Things You Won't Say (24 page)

“Do you think he’s going to be indicted?” Jamie blurted, interrupting J.H. midsentence.

“Fact is, prosecutors don’t need much to get an indictment. A grand jury would indict a ham sandwich for the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” J.H. said. He must’ve seen Jamie reach out to grip Mike’s hand, because he added, “I mean, look, they’re going to try to be fair. The folks in the U.S. Attorney’s Office who handle this stuff actually have to go to Quantico and do a simulated training. They get a laser gun and they have to react as if they’re a police officer in crisis situations. So they know it isn’t easy. The key question for them is whether Mike acted in a reasonable manner in that moment.”

J.H. seemed to know what he was talking about. But was he good enough? He’d asked for an eight-thousand-dollar retainer. Jamie had no idea how to amass that kind of cash. Sell her engagement ring, maybe, and remortgage the house. Now she wondered if they shouldn’t just sell the house and everything else they owned and use the money to hire the best lawyer possible.

“Do you know what kind of evidence they have?” Mike asked.

J.H. shrugged. “I hear the video surveillance sucks. There was a camera on a public housing unit a hundred yards away, but the angle isn’t good. Plus the rain. Crappy visibility; everything’s blurry and distorted. So that’s a wash. They’re going to want to reinterview anyone who was at the scene. They caught three or four guys before everyone scattered, but they all said no gun. So that’s working against us. We could make the argument that the bangers don’t want to rat out their dead homie, but your partner’s the real issue. He was closer to the threat and he didn’t even draw. He said the guy wasn’t making a move that could indicate he had a gun. That’s going to hurt us. I’ll be honest with you. It’s going to hurt a lot.”

J.H. took a sip of coffee that must’ve been cold, since his cup had been sitting there when they arrived. He leaned back, putting his feet up on his desk. He looked far too relaxed, given the stakes, and Jamie felt the urge to smack his feet to the floor. For him this was routine, like a doctor who read biopsies every day and revealed whether tumors were benign or time bombs. Maybe he was inured to the emotions of his job, but couldn’t he at least act as if this was important?

She’d sell the house. She’d sell her minivan and the opal earrings that had belonged to her mother, the ones she’d only ever worn on her wedding day. Nothing mattered but keeping Mike safe.

“We’ll offset whatever they come up with at trial, of course,” J.H. said. “Call character witnesses. Introduce reasonable doubt—show Mike thought he really did see something. Maybe it was a gun, maybe it was a cell phone. Maybe it was a set of keys.”

“It wasn’t a set of keys,” Mike muttered.

“Look, I’m not saying there couldn’t have been a piece, okay? We’ll introduce that possibility. But you and your partner both testified that you barely took your eyes off the ki— off Jose. After you fired you were both at his side in maybe thirty seconds, right? For someone to have the presence of mind to assess what happened, get to him, get his gun, and get away without anyone noticing . . . I mean, what’s the motivation? Maybe the gun was a sweet piece; we can throw that in there. But this was a brawl. We’re talking a lot of guys swarming around. People were busy protecting their own asses. You think someone’s going to run
toward
a gunshot, not knowing if there’s going to be another one?” J.H. shook his head. “I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m saying it’s going to be a hard sell.”

“So that’s what it’s about?” Mike asked. “What we can sell to the jury instead of the truth?”

J.H. shrugged again, unoffended. “Hey, I didn’t create the system,” he said. “I just try to work it to your advantage.”

“Can someone find the other guys who were at the scene and talk to them?” Mike asked.

“Like I said, they scattered,” J.H. said. “I’ll try to track down as many as I can, but I won’t kid you: It’s going to be tough. And hiring an outside investigator is expensive. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is probably working on that now, too.”

“We should get Ritchie to testify!” Jamie blurted. “Mike’s old partner. He’s black, you know. The jury needs to see that he believes in Mike, that Mike’s no racist.”

“I don’t think Ritchie’s in any shape to testify,” Mike said.

“But he would, if we asked!” Jamie said. “We could get an ambulance to bring him to court and he could go right back to rehab after . . . He’d do it for you, Mike.”

“Don’t you think he’s been through enough?” Mike asked. Creases appeared in his forehead, and his dark eyebrows inched lower.

“What about
you
?” she cried. “You’re the one that could go to jail!”

“For doing my job?” Mike said. “This is so fucked up.”

“Let’s all take a deep breath here,” J.H. interrupted them. “Okay? We good? Now, we can also explore the idea of PTSD as a defense. Everyone knows you saw your old partner and that young cop get shot a few months ago. Maybe the police department shouldn’t have let you come back to work so quickly. How soon after the shooting did you return to work?”

“A couple weeks,” Mike said in a clipped voice.

“Any therapy?” the lawyer asked. “Meds?”

Mike shook his head.

“The police counselor offered to put him on medication,” Jamie said quietly. “Mike declined.”

There was silence for a moment. Mike pulled his hand away from hers and folded his arms across his chest.

“One other thing I need to know,” J.H. said. “Is there something in your file that’s going to come out and bite us in the ass? Any charges of roughing up a suspect?”

“What? Of course not.” Mike shook his head. “I’ve been late to work a few times. That’s it.”

J.H. nodded. “Ferguson. George Zimmerman. Too many high-profile cases lately.”

Mike exhaled through his teeth and sat back, arms still folded.

“That’s the one thing you don’t want to do,” the lawyer said, pointing at him.

“What?” Mike asked. “Breathe?”

“Show anger,” J.H. said. “A jury’s going to be looking for that. And you can bet if we go to trial and I put you on the stand, the prosecutor’s going to try to provoke you.”

Jamie squeezed her eyes shut, thinking of Mike snarling at the cameraman who’d bumped into her, and the way he always yelled at football players on the TV.

“Jay wasn’t my partner,” Mike said.

“What?” J.H. asked.

“You called him my partner. He isn’t,” Mike said. “And he’s only been on the force for a year. Why are they taking his word over mine?”

J.H. finally put his feet down and leaned forward. “Look,” he said. “We want to be very careful about attacking another police officer. We can re-create the scene, point out holes in his vision, get an expert to testify about compromised visibility . . . but you realize those exact same points are going to work against you.”

“Are you going to put Mike on the stand?” Jamie asked.

J.H. shrugged. “Haven’t decided yet,” he said. “It’ll depend which way the wind is blowing at the trial. I don’t think we’re going to look at jail time, if everything you’ve said checks out. Maybe a little community service, some probation, in the worst case.”

Jamie swallowed hard. “The thing is,” she said quietly, “you mentioned PTSD . . . there might be something else that could come up.”

Mike whipped around to look at her, but she didn’t meet his gaze in case he was sending her a visual cue to stop talking. The lawyer had to know everything if he was going to have a chance of helping Mike. If making her husband angry with her could improve his chances, she’d absorb his ire.

“Things have been really difficult for Mike,” Jamie continued. “Ritchie is like his brother. Mike couldn’t sleep after the attack. He seemed kind of out of it. He blamed himself for not reacting quickly enough, even though of course it wasn’t his fault! And a few weeks ago he thought he heard someone breaking into our house. We called the police, but they didn’t find any evidence of a break-in.”

J.H. nodded slowly.

“What does that have to do with anything?” Mike asked. “You were the one who called nine-one-one, Jamie!”

“But you took out your gun!” she cried. “What if it had been Henry coming in after he’d snuck out to meet some friends or something?” The moment the words left her mouth she deeply regretted them.

When Mike was furious, his eyes were like knives. Now she felt them cutting into her. “So now you’re saying I would’ve shot my own son?”

“No, no!” she cried. “I didn’t mean it that way at all! I’m just saying there could have been other explanations for the back door being open, but maybe we can tell the jury PTSD made you assume the worst. I mean, if we can use it as a defense . . .”

She couldn’t tell Mike that it was obvious he had PTSD, or that she knew Jose hadn’t been holding a gun, or that the old Mike, the one who’d existed before the attack on Ritchie, would never have drawn his weapon and fired. In every marriage, there are lines you don’t cross. Things you won’t say. She knew she was perilously close to that dangerous place now.

“Sure, tell them I’m crazy,” Mike said.

“Mike, please,” Jamie said. Her voice sounded tight, a giveaway that she was on the edge of tears. “I know you thought you saw a gun in Jose’s hand. I completely understand why you thought that—it was raining hard and everything happened so fast. It was an honest mistake! But you can’t keep fixating on that. We’ve got to start thinking of a way to save you. To save our family!”

Mike jerked up out of his seat, and for a moment Jamie worried he was going to stalk out of the room. But he stayed where he was standing, repeatedly curling his fists into balls and releasing them. Every time he made a fist, Jamie could see his knuckles turn white.

“That nine-one-one call is definitely going to come up at trial,” J.H. said. His voice was steady, and he seemed unaffected by the hot emotions coursing through the room. Maybe that was a plus, Jamie thought frantically. Maybe he
was
the right lawyer for them!

“There will be records,” J.H. continued. “The AG’s office may already have found out about it. I’m surprised a reporter hasn’t yet. And speaking of which, that interview your sister gave?”

“She didn’t mean to!” Jamie said. “She didn’t know it was a reporter. The woman tricked her! She won’t do it again.”

Mike had been okay with the idea of Lou moving in with them, but he’d gotten upset by the quotes, even though he knew Lou hadn’t meant any harm. So Jamie hadn’t asked Lou to babysit today. Instead, she’d dropped the kids at Sandy’s house, her children’s joy at seeing Finn and Daisy adding another layer to Jamie’s guilt.

Could her 911 call become the tipping point in a trial? Jamie wondered. Or maybe Lou’s quotes would be permitted as evidence, and they would sway the jurors. Out of the corner of her eye, Jamie saw Mike take a step away from her. She couldn’t look at his face.

“Let’s focus on something else for minute.” J.H. turned over a page in his pad. “I want a basic layout of the scene here,” he told Mike. “I know you already did it for the FIT squad, but sketch as much as you can remember. Just put an X for where each main player was standing.”

Mike took a deep breath, then walked over and took the pad and a pencil from the mug atop J.H.’s desk and began to draw. He roughed in a few blocky buildings around the perimeter, then a couple of cars.

“Here’s where I was standing,” Mike said. “And here’s Jay, the guy I was partnered with that day.” Mike’s pencil hesitated, then he drew another X. “Jose was here.”

J.H. nodded and accepted the drawing, but not before Jamie saw that Jay was halfway between Mike and Jose. She hadn’t realized how much closer Jay had been. Would a jury really believe Mike had seen a gun but Jay had missed it?

“One more thing I want to ask you about,” J.H. said. “The papers said you were punched in the head moments before the incident. How hard?”

Mike shrugged. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”

“Did your vision get blurry? Any dizziness?”

“No!” Mike almost shouted. “And I said all that in my statement.”

J.H. regarded him for a moment. “I think we’re done for today,” the lawyer finally said. “Let’s let everyone have a chance to cool off.”

He stood up and offered his hand for Mike to shake. After a moment, Mike did so.

“I’ll be in touch,” J.H. said.

It took Jamie two tries to get out of her chair. The first time, her legs buckled. As they left the office, Mike began walking rapidly. By the time they reached the street, he was half a dozen yards ahead of her.

“Do you want to go get something to eat?” Jamie called to him. They couldn’t go back to the house, not like this.

But Mike just reached into his pocket and tossed her the keys. Her hand automatically came up and caught them.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “Do you want me to drive?”

He was passing their minivan, which was parked at a meter on the street in front of J.H.’s office.

“Mike? Aren’t you coming with me?”

He shook his head. “I feel like walking home.”

Their house was at least five miles away, it was blazingly hot, and he was in a long-sleeved shirt and dress pants. “Mike, come on. Please!” she called.

She was sure he’d heard her, but he simply walked faster and disappeared around the corner.

•••

Lou finished loading her clothes into a green Hefty bag and stacked it by the door, next to two she’d already filled.

She was leaving behind her IKEA bed, since Donny said he could use it for guests until Lou wanted to claim it, and the same for her dresser. She’d already taken her prints off the walls and layered her books into a cardboard box. She didn’t see the point of knickknacks and shopping was torturous for her, which worked out well, since she didn’t have much money. But now she realized how little she’d accumulated in life. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she’d brought more than this with her when she’d gone to college. Of course, Jamie had organized things for her then, buying two new sets of sheets and a fluffy bright blue comforter, a bathrobe and plastic caddy for her toiletries, and stacks of notebooks with clean white pages waiting to be filled.