Trial, page 27
“I know you heard,” his son said in a monotone.
To Chase, his eyes looked wounded, as if exposed to too much light. He hesitated, searching for something helpful to say. “Jabari was prepared for this. Whatever happens, he’ll give you a strong defense.”
Malcolm said nothing; he seemed to have no impulse to sustain the rhythms of normal conversation. Then, almost absently, Malcolm said, “How can I explain what happened to strangers who don’t know me?”
Chase already dreaded this. “Maybe you won’t need to. The DA has to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt in the mind of those jurors. I don’t think he can.”
“I have to,” Malcolm insisted. “People think I meant to kill him.”
Chase fell silent. Perhaps his simple presence was better, he thought, than whatever bromides he dredged up. Or at least better than nothing.
For long moments, Malcolm stared at the table. “I’m just waiting here,” he murmured. “I can’t eat. Can’t sleep. I’m afraid to.”
Chase inclined his head, miming inquiry in the hope that Malcolm could sense this and, if he wished, say more.
“I have nightmares.” His son’s voice thickened. “That deputy laughing at me in the darkness. Somebody closes the cell door, I hear a gunshot, see that man’s face with blood all over it. When it’s quiet, time stops. It’s like I’m alone in a space capsule, floating somewhere, and the life I had before happened far away. Only this place is real.”
Chase flinched inside. From his time as a lawyer, he understood the objective meaning of what he was hearing—a textbook description of acute distress disorder, which over time would harden into PTSD. But under the pitiless fluorescent light of a bare room, he was watching this happen to his son, and all he could do was try, somehow, to help him cling to hope for the world he had lost.
“I just want this over,” Malcolm said dully. “Even if they kill me.”
Over time, Chase feared, he would come to see death as not only a threat but an alternative. That this had begun happening was no doubt something Allie knew when she pulled back from Chase’s embrace, choosing not to burden his conscience with their son’s emotional deterioration. Now, seeing this for himself, Chase wanted to embrace not just Allie but Malcolm.
“I wish I could help you,” he said.
But he could not, and his son did not answer. A glance at his watch revealed that their visit had three minutes left. Reaching into the book bag, Chase put the two novels on the table.
“I hope you’ll like these,” he told Malcolm. “I did.”
Returning to his hotel room, Chase found that he, too, had little appetite. But there was sunlight through his window, and he was free to walk away.
It might be different, he supposed, if he thought the son he barely knew was guilty. But he did not. It was difficult to imagine the anger and anguish of an eighteen-year-old boy helpless to cry out his innocence beyond the walls of the cell that now bounded his world, and little easier at this moment to return Jack Raskin’s phone call. But, like everyone save Allie, Jack did not know that Chase’s past had claimed his present.
Picking up the phone, Chase called him. “Hi, Jack. From the tenor of your message, you miss me.”
“Actually, I’m bereft. When are you coming back?”
His tone was new, Chase thought—polite, almost careful, as if talking to someone who, without explanation, had entered some psychological realm beyond his understanding. “In a couple days,” Chase answered.
“Why not sooner?” Raskin inquired. “To my amazement, no reporter has called your communications director to ask why you’re in Georgia. But once you get spotted, and you will, we’re stuck with the truth.”
“Which is that I’m supporting a friend. I hope that will do for our friends at the Globe.”
“I meant the truth according to Fox. That you’ve been playing hooky—or nooky—with the mother of a cop killer who takes his cues from a rapper advocating the execution of blameless police. Won’t matter what your truth is.”
That was right, Chase knew, and likely far from the worst of it. “At the risk of quibbling, I don’t think that deputy was blameless.”
“Maybe not. But why concern yourself with the ills of some retrograde byway three thousand miles away from your district?” Raskin’s voice became more emphatic. “It’s one thing to hold your friend’s hand for a couple days in private, or whatever it is you two are doing. It’s another to stay there until you get caught. That’s when the media takes out Occam’s razor—when a male politician acts irrationally and there’s a woman involved, look for the simplest explanation. Most often, they find it.”
“Jack,” Chase said slowly and coolly, “I want you to hear me. I haven’t lost my mind, and there’s nothing simple about this. What I’m doing here goes way beyond whatever you’re thinking.”
On the other end of the line, Raskin sighed audibly. “But it doesn’t go beyond politics. Worst case, you’d not only blow your chances to become a senator; you’d put your House seat at risk. And for what?”
Chase paused “That’s exactly the right question, Jack—‘for what?’” If you don’t mind, I need to spend the next couple of hours thinking about that.”
But in his heart, he already knew. When he took out his cell phone again, perhaps an hour later, it was to call not Raskin but Allie. “There’s something I need to ask you,” he said. “It’s about Malcolm. All of us, really.”
Shortly before two o’clock, Chase Brevard and Allie Hill walked through the gauntlet of reporters lining the steps of the Cade County courthouse.
Allie had refused to enter surreptitiously—to show fear would have disheartened her friends, pleased her enemies, and demoralized the workers of Blue Georgia. Al Garrett had stationed snipers on the roof, cordoned off White Lightning, and assigned deputies to control the crowd and keep the media from stampeding Allie.
Their shouted questions were for her, not Chase; these were not the beat reporters from Capitol Hill who would know him on sight. But he saw the look of curiosity on their faces, and understood that it was only a matter of minutes, if that, before someone watching recognized a personage no one had expected to see—a rising congressman from Massachusetts transported to an already notorious murder case in Georgia.
Only when they were in the elevator, alone, did Allie dare to look at him.
“I know it’s selfish,” she said quietly, “but I’m glad you’re here. I just hope you’ll be OK with whatever winds up happening.”
Looking into her face, he saw the play of her emotions: doubt, worry, guilt over the price he was paying, gratitude that she and Malcolm were not alone—even, perhaps, more.
Chase, too, felt his own uncertainty and confusion, the undertow of regret at chancing all he had worked for, a residue of bitterness that a decision in which he had played no part had come to this. But he had other emotions, for this woman and their son, and the prosecutor’s call for this hearing had tipped the balance. Or, perhaps, the moment he had passed two books to Malcolm and known that could never be enough. So he mustered a facsimile of the smile he had given her on the day they first met at Harvard. “I was dying to come here, remember? I’m just nineteen years late.”
Entering the courtroom to stares of anger, curiosity and, in a few cases, compassion, Allie and Chase sat in the first row of spectators. Harris was already at the prosecution table; Malcolm sat at the defense table beside Ford, wearing the charcoal-gray suit she had bought him for graduation. Turning to glance at her, Malcolm saw Chase. Watching her son’s look of surprise, Allie stifled the instinct to touch Chase’s hand.
“All rise,” the courtroom deputy called out, and Judge Tilly ascended the bench.
Dalton Harris stood to address him. “As we informed the court and defense counsel this morning, we intend to seek the death penalty against Malcolm Hill for the murder of Deputy George Bullock. Accordingly, the State has filed papers formally charging the defendant with capital murder.”
Though she had tried to steel herself for this, Allie felt a sickness in the pit of her stomach. Through the sheen in her eyes, she saw Malcolm square his shoulders.
The judge turned to Ford. “Under Georgia law, the defendant must be represented by lead counsel qualified by experience to appear in a death penalty case. Am I correct in understanding that you are, Mr. Ford?”
Ford stood, impassive. “Yes, Your Honor.”
With this, Judge Tilly scanned the courtroom. “As before,” he intoned, “the court notes that this case has attracted an unusual amount of national attention. Accordingly, it’s our obligation to direct both the prosecution and defense to refrain from any further public statements about the substance of this case. Put bluntly, I don’t want any lawyer before me tainting the jury pool should this case go to trial.”
To Allie, this was at once superfluous, absurd, and wholly one-sided: Tilly was gagging Ford, the person best in position to speak for Malcolm in the public arena, and nothing the judge could do would offset the rally at the site of George Bullock’s death—let alone stem the toxic effusions daily spewing at her son from cable news and the internet.
But suddenly, Tilly was looking toward her. “As to individuals not before the court, we cannot control their behavior. We only hope they will honor the spirit of our order.”
Gazing back at him, Allie silently answered, You’re free to hope.
Ford rose again. “May it please the court, the defense has filed a motion requesting that a subpoena be issued for Detective George Bullock’s computer, cell phone, and any other communications devices in the possession of his wife or family.”
Lips compressed, the judge regarded him sternly. “On what grounds?”
“It’s a question of intent,” Ford answered. “We’ve submitted copies of screenshots from Facebook showing that the Deputy Bullock posted materials disparaging voting rights workers and asserting that Democrats and voting rights groups stole the presidential election of 2020. We’re seeking to determine whether there are further such materials suggesting a hostility toward the defendant that, in turn, bears on the circumstances of his death.”
“Do you have a response, Mr. Harris?”
“The state is opposed,” Harris answered promptly. “Some two-year-old screenshots say nothing about his lawful stop of an intoxicated motorist three years short of the statutory age for drinking alcohol in Georgia.”
“Your Honor,” Ford rejoined, “before this so-called lawful stop, Deputy Bullock turned off his body and dashboard cameras in blatant violation of departmental policy. The evidence we’re seeking may illuminate why.”
Judge Tilly gave him a look of reproof. “You know the law in this state, Counselor. Without more evidence connecting the deputy’s personal or political views to the defendant’s state of mind at the time of the shooting, you have insufficient basis for seeking this subpoena. Until you can come up with that, motion denied.” Looking from Ford to Harris and back again, the judge asked, “Is there any further business before the court? If not, this hearing is adjourned.”
“All rise,” the courtroom deputy called out again, and Allie saw Malcolm slump with the weight of all that had happened so swiftly. Then two deputies came forward to return him to jail. He was gone before she could speak, or even touch him.
Outside, Allie and Chase left as they had come, descending the courthouse steps. But the crowd had thickened, and more deputies had gathered. On the sidewalk below, Charles Parnell and his followers were calling out toward Allie and thrusting their weapons in the air. “Your boy’s gonna die,” someone jeered.
Face stony, Allie kept moving. At her side, Chase looked straight ahead, ignoring the media pressing toward them.
“Congressman Brevard,” a female reporter called out, “why are you here?”
Stifling his own emotions, Chase considered how to respond. He could ignore her. He could say that this was a private matter, or that he was honoring the judge’s request to refrain from comment. Or he could give the political and politic answer, that he was supporting a longtime friend.
But he was in no mood to do any of this. Instead, he stopped and turned toward the woman and the camera behind her, and gave the answer of a father.
“Because Malcolm Hill is innocent,” he said, and began moving with Allie again.
PART FIVE
The Disclosure
45
That evening, to his surprise, Allie’s mother invited Chase to dinner.
Though the invitation was irresistible, Chase accepted with a certain trepidation. Among the many things that had complicated his relationship to Allie at Harvard was the prospect of her strong-minded mother’s disapproval, and Chase was not certain of why Janie Hill wanted to meet him, or what would happen when they sat face-to-face. But he was also intensely curious to see for himself the woman who, as much as anyone, had shaped who Allie became. And so, at the appointed hour, Chase once again drove to the place where three generations of Hills, including his son, had made their home.
The softening sunlight of early evening turned the fields surrounding the two farmhouses a gentler green. At the head of the driveway, Chase waved to a sheriff’s deputy leaning against his squad car, stationed as a warning to those who posed dangers to Allie. Passing her house, he saw the basketball hoop and horseshoe pit that Wilson Hill had provided for Malcolm, and thought again of the young man in prison, now facing a trial for capital murder.
The woman who greeted him at the door to the larger farmhouse was small and slender, like Allie, with gray-streaked black hair; dark, probing eyes; a handsome face whose age was betrayed less by lines than by an absence of softness; and a reddish-brown complexion that suggested the Native American ancestry Allie had mentioned at Harvard. Giving Chase an unabashed look of appraisal, she said, “Uh-huh, you’re good-looking, all right, just like on television. Makes me wonder why you’ve never been married.”
Despite his uneasiness, the complete absence of prefatory politeness made Chase smile. “People keep mentioning that.”
Briskly, Janie Hill shooed him toward the kitchen. “Nice smile, too,” she remarked over her shoulder. “Looks like some orthodontist did right by you.”
This was not idle chatter, Chase sensed at once—there was a point to all this, and in due course he would learn what it was. “Nice to see where Allie grew up,” he said. “Back in college, I could tell how important this place was to her.”
Janie gave him a swift, sharp look. “Wilson’s grandfather bought it with money made burying Black people. Allie grew up thinking these fields are haunted by other dead people—the slaves who worked from dawn to dusk. ‘Only them?’ I’d ask.”
She turned to the serving dishes laid out by the stove. “Like all of Georgia, this land once belonged to Native Americans. But King George granted title to the dregs from English prisons, all so they could enslave the kings and queens of Africa to work the land they stole by terrorizing and killing the people who’d lived here. Pretty soon we had a holiday named after an Italian who couldn’t sail straight. History for white people.”
For Chase, this triggered a memory. “I remember Allie saying something like that.”
She looked up at him so intently that, yet again, she reminded him of her daughter. Though the intonations of the rural South softened her speech more than Allie’s, the two women were similar enough in appearance and manner that he could imagine Allie after the passage of years. “College again? Seems you two had a lot to say to each other.”
He took his place at a white wooden table. With swift, darting movements that further evoked Allie, Janie covered his plate with the familiar meal her daughter had predicted to Chase she would serve—fried chicken, black-eyed peas, and collard greens—before serving side dishes of mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese, accompanied by sweet tea that, he discovered, came flavored with sugar. No alcohol, Chase noticed—in the Hill family, unlike his own, cocktails before dinner were not part of the ritual.
“Looks delicious, Mrs. Hill. Though I can’t help wondering how you and Allie stay thin.”
“Simple. We worry.” Janie paused for a moment. “I’m imagining you wonder why Allie came back.”
The woman’s directness, Chase found, no longer surprised him—what awaited discovery was why she had turned it on Chase. “I wondered back in college,” he acknowledged. “But even more now.”
Janie studied him again, quiet. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Congressman, over the two people on earth I love most. I’d like to understand more about why. But maybe I should tell you some things about our family and Alexandria you may not be clear on.”
Chase found himself intuitively grasping Janie’s deeper purpose. “I’d appreciate that,” he responded. “I’ve had easier assignments in life than understanding your daughter.”
Janie smiled, almost imperceptibly. “Doesn’t seem like life gave you a head start. So go ahead and eat, and I’ll try to explain what Allie was born into, and why she couldn’t leave it. Truth to tell, much of that comes from me, and what I passed on to her.”
The chicken was moist and delicious, Chase thought, even if his cholesterol count was fated to shatter its previous high. “Wilson and I were born in segregated hospitals,” Janie told him “We went to all-Black schools where the books were so old, the pages fell out. For a lot of our neighbors, that was just how things were.” Her expression became ruminative, as if remembering why her life had changed. “But our parents were educated, and my mother took me to my first protest meeting when I was eight years old. That started me down the same road that Allie’s following now.”
“Jabari Ford told me something about your trying to integrate a movie theater when you were in grade school. If you don’t mind, I’d like to hear about it.”
