Defending Jacob

by William Landay

  I was determined to keep on doing it even after Jacob was indicted. No doubt the neighbors would have preferred that we Barbers not show our faces, particularly in Cold Spring Park. I did accommodate them somewhat. I ran early in the morning, I kept my distance from others, I bowed my head like a fugitive when passing a jogger going the opposite direction. And of course I never ran near the murder site. But I decided from the start that, for my own sanity, I would hold on to this aspect of before-life.

  The morning after our initial conference with Jonathan, I experienced that elusive, oxymoronic thing, a “good run.” I felt light and fast. For once, running was not a series of leaps and thuds, but—and I don’t mean to be too poetic about this—like flying. I felt my body rush forward with a kind of natural ease and predatory speed, as if I had always been meant to feel like this. I don’t know why it happened, exactly, though I suspect the added anxiety of the case flooded my system with adrenaline. I moved quickly through Cold Spring Park in the damp chill, around the loop that follows the perimeter of the park, hopping over tree roots and rocks, leaping the little pools of rainwater and the squelching mud patches that dot the park in spring. I felt so good, in fact, that I ran past my usual park exit and went on through the woods a little farther, to the front of the park where, with only the vaguest intention or design in my head, but a conviction—fast growing into a certainty—that Leonard Patz was the one, I came out into the parking lot of the Windsor Apartments.

  I padded around the parking lot a bit. I did not have the vaguest idea where Patz’s apartment was. The buildings were plain blocks of red brick, three stories high.

  I found Patz’s car, a rusting plum-colored late-nineties Ford Probe whose description I remembered from Patz’s file, among the details Paul Duffy had begun to gather. It was just the sort of car a child molester ought to drive. The vehicular embodiment of a pedophile is precisely a plum-colored late-nineties Ford Probe. Short of flying the NAMBLA flag from the antenna, the car could not have suited the man better. Patz had adorned his pedo-mobile with various disarming badges: a “Teach Children” Massachusetts vanity plate, bumper stickers for the Red Sox and the World Wildlife Fund, with its cuddly panda logo. Both doors were locked. I cupped my hands over the driver’s window to peer inside. The interior was immaculate, if worn.

  At the entrance to the nearest apartment building, I found the buzzer for his apartment, “PATZ, L.”

  The apartment complex was beginning to stir. A few residents straggled out to their cars or to make the short walk to Dunkin’ Donuts just down the street. Most wore business clothes. One woman coming out of Patz’s building held the door open for me politely—there is no better disguise for a stalker in the suburbs than to present oneself as a clean-shaven Caucasian in jogging clothes—but I declined with a thankful expression. What would I do inside the building? Knock on Patz’s door? No. Not yet, at least.

  The idea was only just forming in my head that Jonathan’s approach was too timid. He was thinking too much like a defense lawyer, content to put the Commonwealth to its burden, win it on cross, poke a few holes in Logiudice’s case then argue to the jury that, yes, there was some evidence against Jacob but it wasn’t enough. I preferred to attack, always. To be fair, this was a misinterpretation of what Jonathan had said and badly underestimated him. But I knew—and Jonathan surely did as well—that the better strategy is to offer the jury an alternate narrative. The jurors would want to know, naturally, if Jacob did not do it, who did? We had to offer them a story to satisfy that craving. We humans are swayed more by stories than by abstract concepts like “burden of proof” or “presumed innocent.” We are pattern-seeking, storytelling animals, and have been since we began drawing on cave walls. Patz would be our story. That sounds calculating and dishonest, I realize, as if the whole thing was a matter of trial tactics, so let me add that in this case the counternarrative happened to be true: Patz actually did do it. I knew it. It was only a matter of showing the jury the truth. That was all I ever wanted with respect to Patz: to follow the evidence, play it straight, as I always had. You will say I am protesting too much, making myself sound too virtuous—arguing my own case to a jury. Well, I acknowledge the illogic: Patz did it because Jacob did not. But the illogic was not apparent to me then. I was the boy’s father. And the fact is, I was right to suspect Patz.

  12 | Confessions

  Bringing in a shrink was Jonathan’s idea. It was standard procedure, he told us, to seek a “competency and criminal responsibility evaluation.” But a quick Google search revealed that the shrink he chose was an authority on the role of genetic inheritance in behavior. Despite what he had said about the absurdity of a “murder gene,” Jonathan was preparing to confront the issue if need be. I was convinced that, whatever the scientific merit of the theory, Logiudice would never be allowed to argue it to the jury. The argument was bogus, just a slicked-back, scienced-up version of an ancient courtroom trick, what lawyers call “propensity evidence”: the defendant tends to do stuff like this, so he probably did it here too, even if the prosecution can’t prove it. It’s simple: the defendant is a bank robber; a bank has been robbed—we all know what happened here. It is a way for the prosecution to tempt the jury with a wink and a nudge to convict despite a weak case. No judge would let Logiudice get away with it. Equally important, the science of genetically influenced behavior simply had not matured enough to be admitted in court. It was a new field, and the law purposely lags behind science. The courts cannot afford to make mistakes by taking chances on cutting-edge theories that may not prove out. I did not blame Jonathan for preparing to challenge the murder gene theory. Good trial preparation is really over-preparation. Jonathan had to be prepared for everything, even the one-in-a-hundred chance the judge might admit murder gene evidence. What bothered me was that he did not confide in me what he was up to. He did not trust me. I had fooled myself that we would act as a team, fellow lawyers, colleagues. But to Jonathan, I was just a client. Worse, I was a crazy, unreliable client, one who had to be misled.

  Our meetings with the shrink took place on the campus of McLean Hospital, the mental hospital where Dr. Elizabeth Vogel practiced. We met in a bare, bookless room. It was sparsely furnished with a few chairs and low tables. African masks hung on the wall.

  Dr. Vogel was a big woman. Not flabby; on the contrary, she had none of the pale softness of an academic, though she was one. (She taught and researched at Harvard Medical School as well as McLean.) Rather, Dr. Vogel had broad shoulders and a great square carved head. She was olive-skinned and, in May, already very tan. Her hair, mostly gray, was cut short. No makeup. A constellation of three diamond studs was arrayed on her brown earlobe. I imagined her hiking up sun-blasted mountain trails every weekend or bashing her way through the waves off Truro. She was big in the sense of prominent too, a big shot, which only enhanced her imposing quality. It was not clear to me why such a woman would choose the quiet, patient work of psychiatry. Her manner suggested a low tolerance for bullshit, of which she must have listened to quite a lot. She did not just sit there and nod, as shrinks are supposed to do. She leaned forward, tilted her head as if to hear you better, as if she was avid for good frank talk, for the real story.

  Laurie confessed everything to her willingly, eagerly. In this Earth Mother she felt she had a natural ally, an expert who would explain Jacob’s problems. As if the doctor was on our side. In long question-answer exchanges Laurie tried to draw on Dr. Vogel’s expertise. She quizzed the doctor: How to understand Jacob? How to help him? Laurie did not have the vocabulary, the specific knowledge. She wanted to extract those things from Dr. Vogel. She seemed unaware, or maybe just unconcerned, that Dr. Vogel was extracting from her as well. To be clear, I do not blame Laurie. She loved her son and she believed in psychiatry, in the power of gab. And of course she was shaken. After a few weeks living with the fact of Jacob’s indictment, the strain was beginning to tell; she was vulnerable to a sympathetic ear like Dr. Vogel’s. But for a
ll that, I could not just sit there and let it happen. Laurie was so determined to help Jacob, she nearly hung him.

  In our first meeting with the shrink, Laurie offered this rather startling confession: “When Jacob was a baby I used to be able to tell from the sound of his crawl when he was in a scary mood. I know that sounds outrageous, but it’s true. He would come storming down the hall on all fours, and I just knew.”

  “You knew what?”

  “I knew I was in for it. He would go on rampages. He’d throw things, he’d scream. There was nothing I could do with him. I’d just put him in his crib or his Pack ’n Play and I’d walk away. I’d let him scream and thrash till he calmed down.”

  “Don’t all babies scream and thrash, Laurie?”

  “Not like this. Not like this.”

  I said, “That’s ridiculous. He was a baby. Babies cry.”

  “Andy,” the doctor purred, “let her speak. You’ll have your turn. Go on, Laurie.”

  “Yes, go on, Laurie. Tell her how Jacob pulled the wings off flies.”

  “Doctor, you’ll have to forgive him. He doesn’t believe in this—in talking honestly about private things.”

  “That’s not true. I do believe in it.”

  “Then why don’t you ever do it?”

  “It’s a talent I don’t possess.”

  “Talking?”

  “Complaining.”

  “No, this is called talking, Andy, not complaining. And it’s a skill, not a talent; you could learn it if you wanted to. You can talk for hours in court.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Because a lawyer doesn’t have to be honest?”

  “No, it’s just a different situation, Laurie. There’s a time and a place for everything.”

  “My God, Andy, we’re in a psychiatrist’s office. If this isn’t the time and place …”

  “Yes, but we’re here for Jacob, not us. Not you. You need to remember that.”

  “I think I remember why we’re here, Andy. Don’t worry. I know exactly why we’re here.”

  “Do you? You’re not talking like you know it.”

  “Don’t lecture me, Andy.”

  Dr. Vogel said, “Hold on. I want to make something clear. Andy, I was hired by the defense team. I work for you. There’s no need to hide anything from me. I’m on Jacob’s side. My findings here can only help your son. I’ll submit my report to Jonathan, then you all can decide what to do with it. It’s entirely your decision.”

  “And if we want to throw it in the trash?”

  “You can. The point is, our conversation here is entirely confidential. There’s no reason to hold back. You don’t need to defend your son, not in this room. I only want the truth about him.”

  I made a sour face. The truth about Jacob. Who could say what that was? What was the truth about anyone?

  “All right,” Dr. Vogel said. “Laurie, you were describing Jacob as a baby. I’d like to hear more about that.”

  “From the time he was two, other kids started getting hurt around Jacob.”

  I gave Laurie a hard look. She seemed ethereally unaware of the danger of frankness.

  But Laurie returned my glare with a fierce look of her own. I cannot say for certain what she was thinking; Laurie and I did not talk as much or as easily since the night I confessed my secret history. A little curtain had come down between us. But clearly she was in no mood for lawyerly advice. She meant to have her say.

  She said, “It happened several times. At day care once, Jacob was toddling on the top of a play structure when another boy fell off. The boy needed stitches. Another time, a little girl flew off the monkey bars and broke her arm. A boy down the street rode his tricycle down a steep hill. That boy needed stitches too. He said Jakey pushed him.”

  “How often did these things happen?”

  “Every year or so. Jacob’s day care teachers told us all the time that they could not take their eyes off him, he was too rough. I was scared to death he would get kicked out of day care. Then what would we do? I was still working at the time, teaching; we needed day care. There were long waiting lists at all the other day care centers. If Jacob got thrown out, I’d have to stop working. We actually put our name on the list at another day care, just in case.”

  “Oh my God, Laurie, he was four years old! This is years ago! What are you talking about?”

  “Andy, really, you have to let her speak or this just won’t work.”

  “But the time she’s talking about, Jacob was four—years—old.”

  “Andy, I understand where you’re coming from. Just let her finish, then you’ll have a turn, all right? All right. Laurie, I’m curious: what did the other kids at day care think of him?”

  “Oh, the kids, I don’t know. Jacob had very few playdates, so I imagine the other kids didn’t like him especially.”

  “And the parents?”

  “I’m sure they didn’t want their kids to be alone with him. But none of the moms ever said anything to me about it. We were all too nice for that. We didn’t criticize each other’s kids. Nice people don’t do that, except behind each other’s backs.”

  “What about you, Laurie? What did you think about Jacob’s behavior?”

  “I knew I had a difficult child. I did. I knew he had some behavior problems. He was rambunctious, he was a little too rough, a little too aggressive.”

  “Was he a bully?”

  “No. Not exactly. He just didn’t think about other kids, how they would feel.”

  “Was he short-tempered?”

  “No.”

  “Mean?”

  “Mean. No, mean isn’t the word for it either. It was more like—I don’t know what to call it, exactly. He just couldn’t seem to imagine how other kids would feel if he pushed them down, so he was … hard to control. I guess that’s it: he was hard to control. But a lot of boys are like that. That’s how we talked about it at the time: ‘A lot of boys go through this. It’s a phase. Jacob will outgrow it.’ That was how we looked at it. I was horrified when other kids got hurt, of course, but what could I do? What could we do?”

  “What did you do, Laurie? Did you ever try to get help?”

  “Oh, we talked about it endlessly, Andy and I. Andy always told me not to worry. I asked the pediatrician about it, and he told me the same thing: ‘Don’t worry, Jake is still very little, it will pass.’ They made me feel a little crazy, like I was one of those crazy, jumpy moms always hovering over their kids, freaking out about Band-Aids and … and peanut allergies. And here was Andy and the pediatrician saying, ‘It will pass, it will pass.’ ”

  “But it did pass, Laurie. You were overreacting. The pediatrician was right.”

  “Was he? Honey, look where we are. You never want to face this.”

  “Face what?”

  “That maybe Jacob needed help. Maybe it’s our fault. We should have done something.”

  “Done what? Or else what?”

  Her head drooped, hopeless. The memory of these early childhood incidents haunted her, as if she had seen a shark’s fin that disappeared under water. It was lunacy.

  “Laurie, what are you suggesting? This is our son we’re talking about.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything, Andy. Don’t make this a loyalty contest or a—a fight. I’m just wondering about what we did back then. I mean, I don’t know what the answer was, I have no idea what we should have done. Maybe Jake needed medication. Or counseling. I don’t know. I just can’t help thinking we must have made mistakes. We must have. We tried so hard and we meant so well. We don’t deserve all this. We were good, responsible people. You know? We did everything right. We weren’t too young. We waited. In fact, we almost waited too long; I was thirty-six when I had Jacob. We weren’t rich, but we both worked hard and we had enough money to give the baby everything he needed. We did everything right, and yet here we are. It isn’t fair.” She shook her head and murmured, “It isn’t fair.”

  Beside me, Laurie’s hand
rested on the arm of her chair. I thought I might lay my hand on hers to soothe her, but in the moment it took to consider it, she withdrew her hand and knotted her arms down tight over her belly.

  She said, “I look back on us then and I see we weren’t ready at all. I mean, no one ever is, right? We were kids. I don’t care how old we were; we were kids. And we were clueless and we were scared shitless, like all new parents. And I don’t know, maybe we made mistakes.”

  “What mistakes, Laurie? Really. You’re being dramatic. It just wasn’t that bad. Jacob was a little boisterous and rough. Is that really such a big deal? He was a little boy! Some kids got hurt because four-year-olds get hurt. They totter around, and three-quarters of their body weight is in their enormous heads, so they fall down and crash into things. They fall off play structures, they fall off bicycles. It happens. They’re like drunks. Anyway, the pediatrician was right: Jacob did outgrow it. This stuff all stopped when he got older. You’re beating yourself up, but there’s nothing to feel guilty about, Laurie. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “That’s just what you always used to say. You never wanted to admit anything was out of place. Or maybe you just never saw it. I mean, I’m not blaming you. It wasn’t your fault. I see that now. I understand what you were dealing with, what you must have been carrying around inside.”

  “Oh, don’t put it on that.”

  “Andy, it must have been a burden.”

  “It wasn’t. Ever. I promise you.”

  “All right, whatever you say. But you need to think about the possibility that you don’t see Jacob objectively. You’re not reliable. Dr. Vogel needs to know that.”

  “I’m not reliable?”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Dr. Vogel was watching, saying nothing. She knew my backstory, of course. It was the reason we hired her, an expert on genetic wickedness. Still, the subject embarrassed me. I fell silent, ashamed.