A Good Killing

by Allison Leotta

  I drove to Lake Huron. The coach’s summer “cottage” was lit up like a stone and log palace on the edge of the water. He’d been living there ever since he and Wendy split up. She was living with their daughter in their house in town.

  “Here we are, Coach Fowler,” I said, pulling the car into the long driveway, past the thick stand of trees that hid the house from view. His right cheek was pressed flat against the window, which puckered his lips and made drool run down the side of his chin. I no longer had to hide the hate in my voice.

  “Welcome home, asshole.”

  46

  The first day of Jody’s trial dawned on a freezing February morning. The cold of Michigan in winter was inescapable. Anna drove the Yukon over icy roads to the courthouse, shivering although the heat was on full blast. The problem was that the windows were all open, and the icy air sliced through the interior of the truck. She glanced at Cooper, who sat in the passenger seat. His hand gripped the door handle so tightly it looked like he was trying to strangle it. “You okay?” Anna asked.

  He nodded. “I can do this.”

  It was too cold for him to ride his motorcycle, but he insisted on coming to Jody’s trial. With the windows open, the doors unlocked, and some deep breathing exercises, he might just make it through the car ride. Sweat beaded his forehead. He was ready to jump out at any moment. She understood the massive effort this cost him. She put a hand on his leg and hoped he would make it.

  The woman who faced life in prison sat in the backseat, cradling her round stomach and looking placidly out the window.

  The world was buried beneath a skein of white. Icicles hung from every building, reflecting the stark winter sun like rows of knives. Bare branches clawed against the pale gray sky. The world was silent except for the crunch of tires on salt.

  When they approached Holly Grove’s downtown, Anna could hear a low roar, like an ocean from far away. As they got closer, the noise resolved into the sound of a crowd: hundreds of voices shouting. And when they turned into the courthouse square, she had to brake.

  “Holy crap,” Jody said.

  The square was full of people. Shoulder to shoulder, packing the park in front of the courthouse and streaming in from the streets surrounding it. A smattering of protesters had come for the hearings and legal miscellanea that preceded the trial. But today, for opening statements, they were fully a mob. It was astounding, in this cold weather, that anyone had come out, much less a crowd that filled several city blocks. They were bundled in winter jackets, hats, snow boots, and scarves covering their mouths. Some huddled around barrels lit with fires. Half the people wore white Guy Fawkes masks over their faces. Clouds of breath rose from the mouth holes. They looked like a field of grinning, malevolent puppets.

  Many people spilled onto the icy streets, and Anna had to slow to avoid hitting them. Someone in the crowd recognized them and yelled, “Jody!”

  Soon, several people were chanting. “Jody! Jody! Jody!” They crowded near the car, not to obstruct, but to show their support. They held up their fists and signs in the air.

  Anna loved her sister. She would stand in the cold for her. That a crowd of strangers would do so was awing.

  Press vans were parked throughout the square. There were national outlets, not just the local stations. They wanted to talk to Jody. Luckily, Anna had been given permission to park in the structure beneath the courthouse during the trial. They took the elevator straight up into the courthouse.

  Inside the courtroom, they took their positions. They had discussed the setup beforehand. Anna and Jody sat at the table by themselves. The more alone and helpless Jody appeared to the jurors, the better. Cooper sat in the front row, behind them. Anna could consult with him or have him make phone calls if necessary. He was also there for the sisters’ safety. The courthouse had security, but Anna knew there were chinks in every system. Both she and Jody had gotten death threats.

  Jody wore minimal makeup: just enough to cover blemishes and bring out the pink in her cheeks. Anna wanted her looking fresh-faced and innocent. Jody’s hair was cut into a chin-length bob, which she wore neat and straight. It was attractive but not sexy. Female jurors did not like sexy. Plus, Jody was eight months pregnant. They decided to play up that fact instead of trying to hide it under shapeless clothes. Jody wore a dove-gray maternity dress with a pink ribbon tied in a bow over her belly, accentuating its roundness. She looked angelic, glowing with maternal energy, which was perfect.

  Anna and Desiree wore similar black pantsuits. Anna wore a pink blouse under hers, while Desiree wore blue. The women nodded at each other and unpacked their files. They moved in synchronicity, except that Anna’s hands shook as she straightened her papers. She’d handled plenty of trials, but never one with such personal stakes.

  Her phone buzzed with an incoming text:

  Good luck, sweetheart.

  It was from Jack. Her heart hiccuped. She lowered her phone and hoped Cooper hadn’t seen. She hadn’t heard from Jack in a few weeks. While she appreciated his good wishes, his use of the word sweetheart rankled. She wasn’t his sweetheart anymore. She texted back:

  Thanks.

  She powered off her phone. She looked at Cooper, surprised to realize how important he had become to her.

  At precisely nine o’clock, Judge Upperthwaite took the bench. His clerk, the stenographer, and a CSO took their places. The audience quieted before the judge said a word. He just had that effect. Anna guessed it had something to do with his flowing silver hair.

  “Are both parties ready to begin?” the judge asked. His voice was deep and grandfatherly. Anna and Desiree both stood and said, “Yes, Your Honor,” in stereo.

  The jury was led in. They sat down looking fresh, interested, and eager to hear the story. It was the first day of trial; they hadn’t yet experienced the interminable waits, the annoying objections, the long sidebars with the husher on. For the moment, they basked in the perceived honor of being selected to decide the biggest criminal trial Holly Grove had ever seen.

  They were six women and eight men, including two alternates. During jury selection, Anna had tried to avoid people who were fervent about Bulldog football. In this town, that was like trying to avoid people who enjoyed eating, drinking, and breathing. Months ago, she’d moved to transfer the trial to another venue, where jurors would be less personally tied to the team, but Judge Upperthwaite had greeted that motion with the same enthusiasm with which he’d greeted the one to recuse himself. So here they were.

  Juror number 3, a retired autoworker, was wearing a Bulldogs T-shirt. Anna swallowed back a bubble of nausea and made a mental note to find a way to get him stricken off the jury. Hopefully, he would admit to some prohibited conduct like googling the case.

  “The government may make its opening statement,” Judge Upperthwaite said.

  Anna rose a few inches from the chair before she remembered that she wasn’t “the government” in this case. She sat down quickly. As far as she could tell, only her sister noticed. Jody gave her a small smile.

  Desiree stood up and walked in front of the jury.

  “This is a case about jealousy,” the prosecutor said. “It’s about a woman who was in love with a man for most of her adult life. But he was married to someone else. And when he refused to leave his wife, this woman flew into a rage and bludgeoned him to death.”

  Here Desiree looked in Jody’s eyes and pointed right at her, demonstrating to the jury that she held the same conviction she would ask them to have. Ever since Presumed Innocent, any prosecutor with the slightest literary bent pointed at the defendant.

  Jody reacted as Anna had instructed her for this moment. She met Desiree’s eyes and shook her head. Jody wore an expression of perfect sadness and disbelief, as if she were still grieving the tragedy of the coach’s death and shocked to learn that anyone would think her responsible for it. In another life, Ann
a thought, Jody would’ve made a great actress.

  “The defendant killed Owen Fowler.” Desiree kept her finger pointed a couple sentences more, to prove that she was not convinced by Jody’s show. “She staged a car accident to cover it up. She hoped that she could fool the authorities, and fool you, into believing this was an accident. But it’s hard to commit the perfect crime, and this defendant is no criminal mastermind. She made mistakes. She left a trail of crumbs, if you will, from the site of the car crash all the way back to her own house. Let’s follow them.”

  First, Desiree talked about the coach: what a great guy he was. Anna listened carefully. If Desiree opened the door, talking too much about his good character, Anna might be able to rebut it with evidence of his serial pedophilia. As things stood now, the judge had prohibited such evidence from coming in. They were to stick to the facts relevant to the night of June 3, 2014, the night of the coach’s death. Desiree was smart. She described his job as a coach, his charity camp, and the fact that he was married for ten years with a daughter. Connecting the dots, the coach sounded like a good citizen and a reliable man, although the prosecutor never used the words good or reliable—and thus Anna would not be allowed to introduce evidence to rebut these concepts.

  “In the summer of 2004, the defendant attended Coach Fow­ler’s summer camp.”

  Desiree nodded to a paralegal who sat at her table. He tapped on the computer and a picture flashed up onto a large screen that hung on the wall across from the jury. It was a picture of Coach Fowler’s summer camp of 2004. All the kids stood smiling from the bleachers, with the coach and his assistants standing to the side of them. The paralegal enlarged the section where the coach stood. The jurors looked at the picture of him projected on the screen. He was handsome and clean-cut with a confident, friendly smile. He looked like an L.L.Bean model of what a coach should look like.

  The paralegal cut away from the coach and now highlighted Jody. She stood in the middle of a middle row, her blond hair tied in a ponytail, her fifteen-year-old face in profile. She was gazing at the coach, a dreamy look on her face. If a picture could tell a whole story, this picture told the story of a girl with her first flush of puppy love.

  “The defendant had a crush on Coach Fowler.”

  Anna considered objecting, but let it go. Objecting annoyed the jury. Plus, there was going to be plenty of evidence to show that Jody had an attachment to the coach.

  “You will hear that the defendant spent a lot of time talking to Coach Fowler at the sports camp. You will hear that she spent a good part of school dances not with her friends and peers, but standing with the coach, who was there in his role as a chaperone. You will hear that, during the 2004 Homecoming football game, the defendant got into a physical fight with the coach’s fiancée, Wendy Weiscowicz Fowler, during an argument the two women had about the coach. This was in full view of ten thousand people.” The juror in the Bulldogs T-shirt nodded. He had probably been there. “Imagine what she could do when no was watching.”

  “Objection.”

  “Sustained. Just the facts, Ms. Williams. Jurors, disregard the prosecutor’s last comment.”

  Juror number 3 folded his arms across his chest. He was definitely not disregarding the prosecutor’s last comment.

  “You will also hear that the defendant, in 2004, accused the coach of having sex with her in his car. You will see the police report she made. And you will see that she did not want to press charges. It is our position that she made this report to try to create friction between the coach and his wife shortly after they married, in order to break up the marriage.”

  “And you will hear,” Desiree continued, “that the defendant continued to be infatuated with Coach Fowler, long after he married his wife, Wendy.”

  Desiree called Jody “the defendant” deliberately. During the course of the trial, she would never purposely call her “Jody” or “Ms. Curtis.” This was Prosecutor 101. It was far easier for the jury to send “the defendant” to jail. The defendant was faceless and not really human. “Jody” was a woman who could be your friend or neighbor.

  “The defendant herself never married. And in the spring of 2014, the defendant began frequenting a bar that Coach Fowler was known to patronize. Several people saw her flirting aggressively with him on several occasions.

  “You will hear from the defendant herself, by way of a video­taped statement she made to Detective Rob Gargaron on June 4, 2014, the day after the coach was killed. She admitted that she had been seeing the coach romantically. She admitted that she took the coach to her home the night before. She admitted that she had sexual relations with him. Then she claimed that he drove away, happy and unhurt. She would like you to believe that the coach died in a car accident on the way home.

  “But you’ll hear that that was not true. The defendant’s next-door neighbor will tell you that she heard the sound of fighting coming from the defendant’s home sometime between two and four that morning. The police conducted a search warrant on her home later that day. Among other things, they found this.”

  Desiree held up the clear plastic evidence bag with the sock from behind Jody’s washing machine.

  “DNA tests confirm that the spots on this sock are blood, and that the blood is Coach Fowler’s.

  “You will hear from the coroner. He will testify that the car crash did not kill the coach. Coach Fowler had died hours before his car hit the stadium. He died of several blunt force injuries to his head—injuries that were inflicted with a sharp, square object, creating a pattern in his skull that could not have been caused merely by hitting the windshield.

  “Finally, you will hear from an automotive expert who will testify that cars generally do not explode upon impact. He will tell you that the burn pattern on the coach’s body is more consistent with being set on fire with gasoline than being burned in a car accident.

  “You will be here for many weeks. By the end of this case, you will know the evidence like the back of your hand. And then I will have a chance talk to you again, and I will ask you to return the only verdict consistent with that evidence, the only just verdict: that the defendant is guilty of murder in the first degree. Thank you.”

  Several of the jurors nodded at Desiree as she took her seat. When they turned to Anna, they narrowed their eyes. They had already decided they didn’t like her or what she represented. Her sister was in trouble.

  47

  Anna was shaking as she stood up. This happened, to some extent, before every opening statement. She knew if she could just power through the first few paragraphs, her adrenaline would dissipate, her heart rate would normalize, and she could speak to the jurors like they were just people. But she’d never been this shaky before.

  “Good morning,” Anna said. She paused and waited with a smile, until the jurors chorused back: “Good morning.”

  This was one of the few opportunities for interaction with the jury. The rest of the trial, Anna would be talking and presenting evidence. The jury would sit and listen. Only during this brief moment, at the beginning of the day, could there be an actual exchange of words. And this was the time they would be paying the most attention, so she spoke the most important words now.

  “Jody Curtis did not kill Coach Fowler. She loved him; whether or not that love was wise, you can decide. But she never hurt him. Jody Curtis sits before you an innocent woman.”

  Anna stood behind Jody and put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. This was the opposite of pointing and saying “the defendant.” Anna was telling the jury: I love this woman, and you should too. She is a good person. She means a lot to me. I am not scared of her. No one needs to be scared of her. Jody gazed up at her with a warm, sisterly smile. They’d practiced the move repeatedly, like actors preparing for a Broadway play, until it looked natural and unrehearsed.

  She gave Jody’s shoulder a pat and walked into the well of the court. “My nam
e is Anna Curtis. As you’ve heard, I have the honor and pleasure of being Jody’s lawyer as well as her older sister.

  “The prosecutor talked about knowing the evidence ‘like the back of your hand.’” Anna held hers up. “And we know what she means. You know your knuckles, the path your veins take very well. Similarly, the prosecutor thinks she knows this story quite well. But there’s always another side to a story, just as there is another side to your hand.”

  Anna flipped her hand over so the jury now saw her palm. “The fingerprints, the life lines, the parts studied by forensic analysts and fortune-tellers. You have to look at both sides of a hand to really know it, just as you have to learn both sides of a story before you can make a decision. And so I’m going to ask you, first and foremost, to keep an open mind. The prosecution gets to present their case first. You’ll hear all their evidence before I’m allowed to put on a word of mine. So listen, evaluate, but please: reserve judgment. As you listen to the government’s case, understand that you’re only seeing one side.

  “When we get to my sister’s turn, you’ll hear a very different story. You’ll hear that Owen Fowler was a man who was deep in debt. He had a gambling problem and was falling further and further behind in his losses. He took out hundreds of thousands of dollars in a home equity line of credit. And despite these loans, he owed money to many people.”

  Desiree raised an eyebrow. She had not heard this before. Defense obligations to turn over evidence were far less stringent than the prosecution’s.

  “In fact, you will hear that there were many people who had a reason to dislike or to hurt Coach Fowler. To want him dead.” Anna wanted to tell the jury about the other girls he had raped. But the judge had ruled that inadmissible unless the prosecution opened the door. She didn’t want to promise in her opening statement something that she couldn’t show them later on. And so she kept it vague.