by Rose Connors
“I don’t even cook.”
“Enough, Ms. Nickerson.”
Judge Leon Long doesn’t fool me. He’s on the verge of laughing too.
“Mr. Ed-gar-ton,” he says, so softly it’s almost a whisper. “Sit down, sir.”
Stanley returns to his table and rights his chair. He shakes his head and mutters a barely audible “you people” before he sits.
Silence. For a moment, it seems no one knows what to do next. Even the cameras are still. Finally Judge Long breaks the quiet. “Mr. Ed-gar-ton the Third,” he says, “call your first witness.”
Chapter 16
“Our first witness is Chief Fitzpatrick, Your Honor, of the Chatham Police Department.” Stanley looks uneasy. He glances quickly around the room, then stares at the floor as if he just dropped something precious.
“Bring him in, then.”
“I can’t, Your Honor.”
“You can’t?”
“He’s not here.”
“He’s not here?” The judge glares at Stanley. “He’s not in the building?”
“He’s not in the building.”
Harry leans in front of Buck. “Is there an echo in this room?”
“Your lead-off witness in this first-degree murder trial is not here, Mr. Ed-gar-ton the Third?” Judge Long looks as if he thinks Stanley might be joking. One look at Stanley tells me he’s not.
“I didn’t think we’d need him today, Your Honor. I never dreamed we’d finish both jury selection and opening statements before the end of the first day.”
“You never dreamed?” The judge’s eyes are protruding. “You never dreamed?”
Stanley isn’t dreaming now, either; he’s having a nightmare.
Once again, I cover my mouth and swallow a laugh. Once again, Buck Hammond looks confused. I don’t dare look at Harry.
Stanley’s assumption wasn’t unreasonable. We didn’t begin the afternoon session until after two, and Judge Long always adjourns promptly at four, reserving the last hour of his courtroom day for pending cases. Of course Stanley didn’t think he’d need a witness today.
He did his part. He talked at the jurors for a full hour, and apparently assumed I’d do likewise. But my aborted opening took just twenty minutes, even with Stanley’s tiresome objections. We have forty minutes of trial time left, and Judge Leon Long doesn’t waste trial time. “It’s the taxpayers’ nickel,” he always says. “It’s not ours to squander.”
Stanley’s expression brightens, and he raises an index finger in the air. “Perhaps the defense could call one of its witnesses, Your Honor. Several of the defense witnesses are here in the courtroom. We can take one out of order.” Stanley looks from the judge to me, pleased with his proposal, happy to have solved the problem.
Harry jumps up like a man who’s just heard gunfire. “No way, Judge.”
Judge Long laughs and removes his half glasses, leaning forward on the bench. “Mr. Madigan, how well do you know Mr. Ed-gar-ton the Third?”
Harry doesn’t miss a beat. “We’re pretty close, Judge. He’s Mr. Third to me.”
The jurors chuckle yet again, and Stanley reddens. The judge continues to address Harry. “Then you must know he’s joking. He can’t possibly mean what he just said.”
Harry sits, but he’s perched on the edge of the chair, neck muscles taut and fists on the table. He’s ready to shoot up again in an instant. The seasoned defense lawyer’s instincts, I realize, are fueled by adrenaline. I don’t know that I’ll ever acquire them.
Judge Leon Long turns back to Stanley. “Mr. Ed-gar-ton the Third,” he says, chin down, half glasses back on the edge of his nose, “surely you don’t mean to suggest that Mr. Hammond should begin defending himself before the Commonwealth has offered a shred of evidence against him.”
“Well, Your Honor…” Stanley gestures toward the TV as if it’s his star witness, and it’s already testified.
Harry stands again, but says nothing.
The judge’s composure is slipping. He takes a red bandanna from the pocket of his robe and mops his brow. “Mr. Ed-gar-ton the Third, opening statement is not evidence. Were you not listening when I instructed the jurors?”
The blue vein erupts across Stanley’s forehead. He lifts his hands in the air, palms up, helpless. He’s out of ideas. The crowd in the gallery grows noisy. The judge is about to lose it.
“Chief Thomas Fitzpatrick is here, Your Honor. He’s ready to be sworn in.”
Judge Long bolts upright. Everyone else in the courtroom wheels around. It’s Geraldine, with the Chief in full uniform at her side, hurrying up the center aisle.
J. Stanley Edgarton the Third looks like a man newly delivered from the fires of hell.
Harry leans down toward Buck and me. “She saved his sorry ass.”
“What’s that, Mr. Madigan?” the judge asks.
“He got here awfully fast, Your Honor, awfully fast.” Harry gives the judge a meaningful nod, as if he’s genuinely impressed with the Chief’s velocity.
Geraldine whispers to Stanley, then takes a seat beside him as Tommy Fitzpatrick strides to the front of the room. An ordinary witness might be rattled by this abrupt call to the stand, but not Tommy. He has participated in more trials than most lawyers. He’s composed and confident. And he’s the consummate straight shooter.
Wanda Morgan, the courtroom clerk, approaches the witness box and holds a Bible in front of the Chief. He smiles at her, sets his hat on the box’s railing, then stands at attention. He puts his left hand on the Good Book, raises his right in the air.
“Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give in this court will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do.”
“You may be seated,” Judge Long tells him.
The Chief settles into the witness box, hat on his lap, and faces the jurors.
Stanley is up. “Would you state your full name for the record, please.”
“Thomas Francis Fitzpatrick.”
“And your occupation?”
“Chief of Police, Chatham, Massachusetts.”
“Were you on duty in that capacity during the early-morning hours of September twenty-first?”
Stanley isn’t wasting time with preliminaries. There’s little more than half an hour left in the trial day. He wants to end day one with Tommy Fitzpatrick’s most damning testimony. Let those words echo in the jurors’ minds throughout the night.
“I was,” the Chief says.
“Tell us, if you would, sir, where you were at approximately four o’clock that morning.”
“At the Chatham Municipal Airport.”
“Were you alone at the airport, sir?”
“I was not.”
“Who was with you?”
“A half dozen of my own officers and four from the state barracks; two more from a neighboring town, canine handlers.”
“Anyone else?”
“Just the press. I’m not sure how many reporters and photographers were there.”
“More than ten?”
“Yes.”
“More than twenty?”
The Chief shakes his head. “Probably not.”
“Why was it, sir, that so many law enforcement officers converged on the Chatham Municipal Airport that morning?”
“We were there to receive Hector Monteros. He was coming in on a military chopper. He’d been picked up at the North Carolina border just before midnight. Federal authorities were escorting him back to Chatham at our request.”
“And why did you make that request, sir?”
Stanley pivots and looks at me. He wants to be sure I realize he’s raising the issue first-diffusing, to some extent, the impact of this testimony.
“Hector Monteros was the chief suspect in the disappearance of Billy Hammond, a seven-year-old boy from South Chatham.”
“The boy was the son of the defendant, is that correct, sir?”
The Chief looks across
the room at Buck before he answers. There is, I think, genuine sympathy in his eyes.
“Yes.”
“And you wanted Monteros for questioning?”
“Well, yes, and initially, we were hoping he’d lead us to the boy-or, at least, to his remains.”
Again, a sympathetic glance in Buck’s direction.
“Did you ever get a chance to question Hector Monteros, sir?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He was shot as soon as he deplaned. He died on the runway.”
“Who shot him?”
The Chief looks toward Buck, not unkindly. “Mr. Hammond.”
“Are you certain?”
He nods. “Yes.”
Stanley pauses to make eye contact with the jurors. They’re with him.
“Were you aware, sir, prior to the shooting, that the defendant was present at the airport that morning?”
“No.”
“He was hiding, then.”
The Chief says nothing.
“Was he hiding, sir?”
“I didn’t know he was there.”
That’s Tommy Fitzpatrick. Just the facts.
“What happened, sir, after Mr. Hammond murdered Mr. Monteros?”
I’m up. “Your Honor…”
“Sustained. Mr. Ed-gar-ton the Third, you know better.”
Stanley offers the judge an apologetic smile. “A slip of the tongue, Your Honor.”
The judge glares at him.
“What happened, Chief Fitzpatrick, after Mr. Hammond shot Mr. Monteros?”
“We cornered him. Some of the officers tried to help Monteros, but four of us backed Mr. Hammond up against the hangar with our weapons drawn, to prevent him from fleeing the scene.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t necessary. Mr. Hammond wasn’t going anywhere.”
“What did he do?”
“He bent down, laid his rifle on the tarmac, then stood up straight and put his hands in the air.”
“What happened next?” Stanley walks closer to the jury box, moving in for the kill.
“One of my men seized the weapon. Another cuffed him. He didn’t resist. I read him his rights.”
“Did he tell you he understood his rights, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Did he seem at all disoriented?”
“No.”
“Did he seem to understand what was going on?”
“Yes.”
“Did he seem to know where he was?”
“Yes.”
“Did he seem to know who you were?”
“Yes.”
Stanley pauses and stares at the panel again. He wants them to understand that these one-word responses are important. He’ll ask them to recall these answers at the end of the trial, when they evaluate our defense in general, our temporary insanity claim in particular.
“Did the defendant seem to understand why you were placing him under arrest?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say anything to you, sir, after you read him his rights?”
Again, the Chief looks at Buck before answering. “Yes.”
Stanley clasps his hands together and rests his chin on them, facing the jurors. “What did he say?”
The Chief takes a deep breath and stares at the hat in his lap. “Well, first he jutted his chin out toward Mr. Monteros’s body.”
“And he said?”
The Chief raises his eyes from the hat and looks at the panel. “‘I wish he’d get up, so I could kill him again.’”
Chapter 17
An armed matron leads Sonia Baker into the small cubicle facing mine. The guard cups Sonia’s elbow with one hand and rests the other on her weapon, as if she fears her prisoner might make a break for it. It’s pretty clear to me that the matron has nothing to worry about; Sonia looks like she’s sleepwalking. Her orange jumpsuit is twisted and wrinkled. It looks damp. She presses her cast against her stomach as she sits.
The matron waits until Sonia’s settled, then hands her the telephone, nods at me through the glass, and leaves us without a word.
Sonia rubs one hand across her eyes. “I took a nap,” she says into the receiver.
It must have been a long one. She looks drugged. Her lips are better, though, not so swollen. Her right eye has gone down some too, and it’s beginning to open.
“This won’t take long, Sonia. I just want you to be prepared for tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Dr. Nelson will be here first thing.”
“Who’s he?”
“She. Prudence Nelson. She’s a forensic psychiatrist, a specialist in domestic violence.”
“A lady shrink?”
“That’s right.” Prudence Nelson has been called worse.
Sonia shakes her head and frowns. “You think I’m nuts.”
“No. I don’t.”
“Then you think I killed Howard.”
“I don’t think that either. You say you didn’t. And I believe you.” Sonia doesn’t believe me, though. She stares at the cinder-block wall behind me and shakes her head again. “Then why the shrink?”
Time for my “this is war” speech. Sonia Baker isn’t going to like what I have to say. And she might not like me after I say it. Too bad.
“Because you’re charged with first-degree murder, that’s why. Because a person charged with first-degree murder doesn’t have the luxury of tossing a viable defense out the window-even if she doesn’t like the sound of it, even if it wounds her pride.”
Sonia avoids looking at me. Her eyes roam around the room, then settle on the small, empty counter in front of her. She sets her jaw.
“Because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts intends to convict you of first-degree murder. And sometimes the Commonwealth convicts innocent people. Not on purpose. But it happens. Trust me. I know.”
Sonia’s lips part, but she says nothing. Her eyes stay fixed on the counter.
“Because in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, women convicted of first-degree murder-guilty or not-go to MCI Framing ham, a place that makes this joint look like a spa. And they don’t leave. Ever.”
Now Sonia lowers her eyes to her lap. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. I get it.”
I wait until she raises her head, but she still doesn’t look at me. She stares at the wall again.
“I hope you do. You need to cooperate with Dr. Nelson tomorrow morning. Tell her everything.”
“Everything about Howard?”
“About Howard. About you. And about anything else she brings up. She can’t help us if you don’t.”
Sonia nods, but says nothing.
“Howard’s life is over, Sonia. There’s nothing you can do about that. But if you don’t come clean about him, yours may as well be over too.”
She runs a hand through her bleached hair, then tilts her head back and studies the ceiling.
“Maggie needs you. She needs you more than Howard Davis ever did.”
She closes her eyes, head still tilted, and takes a deep breath. “How is she? Maggie. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. But she won’t be, down the road, if you don’t beat this charge. And tomorrow’s assessment is step one. Take it seriously. It matters.”
Finally, Sonia tears her eyes from the ceiling and looks at me. “What is it? The battered woman thing-what’s it all about?”
The million-dollar question.
“It’s a syndrome-described by the experts as a subclass of post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s not classified as an illness; it’s not even a diagnosis. It’s a pattern of emotions and behaviors common among women who’ve been battered by their partners.”
“Like what?”
“Depression. Shame. Self-reproach. Repeatedly leaving-and then going back to-the abuse. The medical community sums it all up as ‘learned helplessness.’”
Sonia’s gaze returns to the ceiling. “So what? Why does any of that matter?”
“
It goes to intent. A woman in the throes of the syndrome lives in constant dread of imminent aggression.”
Sonia looks at me, raises her eyebrows. “Translation?”
“She knows she might get hurt-badly-any minute of the day, every day.”
Sonia nods.
“The battered woman has a heightened perception of threat. She’s on constant alert. Expert testimony on that issue can bolster a self-defense claim.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“There have been cases where the women didn’t remember.”
“Didn’t remember what?”
“Killing their abusers.”
Sonia stares at me, mouth open.
“I’m not kidding. The psychiatrists call it ‘dissociative amnesia.’ The woman does in her batterer-in one case, she bludgeoned him with a baseball bat-then doesn’t remember anything about it.”
Sonia knits her eyebrows and shakes her head, slowly. She doesn’t buy it. “I’ve never hurt anyone,” she says. “Not on purpose.” Her voice is little more than a whisper. “If I killed somebody-anybody-it wouldn’t slip my mind.”
She falls silent, still staring at me. Her expression says I’m the one who needs a shrink. Our dissociative amnesia discussion is over.
“Okay, Sonia. But I want you to understand the syndrome. So you’ll know the kind of information you need to share with Dr. Nelson.”
She shrugs.
“The experts all agree it’s cyclical. The cycle has three stages. The initial stage is mostly verbal, a lot of yelling. There’s some physical abuse too, but it’s minor.”
“People fight,” she says. “What’s the big deal?”
“In stage two, the verbal abuse escalates. The yelling gets louder, more threatening. Then there’s a single explosion. The woman gets physically beaten up-once.”
Sonia nods, says nothing.
“That’s followed by a respite, a break. No abuse at all. Until stage three.”
She lowers her eyes to her lap again.
“Stage three is essentially a repetition of the first two stages-on fast-forward. The time between beatings gets shorter and shorter.”
For a full minute, the telephone line between us is quiet. Sonia takes a deep breath and looks up at me. “Okay,” she says. “I get it.”
“You should know,” I tell her, “that the law doesn’t recognize a woman as battered unless she’s gone through the complete cycle-all three stages, and with the same man-at least twice.”
