Life Penalty (27 page)

She remembered someone sticking something with a very unpleasant smell in front of her nose, being jolted awake, being ushered from one room to another, being poked and prodded and X-rayed, and later questioned extensively. The truth was that she remembered little of the assault, knew nothing of the man who had attacked her. The police, for their part, seemed more curious about her motives for being in the park. Didn’t she know it was dangerous to go walking alone in the park at night? Had she gone there to meet someone? Was she soliciting? Who was she?

Finally, she had told them her name, and they had left her alone. She closed her eyes.

When she opened them only minutes later, both Jack and Lieutenant Cole were standing by her bed. Again she felt disoriented. Was it now or six months ago? Had she imagined everything? Had she really been attacked or was she still trapped in that last awful afternoon in April?

“Mind telling us what you were doing walking through the park at night?” the lieutenant asked her as Jack rubbed his hand across his eyes. She could see that he had been crying.

“I just went for a walk,” she answered, wishing there was something she could say that would comfort him, knowing how her words sounded, even to herself. “I got restless at home. I needed some air.”

“So you went walking alone through a park on Halloween at midnight?”

“I know it was a stupid thing to do …”

“More than stupid, Gail,” Lieutenant Cole told her. “Very dangerous. You’re damn lucky that guy didn’t kill you, that all you got were a few busted ribs and a black eye.”

Was she? Gail wondered. “Why are you here?” she asked Lieutenant Cole, knowing how late it must be.

“One of the officers who questioned you recognized your name and called me at home.”

“I’m sorry,” Gail said.

“You should be, but not because of me.”

“Did Jennifer get home okay?” Gail asked Jack suddenly. He nodded, but said nothing.

“Jack,” Lieutenant Cole began gently, “would you mind waiting in the hall for a minute?”

Jack obeyed wordlessly.

“Is he all right?” Gail asked, startled by Jack’s zombie-like state.

“He’s understandably upset. The police woke him up when they phoned. He hadn’t realized you’d even left the house. How do you think he feels?” Gail said nothing, trying to imagine. “Gail … is there something that you want to tell me?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Anything. Maybe the real reason you were in that park tonight.”

“You know the reason,” she said, trying to find one. “There was no reason.” Her eyes challenged the lieutenant’s. “Can I go home now?”

His voice was sad. “If that’s what you want,” he told her.

“It’s what I want,” she said.

A
s soon as she was able, Gail was back on the streets of Newark.

Her room at 26 Barton had been rented to someone else when she had failed to show up the next morning with the required rent money. Gail wasn’t surprised; she was relieved. She wondered what, if anything, the man with the dark curly hair had made of her absence.

She walked directly to 44 Amelia. Had the police bothered to investigate her phone call at all?

“Do you have a room?” she asked the landlady whose gray hair was still in pin curls. Did she ever take them out? Gail wondered. The landlady obviously didn’t recognize her, and though she took note of Gail’s black eye, she said nothing.

“Twelve fifty a night,” she answered brusquely. ‘“Payable in advance.”

“Yes, I know,” Gail told her, fishing in her purse for the correct amount and handing it over. “Does Nick Rogers still live here?” she asked as the landlady led her up the first flight of stairs to her room.

“Never heard of no Nick Rogers,” the woman said.

She saw him from a distance of about half a block and was about to turn around or cross the street when she realized
he had seen her and was coming quickly toward her. Gail braced herself for a barrage of questions, pulling her shabby cloth coat tightly around her.

(“For God’s sake, Gail, don’t you think it’s time you got yourself a new coat?” Jack had asked on their way home from the hospital three nights earlier. It was all he had said.)

“Gail,” he said, reaching out and touching her arm. “For God’s sake, I thought it was you, but what the hell are you doing in this part of Newark?” He looked her up and down. “Going to a costume party?” he joked, his voice growing quickly serious. “And what, in Heaven’s name, happened to your eye?”

“Hello, Mike,” Gail said, ignoring his questions. “How’s Laura?”

“She’s fine,” he answered. “She misses you, of course. She’s just got too much pride to keep calling. You haven’t answered my questions. What happened to your face?”

Gail’s hand automatically touched the swollen area under her left eye. “I got mugged. Someone stole my purse.”

“My God! Did they catch—?”

“No,” Gail said quickly, shaking her head before she remembered it was still painful to do so. “But they have several leads.” She wondered if Mike was aware of her underlying sarcasm.

“And what are you doing here?” he asked again.

“I have a few things to take care of,” she said vaguely.

“In Newark?”

“Why not in Newark? You’re here.”

“I’m a criminal attorney, and I’m visiting a client. Look, it’s damn cold out here. Why don’t we go somewhere for a cup of coffee?”

“Follow me,” Gail said, knowing there was no point in protesting. She led him across one street and then
another. “Here.” She stopped suddenly in front of Harry’s, her favorite of the local greasy spoons. “‘They make a good cup of coffee,” she said as they walked inside. Mike looked behind him, as if he were afraid that someone he knew might see him entering such a place, then followed her inside.

“Hi there,” Harry called from behind the counter as Gail walked past. Gail smiled in acknowledgment and led Mike to her favorite table near the back.

Harry was immediately beside them, wiping the table clean and putting two glasses of water in front of them. “What’s the other guy look like?” he asked, turning Gail’s chin around with his free hand. “That’s a real beaut,” he pronounced. “What’ll it be?”

“Just coffee,” Gail said.

“The same,” Mike agreed.

“I got a fresh batch of those pastries with the cherries that you like,” Harry winked conspiratorially.

“Not today,” Gail told him.

He nodded and went away. That was one of the things that Gail liked about Harry. He asked but he never pestered. Add Harry had been very helpful in his own way, gossiping with her about his regular customers, filling her in on neighborhood habits. She smiled and realized that Mike was staring at her from across the table, his confusion almost tangible.

“You come here often?” he laughed, a serious question disguised as an old joke.

“Sometimes,” Gail shrugged.

Mike looked around. The restaurant was small and narrow, with a row of arborite tables running down one side and a traditional counter and metal stools on the other. The colors were nondescript greens and grays; the cutlery was only marginally fancier than plastic. There was a smattering of people in the restaurant, the lunch hour
having come and gone. Gail studied Mike’s face as he made a concerted effort to look relaxed.

“So,” Mike tried again, “aside from the mugging, how have you been?”

“Fine,” Gail nodded.

“I understand you and Jack spent a few days in Cape Cod.” Gail nodded. “How was it?”

“Cold.”

“That’s what Laura said you told her.” Again Gail simply nodded. “How’s Jennifer?”

“Fine.”

“Doing okay in school?”

“Yes. Fine.”

“Good.”

Harry brought over two cups of hot coffee, several small containers of cream resting on Mike’s saucer. “You forgot her cream,” Mike told him.

“She doesn’t take cream,” Harry answered before moving away.

“He seems to know you better than I do,” Mike observed, not trying to hide his bewilderment.

“We went to school together,” Gail said.

It took Mike Cranston several seconds to realize that Gail was putting him on and when he did, he didn’t smile. “Gail, what’s going on? What are you doing here?”

“I’m having a cup of coffee with a friend,” she said, and the look in her eyes told him she would say no more.

“Okay, have it your way.” He took a sip of coffee, burned his tongue and quickly added more cream. “Look,” he tried again, “why haven’t you returned any of Laura’s calls? She’s been sick about what happened between the two of you. You know she’d never say anything to deliberately hurt you. She loves you. Can’t you call her, tell her it doesn’t matter …”

“I can’t.”

“Why not, for God’s sake?”

“Because it does matter.”

“She was only trying to help,” Mike continued, eloquently pleading his wife’s case. “Ever since this awful thing happened, that’s all she’s been trying to do—help you. Make things easier for you. She loved Cindy, Gail. And she loves you. She’d cut off her right arm before she’d do anything that would intentionally hurt you.” His voice caught in his throat.

“I thought lawyers weren’t supposed to get emotional,” Gail said, reaching across the table and squeezing his hand.

“I wasn’t speaking to you as a lawyer, I was speaking to you as a friend.”

“Speak to me as a lawyer for a few minutes,” she requested. “I need to know some things.”

“Will you think about what I said?”

Gail nodded. “Will you answer my questions?”

“Fire away.”

“What exactly happens after they arrest someone for murder?”

“Depends on the someone,” was Mike’s quick retort.

“Are there different procedures?”

“Well, it depends on a lot of factors. If it’s some Mafia big shot, for example, chances are he’ll be out on bail in a few hours …”

“Even for murder?”

“If the judge sets bail at a million dollars and you’ve got a million dollars, you’re out on bail. Even for murder.”

“I thought they didn’t set bail for murderers.”

“Like I said, it depends. If the governor’s wife shoots the paperboy, the chances of her getting bail are going to be a lot greater than if the paperboy shoots the governor’s wife. There’s also a little thing called extenuating circumstances. It becomes difficult to generalize.”

“Okay. What about the ordinary guy, the person without the connections or the money or the extenuating circumstances?”

“They’ll put him in jail to await trial. Unless, of course, he’s mentally incompetent to stand trial, and then he’d be committed to the state hospital until such time that he is judged competent.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“He stays there.”

“Forever?”

“Possibly. More likely, at some point, unless he’s a total basket case, he’ll be judged competent enough to stand trial.”

Gail leaned back in her chair. “Then what?” she asked.

“Well, he’d have a lawyer by that point, either one of his own choosing or someone the court appoints, and together they’d decide how he’s going to plead.”

“Guilty or not guilty,” Gail stated.

Mike laughed. “Well, it’s not quite so easy as that. There’s murder in the first degree, murder in the second, voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, not guilty by reason of insanity, not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Then there’s self-defense. It goes on and on. The days of a simple guilty or not guilty are long gone.”

“All right. So the case goes to trial?”

“Sometimes. More usually, unless your client is out-and-out innocent, you’ll want to spare the state and your client the time and expense of a trial, so you plea-bargain.”

“Which means …?”

“Something in exchange for something else. A compromise. Something that both sides will agree to. Say, you have a guy who shot his poker buddy after he caught him cheating. They’d both been drinking heavily. Chances are you’re going to argue diminished capacity and try to reduce the charge to manslaughter. Well, suppose this
guy has some information about some other crime and he’s willing to help the police out in exchange for a lesser charge and therefore lesser sentence, so you bargain, and chances are the charge will be further reduced to
involuntary
manslaughter and he’ll get off with a few years behind bars. Case never has to go to trial. With good behavior and a bit of luck, the guy’ll be out on parole in less than a year.”

“That’s justice?” Gail scoffed in amazement.

“It’s the best we’ve got.”

“Doesn’t sound like much.”

“Listen, if we took the other route, if the guy goes to trial charged with voluntary manslaughter or second-degree murder, then first you start with a whole lot of costly delays and various motions and postponements, and when the damn thing finally does get to trial, chances are you’ll end up with the same verdict anyway. Guy winds up serving the same amount of time.”

“And he’s out on the streets in less than a year.”

“Can’t keep people locked up forever.”

“What about someone found guilty of first-degree murder?”

“Well, they’ve reinstituted the death penalty, but we haven’t executed a man in this state for a very long time. A more likely sentence is life imprisonment.”

“Which means what?”

“Twenty years. Maximum. With parole, probably less than half that.”

“And the man who killed my little girl?” Gail asked quietly.

“Well,” Mike said gently, “any man who rapes and murders a six-year-old girl is obviously crazy, but insanity is a very tricky line of defense, and the legal definition of what constitutes sanity rests on whether or not the defendant could distinguish between right and wrong at the time of
the crime. Very difficult to prove.” He shook his head. “My guess is that the police won’t make an arrest without either a confession or a solid case of circumstantial evidence. A jury would find him guilty and he’d probably end up in some form of solitary confinement to protect him from the other prisoners.”

“Protect him?”

“The man has certain rights under the law.” He lowered his head. “Look, I know it sounds like shit, and I guess in many respects, it
is
shit, but you have to remember that these laws went on the books originally to protect innocent people.”