The Sabbathday River (65 page)

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Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River
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Finally, Naomi arranged her thoughts. “Is this how it's going to be from now on, Stephen? I mean, what are we, in kindergarten? You going to run and hide whenever I'm around?”
He looked steadily at his desktop, his jaw fixed and still.
“Stephen, we used to be friends.”
“Till I became a turncoat, is that it?” he said angrily.
“No.” Yes, Naomi thought. “No, you did what you felt you had to do. For whatever reason,” she couldn't stop herself from saying.
“But you don't respect my
whatever
reason,” Stephen said. “Close the door.”
Surprised, Naomi did. She hitched Polly up a bit.
“Basically, you don't have any idea why I testified against Heather, do you, Naomi?”
“Well”—she frowned—“I know you were disappointed in her. You thought she should have trusted you enough to tell you she was pregnant again.” She glared suddenly at Stephen. “You always did have this paternal thing about her, didn't you? You kept trying to fix her life, but she didn't want it fixed.”
He was looking at her intently.
“But I still don't understand why you turned against her. It would have been nice if she'd known you believed in her. Not even, you know, in her innocence. But
her
.”
Stephen shook his head. “Naomi.” His voice was tenuous, breakable and low. “I'm … I didn't realize. All this time, I thought you knew.”
Then Naomi want cold. She gripped Polly. “Knew what?”
“I was sure Heather told you. I thought she must have told you. I thought, who else would she tell?”
Like damp sheets on a cold night. Her hair was still wet from the pool and she couldn't get warm.
“I thought it was why you were being such a bitch to me.”
“I was a bitch to you?” Naomi said, amazed.
He shook his head. “Well, it can't be helped. I certainly did what I could.”
“Stephen, what the fuck are you talking about?”
He sat in his own seat and looked vaguely out the window: dark sky meets dark ground. A New Hampshire evening in mud time.
“I went to see her out at the farm, the day after Pick died. Hell, I was probably the only condolence call she got. I didn't know about the other thing. About Ashley. She told me when I got there.”
So what?
Naomi almost said. But she said nothing.
“And of course she was upset. And don't worry, I know I was an asshole to do what I did, but I can tell you it wasn't forced. I can tell you that.”
“You went to bed with her.” She was astounded. “Jesus, what a shit you are.”
He looked stung, but he didn't deny it.
“You went to bed with her the day after her grandmother died and her boyfriend dumped her.”
“I'm not proud of it. But she reached out to me.”
“For comfort, maybe. To be held, just possibly. But to be fucked!”
“It's what she wanted,” Stephen insisted. “She certainly didn't protest.”
“My God.” She was shaking her head.
Stephen leaned forward, and his voice dropped even further. “So it was mine, Naomi. The other baby. One was Ashley's, but the other one was mine. And she wouldn't admit she was pregnant, even when I asked her straight out. Now, don't you think I had a right to know she was pregnant with my kid?”
“No,” Naomi said cruelly. “And you don't know it was yours. There's no proof of any of this. That first baby had nothing to do with her.”
“You still believe that?” He smiled sadly. “I wanted to believe that. I tried hard, but I know one of them was mine. And she killed them both. So she's a murderer. And if she goes to jail forever for what she did to those kids, then that's good enough for me. So what if she's got all those raving feminists thinking she's the second coming. To me, she's a murderer. And God knows, I don't think much of Ashley Deacon, but what Heather did to us both is past redemption. She can go to hell, in my view.”
“Stephen.” Naomi shook her head. Then she had another thought. “You didn't tell Charter.”
“No. It wouldn't have changed anything.”
“Of course it would have. It would have given him a much stronger case”.
“It wouldn't bring the babies back, though. It wasn't worth it.”
“You mean it wasn't worth Celia finding out.”
He looked at her with new worry.
“Don't worry. I won't tell her. You never tell Charter and I never tell Celia. I think that's fair.”
“I didn't mean for it to happen,” he said. “I went out there as her friend. I just went to do the neighborly thing.”
Naomi laughed darkly.
“She's the one. She put her arms around me. She kissed me.”
“Please.”
“I'd always done my best to think of Heather as a young person who needed guidance. But I couldn't after she kissed me.”
“You're pathetic,” Naomi said. “You're like those priests who molest children. You're just an ordinary man, after all. Just a bullshit sexual opportunist.”
He got to his feet. “How dare you say that to me? I brought her to you.
I gave her to you!
”
“Goodbye, Stephen,” Naomi said. She closed the door behind her and left him there.
“I Am Christopher Flynn.”
NOW SHE COULD NOT LOOK AT HEATHER. AS OTHERS were drawn around the girl Naomi herself was repelled. Not that she believed it—that craziness of two men and two infants and two crimes. She could not believe something so irrational, something based as it was on how men both feared and were enthralled by female fertility and strength and mad power. But even not believing she now understood that Heather had never been the woman Naomi took her for—the one who had been used by Ashley for sex and by Charter for his bizarre version of perfect justice. She understood, for example, that Heather had indeed seduced Stephen when he went to her house the day after Pick's death, and that—even out of her pain as it had undoubtedly been—this was, at root, manipulative and cynical. It did not lessen at all the outrage she felt toward Stephen, but she did not question that Heather had initiated the encounter. She understood that Heather had not spoken of this to anyone, though it had obvious bearing on her trial and fate, and that therefore there might well be more that she hadn't told. For the first time, Heather's unwillingness to help herself
struck Naomi as wantonly selfish, because after all, there were others involved now, whose lives and happiness had been knotted to hers—Polly, and Judith and Naomi, and even those crowds outside with their GODDARD SUPPORTS HEATHER placards and their I AM CHRIS FLYNN sweatshirts. And still she said nothing, blindly willing everyone else to carry on and make it all work out for the best. She would do nothing to help herself. Even testifying on her own behalf was too much to ask her for.
Heather arrived, red-faced, her eyes wet. As she sat, Naomi saw the shake of her shoulders and looked away. In front of her, the two women at the defense table leaned perceptibly apart, making no contact. Judith paused in her writing to say, so low that only Naomi could hear, “You're on third. I'm not going to discuss this anymore.”
A soggy exhalation from Heather.
Charter took his seat. Nelson, Naomi noticed, was in the courtroom, but in civilian clothes. He sat behind Charter's table, looking calmly at the door through which Hayes was due to appear. She tried catching his gaze, but he did not want it caught, and she gave up. She had not heard from him since their night together.
The court was called to order. The jury entered, each assembling his or her serious expression, and they stood while the judge walked in his curious rocking gait to the bench. They knew it was nearing an end, if not a climax. The court reporter's hands began to move. Charter, too, was writing. Judith got to her feet. She stood in a posture of expectation, as if she were a schoolteacher waiting for the kids to shut up. Then she turned to Charter and half smiled.
“The defense would like to recall Nelson Erroll.”
His head twisted around, his hand poised mid-scribble, lifting like a needle off a record. “What?”
“I'm here,” Nelson said calmly. He rose and walked past Charter.
“Your honor,” Charter complained, “Mr. Erroll has already been cross-examined by the defense.”
“The defense has the right to continue the cross-examination if new evidence comes to light,” Judith said firmly. Nelson, for his part, sat calmly in his chair, confident of the outcome.
“That's certainly true,” said Hayes. “I take it you have some new evidence?”
“We do.” Judith nodded, more gravely than eagerly.
“Let's hear it, then.”
Charter braced his arms on the table. He stared at Nelson, his expression brutal.
“Officer Erroll,” Judith said, moving up to him, “you testified earlier that when you went to bring Heather Pratt to the police station on October 12, 1985, she was being invited on a voluntary basis and she should not have inferred that she was actually under arrest. Is this still your opinion?”
“No,” Nelson said. “I now feel that our arriving in the evening with six officers in three cars might have led her to believe that she was under arrest.”
“But she was not read her rights?”
“No. Mr. Charter did not want to inform her of her rights because he did not want Heather to know that she had the option of calling an attorney.”
The shock ran through the room. Charter was on his feet, stammering his rage, pointing but not looking at Nelson. Nelson was asked to confine himself to his own impressions.
Judith took this very calmly. “Were you asked not to read Heather her rights?”
“Yes. By District Attorney Charter.”
She nodded. “You testified earlier that Heather could have elected not to accompany you to the police station and to refuse the interview. Is that true?”
“No. If she had tried to resist accompanying us, she would have been formally placed under arrest.”
“So far, this was not precisely illegal, though, was it, Officer Erroll?”
“No. But it was not ethical. Heather's daughter was taken into another room, and Heather was not permitted to see her, though we could hear her crying. She asked to see Polly many times.”
“And what was the response?”
“That she could not see her daughter until she cleared up the problem of the dead baby in the Sabbathday River.”
“How did Heather respond to that?”
“She said she had no connection at all to that baby. Eventually she admitted that she had given birth to a stillborn baby whose body she had hidden. She offered to show us where the body was.”
“Well,” Judith said brightly, “that would have put an end to his nonsense about the baby in the Sabbathday River, wouldn't it?”
“Yes,” said Nelson. “But District Attorney Charter refused to let
Heather show us where the body was. He wanted her to confess to the death of the baby he knew about.”
She nodded. Her arms were folded. She stood a few feet from him, half facing the jury box.
“Officer Erroll, how did Mr. Charter get Heather to confess to the death of the Sabbathday River baby?”
Nelson steadied himself. “He threatened her. He implied that she would lose custody of her daughter if she did not provide a confession.”
Judith paused to let this sink in.
“How was this threat phrased?”
“He said Polly could not go home until this matter was cleared up, and she could only clear it up by confessing.”
Judith looked pointedly at Charter, who fumed but was silent, reluctant perhaps to shut the barn door now that the horse was well and truly gone.
“Is this a common interrogation tactic, Officer Erroll?”
“I wouldn't know,” he said tersely. “But I have never used it myself. I considered it disgusting. I'm ashamed of myself for not putting a stop to it.” He was not looking at her now, or at anyone else. He could not seem to find the right place to look.
“So then Heather voluntarily confessed? She began to speak the words and phrases that you read out to us last week in this courtroom?”
“She did not,” Nelson said tightly. “Those words were spoken by Mr. Charter. Heather just agreed to them. The only part I remember her saying came at the end. That she was sorry.”
“And the knitting needle? How did she come to identify the knitting needle as the weapon with which she had supposedly killed her infant?”
“He put everything out on the table. Everything we collected at the house that fit what the forensic report said must have made the wound in the Sabbathday River baby. Then he just told her to pick one, and she did.”
“I see.” She looked disdainfully at Charter. “Officer Erroll, you testified last week that at no time during the interrogation did Heather ever ask to speak to an attorney. Is that, in fact, true?”
For the first time Nelson turned to Heather. His face held his regret. “No. She asked two times, at least.”
Judith feigned amazement. “She asked to see a lawyer at least two times?”
“Yes. She was dissuaded from seeing a lawyer. Charter told her that
if she hadn't done anything wrong, she didn't need a lawyer. He also said that this was an informal interview. That she wasn't under arrest. So it wasn't appropriate for her to have a lawyer.”
“Officer Erroll, is it your understanding that when the subject of an interview requests a lawyer the interview must be suspended immediately?”
“That is my understanding. I have never acted otherwise.” He eyed Charter. “Until this time.”
“Do you feel that you were justified in ignoring Heather's request for a lawyer?”
He hesitated. “No. It was very wrong. I should have objected then, but I didn't. It's no excuse, but I didn't feel in control of the interview.”
“Who was in control of the interview, Officer Erroll?”
“Mr. Charter conducted the interview. He denied Heather her right to a lawyer. His conduct was completely illegal, and I won't protect him.”
Charter, fuming, kept his seat and scribbled on. Naomi wondered what he could possibly be writing.
“Officer Erroll, let's talk about the events that took place after Heather Pratt's interrogation. What was your reaction to the news that a second dead infant was found on Heather's property, precisely where she had informed you the body of her stillborn infant had been placed?”
“My reaction was an even stronger conviction that she had had nothing at all to do with the death of the Sabbathday River baby. That it was just an awful coincidence that the deaths had been concurrent, but that the two incidents weren't otherwise related.”
“And yet you were the one who provided the theory of the second lover, by collecting an address book from Heather's house.”
Nelson nodded. “Yes. It was after the forensic tests came back, and we knew there would have to have been a second father if this”—he could not resist a faint roll of the eyes—
“superfecundation
thing was true. I was told to go through Heather's house and find something to indicate a second man.”
“I see.” Judith smiled. “And what did you find?”
He shook his silver-gold head. “There was nothing. Only the address book, which was nothing. I shouldn't even have taken it out. It was only a man's name—what does that prove? I'm sure you could go through my house right now and pick up half a dozen women's names, but that
doesn't mean I have a relationship with them. There must be a hundred reasons to write someone's name on a piece of paper.”
“But even so, in Heather's house you could only find one name. Chris Flynn.” She paused. “Tell me, Officer Erroll, do you believe that Heather Pratt had a relationship with Christopher Flynn?”
“I do not.”
“Do you believe a Christopher Flynn exists and is relevant to this situation?”
“Exists?” He shrugged. “Probably. Somewhere. But not relevant, no.”
Judith walked back to her table and sat. “Officer Erroll, what made you decide to return and correct your earlier testimony in this case?”
Nelson took a deep breath and closed his eyes. This was the important thing, the thing he had come to say. He looked at the jurors. “I believe that Heather Pratt is innocent of the charges against her. I believe that her own child was stillborn, and that she has absolutely no link to the Sabbathday River baby. There was no second lover and no superfecundation. I believe her interrogation was duplicitous and manipulative. Also unconstitutional. I'm sorry, Heather,” Nelson said, looking directly at her. She straightened in her seat. For once, she did not cry or seem to lose her concentration. “I know it can't make up for the months you've been in jail, or the obscene way you've been treated in this trial.”
Judith did not speak right away. Then, quietly, she said she was finished and took her seat. Naomi did not think Charter would respond, but before her eyes he blustered up to the witness seat and poked a finger in Nelson's face.

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