Caleb Carr - The Angel Of Darkness

About halfway to the stand Clara stopped walking, as if she could feel the pair of golden eyes boring into the back of her head; then she slowly turned to take in the woman in the black dress, who smiled gently at her before suddenly putting her hands to her mouth with a gasp and sobbing just once. Looking strangely calm, little Clara said three simple words-“Don’t cry, Mama”-in a voice what couldn’t have been more grown up or more considerate; and the sound of those words struck every person in the galleries as dumb as the witness herself had been for the last three years.

Turning again, Clara climbed on into the witness box and held up her good left hand, following the procedure what the Doctor had spent long hours preparing her for. Bailiff Coffey, having been alerted by Mr. Picton, took the girl’s lifeless right hand and placed it on his Bible.

“Do you solemnly swear,” he said, softer than was his habit, “that the testimony you are about to give in this court-”

“I do,” Clara said, jumping the gun in her first outright show of nerves.

Bailiff Coffey just held up a finger, telling her to wait. “-shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

“I do,” Clara repeated, her face going a little red.

“State your full name, please,” Bailiff Coffey said.

“Clara Jessica Hatch,” she answered softly. Then, at a signal from Coffey, she sat down. Clara glanced at her mother quickly again, but just as quickly turned away to look at the Doctor once more. He gave her a firm little nod, to let her know that she was doing just fine. Finally, Mr. Picton stood up to approach the witness box.

“Hello, Clara,” he said, in a careful but still chipper sort of way. The girl opened her mouth to respond, but only managed a nod, as she pulled her right hand up onto her lap. “Clara,” Mr. Picton continued, “I’d like you to tell these gentlemen”-he held a hand up to the jury box-“everything that happened on the night of May the thirty-first, three years ago. In your own words. Can you do that for me, Clara?” The girl paused, trying hard now not to look at her mother. After a few seconds she nodded. “Then please,” Mr. Picton continued, “go ahead.”

As she took a deep breath, the fingers of Clara’s left hand locked onto her numb right forearm, gripping it hard. Letting the air out of her lungs, she began her story, in that same scratchy but brave voice.

“We went to town, to buy some things. And then to the lake-”

“Lake Saratoga?” Mr. Picton asked.

“Yes. Sometimes we’d go there in the summer. To watch the sun go down. And sometimes they have fireworks. But Tommy was getting sleepy before the fireworks started. And Matthew’s tummy wasn’t so good, on account of because he ate so many butterscotches. So Mama said we’d better go on home.”

“ ‘Mama’?” Mr. Picton asked. “Clara, do you see your mama anywhere right now?” The girl nodded quickly. “Can you point to her, please?” Glancing up ever so briefly, Clara stole a look at Libby, and then bent her head back down as she pointed toward the defense table. “Let the record state,” Mr. Picton said, “that the witness recognizes the accused, Mrs. Elspeth Hunter, as being her mother, the former Mrs. Elspeth Hatch, more commonly known as Libby Hatch.” Mr. Picton drew closer to the witness box and softened his voice again. “All right, Clara. Tell me, did you want to leave the lake that night?”

The girl shook her head, being careful to keep her braid behind her. “No, sir-I wanted to see the rockets.”

“And your mama-did she want to see the rockets, too?”

“Yes. But she said we had to get Tommy and Matthew home.”

“Was she happy about that?”

“No, sir. She was kind of-mad. She got kind of mad, sometimes.”

“Did she say anything that let you know she was kind of mad?”

Clara nodded once again, though reluctantly. “She said what she wanted didn’t matter-didn’t ever matter. That she always had to take care of us instead of doing what she liked.”

“Did she tell you what she would’ve ‘liked,’ exactly?”

Clara shrugged-or at least, her one good shoulder did. “I figured she meant seeing the rockets.”

Letting the girl take a few breaths to steady herself, Mr. Picton waited before saying, “Now, then, Clara-you got into your wagon to go home?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did your mother do anything, being as she was so angry?”

Clara’s face went puzzled. “She didn’t spank us or anything, if that’s what you mean. She just told me to get the boys into the wagon, and then we left.”

“Told you ?” Mr. Picton asked, moving over to the jury and plastering a look of surprise on his face. “ She didn’t put the boys into the wagon?”

“She tried,” Clara answered. “But Matthew started to cry. So she just told me to do it, and went down to the water to wash her face.”

Mr. Picton looked at the jury what you might call meaningfully. “Did she often ask you to take care of the boys?”

Nodding, Clara looked down at her hands again. “Mm-hmm. It was my job.”

Mr. Picton nodded, still studying the jury, who were starting to look as wide-eyed and confused as Sheriff Dunning had when he’d come out of the grand jury hearing. “I see,” Mr. Picton said. “That was your job… and once the boys were in the wagon?”

“Then Mama came up from the water, and we started to drive home,” Clara answered; but the words weren’t as strong as they had been to that point.

Mr. Picton, hearing the change, came back over to her, and stood so that his body blocked Clara’s view of Libby, and vice versa. “But you didn’t get home, did you, Clara?”

Seeming relieved that her mother was out of sight, Clara shook her head with more certainty. “No, sir.”

“And why not?”

Another deep breath and another look at the Doctor, and Clara went on, “We drove back through town, and we were on the road home-”

“The Charlton road?” Mr. Picton asked.

Clara nodded. “All of a sudden Mama drove the wagon over under a big tree, off the road. It was dark by then, and I didn’t know why she stopped. It was scary, on that road.”

“And where were you sitting, at that time?”

“I was in the back, holding on to Tommy so’s he didn’t bother Matthew-he was asleep by then.”

“Matthew was?”

“Yes, sir. And I didn’t want Tommy to wake him up so’s he’d start crying about his stomach again. It bothered Mama. I asked her why we stopped. She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, just sat up on the bench, staring at the road. I asked her again, and then she got down and came around to the back of the wagon. She had her bag in her hand. She said she had something important she needed to tell us.”

Hearing Clara’s voice start to trail off again, Mr. Picton said, “It’s all right, Clara. What did she tell you?”

“She said that she’d stopped… she’d stopped…”

“Clara?”

The girl’s eyes’d gone glassy, and for a minute my heart sank, thinking that she’d shrunk back into the horrified silence what’d gripped her for so long. I saw the Doctor’s jaw set hard, and I knew that he was worrying about the same thing. We both started breathing again, though, when Clara near-whispered:

“She said that she’d seen our dada.”

Judge Brown leaned over, cupping one of his big ears with his hand. “I’m afraid you’ll have to speak up a little, young lady, if you can,” he said.

Looking up at him and swallowing hard, Clara repeated, “She said that she’d seen our dada. She said he told her he was with God. She said that he told her God wanted us to be with Him, too.”