Текст книги "Defending Jacob"

Автор книги: William Landay

Соавторы: William Landay
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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

I took a last glance around the room. I was tempted to hide Jacob’s laptop. God only knew what was on his hard drive. But I worried that stashing the computer would hurt him either way: if the computer went missing, that would be suspicious, given his online presence; on the other hand, if found it might contain devastating evidence. In the end I left it-unwisely, maybe, but there was no time to consider. Jacob knew he had been publicly accused on Facebook; presumably he had been wily enough to scrub his hard drive if need be.

The doorbell rang. Game over. I was still breathing heavily.

At the door, none other than Paul Duffy was there to hand me the search warrant. “Sorry, Andy,” he said.

I stared. The troopers in their blue windbreakers, the cruisers with their flashers on, my old friend extending the trifolded warrant toward me-I simply did not know how to react, so I barely reacted at all. I stood there, mute, as he pressed the paper into my hand.

“Andy, I have to ask you to wait outside. You know the drill.”

It took a few seconds to rouse myself, to come back into the moment and accept that this was really happening. But I was determined not to make the amateur’s mistake, not to stumble and give them anything. No dumb statements blurted out under pressure in the critical early moments of the case. That is the mistake that puts people in Walpole.

“Is Jacob here, Andy?”

“No.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No idea.”

“Okay, come on, buddy, step out, please.” He put his hand gently on my upper arm to encourage me, but he did not pull me out of the house. He seemed willing to wait till I was ready. He leaned in and said confidentially, “Let’s do this the right way.”

“It’s okay, Paul.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Just do your job, okay? Don’t fuck it up.”

“Okay.”

“You dot those i ’s and cross those t ’s, or Logiudice’ll throw you under the bus. He’ll make you look like Barney Fife at the trial, mark my words. He’ll do what he has to do. He won’t protect you like I would.”

“Okay, Andy. It’s all right. Come on out.”

I waited on the sidewalk in front of the house. Gawkers accumulated across the street, drawn by the cruisers out front. I would have preferred to wait in the backyard, out of view, but I had to be there when Laurie or Jacob got home, to comfort them-and to coach them.

Laurie arrived just a few minutes into the search. She wobbled when she heard the news. I steadied her and whispered into her ear not to say anything, not even to show any emotion, not fear or sadness. Give them nothing. She made a scornful sound, then she cried. Her sobbing was honest, uninhibited, as if no one was watching. She did not care what people thought, because no one had ever thought badly of her, not for one moment in her life. I knew better. We stood together in front of the house, I with my arm around her in a protective, possessive way.

When the search stretched into its second hour, we retreated to the back of the house and sat on the deck. There Laurie cried softly, gathered herself, cried again.

At some point Detective Duffy came around back and climbed the stairs to the deck. “Andy, just so you know, we found a knife this morning in the park. It was in the muck next to a lake.”

“I knew it. I knew it would show up. Are there any prints, blood, anything on it?”

“Nothing obvious. It’s at the lab. There was this dried algae all over it, like green powder.”

“It’s Patz’s.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What kind of knife was it?”

“Just, like, a regular kitchen knife.”

Laurie said, “A kitchen knife?”

“Yeah. You guys got all yours?”

I said, “Come on, Duff, be serious. What are you asking a question like that for?”

“All right, sorry. It’s my job to ask.”

Laurie glared.

“You guys heard from Jacob yet, Andy?”

“No. We can’t find him. We’ve been calling everyone.”

Duffy stifled a skeptical look.

“He’s a kid,” I said, “he disappears sometimes. When he gets here, Paul, I don’t want anyone talking to him. No questions. He’s a minor. He has a right to have a parent or guardian present. Don’t try and pull anything.”

“Jesus, Andy, nobody’s going to pull anything. We would like to talk to him, though, obviously.”

“Forget it.”

“Andy, it might help him.”

“Forget it. He’s got nothing to say. Not one word.”

In the middle of the yard, something caught our eyes and all three of us turned. A rabbit, tree-bark gray, sniffed the air, twitched its head, alerted, relaxed. It hopped a few feet, stopped. Motionless, it blended into the grass and the gloomy light. I almost lost sight of it until it hopped a little more, a gray ripple.

Duffy turned back to Laurie. Only a few Saturdays before, we had all gone out to a restaurant for dinner, Duffy and his wife and Laurie and I. It seemed like another lifetime. “We’re just about done here, Laurie. We’ll be out of here soon.”

She nodded, too pissed off and heartbroken and betrayed to tell him it was all right.

“Paul,” I told him, “he did not do it. I want to say that to you in case I don’t get another chance. You and I aren’t going to talk for a while, probably, so I want you to hear it right from me, okay? He did not do it. He did not do it.”

“Okay. I hear you.” He turned to go.

“He’s innocent. As innocent as your kid.”

“Okay,” he said, and he left.

Over by the arbor vitae, the rabbit hunched, jaws munching.

We waited until after dark for Jacob, until the cops and the voyeurs had all drifted away. He never came.

He had been hiding for hours, mostly in the woods of Cold Spring Park, in backyards, and in the play structure behind the elementary school he had once attended, which is where the cops found him at around eight o’clock.

He submitted to the handcuffs without complaint, the police report said. He did not run. He greeted the cop by saying “I’m the one you’re looking for” and “I didn’t do it.” When the cop said dismissively, “Then how did your fingerprint get on the body?” Jacob blurted-foolishly or cannily, I am still not sure-“I found him. He was already lying there. I tried to pick him up so I could help him. Then I saw he was dead, and I got scared and ran.” It was the only statement Jacob ever gave the police. He must have realized, belatedly, that it was risky to blurt out confessions like that one, and he never said another word. Jacob knew, as few boys do, the full value of the Fifth Amendment. Later, there would be speculation about why Jacob made this singular statement, how complete and self-serving it was. There were intimations he had crafted the statement beforehand and conveniently let it slip-he was gaming the case, launching his defense as early as possible. All I know for sure is that Jacob was never as smart or as cunning as he was described in the media.

In any case, after that, the only thing Jacob told the cop, over and over, was “I want my dad.”

He could not be bailed that night. He was held in the lockup in Newton, just a mile or two from our house.

Laurie and I were allowed to see him only briefly, in a little windowless visiting room.

Jacob was obviously shaken. His eyes were watery and red-rimmed. His face was flushed, a single horizontal slash of red across each cheek, like war paint. He was obviously scared shitless. At the same time he was trying to stay composed. His manner was clenched, rigid, mechanical. A boy imitating manliness, at least an adolescent’s conception of manliness. That was the part that broke my heart, I think, the way he struggled to hold it together, to keep that storm of emotion-panic, anger, sorrow-all siloed up inside himself. He would not be able to do it much longer, I thought. He was burning fuel fast.

“Jacob,” Laurie said in a wobbly voice, “are you all right?”

“No! Obviously not.” He gestured at the room around him, the situation he was in, and made a sardonic face. “I’m dead.”

“Jake-”

“They’re saying I killed Ben? No way. No way. I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe this.”

I said, “Hey, Jake, it’s a mistake. It’s some kind of horrible misunderstanding. We’ll work it out, okay? I don’t want you to lose hope. This is just the beginning of the process. There’s a long way to go.”

“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I’m just, like”-he made an exploding sound and with his hands he sculpted a mushroom cloud-“you know? It’s like, it’s like, who’s that guy? In the story?”

“Kafka.”

“No. The guy from, whatsit? The movie.”

“I don’t know, Jake.”

“Where the guy, like, finds out the world isn’t really the world? It’s just, like, a dream? Like a simulation? A computer made it all? And now he gets to see the real world. It’s, like, an old movie.”

“I’m not sure.”

“ The Matrix!”

“ The Matrix? That’s old?”

“Keanu Reeves, Dad? Please.”

I looked at Laurie. “Keanu Reeves?”

She shrugged.

It was amazing that Jake could be goofy, even now. But he was. He was the same dorky kid that he had been a few hours before-had always been, for that matter.

“Dad, what am I supposed to do?”

“We’re going to fight. We’ll fight this every step of the way.”

“No, I mean, like, not generally. Now. What happens next?”

“There’ll be an arraignment tomorrow morning. They’ll just read the charge and we’ll set bail and you’ll come home.”

“How much is bail?”

“We’ll find out tomorrow.”

“What if we can’t afford it? What happens to me?”

“We’ll find it, don’t worry. We have some money saved up. We have the house.”

He sniffed. He’d heard me complain about money a thousand times. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t do it, I swear. I know I’m not, like, a perfect kid, okay? But I didn’t do this.”

“I believe you.”

Laurie added, “You are perfect, Jacob.”

“I didn’t even know Ben. He was just, like, this kid from school. Why would I do this? Huh? Why? Okay, why are they saying I did this?”

“I don’t know, Jake.”

“This is your case! What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“I just don’t know.”

“You mean, you don’t want to tell me.”

“No. Don’t say that. Jake, do you think I was investigating you? Really?”

He shook his head. “So just for no reason-for no reason-I killed Ben Rifkin? That’s just-that’s just-I don’t know what it is. It’s crazy. This whole thing is totally crazy.”

“Jacob, you don’t have to convince us. We’re on your side. Always. No matter what happens.”

“Jesus.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “This is Derek’s fault. He did this. I know it.”

“Derek? Why Derek?”

“He’s just-he’s like-he gets freaked out by stuff, you know? Like, the littlest things and he freaks out about them. I swear, when I get out, I’m going to fuck him up. I swear it.”

“Jake, I don’t think Derek could have done this.”

“He did. You watch. That kid.”

Laurie and I exchanged a puzzled look.

“Jake, we’re going to get you out of here. We’ll put up the bail, whatever it is. We’ll find the money. We’re not going to let you sit in jail. But you’re going to have to spend the night here, just until the arraignment in the morning. We’ll meet you at the courthouse first thing. We’ll have a lawyer with us. You’ll be home for dinner tomorrow. Tomorrow you’re going to sleep in your own bed, I promise.”

“I don’t want a lawyer. I want you. You be my lawyer. Who could be better?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not? I want you. You’re my father. I need you now.”

“It’s a bad idea, Jacob. You need a defense lawyer. Anyway, it’s all taken care of. I called my friend Jonathan Klein. He’s very, very good, I promise you.”

He frowned, disappointed. “You couldn’t do it anyway. You’re a DA.”

“Not anymore.”

“You got fired?”

“Not yet. I’m on leave. They’ll fire me later, probably.”

“ ’Cuz of me?”

“No, not ’cuz of you. You didn’t do anything. It’s just the way things go.”

“So what are you going to do? Like, for money? You need a job.”

“Don’t worry about money. Let me worry about money.”

A cop, some young kid I did not know, knocked and said, “Time.”

Laurie told Jacob, “We love you. We love you so much.”

“Okay, Mom.”

She wrapped her arms around him. For a moment he did not move at all, and Laurie stood there hugging him as if she had embraced a tree or a building column. Finally he relented and patted her back.

“Do you know it, Jake? Do you know how much we love you?”

Over her shoulder, he rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mom.”

“Okay.” She pulled herself away and swiped the tears from her eyes. “Okay, then.”

Jacob seemed to tremble on the verge of crying as well.

I hugged him. I pulled him close, squeezed hard, then stepped back. I looked him over from head to toe. There was mud ground into the knees of his jeans from the hours he had spent hiding in Cold Spring Park, in a rainy April. “You be strong, okay?”

“You too,” he said. He grinned, apparently catching the dopiness of his answer.

We left him there.

And still the night was not over.

At two A.M. I was in the living room, slumped on the couch. I felt marooned, unable to move my body up to the bedroom or to fall asleep where I was.

Laurie padded down the stairs barefoot, in pajama bottoms and a favorite turquoise T-shirt that was now too threadbare for anything but sleeping in. Her breasts drooped inside it, defeated by age, gravity. Her hair was a mess, her eyes half shut. The sight of her nearly brought me to tears. From the third step she said, “Andy, come to bed. There’s nothing more we can do tonight.”

“Soon.”

“Not soon; now. Come.”

“Laurie, come here. There’s something we have to talk about.”

She shuffled across the front hall to join me in the living room, and in those dozen steps she seemed to come fully awake. I was not the type to ask for help often. When I did, it alarmed her. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“Sit down. There’s something I have to tell you. Something that’s going to come out soon.”

“About Jacob?”

“About me.”

I told her everything, all that I knew about my bloodline. About James Burkett, the first bloody Barber, who came east from the frontier like a reverse pioneer bringing his wildness to New York. And Rusty Barber, my war-hero grandfather who wound up gutting a man in a fight over a traffic accident in Lowell, Massachusetts. And my own father, Bloody Billy Barber, whose shadowy climactic orgy of violence involved a young girl and a knife in an abandoned building. After thirty-four years of waiting, the whole story took only five or ten minutes to tell. Once it was out, it seemed like a puny thing to have found so burdensome for so long, and I was confident, briefly, that Laurie would see it that way too.

“That’s what I come from.”

She nodded, blank-faced, doped with disappointment-in me, in my history, in my dishonesty. “Andy, why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Because it didn’t matter. It was never who I was. I’m not like them.”

“But you didn’t trust me to understand that.”

“No. Laurie, it’s not about that.”

“You just never got around to it?”

“No. At the beginning I didn’t want you to think of me that way. Then the longer it went, the less it seemed to matter. We were so… happy.”

“Until now, when you had to tell me, you had no choice.”

“Laurie, I want you to know about it now because it’s probably going to come out-not because it really has anything to do with this, but because shit like this always comes out. It has nothing to do with Jacob. Or me.”

“You’re sure of that?”

I died for a moment. Then: “Yes, I’m sure.”

“So sure that you felt you had to hide it from me.”

“No, that’s not right.”

“Anything else you haven’t told me?”

“No.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

She thought it over. “Okay, then.”

“ Okay meaning what? Do you have any questions? Do you want to talk?”

She gave me a reproachful look: I was asking her if she wanted to talk? At two in the morning? On this morning?

“Laurie, nothing is different. This doesn’t change anything. I’m the same person you’ve known since we were seventeen.”

“Okay.” She looked down at her lap where her hands were wrestling. “You should have told me before, that’s all I can say right now. I had a right to know. I had a right to know who I was marrying, who I was having a child with.”

“You did know. You married me. All this other stuff is just history. It’s got nothing to do with us.”

“You should have told me, that’s all. I had a right to know.”

“If I’d told you, you wouldn’t have married me. You wouldn’t have gone out with me in the first place.”

“You don’t know that. You never gave me the chance.”

“Oh, come on. If I’d asked you out and you knew?”

“I don’t know what I would have said.”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because girls like you don’t… settle for boys like that. Look, let’s just forget it.”

“How do you know, Andy? How do you know what I’d choose?”

“You’re right. You’re right, I don’t. I’m sorry.”

There was a lull, and it could have been all right still. At that moment we could still have survived it and moved on.

I knelt in front of her, rested my arms on her lap, on her warm legs. “Laurie, I’m sorry. I’m truly sorry I didn’t tell you. But I can’t undo that now. The important thing is, I need to know you understand: my father, my grandfather-I’m not them. I need to know you believe that.”

“I do. I mean, I guess I do– of course I do. I don’t know, Andy, it’s late. I have to get some sleep. I can’t do this now. I’m too tired.”

“Laurie, you know me. Look at me. You know me.”

She studied my face.

From this close I was surprised to discover she looked rather old and exhausted, and I thought it had been selfish of me and a little cruel to unload this on her now, in the middle of the night after the worst day of her life, just to get it off my chest, to ease my own mind. And I remembered her. I remembered the girl with brown legs sitting on a beach towel on Old Campus freshman year, the girl so far out of my league that she was actually easy to talk to because there was nothing to lose. At seventeen, I knew: my entire childhood had been just a prelude to this girl. I had never felt anything like it, and still haven’t. I felt changed by her, physically. Not sexually, though we had sex everywhere, like minks, in the library stacks, in an empty classroom, her car, her family’s beach house, even a cemetery. It was more: I became a different person, myself, the person I am now. And everything that came after-my family, my home, our entire life together-was a gift she gave me. The spell lasted thirty-four years. Now, at fifty-one, I saw her as she actually was, finally. It came as a surprise: no longer the shining girl, she was just a woman after all.

Part TWO

“That murder might be any business of the state is a relatively modern idea. For most of human history, homicide has been a purely private affair. In traditional societies, a killing was simply the occasion for a dispute between two clans. The killer’s family or tribe was expected to resolve the dispute equitably by some sort of offering to the victim’s family or tribe. The restitution varied from society to society. It might involve anything from a fine to the death of the murderer (or a stand-in). If the victim’s kin was unsatisfied, a blood feud might ensue. This pattern endured across many centuries and many societies… Current practice notwithstanding, by long tradition murder has been strictly a family matter.”

– Joseph Eisen, Murder: A History (1949)

9

Arraignment

The next morning, Jonathan Klein stood with Laurie and me in the gloom of the Thorndike Street garage as we armored ourselves against the reporters gathered at the courthouse door, just down the street. Klein wore a gray suit with his usual black turtleneck. No tie today, even for court. The suit, particularly the pants, hung loosely off him. He must have been a tailor’s nightmare, with his thin, assless body. Reading glasses hung from an Indian-bead lanyard around his neck. He carried his ancient cowhide briefcase, worn slick as an old saddle. To an outsider, no doubt, Klein would have seemed inadequate to the job. Too small, too meek. But something about him was reassuring to me. With his backswept white hair, white goatee, and benevolent smile, I thought there was a magical quality about him. A sense of calm surrounded him. Lord knows, we needed it.

Klein peeked down the block at the reporters, who loafed and chatted, a wolf pack sniffing about for something to do. “All right,” he said. “Andy, I know you’ve been through this before, but never from this side. Laurie, this will all be new to you. So I’m going to read you the catechism, both of you.”

He extended his hand to touch Laurie’s sleeve. She looked devastated by the double shocks of the day before, Jacob’s arrest and the Barber curse. We had spoken very little in the morning as we ate, dressed, and got ready for court. It crossed my mind for the first time that we were headed for divorce. However the trial turned out, Laurie would leave me when it was over. I could tell she was eyeing me, making up her mind. What did it mean to find out that she had been tricked into marrying me? Should she feel betrayed? Or acknowledge that her uneasiness meant I was right all along: girls like her don’t marry boys like me. In any event, Jonathan’s touch seemed to comfort her. She manufactured a brief little smile for him, then a bleary look returned to her face.

Klein: “From this moment on, from the time we arrive at the courthouse until you get back home tonight and close the door of your house, I want you to show nothing. No emotion at all. Keep a poker face. Got it?”

Laurie did not respond. She seemed dazed.

“I’m a potted plant,” I assured him.

“Good. Because every expression, every reaction, every flicker of emotion will be interpreted against you. Laugh, and they’ll say you don’t take the proceedings seriously. Scowl, and they’ll say you’re surly, you’re not contrite, you resent being hauled into court. Cry, and you’re faking.”

He looked at Laurie.

“Okay,” she said, less sure of herself, particularly of this last item.

“Don’t answer any questions. You don’t have to. On TV only the pictures matter; it is impossible to tell whether you heard a question that someone shouted at you. Most important-and I’ll speak to Jacob about this when I get to the lockup-any sign of anger, from Jacob in particular, will confirm people’s worst suspicions. You have to remember: in their eyes, in everybody’s eyes, Jacob is guilty. You all are. They only want something to confirm what they already know. Any little scrap will do.”

Laurie said, “It’s a little late to be worried about our public image, isn’t it?”

That morning the Globe had run a page-one headline: DA’s T EEN S ON C HARGED IN N EWTON K ILLING. The Herald was sensational but, to its credit, forthright. Its tabloid cover showed a background photo of what appeared to be the murder scene, an empty slope in a forest, with a snapshot of Jacob that they must have culled from the Web, and the word MONSTER. There was a teaser at the bottom: “Prosecutor benched amid allegations of cover-up as his own teenage son is unmasked in Newton knife murder.”

Laurie had a point: after that, maintaining a poker face as we walked into court did seem a little inadequate.

But Klein only shrugged. The rules were beyond question. They might as well have been written on stone tablets by the finger of God. He said, in his quiet, commonsense way, “We’ll do the most we can with what we have.”

So we did as we were told. We kept our feet moving through the proxy mob of reporters waiting for us in front of the courthouse. We showed no emotion, answered no questions, pretended we did not hear the questions as they were yelled in our ears. They kept on shouting questions anyway. Microphones bristled and probed around us. “How are you doing?” “What do you say to all the people who trusted you?” “Anything to say to the victim’s family?” “Did Jacob do it?” “We just want to hear your side.” “Will he testify?” One, trying to provoke, said, “Mr. Barber, how does it feel to be on the other side?”

I held Laurie’s hand and we pushed through into the lobby. Things were surprisingly quiet, even normal inside. Reporters were barred here. At the lobby security station, people stood back to let us pass. The sheriff’s officers who used to wave me through with a smile now wanded me and inspected the change from my pocket.

We were alone again, briefly, in the elevator. As we rode to the sixth floor, where the first-session courtroom was, I reached for Laurie’s hand, my fingers scrabbling against hers to find a fit. My wife was a good deal shorter than I, so in order to hold her hand I had to haul it up to the level of my hip. She was left with her elbow bent, as if she were checking her watch. A look of distaste crossed her face-her eyelids fluttered, her lips tightened. It was barely perceptible, a micro-movement, but I noticed and released her hand. The elevator doors shivered as the box was lifted. Klein kept his eyes on the panel of ranked buttons, tactfully.

When the doors rattled open, we marched through the crowded lobby to courtroom 6B, there to wait on the front center bench until our case was called.

An awkward interval passed before the judge took the bench. We had been told our case would be called promptly at ten so the court could deal with us-and the circus of reporters and gawkers-then quickly get back to business. We arrived at the courtroom around quarter of. Time dragged while we waited. It felt like a lot more than fifteen minutes. The crowds of lawyers, most of whom I knew well, stood back as if there were a magnetic field around us.

Paul Duffy was there, standing against the far wall with Logiudice and a couple of the CPAC guys. Duffy-who was essentially an uncle to Jacob-glanced at me once as we sat down, then turned away. I was not offended. I did not feel shunned. There was an etiquette to these things, that’s all. Duffy had to support the home team. That was his job. Maybe we would become friends again after Jacob was cleared, maybe we wouldn’t. For now, the friendship was suspended. No hard feelings, but that was the way it had to be. I know that Laurie was not so bloodless about Duffy’s snubs or anyone else’s. To her, it was awful to see friendships snapped off this way. We were the same people after that we had been before, and because we had not changed, it was easy for her to forget that others saw us-all of us, not just Jacob-in a completely new way. At a minimum, Laurie felt, people ought to see that, whatever Jacob may have done, she and I were certainly innocent. It was a delusion I never shared.

Courtroom 6B had an extra jury box to accommodate large jury pools, and that morning in the empty extra jury box a TV camera was set up to provide a shared video feed to all the local stations. While we waited, the cameraman kept the lens pointed at us. We wore our defendants’ blank masks, said nothing to each other, barely even blinked. It is not an easy thing to be watched for so long. I began to notice little things, as one does during extended downtimes. I studied my own hands, which were big and pale, with prominent scuffed knuckles. Not a lawyer’s hands, I thought. Strange to see them appended to my own coat sleeves. That quarter hour of waiting and being stared at in the courtroom-a courtroom I once owned, a room as comfortable to me as my own kitchen-was even worse than what followed.

At ten, the first-session judge swept in wearing her black robe. Judge Rivera, a terrible judge but a good break for us. You must understand: Courtroom 6B, the first-session court, was a hardship post for judges; they rotated in and out of it every few months. It was the job of the first-session judge to make the trains run on time-to assign cases to the other courtrooms in such a way that the workload was spread evenly, to winnow the docket by cajoling plea bargains out of reluctant ADAs and defendants, and to sort through the remaining administrative busywork on the daily docket as efficiently as possible. It was a hectic job-delegate, dump, defer. Lourdes Rivera was fiftyish, with a frazzled demeanor, and magnificently miscast as the judge to make the trains run on time. It was all she could do to get herself to court on time with her robe zipped up and her cell phone turned off. The lawyers scorned her. They grumbled about how she got the job because of her good looks or her opportune marriage to a politically connected lawyer or to plump up the number of Latinos on the bench. They called her Lard-Ass Rivera. But we could hardly have picked a better judge that morning. Judge Rivera had been on the Superior Court bench less than five years but already she had a towering reputation in the district attorney’s office as a defendant’s judge. Most of the judges in Cambridge had the same reputation: soft, unrealistic, liberal. Now it seemed perfectly appropriate to load the dice that way. A liberal, it turns out, is a conservative who’s been indicted.

When the clerk called Jacob’s case-“Indictment number oh-eight-dash-four-four-oh-seven, Commonwealth v. Jacob Michael Barber, one count of murder in the first degree”-my son was ushered in by two court officers from the lockup and made to stand in the middle of the courtroom, in front of the jury box. He scanned the crowd, saw us, and immediately dropped his eyes to the floor. Embarrassed and awkward, he began to fuss with his suit and tie, which Laurie had picked out for him and Klein had delivered. Jacob was not used to wearing a suit and he seemed to feel both dapper and straitjacketed. He had already begun to outgrow the coat. Laurie used to joke that he was growing so fast that, at night when the house was quiet, she could hear his bones stretching. Now he fidgeted to make the coat sit properly on his shoulders but it would not stretch that far. From all this fidgeting, reporters would later say that Jacob was vain, that he even enjoyed his moment in the spotlight, a slur we would hear over and over when the trial actually began. The truth was, he was an awkward boy and so thoroughly terrified that he did not know where to put his hands. The wonder was that he managed to stand there with as much composure as he did.

Jonathan passed through the swinging gate in the bar, laid his briefcase on the defense table, and took a position beside Jacob. He put his hand on Jacob’s back, not for Jacob’s benefit but to make a point: This boy is no monster, I am not afraid to touch him. And more: I am not simply a hired gun doing my professional duty for a distasteful client. I believe in this kid. I am his friend.