Rose Connors - Temporary Sanity

“Did he?”

“Yes. Well, no. I mean, he did go to the station, but he didn’t ask any questions.”

“Tell the jury why not.”

Patty leans toward them and takes a deep breath. “Turns out the sergeant in charge was dialing our number when Buck walked up to the front desk. The sergeant assumed Buck was at home. They’d told him to stay there.”

I nod to tell her to continue.

“The Chief had called in from the road. They’d found the body of a young boy near the bridge, behind the power plant. They thought it might be Billy.” She looks down at her lap and shakes her head again. “The truth is, they were pretty confident that it was. The Chief wanted Buck at the county morgue as soon as he could get there.”

“To identify the body?”

Patty bites her lower lip. “Yes.”

I pause to fill a water glass and set it on the ledge in front of her. She mouths a silent thank-you.

“Did you know, at the time, how long it would take to drive from the station to the county morgue?”

She shrugs. “Forty minutes, maybe.”

“Was Buck leaving the station as soon as he finished talking with you?”

Patty shakes her head. “He’d already left. He called from the truck phone. He was on the Mid-Cape Highway.”

I walk toward the jury box and face the panel. “Patty, when was the next time you spoke to your husband?”

She takes a deep breath and falls silent for a moment. “He was in jail. They let me in around noon.”

I pause so the jurors can do the math. “More than ten hours later?”

“That’s right.”

I turn to face her, but stay close to the box, my back to the panel. When Patty looks at me to answer these next few questions, she will necessarily face the jurors as well. And that’s important.

“He didn’t call in the interim?”

She’s quiet for just a moment. “No.”

“You’ve already told us he had a cell phone, a phone in the truck.”

She nods.

“But he didn’t call for more than ten hours?”

“He was arrested a little before five.”

“But you didn’t know that at the time.”

Another nod. “That’s right. I got a call from Chief Fitzpatrick at about ten-thirty. He’d just learned that Buck had refused to phone anyone. So he called to tell me what happened. He thought I should know, he said.”

“Did you try to reach your husband between one-thirty and ten-thirty?”

She’s perfectly still. “No.”

“Nine hours. What did you do during that time?”

Patty blinks, looking as if she’s never considered this question. “I’m not sure. I don’t think I did anything. I don’t think I moved.”

I scan the faces in the jury box and lower my voice to just above a whisper. “Why didn’t you call him?”

She blinks again and lowers her eyes to her lap. Her lips part, but no words emerge.

“Patty, your husband went to the county morgue to view the body of a little boy. You knew it might be Billy. You knew the cops thought it was. But you let nine hours go by without so much as a phone call.” I pause until she looks up at me. “Why?”

Patty returns my stare for just a moment, her eyes brimming, then sets her jaw and shifts her gaze to the jurors. “Because I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“I knew the little boy in the morgue was Billy.”

“How did you know?”

Patty bites her lip again and fingers her locket. Her tears flow freely. “I don’t know how I knew. But I did. I knew as soon as I hung up the phone at one-thirty. My heart ached. I knew.”

I scan the panel. They’re frozen.

Patty takes a deep breath. “I also knew time was running out.”

“What time?”

“The time when it wasn’t certain. The time when there was some part of me-a slice-that could pretend it wasn’t Billy, could swear it hadn’t happened. I clung to that.” She raises a hand toward the jurors, then presses it against her forehead. She wants them to understand. Words, though, are inadequate.

“I knew that once I talked to Buck the uncertainty would be gone. And I clung to the uncertainty like a life ring; it was all I had. I knew it was temporary.”

Patty drops her eyes to her lap and wipes her cheeks with the palms of her hands. “It was selfish, I know.”

I scan the panel again. No visible reaction.

Stanley clears his throat. “Your Honor, please. This woman isn’t on trial. Is counsel trying to prove that the defendant’s wife was insane too? Is it contagious?”

I keep my back to Stanley, my eyes on the jurors. Their eyes move from Patty to Stanley, but their expressions don’t change. Patty Hammond doesn’t deserve Stanley’s sarcasm. I hope they realize that.

The courtroom is quiet while Beatrice waits for me to respond to Stanley’s objection. It takes a few moments for her to realize I won’t.

“Counsel,” she says, “move on.”

Even Beatrice Nolan has enough common sense not to bully Patty Hammond in front of the panel.

“Patty, what did Buck say to you when you saw him in jail at noon?”

She looks up from her lap, eyes wide. “He didn’t say anything. We just looked at each other through the glass. We sat across from each other for a long time, staring, but neither one of us said anything.” She shakes her head at the jurors. “There weren’t words.”

“When was the next time the two of you spoke?”

Patty tilts her head to the side. “A few days later. I visited every day, stayed as long as they’d let me, but a few days went by before we spoke.”

“Thursday?”

She nods. “Probably.”

“Did you speak about the reason your husband was in jail? Did you speak about his shooting Hector Monteros?”

She winces at the mention of the name. “Yes,” she says. “We did.”

“Did you ask your husband why he shot Monteros?”

Stanley gets to his feet.

Patty considers the question for a moment. “No,” she says. “I didn’t have to.”

“Your Honor…” Stanley wants to shut this down. The judge does too, apparently. She has her gavel in hand.

I nod at Patty, hoping she’ll finish her thought. She turns to the panel, her eyes wide, but says nothing.

“You didn’t have to?”

“No. Of course not. I knew why.” Patty’s expression changes while she looks at the jurors, as if she just realized something important. “My husband isn’t a murderer.”

“Your Honor!” Stanley’s forehead erupts.

The gavel descends, but I ignore it. Last time I checked, “Your Honor!” was not a valid evidentiary objection.

The jurors seem to ignore it too. They’re zeroed in on Patty. She stares back and speaks directly to them, as if no one else is in the room. “Buck had to do it. Don’t you see?”

More than a few heads shake in the box. Maybe they find it all too hard to take in. Or maybe they don’t see.

“Your Honor!” Stanley’s holding both hands up, palms toward Patty, like a traffic cop. He’s ordering her words to halt. She doesn’t look at him.

“He didn’t have a choice,” she says, speaking to the jurors as if Stanley doesn’t exist. “He had to help Billy. Had to try.”

The gavel descends again, on the edge of the bench closest to the witness box.

Patty jumps. Her eyes leave the jury and she turns to look up at the judge. The jurors do too.

Beatrice isn’t facing Patty or the jury, though. Her gavel pounds again, near the top of Patty’s head, but she’s glaring at me. “Ms. Nickerson,” she says, almost spitting the words, “this examination is over.”

She’s right, of course. We’re finished. I couldn’t have scripted better testimony to end the day. Better, though, to let Beatrice think it’s her idea. I force a resigned smile. “Whatever you say, Judge. You’re the boss.”