Judge Robeson bangs his gavel.
Donna Middleton loosens her grip.
“Is that it?” she asks.
“That’s it.”
“Why only felony assault? I thought he was going to kill me.”
“It’s a balancing act. In the time I worked here, I saw only a few attempted-murder cases. Intent is difficult to prove. The prosecutor picked the charge that he thinks he can win, if the case goes to trial.”
“What do you mean,
if
?”
“Often, there will be a—” My words fall off a cliff as I see Mike Simpson lunging at Donna as he’s being led away.
“That your new man, bitch?” he snarls as Donna drops to the floor, screaming. “I’ll fucking kill you both. You’re dead.”
Donna is on her back, her feet pushing at the floor in an attempt to scramble away from Mike. She’s screaming and crying and slamming backward into the rows of seats, then dropping down and shimmying beneath them. The two sheriff’s deputies tackle Mike, working him down to the floor in front of me. At one point, he cranes his neck out of the scrum, his veins bulging, his face red, and he looks straight at me, gasping, “You’re dead.”
Judge Robeson is standing up and banging away with his gavel. “No bail! Denied!” Judge Robeson yells. “Get him out of here.”
As quickly as it all unfolded, the chaos is over. Deputies subdue Mike Simpson, and then they pull him to his feet and whisk
him out of a side door in the courtroom, where he will be taken by a secure elevator downstairs and back to jail. The room is now full of wide eyes and open mouths and the whimpering cries of Donna Middleton, who is balled up in the corner.
– • –
Downstairs, on the first floor of the courthouse, I sit on a wooden bench and wait for Donna to emerge from the restroom. She has been in there a long time. For a while, it looked like she might not leave the corner she wedged herself into upstairs. Finally, the sheriff’s deputies coaxed her to her feet and led her down here, where I wait.
“Hi, Edward.”
I’m startled by the voice. I look up and see Lloyd Graeve, one of my former coworkers in the clerk of court’s office. Though it has been several years since I have seen him, Lloyd looks the same to me: a head of floppy black hair, wire-rim glasses, a friendly grin. He has been with the clerk’s office for years and does an excellent job.
“Hi, Lloyd.”
“I saw you up there in Robeson’s courtroom. Hell of a scene, huh?” Lloyd would have been seated at the spot reserved for clerks; I had not spotted him earlier.
“Hell of a scene,” I agree.
“What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since…well, since…you know.”
“That guy, the one who caused the commotion, he attacked my neighbor.”
“You’re here with her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I saw it. I called the cops. She asked me to be here.”
“Wow.”
“Yes.”
“You’re probably going to have to be a witness at the trial, if there is one.”
I hadn’t thought of that until now. And yet I know that there’s no way the prosecutor won’t talk to an eyewitness to the attack.
“Yes.”
“So maybe I’ll see you again, eh?”
“Maybe.”
Lloyd lingers silently for a few seconds, and then he says, “We miss you around here, Edward.”
“You do?”
“You were good at the work. We could use that right now.”
“I couldn’t work here.”
Lloyd laughs. “Yeah, I know what you mean. A certain boss hasn’t gotten any better at the job since you left. But, hey, there’s an election in a few days. There’s always hope.”
“Well, good luck, then.”
“Take care, Edward.”
– • –
When Donna emerges from the restroom, I can see that she has made a brave attempt at pulling herself together. She no longer looks disheveled, and her hair is brushed. But the makeup stains and her still-trembling bottom lip betray what she has been through.
“Are you OK?” I ask.
“Can you just hold my arm and get me out of here?” Donna says, limply offering up her right forearm, which I gently take in
my left hand. I then guide her toward the door that will lead us out onto North Twenty-Seventh Street.
A few minutes later, as we’re riding the elevator to the floor I parked on, Donna says, so faintly that I can barely hear her, “This is going to be harder than I thought.”
From the parking garage, I can see that it’s raining. The forecast didn’t say anything about this. I never know what’s coming anymore, it seems. That’s a bad thing when you prefer facts.
– • –
We arrive back at the house at 11:53 a.m. It has been a silent drive. Donna stared straight ahead, and so did I. My job was easy: see the road and drive the car home. Hers is much harder. I don’t know if she knows where the road is or where it leads.
“Edward,” she says, as I set the parking brake, “would it be OK if I stayed here until Kyle comes home?”
“Yes. I could make some lunch.”
“I don’t think I can eat. I just don’t want to be alone.”
“OK.”
“Edward, if I’d had any idea that was going to happen, I wouldn’t have asked you to come.”
“It’s OK.”
“But I’m so glad you did.”
She’s crying again, but not too much. Donna Middleton is tough. Tougher than Mike Simpson, that’s for sure.
– • –
Inside, Donna urges me to go ahead and make lunch, which I do. Today is a spaghetti day.
As I’m stirring the meat sauce and waiting for the noodles to soften, Donna leaves the couch and comes into the kitchen.
“What did you mean when you said
if
Mike’s case goes to trial?”
In my time in the clerk of court’s office, I saw it again and again. Even in criminal cases like the one Mike is involved in, prosecutors and defense attorneys will meet and come up with a plea agreement. Sometimes, it’s because the prosecutors have a sure case and can get what they want without going to trial. Sometimes, it’s the opposite way, and the defense uses its leverage to force a deal out of the prosecutor.
“The goal, for prosecutors and defense attorneys, is often to not have a trial.”
“Why?”
“A jury trial is not a sure thing, for either side. Lawyers like sure things. I would not be surprised, given the facts in this case, if the prosecutors press for a plea agreement that ensures that Mike is punished without having to go to the time and expense of a jury trial. They have a real good case against him, especially after what happened today. They might not need a trial.”
“But what if I want a jury trial?”
“You can tell the prosecutor that. They do listen and take those things into account.”
“I want a jury to make him suffer.”
“But what if a jury doesn’t make him suffer? What if it lets him go free? The prosecutor will probably ask you to consider that.”
Donna is silent. I go back to stirring the meat sauce.
“Are you wondering why I would have been with a guy like that?”
“No.”
“You’re not?”
“I figured you would tell me if you wanted.” I have learned this from Dr. Buckley, who never pushes me to talk about something before I am ready.
“I’d like to. Do you have the time?”
“Yes.”
Donna says she met Mike Simpson a little more than a year ago. He had been in the emergency room with a friend of his. They had been out riding motorcycles, and the friend crashed. It was pretty bad, from what Donna said—broken ribs and pelvis, bad scars from where his skin scraped along the road. Donna had attended to him, and Mike came around a few days later with some roses as a thank-you, and from there, it went.
“He was a really great guy, in the beginning,” Donna says. “And he was good to Kyle. I waited a long time to let them meet. I’d made that mistake with other guys, and I wasn’t going to this time.”
“What changed?”
“Little things, at first. He would call me, a lot. At first, I thought he was being attentive. Later, I wondered if he was keeping tabs on me.”
“Was he?”
“Yeah. He’d make little snide remarks about things, like he knew where I had been. He’d get insane if he saw me talking to another guy. Hello? I work in a hospital. There are a lot of guys there.”
“Do you think that’s why he got so angry with me?”
“Probably. He’s very jealous.”
“Are you scared?”
“I am, yes. Are you?”
“I would be if Judge Robeson hadn’t revoked his bail.”
“That’s right,” Donna says, her eyes suddenly brightening at the memory. “He isn’t going anywhere.”
I hold my right hand up, as I did several days ago for Kyle. Donna slaps it in high-five style.
– • –
Later, we’re in the living room, she on the love seat and I on the couch, and Donna is telling me about her final days with Mike.
“I knew at the end of August I was going to leave. We’d had another fight, and they were growing more frequent now. As we were talking in the kitchen, Mike pulled out a pocketknife and started flicking it to the linoleum near my feet, making it stand up on the blade. He kept reaching down and grabbing it, then flicking it back.”
I feel a tingle in my spine as I imagine that.
“Yeah,” she says, apparently seeing my reaction. “It was spooky. He never made what I would call an overt threat. But he was definitely threatening.
“Anyway, after that, I started to lay the groundwork for my exit. I rented the house we’re in now. I moved some money into my parents’ bank account. I had a bag packed and hidden deep in my closet, ready to go in a moment when I was ready.”
“I know he hit you.”
She looks surprised. “You do?”
“Yes. Kyle told me.”
“Oh.”
She’s silent again. “That was the worst,” she says, finally, “that he punched me right there, right in front of Kyle. I think it shocked even Mike. I didn’t say anything. I just walked into the
bedroom, got the bag out of the closet, took Kyle by the hand and left. Mike didn’t even chase after us.”
“You did the right thing.”
“I know.”
At 2:18 p.m., for the first time since we left the Yellowstone County Courthouse, the steely resolve has returned to Donna Middleton’s eyes.
– • –
At 2:51 p.m., Donna is looking expectantly out my front window for Kyle’s arrival from school.
“So,” I say, “I went on an online date last week.”
Donna wheels around. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“How was it?”
“Terrible.”
“Why terrible?”
I tell her why. I even tell her about the Gewurztraminer burp and the preoccupation with the notion of first-date sex. I tell her about the bizarre series of e-mails from Joy-Annette and the return series of letters of complaint that are now in my files. She laughs at that. I’m not sure why it’s funny, but I don’t mind.
“Well, Edward, I’m sorry you had a bad online date. Women can be weird—weirder than men sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, take this Joy-Annette person. She pretty clearly enjoys creating drama.”
Donna Middleton is a very logical woman.
“I think you’re right,” I say.
“I don’t understand women like that,” Donna says.
“Neither do I.”
“Dating is hard, Edward. It’s hard with the so-called traditional ways of meeting people, and it’s hard on the Internet. Can you imagine being on a rocky seashore and looking at thousands of rocks in the hopes of finding one pearl?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what dating is.”
“I don’t think I want to do it anymore.”
Donna laughs again. “You’re not the first person to say that, and you won’t be the last.”
– • –
At 3:03 p.m., Donna spots Kyle trudging up the sidewalk toward their house.
“Edward, again, thanks so much,” she says as she heads to the door.
“OK.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
“OK.”
And she’s out the door, splashing across the rain-soaked street to see her son.
I don’t keep data on such things, but it seems to me that every day Donna Middleton has been at this house, something extraordinary has happened.
– • –
Tonight’s episode of
Dragnet
, the seventh of the first season of color episodes, is called “The Hammer,” and it is one of my favorites.
In this one, which originally aired on March 2, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are called to an apartment house where a man has been murdered, bludgeoned with a hammer. By piecing together details and talking with the apartment house’s residents, the cops zero in on two suspects—a teenage boy and his girlfriend—who are detained in Arizona on a warrant.
The suspects are mouthy. The boy answers all of Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon’s questions by reciting state capitals. He even says that the capital of Nevada is Reno. Officer Bill Gannon, who can track down criminals and win geography bees, corrects him and points out that the capital of Nevada is Carson City.
The girl, Camille Gearhardt, tells Sergeant Joe Friday that his eyes are nice—for a cop.
He then tells her that her mother probably had a good bark. Sergeant Joe Friday doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
One of the things I like best about this episode is that it doesn’t just show how a crime is solved. It also shows how crime affects the people who witness it or know the victim. The death of the man at the apartment leaves his best friend without a companion.
Tonight, I am thinking a lot about crime and why it happens and what it does to people. I am flummoxed.
– • –
Mike Simpson:
I did not think it was possible to detest you more than I did that night that you tried to choke Donna Middleton in her driveway. Today, in court, you elevated things to the level of hate. I hate you. It’s not a word I use lightly.
If there is any upside to your horrible outburst today, it is that Judge Alan Robeson saw with his own eyes what a horrible person you truly are and denied you bail accordingly. While I cannot know how long you will remain behind bars—I can only guess, and I prefer facts—I do know that Donna Middleton is going on with her life without you and your controlling, deceitful, harmful ways.
She is much the better for it. While that will no doubt make you angry, it makes her family—and especially her boy—happy. And I am happy for them.