Defending Jacob (47 page)

The remarkable thing about all this emotional manipulation was that it actually worked. We actually achieved the traveler’s fantasy of leaving our old selves and all our troubles behind. We were transported, in both senses. Not all at once, of course, but little by little. We felt the weight begin to lift the moment we booked the trip, a nice long two-week stay. Then we felt lighter still when the plane lifted off from Boston, and even more so when we stepped out into the glare and the warm tropical breeze on the tarmac at the little airport in Montego Bay. Already we were different. We were strangely, miraculously, deliriously happy. We looked at one another with surprise, as if to say,
Could this be true? Are we really … happy?
You will say that we were deluding ourselves; our troubles were no less real. And of course that is true, but so what? We had earned a vacation.

At the airport, Jacob grinned. Laurie held my hand. “It’s paradise!” she beamed.

We made our way through the terminal and out to a small shuttle bus, where a driver held a clipboard with the Waves logo and a list of guests he was supposed to pick up. He looked a little bedraggled in a T-shirt, shorts, and shower sandals. But he grinned at us and he peppered his sentences with
“Ya, mahn!”
and generally he made a good show of it. “Ya, man!” he said over and over, until we were saying it too. Obviously he had performed this happy-native routine a thousand times. The pasty vacationers ate it up, us included.
Ya, man!

The bus ride lasted nearly two hours. We bounced over a crumbling road that roughly followed the north coast of the island. To our right were lush green mountains, to the left, the sea. The poverty of the island was hard to miss. We passed little tumbledown houses and shanties knocked together from scrap wood and corrugated tin. Ragged women and scrawny kids walked along the sides of the road. The vacationers in the bus were subdued during the ride. The natives’ poverty was a bummer and they wanted to be sensitive to it; at the same time they had come for a good time and it wasn’t
their
fault the island was poor.

Jacob found himself seated on the wide bench at the back of the bus next to a girl about his age. She was pretty in a debate-team way, and the two kids chatted cautiously. Jacob kept his answers short, as if every word was a stick of dynamite. He wore a dumb grin. Here was a girl who did not know anything about the murder, did not even seem aware that Jacob was a geek who could not quite bring himself to look a girl in the eye. (He was proving himself quite capable of looking this girl in the chest, however.) It was all so wonderfully normal, Laurie and I made a point of not staring lest
we
screw it up for him.

I whispered, “And I figured
I’d
get laid on this trip before Jacob.”

“My money’s still on you,” she said.

When the bus finally arrived at Waves, we passed through a grand gate, past lush manicured beds of red hibiscus and yellow impatiens, and stopped under a portico at the main entrance to the hotel. Grinning bellmen unpacked the bags. They wore uniforms that combined British military bits—pith helmets blancoed to a dazzling whiteness, black pants with a thick red stripe down the side—and bright flower-print shirts. It was a delirious combination, just right for the army of Paradise, the good-time army.

In the lobby, we checked in. We exchanged our money for the in-house currency of Waves, little silver coins called “sand dollars.” A good-time soldier in a pith helmet served a complimentary rum punch, about which I can tell you only that it contained grenadine (it was bright red) and rum, and I immediately had another, feeling it was my patriotic duty to the pseudonation of Waves. I tipped the soldier, Lord knew how much since the exchange rate for sand dollars was a nebulous thing, but the tip must have been generous because he pocketed the coin and said, “Ya, man,” illogically but happily. From there, my memory of the first day gets a little fuzzy.

And the second.

I apologize for the silly tone, but the truth is we were damn happy. And relieved. With the strain of the previous year finally removed, we got a little silly. I know this story is all a very solemn business. Ben Rifkin had still been murdered, even if it had not been by Jacob. And Jacob had only been saved by the intervention of a second murder arranged by a deus ex prison—a secret only I was aware of. And of course, as the accused, we were still widely presumed guilty of
something
and so we had no right to be happy anyway. We had taken to heart Jonathan’s very strict instructions never to laugh or smile in public, lest anyone think we were not treating the situation with the proper gravity, lest they think we were anything less than shattered. Now, finally, we exhaled and, in our exhaustion, we felt intoxicated even when we weren’t. We did not feel like murderers at all.

We spent our first few mornings at the beach, afternoons at one of the many pools. Every evening the resort offered some sort of entertainment. This might be a musical show or karaoke or a talent contest for the guests. Whatever the format, the staff exhorted us to have the most extroverted sort of fun. They would call from the stage in lilting island accents, “Come on, ev-ry-bah-dy, make some noise!” and we guests would clap and cheer with maximum gusto. Afterward there would be dancing. A good dose of Waves punch was required to get through it.

We ate ravenously. Meals were all-you-can-eat buffets, and we made up for months of undereating. Laurie and I spent our sand dollars on beers and piña coladas. Jacob even tried his first beer. “Good,” he pronounced it manfully, though he did not finish it.

Jacob spent most of his time with his new girlfriend, whose name—brace yourself—was Hope. He was content to be with us too, but more and more the two of them went off together. Later we found out that Jacob had given her a false last name. Jacob Gold, he called himself, borrowing Laurie’s maiden name, which is why Hope never found out about the case. We did not know about Jacob’s little subterfuge at the time, so we were left to wonder what it meant, exactly, that this girl was flirting with Jacob. Was she so oblivious that it never occurred to her to do a simple Google search on him? If she had Googled “Jacob Barber,” she would have come up with about three hundred thousand results. (The number has grown since then.) Or maybe she did know and got some weird thrill out of dating this dangerous pariah. Jacob told us Hope had no idea about the case, and we did not dare question her directly for fear of spoiling the first good thing that had happened to Jacob in a very long time. We did not see much of Hope, anyway, in the few days we knew her. She and Jake preferred to be by themselves. Even if we were all at the pool together, the two of them would come over to say hello, then they would go sit at a little distance from us. Once we glimpsed them holding hands furtively as they lay on adjacent chaises.

I want to say—it is important you know—we liked Hope, not least because she made our son happy. Jacob brightened whenever she was around. She had a warm way about her. She was courteous and polite, with blond hair and a wonderful soft Virginia accent that seemed lovely to us Bostonians. She was a little pudgy but comfortable in her body, comfortable enough to wear bikinis every day, and we liked her for that too, for the easy way she carried herself, free of the usual morbid teenage insecurities. Even her unlikely name added to the fairy-tale symmetry of her sudden appearance on stage. “Finally we have Hope,” I would say to Laurie.

The truth is, we were not entirely focused on Jacob and Hope. Laurie and I had our own relationship to work on. We had to relearn each other, reestablish the old patterns. We even resumed our sex life, not frantically but slowly, tentatively. Probably we were as clumsy as Jacob and Hope, who no doubt were fumbling over each other at the same time, in secret corners and thrust up against palm trees. Laurie got very brown very quickly, as she always has. To my middle-aged eyes she looked insanely sexy, and I began to wonder if the website did not have it right, after all: she looked more and more like the hot soccer mom in the ad. She was still the best-looking woman I ever saw. It was a miracle that I got her in the first place and a miracle that she stayed with me as long as she did.

I think that, sometime in that first week, Laurie began to forgive herself for the primal sin—as she saw it—of losing faith in her own son, of doubting his innocence during the trial. You could see it in the way she began to loosen up around him. This was an internal struggle for her; she had nothing to reconcile with Jacob, since he never knew about her doubts, let alone that she had actually been afraid of him. Only Laurie could forgive herself. Personally, I did not see it as such a big deal. As betrayals go, this was a small one, and understandable in the circumstances. Maybe you have to be a mother to know why she took it so hard. All I can say is that, as Laurie began to feel better, our whole family began to return to its normal rhythm. Our family orbited around Laurie. Always had.

We quickly settled into a few routines, as people must, even in dreamworlds like Waves. My favorite ritual was to watch the sunset from the beach as a family. Every evening, we brought beers down with us and dragged three beach chairs to the water’s edge so we could sit with our feet in the water. Hope joined us to watch the sunset once, seating herself tactfully beside Laurie like a lady-in-waiting attending her queen. But generally it was just us three Barbers. Around us in the dimming light, little children would play in the sand and the shallow water, toddlers, even a few babies and their young parents. Gradually the beach would get quieter as the other guests left to get ready for dinner. The lifeguards would drag the empty beach chairs across the sand and stack them for the night, making a clatter, and finally the lifeguards themselves would leave, and only a few sunset gazers would linger on the beach. We would look out into the distance, where two arms of land reached out to encircle the little bay, and the horizon would burn yellow then red then indigo.

Looking back on it now, I picture my happy family of three sitting on that beach at sunset and I want to freeze the story there. We must have looked so normal, Laurie and Jacob and me, so much like all the other partyers and suburbanites at that resort. We must have seemed just like everyone else, which, when you get down to it, is all I ever really wanted.

Mr. Logiudice: And then?
Witness: And then—
Mr. Logiudice: Then what happened, Mr. Barber?
Witness: The girl disappeared.

E
vening was coming on now. Outside, daylight was withdrawing, the sky going dull, the familiar sunless gray sky of a cold spring in New England. The grand-jury room, no longer flooded with clear sunlight, went yellow under the fluorescent lights.

The jurors’ attention had come and gone the last few hours, but now they sat up attentively. They knew what was coming.

I had been in the chair testifying all day. I must have looked a little haggard. Logiudice circled me excitedly, like a boxer sizing up a woozy opponent.

Mr. Logiudice: Do you have any information about what happened to Hope Connors?
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: When did you learn she had vanished?
Witness: I don’t recall exactly. I remember how it began. We got a call in our room at the resort around dinnertime. It was Hope’s mother, asking if she was with Jacob. They had not heard from her all afternoon.
Mr. Logiudice: What did you tell her?
Witness: That we hadn’t seen her.
Mr. Logiudice: And Jacob? What did he say about it?
Witness: Jake was with us. I asked him if he knew where Hope was. He said no.
Mr. Logiudice: Was there anything unusual about Jacob’s reaction when you asked him that question?
Witness: No. He just shrugged. There was no reason to worry. We all figured she’d probably just gone off to explore. Probably she lost track of time. There was no cell phone reception there, so the kids were constantly disappearing. But the resort was very safe. It was completely fenced in. No one could get in to harm her. Hope’s mom wasn’t panicked either. I told her not to worry, Hope would probably be back any minute.
Mr. Logiudice: But Hope Connors never did come back.
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: In fact, her body was not found for several weeks, isn’t that right?
Witness: Seven weeks.
Mr. Logiudice: And when it was found?
Witness: The body was washed up on the shore several miles away from the resort. She drowned, apparently.
Mr. Logiudice: Apparently?
Witness: When a body is in the water that long—It had deteriorated. My understanding is that it had also been fed on by marine life. I don’t know for certain; I was not privy to that investigation. Suffice it to say, the body did not yield much evidence.
Mr. Logiudice: The case is considered an unsolved homicide?
Witness: I don’t know. It shouldn’t be. There’s no evidence to support that. The evidence suggests only that she went swimming and drowned.
Mr. Logiudice: Well, that’s not quite true, is it? There is some evidence that Hope Connors’s windpipe was crushed before she went into the water.
Witness: That inference is
not
supported by the evidence. The body was badly degraded. The cops down there—there was so much pressure, so much media. That investigation was not conducted properly.
Mr. Logiudice: That happened quite a bit around Jacob, didn’t it? A murder, a botched investigation. He must have been the unluckiest boy.
Witness: Is that a question?
Mr. Logiudice: We’ll move on. Your son’s name has been widely linked to the case, hasn’t it?
Witness: In the tabloids and some sleazy websites. They’ll say anything for money. There’s no profit in saying Jacob was innocent.
Mr. Logiudice: How did Jacob react to the girl’s disappearance?
Witness: He was concerned, of course. Hope was someone he cared about.
Mr. Logiudice: And your wife?
Witness: She was also very, very concerned.
Mr. Logiudice: That’s all, “very, very concerned”?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: Isn’t it fair to say she concluded Jacob had something to do with that girl’s disappearance?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: Was there anything in particular that convinced her of this?
Witness: There was something that happened at the beach. It was the day the girl disappeared. Jacob got there—this was late afternoon, to watch the sunset—and he sat on my right. Laurie was on my left. We said, “Where’s Hope?” Jacob said, “With her family, I guess. I haven’t seen her.” So we made some kind of joke—I think it was Laurie who asked—if everything was all right between them, if they’d had a fight. He said no, he just hadn’t seen her for a few hours. I—
Mr. Logiudice: Andy? Are you all right?
Witness: Yeah. Sorry, yes. Jake—he had these spots on his bathing suit, these little red spots.
Mr. Logiudice: Describe the spots.
Witness: They were spatters.
Mr. Logiudice: What color?
Witness: Brownish red.
Mr. Logiudice: Blood spatters?
Witness: I don’t know. I didn’t think so. I asked him what it was, what did he do to his bathing suit? He said he must have dripped something he’d been eating, ketchup or something.
Mr. Logiudice: And your wife? What did she think of the red spatters?
Witness: She didn’t think anything at the time. It was nothing, because we didn’t know the girl was missing yet. I told him to just go jump in the water and swim around until the bathing suit was clean.
Mr. Logiudice: And how did Jacob react?
Witness: He didn’t react at all. He just got up and he walked out on the dock—it was an H-shaped dock; he walked out the right-hand dock—and he dove in.
Mr. Logiudice: Interesting that it was you who told him to wash the bloodstains off his bathing suit.
Witness: I had no idea if they were bloodstains. I still don’t know if that’s true.
Mr. Logiudice: You still don’t know? Really? Then why were you so quick to tell him to jump in the water?
Witness: Laurie said something to him about how the bathing suit was expensive and Jacob should take better care of his things. He was so careless, such a slob. I didn’t want him to get in trouble with his mother. We were all having such a good time. That’s all it was.
Mr. Logiudice: But this was why Laurie was upset when Hope Connors first went missing?
Witness: Partly, yes. It was the whole situation, everything we’d been through.
Mr. Logiudice: Laurie wanted to go home immediately, isn’t that right?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: But you refused.
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: Why?
Witness: Because I knew what people would say: that Jacob was guilty and he was running away before the cops could pick him up. They would call him a killer. I wasn’t going to let anyone say that about him.
Mr. Logiudice: In fact, the authorities in Jamaica did question Jacob, didn’t they?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: But they never arrested him?
Witness: No. There was no reason to arrest him. He didn’t do anything.
Mr. Logiudice: Jesus, Andy, how can you be so damn sure? How can you be sure of that?
Witness: How can anyone be sure of anything? I trust my kid. I have to.
Mr. Logiudice: You have to why?
Witness: Because I’m his father. I owe him that.
Mr. Logiudice: That’s it?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: What about Hope Connors? What did you owe her?
Witness: Jacob did not kill that girl.
Mr. Logiudice: Kids just kept dying around him, is that it?
Witness: That’s an improper question.
Mr. Logiudice: I’ll withdraw it. Andy, do you honestly think you’re a reliable witness? Do you honestly think you see your son right?
Witness: I think I’m reliable, yes, generally. I don’t think any parent can be completely objective about his kid, I’ll concede that.
Mr. Logiudice: And yet Laurie had no trouble seeing Jacob for what he was, did she?
Witness: You’ll have to ask her.
Mr. Logiudice: Laurie had no trouble believing Jacob had something to do with that girl’s vanishing?
Witness: As I said, Laurie was very shaken by the whole thing. She was not herself. She came to her own conclusions.
Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss her suspicions with you?
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: I’ll repeat the question. Did your wife ever discuss her suspicions about Jacob?
Witness: No, she did not.
Mr. Logiudice: Your own wife never confided in you?
Witness: She did not feel that she could. Not about this. We’d talked about the Rifkin case, of course. I think she knew there were some things I just could not discuss; there were some places I just could not go. Those things she would just have to handle by herself.
Mr. Logiudice: So after two weeks in Jamaica?
Witness: We came home.
Mr. Logiudice: And when you got home, at that point did Laurie finally voice her suspicions about Jacob?
Witness: Not really.
Mr. Logiudice: “Not really”—what does that mean?
Witness: When we got home from Jamaica, Laurie was very, very quiet. She wouldn’t discuss anything at all with me, really. She was very wary, very upset. She was scared. I tried to talk to her, draw her out, but she didn’t trust me, I think.
Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss what you two ought to do, morally, as parents?
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: If she had asked you, what would you have said? What do you think your moral obligation was as parents of a murderer?
Witness: It’s a hypothetical question. I don’t believe we were parents of a murderer.
Mr. Logiudice: All right, hypothetically then: If Jacob was guilty, what should you and your wife have done about it?
Witness: You can ask the question as many ways as you like, Neal. I won’t answer it. It never happened.