"Nina Frost, of all people, knows how the system of justice works for-and fails-children. She, of all people, understands what the rules are in an American court of law, because for the past seven years she has measured up to them on a daily basis. But on October thirtieth, ladies and gentlemen, she wasn't a prosecutor. She was just Nathaniel's mother." He comes to stand beside me. "Please listen to everything. And when you make your decision, don't make it only with your head. Make it with your heart."
Moe Baedeker, proprietor of Moe's Gun Shop, does not know what to do with his baseball cap. The bailiffs made him take it off, but his hair is matted and messy. He puts the cap on his lap and finger-combs his hair. In doing so, he catches sight of his nails, with grease and gun blueing caught beneath the cuticles, and he quickly sticks his hands beneath his thighs. "Ayuh, I recognize her," he says, nodding at me. "She came into my store once. Walked right up to the counter and told me she wanted a semiautomatic handgun."
"Had you ever seen her before?"
"Nope."
"Did she look around the store at all?" Quentin asks.
"Nope. She was waiting in the parking lot when I opened, and then she came right up to the counter."
He shrugs. "I did an instant background check on her, and when she came out clean, I sold her what she wanted."
"Did she ask for any bullets?"
"Twelve rounds."
"Did you show the defendant how to use the gun?"
Moe shakes his head. "She told me she knew how."
His testimony breaks over me like a wave. I can remember the smell of that little shop, the raw wood on the walls, and the pictures of Rugers and Glocks behind the counter. The way the cash register was old-fashioned and actually made a ching sound. He gave me my change in new twenty-dollar bills, holding each one up to the light and pointing out how you could tell whether they were counterfeit or not.
By the time I focus again, Fisher is doing the cross-exam. "What did she do while you were running the background check?"
"She kept looking at her watch. Pacing, like."
"Was there anyone else in the store?"
"Nope."
"Did she tell you why she needed a gun?"
"Ain't my place to ask," Moe says.
One of the twenties he'd given me had been written on, a man's signature. "I did that once," Moe told me that morning. "And, swear to God, got the same bill back six years later." He'd handed me my gun, hot in my hand. "What goes around comes around," he'd said, and at the time, I was too self-absorbed to heed this as the warning it was.
The cameraman had been filming for WCSH and was set up in the corner, according to Quentin Brown's diagram of the Biddeford courtroom. As the videotape is slipped into a TV/VCR, I keep my eyes on the jury. I want to watch them watching me.
Once, maybe, I saw this segment. But it was months ago, when I believed I had done the right thing.
The familiar voice of the judge draws my attention, and then I cannot help but stare at this small screen.
My hands shake when I hold up the gun. My eyes are wide and wild. But my motion is smooth and beautiful, a ballet. As I press the gun to the priest's head my own tilts backward, and for one stunning moment my face is split into masques of comedy and tragedy-half grief, half relief.
The shot is so loud that even on tape, it makes me jump in my seat.
Shouts. A cry. The cameraman's voice, saying, "Holy fucking shit!" Then the camera tilts on its axis and there are my feet, flying over the bar, and the thud of the bailiffs' bodies pinning me, and Patrick.
"Fisher," I whisper. "I'm going to be sick."
The viewpoint shifts again, spinning to rest on its side on the floor. The priest's head lies in a spreading pool of blood. Half of it is missing, and the spots and flecks on the film suggest the spray of brain matter on the camera lens. One eye stares dully at me from the screep. "Did I get him?" My own voice.
"Is he dead?"
"Fisher ..." The room revolves.
I feel him stand up beside me. "Your Honor, if I could request a short recess ..."
