The Hanging Judge (17 page)

“Really?” Claire looked up at him. “Students do it all the time, usually the night before a big paper is due. Okay, go lie down.” She pointed to Marlene’s rug, and the dog shuffled sleepily away. It was past her bedtime. “Of course, they don’t usually show up at my house, bang on the window, and scare the crap out of me. Most of the time, they just phone at two a.m. Come. Sit.”

She patted the hassock.

“Are you talking to me or the dog?” David asked. They both smiled, and he sat as directed, a little breathless at how close they were and how fresh she smelled. Claire took his hand.

“I know why you shooed her away, David,” she said quietly. “You can’t have people showing up at all hours. That I understand.”

She looked into the fire and continued. “What I don’t understand is why you couldn’t at least hear what her question was. It was pretty simple, actually, but you wouldn’t even listen. You seemed …” She hesitated, then turned to look at him. “It seemed a little excessive, frankly. I’m trying to figure you out.”

“Was I excessive?” He leaned forward for the poker and began jabbing at the fire. “I didn’t mean to be. But she’s suing the darn universe, and I have to decide her cases based only on what comes into court—no sympathy, no inside information. She could blurt out something, and to be fair to both sides, I’d have transfer all her pain-in-the-neck cases to some other judge.” He poked at the coals. “If I was too hard on her, I’m sorry, but, believe me, I’ve done things a lot worse.”

He got up and pulled another log out of the copper tub at the side of the fireplace.

Claire pressed her lips together to form the word
but
, intending to follow up on her original question. Instead, she swallowed the sound and exhaled through her nose.

“Well, I certainly don’t approve of her showing up here.” She paused for a few moments while the fire crackled and the wind blew outside. “But it’s a hard world you live in. Bright lines and sharp corners.”

David was arranging the fire with his back to her, and she turned to examine him closely, as though he were a name she was trying to remember. He sat back down on the hassock, facing the invigorated blaze. Shadows played over his face.

“Fact is,” he said, “I’m crummy company these days.” He gave a rueful laugh. “I’m screwed down so tight, I feel like my kidneys might squirt out my ears.” The poker fell over with a clatter, and he bent to pick it up. “I’ve got this ugly trial and a tough anniversary coming up.”

“Anniversary?”

“Coming up on five years since I lost Faye. Sorry. I’m so boring I get tired of myself.”

“You aren’t boring.”

“Then, someday, not too long from now, I could find myself, like Gerry said, signing an execution order. That’s assuming I even get through the trial. A million things could go wrong.”

“Really. Like what?”

“You name it.” He began swatting at the fire with the poker, sending up sprays of grainy sparks. “The big one at the moment is the jurors.” He stared into the flames as though he were examining the problem. “We start selecting them a week from Monday. Among other things, I have to be sure they don’t know about Hudson’s prior drug convictions, and then somehow keep them from learning about them once we start. It’s incredibly prejudicial information, and it’s in the papers nearly every day. The whole case would have to be mistried.”

“And that would mean … ?”

“We’d have to start all over.” He turned and resumed beating at the embers.

“David, you’re going to set your rug on fire.” Claire flicked an orange coal off the rug with her toe.

“Sorry.” He shook his head and put the poker in the copper tub. “I shouldn’t be talking about any of this.”

“You think I’m going to notify the media?”

“I know. It’s silly.” He looked down at the fire. “Still.”

They were silent for a while. The only the sounds were the crackling fire and the dying wind outside.

“So,” David said finally, using his winding-up tone to signal the end of the evening.

Marlene got to her feet and approached the wingback, waving her tail.

“What does she want now?” Claire asked with a glance at the dark window.

“Oh, it’s time for her bedtime walk down the drive,” David said. “It’s the last thing we do every night.”

“Can I come?”

He looked at Claire with a tired smile.

“Well, it’s usually just the two of us.” He scratched Marlene under the chin. “What do you say, girl?”

Marlene had no objection, so they got on their coats while she paced back and forth, banging her tail against the door.

Outside, the drizzle had let up, but the air was still wet and swirling. The sodden darkness had a scent of pine and wood smoke. Claire slipped her arm through David’s.

“We just go down to the bottom and back.” He pointed to where the driveway curved downhill through the pines. “It’s dark, but we know the way.”

They walked deliberately, as though they were part of a procession through the creaking trees. After a silence, David returned to a topic they’d started discussing over dinner. “What did you mean when you said that white knights can be worse than dragons?”

“Ah,” said Claire. “I was wondering if you’d ask me about that.” Bending down to pick up a piece of pine branch, she released David’s arm. Claire swished the branch back and forth absentmindedly while she chose her words.

“My husband, Kenneth, was a classic white knight. He scooped me up and carried me away from Missouri and brought me east. In a hundred ways, he helped me become the person I am, which was very, very good.”

Marlene noticed the stick and began leaping around in front of Claire. Claire understood and flung the branch into the darkness down the drive. Marlene bounded off after it. Even in the end-of-the-evening fatigue and disappointment, David could not help noticing how simple and fluid Claire’s movement had been. Professor Lindemann did not throw like a girl.

“He also turned out to be a confirmed and abusive alcoholic, which was very, very bad. Ken could be unbelievably charming when he was sober, and I loved him deliriously, but our life …” She stared out into the dark trees. “Our life got ugly fast. He never hit me, but he did other things just as bad.”

Marlene returned, panting, and dropped the stick at Claire’s feet. Claire picked it up and side-armed it into the shadows. “Actually, that’s not true. He did hit me, once. That was enough.”

She took David’s arm again. “It’s crazy, but for half a second I thought that might be him out there in the trees.”

They had been walking steadily downhill, out of the light thrown by the lamppost at the edge of the judge’s lawn and into the shadows. Behind the overcast, a three-quarter moon was turning the sky a furry gray. Soon they reached a point where they could see neither their feet nor each other and became only voices and touch.

After a bit, David said as simply as he could, “I don’t think I’m the Ken type.” He pressed Claire’s hand. “Not now, Marlene,” he said quietly. The dog dropped her stick and trotted into the darkness ahead of them.

“I know,” Claire said. “Ken never shared his desserts.”

David stepped in front of Claire and ran his fingers over her cheeks into the hair over her ears and around to the back of her neck. “I am definitely a pill, though, sometimes. I know that.”

“True.”

They kissed. David had intended it to be a tender kiss, a kiss of understanding and reassurance. It started out according to this plan—tentative, unpresumptuous, and sweet. But it was soon obvious that they were starving for each other, utterly famished, and that their release, at last, from the postponements and distractions was practically lifting them off the ground. David found himself, like an undergraduate at the end of a date, fumbling to untie the belt of Claire’s London Fog and unbutton its endless buttons to get his hands inside, up her back and onto her breasts, all without removing his mouth from hers. Before long, they were panting like wrestlers.

Suddenly, Claire threw her head back and gave a short laugh. David’s face was down along her neck, devouring the skin behind her ear.

“David,” she broke into a cackle, “David, for God’s sake!” She took a breath to collect herself. “For God’s sake, let’s go inside.”

20

G
o.

Judge Norcross tapped the microphone twice and shoved off.

“Welcome! I’m David Norcross, and you’re in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.” He paused. “Western Division.”

He always underlined these last two words. The men and women in the pews, still struggling to get untangled from their parkas and stamp the January slush off their galoshes, might appreciate knowing they were among friends and neighbors, all conscripted from the same four counties of western Massachusetts.

“Usually, I’d start things off by thanking you for coming, but first let’s see if we can get everybody a seat.”

The jury pool, enlarged with reporters, family members of the victims, sketch artists, and curious onlookers, had overflowed the public gallery and left several people without seats, leaning against the walls. This was not good. The discomfort of these miserable, fidgety standers would press in on him and prod him to rush.

He pointed to the right of the gallery.

“I hate to ask this, but if you folks could scooch down a little bit, I think we might fit one or two more people in there. Just stick your backpack on the floor there, ma’am, if you would. Thank you. That’s terrific. Thanks very much.”

Tom Dickinson, Norcross’s silver-haired court security officer, bustled around in his blazer, touching shoulders and pointing. Two swarthy men, one with a ponytail, who had planted themselves in the front row nearly every time the
Hudson
case was on, looked resentful and shifted minutely.

“Outstanding,” Norcross said. “Think of this as an opportunity to make new friends.”

Amid the shuffling, one or two grudging smiles rebounded toward the bench.

Smile back,
he told himself,
but not too much. Look unconcerned.
Trial judging was a kinetic art, like dance—a matter of posture and presence, aiming to create a certain pattern or atmosphere. A tug on his shoulder made him realize that he was rolling his chair over the hem of his robe again, and he eased back from the bench to free himself.

The seats in the jury box to his right already contained the sixteen potential jurors whose names, churned by the computer, had bobbed randomly to the top of the list. Later this morning, the process of picking out a group of fifty-six neutral, impartial people would start with them. Each side had twenty peremptory challenges, which would leave sixteen—twelve jurors and four alternates—for the final panel. Given all the publicity, it was going to take weeks to find them.

While the people who’d been standing found seats, and the bumps and apologies subsided, Norcross looked over at the jury box to see if today’s group included any pretty women. With Claire in his life now, his interest was academic, but, still, lengthy court proceedings were always more pleasant with one or two cute jurors along for the ride. As far as he knew, every judge felt this way, at least every male judge. The present cohort offered possibilities in seats Four and Eleven. Raven-haired Four had an expression of bored impatience, but Eleven was turning her dreamy, symmetrical face up to him, actually making eye contact. Norcross looked away.

“Okay, terrific. Welcome, and thank you all very much for being here. As I said, I’m Judge David Norcross, and you’re in my court.”

The brush with Eleven tripped the judge’s mind toward Claire, and he suppressed a smile. She’d invited him to her house for dinner that Saturday. When he asked if he could bring anything, she told him just to bring a bottle of Wesson oil.

“As you know, we enjoy many privileges as American citizens, but there are responsibilities, too, and jury service is one of them. Our Constitution gives every litigant the right to a trial by jury, and obviously we could not have jury trials without folks like you being willing to come here and make yourselves available to serve.”

Norcross let his eyes drop into the well of the courtroom. Lydia Gomez-Larsen looked, as always, perfectly composed. Accompanying her again at the government’s table was the Holyoke patrolman—what the heck was his name?—whom Gomez-Larsen had for some reason chosen as case agent over the usual, far smoother FBI investigator. Norcross could see beads of sweat already shining on the man’s forehead. William Redpath, the defense counsel, sat at the lefthand table, matching the prosecutor’s expression of watchful aplomb. His deeply lined face looked as though it had been carved out of an old tree stump. On Redpath’s right, farthest away from the jury box, Clarence “Moon” Hudson occupied the defendant’s chair.

Apart from his stiff posture and expressionless face, Hudson looked like someone who’d just walked in off the street. It was important that none of the potential jurors know he was in custody, that he had only a few minutes earlier changed from a jumpsuit into a jacket, open-necked shirt, and gray slacks, or that the courtroom was tied down inside a tight ring of security. Rumors persisted that La Bandera gang associates or friends of the victims might try to start something, and a beefed-up detail of armed deputies and court officers was sprinkled throughout the gallery and the adjoining hallways. A broad-shouldered man with a marine corps haircut sat near the judge’s exit door, his arms folded and his eyes shifting side to side watchfully.

Norcross steered into a new area.

“Having said that jury duty is one of the responsibilities of citizenship, let me quickly add that I understand, and all of us here at the court understand, that being in this room right now may be, for some of you, a bit of a pain.”

As he examined the jury pool more closely, a familiar sense of frustration began creeping over the judge. Hudson was one of the very few non-whites in the courtroom. Number Nine in the box, the only man with a tie, was plainly African-American, and Eight was possibly Latino, Portuguese, or dark-skinned Italian. Out in the gallery, no more than ten or twelve brown faces dotted the crowd out of nearly a hundred. The Western Division covered mainly suburban and rural areas whose population was slightly more than 10 percent minorities. In that sense, the proportion in the courtroom was about right, but it still was not good. Hudson’s very black, very African face was many white Americans’ worst nightmare: baleful, alien, menacing.