She spends that night calling around town, trying to scare up a crowd. One by one, the team begs off, wishing Tommy luck. They’re guys; some of them don’t even have phones. She doesn’t bother calling Perry. Shawn’s girlfriend says she’ll let him know. Russ she has hopes for, but he says he’s got to work, and she doesn’t shame him with her silence, just hangs up and keeps going down the list. It’s no surprise; she’s known all along that they’re alone in this, but she can’t give up. She finds the next number and dials, closes her eyes and waits.
In the end it’s just the four of them. That morning her mother comes over early to help her get ready, swaying with Casey as Patty pinches in her earrings. Only Cy feels like eating; the rest of them get by with coffee and cigarettes. They’re quiet as they leave the house, solemn as bank robbers. It’s a bright day, springlike. The school buses are running, people going to work. No one talks for a while. It reminds Patty of following the hearse at her father’s funeral, the gloom reinforced by their separateness.
“Thanks, everybody, for coming,” she says. “I’m making dinner tonight, okay?”
“You don’t have to,” Eileen says. “It’s worth it to see him in his suit.”
“What are you making?” Cy asks from the back.
“Whatever you want.”
The vote goes to her chicken parmesan, an easy dish, quick.
“Look how high the river is,” her mother says, because they’re free to speak now.
“It’s the snowmelt,” Cy guesses.
Patty’s stomach clenches. She can’t disarm her body with small talk. It’s only a hearing but it’s the most important one so far, and she’s begun to fear the courthouse. It’s like stage fright, it hits her as soon as she thinks of Elsie Wagner sitting across the aisle.
They’re early enough to get a decent parking spot. She holds Casey to her shoulder while Cy lugs the carrier. The photographers hustle into position, clutching their cameras, kneeling to shoot like soldiers. She has to shield Casey from the flashes. Again, he’s magic; for the first time the reporters part for her. “Mrs. Marion,” the ones who’ve done their homework call out, and she thinks it was a mistake asking her mother to come.
“Is it always like this?” her mother asks inside.
“Pretty much.”
In the courtroom she recognizes faces among the spectators. Donna’s already taken her place in the front row—all by herself in a white turtleneck and dark wool skirt Patty’s never seen before—leaving room for her behind Tommy’s chair. Elsie Wagner’s bench is empty. After they say hi to Donna and get settled, Patty keeps looking back at the doors, expecting her and her husband to come bursting through at the last minute.
The procession begins without them—the DA and the lawyers, the court reporter, the deputies herding Tommy and Gary along. Tommy’s gotten his hair cut, and shaved, but he’s still in his scrubs. He tips his chin at her mother, smiles at Eileen and Cy all duded up. Thank you, he mouths, and she wonders if the lawyer’s coached him to do this. The whole time, Casey sleeps beside her, snuggled into his carrier, a bubble on his lower lip. He only stirs when the bailiff calls the court to order, shuddering and curling his hands as everyone stands.
As the judge comes out, her mother leans across Casey and touches her on the arm. “I know him—that’s Ronald Sherman. I went to school with his sister.”
Patty just nods and sits down again. Is that piece of trivia supposed to help them?
Tommy’s lawyer goes first, reading a brief outlining the motion point by point. He speaks precisely, as if reading instructions, explaining the rules of a complicated game. “We ask the court to grant relief from prejudice as it is anticipated that our defense and the defense of the codefendant will be irreconcilably antagonistic. I believe my client will be denied a fair trial by reason of the greater quantum of evidence to be adduced against his codefendant. As a result, the trier of fact will not be able to render a fair decision by inability to reconcile the two defenses and to separately consider evidence relevant to each defendant.”
“He seems to know what he’s doing,” her mother whispers.
But the judge interrupts: “Mr. Rosen, you mention in your affidavit ‘competing factual allegations.’ Can you be more specific?”
He lets Tommy’s lawyer flounder, sitting back and watching him but not responding. “Thank you. Mr. Tatum?”
Gary’s lawyer gets up and folds his glasses into his jacket pocket and basically says the same thing—the pointing fingers defense.
The judge asks him the same question about evidence, then waits for him to sit down.
“Mr. Atkinson?” he says, and the DA rises behind his table.
“The district attorney’s office considers there is a valid allegation of combined participation, therefore joinder is proper.”
A long minute passes after he sits. The judge shuffles his papers as if he’s lost the one he needs. Finally he leans over his microphone and reads the case number and their names, the purpose of the hearing—a flat recap—and Patty understands that, though it will take a week for the court to respond officially, it’s over.
STRATEGY
THE TRIAL’S SCHEDULED FOR EARLY MAY. WHEN SHE MEETS WITH the lawyer, he says there’s no way a jury will go murder two on both of them, as if the manslaughter charge would be a victory. Each time she speaks to him she comes away even more discouraged. She replays those first few days after the arrest and thinks she should have done things differently, starting with hiring their own lawyer. She doesn’t see how she could have pulled it off, but is hounded now by the idea that she didn’t even try.
Since their motion for severance failed, their lawyer has to craft an overall strategy with Gary’s. Neither of them will take the stand. Both lawyers will hammer the fact that Mrs. Wagner’s death was an accident, the result of a fall. They’ve lined up an expert witness to question the coroner’s report. That way it still comes down to reasonable doubt.
As the date grows closer, Tommy swears to her that he didn’t do it. He says it in the visiting room where the guards can hear and over the phone they know is being taped, as if he’s trying to find a blameless way to inform on Gary. Patty doesn’t tell him to cool it.
She doesn’t tell him he can still make a statement either. He knows how she feels about that.
Instead, they concentrate on getting him a suit to wear. The lawyer has a tailor he recommends, but Patty has to pay for it. To her surprise, her mother comes through without any hesitation, and Patty’s grateful, moved by her honest generosity. The suit is beautiful, charcoal gray with thin lapels. The tailor has to visit Tommy to make alterations. He’s a little round Greek man who talks to himself while he measures and marks with his chalk. Twice he’s supposed to have the suit ready for them and then postpones at the last minute, saying he’s got a wedding. There’s less than a week. The lawyer tells her not to worry, he always cuts it close.
When she gets a call at nine in the morning three days before the trial, she thinks it’s him, that the suit’s finally done.
It’s the lawyer. “I’m glad I got you,” he says. “I just got some news. You better sit down for this.”
“What?” Patty says, thinking he’s being dramatic.
“He’s pleading out,” the lawyer says. “Your husband’s buddy.”
“He confessed?” Because this is what she’s been waiting for, for Gary to step up and tell the truth.
“Just the opposite,” the lawyer says. “He’s gone state. He’s giving the DA a statement right now.”
INNOCENCE
WHEN SHE CALLS DONNA, DONNA SWEARS SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT’S going on. She says she’s sorry.
“Why is he doing this?” Patty asks, because she needs an answer, while another, uglier part of her wants to trap Donna, to make her say something incriminating, since the phone’s probably tapped.
“I don’t know,” Donna says. “But I know he wouldn’t lie.”
“Not even to save his own
ass.”
“I know him. He wouldn’t.”
“I don’t care,” Patty says. And she doesn’t. “He should have kept his fucking mouth shut. And you can tell him that from me.”
EXHIBITS
NOW THAT THEY’VE GOT GARY, THEY WANT TOMMY TO PLEAD TOO. It’s neat and clean that way; the DA gets both convictions and the court avoids having to try the case. The lawyer’s not sure what they’ll offer, but with Gary’s testimony, it won’t be less than the murder two as charged, which is fifteen to life.
Patty rejects it out of hand. Gary’s lying.
It’s possible, the lawyer says, but the way he says it makes her understand that at this point it doesn’t matter.
He asks her to go over the statement to see if she can disprove the smallest part. As Patty reads about their earlier burglaries, she recognizes things Tommy brought home—the chainsaw, the ten-speed—all the evidence numbered and catalogued right in front of her. The feeling sinks in as she reads on, the heat of shame gathering in her cheeks. Maybe it’s the strangeness of seeing her fears laid out on paper, but she’s even more certain now that he didn’t kill Mrs. Wagner, as if there has to be a limit to her cluelessness.
She can’t picture him hitting her, or spinning her, or flinging her against the dresser, though she can see him laying her gently on the bed.
Patty gives him back the statement.
“Nothing?” he asks, and she wishes she could lie and make it stick the way Gary has.
“So,” the lawyer says, “what we need to do is figure out which way we want to go here. We turn down the plea, odds are the DA’s going to recommend the maximum, which is twenty-five to life. So you’re looking at a ten-year difference there.”
Patty’s thinking of the fifteen years, not the ten. To life. And Gary’s lying. This whole thing was his idea, Tommy just went along with it. She knows Tommy.
“There’s still room for interpretation, I think,” the lawyer says, “between murder and manslaughter. Depending on how much leeway they give us on the old lady’s frailty. And they may give us none—that may actually work against us. The arson will, regardless of the fact that it didn’t really do anything. So there’s a number of unforeseeables.”
He talks like a doctor laying out the dangers of surgery, letting her know everything that can go wrong, so that, whatever happens, his ass will be covered. In the end, he wants her to know, it’s her decision.
THE PROBLEM OF CAUSATION
THE TRIAL GOES AHEAD AS SCHEDULED, EXCEPT NOW TOMMY AND the lawyer have the table all to themselves. The new plan is to discredit Gary’s statement, then attack Gary himself, which is fine with Patty. The lawyer’s turned up some previous B&E convictions—not the felony count they wanted, but enough to make him look shady, while Tommy’s record is clean. The cops also took a bundle of money when they raided his and Donna’s place. The lawyer’s trying to find a way to make everything admissible. If they can convince the jury that Gary was the brains behind the operation, they’re halfway there.
Tommy still can’t believe Gary would do him like this. On the phone he sounds down, like he doesn’t care what happens. In the courtroom, he slouches in his suit, and the lawyer has to nudge him to sit up straight. Like a bad actor, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and keeps rubbing his nose.
Donna doesn’t come anymore, doesn’t call. And Patty used to feel sorry for her, that’s how big of a fool she was.
At home, her mother and Eileen pretend they still have a chance. Cy avoids the subject, tries not to get caught alone in the same room with her.
The trial’s like going to a job she despises. Every morning she gets Casey ready, stuffing his diaper bag full of cloths and bottles and wet wipes, then hands him off to her mother so she can get dressed. She doesn’t fit into her old clothes yet. Her mother’s taken her on an emergency shopping spree at Penney’s, but still, people who watch the news must be sick of Shannon’s pantsuit. Patty’s learned to bring extra pads after soaking through one of her new shirts.
Every recess she expects her mother to go over and introduce herself to Elsie Wagner and her husband, but she stays with her, taking Casey when Patty needs her hands free.
And Casey’s good, Casey’s easy. When he fidgets, she walks him on her shoulder in the women’s room, cooing to him and pacing in the mirror. The reporters leave her alone there, as if they’ve agreed it’s safe, home base.
Most of the time she sits still on the hard bench behind Tommy, trying not to show her emotions. It’s surprisingly easy. The trial is mesmerizingly dull, an endless church service. She’s heard so much of the evidence already that she’s not shocked. The neighbor, Mr. Ayres, returns to tell his version of events, and takes all morning, placing the truck in the turnaround, verifying that Mrs. Wagner was legally blind. It seems to Patty that every sheriffs deputy testifies. The DA’s just being thorough, her lawyer says; it’s a big case for him.
Does he even listen to himself? It’s a big case for her and Tommy, not the fucking DA.
The worst part is listening to the coroner describe what might have happened to Mrs. Wagner. Patty can handle the diagram of the room with the body on the bed, the location of the broken glass and the capsized night table; it’s only when he starts making guesses that she has to grip her own leg to keep from flinching. Elsie Wagner raises her tissue to her face like a white flag.
The injuries sustained by the deceased are consistent with a blow to the head with a heavy object such as a lamp or telephone receiver.
“Isn’t it also possible,” their lawyer cross-examines him, “that she could have received these injuries by falling and striking her head on a hard surface like that of a dresser or a doorframe, maybe even a plaster wall?”
“It’s possible,” the coroner concedes, and for the first time since Tommy was arrested, Patty thinks they’ve scored a victory.
Afterward, in the lawyer’s office, she asks him what kind of time Gary’s going to see. He says he doesn’t know what the agreement is. But something; he’s definitely not getting away with probation in this type of case. For an instant she savors a vision of poetic justice: Tommy walking and Gary going to prison for turning on him.
When they leave his office, the TV vans are gone, the sidewalks empty, the courthouse doors locked. It’s only when they’re driving home that the rest of the world returns—the steamy heat of spring with its sun and thunderstorms, bright backlit clouds riding the green hills. On Hunt Creek Road the tidy houses all fly flags. Her mother gazes directly ahead, her face slack under her makeup. The car makes Casey sleep. In these empty moments Patty’s mind wanders to harmless places, memories of a better future, Casey growing up, Tommy playing catch with him in the backyard of their new house while she makes dinner, as if all this—the last six months, today—is in the past and can no longer touch them.
After dinner she waits for Tommy’s call. They go over the day’s testimony and preview what’s coming up tomorrow. He asks about the bumps on Casey’s arm—gone, thanks to the cream the doctor prescribed. They’ve gotten better at not wasting their expensive minutes, hopping from topic to topic like talk show hosts. Happy Days is on at eight, then Welcome Back, Kotter; they’ll watch it as if the TV can magically connect them, a place where they meet in secret. It gives them something to share next time.
When their shows are over, she gets Casey down and says good night herself. She has to get up to feed him and then again at six to be at the courthouse, but of course she can’t sleep, and wakes up with a headache.
She’s busy; there’s not a lot of time to sit around and feel sorry for herself. Plus—she never forgets—she’s not the one in jail.
The trial grinds on, the firemen taking the stand. The DA props blown-up photos of the house on an easel. Patty has to be careful not to stare at the jurors. She sneaks peeks to see what interests them, the way they lean forward to absorb a witness’s testimony. She can’t help but see them as the enemy, the same as the judge and th
e DA and the reporters. She’s even come to resent Elsie Wagner for being there.
The only person on her side is her mother, and she says almost nothing about the case, as if she’d rather not get involved. She critiques the trial like a movie with a faulty plot, but gently, as if she’s afraid of upsetting her. “I’m surprised he didn’t question that second guy more,” she’ll say in the car, and that will be it.
The DA’s saving Gary for last, hoping he’ll clinch the deal. The rest is buildup, putting things in place. The forensics expert from the state police barracks testifies that both Tommy’s and Gary’s fingerprints match those taken from the gas can and that traces of accelerant were found on the bed. The jury’s interested in his diagram showing the trail of gas winding through the furniture; though Patty can see it from halfway across the room, the DA has them pass it along both rows for a closer look.
“1 was afraid of that,” the lawyer says in his office.
Then why didn’t you do something about it, Patty wants to ask, because now it just sounds like an excuse.
Gary can’t surprise them. By the terms of the plea agreement, he has to stick to his sworn statement. What they have to do is hammer his record and then trip him up on cross.
But first the DA wastes a day nailing down the burglary charge, introducing Gary’s hockey bag and the guns into evidence, then going over the long list of property confiscated from their garage, bringing in a sheriff’s deputy to recap their other robberies to show they’re professionals. Their lawyer scores a point, asking the court to acknowledge the exact sum of the wad taken from Gary and Donna’s apartment. Patty’s strangely embarrassed, and angry at the way they used Tommy: they kept the money while he got stuck holding a bunch of junk.
What bothers her is how methodical and bloodless the process is, the steady accumulation of tape from the court reporter’s machine, the folders full of typed pages the lawyers take out of their briefcases every morning. The whole thing is just words, so why is it so expensive? And anyway, the most important ones are lies. From the beginning, no one’s been interested in the truth.
The Good Wife Page 9
