“What do these twelve people know about me anyway?” He pressed his splayed fingers against his chest so powerfully that, when he dropped his hands, they left dents in the heavy cloth of his jumpsuit. “They never, not a single one of them, in their whole lives, ever talked even five minutes with somebody like me, somebody who grew up like I did, lived like I did! If we had twelve black jurors, or even three or four …”
“But we don’t,” Redpath interrupted. “We have one very middle-class black RN, who’s still an alternate.” He coughed. “Look, I could be dead wrong …”
Moon gave a short laugh and looked up at the ceiling. “Right, except I’ll be the one who’s dead.”
“You think I’ve forgotten that?” Redpath asked, raising his voice, then dropping it. “Thanks very much.” He pulled out the soggy handkerchief and blew his nose again. His words were heavy with clog and exhaustion. “You’ve got my advice, Moon. I’ve been saying the same thing for two weeks now. Once and for all, tell me what you want to do. I feel like hell, and I’ve got a ton of work to do before tomorrow. Make your choice.”
Moon slumped back and stared up at the ceiling again. He opened his mouth, breathed deeply, and let his heavy arms drop. In the silence, Redpath heard footsteps receding down the hall outside, the distant sound of a sliding security gate, the hum of the light overhead. Moon smiled faintly at something, then squeezed his eyes shut and dug in his ear with his pinkie finger.
“You know what’s really messed up about this whole thing?”
“What’s that, Moon?”
Moon rocked forward, rolled his shoulders nervously, and rubbed his temples. A flickering, almost childlike smile was playing the corners of his mouth.
“I really hate shots, man.”
“You hate shots. Great.”
“I hate the motherfuckers… .” A wheezing laugh escaped him.
“You hate shots,” Redpath sniffed. “Well …”
“I always have. They scare me to death!” He looked at his hands and laughed in short, breathy spasms. “When I was a little kid, my momma had to practically tie my ass up just to get me to go to the doctor.” He wiped the corner of his eye. “Shit.”
Redpath scratched his head. “Maybe I could …”
“I keep having these dreams, you know? About this big motherfucker of a needle, about three feet long, right? Some white guy, with his evil blond mustache, in one of those long white coats. That cold shit they wipe on your arm, so you know they’re just about to stick you.”
“How about if I …” Redpath began again.
“If they find me guilty, maybe you could get them to rope me to a pallet of tuna fish or something. Tip me off the Memorial Bridge.”
“How about if I just hit you over the head with that chair there?”
“That’s good. I’d appreciate that, Bill. I really would.”
“All part of the service.”
Moon held up his fists. “And I could take a couple pops at you first, bruise up your ugly face a little, so it would look like self-defense, right? I could get with that right now.”
He feinted with two quick jabs toward his lawyer’s head.
“Great idea,” Redpath said, not moving. “We’d need to make it look good.” Another thunderclap of a sneeze broke through his face. Out came the overused handkerchief.
“Otherwise,” Redpath blew his nose. “Otherwise, hell, they might give me a lethal injection.”
“Don’t talk like that, man!” Moon sat back and slapped the table. “I don’t want to snuff it in some damn doctor’s office, strapped to a cart like a side of beef. I’d rather give it up on the sidewalk, in the old neighborhood. Let some hoodlum shoot my ass.”
As he replaced his wad of handkerchief, Redpath groaned again. “Lethal injection doesn’t sound so bad to me at the moment.”
Moon gave his lawyer an appraising look, drumming with his fingers on the scarred wooden table. Finally, he sighed and shook his head.
“Shit,” he said softly. “Okay, time to do this. Time for Clarence to play the big boy. Tell me again why I shouldn’t just get up and tell these twelve nice people, who think I come from Mars, the truth, the whole damn truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Once more, Moon: Your drug record will come in if you testify. Most of the jury will want to hang you just for that.”
“I thought you said Norcross would tell them not to think about my priors.”
Redpath cleared his throat. “If you testify, he’ll tell them they can consider them in weighing your credibility as a witness, but not in deciding your guilt or innocence.”
“Another one of your rules that makes no damn sense.” Moon folded his arms and gazed at Redpath intently.
“Right. It makes no sense,” Redpath said. “Fact is, I doubt half the jurors will even understand what Norcross is saying. But that’s why you can’t take the stand.”
Moon continued looking at Redpath. Finally, he shook his head. “And you spend your life doing this shit?” He dropped his voice. “I’d rather sell dope. Live an honest life.”
Redpath dabbed at his nose and looked at the table, avoiding Moon’s stare. The silence grew, scored lightly by the sound of Redpath’s breathing.
“Okay,” Moon said finally.
“Okay what?”
“You’re my man,” Moon said, “and this is your game. We’ll play it your way.”
51
Redpath ran a nicotine-stained forefinger down the notes he’d prepared for the direct examination of Sandra Hudson, trying to be sure he’d hit everything. When he began to feel Norcross’s eyes on him, he glanced up.
“Excuse me, Your Honor. If I might just have a moment?”
The questioning had not gone badly; in fact, it had gone damn well. Moon’s wife had revealed herself as a loving but honest woman—well spoken, attractive, and, like most of the jurors, utterly middle-class—a bridge of sympathy, perhaps, between them and the defendant, a causeway over which a reasonable doubt might tiptoe.
“Thank you very much, Sandra,” Redpath said, trying to make it sound as if he had just finished a prayer. “I have no further questions.”
This was, for Redpath, the most dangerous passage in any trial: the hour of hope. How in the hell, he wondered as he shuffled back to his seat, could any juror fail to have a reasonable doubt now, after hearing this intelligent, loving woman tell them the accused was definitely with her when the shootings occurred?
As he lowered himself into his chair, Redpath remembered to turn and put his hand on Moon’s shoulder. His client’s face was unreadable, but Redpath felt his muscles stiffen, repressing a flinch.
He hates this crap, Redpath thought. Tough.
Redpath looked up at the bench, hoping His Honor would call a recess, to let the jurors’ minds marinate in Sandra’s testimony a little longer.
But Norcross was down in his notes, scribbling away in his own world. He addressed Gomez-Larsen without looking up.
“You may cross-examine.”
Gomez-Larsen took her time. She sighed regretfully, smoothed down her dark gray skirt, stood, and moved to the podium, holding her yellow pad at her side.
“Just a few questions, Your Honor. I’ll be brief.” For several seconds, she stared at the wall above the judge’s head. When all the jurors had shifted to look at her, she licked her lips and began in a low voice.
“How long did you know the defendant before you two were married, Ms. Hudson?” The question was delivered with no eye contact. Gomez-Larsen had dropped her gaze to the surface of the podium and was examining her fingertips.
“Let’s see,” Sandra said. “We were both at UMass. It was my second year. Hmmm.”
Redpath smiled inwardly. If Gomez-Larsen thought this no-eye-contact trick was going to buffalo Sandra Hudson, she was wrong. She was taking her own
sweet time with her response, and Redpath noticed the faces of most of the jurors swiveling back to her.
“I would say nine—no, let me think—more like ten months, nearly a year.”
Redpath leaned forward and slid his behind further into the chair, willed his shoulders to relax, and drummed on his knee in a deliberately bored way. When anxious, he had a tendency to tilt back stiffly, like a man trying to avoid a punch in the forehead. His task now was to look as unconcerned as possible. There was little he could do to rescue Sandra if she started to go off the rails. From this moment, she was pretty much on her own.
“So you had no idea what your husband’s life was like in the more than thirty years before you met him, apart from what he chose to tell you, correct?”
Sandra’s expression contracted, and she started to answer quickly, then paused to bring herself under control.
Just answer the question, Redpath entreated her silently. No speeches.
“No. Not correct.” She opened her mouth to say more, to explain, but again hesitated and merely shook her head, repeating. “Not correct.”
“So your testimony to this jury is that you were somehow familiar with your husband’s life before you even met him?”
“Somewhat,” Sandra nodded. “After Moon and I got engaged, before his mother passed away, she and I talked. I got to know some of his old friends, that kind of thing. I’d ask them about what he was like when he was little. The way you do when you …”
“But you obviously had no firsthand …” Gomez-Larsen continued.
“Well, wait a second,” Redpath said, pulling himself up awkwardly. He’d made such an effort to appear bored, it was difficult to get himself untangled.
“You have an objection?” Norcross looked up from his notes. “If you have an objection, say ‘objection.’ ”
“Well, Your Honor,” Redpath replied in an injured tone, “I’d ask that the witness at least receive the courtesy of being allowed to finish her answer.”
“I thought she had finished.” Norcross looked down at the witness box. “Ms. Hudson, were you done with your answer?”
“I was just going to say, ‘The way you do when you love someone.’ ”
“Ah, yes,” Norcross said. He rubbed the end of his nose and returned to his notes.
Gomez-Larsen folded her hands on the podium. “But you do admit that, even after you were married, you and your husband were not together every single minute of every day, correct?”
“That’s true.”
Gomez-Larsen left the podium and returned to counsel table. Was this going to be all she had? Redpath wondered. A rising pressure of optimism began pushing at his lungs. It couldn’t be.
It wasn’t. Gomez-Larsen looked down at her notes and flipped a page, reading something. The trip from the podium to counsel table had the jury’s attention. After a pause, she spoke without looking up.
“Are you acquainted with a woman by the name of Zinnia Sanderson?” Gomez-Larsen turned her face to the witness. “Goes by the name Spanky?”
“Yes.” Sandra hesitated. “I know her.”
“Right. In fact, she lives upstairs from you, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Mm-hm.” Gomez-Larsen pulled a smaller piece of paper on counsel table over to her and examined it. “And this Zinnia, or Spanky, Sanderson has a son, Tyler, correct?”
“I don’t know.”
Gomez-Larsen straightened up and lifted her voice in disbelief. “You do not know whether Ms. Sanderson has a young boy living with her directly upstairs from you whose name is Tyler? Is that your testimony?”
Now it was Sandra’s turn to lean forward; she spoke with an edge to her voice. “I know Tyler lives upstairs with Spanky, of course; I just don’t know if he’s her son or not.”
“Well, did you … ?”
“I don’t think he is, but I don’t know. I thought he was her grandson.”
“Uh-huh. But you don’t disagree that you and your daughter, Grace, and Ms. Sanderson and Tyler would sometimes spend time together, right? You knew each other fairly intimately.”
“Intimately? I’m not sure …”
“Well, let me ask you this. On the day the defendant was arrested by officers of the Holyoke Police Department at approximately twelve thirty a.m., you knew Ms. Sanderson well enough that you went upstairs to her apartment with your daughter and stayed with her?”
Redpath felt a wave of unease, remembering how he had instructed Sandra to stay away from the details of the search, the destruction of the apartment, the hours the officers had spent on the premises. Given that the fruits of the search had been suppressed, letting the jury know about this nightmare might do more harm than good. Now he wondered if his advice had been correct.
In any event, Sandra’s quick glance told Redpath that she had remembered his words. No details.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t call any other friend or relative?”
“It was late, and she was up.”
“But that wasn’t my question.” Gomez-Larsen returned to the podium; once more, the jurors’ eyes followed her. “You chose not to call any other friend or family member at this time of crisis. You went upstairs to take shelter at your friend Zinnia Sanderson’s. Isn’t that right?”
“For that one night. Yes.”
“Thank you.” Gomez-Larsen sighed wearily as she prepared herself to continue.
“Now, to return to the point we were discussing a minute ago, it is true there were times, nearly every day, when your husband was on his own and you had no firsthand knowledge of what he was up to?”
“Up to?”
“Right. What he was doing.”
“Well, I knew enough about what he was doing to know he wasn’t out breaking the law.”
“Well, once again, that wasn’t my question, was it, Ms. Hudson? I asked whether there were times during the day when …”
“If you’re trying to say that Moon might have been out committing crimes and I wouldn’t know about it, that’s, you know, that’s nuts. I knew what he was up to, and he knew what I was up to, if you want to put it that way. We didn’t keep secrets.”
“Really?” Gomez-Larsen took a few seconds to stare up at the wall behind the judge again, propping her chin on her hand and reflecting about something. “We may get back to your remark about ‘secrets’ in a minute. Right now, let me ask you this: It is true, is it not, that sometimes in the mornings you and Ms. Sanderson and your children would take off for as long as two or three hours on your own?”
“Excuse me?”
“I’m just asking whether it’s true that you and your neighbor Ms. Sanderson would go for walks in the mornings sometimes.”
“I suppose. Yes.”
“Stop and buy yourselves doughnuts?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’d sometimes stop with the kids at the Dunkin’ Donuts, right? Wouldn’t be back for two, three hours?”
Redpath felt Moon’s foot tap his. Moon was leaning forward on his elbows, using his arms to form a triangle with his hands at the top, so the jury’s view of his mouth would be blocked.
“Bill,” he whispered. “Not good.”
Sandra was answering the question. “I don’t know if it was that long. You’re saying, three hours?”
“Okay,” Gomez-Larsen said, “why don’t we make it two hours then.”
“Maybe two hours.”
“Okay, now a minute ago, Ms. Hudson, you stated that you and the defendant had no secrets from each other?”
“Objection.” Redpath wasn’t sure where Gomez-Larsen was going, but he didn’t like it.
“None,” Sandra broke in. “No secrets.”
“Objection,” Redpath repeated more emphatically.
“Your Honor,” Gomez-Larsen said. “May w
e approach sidebar?”
“Not necessary.” Norcross nodded up at the clock. “We’ll take the normal recess instead. I’ve been intending to give our jurors a chance to stretch their legs.” He tossed a benevolent look toward the jury box. “Mr. Foreperson, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to take fifteen minutes now. Please remember not to discuss the case. Keep an open mind.”
Norcross looked down at Gomez-Larsen. “You did say, I believe, that you would be brief.”
“Almost done, Judge. Ten more minutes, max.”
“Good. Ms. Johnson, please escort the jury to their room. If counsel will stand by, we’ll clear up the sidebar issue. Ms. Hudson, you may step down from the stand.”
Redpath watched the jury leaving with a sinking heart. He’d been praying that the judge would let counsel go for a few minutes, too, which would give him time to think up some basis for his objection. Unfortunately, as soon as the jury was out of the courtroom, Norcross nodded down.
“All right, I’ll hear you. But let’s jump right to the point.”
“Obviously, Your Honor …” Redpath paused and leaped. “Ms. Gomez-Larsen is trying to move into the area of the drugs seized at my client’s residence, which you have excluded.”
“Really?” Norcross turned to Gomez-Larsen. “Is that where you’re going?”
Redpath was gratified and surprised to hear her reply, “Mr. Redpath is absolutely right, Your Honor. They’ve opened the door. The defense is entitled to a fair trial, but not to a license to lie.”
“Nice phrase,” Norcross said. “But who’s lying?”
Gomez-Larsen turned to look around the courtroom until her eye fell on Sandra Hudson.
“Before I continue,” she said, staring at where Sandra and her family sat together. “I’d ask that Ms. Hudson be excused from the courtroom, pursuant to your sequestration order.”
“My order bars witnesses from the courtroom during the testimony of other witnesses. We’re not hearing any testimony right now.”
“Nevertheless, I’d ask that Ms. Hudson be excused before I continue my remarks.”
“Very well. Ma’am?” Norcross nodded to the Cummings group. Sandra rose slowly and gave her mother a hug. As she did this, Moon, freed perhaps by the absence of the jury, allowed himself to twist around and watch her. Emerging from the embrace with her mother, Sandra saw her husband and gave him a smile, which Moon shyly returned. Redpath felt a spasm of frustration; he would, literally, have given one or possibly two of his fingers for the jury to catch that moment. Then, Sandra strode out of the courtroom, and Moon turned to face forward—his expression, as always, reverting to blank.
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