But I used that spare pantyhose the day I killed Glen Szyszynski, and since I haven't been working since then, never thought to replace them.
"Goddammit!" I kick the leg of the dresser, but that only hurts my toes and brings tears to my eyes. I toss out the remaining contents of the drawer, yank the whole thing from its slot in the bureau and throw it across the room.
When my legs give out, I find myself sitting on the soft cloud of undergarments. I tuck my knees up under the skirt of my jumper, bury my face in my arms, and cry.
"Mommy was on TV last night," Nathaniel says as they are driving to the courthouse in Caleb's truck.
"When you were in the shower."
Lost in his own thoughts, Caleb nearly drives off the side of the road at this comment. "You weren't supposed to be watching TV."
Nathaniel hunches his shoulders, and immediately Caleb is sorry. So quickly, these days, he thinks he has done something wrong. "It's all right," Caleb says. He forces his attention to the road. In ten minutes, he'll be at the superior court. He can give Nathaniel to Monica in the children's playroom; maybe she'll have some better answers.
Nathaniel, however, isn't finished yet. He chews the words in his mouth for a bit, then spits them out in one great rush. "How come Mommy yells at me when I pretend a stick is a gun but she was playing with one for real?"
Caleb turns to find his son staring up at him, expecting explanations. He puts on his signal and pulls the truck onto the shoulder of the road. "Remember when you asked me why the sky was blue? And how we went to go look it up on the computer and there was so much science stuff there that neither of us could really understand it? Well, this is kind of the same thing. There's an answer, but it's really complicated."
"The man on TV said what she did was wrong." Nathaniel worries his bottom lip. "That's why today she's gonna get yelled at, right?"
Oh, Christ, if only it could be that easy. Caleb smiles sadly. "Yeah. That's why."
He waits for Nathaniel to speak again, and when he doesn't, Caleb pulls the truck back into the line of traffic. He drives three miles, and then Nathaniel turns to him. "Daddy? What's a martyr?"
"Where did you hear that?"
"The man, last night, on TV."
Caleb takes a deep breath. "It means your mother loves you, more than anything. And that's why she did what she did."
Nathaniel fingers the seam of his seat belt, considering. "Then why is it wrong?" he asks.
The parking lot is a sea of people: cameramen trying to get their reporters in their sights, producers adjusting the line feeds from their satellites, a group of militant Catholic women demanding Nina's judgment at the hands of the Lord. Patrick shoulders his way through the throngs, stunned to see national newscasters he recognizes by virtue of their celebrity.
An audible buzz sweeps the line of onlookers hovering around the courthouse steps. Then a car door slams, and suddenly Nina is hurrying up the stairs with Fisher's avuncular arm around her shoulders. A cheer goes up from the waiting crowd, along with an equally loud catcall of disapproval.
Patrick pushes closer to the steps. "Nina!" he yells. "Nina!"
He yanks his badge out, but brandishing it doesn't get him where he needs to be. "Nina!" Patrick shouts again.
She seems to stumble, to look around. But Fisher grabs her arm and directs her into the courthouse before Patrick has the chance to make himself heard.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Quentin Brown, and I'm an assistant attorney general for the state of Maine." He smiles at the jury. "The reason you're all here today is because on October thirtieth, 2001, this woman, Nina Frost, got up and drove with her husband to the Biddeford District Court to watch a man being arraigned. But she left her husband waiting there while she went to Moe's Gun Shop in Sanford, Maine- where she paid four hundred dollars cash for a Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic handgun and twelve rounds of ammunition. She tucked these in her purse, got back in her car, and returned to the courthouse." Quentin approaches the jury as if he has all the time in the world.
"Now, you all know, from coming in here today, that you had to pass through a security-screening device. But on October thirtieth, Nina Frost didn't. Why? Because she'd worked as a prosecutor for the past seven years. She knew the bailiff posted at the screening device. She walked by him without a backward glance, and she took that gun and the bullets she'd loaded into it, into a courtroom just like this one."
He moves toward the defense table, coming up behind Nina to point a finger at the base of her skull. "A few minutes later she put that gun up to Father Glen Szyszynski's head and fired four rounds directly into his brain, killing him."
Quentin surveys the jury; they are all staring at the defendant now, just like he wants. "Ladies and gentlemen, the facts in this case are crystal clear. In fact, WCSH News, which was covering that morning's arraignment, caught Ms. Frost's actions on tape. So the question for you will not be if she committed this crime. We know that she did. The question will be: Why should she be allowed to get away with it?"
He stares into the eyes of each juror in sequence. "She would like you to believe that the reason she should be held exempt from the law is because Father Szyszynski, her parish priest, had been charged with sexually molesting her five-year-old son. Yet she didn't even bother to make sure that this allegation was true. The state will show you scientifically, forensically, conclusively, that Father Szyszynski was not the man who abused her child . . . and still the defendant murdered him."
Quentin turns his back on Nina Frost. "In Maine, if a person unlawfully kills someone with premeditation, she is guilty of murder. During this trial, the state will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that this is exactly what Nina Frost did. It doesn't matter if the person who is murdered was accused of a crime. It doesn't matter if the person who was murdered was murdered by mistake. If the person was murdered, period, there needs to be punishment exacted." He looks to the jury box. "And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where you come in."
Fisher only has eyes for that jury. He walks toward the box and meets each man's or woman's gaze, making a personal connection before he even speaks a word. It's what used to drive me crazy about him, when I faced him in a courtroom. He has this amazing ability to become everyone's confidante, no matter if the juror is a twenty-year-old single welfare mother or an e-commerce king with a million tucked into the stock market.
"What Mr. Brown just told you all is absolutely true. On the morning of October thirtieth, Nina Frost did buy a gun. She did drive to the courthouse. She did stand up and fire four bullets into the head of Father Szyszynski. What Mr. Brown would like you to believe is that there's nothing to this case beyond those facts . . . but we don't live in a world of facts. We live in a world of feelings. And what he's left out of his version of the story is what had been going on in Nina's head and heart that would lead her to such a moment."
Fisher walks behind me, like Quentin did while he graphically showed the jury how to sneak up on a defendant and shoot him. He puts his hands on my shoulders, and it is comforting. "For weeks, Nina Frost had been living a hell that no parent should have to live. She'd found out that her five-year-old son had been sexually abused. Worse, the police had identified the abuser as her own priest-a man she had confided in. Betrayed, heartbroken, and aching for her son, she began to lose her grasp on what was right and what was wrong. The only thing in her mind by the time she went to court that morning to see the priest arraigned was that she needed to protect her child.
