Graham turned to Jamie and smiled. It looked forced.
"Now," Judge Roarke explained, "the defense claims that the defendant should be excused from conviction by reason of insanity at the time this act was committed. The legal definition of insanity means that at the time, the defendant did not understand the nature and the quality of his act."
Jamie saw one of the jurors, the artist he had thought to be on his side, nodding in agreement.
"If you find this to be the case," Roarke continued, "you also need to decide if the defendant understands the nature and quality of his acts today." He bobbed his head, as if he was satisfied with himself. "There must be unanimity in your decision. If you have any questions about the law or about your duties, if you need testimony reread or want to see the evidence again, please contact the clerk, and perhaps I'll be able to help you." He picked a piece of paper off the desk before him. "When you come to your decision, this ballot will help clarify your answers." He smiled benevolently at the jurors, as if they had already done something very, very good. "This is the most important part of the trial, ladies and gentlemen. I urge you to remember your sworn duty." He furrowed his brow for a moment. "You can give your lunch orders to the clerk on your way down the hall. Thank you."
Graham had started to walk outside with Jamie, but there were so many reporters smoking and jawing on the front steps that he realized it would be like throwing him into a lion's den. "Let's try up here," he said, dragging Jamie up two flights of stairs to the offices in the Pittsfield Superior Court.
He hated this part of the trial. Now he could do nothing, absolutely nothing, except rerun his witness testimonies and cross-examinations in his mind and find every possibly flaw. In Jamie's case, they had won some battles, and lost others. But the outcome of the war was still in question.
He looked at Jamie, wishing there was something to say, and
Jamie watched the jurors slip through the side door like a string of matched beads. He put his head down on the defense table and closed his eyes. He stayed that way for a long time, until all the buzzing reporters had left the courtroom and Allie had given up trying to get him to answer her and the spectator rows were empty. Then Graham put a hand on his shoulder. "We're going for a walk," he said.
JURY BALLOT
STATE V. James MACDONALD INDICTMENT NO. 1098-96 ( ) 1. We find the defendant GUILTY
of murder in the first degree. ( ) 2. We find the defendant NOT GUILTY
of murder in the first degree. ( ) 3. We find the defendant GUILTY of
manslaughter in the first degree. ( ) 4. We find the defendant NOT GUILTY of
manslaughter in the first degree. ( ) 5. If you have found the defendant NOT
GUILTY of murder, did you find him
NOT GUILTY by reason of insanity
at the time of the offense? ( ) 6. If you have answered YES to No. 5:
Does this insanity continue?
knowing that there was nothing right now his client wanted or needed to hear. Jamie was staring out a yellowed window into the parking lot. Graham stepped up behind him and watched the attendant lean into someone's car window and point down the block, offering directions.
"If I forget to tell you, Counselor," Jamie said, still staring outside, "you did good."
Graham shook his head. "I haven't done anything yet."
"Still."
"Can I get you something?" Graham said. "Coffee? Food?"
Jamie turned around and dug his hand into his trouser pockets. "If they take me away, who gets the suit?"
Graham was silent, shocked speechless. "They hold it for you. With your watch and money and things like that."
Jamie glanced out the window again. "I just wondered."
hen Graham left him, ostensibly to go to the bathroom although Jamie knew it was because he was lousy company, Jamie wandered off down the hall of the third floor of the superior court. Most of the doors had a smoky glass pane in the center, which made you want to see inside but obscured everything from view. A good number of the rooms were dark, and most were locked tight. It made Jamie smile. At a courthouse, God only knew what kind of criminals prowled the office floors.
He started absently trying the doors. Not because he wanted to get in, but because he could think of nothing else to do, and there was a rhythm to it: two steps, wrist out, twist; two steps, wrist out, twist. When doors opened, he peeked his head in and gave his best good-citizen smile. "Sorry," he'd say to the startled secretaries. "Wrong number."
He wondered if there was a difference between being locked in and being locked out.
The last room on the left-hand side was a copy room. He could see the neon-blue flashes underneath the edge of the door. Someone was in there, Xeroxing something. He thought he might go in, act like a lawyer, wait until they were finished, and then photocopy his hands or his face. He had done that once in graduate school--his cheek and lips pressed against the glass while the flash went off behind his eyes like a rocket. He had done it over and over, trying for the perfect reproduction; but no matter how he shifted position, in black and white he had always looked as if he was in pain.
He opened the door and saw nobody at first, just the copy machine itself, emitting blue rays as if it had gone haywire. He reached over to the green button and shut the machine off, and then he glanced up and saw Maggie.
She was sitting on top of the copier, wearing a sleeveless black turtleneck and jeans, and he did not understand how she wasn't freezing to death like that in January. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, and he was vaguely aware of the door to the room closing, sealing him inside. A million questions bubbled up in his throat: Do you miss me? Did it hurt? Are you healthy now? Do you love me? But he found himself silent, choked by his own curiosity.
So instead, he watched her smile. He drank in the tilt of her lips and the sorrow in her eyes like a man who has never before known beauty. He thought, Is she an angel? And when she nodded slightly, he grinned. Nothing had changed between them. She could still read his mind.
He understood then that heaven was what you made of it, that it differed for everyone, and that you could find it in the most unexpected places. He had been looking so hard for Maggie he had not bothered to notice her when she appeared, thinking that without a requisite halo and a star in the palm of her hand, she was nothing more than a memory. But Maggie, his Maggie, with a rip in her jeans and a smudge of powdered doughnut on her cheek, well, he had been seeing her like this for weeks: in the reflection of a dinner plate at Ellen's house, or staring back from behind the bathroom mirror when he was trying to shave.
"You found me," he whispered, and he slid down the wall to a sitting position.
Allie and Cam were two floors below Jamie, sitting at the end of the hall on a bench and waiting for the jury to return a verdict. Allie was hunched over, her mind running through all the dramatic court scenes she'd seen on TV. The scenario that stuck with her showed a big, burly guard dragging Jamie from the defense bench-- to where, Attica?--with his hands cuffed behind him, while he raised his face to the ceiling and yelled out Maggie's name.
Cam had been rattling away about Angus's estate--as if that was what she wanted to discuss just then--for the better part of three hours. Something about the house, which Cam had rented for Angus when he came from Scotland, and the lease that was coming up. She listened to Cam ask himself questions about security deposits and rental agencies and realtors. "Can I ask you something?" she said finally. "Why are you talking about this now?"
Cam didn't skip a beat. "Because it'll keep you from thinking about what the jury's doing. You're wound so tight I'm afraid to sit next to you."
Allie smiled a little. "I don't really care about leases. I just want to brood." She looked up at him. "But it was nice of you to try."
"I learned from a master," Cam said quietly, and Allie thought of all the times he had come home from the station, thinking of the one who got away, or of sexual abuse worming its way into a go
ld-plated Wheelock family you'd never suspect. She used to sit beside him and chatter like a squirrel, about flower shows or local sales or gossip she'd read on the supermarket checkout line-- things Cam didn't give a damn about, but that drew his mind away from the heavier side of his life, if not by interest then by irritation.
"What I was going to run by you about Angus's place," Cam said, "was taking out another lease. Maybe month by month. I thought that when we get out of here today, if Jamie doesn't feel much up to going back home yet, maybe he'd like to stay on in Wheelock. I don't think he knows we rented the house for Angus." He turned the brim of his uniform cap in his hands like a wheel. "And he deserves a break for a while."
Allie's jaw dropped. "I think it's a great idea," she said, recovering.
She looked at him, seeing not the handsome features she had always been able to catalog in her sleep, but the more subtle things: the kindness at the corners of his eyes, the way his mouth was bracketed by regret, the hope he held fast with the blunt strength of his hands. Compared to the line of his jaw and the richness of his hair and the other physical qualities she had always admired, these attributes were far more attractive.
She leaned slightly toward him. Cam stared into her eyes, trying to read the signals. Kiss me, she thought. Do this one thing right.
He leaned forward.
A bailiff walked down the hall, bellowing to the spectators that had spilled from the courtroom hours before. "Five minutes," he yelled, shocking Allie back to the time and the place. "Jury's ready to return a verdict."
When Jamie slipped into his seat beside Graham, he glanced at the prosecutor's table. Audra Campbell was stacking her legal pads and folders.
The courtroom was crowded. The two armed guards, the ones who would take Jamie away, were posted like sentries at the back door. There were even more reporters than during the summations. Jamie did not know most of the people who had come to hear the verdict. He thought briefly of old England, where hanging criminals had been a form of public entertainment.
"All rise." Jamie pushed himself to his feet as the judge lumbered to the bench, but the only way he could keep himself upright was by bracing his palms against the defense table and leaning slightly against Graham's side.
The jury was called in. Three of the people looked at Jamie and then glanced away. Graham told himself this did not mean a thing.
It seemed that Jamie had only just sunk into his chair again when Judge Roarke looked at him. "Will the defendant please rise?"
He felt Graham's hand on his arm, pulling him to a standing position. Why do they do this? So I'm more of a spectacle? So they can see my knees shake? So they can watch me fall down when I hear the words?
Judge Roarke turned to the foreman, the retired career army man whom Graham hadn't wanted on the jury in the first place. "Have you reached a verdict?" he asked.
The foreman nodded. He handed the ballot he'd been given earlier to the clerk, who passed it to Judge Roarke. The judge glanced at it, gave it back to the clerk, and nodded. "In the matter of the State versus James MacDonald, on the first count, murder in the first degree, how do you find?" "Not guilty."
Jamie felt something burst free in his chest, something fuzzy and bubbling that broke through his skin in a sweat.
"On the second count, manslaughter in the first degree, how do you find?"
"Not guilty."
There was a collective murmur behind him, a rush of surprise that sounded like wind through a forest of aspens. The judge continued. "Is your decision based on the defendant's insanity at the time the crime was committed?"
"Yes," the foreman said.
Graham gripped Jamie's arm more tightly.
"Does this insanity still continue?"
"No."
No. Jamie turned to Graham, a stupid, silly grin spreading across his face, and he hugged the lawyer so tightly Graham's feet came off the ground. The courtroom erupted into a volley of noise. Jamie could feel Allies hands, smooth and cool, patting at the back of his jacket.
The judge banged his gavel. "Thank you for your time and effort," he said, speaking to the jury. Then he turned to Jamie. "The defendant is free to go."
A throng of reporters descended on the defense table, held back only by the rail that divided the spectators. They held microphones in front of Jamie's face and blinded him with lights and flashbulbs and tossed questions to him that he fielded with one hand and crumpled in his fist: How do you feel? Do you think this will affect other euthanasia cases? What are you going to do now?
Audra pushed through the media to stick a hand out to Graham. "Nice work," she conceded. Her face was pinched tight, her features receding into each other.
Graham shook her hand and watched her get engulfed by the crowd. Then he saw his father. Duncan MacPhee did not come any closer, but he climbed up on one of the wooden spectator benches so that Graham could clearly see him. He stood very tall, his loafers neatly breaking the creases of an Italian suit. He held out his hand, a thumbs-up, and he smiled.
Jamie did not pay attention to most of the questions the reporters asked. He kept thinking of the day he'd been set free on bail, months before, when he'd driven up to Angus's house and had seen the balloons floating in Darby Mac's cornfield. Congratulations, one had said, and he'd believed it.
He leaned toward Graham. "I need a ride home," he said, laughing. "I'll pay you extra." He clapped his attorney on the shoulder and told him he'd meet him outside. Then he walked down the aisle of the courtroom and out the door of the superior court, making a beeline to a small, bare fruit tree behind the dumpsters out back where Maggie was already waiting.
Allie and Cam had not been able to speak to Jamie alone after the verdict was handed down, but Cam told her that he'd be overwhelmed anyway and she could give him a call or drive over later. He took the car keys out of his pocket--they'd driven over in his beat-up unmarked Ford--but Allie plucked them out of his hand. "I'm too wound up. Let me drive."
So he came to be sitting in the passenger seat of his own car, which he rolled back to a more comfortable position. "I'm just going to close my eyes," he said, but it was less than ten minutes before he had fallen asleep.
He dreamed of Mia. He was standing in the front doorway of his house, and she was on the driveway waving. It was winter and she was wearing a deep purple wool coat that matched the color of her eyes and it was so lovely that Cam could not tear his gaze away. He tightened his hand on the doorknob just to keep from running outside to her.
Then Allie was standing next to him, wearing a sweater he had bought her for her last birthday, her arms folded across her chest. "You're letting out all the heat," she complained, and she went to shut the door.
Cam could feel his heart pounding. She was close enough to see Mia, but she hadn't even thought to look. She kept pushing at the edge of the door. "I'll do it," he said, and with one last glance he shut Mia out of sight.
He realized, when the door was closed, that it was not the heavy oak slab that he himself had picked out for the house. It was new, insulated, with a central grid of nine panes of bull's-eye glass. You could see through the glass, but everything was slightly thick and distorted. Cam stared, making out an edge of what he knew was Mia, and he understood that this was enough.
In his dream, Allie smiled at him. "Are you coming?"
He did not know where, but he nodded. And followed her out of the room.
The adrenaline wore off with every mile she tagged in Cam's car, until by the time Allie pulled into their driveway she did not see how she was going to swing her legs out of the Ford, much less make her way into the house. She was still smiling, but that was for Jamie.
She didn't know what she and Cam were going to do now that the trial was over. It had served as a buffer between them and then as a fragile connection. Now Jamie wasn't an issue. Cam wouldn't be able to win points by sitting beside her in the courtroom, by politely shaking Jamie's hand when he arrived for the day. Now, all Allie and Cam ha
d left were themselves.
She remembered how terrified she had been on their wedding night. It wasn't the sex; they had gotten that out of the way. It was the fact that once they left the reception and got back to the Wheelock Inn, it hit her that she was really going to spend the rest of her life with Cam. Her fingers had been trembling as she unbuckled his kilt and freed the buttons from his crisp white shirt, and Cam had tried to tease her out of it, but her fear was not for that particular evening. She was scared of the next evening and the next and the one after that; of the faith they would have to put in each other, of the overwhelming fact that they were at the bare beginning, and they had so very far to go.
On her wedding night, she'd picked a fight with Cam. He had done something eminently forgivable--he'd torn her stocking while trying to get it down her leg---and she'd started crying. She yelled that he hadn't been thinking, he hadn't been careful, and what kind of omen was that? And Cam, always levelheaded, always a hero, had held her until she stopped trying to get free and had kissed her until she believed that if you only concentrated on the here and now, tomorrow didn't so much matter.
Now Allies hands were shaking again as she turned the key in the side door that led into the kitchen. She fixed her attention on a glass of juice that Cam had left sitting out on the counter. Grape juice. Allie walked into the kitchen with Cam behind her. She picked up the glass. On the white Formica, there was a deep purple stain.
She reached for a sponge and began to scrub the stain. "I can't believe you did this," she said. She could hear Cam unzipping his jacket and hanging it over the back of a chair. She was still wearing her coat, her hat, her scarf.