by Sydney Bauer
‘So, we agree you are going to have to make a concerted effort to control the way the kid is portrayed in the media,’ she said, as if needing confirmation.
‘I . . . yes,’ said David, sensing that this was a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question if ever there was one.
‘Great,’ she said, before her previously serious face broke into one of the biggest smiles David had ever seen. ‘Now that that is sorted, we can go and see our kid.’
Twenty minutes later they were sitting in a too-small, windowless interview room in the juvenile detention unit’s maximum-security fifth floor. The only thing to break the monotony of the grey-painted walls was the slightly darker door at the far right-hand corner of the room.
Barbara Wong-McGregor dragged the spare seat to the side, while David sat across from his client who was now wearing a maroon Department of Youth Services detention facility jumpsuit, his hands crossed on the metal table before him, his legs parallel to those of the aluminum table which, like the ones on his chair, had been securely bolted to the floor.
‘When I came home from school I went straight to my room,’ said J.T. Logan who, after several anxious enquiries as to the welfare of his sister (‘Have you seen her?’, ‘Is she back at home with Father?’, ‘Is she okay?’), had settled back quietly.
‘I did like I always did,’ he said, focusing on the small recorder Barbara had asked David to allow her to use as part of her initial assessment analysis. ‘Practised my violin until 4.26.39, did my trig homework until 5.01.05, my English until 5.40.29, then biology, history and geography.’
After David had taken Barbara into his confidence regarding their suspicions on the abusive environment of the Logan family home, the child psychologist had warned that, before they even attempt any enquiries relating to J.T.’s home, they must ease him with the security of ‘fact’ – or in other words, questions that called for a direct reporting of events rather than expressions of his emotional well-being or neglect.
‘Kids like this live by the motto of “trust no one”,’ she had said. ‘And direct assumptions or accusations are only going to scare him. Don’t forget there is a lot to be learned from J.T.’s responses – and whether we perceive them to be “false” or, more to the point, “coached”.’
So David had begun at the beginning – asking J.T. to tell them about his day from the moment he woke up last Friday morning to the moment the police arrived at his Beacon Hill home later that night. The boy answered clearly and respectfully, describing his movements in detail, sticking to a strict chronological order without any vacillation or delay.
‘J.T.,’ said Barbara, who had remained silent until now, ‘you said you did violin until 4.26.39, trig until 5.01.05, English until 5.40.29. Just out of interest,’ she asked, ‘why not break your study periods into more obvious time brackets – like four-thirty ’til five, or five ’til six?’
J.T., looked at her as if the question was one he had never considered, the space of olive skin between his two brown eyebrows folding in a crease of uncertainty. ‘Because that is how we always did it,’ he offered. ‘Me and Chelsea, I mean. The times would be changed regularly – to keep us on our toes.’
‘And would there be checks that you kept to the prearranged time allocations?’ asked Barbara, intrigued by this unusual behaviour, but savvy enough to ask the question as if it were the most natural one in the world.
‘No,’ said J.T., as though he found the question odd. ‘There was no need. We always kept to them. Why would we not?’
Barbara smiled and sat back in her seat, a signal David took for him to move on.
Moments later J.T., who had explained the children did not normally eat dinner until their father returned home from work, finally reached the moments leading up to the shooting – the period of time in which he allegedly went to his parents’ bedroom to retrieve the library cabinet key, proceeded downstairs to unlock said cabinet, went to the garage to get the bullets to load into the rifle, and then returned to the kitchen to shoot a hole in his mother bigger than the size of a baseball.
But the boy just stopped. He remembered finishing his geography assignment at 8.17.56pm, and he remembered going downstairs to the kitchen as he believed he had heard his father’s car turn into the drive minutes earlier, but he did not recall getting the key, or the gun, or the bullets . . . J.T.’s version of accounts jumped straight from the geography assignment to the moment where he pointed the rifle at his mother – a time lapse of what must have been a good five minutes. David knew it should have taken him at least that amount of time to collect the key, unlock the cabinet, take out the gun, re-lock the cabinet, return the key to the upstairs drawer, go to the garage, load the gun and then make his way to the kitchen – which also meant he would have had to have left his room at 8.15pm at the latest, breaking his precious ‘down-to-the-second’ routine.
‘Okay,’ said David, a look from Barbara warning him that he had to stay on track. ‘So you remember leaving your room and going downstairs to the kitchen.’
‘Yes,’ said J.T. without flinching. ‘I left my room, went downstairs, opened the kitchen door and saw mother sitting at the end of the table. She was reading Vanity Fair and drinking a glass of wine and when I came in she looked up at me and said, “No”.’
Barbara frowned; she had obviously noted the boy’s inclination to ‘regurgitate’, rather than ‘tell’ the story.
‘She said “No”,’ reaffirmed David.
‘Yes,’ replied J.T., his voice a monotone. ‘She said “No”.’
‘And then you . . . ?’ prompted David.
‘And then I shot her,’ he said.
‘And do you know why you did that J.T. ?’ asked Barbara, as David took a breath.
‘Because that was my intent,’ J.T. said with just the slightest of hesitation.
‘You wanted to shoot her,’ stated Barbara.
‘It wasn’t about what I wanted.’ His eyes flicked to David. ‘It was about what I intended.’
‘But she was your mother, J.T. Why would you intend to kill her?’ asked Barbara, using J.T.’s wording.
‘Because parents are in charge of their children,’ he answered.
‘You killed her because she was in charge of you?’ offered Barbara.
‘No,’ said J.T., the crease in his forehead now back with a vengeance. ‘I killed her because she wasn’t.’
David nodded.
‘Did she say anything else?’ asked Barbara after a time. ‘Did she scream or call out or cry?’
‘No.’ J.T. shook his head. And then, as if a new thought had occurred to him, he turned his head slightly, answering Barbara, but looking directly at David.
‘But it all happened so quickly. I had the gun in front of me. It has a fully adjustable trigger that has been precisely adjusted for sear engagement. The trigger lies to the rear of the alloy floorplate trigger guard. The cocking indicator showed the rifle to be cocked. The one-piece forged bolt was straight. The length of pull was set at thirteen-and-a-half inches.’ The boy’s voice was no longer a monotone, but almost animated in his urgency to explain.
‘How do you know all this, J.T. ?’ asked David. ‘Do you have an interest in guns? Have you played with your father’s rifle before?’
‘No to the last two questions,’ he said. ‘And I know this because I studied it.’
‘When? When did you study the gun?’
‘Last Tuesday between 11.06am and 12.24pm.’
‘You learnt about it at school?’ asked Barbara, now pulling her chair closer to the table.
‘No,’ said J.T. ‘I was home sick.’
David nodded. This last statement was a major setback for the defence, for Amanda Carmichael could argue that J.T. Logan had been planning the murder for at least four days in advance. And as David had no doubt that Jeffrey Logan intended to push the ‘my son killed my wife because she was abusing him’ argument, claiming the boy shot his mother after he overheard his father’s intention to divo
rce, he also knew that the savvy ADA would blow this theory out of the stratosphere as soon as the sequence of events was established. For Logan had sworn he had asked his wife for a divorce the night before Stephanie’s murder – even speculated that J.T. had overheard his request and thus acted in a state of panic. But now J.T. was claiming he had been studying the gun’s features some four days before, which meant Carmichael could argue J.T. was not a weak and defenceless victim in fear for his well-being, but a calculating and intelligent perpetrator who took great pains to end his mother’s life with purpose and efficiency.
Exactly the argument Logan was hoping for, David thought to himself, reasonable, rational, defined.
‘Okay,’ said David after a pause, sliding his chair forward so that he might rest his elbows on the table in front of him. ‘So what happened next, J.T. – after you shot your mom?’
‘Well, then Chelsea came running. She came into the kitchen. She screamed.’
‘And your father?’ began Barbara.
‘He grabbed me and held me tight, buried my head in his chest. Then he pulled us both from the kitchen and into the hall. And then he called 911.’
‘And then?’ asked David.
‘And then he called Katherine. And Chelsea kept screaming.’
‘At you?’
‘No, not at me,’ he said.
David nodded once again.
‘And then?’ asked Barbara.
‘Then Father pulled me back and looked at my shirt. He said we should get cleaned up. And he pulled me towards the bathroom. But then the police were outside and Father said there was no time, so he ran to the front door and unlocked it and then he told us we all had to go back into the kitchen and sit down – and close our eyes and not say anything.’
David glanced towards Barbara once again.
‘Do you know why he told you to do that, J.T?’ asked the psychologist.
‘Not at the time. But I do now,’ said J.T. ‘He did it so that he could be arrested.’
‘Over you,’ said David.
‘Before me – yes.’
While the boy obviously took the initial question the wrong way – thinking Barbara was referring to the bathroom issue – David was almost glad J.T. had misread her intent. For his answer told David this boy knew exactly what his father had been up to. In all likelihood Logan had suggested J.T. at least feign an attempt to clean himself up so that Logan’s ‘selfless confession’ theory would ring true. But David sensed the boy was more than clever enough to read his father’s motives – and probably had been for a very long time.
‘I’m sorry, J.T.,’ said Barbara then. ‘What I meant was, why did your father get you to go back into the kitchen?’
J.T. took a breath before looking at David once again. ‘Because he was home,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘And that is what we always did at 8.27.55pm Monday through Friday, excluding holidays of course. It was dinner time. And we all knew better than to be late.’
27
‘Wow,’ said David to Barbara Wong-McGregor.
It was a little after midday and a senior guard had just knocked on the door to inform them that their time was up. J.T. had been told to accompany the guard to the dining hall for lunch – which he did, after shaking Barbara’s and then David’s hand with a grip that suggested he was either trying to be very ‘grown up’ or just incredibly afraid as to what lay ahead of him. David figured it was more than likely a combination of the two and found himself holding onto the boy’s small palm until the guard physically tugged at the kid’s elbow and pulled him from the room.
‘Wow is right,’ said Barbara, shaking her head as she took the seat previously occupied by David’s fourteen-year-old client.
‘I know you said we had to take it slow, Barbara,’ said an openly anxious David, ‘but that was . . . well, one of the most frustrating interviews I have ever undertaken. I couldn’t help but feel the kid wanted to tell us about his father, and maybe if we had asked him the question directly he might have . . .’
‘No,’ said Barbara. ‘The kid is shitting himself, David. He can only cope with so much right now. Did you notice the fervour with which he asked about his sister’s welfare? The kid is sitting in a maximum-security juvenile detention facility and is more concerned about his sister’s well-being than his own.’
‘Which just goes to show how desperate his situation is – J.T. is worried what will happen to Chelsea if he spills the beans on his dad. Which means Logan has both kids exactly where he wants them – terrified, separated and well and truly under his control.’
David had been anticipating an argument, but was relieved he did not get one. Barbara believed him, and that was something in itself.
‘Okay,’ she said after a pause. ‘I see what you are saying. We have two kids to consider here. But no evidence to prove either of them is under any threat from their father. And from what Mannix told me, you have evidence that points the finger at the wife as the abuser and . . . Jesus, what a fucking mess.’
‘Worse still,’ said David, ‘Jeffrey Logan is a national hero for Christ’s sake. So not only do we have zero evidence against him, but we are fighting a man who has just added a new sheen to his halo by publicly attempting to take the rap for his kid.’
‘That was very clever of him,’ Barbara replied.
‘He’s a psychologist, Barbara.’
‘So am I, David, but this whole scenario – you have to hand it to him. If what we are thinking is true, well, there is no way I could have come up with it.’
‘That doesn’t help us,’ he countered.
‘No,’ she said after a pause. ‘I guess not.’
David leant back in the uncomfortable vinyl chair, his entire body slumped in defeat.
‘Look,’ said Barbara, determined to find something positive in what they had discovered this morning. ‘It may not have sounded like it, but believe it or not, the kid actually gave us lots to go on.’
‘He told us he shot his mom.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But you have to look beyond what he said and start looking at the world through that poor kid’s eyes. He doesn’t see things the way you and I do, David. His perspective is skewed, distorted. He sees things in pieces and spends his life trying to make sense of them, trying to put them back together.’ Her eyes shifted around the room as if she was looking for a way to explain it to him.
‘Stand up for a second,’ she said. ‘Come over here.’
But David just lifted his head, wondering what the hell this small windowless room could tell them. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Just stand up,’ she said, now having moved around the table, her hands making frantic upwards motions as if to say, ‘don’t ask, just do!’.
And so David got to his feet, and Barbara grabbed his left shirt sleeve and began pulling him towards the two-way mirror behind them.
‘What do you see?’
‘Excuse me?’ David asked, wondering why, given all that he had to do, he was currently standing in a cold interview room corner looking at his own reflection.
‘What do you see?’ she repeated, pointing, insisting that he focus.
‘I see me,’ he said. ‘One seriously pissed off attorney who has no idea as how to help his client.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ she said then. ‘Enough with the self-pity already.’ And then she dragged him towards the other end of the mirror, where the right-hand corner had been splintered by, David guessed, some frustrated teenager set on slamming the invisible voyeurs on the other side of the glass.
‘Now what do you see?’ she asked then.
‘The same thing,’ he said, looking at his tired, stubble-covered face – now dissected and distorted by the cracks in the mirror before him.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Look beyond what you know is there, David. See how the splits in the glass dissect your image, break you down – your nose here, your left ear slightly elevated, your eyes off-centre, your features disjointed, off kilter, out of whack.
’
Despite himself, David was beginning to see it. ‘I don’t make sense,’ he said then. ‘It looks as if someone has taken a hammer to what I am or what I believe I should be, so that I am left with nothing but . . .’
‘A whole lot of sharp, jagged pieces of what you might have been. Nothing fits, David – can’t you see? This is how his father has left J.T. And if I am right, I don’t think he has ever been given the chance at looking at himself in any other way.
‘He has been shattered, David, a new crack forcing its way into his already disjointed perspective every time his father chooses to apply the pressure. We may not yet know exactly what went down in that kitchen last Friday night but to me at least, one thing is obvious: J.T. Logan is at breaking point, David. He is a sheet of glass ready to shatter. He needs our help but we have to be careful how we give it. And we have to be . . .’
‘Quick,’ said David, reading her mind.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Before the kid loses his grip forever and decides he is not worth picking up the pieces for, after all.’
Seconds later a bang on the outside door startled them both, and they turned to see a white-shirted security officer poke his head around the door.
‘Are you Mr Cavanaugh?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ said David.
‘The famous dad is in reception. Says he wants to see you pronto.’
David nodded before turning back to Barbara. ‘I asked Joe to call in a few favours down at DYS,’ he whispered. ‘They must have done what he asked – told Logan his son would not be available for visitors today.’
‘You can’t keep him away from his son forever,’ said Barbara.
‘I know. But in the very least, like you said, we need time to earn J.T.’s trust.’
‘Mr Cavanaugh?’ said the guard, still standing at the door.
‘Okay, I know, sorry,’ said David, now moving back to the table to collect his things. ‘Is Doctor Logan ah . . .’
