Lies of the Heart (33 page)

Alicia leans forward, defiant: “I can definitely see why he’d become
totally
infuriated—”

“Your Honor, this witness is a student and not an expert on physical abuse or behavior!”

“Sustained.”

At this point the jurors can’t possibly understand Richard’s intentions or what Jerry’s anger about sex entails, but they sense the importance of this testimony: all twelve heads are bent over their pads, their pens moving quickly across the pages.

You weren’t there when Jerry was incited, and you couldn’t have stopped it.
This is what Richard’s staff told her in the days following the shooting, what they believed. What Katie so urgently needed to believe then—what she needs to believe now, as the panic continues to pulse through her body.

Detective Mason’s initial testimony centers exclusively on describing proper procedures, the collection of evidence, the confirmation of testimony given by other officials at the scene—a necessary process that drags out for over an hour. The courtroom doors open and close constantly, and each time most of the jurors turn to cast longing glances at the back of the room. Richard’s intention to end the week with a bang is suddenly failing; he should have ended with Alicia, because Detective Mason’s testimony is slowly putting them to sleep.

Katie checks the clock at the front of the room: only twenty minutes left until they adjourn for the week—he’s running out of time.

“Detective Mason, you were the one who processed the defendant at the Warwick Police Department?”

“Correct.”

“And part of this procedure is to videotape the arrest interview?”

“Yes.”

Some of the jurors perk up at the mention of a videotape. As Richard and one of his paralegals set up the video equipment, Judge Hwang informs them that the sound on the tape is of poor quality and requests that the jurors speak up if they need the volume adjusted.

The footage looks like it was shot from a distance, probably a ceiling camera, and is too grainy to capture facial expressions. Detective Mason and a stocky female officer sit on either side of Jerry, who slouches down in his chair, his arms hanging dejectedly by his sides. Detective Mason reads the arrest report to Jerry, who is completely nonresponsive at first: chin tucked under, body so still it would look like a freeze-frame if he were the only one in the room. But as Detective Mason reads the list of charges—breaking and entering, felony theft, first-degree murder—there are little movements from Jerry: a sudden jerk in the neck, shifting in the chair, hands meeting on the table, knuckles bulging. Jerry mumbles something unintelligible on the tape, and a hand is raised by the elderly juror in the back. But before the intern can turn up the staticky sound, Jerry is rising out of his chair on the screen, ripping the report away from Detective Mason, crushing it into a ball with his hands. He hurls it across the room with his whole body, clutches the table as though he will flip it over—Detective Mason and the policewoman are by his side in seconds, struggling to pry the table from his grip, and then they are all falling to the floor, the policewoman’s arm hooked around Jerry’s neck. From the back of the room, out of the camera’s view, a string of officers file in—they join the melee of arms and legs on the floor, partially hidden by the table. Through the gasps and mutters of the jurors, and the muffled static of the struggle, one sound is crystal clear: Jerry’s infuriated screams echo inside the small interview room and into the shocked courtroom.

Later she’s waiting in Richard’s office, the three reels of Jerry’s footage on her lap. For once Richard ignores her completely, his pen blazing across his notepad. The ticking of the small clock on his desk is like a pulse inside Katie’s head—the seconds slowly clicking away, one after the other, before she hands Jerry’s past off to a complete stranger. Outside the window the darkness is punctuated with the lights of downtown Providence, little stars blinking into life in the city’s skyline.

They’re waiting for the agreed-upon third party to pick up the reels, to do whatever it is they’ll do with the moments Katie has filmed from Jerry’s life. Over the weekend, Richard has explained to Katie, they will watch the footage from beginning to end—Donna Treadmont, Judge Hwang, Richard, and other “involved parties”—and they will decide among themselves what the jurors will see in court. For now it’s all still cloudy to Katie: what moments Donna will fight for, which ones have the potential to deflate Jerry’s rage on the screen. The only thing Katie really understands at this point is that the jurors will not be subjected to over seven hours of footage, that strangers will decide the relevant moments of Jerry’s life, and that his life can and will be edited for time and content by a roomful of professionals.

“Katie?”

“Huh?”

“I asked if you needed anything. Water?”

“I’m okay.”

Richard checks his watch. “He should have been here by now. Look, why don’t you just leave them with me. I told you, you don’t have to wait.”

“I don’t mind.”

“All we’re going to do is hand them over to this guy.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have to verify you’re the filmmaker until we get into court. He’s just picking them up.”

“I know that.”

“So—”

“I’ll wait,” she says, and pulls the reels closer.

Katie checks the bulb in her flatbed, snaps on a reel of film, and toggles forward through black space until Sarah and Arthur emerge on the thirteen-inch monitor stationed above it; they stand in front of their couch, facing each other and preparing for a new interview. Katie freezes the frame just as Sarah reaches up to brush lint off Arthur’s shirt—Arthur’s eyes stay fixed on the fingers resting flat against his chest, where Sarah’s eyes also rest. It’s the first time Katie has seen them on such a small screen, yet she can make out every detail of their features: the fine lines around their eyes; the trace of a smile at the corners of Arthur’s lips as he gazes at his wife’s hand; the small, fussy crease of skin on the bridge of Sarah’s nose as she frets over her husband’s appearance.

Katie toggles forward until she sees Arthur and Sarah on the couch, their hands folded in their laps and ready; she cues up the sound, listens to the casual banter between husband and wife. Back when Katie started this project, she quickly realized how important it was to get the elderly couple on track, to move them along by helping them recall where they left off the last time she visited their home. Otherwise, right at the beginning of filming, they would interrupt themselves and chew up valuable minutes to quiz Katie about her own life, her relationship with Nick. To appease them, she would chat with Sarah and Arthur for fifteen minutes or so before she turned her camera on, though even then, after she tried to get them on track, their questions still spilled over at times.

Katie digs through a large cardboard box and listens to her own mild prodding with the couple:
Last time you told me about some changes in the house you both worked in?
Within a few minutes, the couple begin to describe the change of command in the house, how the old general—transferred to a new camp—was replaced by a much younger one.

“He is a good man, Nick? A good husband to you?” Sarah suddenly asks, interrupting Arthur’s harsh assessment of this new general.

Katie looks up from the box and sees the concern and curiosity playing across Sarah’s wrinkled features. Arthur turns his eyes in Katie’s direction, too, waiting for her answer.

Yes
, Katie answers from behind the camera.
He’s a wonderful man, a great husband. You were saying that this new general was much younger?

Katie pushes the box aside, rolls her chair to the flatbed and toggles back.

“He is a good man, Nick? A good husband to you?”

She watches Sarah and Arthur closely. How did she miss this? This look of doubt that passes between the couple right after Katie answers? And then Arthur, worrying a crease in his pants.

Katie sighs. She doesn’t have time for this now. Maybe when their film is finally finished, she’ll review these moments alone, figure out what all these little gestures mean, but for now she toggles forward until she sees a familiar break in the film. Sarah and Arthur reappear, bodies close.

“It was on Sundays,” Arthur says into the camera, “when the new general attended church with his wife. Do you remember, Sarah?” Arthur asks softly, his hand cupping her shoulder, and Sarah turns to stare blankly at him for a moment before she responds.

“Arthur?”

“The stories?” he says gently. “On Sundays?”

Her slow, demure smile is Arthur’s answer.

“He should have written books, this man,” Sarah says. “The things he would come up with, like fairy tales.”

“Oh, Sarah,” Katie says sadly, and Jack looks up from the center of the beanbag chair, where he is curled up in a ball. He wags his tail, tucks his head back into his paws.

Can you give me an example?
Katie asks from behind the camera.

Arthur describes the place where they would meet on Sundays—Arthur sitting on one side of the wall in the hallway outside the kitchen, Sarah crouched close to the corner on her side. There, for ten minutes every Sunday, Arthur and Sarah would go on their “dates,” whispering back and forth while the kitchen supervisor, Adele, smoked cigarettes just outside the kitchen door.

“Sometimes we would have a long dinner together,” Arthur says, “and we would talk about happy things, serious things. I would describe our children, how smart they were in school.”

Sarah is nodding. “Arthur said he wanted ten children. And he wanted them all to have my eyes.”

Arthur watches her, lowers his voice. “We wanted a son first, a strong man. We told each other what he would do one day so that nothing like this could ever happen again. You see, we were proud of this boy before he was even born.”

Sarah smiles remotely, her attention focused on a space above the camera.

“Always,” Arthur says, turning away from Sarah. “He is a clever man, just what we expected.” He adds in a soft voice, an afterthought: “And our Ben, he has his mother’s eyes.”

Sarah’s wrinkled face has glazed over, lost in the past.

“One Sunday,” Arthur says in a loud voice, “we went on a trip together, to Venice—”

Katie pauses the film, rises. Walks slowly to the shelves, eyes the reels with a sinking heart. She picks up a new canister, brushes the dust off the lid with one finger. She hasn’t revisited this footage once since filming it, unsure how to work it in with the romantic scenarios Arthur and his wife exchanged to make their weeks, their months, pass more quickly. Hoping she could ignore it completely, work her way around it. But it’s a part of their story, too.
An important part,
Sarah says on this reel, despite Arthur’s resistance. But Sarah was right. Katie knows that now.