The Sabbathday River

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

  Why, Judith asked her witness, would someone confess to a crime they had not committed?

  It was not a question of simple confession, Harvey explained. There tended to be a gradual progression from “I didn’t do it” to “I don’t remember doing it” to “I don’t think I did it” to “I must have done it,” each step achieved through the subtle power of modern interrogation tactics, an insidious feeding of information to the suspect, who is after all distressed and fearful. The phenomenon, he said, was somewhat akin to that of false memories, another byproduct of forceful suggestion on a mind experiencing extreme stress.

  “So the officers conducting such an interrogation would gradually introduce new information and incorporate it into their questioning?”

  “Yes. They will subtly work in facts that only the perpetrator of the crime would know, so that when the subject of the interrogation responds in the affirmative to any part of the statement, it can be inferred that he or she is admitting to this specific information. They may also flatter the subject by implying that his help is needed to ‘clear up’ a problem, and invite him to create a kind of hypothetical crime scenario—‘If you were going to do this crime, would you do it this way or that way?’ And when this scenario fits the known facts about the crime, the subject receives the approval of the interrogator. ‘That’s exactly right! That’s just how it was done!’”

  “Dr. Harvey, would it be appropriate to suggest to the subject of an interrogation that the subject would be allowed to go home once he or she has ‘helped’ the police by giving the right answers in an interrogation?”

  “Absolutely inappropriate,” he said sternly. “Illegal, in my view.”

  “Would it be appropriate to imply that the subject’s young child will not be returned to his or her custody if the right answers are not given.”

  “It would be entirely outrageous,” he said heatedly. “But I’m afraid such a tactic is not uncommon.”

  “Would it be appropriate to restrain a subject from seeing her child, whom she can hear crying in another room?”

  “Reprehensible, in my opinion.”

  “Dr. Harvey,” Judith said, frowning, “were you able to examine the notes and tape recordings made during the Heather Pratt interrogation conducted through the night of October 12, 1985?”

  “I was not. In fact, I was informed that absolutely no notes and no recordings were made during the interrogation, and I consider this highly suspicious in itself.”

  “Suspicious?” Judith feigned confusion. “Why? Isn’t that routine, not to make notes?”

  “It is not routine. It is extremely unusual for there to be no documentation arising from a long interrogation, other than the resulting so-called confession.”

  “I see,” she said, looking meaningfully at the jurors. “Tell me something, Dr. Harvey. Are we all equally prone to giving in under this pressure and confessing to crimes we didn’t commit? Or are some people more prone than others to weaken under sophisticated interrogation techniques?”

  “No, of course not,” he said brusquely. “Some people have a stronger will than others. Some keep clearer heads. Then there are factors which can fluctuate, like recent trauma or mental illness. These can make us particularly susceptible at a given time.”

  “Recent trauma? Something like, for example, having given birth to a stillborn baby a few weeks earlier?”

  “Well, I call that traumatic. I doubt very much that a mother whose baby had just been born dead would be thinking clearly at all, let alone about dead babies. Heather could easily have brought her own sadness and guilt about the baby she had lost to bear on this other dead infant. This, to me, is not really much of a stretch.”

  “So, in other words, her guilt or distress over her own baby might have made her susceptible to the suggestion that she had harmed another baby, a baby that—in reality—she had no connection to at all?”

  He nodded in agreement. “Yes, this seems a very plausible scenario to me.”

  Judith smiled. “Doctor, is there any way to absolutely avoid the danger of giving false testimony?”

  He grinned back at her. This was his punch line. “I tell people there are four magic words that eliminate all risk, and if they remember them, they will always be all right. The four words are I want a lawyer. That removes the problem entirely.”

  “Really?” Judith sounded innocent. “But what if they refuse to stop the interrogation?”

  “Then,” the doctor said disdainfully, “it’s well and truly out of my field of expertise. In such a situation I would defer to a constitutional lawyer.”

  “It’s unconstitutional,” Judith said.

  “To continue an interrogation after the subject has asked for a lawyer? Oh yeah.”

  “Thanks,” Judith said. She gave him to Charter, who blustered up to the stand.

  “Dr. Harvey, in all those titles of your books and whatnot, I didn’t catch the name of the school where you got your medical degree.”

  Harvey looked bored. He had evidently heard this sort of thing before.

  “I am a doctor by means of my doctorate. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In psychology.”

  “Psychology,” Charter repeated, the word drenched in scorn. “And you feel that this qualifies you to analyze police interrogation techniques?”

  “Well,” Harvey said blandly, “whether it does or not, I have made the analysis of police interrogation techniques my life’s work. And in any case, I fail to see how a medical degree would make me any more qualified.”

  Charter tried to look disdainful. “In the course of your life’s work, then, you must have given some consideration to the fact that the use of tape recording or notetaking during a police interview can have an inhibiting effect on the dialogue between subject and interviewer.”

  “I have considered that,” Harvey concurred, “but I feel that tape recording, in particular, will become increasingly necessary to establish a clean interrogation. Certainly the lack of any documentation from this interrogation is suspicious to me.”

  “You are accusing Officer Nelson Erroll and myself of conducting a dirty interrogation,” Charter said, his voice steely.

  “I think it’s very possible the interrogation was not fairly conducted, yes.”

  “You are accusing Officer Erroll and myself of feeding Heather Pratt information and then claiming she confessed.”

  “I think it’s very possible.” Harvey held his ground. It seemed to Naomi that he, for one, was unlikely to crack under pressure.

  “You are accusing us of withholding Heather’s daughter from her and implying that her daughter would be taken from her if she did not give me the answers I was looking for?”

  “Yes. Possibly.”

  Judith was smiling, and Naomi knew what she must be thinking—that Charter had to be losing control if he was asking these questions, if he was letting the jurors hear these ideas again, and from his own lips.

  “You are accusing us of denying Heather Pratt the basic constitutional right of an attorney at her request?”

  “If she asked for one and you didn’t stop the interrogation, then yes, I am accusing you of that.”

  He turned from the witness in a rage, shaking his head in an exaggerated arc. “Are you aware, Dr. Harvey, that Officer Nelson Erroll, who—unlike you—was present during Heather Pratt’s interview, has already testified to the fact that the interview was properly conducted? That no leading suggestions were made? And that Miss Pratt never asked for an attorney to be called?”

  “I have not attended this trial, Mr. Charter. I am not aware of what has been said by other witnesses.”

  “But how do you respond when I say that this testimony has in fact taken place?” Charter raged. “How do you respond when I say that a police veteran of over ten years said under oath that the interview was entirely correct?”

  Harvey shrugged. “Well, how can I respond. I mean, what else would the guy say? And if the confession is not c
orroborated by physical evidence, then it’s going to be pretty important to your case, so Officer Erroll is hardly going to jeopardize it by admitting the interrogation was improper, is he?”

  Livid, Charter glared at him. “It’s easy to make accusations, isn’t it?”

  “It’s neither easy nor hard,” Harvey said blandly. “I’ve studied many interrogations. A small—though not tiny—percentage are suspect. This confession, in my opinion, is suspect. Look”—he leaned forward in his seat, his expression oddly sympathetic—“I am not—I repeat: not—suggesting that this has been done on purpose. That whoever conducted this interrogation set out to force a confession. What I’m saying is that there are mistakes being made in interrogations that are contaminating them. And until interrogating officers learn more about how they are manipulating capitulations, then confessions will continue to be contaminated.”

  “So we’re ignorant!” Charter raged.

  “Ignorant of this, yes. Training is certainly called for. It’s a simple thing to change, but until it is changed, innocent people are going to continue to be convicted by well-meaning juries.”

  “No further questions,” Charter huffed in disgust. He stomped to his chair. Hayes was looking at his watch.

  “Mrs. Friedman? You going to redirect?”

  “No, your honor.”

  “How many witnesses do you have left?”

  “Three, your honor,” Judith said.

  Still counting on Heather to see sense, Naomi thought. And of course Nelson, who was ready whenever he was wanted. But she didn’t know who the third one was.

  “There isn’t much time left now. I’d rather start fresh tomorrow. Maybe we’ll get lucky and fit them all in. Shall we try that?”

  “That’s fine,” Judith agreed. Naomi looked at her own watch and saw, with a little lift, that she might actually be about to get an afternoon off. It was Wednesday, too, the day of Polly’s swim class at the sports center, though it had been so long since they’d attended that she wasn’t even sure the session was still on. As they stood for the judge to leave, she reached down for her bag and whispered to Judith.

  “I’m going to scram. I can make a toddler swim class in an hour if I rush now.”

  “Good,” Judith said. “Just don’t miss tomorrow.” Her voice dropped. “Tomorrow’s going to be lots of fun.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t,” said Naomi, but she could not be quite so elated at the prospect of Nelson sinking his own career, though he had made his peace with that and they all knew what an enormous difference it would make for Heather. She rushed outside, gave Simone the briefest nod, and went to pick Polly up at Mrs. Horgan’s. Despite having to drive by the house for their bathing suits and towels, Naomi still managed to get to the sports center a comfortable ten minutes before the class. She was glad she had made the effort. Polly, absent for several weeks, was extravagantly fussed over by the instructor, a beefy girl much given to whistle-blowing, and Naomi was surprised to see that the other mothers in the group were suddenly warm to them, that she no longer had that sense of their restraining themselves from all but the most innocuous conversation. “Isn’t she a love,” one woman said, eyeing the compliant Polly as she forced her own squirming son to reach and pull fistfuls of water. They put the kids on their backs, dangling rubber ducks over their faces, and got them to blow bubbles in the cool water. Polly’s face lit up as the instructor took hold of her feet and kicked them on the surface. A girl named Danielle announced, “I go poo!” with evident glee, and was whisked from the pool by her horrified mother. “What a darling bathing suit!” one of the moms cooed to Naomi during “The Grand Old Duke of York.”

  “I didn’t pick it out,” Naomi said. “Her mother did.”

  Actually, this wasn’t true, and she wondered—not for the first time-how long she would continue to rehabilitate Heather in the eyes of her neighbors.

  “Well, she has wonderful taste, doesn’t she?” the woman said.

  “Someone told me,” another woman said, “that she makes all her daughter’s clothes. I thought of asking her if she’d be willing to make some for my daughter.”

  “I don’t know,” said Naomi, fascinated. “I could ask her. Afterward.”

  “Oh, of course. Afterward. I wouldn’t bother her now.”

  They all went back to the locker room together and changed their shivering children into warm clothes. They were talking about the child who would eat only white food, the child who howled when the television was turned off, the child who woke at three o’clock every night, screaming for formula. Naomi was asked her thoughts on the use of bribery in toilet training. She found that she had experiences to share, and opinions at the ready. She did not know the names of these women, but she knew the names of their children, and their children’s ages and quirks. As she pulled on her coat, the woman who admired Heather’s taste asked Naomi if she would like to set up a play date for their girls the following week. “Maybe Tuesday?”

  “Yes,” Naomi said, oddly elated. But then she remembered: next week. Next week Polly might be home with Heather, or Heather might be in prison. Next week was to be the beginning of their new lives, and she couldn’t make plans. “Can I let you know?” she faltered, and the woman wrote down her number and said goodbye.

  Naomi carried Polly out into the lobby and went to return her towel at the desk. Heather’s desk, she thought. There was a young man there now, dull-looking and blond, reading a paper. She tried to imagine that she was Sue Deacon, stepping up to the counter, her talons unfurled, but the boy only smiled vaguely. “Thanks,” Naomi said.

  “Yuh.” He went back to his paper.

  Up the hallway, a door opened and Stephen Trask stepped out. Naomi looked at him and smiled. He went white, stumbled, and stopped. Then he turned sharply and went back through the doorway.

  Naomi stood for a moment, dazed and undecided. Then, flooded with acrimony, she set off after him, as the door snapped shut in her face. Without knocking, she opened it and flung it back. It smacked the wall, and Stephen looked up at her in surprise. This was how they remained for some moments.

  Finally, Naomi arranged her thoughts. “Is this how it’s going to be from now on, Stephen? I mean, what are we, in kindergarten? You going to run and hide whenever I’m around?”

  He looked steadily at his desktop, his jaw fixed and still.

  “Stephen, we used to be friends.”

  “Till I became a turncoat, is that it?” he said angrily.

  “No.” Yes, Naomi thought. “No, you did what you felt you had to do. For whatever reason,” she couldn’t stop herself from saying.

  “But you don’t respect my whatever reason,” Stephen said. “Close the door.”

  Surprised, Naomi did. She hitched Polly up a bit.

  “Basically, you don’t have any idea why I testified against Heather, do you, Naomi?”

  “Well”—she frowned—“I know you were disappointed in her. You thought she should have trusted you enough to tell you she was pregnant again.” She glared suddenly at Stephen. “You always did have this paternal thing about her, didn’t you? You kept trying to fix her life, but she didn’t want it fixed.”

  He was looking at her intently.

  “But I still don’t understand why you turned against her. It would have been nice if she’d known you believed in her. Not even, you know, in her innocence. But her.”

  Stephen shook his head. “Naomi.” His voice was tenuous, breakable and low. “I’m … I didn’t realize. All this time, I thought you knew.”

  Then Naomi want cold. She gripped Polly. “Knew what?”

  “I was sure Heather told you. I thought she must have told you. I thought, who else would she tell?”

  Like damp sheets on a cold night. Her hair was still wet from the pool and she couldn’t get warm.

  “I thought it was why you were being such a bitch to me.”

  “I was a bitch to you?” Naomi said, amazed.

  He shook his head. “Wel
l, it can’t be helped. I certainly did what I could.”

  “Stephen, what the fuck are you talking about?”

  He sat in his own seat and looked vaguely out the window: dark sky meets dark ground. A New Hampshire evening in mud time.

  “I went to see her out at the farm, the day after Pick died. Hell, I was probably the only condolence call she got. I didn’t know about the other thing. About Ashley. She told me when I got there.”

  So what? Naomi almost said. But she said nothing.

  “And of course she was upset. And don’t worry, I know I was an asshole to do what I did, but I can tell you it wasn’t forced. I can tell you that.”

  “You went to bed with her.” She was astounded. “Jesus, what a shit you are.”

  He looked stung, but he didn’t deny it.

  “You went to bed with her the day after her grandmother died and her boyfriend dumped her.”

  “I’m not proud of it. But she reached out to me.”

  “For comfort, maybe. To be held, just possibly. But to be fucked!”

  “It’s what she wanted,” Stephen insisted. “She certainly didn’t protest.”

  “My God.” She was shaking her head.

  Stephen leaned forward, and his voice dropped even further. “So it was mine, Naomi. The other baby. One was Ashley’s, but the other one was mine. And she wouldn’t admit she was pregnant, even when I asked her straight out. Now, don’t you think I had a right to know she was pregnant with my kid?”

  “No,” Naomi said cruelly. “And you don’t know it was yours. There’s no proof of any of this. That first baby had nothing to do with her.”

  “You still believe that?” He smiled sadly. “I wanted to believe that. I tried hard, but I know one of them was mine. And she killed them both. So she’s a murderer. And if she goes to jail forever for what she did to those kids, then that’s good enough for me. So what if she’s got all those raving feminists thinking she’s the second coming. To me, she’s a murderer. And God knows, I don’t think much of Ashley Deacon, but what Heather did to us both is past redemption. She can go to hell, in my view.”