The Hanging Judge (37 page)

“So I keep still. And I let those twelve nice ladies and gentlemen go off and decide whether I’m guilty, without saying one single word to them.” He rocked forward and held out his hands. “That’s what you’re telling me I should do?”

“That’s my advice. That’s your best shot, in my opinion.” Redpath sighed and rubbed his fingers over his eyes, scrubbing so hard the deeply lined skin of his forehead was pulled taut. “Norcross denied my motion, so if you testify the jury will learn about your prior drug convictions. It’s unfair, but that’s where we are. We can’t risk it.”

“After Pepe, after Nono and Spider, after all their bullshit, after that scrunched-up little tailor man, I don’t say anything?” Moon shook his head. “That’s messed up! You know they’re bound to think I’m ducking. You know they’re bound to think I did it—or else why don’t I get up and say I didn’t do it?”

“Norcross will instruct them that they cannot consider the fact that you didn’t testify.”

“So, you’re saying I should trust these twelve people to do what he says. How much chance is there of that? Really.”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re telling me I’m better off not saying whether I did it than saying I didn’t do it. That does not make one damned bit of sense to me.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.” Redpath took his time unwrapping another cough lozenge. He was remembering a conversation just like this one, in March 2004, with a young man named Stevenson James, a low-IQ nineteen-year-old charged with murdering a convenience store clerk. Trusting Redpath, and relieved to avoid the humiliation of getting up in court, Stevie had exercised his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent. A year ago, Redpath had flown down to Texas to be present at his execution. If his client had taken the stand, perhaps the jury would not have believed the older co-defendant when he said that the cold-blooded and entirely unnecessary murder of the young woman was Stevie’s doing. Now, no one would ever know, and Redpath had one more dead man he was responsible for.

“Listen to me, Moon,” he said finally. The cold was making his voice even deeper than usual. “I don’t have a crystal ball.” He worked the lozenge into the corner of his mouth. “And we only get to play this hand one time. If we don’t like what happens, we don’t get to go back and try again. I don’t know if the jury will think you’re God or Godzilla. But my best guess is you shouldn’t give Gomez-Larsen the chance to tear into you on cross-examination. She’s good, and I doubt the jurors will like what they hear.”

While his attorney spoke, Moon shifted in his chair as though he were writhing against tight, invisible chains. Redpath waited in the silence, sucking on his cough drop, until Moon burst out.

“What do these twelve people know about me anyway?” He pressed his splayed fingers against his chest so powerfully that, when he dropped his hands, they left dents in the heavy cloth of his jumpsuit. “They never, not a single one of them, in their whole lives, ever talked even five minutes with somebody like me, somebody who grew up like I did, lived like I did! If we had twelve black jurors, or even three or four …”

“But we don’t,” Redpath interrupted. “We have one very middle-class black RN, who’s still an alternate.” He coughed. “Look, I could be dead wrong …”

Moon gave a short laugh and looked up at the ceiling. “Right, except I’ll be the one who’s dead.”

“You think I’ve forgotten that?” Redpath asked, raising his voice, then dropping it. “Thanks very much.” He pulled out the soggy handkerchief and blew his nose again. His words were heavy with clog and exhaustion. “You’ve got my advice, Moon. I’ve been saying the same thing for two weeks now. Once and for all, tell me what you want to do. I feel like hell, and I’ve got a ton of work to do before tomorrow. Make your choice.”

Moon slumped back and stared up at the ceiling again. He opened his mouth, breathed deeply, and let his heavy arms drop. In the silence, Redpath heard footsteps receding down the hall outside, the distant sound of a sliding security gate, the hum of the light overhead. Moon smiled faintly at something, then squeezed his eyes shut and dug in his ear with his pinkie finger.

“You know what’s really messed up about this whole thing?”

“What’s that, Moon?”

Moon rocked forward, rolled his shoulders nervously, and rubbed his temples. A flickering, almost childlike smile was playing the corners of his mouth.

“I really hate shots, man.”

“You hate shots. Great.”

“I hate the motherfuckers… .” A wheezing laugh escaped him.

“You hate shots,” Redpath sniffed. “Well …”

“I always have. They scare me to death!” He looked at his hands and laughed in short, breathy spasms. “When I was a little kid, my momma had to practically tie my ass up just to get me to go to the doctor.” He wiped the corner of his eye. “Shit.”

Redpath scratched his head. “Maybe I could …”

“I keep having these dreams, you know? About this big motherfucker of a needle, about three feet long, right? Some white guy, with his evil blond mustache, in one of those long white coats. That cold shit they wipe on your arm, so you know they’re just about to stick you.”

“How about if I …” Redpath began again.

“If they find me guilty, maybe you could get them to rope me to a pallet of tuna fish or something. Tip me off the Memorial Bridge.”

“How about if I just hit you over the head with that chair there?”

“That’s good. I’d appreciate that, Bill. I really would.”

“All part of the service.”

Moon held up his fists. “And I could take a couple pops at you first, bruise up your ugly face a little, so it would look like self-defense, right? I could get with that right now.”

He feinted with two quick jabs toward his lawyer’s head.

“Great idea,” Redpath said, not moving. “We’d need to make it look good.” Another thunderclap of a sneeze broke through his face. Out came the overused handkerchief.

“Otherwise,” Redpath blew his nose. “Otherwise, hell, they might give me a lethal injection.”

“Don’t talk like that, man!” Moon sat back and slapped the table. “I don’t want to snuff it in some damn doctor’s office, strapped to a cart like a side of beef. I’d rather give it up on the sidewalk, in the old neighborhood. Let some hoodlum shoot my ass.”

As he replaced his wad of handkerchief, Redpath groaned again. “Lethal injection doesn’t sound so bad to me at the moment.”

Moon gave his lawyer an appraising look, drumming with his fingers on the scarred wooden table. Finally, he sighed and shook his head.

“Shit,” he said softly. “Okay, time to do this. Time for Clarence to play the big boy. Tell me again why I shouldn’t just get up and tell these twelve nice people, who think I come from Mars, the truth, the whole damn truth, and nothing but the truth.”

“Once more, Moon: Your drug record will come in if you testify. Most of the jury will want to hang you just for that.”

“I thought you said Norcross would tell them not to think about my priors.”

Redpath cleared his throat. “If you testify, he’ll tell them they
can
consider them in weighing your credibility as a witness, but
not
in deciding your guilt or innocence.”

“Another one of your rules that makes no damn sense.” Moon folded his arms and gazed at Redpath intently.

“Right. It makes no sense,” Redpath said. “Fact is, I doubt half the jurors will even understand what Norcross is saying. But that’s why you can’t take the stand.”

Moon continued looking at Redpath. Finally, he shook his head. “And you spend your life doing this shit?” He dropped his voice. “I’d rather sell dope. Live an honest life.”

Redpath dabbed at his nose and looked at the table, avoiding Moon’s stare. The silence grew, scored lightly by the sound of Redpath’s breathing.

“Okay,” Moon said finally.

“Okay what?”

“You’re my man,” Moon said, “and this is your game. We’ll play it your way.”

51

R
edpath ran a nicotine-stained forefinger down the notes he’d prepared for the direct examination of Sandra Hudson, trying to be sure he’d hit everything. When he began to feel Norcross’s eyes on him, he glanced up.

“Excuse me, Your Honor. If I might just have a moment?”

The questioning had not gone badly; in fact, it had gone damn well. Moon’s wife had revealed herself as a loving but honest woman—well spoken, attractive, and, like most of the jurors, utterly middle-class—a bridge of sympathy, perhaps, between them and the defendant, a causeway over which a reasonable doubt might tiptoe.

“Thank you very much, Sandra,” Redpath said, trying to make it sound as if he had just finished a prayer. “I have no further questions.”

This was, for Redpath, the most dangerous passage in any trial: the hour of hope.
How in the hell,
he wondered as he shuffled back to his seat,
could any juror fail to have a reasonable doubt now, after hearing this intelligent, loving woman tell them the accused was definitely with her when the shootings occurred?

As he lowered himself into his chair, Redpath remembered to turn and put his hand on Moon’s shoulder. His client’s face was unreadable, but Redpath felt his muscles stiffen, repressing a flinch.

He hates this crap,
Redpath thought.
Tough.

Redpath looked up at the bench, hoping His Honor would call a recess, to let the jurors’ minds marinate in Sandra’s testimony a little longer.

But Norcross was down in his notes, scribbling away in his own world. He addressed Gomez-Larsen without looking up.

“You may cross-examine.”

Gomez-Larsen took her time. She sighed regretfully, smoothed down her dark gray skirt, stood, and moved to the podium, holding her yellow pad at her side.

“Just a few questions, Your Honor. I’ll be brief.” For several seconds, she stared at the wall above the judge’s head. When all the jurors had shifted to look at her, she licked her lips and began in a low voice.

“How long did you know the defendant before you two were married, Ms. Hudson?” The question was delivered with no eye contact. Gomez-Larsen had dropped her gaze to the surface of the podium and was examining her fingertips.

“Let’s see,” Sandra said. “We were both at UMass. It was my second year. Hmmm.”

Redpath smiled inwardly. If Gomez-Larsen thought this no-eye-contact trick was going to buffalo Sandra Hudson, she was wrong. She was taking her own sweet time with her response, and Redpath noticed the faces of most of the jurors swiveling back to her.

“I would say nine—no, let me think—more like ten months, nearly a year.”

Redpath leaned forward and slid his behind further into the chair, willed his shoulders to relax, and drummed on his knee in a deliberately bored way. When anxious, he had a tendency to tilt back stiffly, like a man trying to avoid a punch in the forehead. His task now was to look as unconcerned as possible. There was little he could do to rescue Sandra if she started to go off the rails. From this moment, she was pretty much on her own.

“So you had no idea what your husband’s life was like in the more than thirty years before you met him, apart from what he chose to tell you, correct?”

Sandra’s expression contracted, and she started to answer quickly, then paused to bring herself under control.

Just answer the question,
Redpath entreated her silently.
No speeches.

“No. Not correct.” She opened her mouth to say more, to explain, but again hesitated and merely shook her head, repeating. “Not correct.”

“So your testimony to this jury is that you were somehow familiar with your husband’s life before you even met him?”

“Somewhat,” Sandra nodded. “After Moon and I got engaged, before his mother passed away, she and I talked. I got to know some of his old friends, that kind of thing. I’d ask them about what he was like when he was little. The way you do when you …”

“But you obviously had no firsthand …” Gomez-Larsen continued.

“Well, wait a second,” Redpath said, pulling himself up awkwardly. He’d made such an effort to appear bored, it was difficult to get himself untangled.

“You have an objection?” Norcross looked up from his notes. “If you have an objection, say ‘objection.’ ”

“Well, Your Honor,” Redpath replied in an injured tone, “I’d ask that the witness at least receive the courtesy of being allowed to finish her answer.”

“I thought she had finished.” Norcross looked down at the witness box. “Ms. Hudson, were you done with your answer?”

“I was just going to say, ‘The way you do when you love someone.’ ”

“Ah, yes,” Norcross said. He rubbed the end of his nose and returned to his notes.

Gomez-Larsen folded her hands on the podium. “But you do admit that, even after you were married, you and your husband were not together every single minute of every day, correct?”

“That’s true.”

Gomez-Larsen left the podium and returned to counsel table. Was this going to be all she had? Redpath wondered. A rising pressure of optimism began pushing at his lungs. It couldn’t be.

It wasn’t. Gomez-Larsen looked down at her notes and flipped a page, reading something. The trip from the podium to counsel table had the jury’s attention. After a pause, she spoke without looking up.

“Are you acquainted with a woman by the name of Zinnia Sanderson?” Gomez-Larsen turned her face to the witness. “Goes by the name Spanky?”

“Yes.” Sandra hesitated. “I know her.”

“Right. In fact, she lives upstairs from you, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Mm-hm.” Gomez-Larsen pulled a smaller piece of paper on counsel table over to her and examined it. “And this Zinnia, or Spanky, Sanderson has a son, Tyler, correct?”

“I don’t know.”

Gomez-Larsen straightened up and lifted her voice in disbelief. “You do not know whether Ms. Sanderson has a young boy living with her directly upstairs from you whose name is Tyler? Is that your testimony?”

Now it was Sandra’s turn to lean forward; she spoke with an edge to her voice. “I know Tyler lives upstairs with Spanky, of course; I just don’t know if he’s her son or not.”

“Well, did you … ?”