended with Anna’s testimony, and the judge dismissed the court for the day. The next morning Maria called her witnesses, but they were few. First she called to the stand several students from Jude’s school who testified that Jude had never pushed drugs on anyone. They told the jury that they couldn’t name anyone Jude had sold to, other than Nick. After the students, she called a psychiatrist who testified to the effects of prolonged domestic abuse in children, trying to reinforce her theory of mitigating circumstances.

  Maria kept it short and to the point, and her case was finished before lunch. Closing arguments took an hour. The trial was done by three o’clock, and the jury was sent out to deliberate.

  They took one hour and forty-seven minutes before they filed back into the courtroom to deliver the verdict. The twelve men and women sat down, and the judge asked if they had reached a decision. The forewoman rose from the bench and answered him.

  “We have, Your Honor.”

  She handed over a slip of paper, which the bailiff walked over to the judge.

  Jude found that even though he knew the verdict didn’t matter, he was still gripping the arms of the chair tightly in suspense.

  The judge opened the paper. Then he folded it again very carefully. “Will the defendant please rise. On the count of possession with intent to distribute, how do you find?”

  “We the jury find the defendant guilty.”

  “And on the charge of criminally negligent homicide, how do you find?”

  The forewoman looked at Jude, her chin lifted defiantly, and she said, “We find the defendant guilty.”

  Jude felt Maria’s hand search for his under the table. Her soft, dry palm closed around his.

  THE COURT RECONVENED for sentencing at ten the next morning, and when the judge emerged from his chambers, Jude noted that he looked older and more tired than at any time during the trial. Jude found himself wondering how old he actually was. Right then he looked like he could be eighty.

  The judge lowered himself into his chair and rapped the gavel twice. The room quieted immediately, but he still paused a moment before he spoke. He looked at Jude and smiled. It was a sad, kindly smile.

  Then the judge looked back out across the courtroom, and his face fell again into tired, sorrowful folds as he addressed the people. “I would like to start off by saying I commend the prosecution for pursuing justice with ardor and determination. I also want to thank the jury for their service and their judgment. They chose to follow the lead of the prosecution, and I think they made a statement about the need for severity and high standards of behavior.”

  His gaze scanned the room, searching for something that he didn’t seem to find. His eyes rested on Jude last, for one fleeting moment, and he nodded as if deciding something.

  “However, I believe that sometimes mandatory minimum sentences are excessively harsh, and this is one of those times. In a case like the one we have before us today, considering the age and situation of the defendant, I find it hard to take any satisfaction or to feel like I am doing something that is beneficial to society.

  “I think that while we have a need for severity, we have as much of a need for forgiveness. So, in the hope of leaving this troubled young man a chance for a life after his due punishment, I have decided to be as lenient as the law allows. The charge of criminally negligent homicide carries a minimum sentence of five years. The drug charge also carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years without possibility of parole. These will be served concurrently. I hereby sentence the defendant to a total of five years without possibility of parole.”

  The courtroom sat in stunned silence while the judge handed down the sentence. Once he struck his gavel, the room erupted. Comfort stood so abruptly his chair fell over, and Jude could hear the voices behind him, which sounded as if everyone in the room was speaking at the same time.

  Jude leaned over and asked Maria what the fuss was about.

  “Don’t you know?”

  Jude shook his head.

  “That man,” she said, nodding at the judge, “has done a very brave thing. They wanted a bloodletting, and he spoiled the party.”

  “But I got five years,” Jude said. It would have seemed long enough to him if he had actually had to serve it.

  She looked at him in amazement. “You really don’t get it. I was sure that you were going to get at least ten. With any other judge you certainly would have. You don’t have many in his position that believe in forgiveness. I just wonder if they’ll be able to forgive him for it.”

  Part III

  24

  WHEN JUDE FIRST arrived at North Central in mid-October, the first thing he noticed was the wall. It was as if all the invisible barriers in his life had taken form in this solid piece of steel-reinforced concrete, four feet thick and thirty-two feet tall. He found out later his experience was not unusual—whenever convicts talked about their first day in prison, they always mentioned the wall, and the feeling they had when the bus rolled through the gate, and they knew they weren’t going to leave again for years.

  As Jude exited the bus, he had to concentrate on the peculiar, shambling steps that the leg shackles required. The guard escorted him down the path and through a nearby doorway. They were buzzed through the door and into the receiving area, and his guard greeted the man behind the desk.

  “Hey, Grosso.”

  “Hey, Terry. What you got there? Only one?”

  “Well, this one’s sort of long distance. I don’t know how he got assigned here.”

  “Oh yeah,” Grosso cut in. “Yeah, I heard about him. Come all the way from the other side of the state.”

  “Why on earth did they send him all the way over here?” Jude’s escort said.

  Jude could have told them if they had asked him. It was one final favor Maria had negotiated: to give him a dummy file and send him where no one would know him—to a prison where his mother hadn’t put away half of the criminals inside.

  “Well, he’s all yours now, Grosso,” the guard said. “I got to get back.” He bent to unlock the chains from Jude’s wrists and ankles.

  “Thanks, Terry. See you,” Grosso said, smiling.

  Then Terry headed to the entrance, and Grosso turned toward Jude. His smile vanished immediately.

  “What are you looking at, asshole?” Grosso looked at Jude with a glance that took him in and dismissed him with the flicker of his lids.

  No one had looked at Jude like that in almost two years. He may have been a failure as a student, a disappointment to his mother, and even a convicted drug dealer, but for the last two years everyone had known th
at he was the DA’s son, and that translated into being somebody. In those two years he hadn’t simply adjusted, he had begun to take it for granted. He wondered how he could have forgotten what it was like to be just himself. On his own he was nothing. It was an unpleasant homecoming, and Jude shifted his gaze to a spot somewhere just beyond the man’s shoulder.

  “That’s better. Now, step right over through there,” Grosso said. The unassuming doorway opened into a room with concrete walls, showerheads on one side and crude drains cut in the floor.

  “All right, strip down,” the man ordered.

  Jude slowly peeled off his clothes, folding them as he went and stacking them in a neat pile on the floor.

  Grosso waited until he was done, then stooped to gather them up. He crossed the room to the wall, which was lined with empty cardboard boxes waiting to be filled with the discarded lives of men. Grosso tossed Jude’s carefully folded pile into the box on the end.

  Jude was subjected to a search and a delousing shampoo. The guard threw him a towel, and he was allowed to wrap it around his waist before Grosso led him out of the shower room and up a flight of stairs. They stopped at a doorway. Inside the room Jude could see rows of metal shelves reaching to the ceiling, filled with piles of blue fabric.

  “Freckles, you in here?” Grosso shouted.

  A man appeared around the corner of one of the aisles. Jude saw immediately the cruel joke in his name; three dark birthmarks spread across his face in uneven blotches.

  “Right here, sir.”

  “How you feeling today, Freckles? Arthritis acting up again?”

  “It’s a little better. Clear skies today?”

  “Not a cloud,” the guard affirmed.

  “Yes sir, my bones always know.”

  Jude looked around and saw that there were no windows in the room. All the light came from the flickering fluorescent tubes. It was late afternoon, and the man had not been outside yet that day.

  “So what can I do you for?” Freckles asked. “This a new one?”

  “Yeah, he needs a whole set.”

  The old man looked Jude up and down.