The Sabbathday River (64 page)

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Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River
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“Dr. Harvey, would it be appropriate to suggest to the subject of an interrogation that the subject would be allowed to go home once he or she has ‘helped' the police by giving the right answers in an interrogation?”
“Absolutely inappropriate,” he said sternly. “Illegal, in my view.”
“Would it be appropriate to imply that the subject's young child will not be returned to his or her custody if the right answers are not given.”
“It would be entirely outrageous,” he said heatedly. “But I'm afraid such a tactic is not uncommon.”
“Would it be appropriate to restrain a subject from seeing her child, whom she can hear crying in another room?”
“Reprehensible, in my opinion.”
“Dr. Harvey,” Judith said, frowning, “were you able to examine the notes and tape recordings made during the Heather Pratt interrogation conducted through the night of October 12, 1985?”
“I was not. In fact, I was informed that absolutely no notes and no
recordings were made during the interrogation, and I consider this highly suspicious in itself.”
“Suspicious?” Judith feigned confusion. “Why? Isn't that routine, not to make notes?”
“It is not routine. It is extremely unusual for there to be no documentation arising from a long interrogation, other than the resulting so-called confession.”
“I see,” she said, looking meaningfully at the jurors. “Tell me something, Dr. Harvey. Are we all equally prone to giving in under this pressure and confessing to crimes we didn't commit? Or are some people more prone than others to weaken under sophisticated interrogation techniques?”
“No, of course not,” he said brusquely. “Some people have a stronger will than others. Some keep clearer heads. Then there are factors which can fluctuate, like recent trauma or mental illness. These can make us particularly susceptible at a given time.”
“Recent trauma? Something like, for example, having given birth to a stillborn baby a few weeks earlier?”
“Well,
I
call that traumatic. I doubt very much that a mother whose baby had just been born dead would be thinking clearly at all, let alone about dead babies. Heather could easily have brought her own sadness and guilt about the baby she had lost to bear on this other dead infant. This, to me, is not really much of a stretch.”
“So, in other words, her guilt or distress over her own baby might have made her susceptible to the suggestion that she had harmed another baby, a baby that—in reality—she had no connection to at all?”
He nodded in agreement. “Yes, this seems a very plausible scenario to me.”
Judith smiled. “Doctor, is there any way to absolutely avoid the danger of giving false testimony?”
He grinned back at her. This was his punch line. “I tell people there are four magic words that eliminate all risk, and if they remember them, they will always be all right. The four words are
I want a lawyer.
That removes the problem entirely.”
“Really?” Judith sounded innocent. “But what if they refuse to stop the interrogation?”
“Then,” the doctor said disdainfully, “it's well and truly out of my field of expertise. In such a situation I would defer to a constitutional lawyer.”
“It's unconstitutional,” Judith said.
“To continue an interrogation after the subject has asked for a lawyer? Oh yeah.”
“Thanks,” Judith said. She gave him to Charter, who blustered up to the stand.
“Dr. Harvey, in all those titles of your books and whatnot, I didn't catch the name of the school where you got your medical degree.”
Harvey looked bored. He had evidently heard this sort of thing before.
“I am a doctor by means of my doctorate. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In psychology.”
“
Psychology
,” Charter repeated, the word drenched in scorn. “And you feel that this qualifies you to analyze police interrogation techniques?”
“Well,” Harvey said blandly, “whether it does or not, I have made the analysis of police interrogation techniques my life's work. And in any case, I fail to see how a medical degree would make me any more qualified.”
Charter tried to look disdainful. “In the course of your life's work, then, you must have given some consideration to the fact that the use of tape recording or notetaking during a police interview can have an inhibiting effect on the dialogue between subject and interviewer.”
“I have considered that,” Harvey concurred, “but I feel that tape recording, in particular, will become increasingly necessary to establish a clean interrogation. Certainly the lack of
any
documentation from this interrogation is suspicious to me.”
“You are accusing Officer Nelson Erroll and myself of conducting a dirty interrogation,” Charter said, his voice steely.
“I think it's very possible the interrogation was not fairly conducted, yes.”
“You are accusing Officer Erroll and myself of feeding Heather Pratt information and then claiming she confessed.”
“I think it's very possible.” Harvey held his ground. It seemed to Naomi that he, for one, was unlikely to crack under pressure.
“You are accusing us of withholding Heather's daughter from her and implying that her daughter would be taken from her if she did not give me the answers I was looking for?”
“Yes. Possibly.”
Judith was smiling, and Naomi knew what she must be thinking—that Charter had to be losing control if he was asking these questions,
if he was letting the jurors hear these ideas again, and from his own lips.
“You are accusing us of denying Heather Pratt the basic constitutional right of an attorney at her request?”
“If she asked for one and you didn't stop the interrogation, then yes, I am accusing you of that.”
He turned from the witness in a rage, shaking his head in an exaggerated arc. “Are you aware, Dr. Harvey, that Officer Nelson Erroll, who—unlike you—was present during Heather Pratt's interview, has already testified to the fact that the interview was properly conducted? That no leading suggestions were made? And that Miss Pratt never asked for an attorney to be called?”
“I have not attended this trial, Mr. Charter. I am not aware of what has been said by other witnesses.”
“But how do you respond when I say that this testimony has in fact taken place?” Charter raged. “How do you respond when I say that a police veteran of over ten years said under oath that the interview was entirely correct?”
Harvey shrugged. “Well, how
can
I respond. I mean, what else would the guy say? And if the confession is not corroborated by physical evidence, then it's going to be pretty important to your case, so Officer Erroll is hardly going to jeopardize it by admitting the interrogation was improper, is he?”
Livid, Charter glared at him. “It's easy to make accusations, isn't it?”
“It's neither easy nor hard,” Harvey said blandly. “I've studied many interrogations. A small—though not tiny—percentage are suspect. This confession, in my opinion, is suspect. Look”—he leaned forward in his seat, his expression oddly sympathetic—“I am not—I repeat: not—suggesting that this has been done on purpose. That whoever conducted this interrogation set out to force a confession. What I'm saying is that there are mistakes being made in interrogations that are contaminating them. And until interrogating officers learn more about how they are manipulating capitulations, then confessions will continue to be contaminated.”
“So we're ignorant!” Charter raged.
“Ignorant of this, yes. Training is certainly called for. It's a simple thing to change, but until it is changed, innocent people are going to continue to be convicted by well-meaning juries.”
“No further questions,” Charter huffed in disgust. He stomped to his chair. Hayes was looking at his watch.
“Mrs. Friedman? You going to redirect?”
“No, your honor.”
“How many witnesses do you have left?”
“Three, your honor,” Judith said.
Still counting on Heather to see sense, Naomi thought. And of course Nelson, who was ready whenever he was wanted. But she didn't know who the third one was.
“There isn't much time left now. I'd rather start fresh tomorrow. Maybe we'll get lucky and fit them all in. Shall we try that?”
“That's fine,” Judith agreed. Naomi looked at her own watch and saw, with a little lift, that she might actually be about to get an afternoon off. It was Wednesday, too, the day of Polly's swim class at the sports center, though it had been so long since they'd attended that she wasn't even sure the session was still on. As they stood for the judge to leave, she reached down for her bag and whispered to Judith.
“I'm going to scram. I can make a toddler swim class in an hour if I rush now.”
“Good,” Judith said. “Just don't miss tomorrow.” Her voice dropped. “Tomorrow's going to be lots of fun.”
“Oh, I wouldn't,” said Naomi, but she could not be quite so elated at the prospect of Nelson sinking his own career, though he had made his peace with that and they all knew what an enormous difference it would make for Heather. She rushed outside, gave Simone the briefest nod, and went to pick Polly up at Mrs. Horgan's. Despite having to drive by the house for their bathing suits and towels, Naomi still managed to get to the sports center a comfortable ten minutes before the class. She was glad she had made the effort. Polly, absent for several weeks, was extravagantly fussed over by the instructor, a beefy girl much given to whistle-blowing, and Naomi was surprised to see that the other mothers in the group were suddenly warm to them, that she no longer had that sense of their restraining themselves from all but the most innocuous conversation. “Isn't she a love,” one woman said, eyeing the compliant Polly as she forced her own squirming son to reach and pull fistfuls of water. They put the kids on their backs, dangling rubber ducks over their faces, and got them to blow bubbles in the cool water. Polly's face lit up as the instructor took hold of her feet and kicked them on
the surface. A girl named Danielle announced, “I go poo!” with evident glee, and was whisked from the pool by her horrified mother. “What a darling bathing suit!” one of the moms cooed to Naomi during “The Grand Old Duke of York.”
“I didn't pick it out,” Naomi said. “Her mother did.”
Actually, this wasn't true, and she wondered—not for the first time-how long she would continue to rehabilitate Heather in the eyes of her neighbors.
“Well, she has wonderful taste, doesn't she?” the woman said.
“Someone told me,” another woman said, “that she makes all her daughter's clothes. I thought of asking her if she'd be willing to make some for
my
daughter.”
“I don't know,” said Naomi, fascinated. “I could ask her. Afterward.”
“Oh, of course. Afterward. I wouldn't bother her now.”
They all went back to the locker room together and changed their shivering children into warm clothes. They were talking about the child who would eat only white food, the child who howled when the television was turned off, the child who woke at three o'clock every night, screaming for formula. Naomi was asked her thoughts on the use of bribery in toilet training. She found that she had experiences to share, and opinions at the ready. She did not know the names of these women, but she knew the names of their children, and their children's ages and quirks. As she pulled on her coat, the woman who admired Heather's taste asked Naomi if she would like to set up a play date for their girls the following week. “Maybe Tuesday?”
“Yes,” Naomi said, oddly elated. But then she remembered: next week. Next week Polly might be home with Heather, or Heather might be in prison. Next week was to be the beginning of their new lives, and she couldn't make plans. “Can I let you know?” she faltered, and the woman wrote down her number and said goodbye.
Naomi carried Polly out into the lobby and went to return her towel at the desk. Heather's desk, she thought. There was a young man there now, dull-looking and blond, reading a paper. She tried to imagine that she was Sue Deacon, stepping up to the counter, her talons unfurled, but the boy only smiled vaguely. “Thanks,” Naomi said.
“Yuh.” He went back to his paper.
Up the hallway, a door opened and Stephen Trask stepped out. Naomi looked at him and smiled. He went white, stumbled, and stopped. Then he turned sharply and went back through the doorway.
Naomi stood for a moment, dazed and undecided. Then, flooded with acrimony, she set off after him, as the door snapped shut in her face. Without knocking, she opened it and flung it back. It smacked the wall, and Stephen looked up at her in surprise. This was how they remained for some moments.

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