Chapter 47 – White Flags
Thursday morning June 12, 2008 – 11:45 AM
“Are you OK Frank? Are you OK?” came the muffled calling, like a tender lullaby being sung in a foreign language…and as the words drifted through Newlan’s ears, he shook off his malaise while at the same time he desperately attempted to clear out the cobwebs from his scrambled mind.
Newlan had nearly fainted right then and there in the juror deliberation room; right then in plain sight of his fellow jurors; right there in his deliberation room chair; slumped over in a position which wasn’t all that much different than the one the deceased Fred Miller maintained in his car seat when he was found shot to death staring up at the crumbling ceiling of the Newton garage.
And although Newlan never quite lost consciousness, he was sure that in the wink of an eye he had embarked on a nonstop flight to Hell and back again. And he was sure that what he saw down there in Hades was a sign of the coming apocalypse. He was sure that what he saw down there in the bottomless pit was as real as the nose on his face…and now it was all was all coming back to him; the split second of eye-contact with the defendant John Breslin; the hopelessly frightening declarations that they somehow communicated back and forth to each other; the memories of bad dreams, past and present, jogged loose as if someone had taken a brick to his head.
It was also becoming crystal clear to every one of the jurors who were huddled around Newlan that the trial was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, taking its toll on him. It seemed that as much as he tried to fight off his angst and convince himself that he could handle it, the more his fragile emotional makeup got the better of him. But alas, Newlan was a stubborn son of a gun, and so regardless of how badly he was hurting inside, he was determined not to be perceived as a wimp in front of his associates. And so once again he summonsed up every ounce of energy he could muster in an attempt to snap himself out of his funk. And so once again he gamely fought off his dread. And so once again he unwaveringly reminded himself, “If an old lady can deal with this, then so can I.”
“Are you OK Frank? Are you OK?” asked the voice for a second time as Newlan’s vision drifted in and out of focus.
“Where are those words coming from?” wondered a puzzled Newlan as he swiveled his head from side to side until finally his eyes locked in on Yong, the pretty Korean juror who was seated to the left of him in the deliberation room.
“Oh don’t mind me…I’m fine. Just a little tired is all,” replied Newlan, albeit rather unconvincingly.
“Are you sure? You looked like you were about to pass out,” added Mark, the tall gangly high tech employee who was seated to Newlan’s right.
“No, no, I’m fine. Just resting my head for a few minutes,” reassured Newlan. And now that he had been somewhat awakened by Yong’s lilting chant, he rounded up the invisible troops who watched over his soul in a conscious effort to assist him in the task of expelling the demons that had temporarily overtaken his heart. Now that he was no longer witnessing horrible visions dancing around in the back of his head, he opened up his eyes as wide as he could and let in the illuminating light of day. Now that he had at least partially recovered from his latest panic attack, he mustered up a concerted effort to focus his energies back on the trial.
“Did anyone else notice that Breslin was finally beginning to show a bit of emotion when Tracy spoke of her mother’s death?” wondered a suddenly articulate Newlan with a tint of solace in his tone; his hope was that maybe a few of the other jurors saw the same glimpse of humanity in the stone-faced defendant that he did.
Amazingly enough, even after the apparent telepathic communiqué between Breslin and Newlan, even after Breslin’s ominous prediction that he was next, even after the spine-tingling presage which kicked off visions of Armageddon in Newlan’s brain, he still wasn’t ready to desert the impassive defendant in his time of need. But unfortunately for him, his colleagues didn’t share in his blind faith.
“I wouldn’t believe anything that schmuck says or does,” scoffed the wheelchair-bound Dan.
“Even if he did tear up, he was probably faking it,” added a skeptical Jane, and just like that Newlan’s blood had instantly been heated back up to a full boil; just like that he was utterly riled up again; just like that he shot back an exasperated response to all comers; “oh please, gimme a break, you can’t fake something like that. Why can’t we give this guy a chance? The DA still hasn’t produced a single shred of evidence against him yet.”
“Yeah but the operative word is ‘yet’,” sarcastically replied Dan, and with the gauntlet thrown down, Newlan felt as if his entire body was about erupt in an angry explosion like a gasoline-soaked keg of gunpowder that had been left out in the sun too long. But then he imagined 15 sets of burning eyes staring a hole into his brain…and he backed down.
“You know what…I apologize. Really, no matter what everyone’s opinions are, we shouldn’t even be discussing the trial, so that’s my bad,” acknowledged a contrite Newlan as his paranoia reared its ugly head. The reality of the situation was such that whether his colleagues were actually eyeballing him or not was totally irrelevant; he was absolutely convince that they were fixated on him as one, and his perception was all that truly mattered to him at the moment.
Newlan lowered his head and pretended to be skimming though one of his Rolling Stone magazines, but in his mind his thoughts were racing around the track of his skull at speeds approaching two hundred miles per hour.
“Breslin might as well pack it in. He’s never gonna see the light of day if this lynch mob has any say in the matter,” surmised Newlan. However, before any further tension had a chance of developing between himself and his fellow jurors, Billy popped his head back into the room and announced; “line up and be ready to go in 5 minutes.”
In response to Billy command, the jurors promptly rose up, on cue, and as if by rote they found their place in line, based on their jury box seat number. But regardless of their efficiency, the routine was already wearing quite thin on Newlan, and he whispered as much to Natalie and Pam who were positioned on either side of him in the middle of the convoy.
Pam, the free-lance web designer, had been beset by her own thorny bushel of issues with regards to the seating arrangements, and the stress which was beginning to take shape on her face told her story far better than words could ever do. She had been bestowed with the unlucky destiny of being placed in seat number 9, and so even though she stood directly behind Newlan, dead center in the dreary deliberation room line-up, her swivel chair was actually located in the first seat of the first row of the jury box, no more than an arms-length away from the divisively divided, partisan audience.
As Newlan moved into position, Pam’s intolerable situation wasn’t lost on him either, not by a long-shot. And intrinsically, whenever the jurors were instructed to form their conga line from hell, he would silently mutter his praise to the keeper of the fates; “Thank God I didn’t get assigned that seat.”
It was bad enough to have been unceremoniously thrust onto the jury, but Newlan couldn’t even begin to imagine the stress of being placed a stones-throw away from the friends and family of the victim and the defendant, where they could watch your every move.
“Yes, the routine, amongst other things, is getting to me too,” agreed Pam, who seemed to be reading Newlan’s mind.
“Well I’m glad I’m not the only one. As a matter of fact, I think I might be coming down with a bad case of cabin fever from being cooped up in this damned courthouse all day, especially since the weather outside’s been so gorgeous lately,” cheerfully groused Newlan in an attempt to lighten the mood with his gallows humor observation.
“I’ve taken to drawing outlines of the witnesses. It helps keep me sane,” confided Pam as she displayed a sampling of the caricatures which littered her notepad, exclusively for Newlan’s viewing pleasure.
Newlan always admired people who possessed cr
eative abilities; whether it was of an artistic nature, or music, or creative writing, somewhere over the years, he had developed a penchant for anything that compelled him to get in touch with his inner-self, and so Pam’s etchings momentarily inspired him.
“Wow, did you guys see this? We have an artist in our midst!” blurted out Newlan, much to Pam’s dismay.
Of course, as is the case with most creatively-insecure souls, Pam truly did desire that her work be seen, even though she would have had you believe otherwise based on the fact that she didn’t consider her sketches to be particularly praiseworthy.
But despite Pam’s inferiority complex, each and every one of the jurors was duly impressed with her nifty artwork, although she playfully scolded Newlan nonetheless.
“You shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it,” protested Pam.
“You’re a talented artist. We should make a big deal out of it,” replied Newlan, and despite her objections, he sensed that Pam was enjoying the laudable attention, even though she would never admit to it in a million years.
The doodled portraits led Newlan to disclose a private revelation which had crossed his mind on more than a few occasions over the past week.
“You know, lately I’ve been thinking that maybe I should write a book about the trial…except that I’d rework the story into a novel...that way I can embellish and alter the facts as I see fit.”
“You never know, it just might be therapeutic, and hey you could end up with a best seller on your hands for your troubles! You should discuss the idea with Natalie, she’s an editor...and of course if you ever need a graphic artist, by all means give me a call,” encouraged Pam as she jotted down her phone number onto Newlan’s notepad.
“I’m seriously gonna consider doing it,” continued the pipe-dreaming Newlan, but deep inside he knew full well that he’d never follow up on such a laborious endeavor.
But regardless of Newlan’s commitment level, the alluring Natalie, who had been secretly listening in on his conversation with Pam, couldn’t help but gain just a teensy bit more admiration for him since she was as much of a sucker for the artistic, creative type as he was.
Natalie even offered Newlan a few editing tips…but before they could become too engrossed in their conversation, Billy rounded them up like the captive cattle that they were, and once again court was in session.
Tracy Stone appeared to have composed herself nicely during the break, but that didn’t stop Newlan from whispering to Natalie; “how long before she starts crying again?”
Natalie responded with a sour face, and she pointed her chin in Newlan’s direction, as if to say; “be quiet or you’re gonna get us in trouble with the judge.” But then she smiled and passed him her notepad which contained the words “ten minutes” neatly written on a blank piece of paper.
Newlan smiled back at Natalie, while at the same time he kicked himself for his premature rush to judgment.
“What a jerk I am. She’s not an Ice Princess in the least…and hey, who knows, before everything’s said and done, maybe we just might end up becoming friendly with each other after all.”
However, any flirtatious notions that Newlan may have had towards Natalie would have to wait, because DA Lyons launched right back into the task at hand, like a boxer dancing into the center of the ring at the sound of the 5th round bell.
Meanwhile, as soon as Newlan turned his eyes away from the comely juror who occupied seat number 7 and aimed them towards the witness stand, he found that he was once again taken in by the enigma which was Ms. Tracy Stone.
“Man, she’s got something going on,” Newlan blissfully mused, and although he couldn’t quite place his finger on what that something was, he clearly seemed to understand how she could potentially set off a killing spree amongst her paramours. However, just as he was about to become irrevocably drawn into Tracy Stone’s hypnotic, smoky eyes, he scolded himself until he came to his senses.
“What the hell am I thinking these days? I’m ogling a married juror who I hardly even know. I’m going gaga over a married woman who I haven’t seen in twenty years. I’m drooling over the ex-wife of a murder suspect…man I need to get myself a steady girlfriend.”
And despite the seriousness of his surroundings, Newlan had to work overtime to forcibly wipe the grin off his face as DA Lyons auspiciously took to the stage in an orchestrated production which served to further cement her leading role in this grand pageant we call justice.
“Ms. Stone, before the break you told us of your mother’s passing. Could you tell us what happened after her death?” requested Lyons as she bowed her head in respect.
“After mom died, Johnny and I bought her house in Marlborough, and actually, I still live there to this day,” replied Stone in a sentimental tone.
“And not long after you and Mr. Breslin moved into your mother’s home, you had another child, didn’t you Ms. Stone?”
“Yes, my daughter Rebecca was born in January of 1999.”
“And you had a third child as well didn’t you?” added Lyons.
“Yes, my youngest, Kevin was born in August of 2000,” wistfully replied Stone as a longing for those happier times came over her.
“Ms. Stone, could you take us through the events that led you to file for divorce in 2003?” solicited Lyons as she shifted gears again, while at the same time trying to follow some sort of organized, if not chronological, timeline.
Stone took a deep, extended breath before hurtling herself into a well-rehearsed answer, chockfull of chatty details. She assumed that Lyons would be presenting her with a bevy of in-depth, personal questions, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that her divorce would be at the top of the list, so she had been preparing in her mind (and in front of a mirror) for weeks, maybe even months, now.
“Well, I stopped working for a while after Rebecca was born, but even then, it seemed like I hardly ever saw Johnny. And then he got transferred to the Tex-Ray office in Andover, which was even further from our home than the Waltham office, so he had to leave for work earlier in the morning and he got home later at night. And then he got a part-time job as a bartender at the Irish-American Club in Watertown where he worked on Friday nights and sometimes Sundays…and in the nice weather he golfed on Mondays and Saturdays, and he played in a softball league on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But for some reason he was always too tired to do things with me and the kids…and I just felt so alone all the time. He was hardly ever affectionate towards me anymore, and at times he wouldn’t even kiss me. No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to please him. It’s difficult to explain….but I constantly had a knot in my stomach and I was always worrying that I was gonna do something to upset him. I guess the best way to describe it is that I felt so dead inside, and I thought to myself, ‘my God what have I done? I don’t even think I love this man’.”
And so with her heart exposed, Tracy Stone began to tear up again. Regardless of how tough she had aimed to be, approximately ten minutes into the resumption of her testimony, there she was, once again a blubbering, balling mess of a human being.
With the resumption of Stone’s whimpering, Natalie nudged Newlan and pointed to the clock on the wall, while at the same time he made eye-contact with her and offered up a crack of a smile. She, in turn, flashed her notepad which she had flipped back to the page that had the words “ten minutes” written on it; and it was safe to say that if they had placed a Las Vegas styled bet on the Tracy Stone over/under crying time, Natalie would have been the sure-fire winner.
In no way was it either Natalie or Newlan’s intentions to behave disrespectfully towards Tracy Stone. But rather it seemed that they were resorting to any diversion they could think of to assist them in maintaining their sanity in what was proving to be a very stressful environment. In fact, to the contrary, as Stone’s teardrops continued to flow, her sadness was once again tugging at Newlan’s heartstrings.
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Meanwhile, DA Lyons paused for a moment so that Stone might compose herself…but before long she proceeded on with business as usual.
“And at some point didn’t you attempt to reconnect with Fred Miller?”
“Yes, in 2005 I sent him a postcard which had a scenic photo of the Wayward Inn on the front of it. It was our favorite hangout when we were younger, and I figured that maybe it might bring back some good memories in Freddie’s mind. The note on the back of the postcard was my first contact with Fred in almost 10 years so I wanted it to be meaningful…and as it turned out, months later when he invited me over to his house, I remember seeing the card taped to a mirror in his bedroom, and for some reason, just the sight of it made me weak in the knees,” pensively explained Stone in between sniffles.
“And what was the purpose of sending Fred a postcard after all those years?” wondered Lyons.
“I just wanted him to know that I was thinking of him…and that I still loved him,” replied Stone as she fought back tears.
Lyons approached the overhead projector and placed a small rectangular photo of a rustic slice of Americana onto the lens as she asked; “Is this the postcard in question Ms. Stone?”
Stone nodded her head and whispered a barely audible, “Yes.”
Lyons then turned the postcard over, revealing Stone’s neatly hand-written note of five words, which simply read as follows:
THANK YOU
WHITE FLAG
DIDO
“Ms. Stone could you explain the significance of these words?” requested Lyons, and Stone smiled slightly through her bitter tears as she replied to the tenacious DA’s question.
“Well, ‘Thank You’ and ‘White Flag’ are song titles…and the songs were written and performed by the singer Dido. You see, Freddie and I always loved music, and we’d sometimes communicate with each other by way of song lyrics, so, in not so many words, I was sending him a message, instructing him to listen to those tunes by Dido because somehow I thought that they related to us, and particularly what I was going through in my life.”
And as Tracy Stone described her silly word game, Frank Newlan was almost stunned right out of his swivel chair, all the while wondering whether the gods were conspiring to play a cruel joke on him.
“Holy shit, Marianne and I use to send song lyrics to each other all the time. What are the odds of that? Man you can’t make this shit up,” groaned Newlan. However, once he got past his overly dramatized wonderment, he thought to himself; “Hmmm, I’m gonna have to make a point to check out Dido’s music one of these days.”
And although the ratio of the long-shot odds that Newlan was contemplating in his head are anyone’s guess, little did our reluctant handicapper realize it, but he hadn’t seen anything yet when it came to the laws of probability; little did the number-crunching bookmaker in Newlan’s soul comprehend the crapshoot which was about to be tossed his way; little did our riverboat gambler fathom it, but the fortune-wheel of chance was about to send him reeling with a musical coincidence so astronomical, it almost defied reason.
“Your honor I would like to enter this postcard as the next exhibit,” requested Lyons as she handed the postcard to Assistant Clerk Dan Dente who crisply proclaimed, “postcard from Tracy Stone to Fred Miller entered as the next exhibit.”
Once the postcard had been officially entered into evidence, Lyons went right back to work interviewing Tracy Stone.
“Ms. Stone, did Fred Miller contact you after you sent him this postcard?” asked Lyons and Stone frowned as she dourly replied, “No, I didn’t hear back from him.”
“And even though you didn’t immediately hear back from Fred Miller, you still went ahead with your second request for a divorce anyway, didn’t you Ms. Stone?” stated Lyons in a tone that requested a confirmation.
“Yes, I must have told Johnny a million times that my wanting a divorce had absolutely nothing to do with Freddie,” replied a now more resolute Stone.
And while Stone continued to spill her guts in response to DA Lyons’ guided prodding, Defense Attorney R. J. Gleason had been quietly seated on the sidelines, patiently waiting for his turn at the former Mrs. Tracy Breslin. Conversely however, he was, at all times, still on high-alert, monitoring the proceedings every inch of the way for anything overtly egregious…and finally he felt as if he had no choice but to object to her latest statement.
“Sustained,” replied Judge Gershwin after she thought about it for a moment, which, as the jurors had come to observe, was her modus operandi.
“Your honor, I request that you instruct the jurors of the details regarding husband and wife privileges,” appealed Gleason in attempt to further plaster his objection into the jurors’ minds.
“Of course,” agreeably smiled Judge Gershwin as she turned towards the jurors and gingerly added a dash more legalese into the pungent stew which was already cooking in their cluttered brains.
“Ladies and gentlemen, any private communications between a husband and a wife are considered inadmissible in a court of law. The only times, I repeat, the only times that a conversation between a husband and wife would be deemed admissible is if that conversation was made in the presence of others…or if the discussion took place in a location where the average person would reasonably expect that their conversation might be overheard. For example, if a husband and wife were having a discussion in a public place such as the supermarket, then you might reasonably expect others to overhear their conversation,” explained the knowledgeable judge…and with the marital clarification out of the way, DA Lyons pressed on.
“Ms. Stone you stated this morning that you re-filed for divorce in June of 2005. Now, at that point did you make another attempt to contact Fred Miller?”
“Yes, I looked up Freddie’s phone number and left him a couple of voice messages,” replied Stone, but then in midstream her response came to a thudding halt.
“Well, did he call you back?” pried Lyons, and Stone winced as she replied, “No, he still didn’t contact me.”
“And what happened next?” wondered Lyons.
“I decided to make one last attempt to contact Freddie, so I wrote him a long, emotional letter. I guess you could say that I laid my soul bare…I just wanted him to know that I was sorry for how thing had ended between us, and that I hoped he could forgive me. I recall writing in big letters that I still cared about him, and that I hoped we could at least be friends. I wanted him to see it written down on paper that I still loved him, and that I hoped we could see each again someday,” replied Stone, and for the umpteenth time over the course of the morning, the floodgate of tears opened anew.
“And did you hear from Fred Miller after sending this letter?” probed Lyons.
“Yes, within days of sending my letter, I got an equally long letter back from him…I guess you could also say that he needed to get a few things off of his chest as well. But on the first page of the letter he had printed out the lyrics to a Grateful Dead song called “Built to Last”, and that’s when I knew he still cared about me. Regardless of whatever else he wrote in the letter, I knew he still loved me because, well, song lyrics were our thing. That, of course, and the fact that he had underlined a not-so-subtle hidden message in the lyrics,” explained Stone as her eyes suddenly came aglow.
Lyons had Stone identify the letter in question and she had Assistant Clerk Dente mark it as the next exhibit. But as you might imagine, the ill-fated Frank Newlan never heard another word after the Grateful Dead song title “Built to Last” was uttered by Ms. Tracy Stone.
Newlan’s body was shaking uncontrollably and his face began to turn a pasty shade of gray as he tortured himself with silent contemplation.
“How can this be? I’m listening to the Grateful Dead CD, “Built to Last” in my car this very morning, and now I find out that Miller delivered these same lyrics to Stone in a letter after ten years of silence. What the hell’s happening to me? Am I becoming some sor
t of psychic medium? And I even dreamed about seeing Miller at a Dead concert on the very first fuckin’ day of the trial when we were riding on that god-damned bus to that spooked-out garage in Newton. There was no way I could have known that Miller was a Dead Head. And then Lyons goes on to describe a red car that could just as well be mine, not to mention all of these other spooky coincidences. And to top it all off, my own high school sweetheart, now married I might add, contacts me while I’m in the middle of this big fuckin’ nightmare…man you can’t make this fuckin’ shit up.”
Not surprisingly, this latest set of eerie circumstances had Newlan waving his own white flag while at the same time retreating back into the hellhole shell of his mind at warp speed; back into his funk in record time; back into his depression in no time flat. And while he anguished over otherworldly things, things both great and small, things that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend, Billy approached Judge Gershwin and briefly whispered in her ear.
After the mundanely informative conversation between judge and court officer, Billy opened up the exit door which led to the deliberation room while Judge Gershwin announced that the jurors’ meals had arrived. Apparently, some of them had ordered hot sandwiches, and so the ever-considerate judge (at least when it came to the jurors) decided that she was going to break a little early for lunch; a decision which was immediately followed by Billy’s customary directive of “all rise”.
As the jurors lazily made their way back into the deliberation room, Natalie couldn’t help but notice the distress in Newlan’s face, and in response to his discomfort she gently grasped him by the hand and whispered; “Are you alright? You look a little pale.”’
But the best that Newlan could do was to glower back at Natalie, and with terror in his eyes, he blindly replied; “I think I’m OK…but I just don’t know…whether I’m…built to last.”
From the Eyes of a Juror Page 56
