Defending Jacob

by William Landay

  Logiudice was half right: by this point I did suspect Jacob, but not of murder. The scenario Logiudice was trying to sell to the grand jury—that, because of my family history and because of the knife, I immediately knew Jacob was a psychopath and covered for him—was pure bullshit. I don’t blame Logiudice for overselling the case that way. Juries are hard of hearing by nature, the more so in this case where circumstances essentially forced them to stick their fingers in their ears. Logiudice had no choice but to shout. But the fact is, nothing so dramatic had happened. The suggestion that Jacob might be a murderer was just crazy; I did not seriously consider it. What I thought, rather, was that something was up. Jacob knew more than he was telling. Lord knows, that was unsettling enough. Suspicion, once it started to corkscrew itself into my thoughts, made me experience everything twice: as questing prosecutor and as anxious father, one after the truth, the other terrified of it. And if I did not exactly confess all that to the grand jury, well, I knew enough to oversell my case too.

  The day I discovered the knife, Jacob got home from school around two-thirty. From the kitchen, Laurie and I listened to him clatter into the front hall and back-heel the door shut, then slip off his backpack and coat in the mudroom. We exchanged nervous glances as, like sonar operators, we interpreted these sounds.

  “Jacob,” Laurie called, “can you come in here, please?”

  There was a moment’s stillness, a catch, before he said, “Okay.”

  Laurie made a positive face to reassure me.

  Jacob shambled into the kitchen apprehensively. From my perspective, looking up at him, it struck me how big he had gotten, this man-sized boy.

  “Dad. What are you doing home?”

  “There’s something we need to talk about, Jake.”

  He came in a little farther and saw the knife on the table between us. With the blade folded into the handle, the knife had lost its menace. It was just a tool.

  I said, in as neutral a tone as I could manage, “You want to tell us what this is?”

  “Um, a knife?”

  “Don’t fool around, Jacob.”

  “Sit down, Jacob,” his mother encouraged. “Sit down.”

  He sat. “You looked through my room?”

  “I did, not your mother.”

  “You searched it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Ever heard of privacy?”

  “Jacob,” Laurie said, “your father was worried about you.” He rolled his eyes.

  Laurie continued, “We’re both worried. Why don’t you just tell us what this is all about.”

  “Jacob, you put me in a difficult position, you know. Half the state police are looking for this knife.”

  “For this knife?”

  “Not this knife; a knife. You know what I mean. For a knife like this. I just don’t understand what a kid like you is doing with a knife like this. Why do you need it, Jake?”

  “I don’t need it. It’s just something I got.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You got it but you don’t know why?”

  “It’s just, I don’t know, something I did. For no reason. It doesn’t mean anything. Why does everything have to mean something?”

  “Then why did you hide it?”

  “Probably because I knew you’d freak out.”

  “Well, you got that right, at least. Why do you need a knife?”

  “I just told you, I don’t need it. I just thought it was kinda cool. I liked it. I just wanted it.”

  “Are you having problems with other kids?”

  “No.”

  “Is there someone you’re afraid of?”

  “No. Like I said, I just saw it and I thought it was cool so I bought it.” He shrugged.

  “Where?”

  “This army-navy store in town. They’re not hard to find.”

  “Is there a record of the sale? Did you use a credit card?”

  “No, cash.”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “It’s not that unusual, Jesus, Dad. People do use cash, you know.”

  “What do you do with it?”

  “Nothing. I just look at it, hold it, see how it feels.”

  “Do you carry it with you?”

  “No. Not usually.”

  “But sometimes?”

  “No. Well, rarely.”

  “Do you bring it to school?”

  “No. Except once. I showed it to some kids.”

  “Who?”

  “Derek, Dylan. Couple others maybe.”

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I thought it was cool. It was like, Hey, check this out.”

  “Have you ever used it for anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, whatever you’d use a knife for: to cut.”

  “You mean have I ever stabbed anyone with it in Cold Spring Park?”

  “No, I mean, have you ever used it at all?”

  “No, never. Of course not.”

  “So you just got it and stuck it in your drawer?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Well, it’s the truth.”

  “Why would you—”

  “Andy,” his mother cut in, “he’s a teenager. That’s why.”

  “Laurie, he doesn’t need help.”

  Laurie explained, “Teenagers do stupid things sometimes.” She turned to Jacob. “Even smart teenagers do stupid things.”

  “Jacob, I need to ask you, for my own peace of mind: is this the knife they’re looking for?”

  “No! Are you crazy?”

  “Do you know anything about what happened to Ben Rifkin? Anything you heard from your friends? Anything at all you can tell me?”

  “No. Of course not.” He looked at me evenly, meeting my gaze with his own. It only lasted a moment but it was unmistakably a challenge—the sort of eye-fuck a defiant witness will flip you on the stand. Once he had outfaced me, his point made, he became a petulant kid again: “I can’t believe you’re asking me this stuff, Dad. It’s like, I get home from school and suddenly I get all these questions. I just can’t believe this. I can’t believe you actually think these things about me.”

  “I don’t think anything about you, Jacob. All I know is you brought that knife into my house and I’d like to know why.”

  “Who told you to look for it?”

  “Never mind who told me.”

  “One of the kids at school, obviously. Someone you interviewed yesterday. Just tell me who.”

  “It doesn’t matter who. This isn’t about what other kids did. You’re not the victim here.”

  “Andy,” Laurie warned. She had told me not to confront or cross-examine him, not to accuse. Just talk to him, Andy. This is a family. We talk to each other.

  I looked away. Deep breath. “Jacob, if I submit that knife for testing, for blood or any other evidence, would you object?”

  “No. Go ahead, do whatever tests you want. I don’t care.”

  I considered for a moment. “Okay. I believe you. I believe you.”

  “Do I get my knife back?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “It’s my knife. You have no right to take it.”

  “I’m your father. That gives me the right.”

  “You’re also with the cops.”

  “Are you worried about the cops for some reason, Jake?”

  “No.”

  “Then what are you talking about your rights for?”

  “What if I don’t let you take it?”

  “Try.”

  He stood there looking at the knife on the table and at me, weighing the risk and reward. “This is so wrong,” he said, and he frowned at the injustice.

  “Jake, your father’s just doing what he thinks is best because he loves you.”

  “What about what I think is best? That doesn’t matter, I suppose.”

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

 
By the time I got to the Newton police station that same afternoon, they had Patz in the interview room, where he sat as still as an Easter Island head, staring into a camera that was hidden in the face of a schoolhouse clock. Patz knew the camera was there. The detectives were required to inform him and get his consent to record the interview. The camera was hidden anyway in the hope that suspects would stop thinking about it.

  Patz’s image was piped to a small computer screen in the detective bureau, right outside the interview room, where a half dozen Newton and CPAC detectives stood watching. So far it had not been much of a show, apparently. The cops wore flat expressions, not seeing much, not expecting to see much.

  I came into the detective bureau and joined them. “He say anything?”

  “Nothing. He’s Sergeant Schultz.”

  Onscreen, Patz’s image filled the frame. He sat at the head of a long wood table. Behind him was a bare white wall. Patz was a big man. According to his probation officer he was six foot three and two hundred sixty pounds. Even seated behind a table, he looked massive. But his body was soft. His sides, belly, and tits all sagged against his black polo shirt, as if he had been poured and bagged up inside this black sack cinched shut at the neck.

  “Jesus,” I said, “this guy could use a little exercise.”

  One of the CPAC guys said, “How about jerking off to kiddie porn?”

  We all sniggered.

  In the interview room, on one side of Patz was Paul Duffy from CPAC, on the other a Newton detective, Nils Peterson. The cops were visible onscreen only now and then, when they leaned forward into the camera frame.

  Duffy was leading the Q&A. “Okay, take me through it one more time. Tell me what you remember from that morning.”

  “I already told you.”

  “One more time. You’d be surprised the things that come back to people when they go back over the story.”

  “I don’t want to talk anymore. I’m getting tired.”

  “Hey, Lenny, do yourself a favor, all right? I’m trying to exclude you here. I already told you: I’m trying to rule you out. This is in your interest.”

  “It’s Leonard.”

  “A witness puts you in Cold Spring Park that morning.”

  That was a fib.

  Onscreen, Duffy said, “You know I have to check that out. With your record, that’s just the way it is. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t.”

  Patz sighed.

  “Just one more time, Lenny. I don’t want to get the wrong guy.”

  “It’s Leonard.” He rubbed his eyes. “All right. I was in the park. I walk there every morning. But I was nowhere near where the kid got killed. I never go that way, I never walk in that part. I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything”—he began to count these points on his fingers—“I don’t know the kid, I never saw the kid, I never heard of the kid.”

  “All right, calm down, Lenny.”

  “I am calm.” A glance into the camera.

  “And you didn’t see anyone that morning?”

  “No.”

  “No one saw you leave your apartment or come back?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You didn’t see anyone in the park who looked suspicious, anyone who didn’t belong there, who we should know about?”

  “No.”

  “All right, let’s take a quick break, okay? You stay here. We’ll be back in a few minutes. We’ll just have a few more questions and then that’ll be it.”

  “What about my lawyer?”

  “Haven’t heard from him yet.”

  “You’ll tell me when he gets here?”

  “Sure, Lenny.”

  The two detectives got up to leave.

  “I’ve never hurt anyone,” Patz said. “You remember that. I never hurt anyone. Ever.”

  “Okay,” Duffy reassured him, “I believe you.”

  The detectives crossed in front of the camera and stepped through the door directly into the room where they had been only distant images in the computer monitor.

  Duffy shook his head. “I’ve got nothing. He’s used to dealing with cops. I just don’t have anything to challenge him with. I’d like to let him sit there awhile and cool off, but I don’t think we’ll have time. His lawyer’s on the way. What do you want to do, Andy?”

  “You’ve been going like this for how long?”

  “A couple hours maybe. Something like that.”

  “Just like this? Deny, deny, deny?”

  “Yeah. It’s useless.”

  “Do it again.”

  “Do it again? Are you kidding? How long have you been watching?”

  “I just got here, Duff, but what else can we do? He’s our only real suspect. A little boy is dead; this guy likes little boys. He’s already given you the fact he was in the park that morning. He knows the area. He’s there every morning, so he knows the routine, he knows kids walk through those woods every morning. He’s certainly big enough to overpower the victim. That’s motive, means, and opportunity. So I say stay with it till he gives you something.”

  Duffy’s eyes flicked to the other cops in the room then back to me. “His lawyer’s about to shut it down anyway, Andy.”

  “Then there’s no time to waste, is there? Get back in there. Get me a confession and I’ll take it to the grand jury this afternoon.”

  “Just get you a confession? Just like that?”

  “That’s why you get the big bucks, pal.”

  “What about the kids at the school? I thought that’s where we were headed.”

  “We’ll keep looking at it, Duff, but what do we have, really? A bunch of freaked-out kids running their mouths on Facebook? So what? Look at this guy. Just look at him. Name me a better suspect. We don’t have one.”

  “You really believe that, Andy? This is the guy, you think?”

  “Yes. Maybe. Maybe. But we need something real to prove it. Get me a confession, Duff. Get me the knife. Get me anything. We need something.”

  “Okay, then.” Duffy looked resolutely at the Newton detective who was his partner on this case. “We do it again. Like the man says.”

  The cop hesitated, appealing to Duffy with his eyes. Why waste time?

  “We do it again,” Duffy repeated. “Like the man says.”

  Mr. Logiudice: They never got the chance, did they? The detectives never got back into the interrogation room with Leonard Patz that day.

  Witness: No, they did not. Not that day or any other day.

  Mr. Logiudice: How did you feel about that?

  Witness: I thought it was a mistake. Based on what we knew at the time, it was a mistake to turn away from Patz as a suspect so early in the investigation. He was our best suspect by far.

  Mr. Logiudice: You still believe that?

  Witness: Without a doubt. We should have stayed on Patz.

  Mr. Logiudice: Why?

  Witness: Because that’s where the evidence was pointing.

  Mr. Logiudice: Not all the evidence.

  Witness: All? You never have all the evidence pointing in one direction, not in a tough case like this one. That’s precisely the problem. You don’t have enough information, the data is incomplete. There is no clear pattern, no obvious answer. So detectives do what all people do: they form a narrative in their head, a theory, and then they go looking in the data for evidence to support it. They pick a suspect first, then they look for the evidence to convict him. And they stop noticing evidence that points at other suspects.

  Mr. Logiudice: Like Leonard Patz.

  Witness: Like Leonard Patz.

  Mr. Logiudice: Are you suggesting that’s what happened here?

  Witness: I’m suggesting mistakes were made, yes, certainly.

  Mr. Logiudice: So what is a detective supposed to do in this situation?

  Witness: He has to be wary of locking onto one suspect too soon. Because if he guesses wrong, he will miss evidence pointing him toward the right answer. He’ll miss even obvious things.
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  Mr. Logiudice: But a detective has to form theories. He has to focus on suspects, usually before he has clear evidence against them. What else can he do?

  Witness: That’s the dilemma. You always start with a guess. And sometimes you guess wrong.

  Mr. Logiudice: Did anyone guess wrong in this case?

  Witness: We didn’t know. We just didn’t know.

  Mr. Logiudice: All right, go on with your story. Why didn’t the detectives go on interrogating Patz?

  An older man with a battered lawyer’s bag came into the detective bureau. His name was Jonathan Klein. He was short, slight, a little stooped. He wore a gray suit with a black turtleneck. His hair was long and strikingly white. He swept it straight back over his head where it hung over the back of his collar. He had a white goatee as well. He said in a soft voice, “Hello, Andy.”

  “Jonathan.”

  We shook hands with real warmth. I always liked and respected Jonathan Klein. Bookish and vaguely bohemian, he was unlike me. (I am as conventional as white toast.) But he did not lecture or lie, which set him apart from his brethren in the defense bar, who had only a casual regard for the truth, and he was genuinely smart and knew the law. He was—there is no other word for it—wise. Also, it must be said, I had a childish attraction to men of my father’s generation, as if I still harbored a faint hope of being unorphaned, even at this late date.

  Klein said, “I’d like to see my client now.” His voice was soft—it was naturally soft, this was not an affectation or a tactic—so that the room tended to grow quiet around him. You found yourself leaning in close to make out what he was saying.

  “I didn’t know you were representing this guy, Jonathan. Kind of a low-rent case for you, isn’t it? Some crummy pedophile ball-grabber? It’s bad for your reputation.”

  “Reputation? We’re lawyers! Anyway, he’s not here because he’s a pedophile. We both know that. This is a lot of cops to put on a case about ball-grabbing.”

  I stepped aside. “All right. He’s right in there. Go on in.”

  “You’ll turn off the camera and the microphone?”

  “Yeah. You want to use another room instead?”

  “No, of course not.” He smiled gently. “I trust you, Andy.”

  “Enough to let your man keep talking?”

  “No, no. I trust you too much for that.”

  And that was the end of Patz’s Q&A.