I pause and look across the road at Thomas Paine Park. It’s quiet over there this morning, with just a smattering of people. An old-timer feeding pigeons. A twenty-something in jeans and heels getting coffee from a cart. A clean-cut Wall Street broker in a crisp Armani shirt heading to work.
I turn back to face the courthouse, take a breath to steal myself, and, one at a time, make my way up the steps. Leading with my one good foot, I stick close to the railing running up the middle to the colonnade in case my balance deserts me.
I make it to the top just as a single bead of sweat tumbles from my hairline. I swipe it away and enter the building through the ornate timber doors. I flash my Assistant District Attorney ID to security even though they know me by sight (there’s not too many young female lawyers with a cane), and pass my satchel through X-ray. Sometimes they have tried to wave me through without the X-ray, thinking they are doing me a favor, but that makes me nervous, because if they are doing that for me who else is getting special treatment?
Claire and Susie Watson are waiting for me outside Courtroom No.7. Claire, the mom, a salt-of-the-earth, thick-waisted waitress, with a head full of curly black hair, is wearing her usual outfit. An old-fashioned pair of acid-wash jeans with a Budweiser T-shirt, tucked in, and a pair of soft-soled dirty blue sneakers.
Claire worked two jobs so she could send Susie to an exclusive private school called Ashbury Preparatory and Grammar School in the Upper West Side. Every day for nearly three years, the two of them had made the two-and-a-half-hour round journey from New Jersey to Ashbury.
“I wanted Susie to have a better life than my bullshit crappy one,” Claire had told me when we first met. “You know, give her a proper start, so she could meet the right people, go places. Well, now I know better, don’t I?” Claire had said bitterly through a haze of tears.
Because Mr. Alistair Kennedy was definitely not the “right people” and was now the reason why her daughter was in therapy once a week, possibly for the rest of her life, and about to testify against him in a court of law.
Next to her mom, Susie is looking slightly bewildered. She’s wearing a violet-colored top with a frill around the bottom over a denim skirt, and her dark curly hair, just like her mother’s although longer, hangs in a loose ponytail at the nape her neck. Susie is small for her age, looks more like nine than eleven (which won’t hurt the case if I’m honest), and if it’s possible, she looks even smaller today, as if the gravity of what she’s being asked to do has finally made landfall on Susie’s fragile young shoulders.
Standing with them is a man I don’t recognize. Funny, I don’t remember Claire mentioning a boyfriend.
By the looks of the scowl on Claire’s face, she’s angry about something. And when she sees me approaching, she doesn’t waste any time telling me what’s on her mind.
“Amelia, I called you and you never got back to me. I’ve been going out of my mind here. You gotta do something! This guy”—she gestures to the man with distaste, her New Jersey drawl even more evident given her current state of enragement—“it’s just so freaking stupid.”
Like me, the man looks like he’s been up half the night. He’s in need of a shave and, given the thick dark hair skimming the collar of his shirt, he could do with a haircut, too. Late thirties or early forties, older than me, broad-shouldered but stooped as if he was apologetic for taking up too much space. Good-looking in a tired sort of way.
He extends his hand. “Detective Ethan North.” We shake. Warm, not too firm. He withdraws a little quicker than feels normal.
I’m puzzled. “Where’s Detective Barker?”
Claire raises her arms, exasperated. “My point exactly.”
Detective North shoves his hands in his pockets. There’s a whiff of stale coffee and deodorant hastily applied.
“He was needed on another matter. I’ve been assigned to Susie’s case now.”
“At this late stage?” I say.
He rubs the knuckle of his forefinger along his upper lip where there’s the silvery scar of a harelip repaired some time ago.
“Yes.”
“But Detective Barker has been on this matter since the beginning. He has all the case knowledge. A change this late in the game is…well, quite frankly, it could be damaging to a successful conviction.”
“That’s what I keep telling him,” says Claire, planting her hands on her hips.
“Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m up to date on the case file.” The reason for the crumpled shirt and lack of morning shave, I suspect.
All at once, I’m sorry. This poor schmuck has nothing to do with his stupid departmental decisions. He’s just another cog in the wheel like me.
“This isn’t good enough,” says Claire, jabbing a finger at him. “My daughter deserves better.”
He flinches slightly, then resumes a neutral expression. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“It’ll be okay, Claire,” I say, conscious that Susie is only a few feet away on the bench. “We’re at the tail end of this thing now. How about we just get started?”
Claire looks like she wants to argue some more. Instead, she gives up. “I don’t like it one little bit, Amelia. I really don’t. But I’m sane enough to realize that like most things that have happened to me in my pathetic life there is jack shit I can do about it.” She takes Susie’s hand. “Come on, baby. Let’s get this over with.”
Detective North reaches for the door handle to the interview room.
Claire swings round to face him. “Not you.” She looks at me. “I don’t want him in there, Amelia.”
“But Claire, Detective North has to be present to protect the continuity of the case.”
She shakes her head. “You can’t expect Susie to talk about what happened in front of a man she doesn’t even know. No way. Not gonna happen.”
“But Claire—” I protest.
Detective North holds up his hand.
“I’ll wait here,” he says.
“Well, if you’re sure,” I say.
“He’s sure,” says Claire Watson. “Now are we doing this or what?”
4
Thanks to a favor from the court clerk, Barbara Hobbs, the long-serving bespectacled sixty-something courthouse matriarch who happened to feel sorry for me because of my disability, I have been granted access to courtroom No.7. My hope is to help demystify some of the trial process for Susie. Another hearing starts at 10 a.m. and we need to be out in twenty minutes, I’m told firmly by Barbara Hobbs. No exception.
The room is not one of the particularly grand courtrooms in the building. On the smaller side, it has the same dark wood paneling and boxy high windows typical of the other Supreme Court rooms, but this one’s more intimate, or claustrophobic if you happen to be an eleven-year-old girl required to give evidence against your teacher. Both the defense and prosecution tables are relatively close to the witness box and judge’s bench, and even the most confident of witnesses can find that unnerving. The public gallery, with its allotment of five rows of hardwood seating, is separated from the rest of the court by a wooden balustrade, or “the bar.” The jury box is to the left of the judge’s bench, and a tiny press gallery to the right.