A Good Marriage

by Kimberly McCreight

  “A run?”

  Sam had been on the cross-country team in college and had finished two marathons before the age of twenty-one, or so I had been told. Sam the runner had predated me, the only remaining relics the marathon laptop stickers he replaced on each new computer.

  He’d started running to please his father—a fool’s errand. The only sports that counted as far as Sam’s father was concerned were football, basketball, rugby, lacrosse, and maybe soccer. The colliding of male bodies was a prerequisite. I suspected that it was his father’s disapproving voice in Sam’s head that had sent him out in recent months to his Thursday-night rec basketball game. Despite all the other players supposedly being “old dads,” there was certainly a fair amount of colliding bodies. Sam had the bruises to prove it.

  “Yeah, a run,” Sam had said that morning, his eyes bright as he turned back from the bureau to face me. “I’m getting myself sorted out for real this time, Lizzie. And I know I’ve said that like a thousand times before. But I’m going to make sure it sticks. I—” He knew better than to actually promise. “I will.”

  All I could do was stare back at him and his luminous face. How I wanted to believe. Like my life depended on it.

  “Okay?” he’d asked finally.

  I thought then about the earring. But I’d already been wrong about those matches. And so, in that moment, I chose hope once more. I chose love. And silence.

  “Okay,” I’d said, and left it at that.

  “Good morning.” Paul had appeared at my side in the courtroom. He looked even more distinguished than usual in an exquisitely tailored navy-blue-checked suit. Had he gotten his hair cut, too? I was actually glad he was there. Paul did emanate a certain air of victory.

  “Morning,” I said, pulling out my copy of the brief, painfully aware now that my “designer” suit from Century 21 probably wasn’t fooling anybody.

  There was a bustle of activity behind us as the courtroom doors opened. A silver-haired woman in an edgy camel-colored pantsuit and toothpick-thin lizard pumps strode in, two younger, dark-suited male lawyers close at her heels. A couple of reporters rushed up to her as she headed down the center aisle, but she waved them away with a demure smile. Her face was unreasonably unlined for a woman her age, features regal, with flawless makeup and a perfectly understated manicure. Her eyes glinted across the room like those of a wartime queen prone to edicts and unexpected attacks.

  I tucked my own bitten nails beneath my copy of our brief.

  Avoiding pictures of Wendy Wallace had been a good call. Still, there was something else about her imposingly fashionable appearance: she was awfully familiar.

  “It’s deliberate,” Paul said flatly.

  “What is?”

  “All of it. The pointy shoes, the way she walks—clicking them. She likes to intimidate.” He said this with an air of contempt, but also admiration. He and Wendy Wallace had obviously crossed paths. “Act oblivious. It drives her crazy.”

  I turned to look at him. Paul sat at the defense table to my right, elbows resting on the arms of his chair, fingertips touching so that they formed a church’s steeple. He was staring straight ahead, his expression expertly neutral.

  And then there it was. All at once. The photograph on Paul’s credenza. Wendy Wallace was his fucking first ex-wife. The one he was supposedly pining for all these years later. I closed my eyes and pressed my hands against the table. He must have made an educated guess that Wendy would be the DA assigned. It wasn’t such a leap. The case was in Brooklyn, and it was a homicide. He must also know about her ambitions.

  “You could have told me you had a preexisting relationship with the prosecutor,” I hissed.

  “I didn’t know for sure she’d be assigned.” He hesitated, and I thought for a moment he might actually apologize. “Besides, you were the one who came to me, remember? You know, she took almost everything I had in the divorce, and yet she’s the one who won’t talk to me.” He looked up at me like I might offer some explanation for this cruelty. His face changed then, grew sullen. “Besides, I have insight into the prosecutor’s character. It could be useful.”

  “If she hates you, you’ll do more harm than good.”

  “Define hate,” he said, raising a playful eyebrow.

  I lowered my head. “Zach’s been attacked at Rikers more than once,” I snapped, unable to conceal my fury. “This isn’t a game, you know? He could end up dead.”

  “Well then, let’s hope this hearing goes well,” Paul said, matter-of-factly. He put on his black reading glasses and paged through the brief, which he quite obviously had not looked at before. “We have proof of the warrant discharge, correct?” His voice had regained its military crispness.

  I nodded absently. “Exhibit C.”

  “It was for loitering?” Paul asked, after looking at it more closely.

  “Yes,” I said, already feeling defensive.

  “What kind of Penn Law student doesn’t just walk away when the police tell him to?” he asked. “It would be one thing if he’d been taking a political stand against racial profiling or something, but this is a white guy, right? So he was, what? Being a dick?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, annoyed by Paul’s eleventh-hour insights, accurate or not.

  “Reminds me of that partner I had to get rid of,” Paul said grimly, flipping through the brief. “He showed up on not one but two different legal assistants’ doorsteps, offering to help carry their groceries at just the right time. When confronted about this implausible coincidence, you know what he said?”

  “No, I don’t know,” I said, not bothering to hide my impatience.

  “‘Sometimes, you have to show people what they need.’” Paul shook his head. “Defiant narcissism: some assholes think the rules don’t apply to them.”

  “That’s helpful, thanks. Anyone is capable of anything. I am aware. Are you aware you’re at defense counsel’s table?” I asked. “Because Wendy Wallace is over there, if you’d like to go help her.”

  Paul’s eyes shot up, but luckily the judge’s chambers swung open before he had the chance to cut me back down to size.

  “All rise!” a stout, angry-looking court clerk bellowed as the judge entered the courtroom. “The Honorable Reggie Yu presiding!”

  It wasn’t until I heard the very loud collective rustling of everyone behind me rising to their feet that I became aware of just how many people had filed into the courtroom. Glancing over my shoulder, I recognized several local crime reporters from my own high-profile cases at the US attorney’s office. The press out in force, surely as Wendy Wallace had intended.

  Judge Yu was a petite woman with a blunt black bob and a commanding air. Older than me but younger than Paul and Wendy. Fifty-two, to be precise. I knew because I’d looked her up when I’d found out she was assigned. Slightly defense-leaning. I could only hope that was an understatement.

  “Docket number 45362, the People versus Zach Grayson,” the court officer called.

  “I’ve read your papers,” Judge Yu started in, all business. “I’ll hear from defense counsel first.”

  “Your Honor, the defendant in this case is a successful businessman, father, and well-regarded member of his Brooklyn community,” I began. Calm, assured. “He has absolutely no criminal record and has been charged only with assaulting a police officer, an accident that occurred within minutes of his discovering his wife was dead, when he was quite understandably distraught. And yet he is now being held without bail at Rikers Island, where he’s been repeatedly assaulted.”

  Judge Yu gave me a cold stare through her funky, oversize red glasses. “Uh-huh,” she said. “So you want me to substitute my judgment for that of the judge who presided over the arraignment?”

  An unsurprising response. That was the standard—whether the arraignment judge had abused his discretion. I was ready for it.

  “We’re merely asking that the appropriate standard be applied in assessing my client’s eligibility for bail. Th
e only question before the court should have been whether or not my client was a flight risk for the crime with which he had been charged: resisting arrest. Leaving aside the glaring insufficiency of the evidence in support of that charge, the arraignment judge was shown highly prejudicial photographs of a violent homicide scene. His decision was improperly influenced, Your Honor.”

  “Wait, what homicide?” Judge Yu asked, growing impatient.

  “Amanda Grayson, my client’s wife, died in her home of an apparent head trauma which—”

  “Apparent head trauma?” Wendy Wallace guffawed, like she just couldn’t help herself. “Her skull was crushed, Your Honor. She was savagely beaten to death with a golf club belonging to the defendant, in the defendant’s home, and, oh, the defendant was the one who found the body after the two of them returned home from a night of heavy drinking at a sex party.”

  “Objection!” I barked.

  Though there really was no point. There was no jury in place, and this was not a trial. But it was enraging. Wendy Wallace had gotten in almost every single piece of damaging evidence I’d been there to object to, short of the crime scene photos themselves.

  “What about this old warrant?” Judge Yu asked, brow furrowed as she motioned to her clerk, who handed up some papers. “April 2007, for loitering, apparently? The court looked into it, but there were no additional details online.”

  Her caution was understandable. No judge wanted to be responsible for turning a blind eye to something as glaring as an outstanding warrant in a case where someone was dead. Even if the charge before the court at the moment wasn’t murder, it was the unspoken pall hanging over Zach’s head.

  “Yes, an unpaid ticket for loitering my client received as a law student. It was an innocent oversight, not to mention ancient history,” I said. “Regardless, it’s been resolved. The warrant has been discharged.”

  “Loitering?” Judge Yu asked, brow furrowed skeptically. “What exactly does that mean?”

  Outside of a political protest, a law student acting in such a way was odd—Judge Yu was right. Paul was right. Why hadn’t Zach just moved along when the police officer told him to? I wished now that I had more details about the warrant, but they had yet to arrive from the managing clerk. As it was, I had no choice but to rely on what Zach had told me, which wasn’t all that helpful.

  “There was an extremely aggressive new mayoral initiative at the time, broken windows and such,” I said to Judge Yu as forcefully as I could, hoping that would make the excuse more credible than it sounded, even to me.

  “‘Broken windows,’” the judge said derisively. “Lucky for your client that he’s white. Otherwise, he’d probably be dead.”

  There was that lean to the defense. I had Judge Yu on our side for a second. I needed to seize the opportunity.

  “Your Honor, on the night in question, my client had just found his wife dead in his home. He was in a state of extreme emotional distress when he accidentally struck an officer standing behind him with his elbow. Under the circumstances, I submit that the prosecution will never find a jury willing to convict for the assault, and yet he’s being held at Rikers, where he’s been assaulted three times already. This is an outrageous miscarriage of justice, Your Honor. One that could cost my client his life.”

  “This all does sound excessive under the circumstances, Counselor,” Judge Yu said to Wendy Wallace. “And while I appreciate the ingenuity of getting those pictures in front of the arraignment judge, a homicide—with which the defendant has yet to be charged—is, as the defense points out, irrelevant.”

  Paul wrote a note on his pad. “Ask about ADA Lewis, who was at the scene. I bet he wasn’t even on duty.”

  Who cares? I wanted to write back, but there wasn’t time, and Zach’s public defender and Zach had both flagged the ADA, too.

  “Further, Your Honor, this alleged assault only occurred once ADA Lewis appeared on the scene,” I began, rolling the dice. “It’s my understanding that he wasn’t even assigned to homicides that night.”

  “Then what was he doing there?” Judge Yu asked. And, unfortunately, she was looking at me.

  “I don’t know, Your Honor. That’s my question as well,” I said. “Perhaps Ms. Wallace or someone else at the DA’s office instructed him to find cause to make an arrest because the family involved is high-profile.” I braced for Wendy to shout an objection. Instead, she glared coolly my way. It was far worse. “Once ADA Lewis arrived on the scene with Detective Mendez, my client was deliberately manhandled, escalating the situation, which directly led to his inadvertently injuring the officer. The DA’s office effectively created cause for my client’s arrest, which they are now using as an excuse to hold him at Rikers while they conduct a murder investigation. It’s impermissible bootstrapping.”

  Finally Judge Yu turned to Wendy Wallace. “So what’s the story with this ADA …” She consulted her notes. “Lewis.”

  “There’s no story, Your Honor. It’s procedure to have an ADA at the scene of all homicides. Lewis was that ADA. Perhaps somebody went home that night with a stomachache or had a hot date, and Lewis filled in. Last I checked, the DA’s office is not obligated to provide evidence of its staffing schedule to the defense.” Wendy Wallace leveled her eyes at Paul this time, and with a look that should have, by all accounts, sent him up in flames. “This entire discussion is moot anyway,” she drawled, approaching the bench with a document outstretched. “The grand jury has just returned an indictment against Zach Grayson for first-degree murder in the death of his wife, Amanda Grayson.”

  I had suspected this might be coming. And I was prepared.

  “Your Honor, the defense objects to the amending of the indictment,” I began. “The defendant wasn’t offered the opportunity to testify. It’s a clear violation of CPL 190.50. It calls for vacating the indictment.”

  This was all true. It was a violation of the criminal procedure rules not to give a defendant a chance to testify before the grand jury charged with indicting him. It was such a serious violation, in fact, that it could result in an indictment being thrown out after the fact. I might not have been experienced in state court, but I did excel at doing my homework. Unfortunately, I was also prepared for how Wendy Wallace would respond, which was why I already knew I was unlikely to prevail.

  “Oh, wait, does your client want to testify?” Wendy Wallace turned to me, head tilted slightly. “Because we will happily vacate the indictment to make that happen.”

  And there it was. Of course I didn’t want Zach to testify. A defendant testifying before the grand jury was suicide, no matter how innocent they were. Grand jury proceedings subjected defendants to broad questioning with no judge present, resulting in reams of testimony that could easily be used to impeach them at trial. Nope. No way. But it had been worth a try raising the objection. Attorneys made mistakes, even accomplished ones like Wendy Wallace.

  “What about it, Counselor, is your client going to testify?” Judge Yu asked. She knew how this was going to end, too. We all did. It was only a meaningful violation if Zach actually wanted to testify.

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Then the indictment stands.” Judge Yu cast a sharp eye on Wendy Wallace. “Counselor, your tactics go that close to the line one more time, and I’ll hold you in contempt.”

  “And, Your Honor, first degree?” I asked. “On what possible grounds?”

  The premeditation involved in first-degree murder conflicted directly with the crime of passion theory Wendy Wallace had just laid out. Obviously, they could pursue any theory they liked, but there was the chance—with Judge Yu on my side—that I could at least use my objection to do a little reconnaissance. What did Wendy Wallace know that I did not?

  “As counsel well knows, we are at liberty to amend the indictment to include second-degree or other lesser offenses at a later time,” Wendy Wallace replied smoothly as she sauntered back to the prosecution table. We know this happened, unless we decide this completely di
fferent thing happened. Such were the mental gymnastics permitted by our justice system. “We are also under no obligation to share grand jury evidence with defense counsel at this time.”

  “But you are obligated to share some of your evidence with me,” the judge countered brusquely. She didn’t like being strong-armed by Wendy Wallace any more than I did. Luckily, she had the power to do something about it. “Given the context of everything else that’s gone on here, I think defense counsel can be privy to your theory in broad strokes.”

  Wendy Wallace didn’t seem the least bit bothered, which suggested her case was even stronger than I knew. “Very well. We’ve received a preliminary forensics report confirming that the defendant’s fingerprints and the victim’s blood were found on the murder weapon. We also have evidence that Amanda Grayson was having an extramarital affair, providing ample motive for the defendant to kill his wife.”

  “Your Honor, the prosecution has no actual evidence of an alleged affair,” I protested, hoping that Wendy Wallace might give up a name. While an affair might have been proof of Zach’s motive, it would also have handed me another possible suspect: Amanda’s lover. Maybe this supposed paramour was even the person stalking her?

  “Witnesses saw Amanda Grayson heading ‘upstairs’ with a lover at the sex party she and Mr. Grayson attended right before her death. And, as counsel well knows, premeditation need not occur weeks in advance. Hours or even minutes suffice.” Wendy Wallace was certainly correct about that. But surely she also knew who it was that Amanda had been with that night, and there was a reason she wasn’t mentioning it. It must have been a weakness in her case. “And the defendant refuses to account for his whereabouts at the time of the murder. So we have motive, opportunity, and physical evidence that ties the defendant to the crime—certainly adequate for a first-degree indictment. Perhaps he’d like to say where he was, and we could get this all cleared up.”

  Zach claimed he’d been walking on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Maude was a much better alibi, even with the complications it presented. But I hadn’t even had the chance to speak with Zach about it yet. Besides, Wendy Wallace was baiting me, and I wasn’t falling for it. Maybe she already knew about Maude and wanted me to say something. And to what end? It wouldn’t get Zach bail. Alibis went to whether a defendant was guilty, not whether he was likely to flee.