All That Is Mine I Carry With Me, page 26
The juror in the back row, far left, blinks awake, sits up a little straighter. His bullshit detector has gone quiet.
* * *
—
Later the same morning. It is around eleven-thirty. The energy in the courtroom is flagging. Everyone is drained—judge, jury, lawyers. Lunchtime is coming into view.
Mr. Bailis has called Detective Glover as his first witness. Glover is our Virgil; in over ninety minutes of testimony, he has walked the jury through the entire investigation. He is the one detective who has worked the case from the start, who knows every piece of evidence—the missing red necktie; the car scrubbed clean; Jane’s unhappiness in the marriage; the family vacation in Trout Lake, Vermont, where the body was ultimately found. His memory is strong. He is a seasoned, professional witness. He is also a diffident, involuted guy, and his laconic manner works here. He comes off as steady, reliable, not an attention seeker. By the time his direct testimony ends, I feel confident he has done his job of establishing our case in the jurors’ minds. More important, it is quite clear that he believes Dan Larkin murdered his wife.
All he has to do is survive the cross-examination.
When Mr. Bailis sits down, the judge says: Mr. Larkin, it’s eleven-thirty, we’ve been going quite a while. Would you like to take a break before you cross?
No, Your Honor.
All right then, you may proceed.
Dad goes to a little podium, places his yellow legal pad on it, then comes around to stand in front of the jury box. He rests his hand on the rail before the jurors, almost one of them, asking his questions from their position, without notes.
Lieutenant Detective Glover, what shall I call you, Lieutenant or Detective?
Either.
Let’s go with Detective. Detective, how old are you today?
I’m fifty.
Fifty. So if my math is right, when you were assigned this case, nineteen years ago, you were thirty-one years old.
Yes.
That’s awfully young to be the lead detective on a homicide, isn’t it?
It wasn’t a homicide when it was assigned. It was a missing-person case.
And is that how the case remained, officially, a missing-person case?
Yes.
Had you ever worked a missing-person case at that time?
No.
Had you ever worked a homicide?
Not on my own, no. Only as part of a team.
And yet you found yourself working this very difficult, unusual case. At age thirty-one. Alone.
Not exactly. Lots of other detectives came on. The whole department was available. There were state police, too, and the DA’s office. It was never just me.
But it was you I kept meeting, wasn’t it?
We spoke several times, yes.
Just you.
Yes.
Never had a partner. I never met with you and anyone else?
Not usually, no.
And it’s you here today still, isn’t it?
It is.
No other cops have stuck with the case all this time, have they? Just you.
Just me.
And no other cops are going to testify in this case, will they?
Bailis: Objection
Judge: Sustained.
You told the jury a moment ago that This is a circumstantial case but, taken together, the evidence is strong. But that’s not what you’ve always believed, is it?
At what time do you mean?
Well, even years after my wife disappeared, you continued to investigate whether she might be living somewhere else, didn’t you? Under an assumed name, an assumed identity?
I did.
So obviously even you weren’t convinced she’d been murdered.
It was my job to run down every lead.
Detective, don’t be cute. If you didn’t think there was any chance Jane might be in Cleveland or Petaluma or any of the other places you went, you wouldn’t have bothered going, would you?
No.
No, of course not. So you obviously thought there was a chance, however remote, that she might be alive.
Yes.
You had doubt.
Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Overruled.
You can answer the question, detective. Did you have doubt that Jane had been killed?
I considered it very, very unlikely she was still alive.
But not impossible.
Correct.
So it’s fair to say that this circumstantial evidence, which taken together is so strong, still leaves room for doubt.
Objection.
Sustained. Move on, counselor.
Detective, let’s look at that circumstantial case piece by piece.
All right.
You testified earlier that on the day Jane disappeared, you thought my car had been recently washed. Tell me, if a man takes his car to a car wash, do you generally take that as an indication he has committed murder?
Generally, no. In combination with other evidence, I might. That’s how circumstantial cases work.
That’s how circumstantial cases work? By piling up innocent actions to create a false impression of guilt?
Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Sustained.
Detective, shall we ask the jurors if any of them have washed their car recently?
Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Sustained.
In your direct testimony, you said that there was dirt under my fingernails.
Yes, that’s what I observed.
But that otherwise my hands seemed to have been scrubbed clean.
Yes.
And I changed my necktie?
Yes.
And my shirt?
Yes.
And therefore I killed my wife?
Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Sustained.
Shall we ask the jurors if any of them have washed their hands today? Or changed their clothes?
Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Sustained.
Bailis: Your Honor, may I be heard at sidebar?
Judge: Yes.
The lawyers stand together at the far side of the judge’s bench, out of the jury’s hearing, and mine. Looking up at the judge, Mr. Bailis makes an argument in a low mumble. My father answers with a shrug that says: Who, me? The judge seems to warn him, but as he returns to his spot near the jury box—with his back to the judge and Mr. Bailis—he gives the jurors a look: Do you see what’s going on here?
Detective, you testified that on the date of Jane’s disappearance, you found my manner to be nervous and evasive.
I don’t believe I said nervous. I said you seemed wary and evasive.
Is that because of anything in particular that I said?
No.
Just my manner?
That’s right.
It was just a feeling you got, then? A sense?
Something like that.
You simply divined that, on the inside, I must be hiding something.
That was my impression, yes.
Based on your vast experience with murder investigations, at age thirty-one, in Newton, Massachusetts?
A person knows when he is being lied to.
How many murders a year, on average, happen in Newton?
On average? Zero.
Fair to say you were very inexperienced at the time you drew this conclusion?
It’s fair to say I hadn’t investigated many murders.
Yet you found my emotions unconvincing.
Yes.
Had you ever met me before that day?
No.
Did you know anything about me?
No.
We’d never met, yet somehow you knew how I behave when I am—what was it?—wary and evasive?
It was the sense I had, yes.
Is it ever wrong, this sixth sense of yours?
Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Overruled.
I don’t know.
Well, this is quite a skill for a detective to have, isn’t it? The ability to know what other people are thinking even when they’ve said or done nothing suspicious.
Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Sustained.
Bailis: Your Honor, I would ask for a curative instruction. This can’t go on.
Judge: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am going to instruct you to disregard the last question. Put it out of your mind as if you never heard it. The lawyers will have a chance to make their arguments to you later in the trial. Mr. Larkin, pose a proper question, please. Don’t make speeches.
Detective, you still believe that taken together the evidence is strong?
Yes.
When the search warrant was executed at my house, you took all my suits and shoes. Were those clothes analyzed for evidence of the crime?
Yes.
And what was found?
Nothing.
The shovel that was taken from my garage—what evidence was found on it?
None.
And my car, which you tore apart for evidence. What did you find in it?
Nothing.
And in Jane’s car, which was discovered at the train station? What did you find?
Nothing. It was wiped clean.
By wiped clean, you mean no evidence was found?
I mean we found evidence to suggest that the car had been wiped down to remove any fingerprints or other evidence.
So there was no evidence in that car pointing to me or anyone else?
Correct.
None at all?
Correct.
And yet taken together the evidence is strong?
Yes.
You testified that no witnesses could confirm that I was at the Social Law Library, where I claimed to be on the day of the disappearance.
That’s correct.
But there are also no witnesses who say I wasn’t there, isn’t that so?
It’s very difficult to prove a negative.
Well, it may be difficult but it’s also your job. You’ve suggested to this jury that I wasn’t where I claimed to be. Do you have any witnesses or evidence to confirm that?
No.
No? Not a single witness?
No.
Not a shred of real evidence?
Only the lack of witnesses to corroborate your story.
So, for all you know, it’s possible I was exactly where I said I was that day?
A beat.
It’s possible, yes.
In the back of the courtroom, my eyes drift from the Q&A to the spectators, the judge, the jurors, the details of the courtroom itself. I stop listening. I have never watched a cross-examination before. It is at least possible that they all go this badly. But I doubt it. It will go on a long time, it seems. There is a lot to cover, and Dad is in no hurry. He is like a cat tormenting a mouse before killing it; it isn’t cruelty, just instinct, the pleasure of acting according to one’s nature. Dad is nowhere near satisfied yet, but I think we can look away.
* * *
—
Next morning, around 9:30.
Miranda is on the stand, called by Mr. Bailis to recount her experiences in the first hours of my mother’s vanishing.
My sister’s testimony has been reported in the media and has drawn a predictable crowd of lawyers and ghouls. The district attorney is there, as well, as he has been since the opening statements.
Miranda is a wreck. She hardly slept last night. I have told her that when she is up on the stand, if she starts to lose it, she should look at the tattoo on her arm: Omnia mea mecum porto, all that is mine I carry with me.
Whatever butterflies she may be feeling, Miranda relates her story in a steady, unemotional voice. Coming home from school to an empty house. Waiting for hours alone. The long night. The appearance of Detective Glover the next morning.
It is all very sad, but none of it incriminates my father, so he is not contesting any of it. He raises no objections or distractions. Just listens, downcast.
It has not been going on very long—we are only twenty minutes or so into Miranda’s testimony—when the courtroom door opens and a woman enters. She stops in the doorway, uncertain where to go, where to sit. There are no empty seats in the gallery.
The courtroom goes silent.
On the witness stand, Miranda—who has been telling the jury about how Detective Glover questioned Dad on the morning after my mother vanished—stops speaking.
The woman looks across the room at Miranda, twenty feet away, and she smiles gently.
She is my mother.
Beside me, from Aunt Kate, a sudden intake of breath through the nostrils. Jane!
She cannot be my mother. She is too old. Or is she? Is this what my mother would look like at fifty-eight?
The ghostly moment goes on, a fermata, until Dad turns in his chair to see what is going on.
Mimi beams for this woman, puts her right hand over her heart, and mouths the words Thank you. She is the only one who seems to know who the woman is.
Then I understand. It is Mrs. Bowers, who so reminded Miranda of our mother years ago.
I stand and gesture to Mrs. Bowers, offering my seat, as if she were an old woman on a subway car.
She declines the offer with a shake of her head. Crossing her arms, she settles herself against the doorjamb. She will stand where she is to watch Miranda testify. Something about her posture suggests she will stand there until Miranda is done, all day if she has to.
Aunt Kate continues to stare at this woman.
On the witness stand, Miranda seems to sit a little straighter, stiffened, as if the real Jane has actually showed up. She says into the microphone, I’m sorry, I forgot the question. Could you repeat it?
* * *
—
When Miranda’s direct testimony is concluded and Mr. Bailis has sat down, I am deeply uneasy. Miranda has gone over a lot of the same material that Detective Glover talked about: the business about the missing necktie; my mother’s belongings undisturbed in the bedroom—the hairbrush, cigarettes, jewelry—nothing stolen, no sign of struggle; my dad’s oddly flat demeanor in the first twenty-four hours of my mother’s absence, punctuated by scripted, unconvincing displays of anger or fear. In this big courtroom, under the unforgiving eyes of the judge and jury, it all seems inadequate. There is nothing here, no smoking gun, and there will not be. Increasingly I comfort myself with the mantra fifty percent plus a feather. We do not have to eliminate all doubt, we just have to cross the fifty-yard line.
Miranda looks drained by her testimony. The prospect of taking the stand has terrorized her. She feels guilty about betraying her father by testifying, but she would feel equally guilty betraying her mother by not testifying. Her face shows exhaustion and relief at being nearly finished.
Dad stands up for his cross. He is in a tricky position. He cannot be seen by the jury to be beating up on his own daughter; at the same time, he has to attack her testimony. She is trying to ruin him; he has to answer.
This time he takes a position right next to the witness stand, as close to Mimi as he can get, no doubt so the jury sees him alongside his daughter, father and child, co-victims.
Miranda.
Yes.
I know this is hard for you. I am so sorry you’ve been put through this.
Mr. Bailis: Objection.
Judge: Sustained. Pose a question.
My father nods, mournful, reluctant.
Miranda, do you remember the last morning we all spent together with your mother?
Yes.
You remember we had breakfast, before school?
Yes.
It was a nice breakfast, wasn’t it?
I suppose.
There was no fighting, no arguing?
No.
Everybody was happy?
Yes.
Mom was happy?
I think so.
Do you remember your mom teasing me that morning about how I ate my breakfast?
Yes.
What did she say?
That you shouldn’t eat your muffin with a fork.
And we all laughed about that, didn’t we?
Yes.
Including Mom?
Yes.
You remember that because it was our last meal together, don’t you?
Yes.
You’ve gone over it in your head a thousand times.
Yes.
I have too. Where were we sitting, me and you? Do you remember?
At the table.
And where was Mom?
In the kitchen.
Dad’s tone is gentle, nostalgic. He is practically taking Mimi’s hand and walking her through it.
And where was Jeff?
Late.
Why was Jeff late?
Because he was always late.
(This is not true, by the way. I was occasionally not late.)
And where was Alex? Do you remember that?
He was there too.
When you went off to school that day, you weren’t worried about any trouble between your mom and dad, were you?
No.
You weren’t worried that Mom was unhappy?
No.
She did not seem upset or angry or sad, did she?
No.
And I did not seem upset or angry, either, did I?
No.
Just an ordinary morning.
Yes.
That night and the next day, do you remember sitting with me, waiting for Mom to call or to come home?
Yes.
Where did we sit?
On the couch in the den.
We sat right next to each other, didn’t we?
Yes.
You weren’t afraid of me, were you?
No.
You were never afraid of me, were you? I never did anything to make you afraid, did I?
