by Caleb Carr
A few comments made their way through the galleries at that, and Judge Brown began to rub the white hair on his head, looking a bit disturbed. “Mr. Darrow,” he said slowly, “I realize that you have a different way of doing things out west—but I trust you still follow the same basic rules of procedure in a criminal trial?”
Mr. Darrow smiled and stood back up, chuckling what you might call self-consciously. “I thank the court for its concern. The simple fact is, Your Honor, that the defense has no argument with the state concerning what happened immediately after the shootings. At least, not so far as these witnesses are concerned.”
The crowd seemed to find that information reassuring; as for Judge Brown, he nodded a few times and said, “Very well, Counselor. Just so long as you’re aware of what’s happening.”
“I do my best, Your Honor,” Mr. Darrow replied, sitting again.
The judge turned to Mr. Picton. “The state may call its next witness.”
Mr. Picton stood up and took a deep breath; and I could see the Doctor’s hand tighten on the arm of his chair until his knuckles went white.
“Your Honor,” Mr. Picton said, “the state has an unusual request to make at this time.”
Judge Brown’s little eyes did their best to open wide. “Indeed?”
“Yes, Your Honor. The state’s next witness is Clara Hatch. Clara is just eight years old, and she has not seen her mother—her blood mother, that is—in more than three years. The citizens of Ballston Spa”—here Mr. Picton threw a look around the room that I could’ve wished’d had a little more of what they call the common touch—“are as charitable and considerate in such matters as those of any community, I have no doubt. But given these special considerations, the state would like to ask that the galleries be cleared for the duration of Clara Hatch’s testimony.”
“Hmm,” Judge Brown noised, tugging at one of his monkey ears. “Ordinarily I don’t care for closed trial sessions, Mr. Picton. They smack of the Old World to me. But I do concede that you may have a point. What about it, Mr. Darrow?”
Standing up even slower than was his usual practice, Mr. Darrow began knotting his forehead up. “Your Honor,” he said, as though it was very difficult for him. “Like the court, we do concede that this is a special witness, who needs to be treated carefully. But—and I say this with very mixed feelings—the prosecution has already stated that this little girl is its primary witness. And she has already appeared before one closed court, that being the grand jury. Now, as I say, I’m sympathetic to the sensibilities of a child, but—Your Honor, my client is on trial for her life. Whatever her age, if this girl’s words are going to put her mother in the electrical chair, well, then, I think she ought to be able to say them in front of the same audience and under the same duress as every other witness who’s going to appear here.”
The galleries, for their own selfish reasons as much as anything else, began to rumble in agreement; but the judge didn’t hesitate, this time, to let them have it with his gavel. “The court is aware,” he said, looking around coldly, “of our audience’s prejudice in this regard—so let’s have no more comment, or I will clear this room, and quickly, too!” Pausing to see how long it took the people in the galleries to obey him (only a few seconds), the judge then looked to Mr. Picton again.
“The court appreciates the state’s concerns,” he said. “And I can assure you that, if I so much as hear a pin drop in the galleries while this girl is testifying, I will satisfy the state’s request. But until that happens, I’m afraid consideration toward the defense must remain paramount. The girl is understandably nervous—but I daresay the accused is nervous, too. Bring on your witness, Mr. Picton.”
Mr. Picton frowned and held out his hands. “But, Your Honor—”
“Your witness, sir,” the judge repeated, sitting back in his chair.
Sighing once, Mr. Picton dropped his arms. “Very well. But I will feel free to remind the court of its pledge regarding the behavior of the galleries, should that behavior interfere with my witness’s composure.”
Judge Brown nodded. “If you can find fault with our guests’ behavior before I do, Mr. Picton, I should be very surprised. But please feel free to let me know if it happens. Now—get on with it.”
With another deep breath, Mr. Picton looked over at Iphegeneia Blaylock. “The state calls Clara Hatch.”
Turning to the big mahogany doors, Mr. Picton nodded to the guard Henry, who opened one door and said, “Clara Hatch,” in a low but firm voice.
And in they came: the little girl in the simple summer dress, her left hand holding her right, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Weston, who looked like they were being scorched by the burning stares of every pair of eyes in the room. The folks in the galleries were mostly people the Westons had known for years; but at moments like that, years of knowledge and friendship can be knocked down and trampled by the greater pressures of confusion, suspicion, and plain and simple fear.
Once again, Clara searched out the crowd before her with quick turns of her little head; and when she found the Doctor’s face she stayed locked on it, as if he were a lighthouse that might guide the little ship of her life back into safe port after it’d weathered the storm what lay beyond the oak rail at the end of the aisle. And as she looked at the Doctor, I turned to look at Libby Hatch: the girl’s mother—her “blood mother,” as Mr. Picton had cleverly put it—saw that Clara’s eyes were fixed on the Doctor, and the pleading, loving expression what the woman had managed to shoehorn into her features in hopes of appealing to Clara quickly soured into an expression of jealousy—and hate. But once the little girl was guided onto the other side of the rail by the bailiff, Libby managed to get her face rearranged yet again; and though it wasn’t quite as affectionate as it had been before, it was still closer to that mark than anything I’d ever seen her exhibit to date.
About halfway to the stand Clara stopped walking, as if she could feel the pair of golden eyes boring into the back of her head; then she slowly turned to take in the woman in the black dress, who smiled gently at her before suddenly putting her hands to her mouth with a gasp and sobbing just once. Looking strangely calm, little Clara said three simple words—“Don’t cry, Mama”—in a voice what couldn’t have been more grown up or more considerate; and the sound of those words struck every person in the galleries as dumb as the witness herself had been for the last three years.
Turning again, Clara climbed on into the witness box and held up her good left hand, following the procedure what the Doctor had spent long hours preparing her for. Bailiff Coffey, having been alerted by Mr. Picton, took the girl’s lifeless right hand and placed it on his Bible.
“Do you solemnly swear,” he said, softer than was his habit, “that the testimony you are about to give in this court—”
“I do,” Clara said, jumping the gun in her first outright show of nerves.
Bailiff Coffey just held up a finger, telling her to wait. “—shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do,” Clara repeated, her face going a little red.
“State your full name, please,” Bailiff Coffey said.
“Clara Jessica Hatch,” she answered softly. Then, at a signal from Coffey, she sat down. Clara glanced at her mother quickly again, but just as quickly turned away to look at the Doctor once more. He gave her a firm little nod, to let her know that she was doing just fine. Finally, Mr. Picton stood up to approach the witness box.
“Hello, Clara,” he said, in a careful but still chipper sort of way. The girl opened her mouth to respond, but only managed a nod, as she pulled her right hand up onto her lap. “Clara,” Mr. Picton continued, “I’d like you to tell these gentlemen”—he held a hand up to the jury box—“everything that happened on the night of May the thirty-first, three years ago. In your own words. Can you do that for me, Clara?” The girl paused, trying hard now not to look at her mother. After a few seconds she nodded. “Then please,” Mr. Pi
cton continued, “go ahead.”
As she took a deep breath, the fingers of Clara’s left hand locked onto her numb right forearm, gripping it hard. Letting the air out of her lungs, she began her story, in that same scratchy but brave voice.
“We went to town, to buy some things. And then to the lake—”
“Lake Saratoga?” Mr. Picton asked.
“Yes. Sometimes we’d go there in the summer. To watch the sun go down. And sometimes they have fireworks. But Tommy was getting sleepy before the fireworks started. And Matthew’s tummy wasn’t so good, on account of because he ate so many butterscotches. So Mama said we’d better go on home.”
“‘Mama’?” Mr. Picton asked. “Clara, do you see your mama anywhere right now?” The girl nodded quickly. “Can you point to her, please?” Glancing up ever so briefly, Clara stole a look at Libby, and then bent her head back down as she pointed toward the defense table. “Let the record state,” Mr. Picton said, “that the witness recognizes the accused, Mrs. Elspeth. Hunter, as being her mother, the former Mrs. Elspeth Hatch, more commonly known as Libby Hatch.” Mr. Picton drew closer to the witness box and softened his voice again. “All right, Clara. Tell me, did you want to leave the lake that night?”
The girl shook her head, being careful to keep her braid behind her. “No, sir—I wanted to see the rockets.”
“And your mama—did she want to see the rockets, too?”
“Yes. But she said we had to get Tommy and Matthew home.”
“Was she happy about that?”
“No, sir. She was kind of—mad. She got kind of mad, sometimes.”
“Did she say anything that let you know she was kind of mad?”
Clara nodded once again, though reluctantly. “She said what she wanted didn’t matter—didn’t ever matter. That she always had to take care of us instead of doing what she liked.”
“Did she tell you what she would’ve ‘liked,’ exactly?”
Clara shrugged—or at least, her one good shoulder did. “I figured she meant seeing the rockets.”
Letting the girl take a few breaths to steady herself, Mr. Picton waited before saying, “Now, then, Clara—you got into your wagon to go home?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did your mother do anything, being as she was so angry?”
Clara’s face went puzzled. “She didn’t spank us or anything, if that’s what you mean. She just told me to get the boys into the wagon, and then we left.”
“Told you?” Mr. Picton asked, moving over to the jury and plastering a look of surprise on his face. “She didn’t put the boys into the wagon?”
“She tried,” Clara answered. “But Matthew started to cry. So she just told me to do it, and went down to the water to wash her face.”
Mr. Picton looked at the jury what you might call meaningfully. “Did she often ask you to take care of the boys?”
Nodding, Clara looked down at her hands again. “Mm-hmm. It was my job.”
Mr. Picton nodded, still studying the jury, who were starting to look as wide-eyed and confused as Sheriff Dunning had when he’d come out of the grand jury hearing. “I see,” Mr. Picton said. “That was your job … and once the boys were in the wagon?”
“Then Mama came up from the water, and we started to drive home,” Clara answered; but the words weren’t as strong as they had been to that point.
Mr. Picton, hearing the change, came back over to her, and stood so that his body blocked Clara’s view of Libby, and vice versa. “But you didn’t get home, did you, Clara?”
Seeming relieved that her mother was out of sight, Clara shook her head with more certainty. “No, sir.”
“And why not?”
Another deep breath and another look at the Doctor, and Clara went on, “We drove back through town, and we were on the road home—”
“The Charlton road?” Mr. Picton asked.
Clara nodded. “All of a sudden Mama drove the wagon over under a big tree, off the road. It was dark by then, and I didn’t know why she stopped. It was scary, on that road.”
“And where were you sitting, at that time?”
“I was in the back, holding on to Tommy so’s he didn’t bother Matthew—he was asleep by then.”
“Matthew was?”
“Yes, sir. And I didn’t want Tommy to wake him up so’s he’d start crying about his stomach again. It bothered Mama. I asked her why we stopped. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just sat up on the bench, staring at the road. I asked her again, and then she got down and came around to the back of the wagon. She had her bag in her hand. She said she had something important she needed to tell us.”
Hearing Clara’s voice start to trail off again, Mr. Picton said, “It’s all right, Clara. What did she tell you?”
“She said that she’d stopped … she’d stopped …”
“Clara?”
The girl’s eyes’d gone glassy, and for a minute my heart sank, thinking that she’d shrunk back into the horrified silence what’d gripped her for so long. I saw the Doctor’s jaw set hard, and I knew that he was worrying about the same thing. We both started breathing again, though, when Clara near-whispered:
“She said that she’d seen our dada.”
Judge Brown leaned over, cupping one of his big ears with his hand. “I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up a little, young lady, if you can,” he said.
Looking up at him and swallowing hard, Clara repeated, “She said that she’d seen our dada. She said he told her he was with God. She said that he told her God wanted us to be with Him, too.”
Mr. Picton nodded grimly, glancing to the jury box. “For the jury’s information, Clara’s father, Daniel Hatch, passed away on December the twenty-ninth, 1893—approximately six months before the night in question. The cause was a sudden”—here Mr. Picton turned around to look at Libby—“a very sudden, and unexplained, attack of heart disease.”
“Your Honor,” Mr. Darrow said, standing up as quick as he could, “this kind of innuendo—”
“Mr. Picton,” the judge agreed, nodding to Mr. Darrow and then looking at the assistant district attorney, “I’ve warned you—”
“Your Honor, I suggest nothing,” Mr. Picton said, his eyes going wide and innocent. “The plain truth is that every medical man in Ballston Spa examined Daniel Hatch during his illness, and could find no explanation for his condition.”
“Then say that,” Judge Brown replied. “Half-truths are not better than lies, sir. Continue with your questions.”
Mr. Picton turned to Clara once more, letting his voice go soft again. “And what did you think that your mama meant, when she said that your dada told her that God wanted you to be with Him?”
Clara’s left shoulder shrugged again. “I didn’t know. I thought she meant that—that someday—but…”
Nodding, Mr. Picton said, “But that wasn’t what she meant, was it?”
Clara shook her head, this time hard enough to move the braid; and as the scar on the back of her neck became visible, I noted that one or two of the jurors caught sight of it, and silently pointed it out to the others. “She opened her bag,” Clara said. “And she took out dada’s gun.”
“Dada’s gun?” Mr. Picton asked. “How did you know it was your dada’s gun?”
“He kept it under his pillow,” Clara answered, “and he showed it to me once. He told me never to touch it, unless somebody bad was in the house. Somebody who was stealing, or … Mama left it there after he died.”
The girl’s voice trailed off, and her face began to get frightened: frightened in a way what even looking to the Doctor didn’t seem to help. Knowing that he’d reached a very dangerous point, Mr. Picton moved in closer to ask, “What happened then, Clara?”
“Mama, she—” Clara’s head began to shiver a little, and the left side of her body followed. Wrapping her good arm around herself, she worked hard to go on: “Mama came up into the wagon. She woke up Matthew and told me to give Tommy to him. So I
did. Then she looked at me again. She told me it was time to go see Dada and God. That it would be a better place, and we had to do what God wanted.” Tears filled the girl’s eyes and started to roll down her face, but she never really cried as such, just grabbed herself tighter and tried to keep going. “She touched me with the gun—”
“Where did she touch you, Clara?” Mr. Picton asked. The girl pointed to her upper chest, finally letting out just one choking sob. “And then?”
“I remember she pulled the trigger, and there was a big bang—but that’s all,” Clara answered, getting a better hold of herself. “I don’t remember anything more. Not until I was in my bed at home.”
Mr. Picton nodded, letting out a deep breath of his own. “All right, Clara. It’s all right. We can talk about something else now, if you want.”
Clara wiped her face with her hand and said, “Okay.”
After giving her a couple of minutes, Mr. Picton asked, in a louder voice, “Clara—do you remember Reverend Parker?”
“He—he gave the services at our church. And he came out to visit Mama and Dada sometimes.”
“And what did he do when he came out to visit?”
“He’d come to dinner,” Clara answered. “And sometimes he’d go for walks with Mama. Dada didn’t like to go. He said the air was bad for him.”
“Did your mama ever take you or the boys along?”
Clara shook her head. “She said it wasn’t our place.”
Mr. Picton reached into the box to touch the girl’s left arm, looking very relieved. “Thank you, Clara,” he said. Then he added, not caring whether it was loud enough for anybody else to hear him, “You’ve been a very brave young lady.” Turning to walk back to his table, Mr. Picton then stood and looked at the judge and the jury. “The state has no more questions for this witness, Your Honor.” He sat down, leaving Clara exposed to the full power of her mother’s eyes.
Libby had reacted to her daughter’s testimony very much the way that the Doctor had predicted she would: first she’d tried quiet tears and hand-wringing, then she’d bobbed her head around, trying to get Clara to look at her. Then, when Mr. Picton stepped in to make sure Clara couldn’t see her, the tears and head bobbing had stopped, and she’d settled into still silence, while her eyes filled again with that cold, hateful glare.