Home Town

by Tracy Kidder

  “For example, do you know who Big Bird is?”

  “Uh-huh, the big huge bird.”

  “Do you think Big Bird is a real bird?”

  “A fake,” she said.

  “He’s a fake bird?” asked the judge.

  “He’s really somebody who’s dressed up in a costume.”

  “Very good,” said the judge. “Is there anything else you think I should know?”

  “I know the big elephant,” said the girl. “But I forget his name.”

  Indulgent titters had rippled through the gallery during the girl’s testimony. That last line brought on more. The judge was smiling, too. It wasn’t hard to imagine a jury’s reaction to this child. After a little more questioning, the judge let her go. Rick’s gaze had never left her. At moments when she was speaking, his shoulders had bobbed, as if he had hiccups or were sobbing. Now he beamed toward her. He looked expectant, but his wife had come forward and, once again, she whisked the girl away. Rick turned in his chair, gazing after the child, until the courtroom door shut behind her.

  Then the judge declared the girl to be “a very, very intelligent and verbal child.” He intoned, “I find that she has the ability to recall the events accurately and to articulate her memory of those events. I further find that she understands the difference between fact and fantasy, that she understands the difference between right and wrong, that she recognizes the duty to be truthful in the courtroom and that she understands, in a general way, the concept of punishment if one is not truthful in a courtroom. Under these circumstances, I find that the Commonwealth has established that the child is, in fact, competent, and I will permit her to testify at the trial of this matter.”

  Architects and builders are sometimes blessed by their mistakes. The Plexiglas windows in the vestibule outside Superior Court had grown discolored over the years, but they improved the afternoon sunlight. They turned it a deep shade of gold. Court had recessed for the day and all the parties and spectators had departed, except for Rick and one of his sisters. He sat in the vestibule on the wooden bench outside the empty courtroom, with his face in his hands, and he wept and wept. His sister sat beside him, her hand on his bowed and heaving back, bathed in golden light.

  The lieutenant was away. Tommy was stuck in the station tonight. He was the officer in charge, the OIC. He and the chief, Russ Sienkiewicz, leaned against opposite walls in the hallway by the side door. The door had a window. Now and then they’d glance through it, at the red Saab in the parking lot, Rick’s car. Tommy had been excluded from today’s preliminary hearings, but the chief had been called to the courtroom briefly for one of the motions, and he’d heard accounts of what had gone on in there. He’d also heard that Rick had sat outside the courtroom weeping for a full half hour.

  “They literally had to mop up the floor.”

  Tommy grimaced and glanced out the window.

  “His lawyer took him to his office for a sitdown,” said the chief. Stories of the girl’s interview by the judge had circulated. The chief shook his head. “I think Rick might plead tomorrow. If he doesn’t blow his brains out tonight.”

  Old anxieties may fade without quite being outgrown. Tommy would not let his feelings show in front of the guys tonight, not even in front of the chief. “I told Rick to his face, ‘If you’re gonna do it, don’t do it in Northampton.’ ” Tommy smiled at his boss, the same old manic-looking smile that he used to wear in the presence of a disturbing corpse. “Well, Chief, I’m OIC, and I’m not going out.”

  The chief stared at him, one of his sphinxlike stares, which always made Tommy wonder if he’d said something stupid.

  Tommy looked away, out the window again. “No,” he said softly. “I’ll go.”

  They both stared out the window at the red car for a while. “The longer it’s there, the more talking he’s doing with his attorney,” said the chief. “I don’t want him to go to jail. He’s the one who’s doing that.”

  “I’ve had a headache for three days,” said Tommy. “It’s going away. It’s not the only thing that’s going away.”

  The chief departed. Tommy went back to gazing out the window toward Rick’s car. He murmured, “I feel like I’m putting a nail in his coffin.”

  Other cases were in progress around the station. There always were. Life went on out in his town, but he couldn’t supervise it tonight. He was stuck inside. He wandered around the station, then returned to the hall by the side door, to check on the red car. Still there. “Nine o’clock tomorrow, that’ll be fun,” he said toward the window. “I’m not gonna be anywhere to be found. I’m not gonna sit with the families. I’m just gonna go in and testify and get out of there. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what did I do?”

  Jean appeared in the window, walking toward him across the parking lot, carrying a paper bag, his supper. He opened the door for her. She looked at his face, and said, “Are you crabby again?”

  “I’m in one of the worst moods of my life,” Tommy said in a cheerful-sounding voice. Then he looked serious. “I don’t mind doing what I have to do, but I don’t want to walk in front of Rick and his sisters and his mother. I feel like I’m putting a nail in his coffin.”

  “He put his own nails in,” said Jean.

  Tommy told her the news he’d heard. “Something may happen tonight. They literally had to mop up the floor where Rick was sitting after the hearing. His lawyer took him to his office for a sitdown.” He told her he was watching Rick’s car now. “I’m onto it like stink on sh—”

  “You get in this building and that word just comes out,” said Jean.

  “I don’t use it at home, though. Do I? You bet your ass I don’t.”

  Awhile later, two small children appeared at the door. When she spotted Sergeant O’Connor, the little girl did a hop and said, “Goody!”

  He was glad to see them, too. The little boy asked him, “Do you know our daddy?”

  “Yes, I do.” Tommy knew him very well. A brawler so tough it was impossible not to admire him, but with an unfortunate habit of smoking crack. Tommy had said of their father once, “Does he get violent on crack? Jesus Christ, he’s violent on oxygen.” He was in state prison now. Tommy had helped to put him there.

  “Have you seen him lately?” the little boy asked.

  “No,” said Tommy. Then he changed the subject. He thought the children might like to look at all the lost bicycles stored in the station’s basement.

  At some moment after nightfall the red Saab disappeared. Tommy was away from the window, and the next time he looked out the car was gone. Later, Rick called the station and spoke to another officer. Tommy didn’t get on the line, but he stood facing that other cop, mouthing these words emphatically: “Tell him to plead! Tell him to plead!”

  Old-fashioned Northampton woke up to bad news about one of its own. A Northampton police officer. Was going on trial in Superior Court. Today.

  A few hours later, Tommy walked across the courthouse parking lot, carrying his briefcase, and inside it the statement he’d written almost exactly a year ago. The morning was merely warm, but Tommy felt sweat trickling down his back under his white shirt. He had been dieting. His features looked sharper, but his skin looked scrubbed and pale against his gray court suit. He felt, not exactly weary, but as if he had rejoined a dream. Later, he remembered thinking that he would have to concentrate to get through this day. In his mind he gave himself directions. “You walk past the metal detector. Okay, now you go up the stairs.”

  Two flights lead up to Superior Court. The first lets out on District Court rooms, and the treads are well worn. The second flight is used a lot less often, and as he mounted it, the muffled hubbub of District Court receding, Tommy felt dizzy. At the top, he opened the door to murmurous voices. There was almost always a hush in the vestibule outside Superior Court. People standing there waiting for trials usually talked more softly and dressed better than on the floors below, in direct proportion to the stakes, always larger here. This was the topmo
st floor, the aerie of justice in Hampshire County. A couple of dozen people stood in clusters in the vestibule, a few reporters, the chief, some of Rick’s wife’s family. And there on the bench, among some of Rick’s sisters, sat Rick’s elderly mother. Tommy looked at her and he was a little boy. She was feeding him snacks, talking about her relatives, out on the porch overlooking Forbes Avenue.

  The thing to do was clear. He walked straight for her. Bending down, he said, “Mrs. Janacek! How are ya?”

  She smiled up at him. They chatted a bit about family. She said, “You’re in a tough spot.”

  “Oh, awful.” His voice was loud. He wore his game face.

  Tommy turned away and walked over to the chief. There was news. The lawyers had worked out a plea bargain. The judge had agreed to accept it. But Rick was holding out, apparently. In a moment Rick’s lawyer appeared from around a corner. He walked up to Tommy and said that Rick wanted to talk to him in private.

  Tommy turned to the prosecutor, Angier, who said, “Do what you can.”

  Tommy understood, and he felt surprised. The lawyers wanted to send him on a mission. They wanted him to talk Rick into pleading guilty. His first instinct was to utter his Explorer Scout’s response: Yes, sir. I’ll fix this right away. But then he paused: Should I? Do I want to be the one who finally persuades him not to fight? But every choice looked bad. A plea still seemed like the best of them. “Okay,” Tommy said.

  Rick sat alone in a little room just off the lobby. He was crying quietly when Tommy came in and closed the door. Tommy sat and talked with him for nearly half an hour. He said he didn’t think Rick was entirely to blame for what had happened, and that a lot of the other cops in the department thought Rick really didn’t know what had or hadn’t happened. He was trying to speak consolingly, in the spirit of childhood memories, thinking, “When you were a kid and did something wrong, it was easier to stomach it if your buddies knew it and didn’t think it was too bad. It’s not as big a thing in your mind anymore.” At the same time, he was thinking, “He might confess to me right now.” If Rick really was guilty, that would be best for everyone. There would be an end and after it maybe new beginnings. In a little while, Tommy moved his chair closer to Rick’s, and, reaching out, he touched Rick’s leg.

  The trick didn’t work this time. Maybe it couldn’t.

  So the other chore remained. In his mind Tommy wondered if he himself would plead out to these charges, if he was innocent. He believed he wouldn’t, not under any circumstances. But he knew another person might, given the alternative that Rick faced. If Rick refused to plead, he’d be tried, not just for sexual misconduct, but also for rape of a child. If he got convicted, he’d be sentenced to state prison for a long time. Tommy couldn’t imagine his old friend at a place like Walpole. Rick was too good a person to learn to live by its savage rules. And he’d be a pariah in jail, not only a convicted child molester but also a former cop. He wouldn’t survive. On top of that, if he went to trial, his daughter would have to testify against him and maybe grow up believing she’d destroyed her father’s life.

  But Tommy felt torn. All this past year he’d held on to the possibility that his old friend might be innocent. Since his talk with Angier two days ago, that hope had all but vanished. Rick could perhaps restore it now, but only if he did the self-destructive thing, and, in the face of terrible threats, insisted on a trial.

  Tommy had volunteered for the wrong thing. He hoped Rick would plead out and save himself and get this over with, and he hoped that Rick would not.

  He began to make his argument. “If there’s any possible way that something could have happened, you’ve gotta deal with it and get past this. I know you, Rick. You would not do well in state prison. I would not do well in state prison. Not in 1996. Inside those big walls at Walpole is a hell of a lot different than these walls up here at Hampshire County.”

  Rick cut him off. “I know that.”

  Rick said he’d already decided to accept the plea bargain. He’d wanted to talk to Tommy before he made the act official, but he wasn’t looking for advice. “I just wanted to laugh a little first,” Rick said.

  “You’re doin’ the right thing,” said Tommy.

  “Yeah, right,” said Rick. “I’m throwing my life away. I wish it wasn’t necessary.” Rick said he’d heard a song this morning—“Evil Woman.” He said it had made him think of his wife. She had forced this case to a false conclusion, Rick seemed to say, and left him no choice but to plead out and spare his child. Tommy wished he could believe that.

  He smiled at Rick. “I’ll come and visit ya.”

  Rick smiled at him. “Will you bring me a file?”

  Tommy had closeted himself with Rick at 9:05. At 9:27, the small crowd in the vestibule heard laughter coming through the heavy oak door to the little room. Eight minutes after that, Tommy emerged, his face flushed. He walked over to the chief and Angier, who stood together near the courtroom door. “He’s gonna plead. I got him to laugh. I should go on the circuit.”

  One of Rick’s sisters stood nearby. Tommy turned to her. “Rick said he wanted to laugh a little bit. He said, ‘That’s why I asked you in here.’ He had already made up his mind. I told him to do it. There’s no way around it. It’s over.”

  Chief Sienkiewicz lowered his brows, a wary look. “Until he gets on the stand and answers the judge’s questions …”

  Tommy stayed to watch. He’d planned to leave, but he was hoping for an end, and if he wasn’t there, whatever happened wouldn’t feel like one. He sat down in the gallery. He watched as Rick walked toward the witness box. He thought he saw a smile cross his lips. That was Rick. Still proud on the outside. He looked good, Tommy thought. Rick wore a blue blazer and he sat very erect in the witness chair. He faced the judge, his classical profile framed against the windows behind the judge’s bench.

  Tommy knew this courtroom well. He’d testified against dozens of people here, and he’d sat through many more plea bargains, watching cases he’d worked on come to their conclusions. The room seemed a shade darker than the ones in District Court, but maybe only because the cases were. The furnishings were modern, made of unpainted hardwood and severely geometrical, all right angles and parallel lines.

  The judge was questioning Rick. “So you understand that the recommendation, joint recommendation of both your attorney and Mr. Angier is a sentence of two and a half years in the house of correction with six months to serve, the balance suspended in favor of ten years probation with the condition that, number one, you are to have no contact either direct or indirect with your children unless specifically ordered by the Court and that, number two, you are to undergo whatever counseling or therapy probation may deem necessary. Do you understand that?” The judge might have been a pharmacist explaining a prescription.

  Tommy watched Rick’s face, framed up there against the windows. He saw it change. Rick’s face reddened. “Yes, I do.” Suddenly Rick’s voice cracked. His shoulders heaved.

  “He’s crying,” someone nearby in the gallery whispered.

  “It ain’t a good day for him,” Tommy murmured in reply. His voice had a mordant edge. He leaned forward over his knees and scraped that old football-injured thumbnail against his teeth, caught himself, then did it again.

  The judge’s voice resumed. Rick’s shoulders had stilled. Did Mr. Janacek understand that by pleading guilty he was giving up his chance of ever working as a police officer again, and that he was also surrendering many legal rights?

  The questions and answers went on and on, like a responsive reading of a sacred text, the judge asking the question, Rick answering, “Yes, sir.”

  Rick was taking an Alford plea. The judge briefly explained its provenance—“a famous U.S. Supreme Court case known as Alford versus North Carolina.” In his even voice Judge Ford described the gist of the Alford doctrine: “that a defendant who is charged with a crime may plead guilty to that crime even though he is unwilling or unable to acknowledge or to admi
t the facts which constitute the offense are true.” Plea bargains had long been the main vehicle of criminal justice in America. Alford made bargains more palatable for defendants. An Alford plea didn’t ask as much of a defendant’s conscience even as a plea of nolo contendere. A defendant pleading nolo simply chose not to dispute the charges. When the prosecutor and judge allowed an Alford plea, the defendant didn’t have to make even a tacit admission of guilt. Under the Alford doctrine, a defendant could plead guilty even while claiming to be innocent.

  Tommy knew what must have happened this morning. At the last moment, the prosecution had agreed that Rick could take this plea. In return Rick would have to do six months in the county jail. He had been offered no jail time at all, in exchange for simply pleading guilty to the lesser of the two charges. So he had chosen six months in jail in order not to have to come right out and say that he’d abused his daughter. Maybe he’d done that on principle, maybe out of pride. There was no way of knowing. Maybe Alford represented the best solution all around. But it didn’t clarify a thing. Watching in the gallery, Tommy thought, “This leaves everything right where it was.” At least the first act was over.

  The judge told Rick to leave the witness box. Angier, tall and solemn, took center stage and presented a brief précis of the state’s case, its case on the lesser charge. This was customary and, to Tommy, as familiar as Catholic mass. Angier spoke about Rick’s heavy drinking and the statements he had made to Tommy and the chief. Tommy listened with his head bowed, worrying his thumbnail again. When he looked up, the lead investigator, the female state trooper, was walking to the witness stand. Tommy exclaimed in a whisper, “She trained Rick!” The trooper began to describe her interview with Rick’s daughter, adding images to the words that Rick had asked Tommy to read many months ago. “I interviewed her in the backyard. We were sitting under a tree in the backyard.… She was very articulate, easy to talk to about general things, and she appeared to be somewhat guarded with respect to her father.… She indicated that she had to touch her father’s penis, and I asked her to show me how she did that. And she first used one finger and then two fingers in a motion similar to this.” The trooper lifted an index finger and drew it horizontally through the air. “Back and forth. I asked her where the touching happened, and she said it happened in the shower and in the big room, which is their living room. I asked if her dad ever touched her, and she said, yes, with his fingers. And I asked her how did that happen, how he did that, and she demonstrated using a stroking motion with one finger and then two fingers in the air.…”