A River of Silence

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  Bryce laughed. “I meant the other guy. Did you love Elliott Cummings?”

  “I was crazy about him and would have done anything he said, or at least I thought so then. But now I don’t know what was me and what was the alcohol. I sure like to believe I couldn’t leave you alone in that hotel if I wasn’t a drunk.” She shifted her gaze to the wall behind his head. “But things happen in our lives, Cale—I mean Bryce, and we try to make sense of them.”

  All the pieces of his life broke apart. There was a jab of pain behind his eyes, so quick and sharp he had no time to prepare for it. He dropped the receiver onto the small shelf in front of him for a moment and cradled his head in his hands. When he finally looked up, his mother began to speak.

  He read her lips.

  “I’m sorry. None of it was your fault.”

  It was her resilience and acceptance of the blame for what she did that inspired him to be a person who at least considered allowing her this righting of a wrong. She made no excuses for her behavior. She held herself accountable. He picked up the receiver and smiled at her. “We agreed to stop apologizing, remember?”

  “I agreed to try,” she said.

  They spent the remainder of the hour talking about their lives, her new husband, how much she loved Jason’s kids, and how she thought about her younger son every time she uttered her grandson’s name. As if to prove it, she pulled a worn, black and white photograph from the pocket of her skirt. In it, a boy Bryce recognized as himself sat on the concrete steps in front of their Wheatley clapboard house. In his lap, he held the pet lamb he’d named Oscar.

  Bryce felt an ache so profound he nearly gasped for air. It sneaked up on him, paralyzing him with sadness for all the years he’d lost with Jason, his family, and their mother. If he were honest, he wanted many things for the remainder of his life and continued estrangement from his family was not one of them.

  When the buzzer sounded, Rachael didn’t rise with the other visitors. Her knuckles whitened as she clenched the phone as if it were some kind of lifeline. “Now that I’ve found you, I don’t want to ever lose touch again. I want to be part of your life, if you’ll have me.”

  “The way things are headed, I don’t know what kind of a life I’ll have. I may well spend the rest of it in jail. Or end it quickly with a lethal injection.”

  “I can’t believe that will happen. From everything Detective Radhauser and Kendra Palmer told me, I know you’ll be found innocent. We all make mistakes. You didn’t hurt that little boy on purpose. God forgives us. I’m living proof.”

  When the guard nodded to Radhauser, he touched Rachael’s shoulder.

  She stood and once again pressed her open palm flat as a moth against the clear plastic wall.

  This time Bryce matched it with his own, the smooth Plexiglas between them. Their eyes met and held as his fingers stretched over hers. Bryce took a deep breath. The invisible bands that bound him for so long loosened.

  “Visiting hour is over,” the guard said.

  Radhauser tapped her shoulder again.

  She crumpled into sobs.

  Bryce watched as the hard-nosed detective, who told him how much he hated drunks, slipped a white handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. He put his arm around her shoulders, then guided her gently from the cubicle.

  For hours after he returned to his cell, Bryce sat on the floor. He pulled the soles of his prison slippers together and gripped his ankles like a little boy. He rocked back and forth, continuing to feel that long, invisible thread that connected him to his mother.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kendra measured Bryce’s waist, sleeve, and pant length, and the distance across his shoulders and around his neck. “I know you don’t like this, but the truth is a jury makes judgments based on the way a defendant appears. Besides that, your picture will be plastered in every newspaper from New York to Los Angeles, and I want you to look like a million dollars.”

  “Oh, I see. You’re sprucing me up, afraid the old man’s gonna pick up a newspaper and see his daughter standing next to a loser.” He twisted away from the tape measure to get a better view of Kendra’s face. “Who’s going to pay for my new duds?”

  “Hold still and let the rich girl with the good teeth worry about that. You have far more important things to ponder.”

  Kendra confided that her prime concern was to find a pool of potential jurors from which twelve impartial ones could be selected. Beyond the basic problem of locating jurors able to accept presumption of innocence, the prosecution and defense attorneys both had their own particular interests to protect.

  “Something I learned from my father was that, whatever preconceived ideas a jury may have about a defendant, it is essential they see his lawyer as a person who believes in his innocence and is acting in good faith. When that happens, the lawyer wins a lot of support from the jury. In a close case, it can make all the difference.”

  “Do you think that’s even possible, given all the crap they’ve read about me in the papers?”

  She tried to protect Bryce from the press, but Poncho and his cohorts consistently undermined her efforts. “I won’t have any problem convincing them I believe in your innocence because I do. But the most we can hope for is a jury who will listen to what we have to say before they judge. I’ve made copies of the police reports and other documents the DA provided.” She slid the folder from her briefcase. “Read everything. Take a pencil and make a check mark next to anything you think is wrong or anything that reminds you of something you think I should know. We’ll talk about it when I come back.”

  * * *

  On her next visit, Kendra arrived toting a black garment bag from Macy’s. “I bought this off the rack,” she said. “Forty-two long. I sure hope it fits.” She slipped the suit out of the garment bag.

  Bryce tried on the jacket. It fit perfectly.

  “Tilly polished your black shoes and ironed some shirts. The tie belongs to an old boyfriend of mine, so it’s on loan. Don’t spill any caviar or red wine on it, okay?”

  He raised his eyebrows. For some unexplainable reason, the fact that she called the tie man an old boyfriend made him happy. “What’s up with that? You break up and you get custody of his ties?”

  “Just a couple he left in one of my dresser drawers.”

  “You’re too much, Kendra. And you’re not giving me any choice about my outfit, are you?”

  “No way, Bryce. I’m calling the shots on this show now and the next stop is the barber.”

  “Great,” Bryce said. “I’ve seen the way the prison barber cuts hair. Just what I need to sway the jury’s vote. The skinhead look. Did you arrange for a tattoo as well?”

  “I’m bringing someone in this afternoon from the outside to cut and style your hair. You need to look clean-cut and respectable, like a man who doesn’t belong in a prison cell. Someone the jury sees in a positive light and can identify with.” She paused and looked at him. “Like the man you really are.”

  Bryce fidgeted in his chair, clearly uncomfortable with the plan, but said nothing.

  For nearly three hours they reviewed the prosecution’s case. Kendra asked and Bryce answered questions. And at the end he told her nothing she hadn’t learned from their very first talk. He told the truth.

  “Try to make eye contact with each one of the jurors. Show them you have nothing to hide, that you are there to tell the whole truth.”

  She pressed the button so a guard would come and let them out of the cell.

  The same guard accompanied them down the corridor to the room used as a barber shop. “This is Wendy,” Kendra said. “She cuts my hair, too.”

  A pretty, dark-haired woman shook Bryce’s hand, then got to work. She washed his hair, opened her bag of tools, and started to cut. When she finished blowing his hair dry, she held a mirror up for Bryce.

  “Once I put on that suit, I’m going to look like a hotshot lawyer.” He nodded toward Kendra. “You need a new partner, Palmer
?”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Bryce. Get some sleep. I’ll have your clothes waiting for you in the holding cell. Wear the gray-striped tie. Trust me, it’ll make a good first impression.”

  * * *

  On a clear November fifteenth in Medford, the sky the bright color of a blue-throated hummingbird, Caleb Bryce’s murder trial began. As Bryce stepped through the door from the stairwell where they’d kept him in a basement holding cell, television and newspaper reporters lined the second-floor corridors. There was an armed guard on either side of him.

  He kept his head down, but, recognizing the cowboy boots, paused briefly in front of Detective Radhauser. The detective had been nothing but kind and helpful to him since called to the scene before Skyler’s death.

  Radhauser reached out and touched Bryce’s shoulder in a gesture of support. “Good luck with the trial.”

  Bryce blinked, hoping to avoid tears of gratitude from rising.

  Because of the media hype, they were using the largest available courtroom. It had bronze reliefs of past presidents framing the judge’s bench. Bryce took his seat beside Kendra at the wide oak defense table and rested his right hand on one of the volumes of a blue bound set of books with gold lettering—Oregon Revised Statutes Annotated.

  “You ready to fight?” she asked, flashing that rich girl smile.

  “Yes,” Bryce responded, trying to sound as confident as Andrew Marshall, the county prosecutor, looked as he stepped through the door into the courtroom. Marshall carried two huge manila folders which Bryce assumed contained the state’s case against him.

  With his newly-cut and styled hair, the starched white shirt, conservative tie, and the dark-colored suit, Bryce looked pretty damn good. He would have guessed himself to be an investment broker.

  Kendra’s motion to exclude the press had been denied, and reporters filled seats on both sides of the courtroom. One burly newsman’s leg was propped up on the wooden railing that separated the gallery and behind which spectators and witnesses sat, their eyes glued on Bryce.

  In addition to the new clothes, Bryce had been fitted with a hearing aid to amplify proceedings. And he heard things that he wished he hadn’t—like the disappointment in one woman’s voice as she muttered to her neighbor, “I expected him to be bigger. He doesn’t look like a baby killer.”

  “Look at his hands,” a man said, leaning toward a thin woman in a paisley dress. “They’re huge and powerful looking.”

  Bryce removed his hands from the table top and folded them on his lap. Kendra advised him to sit quietly, look directly at the witness stand, and listen to everything he could hear.

  The attorney had also arranged for a young woman from the Oregon School for the Deaf, a board-certified interpreter, to sit in front of Bryce and sign so he would always know what questions were asked, even when the attorneys had their backs to him. Bryce had learned to sign at the Institute, but rarely used it because his speech was understandable to most hearing people.

  Finally, the wood panels behind the bench opened and the presiding judge, the Honorable Stephen Shapiro, entered and took his seat on the bench. On either side of him, on the back wall, American and Oregon State flags drooped in the still air.

  While the clerk read the roll of prospective jurors, Bryce glanced around the courtroom. Extra chairs had been brought in to accommodate the overflow of reporters.

  In the selection of jurors, it soon became obvious to Bryce that the prosecution wanted individuals unopposed to a death sentence. Only a few seemed to object, and some of those expressed a willingness to reconsider when dealing with this type of case. Jurors with any reservations were asked a question by Marshall, “Even when it deals with the murder of a child—a nineteen-month-old toddler?”

  Each time Marshall asked, slightly rephrasing the question after Kendra’s objection, Bryce cringed. He twisted his sweaty hands under the oak table as jurors with substantial reservations about a death penalty were, one by one, disqualified by the prosecution.

  The jury selection was slow and tedious. Kendra asked the same question of each juror. “Do you think Mr. Bryce has done anything wrong?” And often enough to frighten the wits out of him, the answer she received was positive.

  Kendra stood in front of one prospective juror, a well-dressed woman in her forties, the wife of a local pediatrician. “And why, Mrs. McIntyre, do you think so?”

  “Because he’s here,” she replied, her voice clear and assertive. “Why would he have been arrested and brought to trial if he did nothing wrong?”

  “That’s a very good question,” Kendra said before she dismissed that potential juror.

  Another prospective juror, a man in a three-piece suit, tried to get himself exempted. “I can’t be impartial in this case. I have a son, just about the same age as Skyler Sterling, and it makes me so mad to think of that son of a bitch hurting someone that innocent and small.” He turned to face Bryce and spat out the remainder of his words. “I want to kill him myself.”

  Kendra made a motion for a change of venue stating this answer showed the hostile attitude of the entire community and demonstrated that a fair trial for Caleb Bryce in Jackson County, Oregon, was impossible.

  Judge Shapiro denied the motion.

  To nearly all the jurors, Kendra asked one final question. “Can you assure me that you will base your verdict on the evidence deemed admissible in this courtroom and not on anything you’ve seen on television, heard on the radio, or read in the newspapers?”

  A twelve-member jury was finally selected. It included a school janitor, a car mechanic, a hospital marketing director, a nursing home kitchen worker, a clothing saleswoman at Macy’s, a Medford school bus driver, the manager of Appleby’s Restaurant, three homemakers, the owner of an apartment complex, a local high school math teacher, and two alternates.

  The jury was a good mix of races, ages, occupations, educational backgrounds, and sexes. “All in all,” Kendra mouthed to Bryce, “I’m pretty pleased.”

  With the jury dismissed from the courtroom, Kendra rose from her chair and submitted a motion to bring Dr. Martin Gerhardt, a clinical psychologist, to testify that the jurors selected were subconsciously affected by the pretrial media coverage concerning the case.

  “All twelve jurors and the two alternates read about this case in the newspaper,” Kendra said. “Ten have admitted to seeing it on television and six admit to having discussed it with other people.” She paced in front of the judge’s bench. “Now don’t get me wrong, Your Honor, I’m not trying to say these people lied about their ability to remain impartial. I know they told the truth to the best of their ability. But I propose to show that subconsciously they absorbed much of the media information.”

  Judge Shapiro agreed to hear Gerhardt’s testimony the following morning in the absence of the jury.

  At eight-thirty the next morning, Kendra carted a box filled with newspaper clippings, and television and radio tapes into the courtroom. “Your Honor. These exhibits are intended to support my contention that the jurors, even though they are honest and forthright, may be mistaken in stating they have not already made up their minds about my client’s guilt or innocence.”

  When Dr. Gerhardt took the witness stand, he looked over the exhibits, thought about each question carefully and finally concluded, “In my opinion, it would be impossible for a juror who has read and seen these accounts to completely disregard the information when it comes time to reach a verdict.”

  Despite Gerhardt’s testimony, Judge Shapiro denied the motion for moving the trial to another location. He concluded the court must take the jurors at their word and all of them stated they would be fair and just in their deliberations.

  When the bailiff left the room to summon the jury, Bryce glanced around the courtroom. His mother and brother were seated behind him in the second row. As his eyes connected with hers, Rachael held on for a moment, then smiled, blew him a kiss and bowed her head. When Jason winked, Bryce nodded and swal
lowed. He wasn’t alone anymore.

  Turning his attention back to the defense table, he jotted a note on a yellow sheet of paper and passed it to Kendra. And now it begins…

  She nodded, then covered Bryce’s hand for an instant with her own.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Bryce sat quietly behind the defense table and watched the jury assemble and settle into their seats. If one of them made eye contact with him, he met their gaze, looking directly into their eyes as Kendra had instructed.

  Judge Shapiro called the court to order. He spent a half hour instructing the jury, reviewing his courtroom schedule. They would start promptly at 9 a.m. Lunch from noon to 1 p.m. A fifteen-minute morning and afternoon break. And Maria already told Kendra he meant what he said. Shapiro was the kind of judge who tried a full day, every day.

  When the judge finished, Andrew Marshall stood, buttoned his jacket, then consulted a sheet of paper on his table, laid his pencil aside and turned to the jury. He wore a navy-blue suit, gray shirt, and a blue, red and gray tie. An American flag was pinned on his lapel. His wingtips were spit polished. He was armed and ready.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began. A portable lectern was available, but Marshall elected not to use it. He had no notes. A man who spoke from the heart. “I’m Andrew Marshall and I’ll be presenting the state of Oregon’s case against the defendant, Caleb Bryce. This trial will not be a pretty one. It involves the death of a nineteen-month-old boy.” He paused and held up a photo of Skyler Sterling on his first birthday for the jury to see.

  It was one of Bryce’s favorites. There was cake smeared on the toddler’s cheeks.

  Marshall waited the appropriate amount of time to have the enormity of what was lost sink in. “It will be told by about ten witnesses, the 9-1-1 tape, doctors at Ashland Hospital, the police detective who investigated the case, the medical examiner, the ex-husband of the victim’s mother, and the victim’s four-year-old brother.”