Defending Jacob

by William Landay

  In the Rifkins’ vast kitchen—Wolf cooktop, Sub-Zero fridge, granite counters, English-white cabinets—the school parents huddled in clusters of three or four and made intimate confessions about insomnia, sadness, unshakeable dread. They talked over and over about Columbine and 9/11 and how Ben’s death made them cling to their own children while they could. The extravagant emotions of that evening were heightened by the warm light in the kitchen, cast by hanging fixtures with burnt-orange globes. In that firelight, as I entered the room, the parents were indulging one another in the luxury of confessing secrets.

  At the kitchen island one of the moms, Toby Lanzman, was arranging hors d’oeuvres on a serving platter as I came into the room. A dish towel was slung over her shoulder. The sinews in her forearms stood out as she worked. Toby was my wife Laurie’s best friend, one of the few enduring connections we had made here. She saw me searching for my wife, and she pointed across the room.

  “She’s mothering the mothers,” Toby said.

  “I see that.”

  “Well, we can all use a little mothering at the moment.”

  I grunted, gave her a puzzled look, and moved off. Toby was an incitement. My only defense against her was a tactical retreat.

  Laurie stood with a small circle of moms. Her hair, which has always been thick and unruly, was swept up in a loose bun at the back of her head and held there by a big tortoiseshell hair clip. She rubbed a friend’s upper arm in a consoling way. Her friend inclined toward Laurie visibly, like a cat being stroked.

  When I reached her, Laurie put her left arm around my waist. “Hi, sweetie.”

  “It’s time to go.”

  “Andy, you’ve been saying that since the second we got here.”

  “Not true. I’ve been thinking it, not saying it.”

  “Well, it’s been written all over your face.” She sighed. “I knew we should have come in separate cars.”

  She took a moment to appraise me. She did not want to go but understood that I was uneasy, that I felt spotlighted here, that I was not much of a talker to begin with—chitchat in crowded rooms always left me exhausted—and these things all had to be weighed. A family had to be managed, like any other organization.

  “You go,” she decided. “I’ll get a ride home with Toby.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Why not? Take Jacob with you.”

  “You’re sure?” I leaned down—Laurie is almost a foot shorter than me—to stage-whisper, “Because I’d love to stay.”

  She laughed. “Go. Before I change my mind.”

  The funereal women stared.

  “Go on. Your coat’s in the bedroom upstairs.”

  I went upstairs and found myself in a long corridor. The noise was muted here, which came as a relief. The echo of the crowd still murmured in my ears. I began searching for the coats. In one bedroom, which apparently belonged to the dead boy’s little sister, there was a pile of coats on the bed, but mine was not in the pile.

  The door to the next room was closed. I knocked, opened it, poked my head in to peek around.

  The room was gloomy. The only light came from a brass floor lamp in the far corner. The dead boy’s father sat in a wing chair under this light. Dan Rifkin was small, trim, delicate. As always, his hair was sprayed in place. He wore an expensive-looking dark suit. There was a rough two-inch tear in his lapel to symbolize his broken heart—a waste of an expensive suit, I thought. In the dim light, his eyes were sunken, rimmed in bluish circles like a raccoon’s eye-mask.

  “Hello, Andy,” he said.

  “Sorry. Just looking for my coat. Didn’t mean to bother you.”

  “No, come sit a minute.”

  “Nah. I don’t want to intrude.”

  “Please, sit, sit. There’s something I want to ask you.”

  My heart sank. I have seen the writhing of survivors of murder victims. My job forces me to watch it. Parents of murdered children have it worst, and to me the fathers have it even worse than the mothers because they are taught to be stoic, to “act like a man.” Studies have shown that fathers of murdered children often die within a few years of the murder, often of heart failure. Really, they die of grief. At some point a prosecutor realizes he cannot survive that kind of heartbreak either. He cannot follow the fathers down. So he focuses instead on the technical aspects of the job. He turns it into a craft like any other. The trick is to keep the suffering at a distance.

  But Dan Rifkin insisted. He waved his arm like a cop directing cars to move ahead, and seeing there was no choice, I closed the door gently and took the chair next to his.

  “Drink?” He held up a tumbler of coppery whiskey, neat.

  “No.”

  “Is there any news, Andy?”

  “No. Afraid not.”

  He nodded, looked off toward the corner of the room, disappointed. “I’ve always loved this room. This is where I come to think. When something like this happens, you spend a lot of time thinking.” He made a tight little smile: Don’t worry, I’m all right.

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “The thing I can’t get past is: why did this guy do it?”

  “Dan, you really shouldn’t—”

  “No, hear me out. Just—I don’t—I don’t need hand-holding. I’m a rational person, that’s all. I have questions. Not about the details. When we’ve talked, you and I, it’s always about the details: the evidence, the court procedures. But I’m a rational person, okay? I’m a rational person and I have questions. Other questions.”

  I sank in my seat, felt my shoulders relax, acquiescing.

  “Okay. So here it is: Ben was so good. That’s the first thing. Of course no kid deserves this, anyway. I know that. But Ben really was a good boy. He was so good. And just a kid. He was fourteen years old, for God’s sake! Never made any trouble. Never. Never, never, never. So why? What was the motive? I don’t mean anger, greed, jealousy, that kind of motive, because there can’t be an ordinary motive in this case, there can’t, it just doesn’t make sense. Who could feel that kind of, of rage against Ben, against any little kid? It just doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense.” Rifkin put the four fingertips of his right hand on his forehead and worked the skin in slow circles. “What I mean is: what separates these people? Because I’ve felt those things, of course, those motives—angry, greedy, jealous—you’ve felt them, everybody’s felt them. But we’ve never killed anyone. You see? We never could kill anyone. But some people do, some people can. Why is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must have some sense of these things.”

  “No. I don’t, really.”

  “But you talk to them, you meet them. What do they say, the killers?”

  “They don’t talk much, most of them.”

  “Do you ever ask? Not why they did it, but what makes them capable of it in the first place.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they wouldn’t answer. Their lawyers wouldn’t let them answer.”

  “Lawyers!” He tossed his hand.

  “They wouldn’t know how to answer, anyway, most of them. These philosophical murderers—Chianti and fava beans and all that stuff—it’s bullshit. It’s just the movies. Anyway, they’re full of shit, these guys. If they had to answer, they’d probably tell you about their rough childhoods or something. They’d make themselves the victims. That’s the usual story.”

  He nodded once, to urge me on.

  “Dan, the thing is, you can’t torture yourself looking for reasons. There are none. It’s not logical. Not the part you’re talking about.”

  Rifkin slid down in his chair a little, concentrating, as if he would need to give the whole thing more thought. His eyes glistened but his voice was even, controlled. “Do other parents ask these sorts of things?”

  “They ask all kinds of things.”

  “Do you see them after the case is over? The parents?”

  “Sometimes.”
/>
  “I mean long after, years.”

  “Sometimes.”

  “And do they—how do they seem? Are they all right?”

  “Some of them are all right.”

  “But some of them aren’t.”

  “Some of them aren’t.”

  “What do they do, the ones who make it? What are the key things? There must be a pattern. What’s the strategy, what are the best practices? What’s worked for them?”

  “They get help. They rely on their families, the people around them. There are groups out there for survivors; they use those. We can put you in touch. You should talk to the victim advocate. She’ll set you up with a support group. It’s very helpful. You can’t do it alone, that’s the thing. You have to remember there are other people out there who have gone through it, who know what you’re going through.”

  “And the other ones, the parents who don’t make it, what happens to them? The ones who never recover?”

  “You’re not going to be one of those.”

  “But if I am? What happens to me, to us?”

  “We’re not going to let that happen. We’re not even going to think that way.”

  “But it does happen. It does happen, doesn’t it? It does.”

  “Not to you. Ben wouldn’t want it to happen to you.”

  Silence.

  “I know your son,” Rifkin said. “Jacob.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve seen him around the school. He seems like a good kid. Big handsome boy. You must be proud.”

  “I am.”

  “He looks like you, I think.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been told.”

  He took a deep breath. “You know, I find myself thinking about these kids from Ben’s class. I feel attached. I want to see them succeed, you know? I’ve watched them grow up, I feel close to them. Is that unusual? Am I feeling that because it makes me feel closer to Ben? Is that why I’m latching onto these other kids? Because that’s what it sounds like, doesn’t it? It looks weird.”

  “Dan, don’t worry about how things look. People are going to think whatever they think. The hell with ’em. You can’t worry about it.”

  He massaged his forehead some more. His agony could not have been more obvious if he had been bleeding on the floor. I wanted to help him. At the same time, I wanted to get away from him.

  “It would help me if I knew, if, if the case was resolved. It will help me when you resolve the case. Because the uncertainty—it’s draining. It’ll help when the case is resolved, won’t it? In other cases you’ve seen, that helps the parents, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I don’t mean to pressure you. I don’t mean to sound that way. It’s just, I think it will help me when the case is resolved and I know this guy is—when he’s locked up and put away. I know you’ll do that. I have faith in you, of course. I mean, of course. I’m not doubting you, Andy. I’m just saying it will help me. Me, my wife, everyone. That’s what we need, I think. Closure. That’s what we’re looking to you for.”

  That night Laurie and I lay in bed reading.

  “I still think they’re making a mistake opening the school so soon.”

  “Laurie, we’ve been all through this.” My voice had a bored tone. Been there, done that. “Jacob will be perfectly safe. We’ll take him there ourselves, we’ll walk him right up to the door. There’ll be cops all over. He’ll be safer in school than anywhere else.”

  “Safer. You can’t know that. How could you know that? Nobody has any idea who this guy is or where he is or what he intends to do next.”

  “They have to open the school sometime. Life goes on.”

  “You’re wrong, Andy.”

  “How long do you want them to wait?”

  “Until they catch the guy.”

  “That could take a while.”

  “So? What’s the worst that could happen? The kids miss a few days of school. So what? At least they’d be safe.”

  “You can’t make them totally safe. It’s a big world out there. Big, dangerous world.”

  “Okay, safer.”

  I laid my book down on my belly, where it formed a little roof. “Laurie, if you keep the school closed, you send these kids the wrong message. School isn’t supposed to be dangerous. It’s not a place they should be afraid of. It’s their second home. It’s where they spend most of their waking hours. They want to be there. They want to be with their friends, not stuck at home, hiding under the bed so the bogeyman doesn’t get them.”

  “The bogeyman already got one of them. That makes him not a bogeyman.”

  “Okay, but you see what I’m saying.”

  “Oh, I see what you’re saying, Andy. I’m just telling you you’re wrong. The number one priority is keeping the kids safe, physically. Then they can go be with their friends or whatever. Until they catch the guy, you can’t promise me the kids’ll be safe.”

  “You need a guarantee?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ll catch the guy,” I said. “I guarantee it.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “You know this?”

  “I expect it. We always catch ’em.”

  “Not always. Remember the guy who killed his wife and wrapped her in a blanket in the back of the Saab?”

  “We did catch that guy. We just couldn’t—all right, almost always. We almost always catch ’em. This guy we’ll catch, I promise you.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “If I’m wrong, I’m sure you’ll tell me all about it.”

  “No, I mean if you’re wrong and some poor kid gets hurt?”

  “That won’t happen, Laurie.”

  She frowned, giving up. “There’s no arguing with you. It’s like running into a wall over and over again.”

  “We’re not arguing. We’re discussing.”

  “You’re a lawyer; you don’t know the difference. I’m arguing.”

  “Look, what do you want me to say, Laurie?”

  “I don’t want you to say anything. I want you to listen. You know, being confident isn’t the same as being right. Think. We might be putting our son in danger.” She pressed her fingertip to my temple and shoved it, a gesture half playful, half pissed off. “Think.”

  She turned away, laid her book atop a wobbly pile of others on her night table, and lay down with her back to me, curled up, a kid in an adult body.

  “Here,” I said, “scootch over.”

  With a series of body hops, she moved backward until her back was against me. Until she could feel some warmth or sturdiness or whatever she needed from me at that moment. I rubbed her upper arm.

  “It’s going to be all right.”

  She grunted.

  I said, “I suppose make-up sex is out of the question?”

  “I thought we weren’t arguing.”

  “I wasn’t, but you were. And I want you to know: it’s okay, I forgive you.”

  “Ha, ha. Maybe if you say you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t sound sorry.”

  “I am truly, deeply sorry. Truly.”

  “Now say you’re wrong.”

  “Wrong?”

  “Say you’re wrong. Do you want it or not?”

  “Hm. So, just to be clear: all I have to do is say I’m wrong and a beautiful woman will make passionate love to me.”

  “I didn’t say passionate. Just regular.”

  “Okay, so: say I’m wrong and a beautiful woman will make love to me, completely without passion but with pretty good technique. That’s the situation?”

  “Pretty good technique?”

  “Astounding technique.”

  “Yes, Counselor, that’s the situation.”

  I put away my book, McCullough’s biography of Truman, atop a slippery pile of slick magazines on my own night table, and turned off the light. “Forget it. I’m not wrong.”

  “Doesn’t matter. You already said
I’m beautiful. I win.”

  3 | Back to School

  Early the next morning there was a voice in the dark, in Jacob’s room, a groan—and I woke up to find my body already moving, swinging up onto its feet, shuffling around the foot of the bed. Still dense with sleep, I passed out of the gloom of the bedroom, through the gray light of dawn in the hallway, then back into darkness again in my son’s bedroom.

  I turned on the wall switch and adjusted the dimmer. Jacob’s room was cluttered with huge oafish sneakers, a MacBook covered with stickers, an iPod, schoolbooks, paperback novels, shoe boxes filled with old baseball cards and comic books. In a corner, an Xbox was hooked up to an old TV. The Xbox disks and their cases were piled nearby, mostly combat role-play games. There was dirty laundry, of course, but also two stacks of clean laundry neatly folded and delivered by Laurie, which Jacob had declined to put away in his bureau because it was easier to pluck clean clothes right from the piles. On top of a low bookcase was a group of trophies Jacob had won when he was a kid playing youth soccer. He had not been much of an athlete, but back then every kid got a trophy, and in the years since he had simply never moved them. The little statues sat there like religious relics, ignored, virtually invisible to him. There was a vintage movie poster for a 1970s chop-socky picture, Five Fingers of Death, which featured a man in a karate outfit smashing his well-manicured fist through a brick wall. (“The Martial Arts Masterpiece! SEE one incredible onslaught after another! PALE before the forbidden ritual of the steel palm! CHEER the young warrior who alone takes on the evil war-lords of martial arts!”) The clutter in here was so deep and permanent, Laurie and I had long since stopped fighting with Jacob to clean it up. For that matter, we had stopped even noticing it. Laurie had a theory that the mess was a projection of Jacob’s inner life—that stepping into his bedroom was like stepping into his chaotic teenage mind—so it was silly to nag him about it. Believe me, this is what you get when you marry a shrink’s daughter. To me, it was just a messy room and it drove me crazy every time I came into it.