William Landay - Defending Jacob

In the Rifkins’ vast kitchen-Wolf cooktop, Sub-Zero fridge, granite counters, English-white cabinets-the school parents huddled in clusters of three or four and made intimate confessions about insomnia, sadness, unshakeable dread. They talked over and over about Columbine and 9/11 and how Ben’s death made them cling to their own children while they could. The extravagant emotions of that evening were heightened by the warm light in the kitchen, cast by hanging fixtures with burnt-orange globes. In that firelight, as I entered the room, the parents were indulging one another in the luxury of confessing secrets.

At the kitchen island one of the moms, Toby Lanzman, was arranging hors d’oeuvres on a serving platter as I came into the room. A dish towel was slung over her shoulder. The sinews in her forearms stood out as she worked. Toby was my wife Laurie’s best friend, one of the few enduring connections we had made here. She saw me searching for my wife, and she pointed across the room.

“She’s mothering the mothers,” Toby said.

“I see that.”

“Well, we can all use a little mothering at the moment.”

I grunted, gave her a puzzled look, and moved off. Toby was an incitement. My only defense against her was a tactical retreat.

Laurie stood with a small circle of moms. Her hair, which has always been thick and unruly, was swept up in a loose bun at the back of her head and held there by a big tortoiseshell hair clip. She rubbed a friend’s upper arm in a consoling way. Her friend inclined toward Laurie visibly, like a cat being stroked.

When I reached her, Laurie put her left arm around my waist. “Hi, sweetie.”

“It’s time to go.”

“Andy, you’ve been saying that since the second we got here.”

“Not true. I’ve been thinking it, not saying it.”

“Well, it’s been written all over your face.” She sighed. “I knew we should have come in separate cars.”

She took a moment to appraise me. She did not want to go but understood that I was uneasy, that I felt spotlighted here, that I was not much of a talker to begin with-chitchat in crowded rooms always left me exhausted-and these things all had to be weighed. A family had to be managed, like any other organization.

“You go,” she decided. “I’ll get a ride home with Toby.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Why not? Take Jacob with you.”

“You’re sure?” I leaned down-Laurie is almost a foot shorter than me-to stage-whisper, “Because I’d love to stay.”

She laughed. “Go. Before I change my mind.”

The funereal women stared.

“Go on. Your coat’s in the bedroom upstairs.”

I went upstairs and found myself in a long corridor. The noise was muted here, which came as a relief. The echo of the crowd still murmured in my ears. I began searching for the coats. In one bedroom, which apparently belonged to the dead boy’s little sister, there was a pile of coats on the bed, but mine was not in the pile.

The door to the next room was closed. I knocked, opened it, poked my head in to peek around.

The room was gloomy. The only light came from a brass floor lamp in the far corner. The dead boy’s father sat in a wing chair under this light. Dan Rifkin was small, trim, delicate. As always, his hair was sprayed in place. He wore an expensive-looking dark suit. There was a rough two-inch tear in his lapel to symbolize his broken heart-a waste of an expensive suit, I thought. In the dim light, his eyes were sunken, rimmed in bluish circles like a raccoon’s eye-mask.

“Hello, Andy,” he said.

“Sorry. Just looking for my coat. Didn’t mean to bother you.”

“No, come sit a minute.”

“Nah. I don’t want to intrude.”

“Please, sit, sit. There’s something I want to ask you.”

My heart sank. I have seen the writhing of survivors of murder victims. My job forces me to watch it. Parents of murdered children have it worst, and to me the fathers have it even worse than the mothers because they are taught to be stoic, to “act like a man.” Studies have shown that fathers of murdered children often die within a few years of the murder, often of heart failure. Really, they die of grief. At some point a prosecutor realizes he cannot survive that kind of heartbreak either. He cannot follow the fathers down. So he focuses instead on the technical aspects of the job. He turns it into a craft like any other. The trick is to keep the suffering at a distance.

But Dan Rifkin insisted. He waved his arm like a cop directing cars to move ahead, and seeing there was no choice, I closed the door gently and took the chair next to his.

“Drink?” He held up a tumbler of coppery whiskey, neat.

“No.”

“Is there any news, Andy?”

“No. Afraid not.”

He nodded, looked off toward the corner of the room, disappointed. “I’ve always loved this room. This is where I come to think. When something like this happens, you spend a lot of time thinking.” He made a tight little smile: Don’t worry, I’m all right.

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“The thing I can’t get past is: why did this guy do it?”

“Dan, you really shouldn’t-”

“No, hear me out. Just-I don’t-I don’t need hand-holding. I’m a rational person, that’s all. I have questions. Not about the details. When we’ve talked, you and I, it’s always about the details: the evidence, the court procedures. But I’m a rational person, okay? I’m a rational person and I have questions. Other questions.”

I sank in my seat, felt my shoulders relax, acquiescing.

“Okay. So here it is: Ben was so good. That’s the first thing. Of course no kid deserves this, anyway. I know that. But Ben really was a good boy. He was so good. And just a kid. He was fourteen years old, for God’s sake! Never made any trouble. Never. Never, never, never. So why? What was the motive? I don’t mean anger, greed, jealousy, that kind of motive, because there can’t be an ordinary motive in this case, there can’t, it just doesn’t make sense. Who could feel that kind of, of rage against Ben, against any little kid? It just doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t make sense.” Rifkin put the four fingertips of his right hand on his forehead and worked the skin in slow circles. “What I mean is: what separates these people? Because I’ve felt those things, of course, those motives — angry, greedy, jealous-you’ve felt them, everybody’s felt them. But we’ve never killed anyone. You see? We never could kill anyone. But some people do, some people can. Why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must have some sense of these things.”

“No. I don’t, really.”

“But you talk to them, you meet them. What do they say, the killers?”

“They don’t talk much, most of them.”

“Do you ever ask? Not why they did it, but what makes them capable of it in the first place.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they wouldn’t answer. Their lawyers wouldn’t let them answer.”

“Lawyers!” He tossed his hand.

“They wouldn’t know how to answer, anyway, most of them. These philosophical murderers-Chianti and fava beans and all that stuff-it’s bullshit. It’s just the movies. Anyway, they’re full of shit, these guys. If they had to answer, they’d probably tell you about their rough childhoods or something. They’d make themselves the victims. That’s the usual story.”

He nodded once, to urge me on.

“Dan, the thing is, you can’t torture yourself looking for reasons. There are none. It’s not logical. Not the part you’re talking about.”

Rifkin slid down in his chair a little, concentrating, as if he would need to give the whole thing more thought. His eyes glistened but his voice was even, controlled. “Do other parents ask these sorts of things?”