The Girl From Home

by Adam Mitzner

  Jackie feels like she’s drowning. The sensation of not being able to breathe and being pulled under.

  “Can I have some water?” she asks.

  Mark leans over to fill a paper cup out of a small plastic pitcher sitting on the counsel table behind the podium. As he’s handing the cup to Jackie, the monitor comes alive.

  “Appearances,” the bald-headed man in the screen barks.

  “Assistant County Prosecutor Lydia Rodriguez, for the State of New Jersey,” replies the woman standing at the other podium.

  “Mark Gershien, Your Honor, of Gershien and Kennedy in Princeton.”

  “Good to see you in my courtroom again, Mr. Gershien,” the judge says with a smile. “Does your client care to enter a plea?”

  Mark nods at Jackie. “Go ahead,” he whispers.

  “Not guilty,” Jackie says, her voice only slightly louder than a whisper.

  “Very well. Ms. Rodriguez, this is the companion case, correct?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “What is the people’s position on bail?”

  The prosecutor smooths over her jacket. “As I stated in connection with Mr. Caine’s application, we request that Mrs. Williams also be held without bail. This crime is very serious—murder-for-hire. As I stated in the application involving Mr. Caine, the state’s evidence is very strong. Accordingly, we request that the court reach the same determination regarding Mrs. Williams that it did in connection with her co-conspirator, Mr. Caine, and deny bail.”

  “What say you, Mr. Gershien?” the judge asks.

  “I say that Mrs. Williams is a lifelong resident of this community, Your Honor. She also has two children who presently attend East Carlisle High School. Now, I don’t know how much you know about teenagers these days, Judge, but I’ve got one and I can tell you from hard-earned knowledge that it’s difficult enough to convince them to go with you to the movies, and there’s no way they’re going to give up their lives in East Carlisle and live on the lam in . . . I don’t know where Ms. Rodriguez thinks Mrs. Williams is going to flee to. And there’s also no way Mrs. Williams is going anywhere without her children. As any parent knows, being separated from your kids, that’s far worse than jail. So, we ask that the court impose a reasonable bail for someone of Mrs. Williams’s modest means—a woman who has just lost her husband, who was the only wage earner in the family.”

  “Mr. Gershien, that sounds a little like that old joke of the defense lawyer who asks for leniency for a child convicted of murdering his parents because the boy is now an orphan.”

  “Your Honor, it’s not a joke, it’s the reality of this situation. Mrs. Williams has not been convicted of anything, and she finds herself a single mother with two children who need their mother more than ever, now that their father has been taken from them. Imposition of a high bail is tantamount to denying bail. Bail should be set at an amount that is sufficient to ensure the defendant appears at trial. That can be accomplished here with a reasonable bail. In fact, that can be accomplished without any bail at all.”

  The prosecutor begins to speak, but Judge Turner talks over her. “I’m afraid it’s your turn to lose one, Ms. Rodriguez,” he says. “But don’t worry, I haven’t gone completely senile yet. I’m not letting a murder suspect go without bail.” He smiles for a moment and then rules. “Bail is set for Mrs. Williams at one million dollars. Bond or cash equivalent.”

  Judge Turner strikes his gavel, and the television screen goes dark again.

  “Is that it?” Jackie says.

  “That’s it,” Mark answers. “Between your house and your mother’s, we’ll be able to post the million dollars. I’ll get the paperwork together and you’ll be out in a few hours.”

  * * *

  Jackie is released three hours later. Alex and Mark are standing side by side, waiting for her to exit the prison.

  Mark gives her the good news first. “Your mother’s already arrived, and she picked up Robert and Emma from school.”

  “Thank you,” Jackie says. “So much.”

  She turns to Alex, silently asking him to tell her about Jonathan. He apparently understands the prompt.

  “Jonathan’s good,” Alex says. “He’s very concerned about you, so he’ll be very happy that you made bail. I’m going to tell him as soon as I leave you. I just wanted to be able to report that I saw you get out with my own eyes.”

  Jackie wonders whether Alex is playing her. Her ears ring with Mark’s warning that Jonathan is the greatest threat to her freedom. Maybe Alex was only telling her what she wanted to hear so she’d be lulled into a false sense of security that Jonathan was standing with her, when in reality he’d already decided to give her up to save himself.

  “Can I come with you to see him?” Jackie asks.

  Alex shakes his head. “Not this time, Jackie. I need to talk to him about defense stuff, and if you’re there I can’t do that because the conversation won’t be protected by the attorney-client privilege.”

  Jackie is not willing to take that as the final word. “I can wait and see him after you’re done, Alex.”

  Alex looks to Mark to support his position. “You can see him very soon,” Mark says, “but Alex is right that now is not the time for that. Until we know more about the state’s case, we don’t want to concede anything about your relationship with Jonathan. I know the prosecutor said they have evidence of the affair, but she may have been bluffing, or the evidence is open to interpretation. If you run over to visit him, we’re creating evidence that will later be used against both of you, and that’s the last thing we want to do. On top of that, your conversations with Jonathan from inside the prison will definitely be recorded, and we need to all strategize about what can and cannot be said before that happens.”

  Jackie is afraid of what Jonathan will think if she doesn’t see him. Will he imagine she’s abandoning him? What will he do if he thinks that?

  “Please,” she says.

  “I’ll tell Jonathan how important it was to you to see him,” Alex says. “And I’ll emphasize to him that it was my advice that you couldn’t. So he’ll know you wanted to come.”

  “Jackie,” Mark says, “let me drive you home. Your kids are waiting.”

  Jackie doesn’t want to leave Jonathan in jail, but she knows the lawyers are right. Of course, that doesn’t mean that she’s not worried. For Jonathan, and for what he might do to her.

  * * *

  There’s a gauntlet of press waiting outside the courthouse, but Mark escorts Jackie past them and shouts “no comment” in response to their pleas that she tell them whether she murdered her husband. Even standing beside her protector, Jackie finds the scene terrifying. Like she’s defenseless against the mob.

  “Will they be at my house, too?” she asks.

  “Probably,” Mark says.

  Mark drives a red Porsche convertible that seems out of character for him. Midlife crisis, Jackie assumes. At least he’s keeping the top up.

  “Where do you live?” he asks once they’re behind the closed doors of his car.

  “What?” she says, still listening to the reporters scream.

  “Where am I taking you?”

  “Oh. Redcoat Drive, off Bunker Hill, in the Revolution section of East Carlisle.”

  “I think I know where that is,” he says as he puts the car in gear.

  Not another word is said between them during the ten-minute drive from the police station until they pass the sign telling them that they’ve entered Revolution Oaks, at which time Mark breaks the silence.

  “Jackie, have you ever heard of a game called the prisoner’s dilemma?”

  It sounds vaguely familiar, but because she doesn’t know for sure what it is, she says, “No.”

  “It’s a logic game, part of game theory. It’s used by social scientists and mathematicians to assess how people will react in a given situation. It goes something like this: Assume there are these two prisoners. Let’s call them Blue and Red. The police
offer each one the same deal—if they turn against the other one, the turncoat goes free, but the other one gets five years in jail. If they both take the deal—each turning against the other—then they each get two years. Oh, and this is important, both Red and Blue believe that if they both stay quiet, they’ll both go free, because there’s not enough evidence to convict either of them without one of them betraying the other. With me so far?”

  “All except that they’re called Blue and Red and not Jonathan and Jackie,” she says.

  “Yeah, that’s where I’m going here, obviously. Now, from a purely rational perspective, both prisoners know that if they both keep quiet, that’s going to be the best outcome—neither goes to jail. But if Red believes that Blue won’t turn, then Red gets the same outcome, whether or not she turns. That means that if Red acts purely in her own best interest, Red should turn on Blue. That way, Red gets no jail if Blue is quiet and only two years, not five, if Blue betrays her.”

  “Can you get to the point, Mark, without the colors of the rainbow?”

  “Certainly. What I’m saying is that you and Jonathan are in a prisoner’s dilemma. If you are confident that he won’t turn on you, I might say that it makes sense for you not to turn on him because that’s the best outcome for both of you as a group. Understand, though, unlike in the prisoner’s dilemma, there is no guarantee in your case that, if you both stay quiet, you both go free. Our reality is quite the opposite. You both could end up doing life in prison. That really ratchets up the stakes here. Let’s put all that aside, though. My point is that even if the best result for you and Jonathan together is to keep quiet, he’s still going to go through the calculation for himself, and he’s going to conclude just what I told you—that it’s in his individual best interest to turn on you.”

  Jackie hopes she’s hiding that her faith in Jonathan is slipping. She wishes she was firmer in her belief that Jonathan will stand with her to the end, but the truth is that she’s not. She has no idea what’s going through his mind.

  “I’m going to mix metaphors for a moment,” Mark says. “You know that joke about the bear and the hikers?”

  “No,” Jackie says.

  “Well, these two hikers are awakened by a grizzly bear outside their tent. And one of them starts to lace up his sneakers. The other one says, “Are you crazy, you can’t outrun a grizzly bear,” and then the sneakered hiker says, “I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you.”

  Mark takes his eyes off the road to see Jackie’s reaction to the joke. She smiles, weakly conveying that she understands the punch line was not meant to be humorous as much as cautionary.

  “It’s up here,” Jackie says. “You need to make a right at the next street, and then I’m the third house on the left.”

  Mark nods, and as the Porsche approaches the turn, he says, “So both stories really are about the same thing. Do you trust Jonathan that he’s not going to sell you out? Because if you don’t, then you have to think about beating him to the punch. And when you consider how firm Jonathan is going to be, you need to factor in that he’s in jail now, and he’s wondering how much he can trust you not to turn on him.”

  The Porsche turns onto Redcoat, and Jackie sees what she’s feared. A row of news vans camped out on the street in front of the gate to her home. A few parked cars surround them. Rubberneckers. Her neighbors coming to see her disgrace up close and personal.

  “Same as before,” Mark says. “You walk right by them. You don’t even need to say ‘no comment.’ Just look straight ahead. Keep your front door in your sights and walk straight toward it. Don’t run. They may be filming and you don’t want to look scared. You want to look calm.”

  Calm is the last thing Jackie is at the moment. Nonetheless she nods, psyching herself up to make the short walk to her front door as if it’s an Olympic event.

  39

  After the arraignment, Jonathan is transported by a small van with metal grating on the window to the detention center in New Carlisle. One of the other prisoners, a guy who has done this drill before, explains that when they think you’re going to stay for a while, they move you to New Carlisle.

  At the New Carlisle jail, Jonathan is relieved of his designer clothing and given a gray canvas prison jumper. He’s also introduced to his cell mate—a large man who calls himself Rino—who is still bloodied from the drunken brawl that landed him in prison.

  Four hours into his incarceration, Jonathan hears one of the guards shout out “Caine,” followed a moment later by “Visitor.”

  Jonathan exhales deeply, careful not to smile. No one he’s encountered so far has smiled.

  “Who is it?” Jonathan asks.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care,” the guard says. “Hands behind your back.”

  * * *

  Alex Miller is sitting at a small wooden table in the middle of an otherwise empty room. There are six other tables there, but apparently no one else has a visitor right now.

  The guard unlocks the handcuffs and allows Jonathan to enter the room unescorted. Before shaking hands with Alex, Jonathan looks behind him to the door to determine whether such contact is permitted. The guard has stepped outside the room, however. With no one to object, Jonathan extends his hand.

  “How you doing?” Alex says.

  “I feel like I should offer some type of sarcastic quip about the lack of concierge service, but I don’t have the strength.”

  “Understood. So let me tell you what’s happening. Jackie got bail, and she’s out. Different circumstances. She’s got kids, she’s a lifetime resident, and she’s not the target of a second criminal investigation. She said she wanted to visit you, but Mark and I thought that was inadvisable. There’s no privilege between you, which means that the prison can record your conversations, and Mark also made the good point that we might want to deny you two have the kind of relationship that would cause her even to want to visit you in prison.”

  Jonathan shakes his head in disagreement. He wishes that Jackie had visited, so he could gauge her level of anxiety, calm her down, and hopefully stop her from turning on him. But he’s got no say in the matter now. He’s locked up, and others are making these decisions.

  “I do have some good news, though,” Alex says. “Right before I came to see you, I got a call from the prosecutor who was in court today. She’s pretty junior, so I don’t think she has any authority, but she told me that she’d spoken to her boss, and they’re willing to be very generous with you because they figure that it’s got to be Jackie who set everything in motion. Now, for all I know, Rodriguez had the exact same discussion with Mark Gershien in which she put the blame on you. But the truth of the matter is that I think now is your best—maybe also your last—chance to get out from under this. With any luck, I might even be able to roll the securities-fraud thing into any deal we make on the murder.”

  None of this surprises Jonathan. The Jersey folks just want someone to pin the murder on—they don’t care who, and even Jonathan’s rudimentary knowledge of the workings of the criminal justice system includes the understanding that murder trumps a white-collar charge.

  “And what if I went to trial? What are my chances of an acquittal?”

  Alex pauses, reflecting on this most important question. Then he shrugs.

  “Like I said before, my guess—but it’s only a guess—is that they don’t have much beyond what this Kishon guy has to say. Now, they more than likely have the affair—the prosecutor said in court that they did—so that gives you motive, but Kishon must not be able to identify either of you as his patron. So, at trial, you and Jackie could point at each other, hoping that the jury has reasonable doubt as to which one of you hired the hit man. That’s a risky strategy because a jury could conclude you were in it together and convict you both, but I’ve seen it work. Another way to go is to put Rick Williams on trial. An asshole like him must have pissed off tons of people. That creates a lot of reasonable doubt.

  “But,” Alex say
s with emphasis, “and this is the wild card, the only chance you have of beating this is if Jackie keeps her mouth shut. And that you can assess better than I can. But I’ll tell you this: I sure as hell wouldn’t trust the Jacqueline Lawson I knew in high school to do the right thing.”

  “She’s probably thinking the same thing about Wall Streeter Jonathan Caine,” Jonathan says. “Can’t trust that guy.”

  “That only proves my point, Jonathan. These deals are first come, first served. I saw Jackie when she got out. She looked scared to death. And people scared to death . . . You don’t have children, Jonathan, but I do, and so I’m going to tell you, people with kids will do anything to stay with their kids.”

  “I’m pretty fucking scared, too, Alex. And I didn’t kill Rick—she did. She told me so.”

  There, he’d said it. Alex Miller now needed to know. Jonathan was innocent and Jackie was guilty.

  Alex doesn’t look the least bit fazed by Jonathan’s charge. Jonathan wonders whether that’s because he’d already figured it out, or because he didn’t necessarily believe it was true.

  “In that case . . . you should definitely think very hard about cooperating against her. At least you’d be telling the truth.”

  Jonathan considers what life would be like for him if he throws Jackie under the bus. She’d go to jail, and he’d be alone. Not exactly the happy ending he was hoping for.

  “I can’t do that, Alex. I just can’t. I know you think it’s too soon, that I’ve only known Jackie a short time, but I’m in love with her. The only future I can see for myself is one in which I’m with her.”

  Alex doesn’t say anything in response. Jonathan has the feeling that Alex’s silence is driven by the fact that he thinks his client has lost his mind. What grown-up falls hopelessly in love in a month? And with a murderer, to boot?

  “Jonathan . . . I’m a believer that like a therapist, a defense lawyer shouldn’t share anything of his own life with his client,” Alex says slowly, as if he’s still unsure whether he should be disclosing anything of his own life, “but since we know each other from way back, I’m going to break that rule with you. A few years ago, I thought I had it all. I was a partner at Cromwell Altman, pulling down a million a year. Fancy apartment, designer suits, the whole nine yards. And I won’t bore you with the psychobabble that’s been thrown at me since then, but I became involved with an associate at the firm. I didn’t know her very long, but I imagine it was something like what’s going on between you and Jackie. I felt alive for the first time in years. I was blind, and now I could see. Rebirth. Whatever crazy metaphor you want, that’s how bad I had it. Being with her was all that mattered. Sound familiar?”