Learning to Stay (14 page)

“They’re all broken,” I say.

Starting the following Monday, we have a full slate of depositions for
Rowland v. Champion Construction
, which Susan has put Zach and me fully in charge of. She has another pressing matter and won’t be able to attend. As such, today is a big day. To mark it, I’m wearing my best, most serious suit: a charcoal gray pantsuit with only the faintest of cream pinstripes. I step out of my car and directly into a puddle, soaking my shoe and pant leg past the cuff.

We get situated in one of a long line of nondescript conference/ballrooms at a nondescript hotel at the edge of town—a location mutually agreed upon by the Rowlands’ counsel and us. Zach and I face off against their attorneys. It’s a power play, and they have the advantage in more ways than one. Not only is a cadre of lawyers sitting across from us, but a child is dead, and he died on our client’s construction site. Any defendant in the wrongful death of a child knows that it’s an uphill grind. Our goal is to avoid a trial, because there’s hardly a jury on record that can get past anything bad happening to a child, regardless of the facts of the case. If one were to bug jury deliberations, I’d place money that the words, “They were just being kids,” or some variation thereof, would be uttered repeatedly. It’s never the
kid’s fault. And though sometimes blame should fall squarely on the parents, they’re carrying enough grief and guilt already. So someone has to pay. And in this case, it could be our client.

The Rowlands’ counsel has set up these depositions, which means that all of the witnesses will be of their choosing. In a couple of weeks, we’ll reconvene for another round. We’re planning to depose Mr. and Mrs. Rowland—a firefighter and kindergarten teacher, respectively. We’ll try to poke holes in their motives for suing Champion and question their parenting. We’ll have to ask the Rowlands why they allowed ten-year-old Nicky to play unsupervised, and blocks from their home, at nearly nine p.m., and we’ll ask the boys he was with whose idea it was to climb into the construction site. We will try to assign blame to anyone except our client, and my stomach churns just thinking about those lines of questioning. I try to put it as far from my mind as I can. There’s plenty today to command my attention.

The Rowlands’ counsel opens with Officer Topher Frenty, a member of the Capitol Police who was on duty the night Nicky Rowland and his friends climbed into the construction site. Officer Frenty sits at the head of the table. He is a large man with a ruddy, honest face, like an overgrown Wisconsin farm boy, and looks considerably less commanding than a person wearing a law enforcement uniform often does. In fact, he almost looks frightened.

I sit next to Zach, jotting notes on a legal pad and once in a while writing down and showing him a follow-up question he should ask. The hotel conference room is frigid, and the coffee, which tastes like instant, is watery and doing little to warm me. I make a mental note to add additional layers of clothing for tomorrow’s session.

The clock on the wall inches toward the noon hour, and finally, it’s our turn to take a swing at the witness. Zach launches in, reminding me of a tennis ball machine, firing question after question at poor Frenty: “How long have you been with the Capitol Police? What did
you do before that time? Ever had any issues with gambling? With booze? Ever had a reprimand while in the course of your employment?” It’s a staccato, frenetic pace, with Zach moving on to the next question almost before Frenty has a chance to fully answer the one preceding it. Then Zach pauses to write something on the legal pad in front of him, takes a gulp of water, and looks up at Frenty. He doesn’t say a word, and the mood in the room shifts. Frenty starts to fidget, and so do I. What does Zach know that the Rowlands’ attorneys don’t? I look down at the word he scribbled at the top of his legal pad, underlined three times. It reads
pause
.

I have to stifle a laugh. Zach doesn’t know anything. He’s giving a performance.

Zach is turned out in his professional best today, too: a navy blue suit, white shirt, and red tie—the POTUS, State of the Union look. He even broke out his Yale cuff links—something I’ve seen him do only once before. This is something I like about Zach. He’s not in-your-face showy and arrogant on a daily basis—only when it really counts.

Zach asks Frenty if the hole in the fence that Nicky Rowland climbed through was noticeable.

“Oh yeah,” Frenty says. “For sure.”

Zach nods pensively, as if Frenty has just provided a particularly thoughtful answer—one warranting full consideration and understanding before he continues on to the next.

“And you saw it every day, right? How many times a day?” Zach asks him.

Officer Frenty scratches his chin and twists his mouth, thinking. “Over the three weeks, probably ten, twelve times, I’d say. Almost every day I was on duty.”

Zach takes a moment to write something down on the pad of paper in front of him, which as far as I can tell is a whole mangled mess of chicken scratch. I couldn’t read it even if it were directly in front of
me. I hope Zach is the type of person who isn’t easily confused by his own penmanship.

“What are we talking about here? A hole how big?” Zach asks.

I look sideways at him, my eyebrows arched in warning. When Zach doesn’t notice, I take his pad from him and scribble in all caps at the top,
DON’T DO THIS!
Does he really want to establish a record of how big our client’s potential negligence was?

Zach shakes his head at me and crosses out my letters with two quick lines. Then he leans back in his chair and drops an arm onto the back of mine. I work to keep my face expressionless, while inside I’m seething. If he’s not going to take my advice seriously, why am I here?

He looks up at Frenty. “Sorry, Officer,” he says, turning on the charm. “Pardon the interruption. Go ahead. Show me how big that hole was.”

Officer Frenty smiles back at Zach and then stretches his arms out in front of him, holding them a little more than shoulder-width apart. “Maybe about this wide at the base.”

“Can you say how big, in your estimation, that is—so the court reporter can get it down?”

“Oh, sure,” Frenty says by way of apology. “Four feet, I’d say.”

“That’s a pretty big hole, then,” Zach says. “So it comes undone at the corner and it rolls up. Would that be right?”

Frenty nods.

“I’m sorry,” Zach says. “If you agree, you’ll have to say so, so they can get it on the transcript.” He gestures toward the court reporter, her fingers suspended above her keyboard.

“That’s right,” Frenty says.

Zach looks down at his legal pad. He flips the top sheet up, then the second, scanning the pages as though looking for something. Then he lowers them and takes time to note something else on his
legal pad. When I look over, I see his pen making squiggly lines with the occasional loop—nonsense that only looks like writing.

“So…,” Zach says, making that one word sound like its own sentence. He sets his pen down and gives Officer Frenty his full attention once again. “You see this hole—a rather big hole, from what you’re describing—and the situation concerns you, right? And you were so concerned that you reported it to someone?”

Frenty has started to perspire. Despite the conference room’s chilly temperature, beads of sweat appear on his brow. He takes out a handkerchief to wipe them. “No,” he says, and his voice squeaks.

“No?” Zach asks. “You must’ve talked to my client, then? Expressed your concerns to the project manager, a foreman—anyone?”

Frenty’s head hangs. “No,” he says.

I laugh inwardly and recline in my chair. Zach continues to grill Frenty, and it’s clear he knows exactly what he’s doing. He doesn’t need a running commentary or any help from me. I keep an ear on their ongoing exchange, but I busy myself generating rebuttals to the witness they’ve called this afternoon—Champion Construction’s lobbyist.

I hear the conference room door open behind me, and I see the faces on the opposite side of the table from me look away from Zach. The looks are quizzical, not welcoming, and so I turn to see what they’re seeing.

Two police officers have entered the room.

“Gentlemen,” the opposing counsel says, “we’re almost done with Officer Frenty here. Just a few more minutes, please.”

But the officers don’t move. One of them is staring at me. “Elise Sabatto?” he says.

I nod. I wonder, for a brief moment, how he knew it was me. But then I look around and realize that I’m the only woman in the room.

“Can you come with us, please?”

I shake my head. “Can’t this wait? We’re almost done.”

“I’m afraid not, ma’am.”

I look at Zach, and in answer to his raised eyebrows, turn my hands over and raise them—a halfhearted shrug—as if to say, “I don’t have a clue,” because I honestly don’t.

“Go ahead,” Zach whispers. “I’ve got this.”

“Thanks,” I tell him. I leave my pen atop my legal pad, and the rest of my things—my bag and coat—hanging on the chair. I can’t imagine that whatever the officers want will take long. I wonder which of my other clients absconded with his kid across state lines or has landed in the clink for yet another DUI.

I’m still running through that mental list of clients when I step out into the hallway. The officers are waiting for me. “Ma’am, you’re going to need to come with us,” says the younger officer who hadn’t spoken previously.

“I thought that’s what I was doing,” I say. “Here I am.”

He shakes his head. “Down to the station.”

“I’m in the middle of depositions,” I say. “Unless someone committed a murder, whoever needs my legal advice will just have to wait until I’m done here.”

“Ma’am,” the older officer says, “it’s your husband. And we’re here because he tried to.”

Zach’s face goes wooden when I tell him I have to leave. Wooden and red. Even the tips of his ears turn crimson.

“You can’t,” he says. “We have Anduzzi up next.”

Carlo Anduzzi is Champion Construction’s lobbyist. He’s been my pet project—mine to ensure that we know everything the Rowlands’ counsel knows about him and more. I’ve gone over every client he’s represented, every meeting he’s taken with legislators and the governor, every move he’s made for the past five years. The only thing I don’t know is if he prefers boxers or briefs. Given enough time, I’m sure I could ferret that out, too.

“I have to,” I say. “Just trust me on this, please. Get them to take an early lunch. I’ll be back in time for Anduzzi. I promise.”

Zach gives me a look. The opposing counsel clears his throat.

“Something we should know about?” he asks. I shoot him the same look Zach just gave me and shake my head.

“I promise,” I say in a hurried whisper, twining my middle and index fingers and tapping them on my chest, over my heart. “Early lunch. I’ll be back.”

I grab my coat and bag from the chair, and at the last minute, remember
my legal pad with all my musings on questions and strategies for Anduzzi, and swipe that from the table as well. I scurry out of the room before Zach can get another word out of me. My head is swimming, and I don’t trust myself not to tell him what’s going on. Besides, “My husband was just picked up for attempted murder,” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

The officers, Noble (older) and Karlson (younger), take turns peppering me with questions as we drive toward the police station: “Has your husband ever exhibited any violent tendencies toward anyone?”; “Has he ever threatened to hurt you or anyone else?”; “Have you noticed a change in his behavior recently?”; “Is there anything that might have happened in the past couple of weeks that could have triggered violent tendencies in him?”

I stare out the window. I think of all the strange things Brad has said and done since he’s been back—his inability to open a tube of toothpaste, his tendency to charge through crosswalks without looking, the way he patrols our backyard at night. And then there are the outbursts, the most recent of which happened at our kitchen table late last week when he kicked my chair.

But I don’t know exactly what happened yet. I don’t know much of anything, save for what Officers Noble and Karlson have told me. Plus, my husband has a real, diagnosable disorder, whether he wants to admit it or not.