Bud grinned. "No, ma'am, I would not. We were the toast of the town, back then. It was before Wal-Mart and Woolworth got to Cummington, so everyone came to us first."
"So you'd agree that what you say in answer to a hypothetical question isn't always the way things work out when you're faced with the actual situation?"
She could see the wheels turning as he sorted out the words. God preserve her from stupid people. "Yes," Bud said, "I guess that's true."
"Then what the deceased said in the context of your sister's unfortunate situation might not have been what she wished for when she actually found herself in similar straits?"
Bud's face went dull red. "I can't say," he mumbled. "I can't be sure."
"Mr. Spitlick, when your sister was terminally ill and comatose, were you under a lot of stress?" She started pacing, her back to the witness.
"Oh, yes," Bud said, relieved to be talking about a topic he could firmly grasp.
Audra turned to face him and pinned her cold blue gaze to his. "Why didn't you kill her?"
Graham jumped up. "Objection."
"Sustained."
Audra smiled at the defendant. "Withdrawn."
Allie could hear the water running, so she knew Cam was taking a shower. He had come home from work in the middle of the day because he had been on the midnight shift, and this was his usual procedure: he'd eat everything in the refrigerator that did not require heavy cooking, he'd shower, and then he'd crawl into bed and sleep like a log for six hours.
He had left the door ajar. Allie watched the steam slip out of the bathroom in a long, thick curl and come to lie on the Oriental runner in the hall. He was singing, and he must have been washing his hair, because every few words came out gurgled. His eyes were probably screwed shut.
She cracked the door a smidgen more and put her face up to the opening.
She told herself that she was still angry at him; that she didn't want to be looking, so it didn't matter if it was her business or not. Through the smoky glass stall she saw the length of his legs, his arms raised overhead to soap his back, the muted outline of his buttocks.
It wasn't until she had run back down to the kitchen and waited for the fire to leave her cheeks and the shaking to stop that she realized her agitation had nothing to do with voyeurism. It had to do with the fact that in spite of her best intentions, she could not help wanting something she knew she should not have.
Dascomb Wharron almost did not fit into the witness box. Graham saw several jurors hiding smiles behind their hands as the bailiff helped the doctor settle himself across the seat of the witness chair and a second one that was placed inside for his comfort. Great, Graham thought. Our one expert witness is a laughingstock.
But Wharton's answers were clear and clipped, very professional. When he listed his credentials, which included Harvard Medical School and a residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, even Judge Roarke looked impressed.
"How long have you practiced in Cummington, Doctor?" Graham asked.
"Twenty-one years," Wharton said. "And what kinds of cases do you see?"
"I'm a general practitioner. I deliver babies, I take care of those babies when they have whooping cough, I get them through the chicken pox and give them school physicals and physicals for the Army, I help some of them give birth to their own children. I also see a wide range of emergent cases: appendectomies, gallstones, cancers of various kinds."
"When did you first see Maggie?"
Wharton shifted; the floor of the witness stand creaked. "Maggie started coming to my office when she moved to Cummington, which was in 1984. I was quite familiar with her medical history."
Graham nodded. "Can you tell us how you diagnosed her cancer?"
He did not listen to Wharton's story of how Maggie had come to him with a broken ankle, a skating accident, and how X-rays had revealed not only the best way to set the bone, but lesions which indicated a tumor had insinuated its way into her body. Instead, Graham watched the jury. For the first time during the trial, some of them were taking notes. Most of them perched on the edge of their seats.
Wharton explained in layman's terms the type of breast cancer Maggie had; the decision to do a radical mastectomy that would also remove the lymph nodes; the meaning of finding the secondary site--the bone lesions--before the primary one. He chronicled her forays into chemotherapy and radiation, as well as the side effects she experienced.
Jamie did not look at the doctor. He stared into his lap.
"Can you tell us, given the various cancers Maggie had, what the prognosis was?"
Wharton sighed. "She was going to die. It wasn't a matter of if, but of when."
"In your experience, was there any hope for improvement in her condition?"
"I haven't seen it, no."
Graham stood beside Jamie. "Did you tell Jamie and Maggie this?"
"Yes, of course."
"And what were their reactions?"
"Maggie was very stoic about it. I believe that she had known what I was going to say. Jamie didn't take it quite as well. He held her hand the entire time I was speaking, but when I was finished, he told me I was out of my mind. He suggested that I had mixed up her results, and that they would get a second opinion."
"Did they, to your knowledge?"
"Yes," Wharton said. "The doctor's findings confirmed mine. He sent along a diagnosis to stick in her file." "Did you ever meet with Jamie alone?"
The doctor nodded. "He came to see me several times with new cures he'd heard about. Once it was something to do with Chinese ginseng, I believe, and another time it was some sort of chiropractic nonsense that supposedly broke up the cancer. He said that he liked to meet with me alone because he didn't want to give his wife false hope, but he would then explain the latest theory that he'd found. It was evident he did a great deal of research on ductal melanomas and the different therapies that they'd responded to in other cases. However, even the more reasonable treatments he brought to my attention would not have made a difference for Maggie."
"Would you say he was a devoted husband?"
For the first time since he had taken the stand, Wharton looked at Jamie. "I've rarely seen the like."
Graham sat down again. "Dr. Wharton, when did you last see Maggie?"
"She came to my office for a 4:45 appointment on September fifteenth. Friday, I believe it was."
"What did you tell her on that date?"
"She was complaining of flashing in her eyes and temporary blindness, which I explained was a result of the tumor pressing down on her optic nerve. At that point, the cancer was spreading through the brain. I told her that I was not sure what part of her would be affected next. Depending on the direction the tumor took in its growth, it could have depressed her respirations. It could have led to seizures, or a stroke. It could have resulted in permanent blindness. I told her I just did not know."
"Can you tell the court what Maggie's state of mind was like when she left your office?"
"Objection," Audra said. "Witness cannot know what was going on in the deceased's mind."
"I'll rephrase. Can you tell me how she was acting before she left?"
Wharton shook his head. "She was very subdued. She thanked me and she shook my hand." He paused, as if remembering something. "She forgot her coat; my secretary had to call after her as she walked down the hall." He pursed his lips. "She already knew she was going to die; she was told that day that her body systems would be shutting down in a Russian roulette order; I don't imagine she was feeling very spirited."
Graham thanked the doctor. "Nothing further."
Audra stood up before Graham had even made it back to his chair. "One question, Dr. Wharton. In your expert opinion, can you tell the court what the chances would have been of the victim dying of natural causes by the morning of September 19, 1995?"
Wharton let out his breath slowly. "It would not have been very probable."
Audra smiled. "Nothing further."
Graham
stood immediately. "I'll redirect. He walked in front of the witness stand. "Dt. Wharton, if Maggie had lived through September 19, 1995, would the quality of life she was experiencing have been equal to the quality of life she enjoyed before the onset of her cancer?"
Wharton glanced at the jury. "Absolutely not."
Cam told Hannah he was going to be reviewing the log sheets for the officers who'd been on the night shift the previous few days, and then he went into his office and locked the door behind him. He sat down at his desk and picked up the small clock in the corner. He'd gotten it for opening up his first joint savings account with Allie five years back. For a thousand bucks, they could have gotten a hot-air corn popper. They'd only had two hundred and fifty at the time.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk, the one that held the swinging green files with the mimeographed sheets of blank arrest reports, transfer-of-custody forms, voluntary confessions, cruiser logs. He'd tucked the globe Mia had given him for Christmas into the back.
He pulled it into his hands and spun it on its magnetic axis. "Where are you?" he said aloud. He pointed to Turkey, which they had talked about, and walked his fingertips all the way across to North America. He spun the globe again until all the colors and countries ran together in an indistinguishable rainbow.
Then he put the globe into the garbage can beneath his desk, and covered it with crumpled blank arrest reports so it would be thrown away with the trash.
Pauline Cioffi should have been a stand-up comedienne. When Graham asked her to state her name and address and occupation for the record, she said she was Martha Stewart's stunt double, and that she'd be happy to be a witness for any other trials they had coming up since it got her away from her kids.
She wore a loud, flouncy dress with purple flowers all over it and she sat in the witness box as if she were a queen. She made lots of eye contact with the jury, and when she wasn't looking at them, she was staring directly at Jamie with compassion.
Graham thought he'd like to hire her.
"Mrs. Cioffi," he said, "how long did you know Maggie?"
She rolled her eye, upward. "Let me see. It was before Alexandra and Justin, but I'd already had the twins and I was pregnant with Chris." She beamed at Graham. "Eight years."
"How did you meet?"
"We were taking an aerobics class together given at the town church. Like I said, I was pregnant, so I tried to stay in the back where no one could see how stupid I looked in a maternity leotard. Maggie stayed in the back because she said she was motor-dyslexic and always went right when the rest of the class went left. We just hit it off, and we went out for coffee after the first class." She glanced at the jury. "Of course, I had decaf."
"How often did you two get together?"
"Twice a week, at first; after every aerobics class. Then I got to the point where I had too many kids for a sitter to take care of, so I dropped the class. Maggie would come over to my house a couple of times a week, sometimes on a weekend."
"Were you aware of Maggie's illness?"
"Yeah, I was. First of all, she couldn't get around as well as she used to. She popped pain pills all the time, and you could see her eyes glaze over sometimes when there was an ache the medicine couldn't get rid of. She was a very different woman from the one I met eight years back." Pauline paused. "She talked about the cancer a lot with me. She said she needed to get it off her chest, and she didn't want to upset Jamie."
"Can you describe for us the nature of Maggie's marriage?"
Audra raised her hand. "She's not a therapist, Your Honor."
"No," Pauline said cheerfully. "Just a household guru. I do therapy, but it comes awfully cheap."
"Rephrased. How did Jamie and Maggie act around you?"
Pauline sobered. "Jamie was very attached to her, and she was very much in love with him. They were the sort of couple that could have whole conversations by just looking at each other and raising their eyebrows and shrugging, you know? You always sort of felt like you were intruding around them." She smiled. "I was extremely jealous. My husband's idea of devotion is picking up his underwear from the bathroom floor." The jury laughed, and Judge Roarke shot Pauline a quelling look. "Well, I can't think of a time she came over that his name didn't come up. She told me that the worst part about dying would be leaving him behind."
"Did Maggie know that she was dying?"
"Yes, but she didn't know when. She told me once that what she really wanted was some control over it. And the same day, she said that she was going to ask Jamie to kill her."
Graham glanced at Audra, trying to circumvent an objection. "To the best of your knowledge, Mrs. Cioffi, and at the time that Maggie told you this, did you think Jamie would be capable of doing it?"
Audra remained quiet. For a moment, so did Pauline. She stared at Jamie, as if she was speaking to him with her gaze the same way his wife had. "I don't know," she said finally. "He would have done anything Maggie asked, but he never would have hurt her. I guess if he thought that killing her would cause her less pain than what she was already suffering every day, he would have done it."
Graham stood in front of Pauline. "Was Maggie your best friend?"
"She was the sister I never had."
"Are you angry at Jamie for killing your best friend?"
Pauline's eyes slid from Graham's face, over his shoulder, to rest on Jamie. She smiled at him, and Jamie's shoulders relaxed. A benediction. "No," she said. "Absolutely not."
For the cross-examination, Audra stood up and paced between Jamie and Pauline. "How very interesting. You wished your best friend dead?"
Pauline glared at Audra. She didn't like her, not her tight-ass little designer suit or her scraped-back hair or the way she talked through her nose. Well, hell, the prosecutor had yet to see the loyalty that was part and parcel of Pauline Cioffi. When a bully beat on her little son, Pauline had gone to the kid's house and slapped his mother. If this prosecutor bitch started to shred Pauline's relationship with Maggie--something sacred and fine, one of the bright spots in Pauline's life--she was going to get equal treatment.
"No," Pauline said. "Of course not. You don't know what she was going through."
"Yet you feel that she was better off dead. What if, Mrs. Cioffi, they found a cure for her cancer this month? Or this year?"
Pauline leaned to the edge of her seat and fixed Audra Campbell with a stare. "But they haven't, have they?"
Audra turned around, bested. "Nothing further," she said.
TWENTY-ONE
It wasn't until Jamie lost a dollar in the soda machine outside the courtroom that he realized he didn't believe in the legal system. It was not right that twelve people he'd never laid eyes on in his life were going to have a chance to determine his future. It was not right that they would get to hear the details of his relationship with his wife that Jamie wanted to hoard, so they wouldn't lose their intensity and shine. In a perfect world, there might be justice. But in a perfect world, nothing ever went wrong. The people you loved didn't get cancer. The issue of euthanasia wasn't up for debate. The money you put into a Coke machine actually produced a Coke.
The buttons of his shirt were pressing into his flesh. He realized he'd put it on inside out this morning; he wasn't thinking clearly. Through the tiny Plexiglas square in the swinging courtroom door he could see the American flag. He remembered being a little kid, trying to say the Pledge of Allegiance, and getting the words wrong. One nation, under God. Invisible. With livery and justice for all. But this was hardly a classroom.
He considered the first few days after Maggie's death, when the only thing that had seemed important was finding someone who would punish him. He remembered wanting to go to jail as quickly as possible. He did not know how he had come to change his mind so radically, so that the very thought of being locked away where he could not walk with the grass beneath his feet and the sky stretching all around him made him feel sick.
He realized he thought of jail and of dying the same
way: you were just gone. It didn't really matter exactly where you went.
Through the Plexiglas, he saw Graham make a motion with his hand. Jamie MacDonald walked through the swinging doors and swallowed the bitter taste of his future.
Allie shifted on the hard wooden bench. They had just called Jamie to the stand; he was being escorted up to the tiny witness box. He was wearing the olive suit she had bought with him, and with his height and his wide shoulders, he looked like a man hunched over a grade-school desk.
She glanced around. Ellen was sitting next to her, grasping her hand and pressing a small round black stone between them. Yesterday she had given Jamie a mantra, a word to take home with him and up to the witness stand and anywhere else he thought he'd need to pull himself to center.
Angus, God rest his soul, was a few feet away from Ian in the Wheelock cemetery. But Allie knew he was watching. She could tell by the way she had sensed him sitting in the passenger seat of the car he hadn't used in years but which Jamie had unearthed and had taken to driving to the trial.
The rest of the spectators in the courtroom were people who had heard about the case, or reporters. Maybe there were court groupies. People who loved a mystery, who sat in on criminal cases and tried to guess the outcome.
She was beginning to turn her attention to the stand, where Jamie was being sworn in, when the flash of a badge caught her eye. Cam slipped quietly through the aisle and the back of the courtroom, taking a seat several rows behind her.
He had started coming to the trial the day they put Maggie's doctor on the stand. He said nothing about it, and they never discussed the case at home, but then they didn't discuss much of anything at all.
Allie liked to imagine the configuration of the courtroom spectators like guests at a wedding. Bride's family, groom's family--prosecutor's, or defendant's. Every day since the trial began she had counted the number of people on the prosecutor's side, and the number of people on the defendant's. Jamie usually lost out by a handful.
Allie realized that the people watching a trial would choose a side without considering the psychological statement that they were making, and that she was reading into it. But she glanced back at Cam, caught his eye, and smiled. Today was the first day since he'd started coming that he'd sat in support of his cousin.