“That won’t be until late Sunday afternoon,” I said.
“Perfect. We’ll have dinner together downstairs. Make sure your phone is charged, and keep it on, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
“By the way, how did it go with Charlie?”
“Okay, I guess.”
“I talked to that reporter I told you about. He sent over a file of clippings on the case. It’s on my desk, if you’re interested.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
. . .
“You were right,” I said to Morgan. We were in the girls’ restroom at school. She passed me another tissue. I wiped my eyes and blew my nose. “Nick and Danny are more than just friends.”
“Oh, Robyn, I’m so sorry,” Morgan said.
I cried some more.
“It’s good we’re getting out of town for the weekend,” Morgan said.
“That’s what my dad said.”
“Well, he’s right. I’m not saying you’re going to forget about Nick overnight, but maybe it’ll help to spend some time with a guy who appreciates you. James likes you, Robyn. He really does.”
Maybe. But he probably wouldn’t if he knew who my mother was.
“I don’t know, Morgan,” I said. There was a big part of me that wanted to spend the weekend alone, feeling sorry for myself. “Maybe it would be better if ...”
“We’re going, and that’s that,” Morgan said just as the bell rang. “I have to run. Mr. Lowney gets really pissy when anyone is late for homeroom. I’ll see you at lunch, okay?”
. . .
That night, after I finished packing for my trip to the country, I picked up the folder that my dad had left for me on his desk. It was filled with his reporter friend’s coverage of the trial. There was even a picture of James—much younger—in one of the newspaper clippings. He was wide-eyed and looked frightened. I read through article after article. Most of what I read wasn’t new. I’d heard it from James or my father or Charlie Hart. But it was still interesting. As I read I began to wonder, especially when the articles mentioned my mother. I knew my mom worked hard. She was a perfectionist, and not just at her chosen profession. How many times had I teased her about her obsessive sense of order and the long hours she put in at her desk in her home office? But I had never seen her in a courtroom. I began to imagine her, conservatively dressed in a dark business suit, probing, prodding, asking question after question, pointing out any inconsistencies in what witnesses said, poking holes in the prosecution’s case, doing everything she could to provide her client with the best possible defense.
Because James was the only eyewitness, the reporter had devoted a lot of space to his testimony and cross-examination. First James was questioned by the prosecutor, who led him through what he had seen and heard in the alley the night his brother was shot.
The reporter noted that James—David—had gone into heart-wrenching detail about seeing his little brother lying bleeding on the ground in front of his eyes. He’d described the blood that completely soaked his brother’s T-shirt and that pooled around his head and torso. He’d described his brother looking up at him and trying to say something. He’d described holding his brother’s hand and how white it had been against all that blood, and then how still. James’s parents, the reporter noted, had wept silently as they listened to his testimony.
Then the prosecutor had asked James about the man who had shot his brother. The description, noted the reporter, was more succinct, less detailed, rattled off: “The witness described the shooter as having dark eyes—he said he couldn’t tell exactly what color they were—a long, thin nose, ears that stuck out, shaggy brown hair, a small mouth, and a scar on his chin.” I stared at the words. They were almost identical to the words Charlie Hart had read to me out of his notebook—and to the description James had given me a full five years after the shooting. Charlie Hart had said that James had repeated the words over and over again, like he was afraid he was going to forget them. Well, he sure hadn’t. They had burned themselves into his brain.
After the prosecutor had led James through everything he had seen and heard, my mother stood up to conduct her cross-examination. I trembled a little as I read what the reporter had written. I knew the story from James’s point of view. He felt that he’d been attacked, that he’d been disbelieved, that the defense attorney—my mother—had treated him unfairly. He blamed himself for not standing up to her, for not insisting on what he had seen. But as I read the reporter’s account, I began to see things a little differently.
My mom had started by asking James to describe the events leading up to the shooting. He responded by telling her about going to the movie and then heading back to the car with his brother while his dad stopped off at a convenience store.
And what about the actual shooting, my mom had asked. Could he describe what had happened in that alley?
“That man shot my brother,” James had said. “The man had a gun and he shot Gregory.”
“But how did it happen?” my mom asked. “What exactly did you see?”
“The man shot Gregory.”
“Yes, but what did you see? What happened leading up to the shooting?”
James didn’t answer the question other than to repeat what he had already said: “The man shot my brother.”
Next, my mom asked, “Did you actually see the man shoot your brother?”
James had answered by saying, “That man shot my brother.” He pointed at Eddy Leonard. “That man shot my brother. That man killed my brother.” He burst into tears. He was so distraught that the judge called for the court to adjourn so that James could compose himself.
Shortly after court resumed, James slipped up. My mom asked more questions about what it had been like in the alley—how dark it was, whether there were any light sources, where exactly he had been.
“I was with my brother,” James said. “I was with him the whole time.”
That didn’t sound right; James had told me that Greg ran into the alley ahead of him. He said that he’d gone into the alley after him.
My mom had asked James about the gun. Hadn’t he told the police that it was “huge”? James agreed that he had. My mom produced the gun.
“Does it look big now, here in court?”
James had stared at it and admitted that it didn’t. The reporter noted that James had sounded surprised.
“Can you describe how you were feeling in that alley, when you saw that gun?”
“I was afraid. That man shot my brother.”
“Were you afraid he was going to shoot you?”
“I was afraid,” James said again.
“What were you looking at?”
“I was looking at my brother. He was lying on the ground.”
“Didn’t you tell the police you were looking at the gun?”
James said that, yes, he’d been looking at that too.
Then my mom asked him, if he was afraid, if his brother was lying on the ground, and if he was focused on his brother and on the gun the man was holding, how he could describe the man so accurately? Was he sure that he’d had a really good look at him?
James had repeated the description that he’d given the police. Then, perhaps desperate to convince my mom, he added something new—something that he hadn’t mentioned before. He’d said, “The man was wearing a blue plaid shirt.”
According to the reporter, even the prosecutor had been taken aback by that.
My mom had asked James to clarify the matter: “He was wearing a blue plaid shirt?”
“The man who shot Gregory. He was wearing a blue plaid shirt,” James had said.
“You saw the blue plaid shirt?” my mother had asked.
“Yes.”
“Where did you see this blue plaid shirt?”
“When he shot my brother. The man who shot my brother was wearing a blue plaid shirt.”
My mom had ended her cross-examination at that point.
The prosecutor spoke with James again
after that, but James repeated his answer.
As the trial progressed, my mother questioned the two other people who had seen Eddy Leonard in the vicinity before the shooting. Both were sure about what he was wearing—a tan windbreaker over a white T-shirt. Neither had seen a blue plaid shirt. I remembered what Charlie Hart had told me: the only time that Eddy Leonard had been seen wearing a blue plaid shirt was during the lineup. I wondered if it were possible that Charlie Hart was right. Had James picked Leonard out of the lineup simply because he believed that the guilty man was in the lineup somewhere? Or had it happened the way James had told me—had he made a mistake because he’d been so flustered by my mom’s questions? If that were true, why had he repeated his mistake when the prosecutor had asked about the blue shirt?
After the prosecution had finished its examination, my mom called her witnesses. One of the articles included an artist’s sketch of Leonard—a skinny, clean-shaven man in a dark suit. When Leonard took the witness stand, my mom had even asked him about his criminal record. Leonard had replied “in a straightforward fashion,” according to the reporter. He had been convicted several times of petty theft and breaking and entering. He had never used a weapon and had never been found in possession of a weapon.
Later my mom called other witnesses, including two police officers, who backed this up. She asked Eddy Leonard if he knew that there was no law that could compel someone accused of a crime to participate in a police lineup. He said that a lawyer had told him that once. Then why, my mom had asked, had he agreed to participate in this particular lineup? His answer: because he hadn’t done anything wrong.
The last article in the series—after Eddy Leonard had been acquitted of the murder charge—focused on my mother’s handling of the case. Richard Johnson—James’s father, Mr. Derrick—was quoted extensively. He said he was “outraged” at his son’s treatment by the defense and stunned by “the sleazy tactics.” I was surprised to see him described as a professor of law and the author of more than ten books on the development of law and legal systems. I remembered what he had said at dinner that night—that he had written a book on the history of everyday things. He’d said the topic was a departure for him, but still, I had assumed that he was a history professor. It had never crossed my mind that his area of expertise was law.
Public opinion seemed to side with James’s dad and against my mom. Several people were quoted as saying that a guilty man had gone free and that it was the defense’s fault. One woman said she thought it was “shameful how that young boy was treated and made out to be a liar.” The article attempted to be balanced by pointing out the weaknesses with eyewitness identification. It also highlighted the lack of any physical evidence that could have corroborated the eyewitness testimony at the trial.
I closed the file folder and sat there, thinking. I could understand why James felt that he’d let his brother down, why he blamed my mother. But now that I had read about the trial, I wasn’t so sure I agreed. My mom had just done her job. She’d done it well. And for that she had drawn a lot of criticism. I was sorry about how James felt. I was even sorrier that his brother’s killer had never been brought to justice. I couldn’t imagine how it must feel to know that that man was out there somewhere, secure in the knowledge that he had gotten away with murder.
The phone rang. I jumped. I hoped it was Nick.
I
scrambled for the phone. It was Charlie Hart.
“I don’t know how you knew, Robyn, but it turns out you were right,” he said. “I tracked down the first officer on the scene the night Greg Johnson was shot. It was in his notes—Richard Johnson told him that he’d seen someone suspicious. He said the guy was hurrying away from the scene and that he got a good look at him.”
“Was it Eddy Leonard?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Charlie Hart said. “He gave a description. Then he changed what he’d said. He told the officer that everything had happened so fast, it was all a big blur. He said he couldn’t remember who or what he’d seen. He’d heard a bang, then a scream—that was the older boy. After that, he saw faces but they all kind of blended together. There were a lot of people on the street, and one of them struck him as odd because he was moving away from the sound of the shot, whereas other people were looking in the direction of the noise. But he said he wasn’t sure who was who—there were too many people, and he didn’t want to mislead anyone or send them in the wrong direction. Apparently he was distraught, very apologetic. The officer he spoke to should have briefed me or my partner on that, but he was new, inexperienced. Instead, he told us what he thought were the facts—that Richard Johnson had heard the shots and the scream, but he hadn’t seen anything. And when I spoke to Richard Johnson—which I did on numerous occasions—that’s what he told me.”
James hadn’t mentioned anything about his father making a statement to the police and then withdrawing it. But he’d been in shock. Maybe he’d forgotten. Or maybe his father hadn’t told him.
“Thing is,” Charlie Hart continued, “the officer called me back a couple of hours after I spoke to him. He’d dug out the notebook he used at the time and taken a look at what Johnson had told him. And you know what? That first description he gave to the officer—it matched what the boy told us.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it really matched—dark eyes, long, thin nose, ears that stuck out, shaggy brown hair, scar on his chin. He was definitely describing the same person that the boy said he’d seen. If we’d known that ...” His voice trailed off.
“If you’d known, what would you have done?” I said.
“Well, for one thing, Richard Johnson could have been called to testify. It might have made a difference.”
“Might have?”
“Well, it wouldn’t have put Leonard at the scene of the shooting, and it wouldn’t have put the gun in his hand. The boy was the only one who could do that. And we still didn’t have any physical evidence. But it would have put Leonard close to the scene at the time of the shooting. On the other hand, the prosecution led with the boy, and your mom managed to plant a huge seed of doubt. And the other witnesses who saw Leonard only saw him before the shooting. They had no idea what he was doing in the area. He could have been on his way to an appointment or to meet a friend. They didn’t even see him near that alley. So their evidence was pretty weak. After your mom managed to shake the boy, she had an easy time making her case. Without any physical evidence, the outcome probably would have been the same. Leonard would have walked.”
He sighed. “In any event, the worst part of my job is having to deal with the victim’s loved ones. We focused on the brother. He was young, he’d been right there, it was obvious he was in shock. Maybe we should have paid more attention to the dad. Maybe we underestimated how hard it had hit him.”
“But you told me that he was with James the whole time—when he was looking at pictures and at the lineup. Wouldn’t he have recognized Leonard when he saw him?”
“I like to think that if it had been me, I would have recognized him,” Charlie Hart said. “But it happened right downtown, Robyn. There were a lot of people around. People can get really mixed up when they’re under a lot of stress—and I can’t think of anything more stressful than the murder of a child. I feel sorry for the brother, though. That kid had a lot riding on him.”
He sure did. The whole murder case.
“I guess, if nothing else, it’ll make an interesting sidebar for your project,” Charlie Hart said. “It sure speaks to some of the problems with eyewitness IDing. You see a face in a crowd for a second or two. How well can the average person pick that person out again an hour later—never mind a day or a week or a month?”
“You said if you’d known, Johnson could have testified. Is there anything else you would have done if you’d known?”
For a moment he said nothing. Then, finally: “When I said the father’s description matched the son’s, I meant it, Robyn. They matched almost w
ord for word. That doesn’t happen very often. It makes a person wonder. It sure would have made me wonder.”
. . .
My father had just appeared from his bedroom—his hair was disheveled, and he was wearing pajama bottoms and a T-shirt—when I spotted James’s car pulling up at the curb below. Suddenly I was glad to be going. I was even more curious now about James and what had happened to him.
“I have to go, Dad,” I said to my bleary-eyed father. “My ride is here. See you tomorrow.”
My dad grunted at me as he made his way to the kitchen to put the coffee on.
I grabbed my things and ran downstairs.
James got out of the car to greet me. I threw my backpack and purse into the backseat. I was getting into the car when I heard a loud rowf. Nick and Orion were in the park across the street. Nick stared at me. Well, let him. He obviously didn’t care about me. I met his eyes for a moment before getting into the front seat next to James.
. . .
We chitchatted until we were out of the city, and then James put some music on. We had been driving for nearly an hour when I glanced at him.
“It’s great out here, isn’t it?” he said, smiling at the fields on either side of the road.
“I always forget there’s an ‘out here’ out here,” I said. I told him about my summer in the country, but without mentioning Nick.
“Do you mind if we take a little detour?” he said when I’d finished.
“I thought you had to be up there in time to sign for something.”
He grinned. “Change of plans. This weekend I tidy up the place. Next weekend, when my dad’s around, we start to pack.”
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