Big Red and Joey Kelsey return to the courtroom. The other two must have Harry under control. That means he’s in a cell. And it’s locked.
I pull my phone from my briefcase and place it in the center of the defense table, then drop into my chair and smile up at Beatrice.
She scowls at the phone, so I know she gets it. Either she allows these jurors to deliberate or I place a call to the Court of Appeals’ emergency line. And the appellate panel won’t like that. The judges on call won’t appreciate being summoned on Christmas Eve. Far better that Beatrice work the holiday than the Big Boys.
“Oh, and Your Honor.” Our schoolteacher is on her feet again.
Beatrice turns an angry face to her. “What now?”
“I just thought I should mention…” The older woman looks resolute, not a bit nervous. “We’re in agreement on this. It’s unanimous.” She takes her seat once more.
Beatrice’s face turns to stone. She signals Big Red again, and he strokes his beard. He tells the panel to stand and follow him, and they do. Just like that, they’re gone. Deliberating. Beginning their draft of the final chapter.
Joey Kelsey looks relieved as he approaches our table to escort Buck Hammond back to the House of Correction. Compared to Prisoner Madigan, Prisoner Hammond is a breeze. He surrenders to the handcuffs willingly, as he always does, then asks Joey Kelsey to give him a moment. Joey hesitates, then agrees.
Buck turns toward me. “Thank you. And thank Harry too.” He smiles. “If you ever see him again.”
I laugh. “Don’t worry. We’ll see him again. But don’t thank us yet. It’s too soon.”
Joey gestures toward the door.
Buck leaves his seat, shakes his head. “It’s not too soon,” he says. “I mean it. No matter what happens. Thank you.” He stares into the first row for a moment, at Patty, then allows Joey to lead him away.
Beatrice watches them exit, then looks from Stanley to me. “Well, Counsel, I trust you’ll enjoy your evening. I’m going home.”
“Home?” The word escapes before I realize I’ve thought it. Beatrice lives in Provincetown, a solid hour from here even without the snowstorm.
She leaves the bench, her footsteps decidedly heavy, and pauses at the chambers door. “That’s right, Ms. Nickerson. Home. These jurors want to bring in their verdict on the holiday, they can damn well wait for me to get back.”
Chapter 46
Santa Claus spends Christmas Eve-every Christmas Eve-in Chatham. He arrives at dusk, waving from the bow of the year’s designated Coast Guard vessel, thigh-high oilskins protecting the legs of his cherry red suit. Coastguardsmen outline the masts of the chosen boat with twinkling white lights each year. The crew docks at the Fish Pier, where Santa disembarks and glad-hands his way through the wind-whipped, near-frozen assembly. He distributes candy canes as he makes his way through the crowd, ho-ho-ho-ing all the way.
On the street side of the pier, the Chatham Fire Chief waits in his official truck, heater running and red lights ablaze, to serve as Santa’s surrogate chauffeur. The reindeer, we’ve always been told by town selectmen, are busy elsewhere. After all, they explain each year, some children don’t live in Chatham. Someone has to deliver their toys.
Every year, Santa and the Fire Chief lead a caravan from the Fish Pier to the Main Street Elementary School, where the Cape Cod Carolers and the Chatham Band greet one and all with holiday music, home-baked cookies, and mulled cider. There, Santa sits enthroned on the gymnasium stage, chatting leisurely with every good boy and girl in town. The naughty ones usually stop by for a few words as well.
When Luke was little, he worried about the rest of the world’s children. Who visits them, he wondered, if Santa spends all of Christmas Eve-every Christmas Eve-with us? Helpers, I told him. Santa has thousands of helpers, and many of them look remarkably like him. The
real
Santa, I said, would just
rather
spend Christmas Eve in Chatham. That explanation made perfect sense to my son, for more years than he now cares to admit.
Luke and his friends still attend the Christmas Eve festivities each year. They stay until the last cookie is gone, then head out to a movie, an annual tradition of sorts. This year Maggie plans to join them. Luke actually invited her, she told me breathlessly this morning. When Luke got into the car, though, she acted as if the evening plans had all but slipped her mind. She’s good, that Maggie.
She’s not happy with me at the moment. She and Luke appeared in the courtroom’s back row at five, expecting we’d all head to Chatham and the Fish Pier shortly thereafter. It didn’t work out, of course. It’s almost eight now. Santa and his entourage are well into the festivities at the elementary school. And the baked goods are almost certainly gone.
“Can we
please
get out of here?” Luke drapes one arm across his forehead, to show me how gravely he suffers, as he and Maggie approach the defense table.
My plan was to drive them to Chatham, then return to the courthouse to await the verdict or, more likely, the jurors’ departure for their hotel rooms. That way I’d have the car. Luke and Maggie can hitch rides with any number of Luke’s friends.
Inherent in my plan, though, was an expectation that Harry would sit here, at the defense table, while I was gone. It doesn’t seem right to leave our table unmanned. Especially not with Stanley entrenched at his.
The Kydd returns to the courtroom grinning. I can’t imagine what he finds funny. He crosses the front of the room, drops into the chair next to mine, and laughs. “He wants to stay.”
“What?”
“Harry. He wants to stay.”
“Stay where?”
“In lockup. He doesn’t want us to get him out. Doesn’t even want us to try.”
Sometimes I think Harry’s been ensconced in the underworld too long, needs a new set of friends, maybe.
“He says if this thing goes the wrong way, if Buck’s convicted, the judge’s bias will make a decent appealable issue. We’ll argue ol’ Beatrice had a conflict of interest-a huge one-and she should have recused herself at the outset. With that argument in mind, he says, the longer he spends locked up, the better.”
Sometimes I think Harry’s pretty damn smart.
The Kydd laughs again. “He also says he’s beat. He told me to get lost. Says he could use a few hours sleep. And the county’s accommodations are fine with him. There’s no phone, it’s quiet, and the cots are comfortable.”
And sometimes I think Harry’s certifiable.
“Can we
please
get out of here?” Luke repeats his plea, complete with arm drama.
“Go ahead,” the Kydd says. “I’ll stay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.” The Kydd taps the phone in his jacket pocket.
“I’ll call you if there’s even a peep.”
“Okay.”
Luke and Maggie dash for the back door.
“I shouldn’t be gone much more than an hour,” I tell the Kydd as I zip up my parka. “I’ll just drop them off.”
“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
The gallery is all but empty as I head down the center aisle. Only one spectator remains: Patty Hammond. She traded her front-row seat for the back bench, where the lighting is dim. She looks concerned as I approach. Of course she is. One of Buck’s lawyers is in jail. And the other one is leaving.
“I’ll be back,” I tell her.
She looks only slightly relieved.
“I’m taking Luke and Maggie to Chatham, to the elementary school.”
Her face changes, collapses a little. Relief turns into a different emotion. Pain, maybe. Physical pain.
She stares into her lap for a moment, then looks back up at me, her eyes moist.
Physical pain it is. Billy should be at the elementary school tonight. No doubt he was there last year.
“Why don’t you come with us?”
“To Chatham?” Patty looks as if our hometown might be somewhere on the West Coast.
“We’ll be back in an hour. It’ll probably take the jury that long to elect a foreperson.”
She looks uncertain.
“Come on. Let’s get some fresh air. You can keep me awake on the ride back.”
“Okay,” she says, reaching for her coat.
Waiting for a verdict in any case is nerve-racking. In a murder trial, it’s an impossible combination of tedium and panic. The opportunity to do something useful with the time is irresistible. And I wasn’t kidding. Patty can keep me awake on the ride back. I’m exhausted. It’s been a long time since Opie and I visited Geraldine this morning.
The snow, it seems, will never end. Paths through the parking lot, apparently plowed out earlier in the day, are half filled again. Luke and Maggie wait by the locked Thunderbird, hoods up, their breath creating misty gray clouds amid the swirls of white snowflakes. Maggie dances by the back door to keep warm.
The old car starts without a problem, as it always does-a recurring miracle. In minutes, we’re traveling the back roads toward Chatham, the defrost and the heat at full blast, the radio silent. Christmas carols don’t feel quite right tonight, no matter what the calendar says. Again, there’s no moon. Inky blackness envelops us.
Patty turns in the seat beside me to face Maggie. “How’s your mom doing?”
That’s a question I should have asked. Add guilt to the menu of emotions I’m carrying around tonight.
“She’s okay.” Maggie leans forward, between Patty and me, and the dashboard lights illuminate her face. “She says it’s not too bad in there. She made a friend. One of the other ladies is real nice, Mom says. Her name is Cassie.”
“That’s good,” Patty tells her. “She needs a friend. We all do.”
“I want to go back tomorrow, see her on Christmas, if that’s okay with you, Marty. The guard ladies say it’s okay by them. And Luke says he’ll drive me.”
“Sounds like a plan.” I’m fairly certain I’ll be coming back myself, though, to pace the hallways and wait for Buck’s verdict.
“I have a present for her. A necklace. I know she won’t be allowed to wear it in there, but I want to show it to her anyhow.”
Presents. Double the guilt. Most years, Luke’s Christmas Eve schedule with his friends works out well for me and the presents problem. I shop until the last store locks its doors, then wrap till I drop. Not this year, though.
This year I have only a handful of packages for Luke. And half of those, the items that aren’t strictly male, I’ll cull out for Maggie. They’re small things, for the most part, trinkets I purchased during early fall, when the weather was conducive to strolling through Chatham Center and I was unemployed. The good old days.
Lucky for me Luke’s been saving for a pickup truck, a used one he spotted for sale at the local gas station. I’ll write a check in the morning, one hefty enough to bump up the total in his passbook to almost match the asking price. I figured out the math during one of our breaks this morning. Working for a living is expensive.
I look into the rearview mirror, catch Luke’s eye, and fire a silent reminder into the backseat. He nods back at me, then rolls his eyes to the Thunderbird’s roof. Chill, he’s telling me; he hasn’t forgotten. His assignment, tonight, is to find out what Maggie’s saving for. Let’s hope it’s not a condo on the Riviera.
“It’s beautiful, Maggie.” Patty holds a small white box in the dashboard lights, a glittering necklace dangling from its dark blue velvet lining.
“It is,” I agree. And it is. “Where in the world did you get it?”
“Luke and I found it today. At Pedro’s Pawn Shop. Have you ever been there?”
Patty and I both shake our heads.
“It’s on Main Street in Hyannis,” Luke volunteers. “You should check it out. Pedro cuts great deals.”
Triple the guilt. My son cruises pawnshops while I’m working. Calls the owners by name. Cuts deals.
Patty snaps the box shut and returns it to Maggie. “Well, your mom is going to love it. What a nice present to have waiting when she comes home.”
Silence. It’s the coming home idea. It shuts us all down for a beat.
Patty recovers first. “He’s pretty intense, isn’t he, that prosecutor?”
I laugh. “J. Stanley Edgarton the Third? Intense? What gives you that idea?”
Patty laughs too. “Does he do all the murder cases?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. But eventually he will. He used to work in the New Bedford office; he was their lead homicide attorney. He’s new to Barnstable County; he’s only been here about a month.”
She laughs again. “So for now he’s specializing in Forest Beach, I guess.”
I don’t get it. “Forest Beach?”
“Buck and Sonia. Probably the only two Forest Beach people in history to be accused of murder.”
I still don’t get it. “And?”
“And the intense guy is prosecuting both of them. Seems like a specialty, doesn’t it?” Patty smiles over at me.
I glance back at her, but I can’t return the smile.
“I’m kidding,” she says.
I know she’s kidding. But my stomach isn’t laughing. On some visceral level, her words unnerve me. “Why did you say that?”
My mind starts racing without a road map. My eyes alternate between Patty’s face and the winding, snow-covered road.
“It was just a joke. Honest. I didn’t mean anything by it.” Patty looks at me as if I’m scaring her. I probably am. I’m scaring myself too.
I pull onto the shoulder, stop the Thunderbird under the ENTERING CHATHAM sign. INCORPORATED 1712, it says. A nearby streetlamp casts a glow on Patty’s features. Luke and Maggie lean forward between us.
“Patty, listen to me. It’s important.”
Her eyes grow wide.
“Why did you say Stanley’s prosecuting both of them?”
She shrugs. “Because he is.”
“Sonia Baker?”
“Sure,” she says. “I saw him there on Monday, shortly after”-she glances sideways at Maggie-“it all happened.”
I have an enormous urge to grab her by the shoulders, but I resist. “You saw him where?”