Lies of the Heart

by Michelle Boyajian

  “Your client is on trial for murder, and you didn’t check to see if potentially damaging information was included in his files?”

  “I don’t—I think—”

  “Is it normal procedure at DCYF for records to just disappear like that?”

  Throughout this exchange, Donna’s objections are overruled, one after the other, and she flags at the defense table, shaking her head. Jerry stares down at his yellow pad, the pencil off to one side. His eyes are unfocused, bleary, and there are puffy bags underneath them. He is a statue, solid and unmoving, and when Donna turns to consult with one of her assistants and accidentally bumps his shoulder—a gesture that makes Katie flinch on her bench—he doesn’t react.

  Last week, just days ago, Katie would have sat forward, her eyes hard and unforgiving at this assault, but she recognizes this girl’s confusion, her desire to understand. And then her failure, her frustration, as she checks the defense table for help yet again and sees Donna still consulting with a woman in the front row.

  “Well, I suppose this is just a matter of record keeping, then?” Richard says to Amanda. “That now you can call the Warwick Center administration and have them make copies from their own files?”

  No one in the courtroom could possibly believe it’s this easy, that the missing incident reports would be mentioned at all if they still existed, but Amanda is glad to be let off the hook.

  “Yes,” she says.

  Katie watches Amanda’s body go limp with relief, wishing hers would do the same.

  One by one, Richard calls DCYF administrators and Jerry’s past social workers to the stand and begins his assault all over again. Katie finds a rhythm inside her head, a way to shut out the words that come at her, along with Richard’s scathing looks and gestures; she catches herself counting her fingers, slowing her breathing, the way Nick taught Carly when she couldn’t calm herself after her mother’s death. It works for a while, long enough for Katie to understand that what looks like simple badgering (Richard repeating the same questions to each witness) is actually practiced and has a purpose. Richard shakes his head, sighs, raises his eyebrows in doubt. As always, it works: when he stands before the jurors and gives them a look—Can you believe this?—all twelve sets of eyes mirror his frustration.

  There is only one interruption in the rest of the morning session, though not from Donna, who doesn’t object any longer. Katie watches Donna with envy, because she has become as quiet, as unmoving, as Jerry, which makes the scene even more dramatic: as the last social worker trudges out of the courtroom, Jerry’s body spasms once, torso twisting, then a second time. And then he is suddenly falling out of his chair sideways, landing on the courtroom floor with a loud whimper of pain. As the noise of confused voices intensifies inside the room, Katie has only one clear thought: she’s just glad she wasn’t the one to fall down.

  “Can I get you anything?” Richard asks at the lunch break. He bangs his briefcase and laptop onto his desk, sits. “Something to eat?” he asks without glancing at her.

  She can’t pinpoint it, but something has changed between them. She’s sure of it. First there was the unsettling way he treated her this morning when she asked about today’s witnesses—his short, overly formal answers, his scarcely hidden irritation with her, as if she were a meddling reporter with too many questions. And now, as she watches him, this: he opens his laptop, hits a key, begins typing. Like Katie isn’t in the room at all—or she’s in the room, but completely irrelevant now.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  “Please,” he says, jerking open a drawer and rifling through it, “have a seat.”

  “I’ll stand,” Katie blurts, too loud, and Richard looks up.

  “Everything okay?” he asks.

  “Fine,” Katie says, louder.

  Richard turns his eyes briefly to where Katie’s hands clench the chair in front of her. His eyebrows rise, and he looks back at Katie. “You said you have some questions? About the tape, I assume?”

  “Actually, no. I just want to know if your strategy has changed.”

  Richard becomes absorbed in another drawer for a moment.

  “Please,” Katie says.

  He pulls out a legal brief, flips it open. “Last week was a little crazy, for a bunch of different reasons,” he says. “For one, the footage of Jerry’s violence was brand new to me, and I had to make some adjustments.”

  “I’m sorry—” she begins, but he stops her with an indifferent shake of his head and scribbles something onto his pad.

  “Treadmont might have known about it before me, but in fact she’s playing right into my plan. Even with the footage that made it onto the final copy.” His voice is defensive, like Katie is challenging his competency.

  “So the strategy has changed.”

  “No. We’ve always needed to show deliberate and premeditated behavior. Still do.”

  “But you keep talking about his anger, and then you let the witnesses talk about Jerry’s compliance, how he wasn’t an angry guy.”

  “I keep pushing them to repeat this for a reason.” He lines up his pen with the cardboard binder of the pad. “I want the jurors to believe that Jerry wasn’t angry and out of control.”

  “But why the footage then, why—”

  “The more I push to show he could become violent, the more the defense pushes back. In the end it will be exactly what I need.”

  “Which is?”

  “He smiled right before he shot your husband, Katie. He didn’t strike out, he wasn’t aggressive at all.”

  “But earlier that day, he had the group session with Nick.” Katie lowers her eyes for an instant. “About sex and marriage. The defense is going to say it was fear, that he was set off by his history with his mother and how she abused him while she talked about sex and recited Scripture.”

  “And what happened years ago, when Jerry was ‘set off ’?”

  “You know. He freaked out.”

  “Exactly,” Richard says, leaning forward. “But this time he didn’t. He learned to control his rage. He was upset by whatever he heard in that session, and whatever he and Nick talked about later at lunch, and then he acted on it. He seemed preoccupied, but not angry. He was upset with Nick, but not out of control. In his supervisor’s own words, he was ‘pensive’ and ‘diligent.’ Planning.” Richard sits back in his chair, folds his arms. “Controlled. Deliberate. Premeditated.”

  “And when they say he tried to save Nick? That he was confused and tried to help him?”

  “I recall Rodriguez’s statement. ‘Bad men belong in hell.’ Jerry thought it was okay to shoot a bad man, because God wanted it.”

  “But I don’t think it’s that easy. Jerry did love Nick.”

  Richard shrugs. “Jerry may have loved your husband and still tried to kill him for reasons we’ll never understand. Maybe he thought Nick was ‘bad,’ or he got pissed off at what he heard that day, or maybe he really thought shooting him was a good thing—who knows? The facts are still the same. He stole the gun, hid it in his jacket, then walked into the gym to murder Nick. He smiled and said, ‘Time to go.’ Why he did it barely matters anymore.”

  “But the tape,” Katie says. “They’ll see the other side—”

  “It doesn’t matter how many sugary moments made it on there. Those jurors will still see what this man is capable of, how he hurt Nick in the past.”

  “But during those struggles, when he was upset by thunder or something, he wasn’t purposely trying to hurt Nick.”

  “Well, they can make that decision for themselves, can’t they?” he asks tersely.

  “The point is,” he continues, “they’ll see a man who became enraged when his past caught up with him, someone who would strike out, but only when Nick was around. Even if Jerry learned to contain himself and deal with his past, the images of this rage will affect them. And then, when we put them side by side with his complete restraint on the day of the murder,” Richard says, “even when the jurors see
the innocuous images of Jerry juxtaposed with the blowouts on the tape . . . well, we’ve got exactly what we want. A violent man who might have appeared harmless at times but who also became vicious within seconds. A man who eventually found a way to focus this rage in a controlled manner, who was completely aware that shooting Nick from three feet away would kill him. A man who was still able to recite the Bible thirty-some years after he heard it. ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ right?”

  The self-satisfied smile on Richard’s face is too much. Katie looks away, mumbles her thanks.

  “Anything else?” he asks in a dismissive tone.

  “Are you—have I done something wrong?”

  “No. Why would you think that?”

  “I don’t know, you just seem upset with me.”

  “Not at all,” he says with a stiff smile.

  “Please state your name for the jurors.”

  “My name is Patricia Kuhlman.” undaunted, Patricia keeps her gaze level with Richard’s.

  “You are the acting program director at the Warwick Center?”

  “I am.”

  “Your duties include overseeing both the work and recreation components of the center?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that includes supervising all the employees, and the clients, and keeping things like accounting and client files updated and organized?”

  “Yes.” Patricia doesn’t break eye contact with Richard.

  “You are ultimately accountable for every piece of paper that crosses your desk?”

  “Of course. I read each one.”

  “And that includes incident reports?”

  “Yes.”

  “So how do you account for the missing reports from the defendant’s file?”

  “I can’t.”

  Richard waits for more, but Patricia just raises her eyebrows at him: Next question?

  “You understand that removing those reports from his file is illegal? That keeping them from the prosecution is considered an obstruction of justice?”

  “I do.”

  “And that their absence could potentially help the defendant’s case because of their incriminating nature?”

  “Incriminating?” Patricia asks, musingly. “No. No, I don’t believe they are.”

  “No? Reports detailing the defendant’s violent outbursts wouldn’t incriminate him? Even if they included medical reports of, say, Nicholas Burrelli’s fractured wrist or his broken finger—”

  “Objection,” Donna says. “Judge, the reports have gone missing, and that is unfortunate, but we can’t simply speculate what might be in them.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Did you remove those reports from the center’s file yourself, Ms. Kuhlman, and did you direct or request DCYF to do the same, because you knew that reading them aloud to jurors would be shocking? That Nick’s resulting injuries from the defendant’s—”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained,” Judge Hwang says, lifting her glasses at Richard. “Move on, Mr. Bellamy.”

  “Okay. Well, Mrs. Kuhlman, are you aware, then, that the defendant fractured Nick’s wrist—”

  “Objection,” Donna says, standing. “We’ve covered this.”

  “Your Honor,” Richard says, “this is a reasonable question. By her own testimony, this woman is privy to every piece of paper that moves within the Warwick Center administration. She’s read the missing reports, and she can at least verify what was in them.”

  “I’ll allow it.”

  “Thank you, Judge,” Richard says, and turns back to Patricia. “Did you, in fact, read the incident reports that included medical records of Nicholas Burrelli’s injuries?”

  “I read Jerry’s incident reports, yes,” Patricia says, “but there weren’t any medical reports attached to them.”

  Richard stares for a moment. “If a staff member is injured—”

  “If a staff member is injured, then yes, medical records are attached to the reports, but that is rare. Very rare. I can assure you that while Nick did suffer minor bruises from trying to contain Jerry, he didn’t need medical attention. I assume you subpoenaed his medical records from Kent County Hospital, Mr. Bellamy, so I’m also assuming you know that the injuries you just mentioned had nothing to do with Jerry.”

  Katie remembers their trips to the emergency room, Nick sitting in the curtained room, charming the nurses who smilingly wrote everything down. I was lifting the anchor up on my boat, and then I tripped. Guess I’m getting clumsy in my old age. Protecting Jerry back then—protecting him now.

  “So you’re actually denying that Nick’s visits to the ER had anything to do with the defendant?”

  “I certainly am. It’s completely false.”

  “Even if we have an eyewitness who observed Nicholas Burrelli sustaining serious, multiple injuries at the hands of that defendant?”

  He is pointing to Jerry now, but Patricia has finally broken her staring match with Richard. She is looking directly at Katie.

  “I can tell you, with utmost certainty, that anyone who claims that Jerry seriously injured Nick is lying for his or her own personal, confused reasons.”

  “And do you also understand, Ms. Kuhlman,” Richard says angrily, “that if you lie in a court of law, you could be prosecuted for perjury?”

  Patricia flicks her eyes back to Richard. “I do, but I can assure you that Jerry never purposely or critically harmed Nick.”

  “So murdering Nick, intentionally executing him—”

  “Objection!”

  “Withdrawn.”

  Veronica is on the stand for less than a minute when Richard begins his attack.

  “Mrs. Holden, is it true that clients’ personal and private files at the Warwick Center are openly discussed with people who don’t even work there?”

  “Our client files are always confidential,” Veronica says.

  “By ‘confidential’ do you mean it allows you to discuss a client’s past or progress with people who aren’t professionally affiliated with the center?”

  “No, we don’t. We can’t.”

  “But didn’t you and other staff members in fact discuss the defendant’s history and his progress with Nick Burrelli’s wife, Katie?”

  “Oh, well, if people are close to the clients,” Veronica says, looking quickly at Katie, “sometimes we would.”

  “So you and other staff members did share information from his files?”

  “A little,” Veronica admits.

  “But I assume that there is a process for this disclosure? A thorough discussion among the staff first to determine that being ‘close’ to someone is enough to reveal private, legal information? And then meetings with, and official clearances from, their social workers? Lengthy administrative procedures to determine it’s okay to break confidentiality?”

  “Everyone knew Katie was like a mother to Jerry—”

  “And was she also a mother to”—Richard picks up a piece of paper, reads—“ a ‘Joseph Capaldi’?”

  “Joey?”

  “Yes, the client who witnessed the defendant shooting Nicholas Burrelli?”

  “Katie wasn’t close to Joey, no—”

  “But you and others at the center discussed Nick’s problems with Joey, his communication difficulties?”

  “Well—”

  “So then you weren’t exactly truthful just now, were you? Outsiders don’t actually have to be close to a client at all to hear about that client’s personal and confidential information, do they?”

  One by one Richard calls the staff up to the stand and begins all over again: Did you ever discuss private information about the defendant’s therapeutic and social progress at the center? Did you tell Katie Burrelli, before she had clearance to film a documentary about the defendant, that his mother had abused him? Is this normal procedure for staff members to carelessly mention confidential information about the clients to anyone who walks in the front door?

  By late afternoon Richard has pain
ted a disturbing picture of the Warwick Center staff—unprofessional, gossiping people who thought nothing of breaking rules that were meant to protect an innocent and challenged population. Donna’s objections come frequently, and Judge Hwang dismisses them each time in a sullen voice.

  Dottie is the last to take the stand. She settles herself in the chair, looks directly at Katie, and offers her a gentle smile. Before Katie can process this act of kindness, this unexpected generosity—before she can stop herself, her hand comes up to chest level, and she waves at Dottie shyly, as if they are meeting for the first time. Dottie’s smile deepens, and Richard’s head snaps back toward Katie, who feels the guilty rush of blood climbing up her neck and into her cheeks.

  Some of the jurors’ eyes follow Richard’s, and out of the corner of her own eye Katie can see the staff, across the aisle, turning her way, too. She clamps her hands together, the room contracting inward.

  “Mrs. Halverson, can you please tell me what information, if any, you illegally shared with Katie Burrelli about the defendant?”

  Suddenly the air in the room becomes thick, strangling—Katie jumps up, scrambles to the end of the row. Comes face-to-face with the Warwick Center employees, stops short: sees, in Billy, and Eddie, and Jan and even Veronica the once-familiar looks of concern playing across their features. Not for Jerry this time, but for Katie—they look like they’re actually worried about her. Katie stares back until Veronica leans forward, nods, a signal that seems to say, I’ll come with you if you want.

  Katie shakes her head, lurches up the aisle—the stunned silence propelling her onward. Outside the courtroom she bends at the waist, blows out short breaths. When she hears Richard’s angry questions—“Did you tell Mrs. Burrelli, before she gained permission to hear the defendant’s history, that his violent outbursts were actually good? Did you relay this information that the program director shared with you in privacy?”—Katie races to the elevators, her heart clamping inside her chest.

  Something silly and unimportant, that’s what she needs. Not to think, not to remember, not to try to understand why, for one overwhelming moment in the courtroom, she imagined falling into the rows packed with her former friends. Knowing then, knowing right now, that they would have caught her—after everything, still.