Invisible Boy (45 page)

She faced the jurors once more. “Make
her
strength your touchstone as you consider the facts of this case.”

Bost stepped toward Teddy’s picture. “Teddy Underhill was murdered.”

She gripped the side of the poster firmly with one hand and pointed to the boy’s joyous face with the other.

“Angela Underhill
knew
how the ravages of physical abuse build inevitably, until they culminate in murder. Albert Williams
knew
he was smashing the fragile rib cage of a three-year-old child into shards, just as he
knew
that his final blows punched through to crush a tiny, beating heart.

“They are
both
murderers,” said Bost.

“
Yes,
” said Cate, under her breath but vehemently.

Bost looked at Teddy’s picture one more time, then let her gaze linger on the face of each juror in turn.

“Hold them accountable.”

Please God.

“Thank you.”

H
etzler took his time getting up, each motion distinct, a sort of gestural stop-motion. Chair pushed back. Hands on tabletop.
Chest tipped forward. Feet braced. Legs straightened to full height. Jacket patted smooth and buttoned closed. Three strides
to the center of the floor.

It was like watching a sniper assemble his favored rifle, click by click.

“The facts of this case…” said Hetzler.

His nostrils flared, once, as though he were testing the air to ensure that even the
fragrance
of Bost’s closing had dissipated entirely before conjuring forth his own.

“Here’s the
main
fact of this case: Teddy Underhill’s death was a senseless tragedy.”

Teddy’s portrait remained in place on its easel. Hetzler gave it a look of sad appraisal.

“This beautiful, innocent boy? Just barely three years old?”

He raised his hand to the pixels of Teddy’s cheek.

“Horrible, what happened to this little angel
… heart
-

rending.… No one with a shred of human decency could call his death anything less.

“
But
”—he looked up from Teddy, toward the jurors—“as tragic as it was, what happened to little Teddy Underhill was
not
murder, ladies and gentlemen.

“To find either Angela Underhill or Albert Williams guilty of murder, the prosecution would have had to prove that their actions
were undertaken with the
intent
to cause Teddy’s death. The prosecution would have had to prove that the defendants sitting before you actively
planned
to kill this child, which is what we call premeditation.”

He nodded, sagely. “The defendants did
not
intend Teddy’s death. No one has testified otherwise, here in this courtroom, and rightly so.

“The
facts
of the case,” said Hetzler. “You’ve been told that Albert Williams injured this little boy repeatedly—finally battering him
to death. Angela Underhill described witnessing him inflict those injuries. Stephanie Keller testified that she heard Williams
yelling, heard him strike the child, heard the boy’s own screams as Williams beat him. Mrs. Elsie Underhill told you that
she saw the mark of a clothes-iron burn on the boy’s back, the day before he died.”

Hetzler dropped his hands, taking a few strides closer to the jury box. “Were they telling the truth, those three women?”

He looked at one juror, then another. “
I
think they were.
I
think these injuries were inflicted on Teddy Underhill by one person: Albert Williams.”

Here, he pointed an accusing finger at Teddy’s killer, bouncing his hand angrily to underline each emphasized word to follow.

“
I
think that the man you see seated before you—a man who weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and who measures six feet two inches
in height—battered the body and soul of a three-year-old child without mercy, whenever the spirit took him.
I
think Albert Williams is a vicious man, a coward, and a bully.”

He paused.

“The facts of the case—here’s another one: the medical examiner estimates that at the time of his death, Teddy Underhill weighed
thirty pounds and stood three feet tall. We all know that he had no hope of defending himself against the violent attacks
of Albert Williams.

“But we all have to wonder why Teddy’s mother didn’t step in to defend him, don’t we?” asked Hetzler, looking over his shoulder
briefly at Angela. “Well, here’s another fact: Angela Underhill stands five feet two inches tall. And before her pregnancy,
she weighed roughly one hundred five pounds. Physically, she is no match for Williams.”

Hetzler crossed his arms. “The sad truth is that she was no match for him emotionally, either. We can hate her, we can
despise
her, for not protecting her son, but we all
must
take into account the
fact
that she suffered irreparable, horrifying, profound damage during the course of her own childhood. Mrs. Elsie Underhill told
us that, didn’t she? She said that the man who killed Angela’s mother killed something inside Angela, too.”

Hetzler clasped his hands behind his back, looking thoughtful. “Angela was forced to take a terrible, crushing, and
flawed
lesson to heart during that long dark night when she lay pinned beneath her mother’s dead body: she learned that if you speak
up in defense of your own child, you will
not
survive. She learned that the
only
possible result of attempting to deflect the violence of a lover’s rage is death.”

He nodded again, raising his eyes above the heads of the jurors. “We can hate her. We can despise her. We can smugly assure
ourselves that
we
would have been strong enough to act differently. But we
can
not blame her. Angela Underhill sustained such devastating psychological damage when her mother was shot to death before
her nine-year-old eyes that she was rendered
wholly
incapable of defending her child from Albert Williams.

“Three years ago, another child died at the hands of a vicious, cowardly bully named Joel Steinberg. The dead child’s name
was Lisa Steinberg, and her adoptive father battered her into a coma, then left her body lying on the bathroom floor for twelve
hours. Steinberg went out to dinner with friends for several hours, and his common-law wife, Hedda Nussbaum, did nothing to
help little Lisa. She
didn’t
call nine-one-one. She
didn’t
call the pediatrician. She didn’t even
try
to make the little girl more comfortable—with a blanket, or a pillow.

“Hedda Nussbaum waited until Joel Steinberg told her it was time to take Lisa to a hospital, but all charges were dropped
against Hedda Nussbaum, in exchange for her testimony against Steinberg.”

Hetzler unclasped his hands. “Here’s what I find fascinating about that case. Do any of you remember what Nussbaum and Steinberg
did in the hours before they carried Lisa’s body to the emergency room?”

Several of the jurors nodded.

“They smoked crack cocaine together, didn’t they?” he said. “For seven hours, according to Nussbaum. So that means Hedda Nussbaum
was alone in that apartment with little Lisa for five
hours
—five
hours
in which she could have called an ambulance, or a friend, or a doctor. But she didn’t do any of those things. And the State
of New York decided that she wasn’t
responsible
for Lisa’s death because she had been battered herself to the point that she was no longer
capable
of exercising the sort of judgment necessary to saving the life of her own adopted daughter.

“Ms. Bost, the prosecutor, asked you to weigh the character of Stephanie Keller against that of Angela Underhill. I ask you
now to weigh something
else
: the State’s treatment of Hedda Nussbaum against its treatment of Angela Underhill.”

Hetzler started pacing slowly, as though considering the import of his thoughts for the very first time himself.

“Two women
equally
ravaged by domestic brutality, two women
equally
damaged,
equally
overwhelmed by the violence inflicted on their children,
equally
incapable of normal human response in the face of that tragedy. One white, one black. One privileged and highly educated,
one equipped with a high-school diploma.”

He’d reached the empty witness box so he spun on his heel to pace slowly back toward the gallery.

“Both of them agree to testify against the men who battered their children to death, and yet only
one
of them gets charged
alongside
that man, only
one
of them is held responsible for
his
actions.”

Hetzler stopped, midstride, and looked at the jurors.

“Guess which one of those women was shown mercy by the State of New York, ladies and gentlemen.”

He turned toward Bost, and glared.

“Go ahead.
Guess
.”

Galloway didn’t bother with Hetzler’s prolonged theatrics when she got to her feet. She jumped right in, bristling with indignation
on her client’s behalf.

“You’ve heard Angela Underhill’s version of her son’s death. You’ve heard the testimony of a woman who was both racked with
the pain of cancer surgery and stupefied by powerful drugs. You’ve heard the words of a woman suffering from three generations
of tragedy, desperate to save the life of her last remaining descendant.”

Here she paused. “What you have
not
heard is the testimony of Albert Williams, in his own defense. And it’s important that I remind you, right now, that you
cannot hold this against him. His having chosen
not
to take the stand is no admission of guilt, or of innocence. You were told this, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, at the
outset of this trial. It is no less true now. The fact that Albert Williams has not taken the stand to speak to you directly
can
not
factor into your decision, at the culmination of this trial.

“And now I’m finished with what you are not allowed to consider. Here is what you
can
—”

She held up one finger. “First, consider that Angela Underhill has everything to gain by convincing you she had no hand in
her son’s abuse, or in his death. We have
only
her word that the injuries inflicted on her son, Teddy, were inflicted by Albert Williams. She is the
only
so-called eyewitness produced by the prosecution, the
only
person who told you that she
allegedly
saw Williams beating her child. Can we take her words at face value, can we take them as the words of a disinterested party?
No, we can’t.”

Up went finger number two. “Second, we have the testimony of Stephanie Keller, the former emergency-room nurse. Ms. Keller
never
saw Albert Williams mistreating Teddy Underhill. She
never
saw him hit the child, she
never
saw him cause the boy even the slightest
discomfort
. And when Ms. Keller asked the boy’s mother how these injuries had occurred, what did Angela Underhill do? She ran from the
building, and refused to speak with Keller further. What was the basis of Keller’s claim that Albert Williams had harmed Teddy
Underhill? Disembodied voices in an air shaft, ladies and gentlemen, the vague echoes of voices she heard while under the
influence of the most powerfully intoxicating, mind-altering
drugs
known to medical science. Nothing more than that.”

Galloway lofted finger number three, a benediction.

“Third, you heard the testimony of Mrs. Elsie Underhill—a widow, an upstanding member of this community—who raised her granddaughter
following the murder of the girl’s mother, her
own
daughter. Think about that, ladies and gentlemen—think about what’s at stake for Mrs. Underhill, the powerful loyalties that
must have informed her testimony. She’s lost her husband, lost her daughter, and lost her great-grandson. The only family
member she has left in the world is Angela Underhill—and the unborn child Angela now carries.”

Galloway gave her three-pronged hand a little bounce in the air. “
Think
about that, ladies and gentlemen.
Think
about the tragedies suffered by Mrs. Elsie Underhill, and then ask yourself whether she could have brought herself to condemn
the last living member of her own family—whether she could have taken that stand and told us the
truth
about who hurt little Teddy—when by so doing Mrs. Elsie Underhill would lose her granddaughter, Angela, on top of everything
else
she’s been made to endure.

“Mr. Hetzler just urged you to consider the facts of the case, ladies and gentlemen,” she continued. “
The facts of the case
.

“Angela Underhill. Stephanie Keller. Mrs. Elsie Underhill”—she looked at her raised trio of fingers. “You’ve heard the
testimony
of these three so-called witnesses, ladies and gentlemen—”

Galloway’s hand fell like a slingshot-struck songbird. “But they did not tell you even a single
fact
.”