The Wally Lamb Fiction Collection: The Hour I First Believed, I Know This Much is True, We Are Water, and Wishin' and Hopin' (40 page)

He caught a break when he noticed that Maureen’s hands had gotten burned by the detonated air bag—and that there was a small amount of blood oozing from the cut in her left eyebrow. “Ma’am, I think, to be on the safe side, we’re going to call you an ambulance. Get you to the hospital and have them look you over.” She told him she didn’t need to go; her injuries were superficial. “Just to be on the safe side, ma’am,” he repeated. He knew they’d take a blood sample when they examined her, and later on, if he could convince a judge to sign off on probable cause, he could get at that blood. Have her serum levels analyzed by the toxicologists at the State Police lab.

He caught a second break when the ambulance got there and Maureen complied. The EMTs strapped her onto the stretcher and hauled her up and in.

Officer Gatchek nodded in satisfaction as the ambulance pulled away. She hadn’t said anything more about getting her purse. It was in the car,
on its side on the floor of the passenger’s seat. By rights, he couldn’t look in it, not without probable cause. But he could certainly pick it up and put it back on the seat for her. And when he did, he felt something in the purse’s side pocket. Damned if it didn’t feel like a syringe.

He called for a tow. Her car was evidence, so they’d have to inventory everything in it when it got to the impound lot. That wasn’t breaking any search and seizure rules: doing a standard inventory. And meanwhile, he’d have bought himself some time to write up the affidavit, go after probable cause. Once the judge had signed off—he’d ask Judge Douville, who never refused if it was a suspected DUI—then he could execute the search warrants. He wanted her blood tested. He wanted her medical records. He wanted a look at her employment history. And he wanted to talk to her coworkers, too—see if there were any issues there. Nurses covered for each other, he knew that. But even if it was inadmissable later on, he’d have another piece of the whole picture. Maureen Quirk: Who was she? He’d figure it out. He owed that to the hysterical mother, and to her lifeless son, splayed facedown in the middle of Route 32 and now heading off to the morgue.

WE HIRED LENA LOVECCHIO MY
Aunt Lolly’s pal and pallbearer—the lawyer who’d helped me out with the Paul Hay debacle. Lena had an associate now, her cousin Nicholas Benevento.

The four of us—Lena, Nick, Maureen, and I—sat at Lena’s conference table. It was after hours, at Mo’s request. She was too ashamed to go out in daylight. “Guys, I hate to be the one to tell you, but there’s no sense bullcrapping you, either,” Lena said. “In terms of an acquittal, we’ve got the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell.”

Mo nodded, resigned. She was on a pretty powerful antidepressant at that point, and it tended to stupor her out. The upside was that she was finally able to grab three or four hours of uninterrupted sleep, and she had stopped talking about suicide.

“A snowball’s chance why?” I asked.

“Because they’ve got her on the blood serum, and they’ve got the second eyewitness who corroborates what the brother says. And, most of all, because she coughed it up to Gatchek about injecting herself before she left the parking lot. That’s the real nail in the coffin.”

“He told me it would be better if I cooperated with him,” Mo said.

“Better for him, yeah. Not for you.”

The bitter irony was that I’d been upstairs on the phone, arranging for Lena to represent her while, downstairs, Gatchek was knocking at the back door, wanting to know if she could answer a few questions.

“He didn’t read her her rights,” I reminded them.

“Didn’t have to because she wasn’t in custody,” Nick said. “You’re not required to Miranda-ize someone if you’re just having a chat at their kitchen table. She handed it to him voluntarily.”

“Therein lies our problem, kids,” Lena added. “You never,
ever
talk to the cops without your lawyer there.”

The fact that it was a high-profile case didn’t help us either, Nick explained. The accident had caught the attention of the national media because of the Columbine angle. That had generated op-eds in both the
Daily Record
and the
Courant,
which had in turn generated over a dozen letters to the editor. “The public cares about this case,” Lena said. “So the chief state’s attorney is bound to take an active interest. As in, stick his finger into the wind to see which way it’s blowing. And so far, it’s blowing pretty hard against us. But I talked to that
New Yorker
writer today, and we may be able to use her to our advantage. Not sure yet; she and I are continuing our discussion. Maureen, I may want you to talk to her. We’ll see. Of course, the
New Yorker’s
national. What we need more right now is a sympathetic in-state press.”

“In terms of potential jurors?” I asked.

She shook her head. “We probably won’t go the jury route. Too risky. Their case is just too damn strong. So we want to avoid a trial if we can. See if they’re in the mood for some charge-bargaining.”

Nick went over the chronology of what was coming. First, the arrest, probably sometime the following week. “I talked to a guy in the state’s attorney’s office and asked for a heads-up,” he said. “Better for us, Mrs. Quirk, if you turn yourself in, rather than they take you in in handcuffs. Makes great theater for the cops and the TV guys, but it’s bad for our side. People see a perp walk on TV, and ‘innocent until proven guilty’ goes flying out the window. We want to be able to control as much of the imagery as we can.”

Maureen would be arraigned within twenty-four hours after they arrested her, Nick said. “They’ll read the charge, we’ll enter her plea. They’ll give her a court date and set her bail. I’m guessing a hundred thou. I think we can get a reduction, though. She’s got no priors. She’s not really a flight risk.”

“What we’ll do is post a surety bond,” Lena interjected. “Use the farm as security, if you’re comfortable with that.” I nodded. “Okay, now about her plea. I think our best bet is to have her plead guilty under the Alford doctrine. That’ll open up a ‘let’s make a deal’ situation.”

“What’s the Alford Doctrine?” I asked.

“It’s when the defendant says, ‘I’m not admitting actual guilt, but based on the state’s evidence, I
am
conceding that, in all likelihood, I will be convicted. Therefore, I plead guilty.’ Doesn’t change the criminal penalties, but it gives you guys some leverage later on if the Seaberrys decide to file a civil suit. The insurance companies love it when their clients use the Alford. Makes it harder for the plaintiff to win a civil case.”

“So is that what you’re going to do? Use this Alford thing?”

“Yeah. Because, defense-wise, we just don’t have much to work with. I’ll argue that it was the non-Xanax circumstances that led to the accident. There’d been a death on her shift that night, and a shouting match between the two aides that Maureen had to put a stop to before it broke out into a fistfight. So Maureen was upset. Distracted. And since Columbine, she deteriorates when there’s any threat of
violence.” She turned to Mo. “And I’m also going to emphasize that you’ve tried in earnest to wrestle with your demons, hon: psychotherapy, NarcAnon. I’m going to play Columbine for all it’s worth. If we have an ace to play, that’s it: the fact that
you’re
a victim, too. That’s what I think’s going to bring them to the bargaining table.”

“But why
would
they bargain, if their case is so strong?” I asked.

“Expediency, mainly. They get a conviction, which makes the public happy, but they don’t have to put the manpower into it that a trial would require. And conviction’s another notch on their belt that they can point to at reappointment time. These guys are politicians, first and foremost, okay? Now, they’ve also got to keep the Seaberrys happy. The last thing they want is for the victim’s mother, say, to start spouting off in the papers and on the nightly news about how Maureen got off with just a slap on her wrist.”

“It’s a dance,” Nick said. “First, they’ll hit Mrs. Quirk with the toughest charge they can: manslaughter in the second degree with a motor vehicle. That’s a class-C felony, which means that they could put her in prison for up to ten years. So we start charge-bargaining. Offer them the guilty plea in exchange for a lesser charge: misconduct with a motor vehicle. That’s a class D. Carries a prison term of five years tops.”

Maureen sighed in disgust. “Misconduct: it makes it sound like I should go to the principal’s office. You all seem to be forgetting that I took a seventeen-year-old boy’s life.”

Lena smiled, softened her voice. “Hon, you may feel like waving the white flag right now. But there’s a big difference between a ten-year sentence and a five-year one. You were a victim, too, Maureen. Don’t lose sight of that. What happened to the Seaberry kid would
not
have happened if those little psychopaths out there in Colorado hadn’t damaged you. Now you’re definitely going to have to do some jail time; we don’t see any way around it. But I’ll be damned if we’re going to let them lock you up for a whole decade. Okay?”

Looking down at the floor, Maureen nodded.

“So just to summarize,” Nick said, “what we’re looking for from the prosecution is a downgrade to class D, and what we’re willing to give them in exchange is a guilty plea under the Alford. If we get what we want, Maureen’s out in five years max, but we might have a decent shot at five, suspended after three. Or if we
really
get lucky, three years, suspended after two.”

“One more thing,” Lena said. “We’ve heard that the boy’s mother is consulting with Jack Horshack, the victims’ advocate for the state. Remember Arnold Horshack on that show,
Welcome Back, Kotter?
Not too far off. But the reason we’ve got to worry about Jack is, he sees things in black and white. There’s good guys and bad guys, and you never show the bad guys any mercy. My guess is, if the kid’s mother decides she wants them to throw the book at Maureen, Jack’s the one who’s fanning her fire. And like we said, the chief state’s attorney’s going to want Mom on board if they make a deal with us. What I imagine happening—
if
they deal—is that they’ll tell Mama to go along with them on the criminal side of the equation. Then they can whack you guys in the civil case.”

“What do you mean, whack us?” I asked.

Nick was opening his mouth to answer when Maureen began crying and banging her fists against the table. “It’s all so calculating,” she said. “Deals, politics. I’m guilty! I killed him!”

I got her calmed down, got her coat. On our way out, I asked Lena if there was anything else she needed me to do.

“Yeah. Pray we don’t get Judge Douville or Judge LaCasse. Most of the others will be inclined to factor in the mitigating circumstances when they sentence her. But not those two.”

We got LaCasse.

We got the deal: misconduct with a motor vehicle, class D. A five-year prison sentence, to be suspended after three years, if LaCasse gave his blessing.

Under Victims’ Advocate Horshack’s advisement, Carole Alderman invoked her allocution rights so that she might address the court
before Maureen was sentenced. I heard later that Jesse Seaberry’s request to address the court, too, was impromptu—that he had approached Horshack at the hearing and told him he wanted to speak, and that the blood had drained from Horshack’s face.

Jesse was called first. Given what I’d read about their father-and-son acrimony in “A Victim’s Victims,” I thought it odd that the boy was sitting with his father. When he walked past his mother and nodded a hello, she turned away.

Judge LaCasse informed Jesse that in his courtroom, men didn’t wear bandannas. “Yeah?” Jesse replied, as if he’d just been presented with an interesting but irrelevant factoid. Horshack stood and whispered something to him. “Oh, right. Sorry, Your Excellency,” Jesse said, yanking off the bandanna. LaCasse told the kid he’d had an appointment to the bench, not a coronation. Jesse nodded in puzzled agreement. He turned and faced Maureen.

“I guess if life was fair, you should have killed me, not my brother,” he said. “Because I’m the one who isn’t worth much. My brother was, though. Morgan was my hero in a lot of ways, you know? Even though he was younger than me. But I never got the chance to tell him that…. He had a future, you know? He was good at things, whatever he tried.” Jesse looked from Mo to his mother. “He wasn’t perfect, though. And he didn’t
want
to be perfect, either.” Carole Alderman locked her arms around her chest and glared at him.

Jesse looked back at Mo. “But he was a great guy. And me, hey, I’m just a druggie, same as you. Except I didn’t kill anyone. So, you know, you did the crime, you gotta do the time, right? … But I don’t hate you or anything. I don’t know. Maybe I should, but I don’t. All’s I want to say to you is that Morgan’s death kind of woke me up, you know? Me and my dad made up at the funeral, and I’m living with him now. Him and my stepmother. I got a job at this furniture warehouse? Operating a forklift? And I been clean and sober for forty-one days now. Which is a somewhat large deal for me…. And all
I’m trying to say to you is that maybe you could do like I did. Let it wake
you
up, you know what I’m saying? While you’re doing your time. Okay?”

Mo had been standing there, her hand over her mouth, her cheeks wet with tears. She had nodded at everything Jesse said. Her words, after he’d finished, were nearly inaudible. “Thank you.”

“No problem. Peace out.” He looked up at LaCasse. “You, too, Judge.”

“And peace to you, sir,” LaCasse said. “Keep up the good work.”

Carole Alderman had brought two things with her to the sentencing hearing: a framed assemblage of snapshots that showed Morgan’s progression from infancy to adolescence, and her leather-bound copy of
Who’s Who in American High Schools, 2002–2003.
She asked that the assemblage be placed on the table in front of Maureen. The judge nodded and a sheriff took it from her and did as she asked. Carole Alderman, too, spoke directly to Maureen.

“Look at me, please,” she said, and Mo, shaking violently, raised her eyes. Ms. Alderman was dry-eyed and composed. “Practiced,” Lena said later.