Ieaving it to others, neighbors of the Heart family, to summon an ambulance, police.
Guiltily he attempted to dispose of the murder weapon by tossing it out a window of his car... into a creek. Except, unfortunately for the defendant"-and here Dill allowed himself a sneer, a mean little smile--"the creek happened to be frozen. This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I suggest was not a premeditated act." (Smiles and titters in the courtroom. Even judge.
And John Reddy Heart's back rigid in mortification. ) "Police found the murder weapon next morning... covered with the defendant's fingerprints. John Reddy Heart's damning fingerprints, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, and no one else's." Dill drew a deep, satisfied breath. Allowing himself a moment of triumph, glancing about the crowded courtroom. Allowing the significance of this fact to sink in to the twelve silent, staring jurors.
Next, he continued, John Reddy Heart had fled Willowsville by following a route he'd clearly worked out in advance to elude police roadblocks and to carry him, eventually, to the Canadian border and into Canada where, like others of his ilk, draft dodgers, political radicals and common criminals alike, he might have escaped detection for years, in the process he callously stole a vehicle in Skaneateles and broke into a 7-Eleven store in Parish and a private residence in Mount Nazarene, he thwarted a manhunt for seventy-two hours and when finally apprehended by
"fiercely resisted arrest" and injured several officers, in custody, he refused to cooperate with authorities. "To this day, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, to this very minute," Dill said, with the air of an aggrieved schoolteacher, "the defendant has put himself above the law. He has said, in effect, refuse to play your game. We have here not just a young, vicious killer a depraved indifference to human life but a young, vicious dissident, an antiamerican traitor--I'm not exaggerating! --who would undermine the foundations of the American criminal justice system in which the rest of us believe and hold sacred." So the jury, seven men and five women, all Caucasian, most of middle-aged, stared at John Reddy Heart in his tight-fitting suit, downlooking, heavy-jawed and sullen, and you could see them thinking, Killer.
Traitor-killer.
"The strange thing is, you sort of believe, yourself. The way convince." It was Mrs.. Connor, Shelby's youngish, popular mom, who told us this.
Mrs.. Connor, Mrs.. Rindfleisch and a few other Willowsville John Reddy's trial from time to time, if they were in the vicinity of downtown Buffalo and could fit the courthouse into their busy, frantic schedules of luncheons, club meetings, charitable organizations like Planned Parenthood and the Friends of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, fashion shows at Berger's. (These visits to the Erie County Courthouse kept secret from their husbands. We had a sudden fleeting sense of mothers' secret lives, the lives they lived away from their families, like a door opening, just a crack, and we'd yearned to know more but never would. ) Mrs.. Connor described the courtroom to us, the way the prosecutor, Dill, a pinch-faced middle-aged man in horn-rimmed glasses and a suit, with the worst western New York accent she'd ever heard, so nasal, like actual concrete was clogged in his sinuses, seemed to hold the in his spell. John Reddy's lawyer Roland Trippe was somehow too attractive, too smooth. You could see his suit was expensive, he'd gone to a good law school.
Whereas Dill was homegrown, from Buffalo's south side, a local product.
One of the jurors, Mrs.. Connor said, seemed really to hang on word. A plain, prune-faced woman of about forty, Sears-type hair, staring damp-bulgy eyes, she seemed to be regarding John Reddy Heart as if he was the devil incarnate. "Or maybe she has a crush on him," Shelby's mother said with a high-pitched giggle that startled us.
At the defense table, hour after hour, John Reddy just sat.
Hunched his shoulders, stared into space. "Like he isn't there, almost.
his body, not his soul. So different from when he'd play basketball--remember? As if we'd have forgotten. Those of us who were cheerleaders sighed.
We'd really known John Reddy, not even Verrie, or Bibi Arhardt he'd seemed to like O. K. when he took time to notice her, but there was the expectation in others' minds that we cheerleaders had known John Reddy Heart, even dated him. Or went to parties with him and his teammates.
was, gohn Reddy rarely dropped by our parties even to celebrate Wolverine victories. ) You can bask in the expectations of others, false, for only so long. Mrs.. Connor was describing in her low intense voice a stranger to us. His hair had been cut unattractively short, like soldier's, and damp-combed so he hardly resembled his pictures. He looked older, perplexed. He didn't look sixteen and a half. The single time Mrs.. Connor and her friends managed to sit near the front of the courtroom, to the right, on the second day of testimony, they'd noticed that John hadn't shaved adequately. His navy-blue serge suit, white shirt looked as if they belonged to someone else, smaller in size and lesser in spirit. Mrs.. Connor believed that John Reddy must have been in the House of Detention, she didn't remember him so muscular and tightto-bursting on the basketball court, he'd been more lanky, loose-jointed.
Even his jaws looked muscular now. "He never glances around at his mother.
That shameless woman. Dressed all in white linen like a nun and dark glasses as iihe's been crying. And her hair bleached that platinum blond like Marilyn Monroe's, Kim Novak's--done up in a twist as if she's a lady. Her! She sits there pretending not to notice how people look at her, staring at John Reddy and touching a handleerchief to her eves like a woman in a movie, so phony, so staged, but John won't turn. If he killed Melvin Riggs, he killed for her--that's obvious!" We were surprised at the bitterness in Mrs.. Connor's voice and the vehemence with which she lit one of her Chesterfields.
Evangeline Fesnacht, agitated as we'd rarely seen her, a rosy bloom in her cheeks, reported that the mood of the courtroom was "electric" and "vindictive." It was a good thing, she said, that New York State had set the death penalty. (Decades later, under a Republican governor, penalty would be restored. ) The jurors looked like "cruel zombie-sheep gathered for a public execution." The judge was clearly a "hanging judge, a rightwing conservative" who favored the prosecution.
Dill was a "cruel, old puritan" who knew how to arouse middle-aged anxieties by John Reddy's youth. And Roland Trippe, cross-examining the prosecution's witnesses and raising objections every few minutes, was shrewd, too shrewd, Evangeline's impressions dovetailed with Mrs..
Connor's--"The jury doesn't trust Trippe the way they trust Dill who's one of their own." Evangeline astonished us with the confidence with which she spoke, only in the cafeteria as we gathered around her, straining to hear, but in Mr.. Cuthbert's class, we were forced to realize how intelligent was, how analytical-minded, mature. Yet she was naive, too, she told us she'd sent letters to Trippe offering legal advice but hadn't heard from him yet.
She'd sent a pleading message to Mrs.. Heart--but hadn't heard from her yet.
"The noblest strategy, I think, would be to allow John Reddy to take the witness stand and tell the court why he killed Melvin Riggs, and why he feels no remorse." We cried in near-unison, "But John Reddy is innocent!" Evangeline retorted, "Don't be ridiculous. John Reddy is a killer, I saw it in his eyes from the start." It was obvious that the evidence of the. 45-caliber revolver covered with John Reddy's prints had made a profound negative impression on the court.
The burden of the defense would be to suggest that, though the gun have shot Melvin Riggs, somehow John Reddy Heart hadn't shot him-exactly, or, if he had, John Reddy wasn't guilty--exactly--of murder, because he'd shot in self-defense and to protect his mother. (Mrs..
Heart's bruises and swellings, attested to by a medical report, would be evoked by the defense. ) There was the possibility, too, which Trippe floated past the jurors, that John Reddy hadn't even known his grandfather's revolver was loaded, Aaron Leander Heart had told police, possibly truthfully, that the revolver had never been loaded since the family moved to Willowsville. (Clearly, Trippe was handicapped by John Reddy's to talk about i
t with him, the lawyer was forced to construct a plausible defense out of speculation about his client's basic actions and motives. ) Matt Trowbridge made a strong impression on the court with his damaging delivered in a firm, respectful voice. He and his fellow officers had arrived at the Heart home shortly after ten a. m. of March 19, by which time Riggs appeared to have died and John Reddy Heart had fled to his car. He'd left only minutes before Willowsville police arrived. There were skidding tire tracks in the driveway that indicated he'd accelerated quickly, veering out onto Meridian Place. When the police officers entered the house lights were blazing and the front door was ajar. Yet there was, Trowbridge said, a "strange silence--like the silence following a thunderclap." He and the other officers encountered, on the stairs leading to the second floor of the house, an elderly, disheveled man, Aaron Leander Heart, the defendant's grandfather, "in a state of agitation, confusion and fear." And the defendant's thirteenyear-old brother Farley, dazed-looking, barefoot and in pajamas. This boy volunteered to police officers, without being questioned, that whom he called John--But here Trippe rose quickly to his feet, and objected, the objection was allowed, and Trowbridge went on to describe the scene in the upstairs bedroom, Riggs's body on the floor and Lying semiconscious on a bed " looking as if she'd been beaten.
Dill said suggestively," Looking as if she'd been beaten'?" Trowbridge said, frowning, "Yes, sir. Looking as if she'd been beaten." That afternoon Farley Heart was called to testify by the prosecution.
Technically he was what's called a hostile witness. Smoke Filer how, after hours of police and forensics testimony so repetitious and boring Smoke had about decided to slip out of the courtroom and take a bus to Willowsville though he'd gone to a hell of a lot of trouble to get there Smoke boasted how he'd disguised the fact he was high school age and truant, powdering his springy red-blond hair to give it an ashen cast, darkish-mauve matte makeup under his eyes to look ravaged, wearing droopy gray mustache borrowed from our school theater supplies--"Man, I looked cool, like shit"), Farley's testimony livened things up.
Fesnacht, seated closer to the front of the courtroom than Smoke, how, as Farley Heart approached the witness stand, not frightened so much as in a kind of daze, John Reddy at the defense table looked sharply up at him--"The first time in three days that John Reddy seemed to be anyone." At the age of thirteen, Farley Heart might have been eleven. A thin, sallow-faced boy with round owlish glasses that caught the light in fractured nervous winks. His hair was straw-colored and his features so indistinct as to seem partly erased, smudged. When he stepped up to the stand, he stumbled. The courtroom was silent. The boy's ears perceived to be protuberant, and flame-red. "Poor kid," Smoke sympathe ically, "put on the spot like that. I mean, swearing to God to tell the whole truth'--like, what's he gonna say about his own brother?" Asked Dill to give an account of the fatal night, Farley spoke slowly, his hoarse, his wordtseemed pried from his very bowels, one by one, rawly sincere, pain. He said he'd been in bed, but not asleep, when he began to voices. Around eleven p. m. Men's voices. Quarreling. Then one the men left, Farley heard him drive away, he didn't know who it was, he hadn't seen, and it was quiet for a while, then, later, possibly an hour later, he was wakened from sleep by a loud noise and again there was quarreling, a stranger's voice, a man's--"I didn't know who. I didn't know Mr.. Riggs. My mother has friends, my mother has business friends, but we don't know them.
don't meet them. Grandpa told me this Melvin Riggs' forced his way into house. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Not here or back-where we'd been." Farley spoke falteringly, his eyes fixed Dill's face with a look of drowning desperation. He looked neither at John Reddy (who staring intently at him) nor at Dahlia Heart (who was staring intently at him, having removed her dark glasses to sit leaning forward in her seat, lips slightly parted, and moistened, Smoke Filer said, "in a way it's good Dougie didn't see, he's nuts about that broad"). Farley seemed confused, and Dill directed him back onto his account. "I heard a loud sharp noise like a firecracker. I didn't know it was a gun. I heard three shots. I was awake now, and scared. I'd been asleep but doing geometry problems in my head.
was mixed up with the geometrical figures, it was like a cube exploding. I was confused at first. I was scared for my mother, and my sister.
I wasn't sure if Grandpa was home. I believed John Reddy was not home. He'd that night and he wouldn't come back sometimes till late. Also Grandpa is sometimes away at night. We don't know where. I didn't know that might be Grandpa's gun. I didn't know Grandpa still had a gun.
Grandpa's got lots of things in his part of the house and we don't go there without his permission. Mother said she didn't want any gun in the house whether it was loaded or unloaded. Grandpa thought we should be protected, though, driving from Nevada to here. He was worried about the car breaking on the Great Plains. Grandpa said--" Farley squinted in the direction of Aaron Leander Heart who was sitting beside Dahlia Heart in the first row of seats. You could see that Mr.. Heart and his daughter Dahlia were kin, Aaron Leander was a handsome old man with sharp cheekbones and a fierce, instfutable expression behind gray-grizzled whiskers (trimmed for trial), he'd been made to dress presentably, in a funeral-dark suit, shirt and checked bow tie, his snowy white hair floated above his head with a cloud, giving him a look of gentlemanly dignity. Dahlia Heart, in a classic white linen suit, a white silk blouse and a string of pearls, wearing pearl earrings and her very blond hair in a graceful French twist, looked like a lady. Aaron Leander and Dahlia Heart were gazing at Farley with such intensity might think They're sending him a message--but what is the message?
tactfully interrupted the boy, who'd become stuck like a record needle in a groove, asking if Farley had left his room to investigate the gunshot. Farley said hesitantly yes he'd run out toward his mother's bedroom at the far end of the hall but he hadn't known for certain that he'd heard gunshots. "It might--might've been something else. It was just noise. I was so--scared." Farley began to stammer, his lips trembling. "I was afraid for my m-mother and my s-s-s-sister. My s-sister's just a little girl, she--she gets s-scared, too.
She f-fell down the stairs and broke her leg and s-she--hurt herself bad, and--" Again, Dill had to prod Farley to return to his account.
He'd come to an abrupt halt as if he'd only just now seen what lay ahead, like a boy running blindly toward a precipice. His forehead glistened perspiration. He was wearing a suit that fit him loosely, a child's snap-on bow tie crooked at his throat. Dill asked in a kindly voice, "Now, son, did you see your brother John Reddy at this time--emerging from the bedroom, or in the hall, or on the stairs?"
There was a long pause. Farley was staring now at Dill with that look of drowning desperation. "I... don't think so, sir."
"You don't think so, son?"
"I... don't know, sir."
"But what did you tell the police officers when they arrived? ts "I... might have told them I s-saw John Reddy. But I might w-wrong." "And later, when you were questioned? And signed your name to the document?"
" I m-might have been wrong. Both times."
"You haven't changed your testimony, son, have you? Under the of Mr.. Trippe?"
"No, sir." Dill spoke patiently, with an air of barely suppressed exasperation. "Farley Heart, will you simply tell this court, did you, or did you not, see your brother John Reddy with your grandfather's gun in his hand immediately after hearing three gunshots fired in your mother's bedroom?" Farley's lower lip jutted. "I w-wouldn't have known it was Grandpa's gun, sir. If I did see it." Dill persisted, "But you did see it? The gun?"
"I... I can't remember."
"Did you exchange words with your brother John Reddy? As he was rushing from the bedroom in which, on the floor, Melvin Riggs lay of a gunshot wound to the head?"
"S-sir, I can't remember."
"Can't remember! But earlier you'd told police, or certainly implied, that you had seen John Reddy at that time?" Dill spoke carefully, not wishing to seem to be browbeating a cowed,
frightened boy.
Exactly what was happening here none of us would've known. Not Evangeline Fesnacht who'd faithfully recorded the exchange verbatim read it to us at school. It would be Roger Zwaart's father who explained, aft the trial had ended, the prosecutor had Farley's statement to the in his hand, in which Farley, shortly after the shooting, had that the shooting had been an accident, that John Reddy "hadn't known the gun was loaded." This statement clearly implied that Farley had seen his with the gun, that Farley was assuming, or pretending to assume, that John Reddy hadn't known the gun was loaded. "Dill hoped to extract from an acknowledgment that, yes, he'd seen his brother with the gun, but Dill didn't want the boy to sway the jury with the additional statement that, in his opinion, the shooting had been an accident, John Reddy hadn't the gun was loaded. So Dill couldn't read the statement. So was an
impasse." Seeing our faces, Mr.. Zwaart who was usually such a dignified, pained-looking person, actually suffering from bleeding ulcers as Roger told us, laughed. "Look, kids, a trial is essentially a gume. Law is a game. Justice' is like a field goal, a winning score, it isn't just. They don't teach you that in school?" He laughed, we were shocked. It shocked us as much that Mr..
Joyce Carol Oates - Broke Heart Blues Page 18