Rose Connors - Temporary Sanity

Judge Long looks down at me but I turn away from him, face the panel again. If he’s going to allow the testimony, I don’t want him to say so yet. I want to get one more argument in front of the jurors-and in front of Stanley-before the judge rules.

“But if the Court prefers, Your Honor, we’ll call the neighbor during our case in chief. She’s spending the Christmas holidays in her South Chatham cottage. I spoke with her this morning.”

Hearsay is only hearsay if the person being quoted is unavailable to testify. If the neighbor is available for trial, then the Chief’s testimony isn’t hearsay in the first place; it doesn’t have to qualify as an exception.

I face Judge Long again. He arches his eyebrows, then looks at Stanley for a response.

Stanley sinks to his chair without a word.

I steal a glance at the defense table. Harry winks. It worked.

The last person Stanley wants in front of this panel is the Hammonds’ hysterical neighbor. If Stanley persists with his objections-even the valid ones-I’ll call the neighbor to the stand to fill in the blanks. If Stanley keeps quiet and lets the Chief tell the whole story, then the neighbor’s testimony won’t come in. It will be excluded as cumulative.

Judge Long looks at the jurors, then at Stanley, and finally at me. “I’ll allow it.”

I face the witness box again. “Chief, you were telling us about a conversation between Billy Hammond and his neighbor.”

The Chief looks comfortable in the witness chair. He always does. He enjoys the ease of a man who plans to tell the truth-nothing more, nothing less.

“Yes,” he says. “The neighbor told Billy he looked like he’d grown three inches since she’d seen him last. Billy laughed and said he probably had. She turned back to her weeding but stood up a few moments later to stretch.”

The Chief pauses for a sip of water.

“She was facing the beach at the time. She saw Billy approach a van idling at the far end of the parking lot. He was reaching out to pat a dog in the front seat. Then Billy vanished. She ran to the road and started for the beach, but the van peeled off before she got there. She found a fishing pole where the van had been.”

“Billy Hammond’s fishing pole?”

“Yes.” The Chief turns from the panel and looks-apologetically, it seems-at Patty. “His mother identified it.”

The members of the panel turn toward Patty too. Her eyes are wide, tear-filled, and she’s biting her lower lip, all the horror of that moment written on her face.

It takes a while for the jurors to return their attention to the Chief. I remain silent until they do.

“What happened next?”

“Well, as I said, it was a Saturday. One of my men called me at home and I joined the officers at the scene right away. The neighbor had gotten a good look at the van. She’d also had the presence of mind to memorize its license plate. We traced the plate immediately. Then I alerted the state barracks and they set up checkpoints at both bridges. We didn’t want that van leaving Cape Cod.”

“Did it?”

The Chief looks at the hat in his lap and shakes his head. “No.”

“Where did it go?”

He looks up at the panel again and takes a deep breath. “A state trooper found it the next day-Sunday-at about five in the afternoon. It was backed into a thicket of bushes at the Cape Cod Canal.” The Chief looks down at his hat again, then up at the panel. “Empty.”

“Let’s back up a moment, Chief. You say you traced the plate. What did you learn?”

“The van was registered to a Hector Monteros. We did a background check on him as soon as we got the ID, then put out an APB.”

Stanley clears his throat yet again.

“What did the background check tell you about Monteros?”

Stanley jumps up and his chair topples backward once more. “Objection, Your Honor!”

“Counsel”-Judge Long waves his arms like a traffic cop-

“approach.”

Stanley and I hurry to the judge’s bench, to the side farthest from the jury.

“Where are you going with this, Counsel?” Judge Long directs his question to me, in a whisper.

“Monteros was on the county’s registry of known sex offenders, a repeat pedophile.”

The judge shakes his head emphatically before I complete the sentence. “Not coming in.”

“State of mind, Judge. That information was conveyed to the parents-to the defendant-before Monteros was arrested. Surely it goes to state of mind.”

Judge Long shakes his head even harder. “No way. I’ll allow testimony about what happened to this child. That’s all. No prior acts.”

He’s right, of course. Even if Monteros were alive and sitting in the courtroom, evidence of his prior bad acts wouldn’t be admissible. Not unless he opened the door by offering evidence of good character. And no lawyer with a license would let him do that.

Stanley rights his chair again and sits, and I return to my post in front of the jury box. Twenty-eight eyes search mine. They want to know what information I’m being forced to swallow. They want to know what I know-more important, what Buck Hammond knew-about Hector Monteros.

I’d like to tell them to remember this moment. I’d like to tell them to keep it in mind as they listen to the Chief’s testimony. I’d like to tell them to read between the lines, to fill in the blanks, to figure it out for themselves.

I can’t, of course. I can’t say any of those things. Not now. Not ever.

Silence settles on the courtroom like cloud cover. The jurors’ gazes rest on Tommy Fitzpatrick. Mine does too. But I’m in no hurry to resume questioning. The longer the pause, the more memorable the hole in the testimony. At least that’s my theory.

Finally, Judge Long leans forward and catches my eye. “Counsel,” he says, “you may proceed.”

I smile up at him, as if I’d been awaiting his permission.

“You told us yesterday, Chief, that Hector Monteros was the main suspect in the disappearance of Billy Hammond, is that correct?” I turn to scan the faces in the jury box as I ask the question.

“That’s right,” he answers.

I face him again. “Who were the other suspects?”

His smile is barely perceptible. He knows where this is going.

“There weren’t any other suspects,” he says.

“Never?”

“Never.”

“To this day?”

He nods. “To this day.”

“You also told us you were hoping-initially, at least-that Monteros would lead you to Billy Hammond, correct?”

“Yes.”

“That wasn’t necessary, though, was it?”

“No.”

“Why not, Chief?”

He takes a deep breath. Stanley shifts in his chair and Judge Long looks over at him, no doubt anticipating an objection. Stanley doesn’t get up, though. I walk to the jury box and lean forward on its banister, my back to the witness.

“We found the boy,” the Chief says. “We found his body. Early Monday morning, the twenty-first, at about half past one.”

I continue to stare at the panel. “Where did you find Billy Hammond’s body?”

Water pouring from pitcher to glass is the only sound in the room. Silence surrounds us, weighs on us, while the Chief sets the pitcher down and pauses for a drink. “We had canine units working the canal. Two of them; one on each side. They started combing the area late in the day Sunday, as soon as the van was located.”

Another pause. Another swallow.

“One of them found the boy’s body. It was buried in a shallow grave, under thick brush, about a hundred yards behind the power plant.”

The jurors are silent, their eyes riveted to the witness box. Their expressions are fixed; no emotion in sight.