The Last Man: A Novel

by D. W. Buffa

  And suddenly, instead of a lynch mob, they were a jury again, embarrassed that they had for a moment forgotten their main obligation. Whether a deliberate adjustment, a conscious reaction to what Alfonso had done, or the style that had become second nature, what he would have done in any event, Harlowe, unlike Alfonso, was calm, cool, and at times even ironic. He made everything seem obvious, and nothing so obvious as the fact that for all the prosecution’s rhetoric about murder and guilt there was no evidence linking the defendant to the crime.

  “There isn’t, not really,” insisted Harlowe with an expression like that of a schoolboy who has to his considerable amazement just discovered that a class he had been told was difficult was not difficult at all. He shrugged his hunched over shoulders and shook his head. “There isn’t anything; nothing at all. Where is the murder weapon, the knife missing from the kitchen that must have been used to kill Gloria Baker? The police searched the defendant’s home, searched everywhere. They could not find it. Where is the bloody clothing? You saw the photographs of the murder scene, you heard the witnesses – you heard Yolanda Ross – describe all the blood they saw. The murderer must have had blood all over him. But did the prosecution produce any blood stained clothing belonging to the defendant? There was nothing. They did not find the weapon in his home; they did not find any evidence of the victim’s blood on his clothing or on anything else that belonged to him. There is a reason for that. He did not kill her. He did not murder Gloria Baker.”

  Harlowe did not need a script or a handful of notes; his closing argument had written itself, line by line during the whole course of the trial, a trial that had become so much a part of him that a review of each thing that had happened came as easily as a short recitation of his own abbreviated biography. He talked and, listening to what he said, talked some more. He asked a question, and then gave an answer, which gave rise to another question and another answer; it was a dialogue that, given by someone on the street, might have led to commitment in an institution, but in a court of law was essential to instruction.

  “But Driscoll Rose was there that night. He took the stand and admitted that. Yes, when he did not need to. What do you mean he didn’t need to? Didn’t he have to tell the truth, explain what he knew? No, he didn’t have to testify; no one can make someone charged with a crime do that. He did it of his own free will, chose to testify, chose to face a brutal cross-examination by an experienced and relentless prosecuting attorney.” Harlowe flashed a smile at the watching Hector Alfonso. “A prosecuting attorney who showed us once again why a defendant with something to hide would have to be out of his mind to subject himself to the thorough and incisive questions he asks.”

  Alfonso felt the sting of it, the compliment that only hurts you if it is true, and smiled back.

  “The defendant didn’t have to testify, didn’t have to tell you he was there that night; he didn’t have to tell you that he discovered Gloria Baker, the woman he loved, lying dead on the floor. Why did he? Why didn’t he just sit there, say nothing – explain nothing – and let the prosecution’s case fall completely apart? They could not have proven that he was even there that night, much less that he murdered her. Why did he do it? Why did he testify? Maybe because, like most of us, he still believes in telling the truth. Maybe because he thought he owed it to Gloria Baker to get up there and confess in public the mistakes he has made and how he wishes none of those things had happened. Maybe because he thought that if he told the truth someone would believe him and would understand that the real killer is still out there and should not go unpunished.”

  Shoving one hand deep in his pants pocket, Harlowe with the other rubbed the back of his neck. He looked slowly from one juror to the next, searching their eyes as if the only mystery was why he had to tell them what they must already know.

  “Driscoll Rose was there that night. He took the stand and under oath told us what time he got there and what he saw when he opened the door. There was someone else there that night. A witness, who also testified, saw him leaving the home of Gloria Baker nearly an hour before Driscoll Rose arrived. The district attorney wants you to believe that it was the defendant, but despite being challenged on this point repeatedly, Billy Dunsmore was absolutely certain that it was not Driscoll Rose. We know two things about this person, whoever he was, two things that do more than rouse our suspicion, two things that make it almost certain that he was the killer, the man who murdered Gloria Baker: He was running away from the house and he did not testify at this trial. Consider this; think about this. If he had not done anything, if he was just visiting and when he left decided to jog down the street for a little late night exercise, why would he not have come forward? Why would he not have told the police that he was there and what he had seen: whether she was alive and well when he left or whether he had discovered her lying dead on the living room floor?”

  Walter Bannister was impressed. It was, he wrote in his private journal, one of the best performances he had seen; better, he thought, than anything Michael Harlowe had done before.

  “But it won’t be enough to save Driscoll Rose. He will be found guilty because they want him to be guilty; because he does not have an excuse for who he is - an actor who, now that they have seen him, listened to him, come to understand that he has all the self-discipline of a self-absorbed child, heard how easily he falls into an uncontrollable, violent rage, they find themselves embarrassed by the way they looked up to him before, a movie star with feet of clay. They are not entirely wrong. He is innocent of the crime – he did not kill Gloria Baker – but as much as anyone he is responsible for her death. No one who knew what happened that night would believe this, of course; the only thing most people are interested in is who did it, who committed what we in our ignorance call murder.

  “I have written this all out before, described as best I can the series of events, each of them, if in different ways, involving Driscoll Rose or caused by something he did – the chain of events that led inevitably, as it seems to me, to her death. There is no reason to do so again, except, perhaps, as some kind of catharsis, a temporary release from the pressures that have built up inside me, all the things I know, all the secrets with which I now have to live. I wonder what they think of me – No, I know what they think! – the lawyers, the jurors, that crowd of eager trial watchers who come every day to court: Walter Bannister, the learned, incorruptible judge whose only purpose is to follow the law and make sure the trial is fair!

  “They thought - Harlowe and Alfonso - that I was talking about the evidence when I said in chambers that Rose was innocent. It was hard not to laugh, hard not to scream, hard not to pound the desk with both hands, hard not to grab them each by the throat and tell them everything, exactly what happened and why. It would have been worth it just to see their expressions.

  “It’s almost over now. The jury has their instructions. I imagine we will have a verdict sometime tomorrow. Between them, Harlowe is the better lawyer, but Alfonso knows what he is about. He will mask all the feelings of elation that will surge through him, the shameless sense of triumph at a victory he will think he achieved on his own, and deliver himself of the kind of cautionary remarks considered appropriate at the end of a murder trial. With fawning sincerity he will remind everyone that more than a trial it was a tragedy, a beautiful and gifted young woman murdered for no reason, and a talented young man driven by demons we do not understand to do something that should never have happened. He will say something about how the jury did what it was supposed to do, reached a verdict based on the evidence, and how there is some small satisfaction in knowing that this meant justice for the victim, Gloria Baker. Alfonso, as he always does, will believe everything he says, and feel it as well; and then, as soon as he is back in his office, away from the cameras and the crowd, he will busy himself with the next set of calculations on how to use what has happened to his own advantage.

  “And Harlowe? He gave me a strange look when I said in chambers that I was sure h
is client was innocent. I do not know that he believed me when, analyzing the evidence, I tried to show what it meant that her portrait had been slashed before Gloria Baker was murdered. Harlowe has a well-developed instinct about people and the various ways all of us lie. He could sense that something was not right, but he did not know what, or rather could not be sure. I think he thought I was guessing, that the analysis of that part of the evidence had come to me only after I had decided – a decision based perhaps on nothing but intuition – that Rose was not the killer. I wanted to say more, tell them everything I knew. That is what intrigues me: why did I feel such a strong compulsion to tell them even that? Was my conscience at work? Perhaps. Or was it something more than that, something just the opposite of the desire to tell the truth, something evil, a desire to taunt them with their ignorance, taunt with the possibility – the very real possibility – that they were trapped every bit as much as I am in a story they cannot change: that the prosecution was about to convict a man for something he did not do and the lawyer for the defense would not be able to do anything about it? Was this in the strange perversity of my mind the only way I had to share the guilt for what was done? Am I – are we all – really that pathetic?”

  Bannister had expected a verdict sometime the next day, but it did not happen. Two days went by, then three, and still nothing, not a word. Everyone began to get nervous, though for what reason no one could really say. Juries were unpredictable; everyone who had spent any time in court could tell you that. There were the usual explanations. The longer a jury stayed out the more uncertain they were and, for that reason, the less likely they were to convict. It was logical; it certainly made sense; and it had absolutely no basis in experience. Juries had stayed out for weeks and then brought back verdicts of guilty on all counts. No one knew anything and their ignorance made them crazy. The ancient Romans had claimed to read the future, the outcome of battles about to be fought, in the entrails of dead chickens. More civilized than that, those who worked in the courthouse, as well as those who covered the trial for the media, began to make bets, as if the combined ignorance of a larger number increased the chances of an accurate prediction. Harlowe, asked what he thought the odds of an acquittal, refused to speculate, confining himself to the deliberately meaningless remark that the jury was taking its time, as it was supposed to do, as it considered all the evidence. Alfonso, asked his opinion, would say only that he was certain the jury would do what was right.

  No one asked Walter Bannister anything. A judge, especially this judge, was considered, such are the privileges of the office, unapproachable on any question having to do with the trial. In that silent dialogue with himself, that dialogue in which he considered things he could not discuss with another human being, in that dark labyrinth of his mind, he began to wonder whether he might have been wrong and that a guilty verdict was not nearly as inevitable as he had thought. It was a possibility he had not considered. He tried to imagine his reaction if the jury came back with an acquittal. It was what he had secretly wanted but had not dared hope. Rose was innocent. He had not murdered Gloria Baker. Whatever share of responsibility he had in the events that had led to her death, it did not warrant conviction for something he had not done. The more Bannister thought about it, the greater his sense of relief. He had decided what he would do – what he knew he had to do – once Driscoll Rose was found guilty of murder, but now there seemed a chance that he would not have to do anything. It was almost too good to be true. For the first time since the night of the murder, he started to think there might be a way out, a way to avoid any more evil.

  Four days the jury was out, and then five, and then the question was not what the verdict was going to be but whether the jury would ever reach one; whether, hopelessly deadlocked, they would give up and go home and let another jury in yet another trial decide if Driscoll Rose was innocent or guilty. And then, eight days after they had been given their instructions, eight days after Walter Bannister had done everything he could to impress upon them the seriousness of their task, the jury told the bailiff and the bailiff told the judge that they had a verdict and were ready to announce it.

  At three o-clock in the afternoon, Hector Alfonso sat alone at one counsel table and Michael Harlowe sat next to the defendant at the other, lost, all three of them, in thoughts of their own; thoughts, if the truth be known, that were entirely about themselves. The courtroom, filled to capacity, and more than capacity, by a crowd that though made up of many of the same faces that had watched the proceedings every day of the trial had, as it were, a different sensibility, a deepening of interest, a change of mood. There was none of the eager excitement of an act in progress; nothing of the keen anticipation of what turn things might take next. It was over; the trial was at an end. The jury had reached a verdict, and though no one outside the jury room knew what it was, there was a strange finality about the fact. There was nothing more to look forward to; the only thing left was learning what was already in the past. The line of Dr. Johnson – “Tell a man he is to be executed in the morning, it concentrates his mind wonderfully” – had no application. There was not that kind of tension. “The jury has reached its decision but no one knows what that decision is” – that stops the mind thinking anything. Driscoll Rose, who was not the least religious, could only pray.

  One by one, with solemn, ghostlike faces, the jurors filed into the jury box and took, each of them, the same seats they had occupied during the long weeks of the trial. None of them looked at the defendant; none of them looked at anyone. The silence in the courtroom was complete. The slight sound of creaking leather when the court reporter shifted position in her chair seemed an almost obscene intrusion.

  “I understand the jury has reached a verdict,” said Walter Bannister in the voice that always gave confidence to those who heard it. “Is that correct? Have you reached a verdict in the case?”

  “Yes, your Honor,” said the foreman, the youngest member of the jury, a woman whose friendly, shining eyes were now filled with fatigue.

  “And is that verdict the verdict of all of you? Is it the unanimous verdict of the jury?” asked Bannister. He looked at her with the serious expression of one who understands how difficult this decision, whatever it was, had to have been. She seemed grateful for that, what his eyes told her; grateful and somehow reassured that what they had done had met the measure of their responsibility.

  “Yes, your Honor; we all agree.”

  “Would you please read the verdict to the court.”

  She lowered her eyes to the single piece of paper she held in her hand.

  “We, the jury, in the above entitled case -”

  “I didn’t do it!” cried Driscoll Rose, shaking all over. He stood there, with pleading eyes, his fists clenched at his sides, shouting his innocence. “I didn’t kill Gloria; I didn’t kill anyone. I -”

  “Mr. Harlowe,” said Bannister without raising his voice. “Would you please…? Mr. Rose, we all understand the emotion you must feel, but you have to remain silent. You have to wait, like the rest of us, to hear what the verdict is.”

  Rose stared at Bannister as if he was not sure what he had just been told or what he was supposed to do. Harlowe put his arm around his shoulder and whispered that he had to hold onto himself, that it would all be over in just a few more moments. Bannister told the foreman to continue.

  “In the above entitled case, we the jury, find the defendant, Driscoll Rose….” She lowered her hands and looked straight at the defendant and with a deep sigh that seemed to speak of nothing but regret, went back five words to finish it: “…find the defendant, Driscoll Rose, guilty.”

  Rose fell flat to the floor in a dead faint. Harlowe bent down next to him, trying to help. Reporters, eager to be first with the story, pushed their way out from the spectator benches. There was noise everywhere. Bannister tried to gavel the courtroom into submission, but the trial was over, the verdict had been announced, and all anyone wanted was to talk about it. The jur
ors were the only ones who had said all they needed. They sat in stunned silence, watching in disbelief as the courtroom gradually cleared out and, with his lawyer’s help, Driscoll Rose, whom they had just found guilty of murder, recovered his senses just long enough to collapse in his chair.

  Chapter Twenty One

  No one went to see him, none of the people he had helped in their careers, certainly none of those whose careers he had ruined, none of the many friends he thought he had, none of the women he had known; no one came to visit Driscoll Rose while he sat in jail waiting to be sentenced. He had been forgotten, put out of mind, a name never mentioned, someone who had, in a sense, died with his last motion picture and been buried with his trial. He did get letters, dozens of them, but not from anyone he knew; crazy letters, most of them, offering everything from forgiveness to the love that Gloria Baker had not been smart enough to give him. He did not answer them, and after a while did not bother opening the new ones he received.

  The days crawled by, each one duller, more tedious, than the last. He tried to read, but after a page or two his mind would begin to wander, and always to the same, maddening, inexplicable fact: He was innocent, he had not done anything, and yet here he was, locked inside a steel and concrete cell, the only question about his future how long he would be in prison if he was not there for life. He kept going back over everything that had happened, starting at first with the night of the murder, going through it, hour by hour, minute by minute, as if he was looking frame by frame at a picture he had made, certain that he must have missed something, overlooked some detail, something which at the time seemed insignificant but that, if he could only remember it, would explain everything. But no matter how often he went over it, no matter how often he tried, there was nothing, nothing that would help.