Absolute Certainty

by Rose Connors

  CHAPTER 56

  All eight Chatham squad cars are at the entrance to Morris Island, at the very end of the causeway, lights blazing and sirens shrieking. A half dozen state cars are here as well. The wooded embankment between Rob’s house and Jeff’s is peppered with uniforms. The sirens fall silent every few minutes and the Chief shouts through a bullhorn. I can’t understand him.

  I am headed toward the squad cars as fast as my own car will travel, the county van still on my tail. Somehow, I have to get around them. I have to get to Rob’s house. I have to get to Luke and Justin.

  A movement to my left catches my eye, though, just as I approach the end of the dike, just before I reach the first of the squad cars. Through the windblown marsh grass, I see activity on the shoreline of the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge. Two people, both inching across the beach at the water’s edge. But only one is moving voluntarily; the other is being dragged.

  I drive off the road and through a wooden split-rail fence onto the mudflats. I travel as fast as the old car will move, through the marsh, until I see them well enough to know who they are, even through the Chatham fog.

  Dr. Jeffrey Skinner. Esteemed pathologist. Serial killer.

  And Luke.

  I speed straight toward them as far as I can, until the Thunder-bird’s wheels refuse to turn anymore in the deepening mud. I am out of the car before it stops, my Lady Smith already drawn. I fire immediately. The shot catches Jeff in his left shoulder. It causes only a momentary loosening of his grip on Luke.

  I run toward them on someone else’s legs. Jeff shifts Luke’s weight to his right arm, examines the blood pouring from his own left shoulder for just a few seconds, then turns to his right again, toward Luke.

  Luke is motionless.

  Someone else’s voice screams from my throat. The voice is louder, even, than the ocean wind. “Drop him. Now, Jeff. Drop him or I’ll kill you.”

  I am six feet from them now, both arms outstretched, the Lady Smith aimed at Jeff’s head. I slow to a walk. I don’t want Jeff Skinner to panic.

  Gusts from the Atlantic make walking more difficult when I reach the open beach. “Drop him, Jeff. I swear to God I’ll kill you if you don’t drop him right now.”

  Three feet—I am three feet from Jeff Skinner and my son. “Let him go, Jeff. I’ll blow your brains out if you don’t. God almighty, let him go, please.”

  I am eighteen inches from them now. Jeff looks directly at me, with eyes that are not his. Planted in the sockets of Jeff Skinner’s face are the eyes of someone I’ve never seen before, someone driven, someone desperate.

  I force my eyes away from his frantic stare and steal a glance at his left hand. He’s holding a scalpel. It’s clean.

  The tip of the Lady Smith’s barrel is six inches from Jeff’s head. I take two more steps—small ones, no big movements. I press the barrel flush against Jeff’s left temple and fire.

  Jeff’s head jerks violently to the right. Fragments of his skull and its contents fly onto the sand behind him. His eyes remain open, staring into mine, and his entire body goes rigid for what seems like a full minute before he releases his grip on Luke. Finally, Jeff Skinner’s body falls to the sand.

  So does Luke’s.

  Luke rolls away from Jeff’s body, into the incoming tide of the Atlantic. He comes to rest in the shallow water, facedown, and my knees abandon me. I pull myself to him with my hands and elbows; I can’t feel my legs. I lift him gently from the water, and roll him over onto my lap. He is not conscious. But he is not cut either. He is breathing. He is alive.

  The din of a stampede is behind me. I am afraid to move, afraid to cause further damage to Luke’s skull. But my arms don’t listen to my fear. They automatically envelop Luke. I press my face against his, begging him to live.

  I don’t know how much time passes before the paramedics pry my fingers away from my son. Years, maybe.

  CHAPTER 57

  Late October

  Geraldine handled the press afterward. She had known all along about our surveillance in the holding cells and the evidence room. She installed a security camera of her own—in my office. And she monitored the Kydd’s every movement.

  During the early morning hours of July 4, Geraldine sat in a county van behind the District Courthouse with her own electronic equipment. She watched me while I watched Jeff Skinner manufacture evidence—evidence that would have sent Angelo Santini to Walpole for life just as surely as it did Manuel Rodriguez. And Eddie Malone would have landed there too, eventually, maybe after another stint or two at Bridgewater State Hospital.

  It was Geraldine who drove the county van that tailgated my Thunderbird as I sped from the Barnstable District Courthouse toward the Morris Island causeway. The van was never more than a few yards from the Thunderbird, even when I drove through the split-rail fence and onto the mudflats of the Monomoy Wildlife Refuge. Geraldine had jumped from the county van and drawn her own weapon, I learned later, as soon as the Thunderbird came to a stop. She followed me across the marsh, prepared to take Jeff Skinner down if he lunged at me.

  Perhaps I could have spared Luke these long months of suffering if I had worked harder at the practice range, if I had gone more often, as Geraldine said I should. Well-meaning people tell me that the minutes between my first shot and my second didn’t matter, that Jeff Skinner had fractured Luke’s skull before any of us arrived.

  Of course, no one really knows.

  CHAPTER 58

  The battle of the experts started the day Jeff Skinner’s life ended. It continues to this day. Psychiatrists and academicians, many of them Ralph’s colleagues, debate the details of Jeff Skinner’s mental illness. They begin, of course, with the presumption that he had one. They refine their diagnoses each time a new fact about him is uncovered.

  They seem to agree on the big picture. Jeff suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, they say, stemming from his combat experiences during the Vietnam War. The invitation to speak at Chatham’s annual Memorial Day ceremonies just over a year ago is what pushed him over the brink. Preparing his speech, they theorize, is what triggered the flashbacks that made him snap the first time.

  They agree on little else.

  Some of the experts see significance in the fact that every one of Jeff’s victims was wearing some article of clothing that connected him to the U.S. military. Michael Scott was wearing his U.S. Navy wind-breaker; Skippy Eldridge his Otis Air Base cap. Jake Junior was wearing his U.S. Army tee shirt. So was Luke.

  But other experts say the victims’ clothing had nothing to do with it. The victims were not selected for any particular reason, this group says. These four young men were never targets. They simply happened to be in the wrong places at the wrong times.

  Records obtained by the press from the U.S. Marine Corps revealed that Lieutenant Jeffrey Martin Skinner repeatedly complained to his superiors about the youth of the men under his command. The troops were too young, he said over and over again, too inexperienced. Almost every day some of his boys would be brought down by enemy fire. And each new batch of recruits, he complained, was younger than the last.

  Some say Jeff’s breakdown—and therefore the four Chatham attacks—could have been prevented if proper psychiatric intervention had been available immediately after his return from combat. Others say that the damage done to Jeff’s psyche during his years of armed combat was insurmountable. His flashbacks were inevitable, this group says. He was destined to snap.

  Still other experts claim that the blame for the four Chatham attacks lies not with Jeff Skinner at all, but with the American public and our national guilt over the Vietnam War. Our failure to deal with that guilt, these experts say, isolates every Vietnam veteran who returned to the States alive. As a nation, we have frozen every one of them in perpetual combat.

  Ralph seems to take some comfort from this academic dialogue, as if Luke’s ordeal will be made less painful for Ralph to witness if he can understand the forces that drove Jeff Skinner to
attack. Ralph actively participates in the debate, writing opinion pieces in scholarly journals, even appearing on television talk shows. He calls me to discuss new theories. He sends me copies of articles.

  I don’t read them.

  CHAPTER 59

  Judge Herbert Carroll never returned to the Superior Court bench after the July 4 holiday. First he called Wanda to say he would be taking a much needed vacation. Then he called her back to extend his time off. Finally, he opted for early retirement.

  Charlie Cahoon came to the cottage just once, the day after Luke was released from the hospital. He spent a good ten minutes looking closely at Luke asleep on the couch, then took my hands in his and said only, “Oh, Miss Marty.” The tears brimming in his sad eyes spilled over then, and he walked out the kitchen door. He hasn’t been back. I understand. There is, I know now, a limit to the suffering the human spirit can endure.

  Geraldine’s campaign is in full swing. The Board of Bar Overseers cleared her of any wrongdoing, agreeing with her that my visit with Eddie Malone and Harry at Bridgewater State Hospital constituted “questionable conduct.” Of course, I never testified.

  Geraldine’s public image did suffer minor damage as a result of the false accusations leveled against Manuel Rodriguez, Eddie Malone, and Angelo Santini. But that damage was more than offset by the dozens of photographs that ran in every newspaper in New England for weeks after Jeff attacked Luke, many of them featuring Geraldine on the Wildlife Refuge, her nine-millimeter Walther PPK drawn, covering me as I approached Jeff Skinner. Those images breathed new life into her “tough on crime” campaign. The polls show her ahead of her male opponent by a healthy margin.

  Justin comes over almost every afternoon. He and Luke take Danny Boy for a short walk and then chat with me over a soda or a lemonade at the kitchen table. Rob stops by each day after he leaves the office, visits with us for just a few minutes, and then he and Justin go home together.

  I know this arrangement is difficult for Rob. It’s hard for him to face Luke and me day after day. He is miserable with guilt about his lack of attention to the Roman numerals, about his unquestioning acceptance of Geraldine’s version of reality. But I wasn’t sure about the Roman numerals myself until I saw Jake Junior in the morgue. I have told him that more than once.

  Luke and I look forward to Justin’s daily visits. He pulls us into the present, makes us look to the future, even, to Luke’s return to school and, eventually, basketball. Justin doesn’t avoid certain topics the way adults do. He makes us laugh out loud by parroting Luke’s imitation of Ralph—speaking psychobabble—on the witness stand. He cries freely, as do we, when we talk about the early morning hours of July 4.

  It was Justin who filled in the missing details for us; Luke has no memory of that time. The party guests had been picked up at midnight. Luke and Justin sat by the bonfire for another hour, letting it burn down, talking and roasting the last few marshmallows. At one o’clock, they went to bed.

  They agreed to a short night’s sleep, to go back out to walk the refuge beach and watch the sun come up on Luke’s seventeenth birthday. They checked the Cape Cod Times and learned that sunrise was expected at five-twelve. Luke set the alarm for five o’clock sharp.

  Justin remembers the buzzing of the alarm clock and Luke’s shaking him a minute after that. Justin told Luke to forget it and pulled the covers over his head. He remembers feeling kind of bad about it. He remembers Luke’s laughing and the sound of the bedroom door closing.

  Jeff Skinner never entered Rob Mendell’s house that morning. Luke unwittingly went to him.

  The Kydd calls each day after he finishes the morning docket. His workload is enormous now that I am gone and Geraldine is campaigning full-time. He tells me he’s just holding down the fort until I return. But we both know I’ll never go back.

  And then there is Harry.

  Harry didn’t leave my side during the five days Luke spent in the intensive care unit. When Luke’s condition was upgraded and he was moved to a regular medical unit, Harry showed up in his room every morning and every evening, before and after work. More than once, I awoke at daybreak in my seat next to Luke’s bed to find Harry sound asleep in the chair next to mine. I realized, then, that Harry really does doze off in his suit for a few hours just before going to work. Once again, Geraldine was right.

  Now that Luke and I are back in our Windmill Lane cottage, Harry appears on the back deck every morning at sunrise. Even on those rare mornings when I sleep later than that, he is still there, waiting. He brings two large coffees and two cranberry muffins. We sit on the deck while Luke sleeps in, watching the autumn sun climb to its position of prominence over the pounding surf of the Atlantic. Each of us has a coffee; Harry eats both muffins.

  At his own request, Harry was relieved of active trial duties as soon as he secured the reversal of the Manuel Rodriguez conviction and the dismissal of the murder-one charges against Eddie Malone and Angelo Santini. Since then, he has spent his days reviewing old case files, looking for other defendants who might have been convicted on the basis of evidence tainted or manufactured by Jeffrey Skinner. I have already told him he won’t find any. Michael Scott was Jeffrey’s first victim. I saw his number.

  Manuel Rodriguez was cleared of the Scott murder and charged with the attempted murder of Jim Buckley in the same proceeding. He entered a not-guilty plea—he’s been assigned a new public defender— and will be tried this winter. He never signed a written confession and he denies confessing orally. Harry is prohibited, of course, from testifying against him. But I am not.

  The Kydd has already asked me to testify against Rodriguez. I won’t do so voluntarily—I won’t participate in any criminal prosecution voluntarily—but the Kydd will subpoena me, I am certain. It doesn’t really matter. Jim Buckley’s positive I.D. will be enough to send Rodriguez back to Walpole. Not for life, but for a decade anyhow.

  The Buckley charges are the only ones Manuel Rodriguez will face this winter. I withdrew the assault charges I filed against him. All things considered, I did far more damage to him than he did to me. Technically, the District Attorney’s office can pursue those charges without me, of course. But it won’t. I told both Geraldine and the Kydd that if they opted to do so, I would testify for the defense. I meant it. And they both knew I meant it.

  Angelo Santini pled guilty to three weapons offenses in exchange for the dismissal of the remaining charges against him. He was sentenced to three to five years on each of the firearms convictions and five to seven for the sawed-off shotgun. His sentences will run con currently and, with time off for good behavior, he will walk away a free man in about two and a half years. He shouldn’t, of course. Sergeants Sharkey and Kane were correct when they said he murdered someone. But, so far at least, no body has been found. And as a practical matter, it would be all but impossible to secure a conviction—even with a dead body—after the Commonwealth’s employee fouled the evidence.

  Judge Richard Gould called a press conference—something no judge in Barnstable County had ever done before—and issued a public apology to Eddie Malone. Eddie walked out of the Barnstable County House of Correction afterward and faced the press with just a little of the old grit back in his eyes, Harry at his side. They both climbed into Harry’s Wrangler and the reporters followed it on foot down the driveway until Harry stopped and rolled down his window for Woody Timmons.

  “I’m dropping Eddie at the Nor’easter,” he said. “You can talk to him there.”

  Harry expects to finish his file review by November 1, the effective date of his resignation from the Barnstable County Public Defender’s office. He plans to take a month off, then open a private criminal defense practice. Private practice, Harry says, will provide a more level playing field, a fighting chance at some semblance of justice. He asked me to join him when I am ready, as a partner. I told him I would think about it. But I haven’t.

  I am unable to think about any of the things people tell me I should thin
k about. Sometimes, I think long and hard about the criminal justice system—a system I believed in and defended during most of my adult life. I think about Judge Carroll’s dynamite charge: “…absolute certainty cannot be attained, nor can it be expected…” He was wrong. Sometimes, absolute certainty can be attained. Sometimes, it is there to be seen with the naked eye. But the system, choked by its own rules and procedures, does not allow for that.

  Judge Carroll is not the only one who was wrong. I was wrong too. I told jurors—hundreds of them, over the years—to use their common sense, to trust their guts, when searching for the truth. I see now that common sense has little to do with it. And most of us, I now believe, could search our souls for the rest of our days without stumbling upon that elusive item called truth.

  Other times, I think about Jeff Skinner, a decorated war hero. I think about how difficult it is to recognize evil when it is well dressed and well educated. I think about how easy it is to assign guilt where there is none, how easy it is to leap from accusation to conviction, especially when the accused is rough and unappealing to those of us who are more privileged, those of us who show up for jury duty, those of us who prosecute. I think about how someone as intelligent as Jeff Skinner would understand those facts, could rely upon them.

  Most of the time, though, I think about Luke. I sink to my knees each morning and each night and thank God for sparing his young life. I find myself reliving as many moments of that young life as I can. My thoughts are not in chronological order. He is a teenager one minute, rolling his eyes at me, a toddler the next, his little-boy eyes earnest and twinkling. I lose my breath when I reflect on how close we came to the unthinkable.

  The tutor has been coming to the cottage for two weeks now. He spends a couple of hours with Luke each morning, and Luke spends an hour or two alone with the books each afternoon. Luke should be ready to return to school in November, the doctors say. With a little extra work, the principal promises, he will graduate with his class.