Closer Than You Know

by Brad Parks

  Most of all: What kind of cretin would knowingly endanger an infant like that? And what else would a person like that be willing to do?

  With those thoughts occupying me, I passed through the remainder of Tina Anderson’s testimony in a haze.

  I only refocused when Nancy Dement and her epaulettes came to the witness stand. In that jowly voice of hers, she went through the same routine of establishing herself and her credentials for the court.

  Then Donna Fell began solving the riddle of Dement’s presence.

  “Ms. Dement, can you please tell the court how Ms. Barrick and her child first came to your attention?” Fell asked.

  “Ms. Anderson asked me to consult on the case,” Dement said. “She told me she had received a call from Lieutenant Peter Kempe of the Augusta County Sheriff’s Office, and she wanted me to talk to Lieutenant Kempe about a certain aspect of the case.”

  “And what did you and Lieutenant Kempe discuss?” Fell asked, in that way that made it clear she already knew the answer.

  “He told me he had been working with a confidential informant relating to the criminal case against Ms. Barrick, and that the confidential informant had shared information with the Sheriff’s Office that might be of interest to us.”

  “And what was that information?”

  “The confidential informant told Lieutenant Kempe that Ms. Barrick wanted to sell her baby.”

  “Sell her baby!” Judge Stone boomed.

  The charge, the mere suggestion of it, affronted him so greatly he leaned away from Dement. Then he rotated his whole body toward me. He could scarcely make his disgust more plain.

  At least for the moment, I didn’t care. I was more focused on the revelation itself. This was what Dement refused to tell me in her office the previous week. I now at least had some inkling as to where this horrible accusation had come from, even if all it did was open up yet another mystery: Who was this confidential informant?

  As much as I wanted to think it was an invention of Nancy Dement’s imagination, that couldn’t be the case. She wouldn’t rope a sheriff’s lieutenant into a fiction like that.

  It had to be a real person saying made-up things.

  I began talking to Mr. Honeywell in a low, urgent voice: “That’s not true. It’s not true. I don’t know who this confidential informant is, but he’s lying. I never told anyone I wanted to sell my baby.”

  Donna Fell had waited a beat for the judge to contain his shock, then continued: “And how did you respond to that?”

  “I was taken aback, just like anyone would be,” Dement said. “As I said, I have been working at this agency for thirty-three years, and I have never been confronted with a situation like this.”

  “What did you do next?”

  “I asked Lieutenant Kempe for more details, and he couldn’t really give me any. I think Lieutenant Kempe was more concerned with Ms. Barrick selling drugs and was going to leave the selling of the baby to us. I told Lieutenant Kempe I needed more information and I asked if I could talk to the confidential informant myself.”

  “How did Lieutenant Kempe respond?”

  “He was hesitant. He told me about how the Sheriff’s Office has to protect the identity of its informants, and of course I understand that. He asked if perhaps he could relay some of my questions to the confidential informant and then get back to me with answers. I told him that given the nature of the issue, I really needed to talk with the informant myself. We went back and forth on this subject until we decided Lieutenant Kempe would bring the informant into his office and have the informant make the call from there.”

  At this point, Mr. Honeywell stood up with more force than I knew him to be capable of. And for the first time since he had come into my life, he started acting like he was defending an innocent woman.

  “Your Honor, I have to object. It sounds like Ms. Fell is about to have Ms. Dement recall the details of a conversation this confidential informant is alleging he had with Ms. Barrick. I realize Ms. Barrick is a party opponent, so her utterances are a hearsay exception. But what Ms. Fell is asking you to accept is clearly hearsay within hearsay. If Social Services wants you to consider what this confidential informant has to say about a conversation with Ms. Barrick, let’s bring him in and get him under oath. Otherwise, I don’t see how the court can allow Ms. Dement to bring this conversation into evidence.”

  I didn’t know what had gotten into him. But when he was through, I felt like standing up and applauding him, or maybe like kissing his pudgy, wrinkled cheek.

  Someone—someone who actually mattered—was finally sticking up for me.

  Better yet, Judge Stone seemed to be pondering my lawyer’s argument.

  “Ms. Fell?” he said. “What do you have to say about this?”

  The plaintiff’s lawyer straightened, making herself even taller. “Your Honor, I’d love nothing more than to bring this confidential informant in and have him testify. That’s just not possible under the circumstances. But I think what this informant has to add to this case can’t be ignored, and there’s no other way to get it on the record.

  “I’d ask that you remember the courts have long recognized the role of confidential informants in enforcing our laws, particularly our drug laws. We trust sworn law enforcement officers to make sound judgments about the reliability of their informants, and it seems reasonable the court have that kind of trust in Lieutenant Kempe. This isn’t just someone Lieutenant Kempe picked up off the street. This is someone Lieutenant Kempe had used in other cases and considered to be solid.”

  The judge turned back our way. “Mr. Honeywell?”

  “Judge, the courts have recognized the importance of confidential informants in criminal matters. This isn’t criminal. It’s civil. And in any court, it’s still hearsay within hearsay. I’d ask you to disregard Ms. Dement’s testimony entirely. We’re talking about basic due process here.”

  Judge Stone tented his fingers, a gesture that made him look very judicial, indeed. The courtroom fell silent.

  I can’t say I comprehended the legal underpinnings of the verbal melee that had just occurred. Hearsay rules weren’t something they taught in my literature classes. But I certainly understood the consequences of what the judge was about to say.

  It would essentially decide whether or not I’d get to see my son while this case dragged out. If Nancy Dement’s testimony was tossed—taking the absurdist fiction this confidential informant was spouting along with it—Social Services would have no basis to deny me supervised visits.

  I had this brief fantasy about being able to hold Alex again; about his soft little head resting against my cheek; about his warm, chunky body pressing against mine. I felt that loss like a phantom pain.

  Judge Stone shifted his weight in his seat, then crossed his arms as he gazed toward the back of the room. Then he looked at Mr. Honeywell and uttered a sentence that broke my heart.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Honeywell, but I’m going to have to overrule your objection,” he said. “If this were a jury trial, I’d side with you all the way. But as you know, the law recognizes that a judge can assess evidence like this in a more nuanced way and assign it the proper weight. At the end of the day, I have to decide what’s in the best interest of this child. And I need to use all evidence at my disposal to make that determination. You have my assurances that I’ll take the hearsay factor into consideration. With that caveat, I’ll allow it.”

  Mr. Honeywell sat back down. He didn’t look at me. Maybe he didn’t realize how devastated I was.

  Or maybe he knew precisely.

  Fell just picked up where she left off: “So, Ms. Dement, you accepted Lieutenant Kempe’s offer to talk with the confidential informant?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when did this phone call occur?”

  “Later that same day. The informant called and confirmed
that Ms. Barrick had asked him whether he knew someone who might be interested in buying a baby. The informant was mindful that he had to keep up the facade of having criminal contacts, so he told her he could look into it. Ms. Barrick told him she wanted a minimum of fifty thousand dollars.”

  When she uttered the amount, Judge Stone’s eyes darted toward me and narrowed. In that moment, I knew I could completely disregard all his judge double-talk about what weight he would give certain evidence.

  As Nancy Dement finished, the judge clearly had decided which way he fell on the subject of Melanie Anne Barrick. My own testimony—during which time Mr. Honeywell attempted to rehabilitate the tattered remains of my credibility—only did so much good.

  Judge Stone spoke like a man with bile on his tongue as he rattled off his various proclamations and decisions. He started with a preliminary removal order, confirming the emergency removal order he had given the previous week. He told me I needed to get a job and stay out of prison if I wanted to have any hope of convincing him I could provide a fit home for Alex.

  He finished by issuing a protective order against me, saying I couldn’t knowingly come within five hundred feet of Alex, wasn’t allowed to make attempts to find him, and couldn’t communicate with the foster family that had custody of him.

  My jaw was as unhinged as the rest of me, and I’m pretty sure it hung down the entire time. Because, sure, I could tell myself that I was being framed, that this was the work of hidden hands masterfully manipulating the levers of justice for their own purpose, and that therefore none of this reflected objective reality.

  But the fact was, the law—very real, and very enforceable, with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men behind it—had just spoken.

  And it said I was the kind of mother whose child needed to be protected from her.

  THIRTY

  I was so defeated and dazed by the time I left the courtroom, I felt like someone had spent the past two hours beating on me with a bagful of padlocks.

  Needing to put some distance between myself and that awful courtroom, with its stale air and its preposterous accusations, I emptied out onto the street, setting a furious pace toward my car.

  For a moment, I thought I heard someone saying my name. But then I dismissed it. No one out here was looking for me.

  Then it came again: “Ms. Barrick! Ms. Barrick!”

  I turned to see Mr. Honeywell. He had followed me out of the courtroom.

  “Slow down,” he said.

  “I . . . I don’t want to talk,” I said in his direction, then quickened my pace.

  “You left your purse,” he said.

  He was waving it in the air as he came toward me in the speediest limp he could manage.

  “Hold up,” he said. “I’m an old man. My days of running around after young women are long gone.”

  I walked back in his direction, feeling churlish for having made him chase me.

  “Thank you,” I said when he handed me my purse. “I really appreciate it.”

  I turned to continue toward my car, but Mr. Honeywell wasn’t having it.

  “Now, hang on a second. Just hang on,” he said, out of breath. “I want to talk for a moment.”

  “What’s there to talk about?” I said petulantly, then pointed toward the courthouse. “That man hates me, and he’s clearly never going to let me have my son back.”

  “Now, now. Judge Stone is just . . . Well, this is your first time in front of him, so he wants to set a certain tone. Some women, they don’t take this as seriously as they need to, so he goes a little rough on them at first.”

  “A little rough,” I said.

  “Ms. Barrick,” he said, still panting a little.

  Then he surprised me: “Would you sit with me, please?”

  He pointed to a stone bench that was under a tree in front of the courthouse.

  “Uh, sure,” I said.

  I almost took his arm as he hobbled toward the bench. I would have, if I hadn’t thought he’d be offended by my offer to help.

  “There. That’s better,” he said after lowering himself.

  He patted the spot on the other side of the bench. As I sat, he pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed his face with it.

  “Now, look, I’m going to be honest with you: That was a heck of thing in there,” he said. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had a five-day hearing that was so . . . combative is the word that comes to mind. If you’re feeling a little woozy, I don’t blame you. I do too.”

  “Thank you,” I said. And I meant it.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t keep that nonsense about the confidential informant out of evidence,” he said, shaking his head as he returned his handkerchief to his pocket.

  “I appreciate that you tried,” I said. “Who is that confidential informant, anyway? Do we have any way of figuring that out?”

  “We might,” he said.

  “How?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about that, and some fancy lawyering from yours truly just might be in order. The search warrant is a public record, so that’s not the issue. The problem is, in the warrant, they list the confidential informant by number, not name. The only way we can unmask him, so to speak, is to challenge the warrant itself.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Oh, sure. This would be connected to your criminal case, so it happens over in Circuit Court. I can make a motion to have the warrant suppressed on the grounds that the confidential informant was lying to the Sheriff’s Office. The judge’ll eventually tell them to produce their CI. At that point, we’ll have what’s known as a motion hearing. Depending on how it goes, that might be your whole case right there.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Once I get that fella up on the stand, I’m hoping I can trip him up and catch him in a lie. Maybe more than one. Once the judge sees that the confidential informant isn’t on the up and up, he’ll have no choice but to toss the warrant. If the government loses the warrant, all the evidence found as a result of that warrant is known as ‘fruit from a poisoned tree.’ It’s inadmissible.”

  “Inadmissible, as in . . .”

  “Gone,” he said. “And without any evidence, they don’t have any case. The prosecutor would have to drop the charges.”

  I took in a deep breath. It was tempting to listen to Mr. Honeywell’s strategy—simple, straightforward, and seemingly so possible—and get hopeful.

  But hadn’t I already learned how dangerous that emotion could be?

  I looked up at the tree hanging over us. Its buds were just about to burst, heavy enough that they were bending the branches. It was one of those portents of spring, of rebirth. It made me think of the tulips in front of my house.

  They had once filled me with optimism too; and look how that turned out.

  “You really think that’s going to work?” I asked.

  “We won’t know until we try.”

  We. There I was, overvaluing pronouns again, but to hear the first-person plural come out of his mouth was heartening. And as I looked at him—my wrinkled champion—I wondered what it was that had come over him. Until recently, he had been as skeptical of me as everyone else. Something had clearly changed his thinking.

  “Mr. Honeywell, thank you, but . . . I guess I’m curious: Why are you helping me like this?”

  The question seemed to amuse him. “Ms. Barrick, I know I might not look like much, but I am your lawyer.”

  “No . . . I know that, but . . . I’m not naïve. The court barely pays you anything for this. And you’ve probably had a million clients singing the same song as me about how innocent they are. And you . . . You can’t possibly believe them. I know you probably didn’t believe me at first. But in court just now, you were acting, I don’t know, differently.”

  He chuckled softly. “That’s . . . that’s h
ard to answer.”

  “Please try.”

  We sat in silence for a little while as he composed an answer. When he finally began, it was in a voice that was as slow and marble-mouthed as ever, but also somehow deeper and sadder.

  “Ms. Barrick, I’ve been doing this a long time. Maybe not always well, and certainly not lucratively; but a long time nevertheless. When you sit where I’ve sat for forty years, you realize no one is purely bad and no one is purely good. We’re all somewhere in the middle, and sometimes it’s just a question of . . . of what position the world puts us in that determines which side of the courtroom we sit on. Do you follow me so far?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t kid myself about who my clients are. They’ve probably done bad things, you’re right. But they’re not really bad people, much as some folks in the legal system might like to view them that way. It’s my job to represent them all the same. I’ve got to make sure the courts treat them fairly, of course. And maybe, if I’m having a good day, I can even get the courts to see my clients the way I do—as that mix of good and bad that we all are. That’s probably the best I can do for most of them, and I can sleep okay at night knowing I’ve tried my best.”

  He paused and sighed heavily. “But then, every once in a while, a client comes along . . .”

  Mr. Honeywell was now the one looking up at the tree. “When I saw you in court this morning, I was really struck by . . .”

  He was struggling with the words, almost choking on them. “Well, you remind me of someone, put it that way. Seeing you in that dress, maybe I understood who you really were for the first time.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I see you, Ms. Barrick,” he said cryptically. “I see you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “And I don’t think I can explain it,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

  He lifted himself slowly from the bench. To my astonishment, he had tears in his eyes. He pulled out his handkerchief again and blotted his face.