“We just go down to the bottom and back.” He pointed to where the driveway curved downhill through the pines. “It’s dark, but we know the way.”
They walked deliberately, as though they were part of a procession through the creaking trees. After a silence, David returned to a topic they’d started discussing over dinner. “What did you mean when you said that white knights can be worse than dragons?”
“Ah,” said Claire. “I was wondering if you’d ask me about that.” Bending down to pick up a piece of pine branch, she released David’s arm. Claire swished the branch back and forth absentmindedly while she chose her words.
“My husband, Kenneth, was a classic white knight. He scooped me up and carried me away from Missouri and brought me east. In a hundred ways, he helped me become the person I am, which was very, very good.”
Marlene noticed the stick and began leaping around in front of Claire. Claire understood and flung the branch into the darkness down the drive. Marlene bounded off after it. Even in the end-of-the-evening fatigue and disappointment, David could not help noticing how simple and fluid Claire’s movement had been. Professor Lindemann did not throw like a girl.
“He also turned out to be a confirmed and abusive alcoholic, which was very, very bad. Ken could be unbelievably charming when he was sober, and I loved him deliriously, but our life …” She stared out into the dark trees. “Our life got ugly fast. He never hit me, but he did other things just as bad.”
Marlene returned, panting, and dropped the stick at Claire’s feet. Claire picked it up and side-armed it into the shadows. “Actually, that’s not true. He did hit me, once. That was enough.”
She took David’s arm again. “It’s crazy, but for half a second I thought that might be him out there in the trees.”
They had been walking steadily downhill, out of the light thrown by the lamppost at the edge of the judge’s lawn and into the shadows. Behind the overcast, a three-quarter moon was turning the sky a furry gray. Soon they reached a point where they could see neither their feet nor each other and became only voices and touch.
After a bit, David said as simply as he could, “I don’t think I’m the Ken type.” He pressed Claire’s hand. “Not now, Marlene,” he said quietly. The dog dropped her stick and trotted into the darkness ahead of them.
“I know,” Claire said. “Ken never shared his desserts.”
David stepped in front of Claire and ran his fingers over her cheeks into the hair over her ears and around to the back of her neck. “I am definitely a pill, though, sometimes. I know that.”
“True.”
They kissed. David had intended it to be a tender kiss, a kiss of understanding and reassurance. It started out according to this plan—tentative, unpresumptuous, and sweet. But it was soon obvious that they were starving for each other, utterly famished, and that their release, at last, from the postponements and distractions was practically lifting them off the ground. David found himself, like an undergraduate at the end of a date, fumbling to untie the belt of Claire’s London Fog and unbutton its endless buttons to get his hands inside, up her back and onto her breasts, all without removing his mouth from hers. Before long, they were panting like wrestlers.
Suddenly, Claire threw her head back and gave a short laugh. David’s face was down along her neck, devouring the skin behind her ear.
“David,” she broke into a cackle, “David, for God’s sake!” She took a breath to collect herself. “For God’s sake, let’s go inside.”
20
Go.
Judge Norcross tapped the microphone twice and shoved off.
“Welcome! I’m David Norcross, and you’re in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.” He paused. “Western Division.”
He always underlined these last two words. The men and women in the pews, still struggling to get untangled from their parkas and stamp the January slush off their galoshes, might appreciate knowing they were among friends and neighbors, all conscripted from the same four counties of western Massachusetts.
“Usually, I’d start things off by thanking you for coming, but first let’s see if we can get everybody a seat.”
The jury pool, enlarged with reporters, family members of the victims, sketch artists, and curious onlookers, had overflowed the public gallery and left several people without seats, leaning against the walls. This was not good. The discomfort of these miserable, fidgety standers would press in on him and prod him to rush.
He pointed to the right of the gallery.
“I hate to ask this, but if you folks could scooch down a little bit, I think we might fit one or two more people in there. Just stick your backpack on the floor there, ma’am, if you would. Thank you. That’s terrific. Thanks very much.”
Tom Dickinson, Norcross’s silver-haired court security officer, bustled around in his blazer, touching shoulders and pointing. Two swarthy men, one with a ponytail, who had planted themselves in the front row nearly every time the Hudson case was on, looked resentful and shifted minutely.
“Outstanding,” Norcross said. “Think of this as an opportunity to make new friends.”
Amid the shuffling, one or two grudging smiles rebounded toward the bench.
Smile back, he told himself, but not too much. Look unconcerned. Trial judging was a kinetic art, like dance—a matter of posture and presence, aiming to create a certain pattern or atmosphere. A tug on his shoulder made him realize that he was rolling his chair over the hem of his robe again, and he eased back from the bench to free himself.
The seats in the jury box to his right already contained the sixteen potential jurors whose names, churned by the computer, had bobbed randomly to the top of the list. Later this morning, the process of picking out a group of fifty-six neutral, impartial people would start with them. Each side had twenty peremptory challenges, which would leave sixteen—twelve jurors and four alternates—for the final panel. Given all the publicity, it was going to take weeks to find them.
While the people who’d been standing found seats, and the bumps and apologies subsided, Norcross looked over at the jury box to see if today’s group included any pretty women. With Claire in his life now, his interest was academic, but, still, lengthy court proceedings were always more pleasant with one or two cute jurors along for the ride. As far as he knew, every judge felt this way, at least every male judge. The present cohort offered possibilities in seats Four and Eleven. Raven-haired Four had an expression of bored impatience, but Eleven was turning her dreamy, symmetrical face up to him, actually making eye contact. Norcross looked away.
“Okay, terrific. Welcome, and thank you all very much for being here. As I said, I’m Judge David Norcross, and you’re in my court.”
The brush with Eleven tripped the judge’s mind toward Claire, and he suppressed a smile. She’d invited him to her house for dinner that Saturday. When he asked if he could bring anything, she told him just to bring a bottle of Wesson oil.
“As you know, we enjoy many privileges as American citizens, but there are responsibilities, too, and jury service is one of them. Our Constitution gives every litigant the right to a trial by jury, and obviously we could not have jury trials without folks like you being willing to come here and make yourselves available to serve.”
Norcross let his eyes drop into the well of the courtroom. Lydia Gomez-Larsen looked, as always, perfectly composed. Accompanying her again at the government’s table was the Holyoke patrolman—what the heck was his name?—whom Gomez-Larsen had for some reason chosen as case agent over the usual, far smoother FBI investigator. Norcross could see beads of sweat already shining on the man’s forehead. William Redpath, the defense counsel, sat at the lefthand table, matching the prosecutor’s expression of watchful aplomb. His deeply lined face looked as though it had been carved out of an old tree stump. On Redpath’s right, farthest away from the ju
ry box, Clarence “Moon” Hudson occupied the defendant’s chair.
Apart from his stiff posture and expressionless face, Hudson looked like someone who’d just walked in off the street. It was important that none of the potential jurors know he was in custody, that he had only a few minutes earlier changed from a jumpsuit into a jacket, open-necked shirt, and gray slacks, or that the courtroom was tied down inside a tight ring of security. Rumors persisted that La Bandera gang associates or friends of the victims might try to start something, and a beefed-up detail of armed deputies and court officers was sprinkled throughout the gallery and the adjoining hallways. A broad-shouldered man with a marine corps haircut sat near the judge’s exit door, his arms folded and his eyes shifting side to side watchfully.
Norcross steered into a new area.
“Having said that jury duty is one of the responsibilities of citizenship, let me quickly add that I understand, and all of us here at the court understand, that being in this room right now may be, for some of you, a bit of a pain.”
As he examined the jury pool more closely, a familiar sense of frustration began creeping over the judge. Hudson was one of the very few non-whites in the courtroom. Number Nine in the box, the only man with a tie, was plainly African-American, and Eight was possibly Latino, Portuguese, or dark-skinned Italian. Out in the gallery, no more than ten or twelve brown faces dotted the crowd out of nearly a hundred. The Western Division covered mainly suburban and rural areas whose population was slightly more than 10 percent minorities. In that sense, the proportion in the courtroom was about right, but it still was not good. Hudson’s very black, very African face was many white Americans’ worst nightmare: baleful, alien, menacing.
Norcross recalled how uncomfortable the high cheekbones and slanted eyes of the Kikuyu men had made him feel when he’d first arrived in Kenya as a volunteer. His jitters had quickly disappeared with real human contact, but unless Redpath worked some magic, the trial would give Hudson precious little opportunity to reveal any of his human side to the jurors. Several of them were already darting anxious looks the defendant’s way, and the burly man in Seat Five seemed to be sizing Hudson up for a fistfight.
Norcross pushed on. “You’ve been pulled away from your jobs and your personal lives to play a part in our constitutional process, our living democracy. My staff and I will do everything we can to make sure your time is not wasted.”
As he spoke, part of the judge’s mind continued rolling along on its private track. Suppose Gomez-Larsen exercised her peremptory challenges to knock off any minority jurors that made it onto the final panel? Would she stoop to that? He jotted, in caps, a single word, BATSON, the controlling Supreme Court decision, to remind himself to get Eva or Frank to swat up a memo on the problem.
“So. Let me move quickly to the thing that’s probably foremost on your minds: How long is this business going to take? When am I getting out of here?” The judge leaned forward to deliver the whack. “The bad news is that, for reasons I will get to in a moment, jury selection may be lengthy, perhaps as long as three or even four weeks. And you are only our first pool; there are others behind you if we need them to put together the ultimate panel.”
At this, many of the occupants of the gallery began to grow mutinous, shaking their heads, murmuring in disbelief, or turning for sympathy to a neighbor. Number Four tossed her dark hair, sighed dramatically, and fixed her mouth in a spoiled pout.
He hurried on. “The good news, however, is that no individual will need to be here longer than one or two days to learn if he or she is going to be a juror. In many cases, we’ll be needing you for less than a day.”
This helped, but not much. Norcross gathered his robe over his knees, raising his voice slightly and holding up three fingers.
“Now, today, we’re going to proceed in three stages. First, we will be distributing questionnaires for all of you to fill out. We’ve set aside a half hour for this, while I take a recess and you get to work with your pencils. Next, I will be giving the whole group of you some general instructions covering this portion of the process. After that, we’re going to be excusing all of you for the day, except these sixteen lucky folks here to my right in the peanut gallery.”
Lucky, ha-ha. Not many cheerful looks from the jury box.
“Those of you who are off the hook for today will be coming back tomorrow, later in the week, or next week, in batches of sixteen, for more detailed instructions.”
Up to this point the judge’s courtroom deputy, Ruby Johnson, had been placidly sitting at her desk below the bench. Her job involved scheduling the judge’s cases, making sure everyone was in position before he stepped onto the bench, and handling routine courtroom tasks, such as swearing in witnesses. Ruby’s resonant West Indian voice was perfect for the job, employing a tone that was kindly but brooked no nonsense. Now she turned and gave her boss the fish eye: danger. Ruby always managed to do this without making it obvious that the judge needed rescuing, but Norcross knew he was about to flub something. In fact, he might already have.
The numerous reporters—from all the western Massachusetts papers, of course, but also The Boston Globe, The New York Times, the Associated Press—sat in the front row with their pads and pens, looking like so many vultures ravenous for a gory catastrophe. So far the first death penalty case in Massachusetts in fifty years had been blessedly dull. They were not bad people, these journalists, but he knew if he fouled things up, they’d grind his bones to bake their bread.
“With luck, then, by around eleven o’clock, all but sixteen of you will be on your way. In just a minute, we’ll begin distributing the questionnaires, but before we do, I have one or two additional things to tell you.”
Think.
Norcross let his eyes drop to Ruby’s face again; she was willing him to remember. Then the crackle of connection jumped between their brains; he often forgot this part of the ritual and needed reminding.
Ruby received the judge’s minute nod and turned forward without expression. Norcross moved seamlessly on.
“But before we commence actual jury selection, it is part of our process that the defendant be presented formally to those of you who may be making up his jury. We’ll take care of that now. Ms. Johnson, if you please.”
Ruby rose from her chair. Her voice during this stage was always queenly perfection.
“Clarence Hudson, please stand.”
The defendant stiffened and looked at his attorney. Redpath must have failed to mention this phase of the ceremony. The lawyer nodded, and the two men rose together. Norcross saw with a sense of helplessness that Hudson’s tight face probably made him appear beyond hope to many of the strangers looking on—just another who-gives-a-damn, street-gang killer, whose picture appeared two or three times a week in every city newspaper.
The whole room was gaping; people were craning their necks and half rising from the benches to stare. The defendant looked down at his hands resting on the counsel table, swallowed, set his jaw, and lifted his eyes to a spot somewhere over the judge’s left shoulder, in the area of the large American flag beside the bench.
Ruby’s words were soft, but her accent carried easily over the stilled courtroom.
“Clarence Hudson, you are now set to the bar to be tried. These good people who shall be selected are to pass between you and the United States upon your trial. If you object to any of them, you must do so before they are sworn. You may be seated.”
21
Lunch recess. Bill Redpath sat on a wooden chair tipped back against the conference room wall, in a shaft of gray winter light from the room’s only window. Over his shoulder, a sign in bold red letters shouted ABSOLUTELY NO SMOKING ANYWHERE IN THIS BUILDING!! The court had given counsel an hour to eat, and, desperate for time, Redpath was spending the break with his thermos of black coffee alone in the quiet room.
His right hand held a questionnaire, which he was r
eading with ferocious intensity. His left hand was squeezed through a four-inch aperture at the bottom of the casement window. This was the widest Redpath had managed to pry the balky mechanism open.
Grimacing from arthritis, the old attorney pulled his hand back into the room and positioned the cigarette he’d been holding outside between his lips. He then flipped the page of the questionnaire, took a drag on the cigarette, and stuck it back out the window. After reading for a few moments, he pulled his arm in, bent to the side, and blew the smoke out through the opening. The arrangement was not working very well—a faint pall was starting to thicken against the ceiling—but, given time constraints, this was his only choice.
Judge Norcross had allowed Redpath and Gomez-Larsen a paltry sixty minutes to eat lunch and read the questionnaires of the sixteen jurors who would be individually questioned this afternoon. Even sticking to coffee, Redpath had far too little time. Any fair-minded judge, any judge who had ever tried a major criminal case himself, would have allowed them to study the questionnaires overnight and come back in the morning. Redpath was furious at being jammed by this judicial greenhorn. A man’s life, a possibly innocent man’s life, could be lost for this baloney.
Too much pique at a judge’s stupidity or meanness, Redpath knew, would only weaken his focus, but he could not help picking at this scab of injury. All the pressure, the judge had told them blandly, was in the cause of “moving the case along” and “not unduly inconveniencing the jurors.” From what Redpath could see from his frantically hasty review of almost two hundred pages of questionnaires, precious few of the jurors would be in jeopardy of any real inconvenience anyway, since most of them would probably be excused (as the phrase went) “for cause.” In seven of the thirteen questionnaires he’d read so far, including the one filled out by the panel’s only black juror, the writer had claimed utter inability to sit for the four to six weeks this trial would take. It was maddening, but, really, who could blame them?
The Hanging Judge Page 14