Private Screening (24 page)

“Long day.” He examined her. “You watched my cross-examination, didn't you? On television.”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

The woman who had come through the door looked wrong for the restaurant, Lord thought—alone, haggard, close to anorexic. Her straight black bangs seemed cut with a hatchet, and she carried an oversized purse. Watching her, Lord mentally replayed his wife's tone of voice. “I'm not the judge, jury, or prosecutor, Marsh—I'm there to protect Harry. I had to use that film.”

She sipped her Chianti. “I guess I was surprised you mentioned the Parnells'.”

The woman took her place in the line. “Tarrant could have said what happened there.” He turned to Marcia. “She surfaced to help DiPalma, right down to pronouncing Harry rational. All I did besides create even more sympathy for her was to keep doubt alive—barely. It'll be a cold day in hell before I apologize for that.”

“I wasn't looking for an apology, Tony. Just trying to understand you.”

The woman was watching them. Perhaps he had drawn her attention, Lord thought, and faced his wife again. “Not your fault,” he told her. “Some days I enjoy more than others. Let's forget it.”

“I'd like that.”

Awkwardly, he covered her hand. “I think Christopher was glad to see us going out.”

She glanced downward. “I guess he worries sometimes.”

“So do I.” The last impulse to confront her flickered and died. “Let's not let him, all right?”

“
I
never have.”

Looking sharply up at her, Lord saw the woman, watching his hand on Marcia's with the bright-eyed look of a bird.

“Tony?”

There was something wrong, he thought sluggishly, even as the woman started forward.

As Marcia turned, he stood without thought. Staring fixedly, the woman moved toward them, purse raised in front of her.

Three feet away, she said dully, “You're
him
.”

Grab the purse, he told himself. But he couldn't make his hands move. Marcia's mouth and eyes stretched open.

Lord stepped between them.

The woman spat in his face.

As Lord's hand went to his eyes, the woman stooped and spat in Marcia's wine.

Lord wrenched her away from Marcia. With mad intensity, the woman shrieked, “
Fucker!
”

Marcia ran from the restaurant. Throwing the woman to one side, Lord went after his wife, shoving through the line of startled patrons.

He found her bent over the steering wheel, crying.

Lord put his arm around her. He could feel her shoulders trembling. “It's okay,” he tried. “We'll go somewhere else. Please, we can't let this ruin things.…”

“Your
job's
done that,” she said with sudden vehemence. “Nothing will be okay until you quit.”

He kept his arm where it was. She turned, not crying now, demanding an answer. Strange, he thought, that you can look at someone and yet see anyone else—Christopher, his father, even Stacy Tarrant.

“I can't,” he finally told her.

She turned from him, staring at the parking lot. “Take me home, Tony.”

THE TRIAL: JOHN DAMONE

November 12–16

1

M
ONDAY
morning, when Lord opened with Shriver, Damone was there.

He watched Shriver intently, as if comparing what he heard to what he knew. Edgy, Lord wondered if he were there for Stacy Tarrant, or himself; the unanswered question of what Damone and Carson had faced in Vietnam ran through Shriver's testimony.

“So your opinion,” Lord summarized, “is that service in Vietnam changed Harry Carson.”

Shriver nodded. “It's like a fault line—before and after are two different people. There's no clue in his childhood or adolescence to what he's become.”

“Does that apply to shooting Senator Kilcannon?”

“Yes.” Lord could hear conviction in the calm, slow rhythm of his answer. “To me, it's inconceivable that Harry Carson would be here if not for Vietnam.”

“Can there also be a pattern to the way that some
particular
trauma affects postwar behavior?”

“It's called the anniversary reaction.” Facing the jurors, Shriver explained, “It's like recalling when a parent died or got divorced, but much worse. To survive for one year was the draftees' obsession—they counted each day they had left. So their postwar subconscious may revive a traumatic event on the date it originally occurred, sometimes to the day.”

“How does this reaction surface?”

“Through depression, moodiness, volatility. A severe traumatic memory will cause some vets to respond as if they're still in Vietnam.”

Lord paused. “Does the poem Harry completed on June second, the date of Senator Kilcannon's death, seem to fit this pattern?”

As Shriver glanced at him, Carson looked unsettled, oddly young. “The title, ‘Golden Anniversary,' suggests that,” Shriver answered, “and its images—blond hair, sunglasses, a camera—have no apparent relationship to Senator Kilcannon.”

“And does June second also relate to Mr. Carson's Vietnam experience?”

Shriver gave Carson a puzzled, contemplative look. “It's the date he returned from Vietnam,” he answered. “An entirely different man.”

“Let's talk about murder,” was DiPalma's sardonic lead-in. “Isn't violence caused by so-called Vietnam stress typically spontaneous?”

Shriver hesitated. “It can be.”

“Caused by a real or perceived threat which triggers war reflexes?”

“That's often the case.”

“So that the victim is dictated by circumstance rather than careful planning?”

Shriver paused. “As in combat, who gets hurt is usually a random matter of threat or opportunity.”

“So this isn't the typical case?”

Lord recalled his own first questions, David Haldane's skeptical response. “Not typical.” Shriver answered “No.”

“Did Senator Kilcannon threaten Mr. Carson?”

Shriver raised one eyebrow. “Not as you and I would define it.”

“Then can you point to some specific in Carson's war experience which would make
him
view Kilcannon differently?”

Shriver frowned. “As is often the case, Mr. Carson's memory of Vietnam is suppressed except for fragments—plus no records exist for the latter part of his service. Which,” he added pointedly, “is
not
usual, and no fault of his.”

“But you can't tell us, for example, why the memory of leaving Vietnam would impel him to murder a senator.”

“What I don't have,” Shriver retorted, “are facts to tell me how the anniversary reaction might fit with what he did.”

“In their absence, Dr. Shriver, isn't there equal reason to believe that Mr. Carson used a convenient date and a helpfully titled poem to cloak a simple assassination?”

Shriver's frown became pensive. “That would require sufficient understanding to manipulate what I am convinced is a genuine psychological condition. There is nothing here to suggest that level of sophistication.”

“Then,” DiPalma pursued, “what your opinion comes to is that but for events fourteen years past, he would not have shot Senator Kilcannon.”

“Without the irony, yes.”

Folding his arms, DiPalma summoned a tone of amazement. “But can you state, Doctor, that Mr. Carson did not appreciate the
consequence
of shooting the senator, or that murdering him was wrong?”

It was the only test that Rainey would allow the jury to apply; their faces, cautious and alert, registered Shriver's pause. “I believe that,” he finally answered. “But I don't yet have the facts to tell you why.”

DiPalma stared, as if stupefied by inexplicable foolishness. “No further questions,” he murmured and walked to his table, leaving Shriver's frustrated look for the jurors.

Mary Carson's courtroom voice was flat, and she would not face her son.

Lord spoke softly. “Before Vietnam, then, Harry was a normal farm boy.”

Her mouth compressed in a bitter line which made other lines appear. “He was his father's son.”

“Was he violent?”

“No.”

“And afterwards?”

“He was lost to us.” As if caught in a crosscurrent of feeling, she added, “It killed my husband.…”

She stopped herself, mouth ajar. As Carson looked up in sudden, palpable hurt, Lord realized he had her eyes.

“That was after the fight you described,” he ventured.

She faced him, seemingly surprised by this intervention. “Yes,” she said at length. “Harry left that day.”

“When was that?”

She gave her son one long look, and turned from him. “Early June,” she said in a tone of final reckoning, “almost a year to the day after they sent him back to us.”

“During the fight,” DiPalma asked her, “did your son do anything that told you he didn't know where he was?”

She gave him a bewildered look. “No.”

“Or who he was hitting?”

“No.” The look became chiding. “My husband had rebuked him for cursing me.”

DiPalma nodded. “What was the significance of the pine trees?”

“His father had planted them.”

“So cutting them down was a specific act of hatred against his father.”

“Objection,” Lord snapped. “The question assumes Mrs. Carson's clairvoyance.”

“Overruled. You may answer, Mrs. Carson.”

She held herself straight, as though strengthened by bitter memory. “Yes,” she said finally. “It was.”

Glancing toward Carson, Lord noticed that Kleist's blue notebook had been replaced by a red one, in which he wrote now. But Carson's eyes were shut.

“No further questions,” DiPalma said.

Faced with his past, Carson looked smaller. It was a trick of his mind, Lord knew, and Carson's posture; as Beth took the stand, he seemed to curl in a shell.

She sat with a tentative delicacy, as if poised to run. Through the glass, Damone watched her.

“Before Vietnam,” she was saying, “Harry was different.”

“Different than afterwards?”

“That, and from the other boys I knew.” Her voice became softer, reminiscent. “He knew how to see things and not to be embarrassed by it. Like he had a second way of looking.”

“How do you mean?”

“He saw the farm like that. He said the reason he wanted to keep it was because he could smell and touch and feel things, see the work he'd done.” Lord sensed her groping to make the jury understand. “He could name all the sounds and smells—I remember he took me for a walk once, down to this bog they had. Afterwards, he asked what smell I remembered.…”

“Objection,” DiPalma cut in. “Unresponsive.”

“Sustained.”

Beth turned to Rainey. “It smelled like wild mint,” she finished.

Lord saw Carson's quick, sideways glance at Beth, as if afraid looking would hurt him yet afraid she'd disappear. “After the war,” Lord asked, “did he still notice things like that?”

“No. But in a way I could still see it in him—like that second part of him was hurt now.” Her neck gave an embarrassed twitch toward Carson. “He used to cry in his sleep.…”

“Objection—unresponsive.”

Lord turned. “What are you afraid of, Ralph?”

“Sustained, Mr. Lord—and that's sufficient.” To Beth, Rainey added less severely, “You'll have to confine yourself to answering the question.”

She nodded, then answered softly, “I thought I was.”

The judge gave her a look of perplexity. “You may proceed, Mr. Lord.”

“When he would cry, did you try to wake him?”

“At first.” Her gaze flickered toward Carson again; she picked at a fold of her dress, like a smoker without a cigarette. “One night when I did, he rolled on top of me and clamped his hand over my mouth. ‘Shut up,' he whispered. ‘They'll find us.…'”

“When was that?” Lord broke in.

“June.” She looked down. “I just lay there, trying to breathe through my nose and feeling his heart beat against me. Then he drew back his head—it was like he knew who I was then. But he could never talk about it.” She shot another half-glance at Carson. “I think that's where the poetry came from.…”

“Objection.” DiPalma made this dutiful, bored. “Unresponsive.”

“Sustained.”

“Did your husband write poems?”

“Yes.”

“What were they about?”

“He'd never say. But I knew they were about the war—death, dying.…”

“Did you show them to anyone?”

“I tried to show Harry's mother. They were too ugly, she said.”

“That was after the fight.”

“Yes.” Her glance at Carson was longer. “I wanted them to understand.”

“Did they?”

Her eyes stopped between Carson and Lord. “They couldn't.”

Lord paused. “But there came a time,” he said, “when Harry was violent with you.”

“Only that once.” She turned a fraction more toward Carson. “He looked so surprised.…”

“What did he do?”

“When I told him to leave, he did—like he was ashamed to argue. But I was just so scared it happened.”

She was no longer speaking to him, Lord thought, or to the jury. “When was that?”

“Last year.” Slowly, she faced Carson, as if seeing what they could never have. “I never saw him again.”

“Do you remember the date?” Lord asked.

“June.” She said this quietly, to Carson. “June second.”

“So when your husband hit you,” DiPalma asked, “you think he was confused?”

“Yes.”

He eyed her with melancholy skepticism. “But he also told you he hit a sergeant, didn't he? In boot camp.”

“Objection,” Lord said, startled. “Hearsay—the witness wasn't in boot camp.”