No Safe Place (24 page)

Behind Levin, Anthony Musso stared at his son with what seemed, to Kerry, a chilling admixture of hatred, command, and indifference to the boy’s ordeal. Seeing his father, John looked away, his voice anxious. “Sometimes.”

“And when you called 911, you just told them your mommy might be dead.”

John swallowed. “I don’t remember.”

“But isn’t that all you said when the police came?”

John shook his head, confused, unable to answer.

Levin moved forward now, voice and manner kindly. “John,” he said in a tone of understanding, “you like Mr. Kilcannon, don’t you?”

Looking at Kerry, the boy nodded. “Yes.”

“And you want him to be proud of you.”

The boy looked from Kerry to Bridget. “Mom, too.”

Levin smiled. “They’d want you to tell the truth, right? That’s all that Mr. Kilcannon wants.”

The boy nodded. The seduction was beginning to work, Kerry saw; caught in a rhythm of answers, Levin’s seeming approval, John had his eyes on the lawyer now.

“So,” Levin said, “isn’t it the truth that you met with Mr. Kil-cannon and found out it would please him if you said your dad hurt your mom?”

For a long time, John hesitated, and then he said, “I wanted to help him.”

Levin nodded. “So you did, John. By telling him your dad pushed your mom into the sink. But you don’t really
know
what happened, do you?”

John folded his arms again. “I do
too
know.”

His voice was stubborn, angry. Edgy, Kerry felt himself begin to rise.

Almost pityingly, Levin said, “Your mommy drinks, doesn’t she? And then she hurts herself.”

John straightened in his chair, looking at the lawyer with a sudden rage that startled Kerry. “Daddy hurts her. He hurts her all the time—”

“Your Honor,”
Levin called out, but now John Musso had turned to the jury, voice piping and insistent. “He punches her in the face and in her stomach—”

In the jury box, Kerry saw the black woman shudder.

“Your Honor,” Levin said at once, “I move for a mistrial.”

They sat in Weinstein’s airy chambers—the judge, Kerry, Levin, and a court reporter.

“The testimony’s prejudicial,” Levin insisted. “The charge is whether my client is responsible for a single incident—the only one
ever
reported to the police. Suddenly he’s this brute who routinely uses his wife as a punching bag. There’s no way he gets a fair trial.”

Weinstein turned to Kerry. “I agree with Mr. Levin—there’s a problem here. Why go on and risk getting reversed on appeal?”

Kerry paused, gathering his thoughts. “Let Mr. Levin appeal, Your Honor, if he thinks that flies. But a mistrial?
I
didn’t ask John the question, although John’s answer shouldn’t surprise
anyone—especially Anthony Musso’s lawyer.” Pausing, Kerry turned to Levin. “Mr. Levin pushed and pushed an eight-year-old boy—”

“You
put
him there,” Levin shot back, red-faced. “It’s up to you to tell him what the rules are.”

That this might be true only made Kerry angrier, more impassioned. “Your Honor,” he said to Weinstein, “Mr. Levin effectively called this boy a liar, a pawn in my vendetta against his dad. The boy fought back with the only weapon he had—the truth. The defense got what it deserved.” He lowered his voice. “What it
doesn’t
deserve is a mistrial. This boy has seen enough and suffered enough. To put him through all this again would be an act of cruelty.”

Slowly, Weinstein nodded, and then spoke with what, to Kerry, was surprising compassion. “I agree with Mr. Kil-cannon. The testimony wasn’t his doing, and it’s painful to watch this boy. If he has to come back here again, it’ll be because the court of appeals says so, not me.” He turned to Levin. “Mr. Levin, I’m instructing the jury to disregard all testimony about any other alleged acts of domestic violence. Motion denied.”

Levin frowned. “For the record, Your Honor, if Mr. Musso is found guilty, I’m taking this to the court of appeals.”

Weinstein shrugged. “That’s what it’s there for,” he said, and the conference was over.

On the way out, Kerry put his hand on Levin’s shoulder. “Why don’t you put Musso on the stand, Gary. Have him explain why he stepped over his wife’s body on the way to the local bar, leaving his eight-year-old son there, afraid she’s dead. That’ll fix everything.”

Levin flushed, clearly angry. He stalked back to the courtroom without answering.

In the clearest possible terms, Judge Weinstein instructed the jury to disregard John Musso’s answer. But Kerry knew that they could not; the damage was there, in the transcript of the trial, a ticking time bomb. To spare the Mussos further agony, he would have to win twice—here and on appeal.

Resuming his cross-examination, Levin was cautious. “Isn’t it the truth, John, that you never told anyone that your dad beat your mom until after you met with Mr. Kilcannon?”

Swallowing, John looked at Kerry. With a small nod, Kerry gave his permission.

“Yes,” John said.

“And you’ve met with Mr. Kilcannon a lot.”

“Yes.”

“And gone over your story, again and again, to make sure you get it right.”

“Yes.”

Levin put his hands on his hips. “Mr. Kilcannon made a promise, you said? That if you helped him, your dad would go to jail?”

A glance at Kerry, a nervous bob of the head. “He promised me.”

“And that’s what your mom says she wants too. Your dad in jail.”

Suddenly John Musso looked exhausted; the question went to the choice he had made and, because of this, shamed him. “Yes,” he answered in the voice of a guilty child or, perhaps, a liar.

Levin, Kerry saw, had gained back a little ground. As if sensing this, the lawyer said, “No more questions.”

Kerry stood, irresolute. With luck, he could repair the last few minutes. Looking back at him, John Musso’s eyes pleaded for relief.

Gently, Kerry said, “Thank you, John. It’s over,” and the case for the prosecution was done.

From the first words of his closing statement, Kerry felt off balance, defensive.

Gary Levin had not called Anthony Musso to the stand; it
deprived Kerry of his aggressive edge, the chance to show Musso for what Kerry knew him to be. At once, Kerry sensed that Levin would make
him
the issue, resting his hopes on the assertion that Kerry had fabricated the case and, if Kerry won, using John Musso’s blurted accusation as grounds for appeal. For that, Kerry blamed himself; suddenly the trial seemed far too much about him—
his
passion,
his
mistakes.

Now, facing the jury, Kerry tried to be the calm professional, marshaling the evidence: that John Musso’s story buttressed Bridget’s, that Anthony Musso—as confirmed by the police—had not called 911. “All I ask,” Kerry concluded, “is that you find Anthony Musso to be what
he
knew he was when he fled that apartment—guilty of a brutal crime against a defenseless woman, witnessed by a helpless child.”

Sitting down, Kerry was depressed. The jurors appeared neither antagonistic nor persuaded, as if reserving both their judgment and their emotions. The quiet of the courtroom seemed distant from the night that Kerry imagined, filled with rage and violence.

Gary Levin got up—calm, confident, unapologetic.

“All of us,” he said, “deplore the acts described by Mr. Kil-cannon. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because while this is very much Mr. Kilcannon’s
case
, he himself is not a witness.” Briefly, Levin turned to Kerry. “His witnesses are a damaged woman and an eight-year-old boy.”

Once more, Levin faced the jury. “Bridget Musso,” he continued, “merits our pity. On the night of her injury she was, as she admits having been throughout her marriage, drunk. She was also what she will be for the rest of her life—epileptic, with frequent blackouts and a propensity for falling.

“
Alcoholic
and
epileptic
.” Levin shook his head. “The combination is devastating. Especially to memory, as Bridget Musso so clearly demonstrated.

“Forget her performance as a witness, though that should be proof enough. Remember this: within hours of her injury, when the trauma as described by Mr. Kilcannon should have been fresh in her mind and branded in her memory, Mrs. Musso remembered nothing.

“Ask yourself this: why did she tell the police nothing and
yet, a month later, tell
Mr. Kilcannon
more than reason suggests she could remember?”

Levin paused, hands in his pockets. The jurors seemed troubled and deeply attentive; the woman who had seemed sympathetic to Bridget sneaked a glance at Kerry and then looked away.

“Which brings us back,” Levin said, “to Mr. Kilcannon and his other witness, a young and impressionable boy.

“When the police arrived, John Musso told them that he thought his mother was dead.” The lawyer’s eyes swept the jury. “He was able to articulate a child’s worst fear—the death of a parent. Yet
at no time
did he tell the police how this fearful tragedy occurred.

“No.” Levin’s voice became sad. “No, he told
Mr. Kilcannon
.

“Even more than his mother, John Musso deserves our compassion, and far beyond the life he has led or the damage that may have been done to his sense of who he is. From the moment Mr. Kilcannon brought him to the courtroom, the boy faced a terrible choice.” Levin stopped, pointing to Anthony Musso. “The choice between a father he has not seen for over three months, and the mother he has lived with every day. The choice between a man now locked in jail and the man he has spent hours trying to please—Mr. Kilcannon.”

Looking around him, Kerry saw Bridget Musso, humiliated and clearly frightened; her husband, watching her with a soulless, heavy-lidded calm; the jury, seeing neither of them, listening to Levin with new intensity. Then Kerry thought of John Musso waiting in a small room with a stranger and a box of toys, and felt a deep rage at Levin’s perversion of a truth he knew in his bones—that the cry for help might take months, or years, or never come at all.

“I make no excuses,” Levin went on, “for Anthony Musso. I do not claim that he has been a model husband or father, or that this family can or should be a family anymore. But he does deserve what the law accords us all—reasonable doubt. You cannot find that the ‘truth’ presented by Mr. Kilcannon through a troubled child and a woman with no memory is, beyond a reasonable doubt, true.”

In the jury’s pensive quiet, Levin sat.

Kerry stood, walking toward the jurors. Suddenly he was less aware of the faces in front of him than of his own memory of a small boy and, as painful and more fresh, his image of this one. The words came to him without thought.

“You’re eight years old,” he said softly.

“You’re alone in your room.

“The apartment is dark, and your mother is drinking. Your father is out somewhere—probably in a bar, you know. You’ve got no one at all.

“Then you hear the front door open, and know it’s your dad.

“‘Dad’s home,’” Kerry said, more quietly yet. “You know other boys in school who would run to the door to give their dad a hug. But
you
—you’re different. You already know better.

“You hear his voice, and pull the covers over your head. And then you hear your mother scream.”

Kerry paused, scanning the faces before him—an Italian sanitation worker, an Irish mother of six, a Jewish accountant, the black woman he had been so conscious of.

“You know who your mother is,” Kerry went on. “You know all her problems. But, God help you, you need someone in your life to love, and to love you back.

“When your mother cries out, you feel it on your skin, in your stomach. You’re afraid to move.” Kerry lowered his voice. “But you’re alone, and you’re afraid of having no mother.

“So you crawl out of bed and, against your will, start toward the sound of your mother’s cries.”

Slowly, with the faltering steps of a small boy, Kerry walked toward the jury.

“The living room is dark. The only light is in the bathroom.

“You go there, hoping that no one will see you. Afraid of what you’ll see.

“What you see is your father pushing your mother down on the toilet, screaming at her while tears run down her face.”

Suddenly Kerry stood tall.
“‘Now you can piss,’”
he shouted at the jury.
“‘Go ahead. Do it.’”

In front of him, the accountant flinched.

“You shrink back in fear,” Kerry told him with new quiet. “But you can’t stop watching. Because they’re your father and mother, all that life has given you.

“He slaps her. Her head hits the wall. He slaps her again. She
falls sideways, catching herself on the sink. She bends over the sink, underpants around her ankles.” Kerry’s voice became hoarse and slow, stretching out each word. “And then your father takes your mother by the hair and smashes her face into the sink.”

The courtroom was hushed. “Your mother staggers past you,” Kerry went on relentlessly. “Her mouth is bloody; she’s spitting pieces of teeth; your father is behind her.

“So you shrink back into the darkness. Hide, so he can’t see you. Hide, with tears in your eyes, unable to move or make a sound. Hide, until your father leaves.

“Then the only person you’ve got in the world is lying on the living room floor, and you’re the only one to help her.

“So you go to the telephone, like they told you in school, and call 911.”

The Irish woman was crying. Kerry spoke to her now.

“When the police come,” he said, “you tell them you’re afraid she’s dead. But there’s something locked inside you that you’re more afraid to say. And someone you’re more afraid of than anything in the world.”

Kerry stood straighter. “
You
know what happened,” he said, and turned to point at Anthony Musso. “
You
know what this man is.”

In the silence, he stared at Anthony Musso until Musso’s unblinking eyes filled with rage, and then Kerry turned to Bridget Musso. “For three months,” he said, “Bridget Musso has gone without a drink. She’s done her part. You do yours.” Now Kerry almost whispered. “Protect this woman. Protect her son.”