Sandy smacks her forehead. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, you must be freezing out there. Come in, come in,” she says, taking the rope from Katie. Sandy points a finger at Jack. “Not you, bud. Stay.”
Katie watches as Sandy hooks the rope around the outside door handle and shuts the door firmly in Jack’s face.
She turns to Katie, tries a bright smile, fails. She dips her head down and picks at the baby’s yellow sock. Katie shifts from one foot to the other, waiting.
“God, you must hate me, huh?” Sandy finally says quietly, peering up at Katie through long lashes.
Instead of answering, Katie strokes the baby’s pajamaed leg with one finger. “She’s so big now.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s allergic to the dog,” Sandy says, gesturing with her chin toward the door, and now Katie can see that the blotches on the baby’s face and neck are hives. “We didn’t know what it was at first, because Jack’s a smooth-haired fox terrier, so we figured hair, not fur, you know? But.”
“He came to my house.”
“Oh, right,” Sandy replies, “Thanks. I put him in the garage, you know, but he hates it in there, and there’s a dog door. What can you do?”
“Not much,” Katie says, shifting her weight again. “Well, it’s late—”
“So how are you?” Sandy says, and takes a step toward her. She looks at Katie’s face, looks down at the floor, shakes her head. “Dumb question, huh?” she says.
“It’s okay.”
Sandy transfers the baby onto her other hip, raises an arm at Katie. “Well, come here already, I haven’t talked to you in ages, girl.”
Katie walks into the half hug, pats Sandy awkwardly on the back.
“You do hate me, huh?” she whispers into Katie’s ear.
“No, of course not.”
They pull back, Sandy tracking her face for a second. “Well, you should.”
“I don’t,” Katie says firmly.
Sandy nods, tugs the baby’s pajama top down. The baby makes wet, burping sounds, gearing up to cry again.
“God, Emily, you’re a mess,” Sandy says, trying to laugh. “I beeped Rick, and he’s supposed to be getting back to me after he talks to the pediatrician on call, but with this weather . . . ”
“I’m sure Rick is okay.”
“Oh, I know, it’s just that everyone pitches in in the ER,” Sandy says, “so who knows when he’ll get back to me?” Her eyes stray to the bay window, back to Katie. “So, really. How are you? The truth.”
“You have a few hours?” Katie says, trying to laugh her off.
But Sandy’s face grows serious. “Yes,” she says with such sincerity that Katie finds herself grateful and embarrassed at the same time. “Yes, I do.”
After Sandy ties Jack securely in the garage, it doesn’t take much time for Katie to catch her up on the trial. There isn’t much to say, after all, and she’s thankful when Sandy doesn’t ask any questions or push for more information. Katie transitions to a question about Sandy’s older son for a quick sidetrack, a short respite so she can gather her thoughts about the days and nights since she and Sandy last talked. Wishing, despite herself, that she could explain, as soon as Sandy stops talking—finished now with her son and launching seamlessly into poor Mr. Peterson across the street and two doors down—how she felt after Nick moved out, when Sandy first started to pull back, and then soon after the funeral, when Sandy stopped talking to her altogether.
“I’m pretty sure Mr. Peterson’s having problems with prescription medicine now, too,” Sandy says, rolling her eyes. “He was out raking leaves yesterday, and he was wobbling over all the place. He looks so thin, too, and I told Rick . . .”
Please, Katie wants to say into the blur of words, do you remember Nick? Me and Nick? Will you talk about that now?
“ . . . then I saw him at CVS yesterday,” Sandy says, “and I was actually frightened—”
“Shouldn’t you try Rick again?” Katie suddenly blurts out.
Sandy leans back, startled. “Oh. Oh, maybe I will,” she says, and gazes down at Emily, who is snoring softly on her shoulder now. The hives are better, faded pink. “Let me put her down first.”
After Sandy leaves the room, Katie wants to flee, to run out the front door and sprint home, but the nightly news is flashing right in front of her on the silent TV. A young male newscaster stands in front of the Providence courthouse, bundled into a long beige overcoat, microphone raised and lips moving. Katie picks up a huge remote with dozens of colored buttons, pushes “off.” Nothing. Picks up another one, pressing buttons, and watches the scene shift back to the studio.
“Thank you, Andrew,” comes the female newscaster’s voice, loud and grave.
In a box at the top right corner of the screen is that same black-and-white photograph that was taken in New Hampshire, Katie’s favorite, and this time it isn’t just Nick there: Katie stares back into her own smiling face in the photo, traces the contours of her body and the way it rests against Nick’s as they recline on the huge, sand-colored rock.
“. . . Nicolas Burrelli’s wife, Katie, seen here as she rushes from the courthouse this morning,” the newscaster says, and then the picture shifts again and the screen fills with Katie in front of the courthouse, ashen-faced, pushing through the extended microphones and cameras, “after the first day of testimony ends almost before it begins.”
The walls jump in, out. Her legs drain, chest ballooning as if she’s been underwater for too long and needs to surface for air. Her fingers roam over the remote, searching for the “off ” button.
The picture shifts again—there is the somber newscaster behind the desk, and there is Jerry’s grinning face, at the corner of the screen in a box.
“. . . Jerry LaPlante, the mentally handicapped man who is charged with the murder of the speech pathologist this past spring. LaPlante is being held at the Adult Correctional Institution in solitary confinement, at the request of his lawyer.”
The newscaster turns to her male coanchor.
“Where he’ll remain, I understand, until a verdict is reached,” the male coanchor says. “You know, Carol, it isn’t a secret that the Burrellis were like surrogate parents to LaPlante, so sources are now questioning if Mrs. Burrelli is actually cooperating with the district attorney at all. Whether or not her personal relationship with the mentally handicapped defendant is interfering with her ability to seek justice for her estranged husband—”
The TV finally snaps off. Katie stares at the blank screen, the remote still pointed at it.
“Oh, God,” Sandy says, and Katie turns, sees her standing with the phone in one hand, the other one covering her mouth.
“It’s a lie,” Katie says. She barely recognizes her own voice. “They’re lying.”
“Who would tell them that?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know who—” Katie begins, but it’s too much.
“What can I do?” Sandy says. “Anything.”
“I want him convicted. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
“I believe you,” Sandy says. “You know how reporters are—”
“He would have come back,” Katie says. She places the remote on the coffee table, carefully lines it up with the others.
“Who?”
“Nick. If Jerry didn’t kill him, we would be together now.”
“Of course you would.”
“I should have told Richard about Carly today, but that doesn’t mean I’m not cooperating.”
Sandy’s face fills with confusion. “It’s probably just a misunderstanding—”
“I have to go, Sandy.”
The conversation at the door is short and perfunctory. Yes, Katie says, she will take Jack temporarily, until Sandy and Rick can figure out if Emily is allergic to him. No, she won’t let Jack have any dairy, because it makes him vomit. Yes, she understands that she should call if she needs anything, anything at all.
There’s a crate at Katie’s feet, filled with dog food, bowls, th
ings that squeak.
“He’ll be good company right now,” Sandy says, handing her Jack’s leash.
“Okay, right.”
Before she can escape, Sandy gets her in a death-grip hug.
“You call me if you want to talk, girl,” she says. “I mean it.”
“Right.”
Minutes later Katie is back in the basement on her knees, adrenaline pumping as she tears through the metal canisters of film on the bottom shelf. On some of the lids there is a strip of masking tape with a name written on it in faded marker: HOUSING CRISIS. ANIMAL RESCUE. SAVE THE BAY. The lids come loose as she tosses them like Frisbees across the tiled floor; the canisters clang and crash into each other, the lids skidding across them, the films unraveling and wobbling up to tangle into one another and the ones already on the floor from earlier. Jack watches nervously, shifts his weight back and forth on his front paws and snaps at the canisters halfheartedly as they pass by. Finally Katie finds what she’s looking for, the first one—a green canister with a long piece of masking tape across the lid. JERRY AT THE WARWICK CENTER. And then another. JERRY/GROUP HOME. And another. JERRY/MISC.
No, she didn’t forget them, of course not. And the question—why she didn’t tell Richard about them before—isn’t important anymore. Only this: they exist.
Katie presses the curling masking tape down on the top canister. Nick would have come back, it is the only thing she is certain of at this point.
You want to see cooperation? I’ll show you fucking cooperation.
And then there is finally that pulse of excitement she’s been waiting for since the trial began, a frigid, stone-size feeling of satisfaction that starts to grow in the center of her heart, replacing everything else.
11
At 7:45 the next morning, she’s sitting in Richard’s office waiting for him, her compact video camera by her side. Richard stands outside the door with his assistant, Kristen, who had let her in only minutes before. Katie sees the young woman flipping her long blond hair over her shoulder now, shrugging at Richard. Her small, watchful eyes squinting behind her black-framed glasses, her expression easy to interpret: Don’t ask me what she wants.
Richard walks into the office, sits down behind his desk. He picks up a pen, studies the tip before looking at her. “What can I do for you, Katie?”
She knows she’s only one short step away—she just needs that last final push to truly join forces with him, to accept who he is inside the courtroom. She leans forward, elbows on the desk, fingers laced. Face like stone.
“Yesterday you said Jerry was a very dangerous man. Do you really believe that?”
He looks only a little surprised. “Don’t you?”
“He still believes in Santa. His favorite show is Bugs Bunny.”
“He shot your husband point-blank in the face. After warning him that he was about to execute him.”
“And if Jerry was confused? If he thought he was doing something good, like he was somehow helping Nick?”
“By murdering him? Then that makes him even more dangerous, doesn’t it? Suppose he wants to ‘help’ someone else?”
It’s clear by Richard’s demeanor—his eyes narrowed, his head bent slightly, the stillness of his body—that he knows what’s expected of him here. “Jerry was upset with your husband that morning, and he acted on it,” he says evenly. “Whether Jerry’s complicated history played into his motives is almost irrelevant at this point. And you’ve witnessed his violent nature firsthand. He is a volatile, dangerous man.”
“He draws pictures of stick people,” Katie says, her eyes never leaving Richard’s. “Someone has to remind him every morning to wash his hair when he’s in the shower.”
Richard puts the pen down. “He stole a gun, then walked into the gym with the sole purpose of killing your husband. According to the law, that’s premeditated murder.”
Katie searches his face. “I ran into a woman from the Warwick Center last night, Dottie. Dottie said Jerry thinks he saved Nick.”
Richard nods, scribbles on his pad. “Well, it might be a tactic to throw us off, but even if he actually said that, it doesn’t change the facts. We have corroborated evidence proving that Jerry was incited by his past and that he acted on it.”
Richard watches Katie closely, too, now, as if he can sense the small hesitation inside her. “Even though your husband left—”
“I asked him to leave. Just for a short time.”
“Exactly.”
“We never thought it would be permanent.”
And then the final push, the exact words she needs to hear from this man, the genuine outrage in his eyes: “You never had the chance to find out, did you, Katie?”
And there it is, the confirmation once again. Jerry’s fault that Nick will never walk through the front door of their home again, Jerry’s fault that the chance, the certainty, was taken away from her. All of this on Richard’s face as he meets her gaze.
“You have something for me?” He pulls the writing tablet closer.
Katie squares her shoulders; she drops the recorder onto the desk, surprised and pleased when Richard startles back into his chair.
“What’s that?”
“I had to use the recorder to film off of the screen. I didn’t have time to get a working print to the lab, so the images are a little fuzzy.”
“What images?”
“I told you about the documentary I started when Jerry was admitted into the program?”
“Yes, but—”
“I have hours and hours of him on film.”
“I know,” Richard says.
He leans into the desk toward Katie, the pen suspended vertically in the air. There’s a probing look on his face that gives Katie a surprising shiver of power; it’s completely unexpected, the sheer force of this moment, how she feels with Richard’s attention focused so entirely on her. To be the one who is watched like this, the one who is listened to so intently.
“Then you know that most of the footage looks like home movies, something a mother or father would take. I already told you that sharing the film with an audience felt very much like a betrayal, so I abandoned it. The reels have been gathering dust for years.”
She is ready for Richard’s confused look. “The problem with this—” he begins.
“Most of my footage looks like home movies. There are other things on the film, too. Jerry at the center, working with Nick and with the other clients,” she says, then stops for effect. “And the incidents I told you about, when he first came to the program.”
“You have some of them on film?”
Kate nods, hooks a thumb at the TV standing in the corner of his office. “It works?”
“Yes, yes, go ahead.” Richard thumps his pen against his palm.
Katie sets up the recorder, feels Richard’s entire focus on her, on what she will give him. Another acute shudder of pleasure passes through her body. “I didn’t feel like playing with sound, but you’ll get the point.”
The TV fills with static, and then Jerry is grinning in his thrift-store clothes, oversize khaki shorts and a faded T-shirt. His hair is combed neatly to the side, blue eyes wide with suspense as he hunches over a feeder at the Roger Williams Zoo, hands cupped underneath the small metal door. A little girl in a yellow jumper stands beside him, looking up with confused but inquisitive eyes: Is he a grown-up? Jerry’s grinning face is focused on the feeder, his hands shaking with excitement. Nick pops quarters into the feeder and says something to the girl—probably that Jerry is special, a grown-up but different from the kind she knows—and twists the knob. The little girl is nodding, looking from Nick to Jerry, and then suddenly Jerry is swirling away from them, eyes lifting to the sky. His face seizes up, arms instantly striking out. He ducks his head under, but his arms still swipe and attack the air. Nick tries to grab hold of his hands—Jerry wrestles clear, teeth clenched, his fist pounding into Nick’s neck. The little girl’s mouth is wide, howling—she’s frozen until he
r mother darts into view, yanks her away. Jerry kicks now, fists hammering the air, as Nick lunges and throws his arms around Jerry’s middle. For an instant, Jerry looks in the camera’s direction—there, right there, his face: not the one Richard has seen, not the one the jurors sneak peeks at in court.
Another burp of static, and there is Jerry again, at a birthday party at Nick and Katie’s apartment, sitting at the head of the table. A paper crown on his head, beaming with anticipation. Her family standing beside the table, smiling. The screen goes dark—someone has turned the lights out—and then the camera moves to capture Nick walking in with a huge Bugs Bunny cake, a forest of candles burning on top. Nick places the cake in front of Jerry, and the camera pans up. Jerry stares down at the candles, face filled with terror. His lips start to mumble, slowly at first, then faster.
Katie leans over, presses the pause button.
“Sometimes when he does that with his lips, it’s a sign,” she says in a dispassionate voice. She pushes the play button.
Jerry raises his head, and his face is completely transformed again: no sign of the normally pudgy innocence or confusion or happiness that is usually there; it has mutated into something horrific, his eyes pinpoints of rage—almost feral, focused on destruction. Not a mentally handicapped man anymore, not a harmless adult with the IQ of a child who loves Saturday-morning cartoons. Just a man, a grown man warped with anger and prepared to inflict violence. His hands seize the table, ready to flip it over. The screen fills with snow again.
Katie hits the stop button. “I have a couple more on film.”
“Holy shit.”
Katie unplugs the cord, winds it around her hand. Tries to quiet the victorious shaking of her body.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Richard asks, much too softly.
Lies of the Heart Page 11