House on Fire

by Bonnie Kistler

  She faltered out of the gate.

  “Tell the jury about your daughter Christine.”

  She froze. “Um, tell what—?”

  “Tell the jury what she was like.”

  She stared at him. “What she—I’m sorry, what?”

  Now he faltered. The question was supposed to be a softball and here it was spiking back at him. He leaned an elbow on the lectern and adopted a casual stance. “Just to give the jury a picture of your daughter. The kind of girl she was.”

  Leigh gripped her hands in her lap and answered in a low, flat voice. Chrissy was a good student. She liked sports. She loved horses.

  Rodell waited until it became obvious that he wouldn’t coax anything more out of her. He moved on. “Let me call your attention to that night last April when your daughter and stepson were in an accident. Do you recall that night?”

  Leigh took a deep breath. This was what she came here to do. She sat up straight. “Of course I do.” She turned to the jury and went on without waiting for the next question. “It was our wedding anniversary, and my husband and I went away for a few days to celebrate. We were driving home late that night when I got a call from Chrissy. She told me she was at the St. Alban police station. She said there’d been an accident.”

  “What happened next?” Rodell relaxed at the lectern. If all he had to do was inject the occasional prompt, his job was suddenly looking a lot easier.

  “We drove straight there, and my husband went into the interview room with Kip—Christopher—and I sat in the hall with Chrissy.”

  He sauntered out from behind the lectern with his hands in his pockets. “Did she tell you what happened?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t his fault. There was nothing we could do. “She told me that a dog ran out in front of them. It was raining and the road was slippery, and there was nothing she could do. The truck went off the road and hit a tree.”

  A wrinkle creased Rodell’s forehead, and across the courtroom, Shelby leaned forward.

  Hurts nobody, protects somebody, Leigh thought. The classic definition of a good lie. But was it even a lie, when it was so obviously what Chrissy was trying to tell her that night?

  Rodell decided to move on. “Did she tell you what happened next?”

  Leigh hesitated. She hadn’t committed to it yet, with that single slip of a pronoun. Her next answer would be the decisive one. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “She told me she couldn’t get the truck out of the mud, and Kip told her to slide over and he’d back it out of there for her.”

  “Wait—what?” Rodell took his hands from his pockets. He shot a look at Andrea Briggs, who shook her head furiously at him. Across the aisle Kip’s eyes opened wide. He spun to his father, but Leigh couldn’t look at Peter, not yet. She looked at Shelby instead. Her citrine eyes seemed to laser the question across the well of the court. What are you doing?

  “She wasn’t an experienced driver,” Leigh said. “She didn’t know how to get out of the mud. So she told me that Kip got behind the wheel to give it a try. Then the police officer arrived.”

  “You’re saying—?” Rodell stopped and grabbed both sides of the lectern as the spectators behind him started to buzz. “Your Honor, this is hearsay. Move to strike and to instruct the jury to disregard.”

  The judge looked to Shelby, who rose to her feet to respond, but for a moment she only stared at Leigh. She looked baffled. Come on, Leigh urged her with her eyes. You know this. But Shelby still stood speechless.

  “Chrissy was, uh, worked up,” Leigh prompted her. “When she blurted that out.”

  “Move to strike again,” Rodell cried.

  “Excited utterance!” Shelby called out as she finally picked up the cue. “Rule 2:803(2). It’s not hearsay because it was a spontaneous statement prompted by a startling event and made by a person with firsthand knowledge.” The rest came to her on her own. “Also Rule 2:804(b)(3)(B). Exception to the hearsay rule when it’s an admission against interest. Both apply here. The testimony is admissible.”

  The judge didn’t rule on Rodell’s objection. He was looking down at Leigh with a sharp frown. “Let me be clear. Are you saying the girl was driving?”

  “That’s right.” Leigh felt suddenly, extraordinarily calm. “That’s what she told me.”

  The judge threw up a hand to stop her before she could speak further. “Mr. Bailiff. Escort the jurors to the jury room. Counsel remain. Everyone else, clear the courtroom.”

  Nobody moved. The jurors were waiting for the bailiff to come up the aisle, and the spectators were waiting to see what would happen next after this unexpected twist in the drama. Whispers darted through the crowd like the hiss of steam from an old radiator.

  Leigh looked over to the other side of the courtroom. Shelby’s head was bent to Kip’s, and her paralegal and investigator were in their own huddle at the end of the defense table. Behind them Karen stood up uncertainly, but Peter sat motionless, gazing up at Leigh. She could see the moment when he began to understand, then she could see the moment when he knew for sure what she was doing. The look he gave her was anxious—Are you sure you want to do this?—but hopeful, too, that it might actually work. He didn’t stir until Karen nudged him to get up and let her out. With a final look back at Leigh, he followed her out of the courtroom.

  It was five minutes before the last juror filed through the door at the front of the courtroom and the last spectator pushed through the doors at the rear. No one remained but the prosecutors on one side and Kip and his defense team on the other. And Leigh, still on the stand. The judge glowered at both sides in turn. “Why is this the first I’m hearing this?”

  “I’d like to know that, too.” Rodell’s face was red with outrage.

  “It’s the linchpin of the defense, Your Honor,” Shelby said. “You would have heard it as soon as we put on our case. Christopher will testify that his stepsister was driving the vehicle, and the girl’s statement to her mother that night corroborates his testimony.”

  “The Commonwealth had no notice—”

  “The Commonwealth is well aware that we’ve been blanketing the media with our search for the roadside witness to corroborate the defendant’s statement.”

  Rodell looked at Briggs, who whispered something before he straightened again. “We assumed that was a smoke screen,” he said stiffly.

  “At your peril,” Shelby retorted.

  The judge ignored both of them and wheeled his chair to look down directly at Leigh. “Why didn’t you tell this to the government earlier?”

  “I wish I had,” she said. “But they never asked. They never interviewed me. About anything. And I was too deep in my grief—I’m sorry—it just never occurred to me that I needed to go to them.”

  “A grieving mother should hardly be expected to take the initiative in a police investigation,” Shelby said.

  “But you knew your stepson was facing these charges—”

  Leigh cast her eyes down. “My husband and I have been separated since my daughter died. I wasn’t in communication with him or Christopher or Ms. Randolph.”

  Rodell gave her a hard look. “Your Honor, permission to treat this witness as hostile when her testimony resumes.”

  The judge leaned back in his chair and fixed a baleful eye on the young prosecutor. “Are you sure you want this trial to resume, Mr. Rodell? You might want to confer with your superiors about the wisdom of that course.”

  “Your Honor, if you allow me to treat this witness as hostile, I can establish that her testimony is a recent fabrication—”

  “This is the victim’s mother.” His eyebrows drew down sharply. “Think about how the jury’s going to react if you try to impeach her credibility. Think about where their sympathies will lie. Think hard about all of that, Mr. Rodell.” He reached for his gavel. “This court stands in recess until nine thirty tomorrow morning. But feel free to contact chambers earlier. I have another matter I’d like to schedule if my calendar should suddenly clear
.”

  He banged the gavel and left.

  The banished spectators swelled back into the courtroom on an excited buzz of speculation, in numbers that seemed to be greater than were in attendance before. They poured down the aisle and milled around in the well of the court, peppering the lawyers with questions about what had just happened and what would happen next. Shelby smiled and batted them aside like pesky flies. Seth Rodell wouldn’t answer them at all. He was busy berating Andrea Briggs in a scathing whisper. Andrea looked furious, too, and Leigh couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t asked for this case, but she’d worked it to the best of her ability, and she didn’t deserve to have it blow up on her this way. Collateral damage, Leigh thought. It happened in courtroom wars, too.

  She climbed down from the witness box and pushed through the crowd in search of Peter. Before she could reach the aisle, Shelby was there, blocking her path. “You owe me a drink,” she declared. “Or maybe a defibrillator. I think my heart stopped at least twice.”

  “I’m sorry,” Leigh said. “I didn’t want to put you in the position—”

  “Of suborning perjury. I know.”

  “Of worrying that you might be suborning perjury.” Leigh pronounced each word carefully.

  Shelby arched an eyebrow. “Okay. We’ll go with that.” She stepped back and raked her eyes over Leigh. “And by the way what the hell happened to you?”

  “Long story.”

  “Tell me later.” She looked past Leigh to the prosecution table. “Let me go work my magic now.”

  Leigh cut around her past a cluster of people in the aisle, still searching for Peter, but it was Karen who came at her next. “Leigh!” She gave her a quick, tremulous hug. “I’m not sure I know what just happened.”

  “I guess we’ll all find out later.”

  “I have to go now. But call me, would you? Or tell Kip to?”

  “You bet.”

  Leigh still couldn’t see Peter through the crowd clogging the center aisle. He must have remained out in the corridor. She decided to take a detour down the side aisle. She pivoted and pushed through the crowd behind her, and came to an abrupt stop. Peter and Kip had somehow circled around, and there they were in front of her. They stopped, too, and the three of them stood facing one another, suspended in a perfect triangle, until Peter reached out and grabbed her. “God, babe,” he whispered, holding her tight. “Are you all right?”

  She squeezed him back, but it was Kip she was looking at. “I’m sorry, Kip,” she said. “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “That’s okay.” A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “I forgive you.”

  She reached out and pulled him into the hug, and Peter wrapped his arms around both of them until their triangle contracted to a single point in the middle of the courtroom.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Shelby came to the house that night. The last of the FBI team had left, and they were just sitting down to a late supper when Pete heard her car in the drive. Together they went to the window to watch her approach, and as her face passed under the carriage light, Leigh’s breath caught.

  “What?”

  “It’s not good news,” Leigh said.

  He squeezed her hand. She looked done in. He’d tried to get her to go to bed just as he’d tried to get her to go to the hospital, but she insisted she was fine. Scratches and scrapes. A little Bactine and a homemade ice pack was all she would submit to. She had other priorities now. First the manhunt for her kidnappers. Now this.

  She pushed aside the sandwich fixings to clear a place at the table, and Shelby took the fourth chair. It was after nine, she’d been running at full throttle for fifteen hours and still looked as cool and crisp as the iceberg lettuce on the plate in front of her.

  “I waive it,” Kip said.

  That caught her off guard. “Jeopardy?”

  “Confidentiality. Isn’t that what you were gonna ask? So Leigh can be here.”

  “They want him to waive jeopardy?” Leigh looked stricken. “It’s without prejudice?”

  Shelby gave a brisk nod to Kip then a slower one to Leigh.

  “Wait,” Pete said. “Back up.”

  “Here’s the deal,” she said. “The government’s willing to dismiss all charges, but without prejudice. Meaning they can refile under certain circumstances.”

  “What about double jeopardy?” Pete asked at the same time Leigh said, “What circumstances?”

  She answered Pete first. “He’d have to waive it.” Then Leigh. “Only one circumstance, actually. Upon discovery of any new evidence that your testimony today was perjured.”

  A soft moan escaped Leigh’s lips, but Kip was unperturbed. “What new evidence? It’s not like Father G.I. Joe’s gonna come in and testify that Chrissy wasn’t driving.”

  “They mean me,” Leigh said in a small voice. “They’re betting I’ll recant.”

  Pete looked at Shelby. “Is that it?”

  Reluctantly she nodded. “Harrison came right out and said it. She’ll change her story when her marriage collapses.”

  “Fuck him,” Pete said, and Kip shot him a startled look that quickly morphed into a grin.

  “I recommend against this deal,” Shelby said. “Call their bluff. The judge all but sky-wrote his signal that they should drop the case entirely. We’ve got them on the ropes now. We go back in there tomorrow. Let Rodell finish his examination of Leigh.”

  “As a hostile witness this time,” Kip said. “That means cross-examination.”

  “Right.”

  “Like what Garcia did to me.”

  “Well, not exactly—”

  “No,” he said. “Take the deal.”

  “Kip, no.” Leigh reached across the table to cover his hand with hers. “It’s all right. I’m happy to go back on the stand.”

  “There’s no statute of limitations for manslaughter,” Shelby told him. “You’ll have this hanging over your head the rest of your life.”

  He looked straight at Leigh as he answered. “I’m not worried. Take the deal.”

  “Kip—”

  “I’m the client, right?” He looked to Pete. “It’s my decision.”

  Pete hesitated. Was this only his teenaged brain at work? Zero impulse control, inability to foresee consequences, poor decision making. Already he was back to his wise-assery. Father G.I. Joe. And yet. At that moment, gazing across the table at this kid of his, he couldn’t help thinking that Kip’s judgment was the wisest, most mature of them all.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  With a satisfied nod, Kip reached for a slice of bread and started to assemble his sandwich. The subject was closed.

  But one question remained open for Leigh, and after dinner while Peter walked Shelby to her car, she stopped Kip on the staircase to ask it. “Something I don’t understand.” It had been nagging at her since the moment she recognized Stoddard as the roadside priest, but only now did it seem safe to ask. “Why did you tell me you lied when we all know now that you didn’t?”

  He looked down at her, his face blank.

  “When you came here on Sunday,” she prodded him. “You told me you lied.”

  “Oh! Not about that. I didn’t lie about who was driving. I meant I lied to Chrissy.”

  “What?”

  “To get her to keep her mouth shut.” He gave a sheepish shrug. “I told her any kid caught driving underage is automatically banned from getting a driver’s license for the next ten years. And she fell for it. She wanted to get her license when she turned sixteen like anybody else. It was the only way I could get her to play along with the cops.”

  She did one selfish act in her young life, Stephen had said. She stood by and let Christopher take the blame. Leigh had refused to believe it, not when all Chrissy was facing was a slap on the wrist. But if she had believed this?

  Everybody lies, Stephen said. Even Chrissy.

  The twins came home that weekend, and for five minutes Saturday morning every
one was there. The whole fam damily, Zack declared. Peter and Kip were in the driveway packing the truck with everything a well-equipped dorm room required. Then Karen and Gary arrived to drop Mia off before they hit the road to Durham, too—at the last minute Kip had invited them to join in the parents’ orientation program, and it was decided that Mia would stay here with Leigh while they were gone. Then Dylan and Zack ran out in their rented cutaways—they were serving as groomsmen in their cousin’s wedding that afternoon—and they posed for pictures while imparting some wisecracking words of upperclassmen advice to Kip. And finally Ted arrived, late, to drive them to the church, and for five chaotic minutes, nine people swarmed the driveway, each one related to the other by blood or marriage or remarriage.

  Ted and the twins left first, then Karen and Gary, and then it was time for Leigh to say good-bye. Peter gave her a long, lingering kiss in the driveway while Shepherd barked circles around them and Kip and Mia clambered over the back of the truck to tighten the bungee cords securing the load.

  “I wish I didn’t have to go,” Peter whispered in her ear. “Not now.”

  She felt the same. Three days apart was too much after four months. But she shook her head. “This is a big weekend for Kip. You need to be there for him. That’s Job One. You and I have the rest of our lives for us.”

  “I’m gonna hold you to that,” he said and kissed her again.

  Kip jumped to the ground and swung Mia down after him. “Oh, wait,” Leigh called before he got in the cab. “I almost forgot!” She ran in the house and snatched up her old iPod from the hall table. Peter was behind the wheel with the engine running when she got back, but Kip was waiting for her in the driveway. “Here.” She thrust the iPod into his hands. “A mixtape for the road.”

  He looked down at it, and his breath caught.

  “No—Kip! This is a happy memory.”

  “Leigh, I don’t know—” He choked up and had to start over again. “I don’t know how you can ever forgive me.”