Cruel Justice

14

BEN PUNCHED THE REMOTE and sent the videotape back to the beginning, trying to be as quiet as possible. He didn’t normally think of operating the VCR as a noisy chore, but tonight he was taking no chances. It had taken him hours to get Joey to sleep. He hadn’t gone down until well after midnight, and Ben suspected that the slightest sound could bring him back to life at full roar.

Ben’s first night at home alone with his nephew had been an unmitigated nightmare. His ignorance of the world of child care knew no bounds. He didn’t know the first thing about babies. How do you get the nipple to go inside that plastic ring? Why do women squirt milk on their wrist? How can you tell which side of the diaper goes up? Does it matter?

And this was a good one—where do you put them down to sleep if you don’t happen to have a crib in your bachelor pad? He’d made do with an oversized plastic laundry basket. All right—it looked stupid, but it was the best he could come up with on the spur of the moment. Joey didn’t seem to mind; he just didn’t want Uncle Ben to leave him there alone. So he cried. Loudly. After striking out with every lullaby he knew, Ben tried all the poetry he could recite from memory, which wasn’t all that much. Only “Annabel Lee” seemed to calm Joey. Somewhat. Ben hoped it was the rhythm and rhyme that turned the trick, not the melancholy ruminations on premature death. It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea …

Joey quieted, but he still wasn’t asleep. Ben tried several quiet songs he knew, a few half-remembered Disney tunes, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, for no reason he could fathom, he began singing the theme from The Flintstones. Hardly a nursery standard. It was a wacky idea, but …

It worked. A sweet contented smile emerged the instant Joey heard “Flintstones … meet the Flintstones …” Halfway through the song, his eyelids fluttered closed.

At long last, he had drifted to sleep. Of course, once he was asleep, Ben worried about whether he was breathing. Ben pressed his ear up to Joey’s mouth until he heard the soft intake of baby breath. He couldn’t remember what the latest was—were babies supposed to sleep on their backs or their tummies? Or maybe their sides? Were they allowed to have pillows? Why did Joey keep kicking off the blankets?

Ben finally tore himself away from baby watching and plopped down, thoroughly exhausted, on the sofa in the front room of his apartment As soon as he was situated, Giselle, Ben’s cat, pounced into his lap. Giselle was obviously not pleased about this interloper who had invaded their apartment and occupied Ben’s attention, not to mention his lap, all night long.

Christina had given Giselle to Ben as a present a few birthdays back, and the cat seemed to have been eating continuously ever since. Of course, she would eat nothing but the most expensive gourmet cat food. Ben had never had a pet before and never particularly wanted one either, but since Christina was a dear friend and tended to drop by his apartment fairly frequently, the animal shelter was out of the question. He had never quite determined what breed of cat Giselle was; all he knew was that she was black and she was large. Huge, really. The dinosaur of cats.

Giselle rubbed her wet nose into Ben’s face. Charming. Her nuzzle felt scratchier than usual, though. Ben glanced down casually, then shot off the sofa.

Giselle had a dead bird clutched in her teeth.

“Giselle!” He started to shout, then remembered the sleeping babe in the next room. “What have I told you about dragging carcasses into the living room?”

Ben paused, breathing rapidly, almost as if he expected Giselle to answer. Instead, she clenched the tattered remains of the unfortunate blue jay in her mouth and purred.

“If you must act upon your biological imperative and kill living creatures, at least don’t drag them inside!” Ben tried to keep Giselle indoors, but about two weeks earlier she had discovered the trapdoor in the ceiling of his bedroom closet. The trapdoor permitted access to the roof. Ben crawled up there sometimes to gaze at the stars and remind himself that he wasn’t afraid of heights anymore.

Giselle went up there to hunt.

Ben continued scolding to no avail. Finally, he ran into the kitchen and opened a can of Feline’s Fancy. As soon as Giselle heard the motor of the can opener, she dropped her treasure and bolted toward her food dish. Ben then circled back to the living room, scooped up the lifeless remains, and dropped them out his bedroom window into the open trash bins in the back alley.

Once his domestic chores were completed, he sat down to review the videotape of the Leeman Hayes confession. He watched it three times, front to back, without intermission.

And each time he got more depressed.

Small wonder they were going forward with the prosecution of Leeman Hayes. The effect of that videotape on an Oklahoma jury would be devastating.

The first half hour was an exercise in sheer frustration. Leeman was represented by his first attorney, an old-school lawyer now deceased. The DA was present, as was a physician who had been assigned to the case. Ben also recognized Ernie Hayes—a ten-years-younger version of the one he had met.

The DA began asking questions, trying to get Leeman to tell what he knew about the murder of Maria Alvarez.

They got absolutely nowhere. Leeman was not uncooperative; on the contrary, he seemed willing to do anything for these nice men in white shirts and ties. He just couldn’t. He didn’t possess even the most rudimentary communication skills that would allow him to answer their questions.

The interrogators tried using different approaches, simpler terms. They spoke loud; they spoke soft. They acted friendly; they acted angry. Friend, foe; good cop, bad cop. It made no difference.

Finally, someone had the brilliant idea of showing Leeman a picture. They gave him the only known premortem photo of Maria Alvarez, taken about three years before.

Leeman recognized her. That much was clear. Even Leeman’s stoutest defender could no longer doubt that he had seen her before.

Next, over Ernie’s vigorous objection, the interrogating officer showed Leeman a photo of Maria taken at the crime scene. Her face and chest were soaked with blood; the shaft of the broken golf club still protruded from her neck.

Leeman turned away almost instantly. But again there was little doubt—he had seen this before.

The lead interrogating officer asked Leeman to tell him what had happened that night, and when that didn’t work, he pantomimed the act of clubbing someone over the head. That turned the trick. Leeman began not to talk, but to act out the murder.

Leeman’s face was transformed. The eager, friendly, puppy-dog expression disappeared. He stood on his tiptoes and crept across the expanse of the room, then made a shoving gesture.

“That’s how he got the woman’s attention,” one of the detectives on the tape said.

Amazingly enough, Leeman then switched characters. He became Maria, and enacted her reaction. She was startled, then angry. It was impossible to discern why she was upset, as Leeman used no words. But something was definitely the matter.

In the next few moments Leeman shifted back and forth between characters so many times it was difficult to tell who did what to whom. Somehow, a fight broke out, and Maria got the worst of it.

Then, in what was by far the most horrifying part of the performance, Leeman’s face contorted with rage. Hatred boiled forth from every pore. This was more than mere mortal anger; this was the fury of the gods. His body trembled; his hands shook. Ben had read about Leeman’s supposed violent temper, but had never truly believed it possible.

Until now.

Ben saw Leeman mime picking up a golf club and swinging it down onto Maria’s head. The club apparently broke upon impact. Leeman picked up the broken shaft and rammed it through Maria’s neck.

His face still transfixed with rage, Leeman withdrew slowly, wiping his hands and face. He looked all around, then bolted away.

When he reached the far wall, he stopped. The reenactment was over. Leeman closed his eyes and, like some primitive Method actor, stepped out of character.

Leeman returned to his chair. Everyone else in the room was staring at him with blank faces, with wide eyes. It was a long time before anyone spoke.

Finally the DA said, “I don’t believe any more questions will be necessary. Thank you for your time.” He stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.

Twenty minutes later Leeman Hayes was charged with murder in the first degree.

After Ben had watched the tape three times, he became convinced that Leeman’s case was hopeless. He saw no opening, or ambiguity, or anything else he could use to convince a jury this was anything other than what it appeared to be—a pantomimic confession of guilt.

Ben hit the rewind button and watched Leeman run through the performance backward. Giselle jumped back into his lap. Sweet kitty—and no dead bird in her mouth, he was relieved to see. He stroked the back of her neck. She purred and looked up at him, peering intently with those big green cat eyes

Wait a minute. Ben grabbed the remote and stopped the tape just as Leeman was beginning his performance.

It was so quick he almost missed it. In fact, he had missed it during each previous viewing. Leeman did not move directly from unresponsiveness to the performance. First, in a gesture that took less than a second, he held his right hand over his eyes, as if shading off an imaginary sun.

See.

It was the same gesture he had used to tell Ben he had seen him getting out of his Honda. There were no words attached—Leeman was still preverbal—but the gesture was absolutely the same.

See.

Leeman wasn’t telling the police officers what he did. He was telling them what he saw.

See.

It wasn’t a confession. It was an eyewitness account. Ben was certain of it.

But how would he convince a jury? Regardless of what he told them, Ben knew most jurors, most anybody, would view that taped performance as a confession. Ben’s explanation about the gesture would be written off as a desperate ploy by a desperate defense attorney.

And Leeman Hayes would be convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. And sentenced. In addition to the ten years of institutionalization to which he had already been condemned, even though he had never been convicted of a crime, he would spend the rest of his life a prisoner.

Or he would be sentenced to death.

It would be hard to say which penalty would be worse for Leeman.

Ben pushed the stop button on the remote. He couldn’t let that happen. Could he?

Are you going to spend the rest of your life representing every petty felon and hard-luck story that slithers into your office?

The words thundered in Ben’s brain. He would never be able to convince the jury Leeman’s taped performance wasn’t a confession, and Leeman himself would be absolutely worthless at trial. The file had virtually no exculpatory evidence in Leeman’s favor. Ben would have to start his investigation from scratch. He would have to unearth witnesses and evidence on a ten-year-old crime.

An extremely difficult task.

Difficult? Try impossible.

Don’t be such a sucker.

One thing was certain. If Ben took this case, he could kiss goodbye any chance of regaining Jack Bullock’s respect.

I’m so disappointed, Ben. You were like a son to me.

But other images from the day flashed through Ben’s mind. Leeman’s face on the videotape—scared, helpless, alone. Leeman Hayes ten years later—bloated, locked away in dirty, ill-fitting clothes, his whole life passing him by. The eager, desperate look in Ernie Hayes’s eyes. What was it he had said? I knew you were the one who was finally going to help my boy.

I knew it.

At least one thing Ernie had said was true. If Ben didn’t take the case, who would?

Ten years. Ten long years.

Ben turned off the television. His deliberation was over. Despite all the dangers, all the difficulties, and all common sense, he was representing Leeman Hayes.

He had no choice.

They didn’t have much of a chance. But that was better than no chance at all. That was better than condemning Leeman to more wasted days. More isolation and fear. And suffering.

Even more than he had already suffered.

At the hands of justice.