The channel switches again, this time to CNN. A woman with a smooth space helmet of red hair is speaking in front of a small graphic of Nina Frost's face. "Testimony in the DA Murder Trial finished this afternoon," the anchor says. "Closing arguments are scheduled for tomorrow morning."
Quentin turns off the TV. He ties his boots and then his gaze falls on the telephone beside the bed.
After three rings, he starts debating with himself about whether or not to leave a message. Then suddenly music explodes into his ear, a deafening backfire of rap. "Yeah?" a voice says, and then the sound is turned down.
"Gideon," Quentin says. "It's me."
There is a pause. "Me who?" the boy replies, and it makes Quentin smile; he knows damn well who this is. "If you're looking for my mom, she's not here. Maybe I'll tell her to call you back and then again maybe I'll just forget to give her the message."
"Gideon, wait!" Quentin can almost hear the phone, halfway to its cradle, being brought back to his son's ear.
"What."
"I didn't call to talk to Tanya. I called to talk to you."
For a long moment, neither of them speaks. Then Gideon says, "If you called to talk, you're doing a lousy job of it."
"You're right." Quentin rubs his temples. "I just wanted to say I'm sorry. About the whole rehabilitation sentence, all of it. At the time I really believed that I was doing what was best for you." He takes a deep breath. "I had no right to start telling you how to live your life when I voluntarily walked out of it years before." When his son stays silent, Quentin begins to get nervous. Did he get disconnected, without knowing it? "Gideon?"
"Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?" he says finally.
"No. I called to see if you wanted to meet me for some pizza." Quentin tosses the remote control on the bed, watches it bounce. The moment he waits for Gideon's response stretches to an eternity.
"Where?" Gideon asks.
Funny thing about a jury: no matter how scattered they seem during testimony; no matter who falls asleep in the back row and who paints their nails right during your cross-examinations, the minute it's time to get down to business, they suddenly rise to the challenge. The jurors stare at Quentin now, their attention focused on his closing argument. "Ladies and gentlemen," he begins, "this is a very difficult case for me. Even though I do not know the defendant personally, I would have called her my colleague. But Nina Frost is not on the side of the law anymore. You all saw with your own eyes what she did on the morning of October thirtieth, 2001. She walked into a courtroom, put a gun up to an innocent man's head, and she shot him four times.
"The ironic thing is that Nina Frost claims she committed this crime in order to protect her son. Yet as she found out later ... as we all would have found out later, had the court system been allowed to work the way it is supposed to work in a civilized society . . . that in killing Father Szyszynski, she did not protect her son at all." Quentin looks soberly at the jury. "There are reasons we have courts-because it's very easy to accuse a man. Courts hold up the facts, so that a rational judgment can be made. But Mrs.
Frost acted without facts. Mrs. Frost not only accused this man, she tried him, convicted him, and executed him all by herself on that morning."
He walks toward the jury box, trailing his hand along the railing. "Mr. Carrington will tell you that the reason the defendant committed this crime is because she knew the justice system, and she truly believed it would not protect her son. Yes, Nina Frost knew the justice system. But she used it to stack the odds. She knew what her rights would be as a defendant. She knew how to act to make a jury believe she was temporarily insane. She knew exactly what she was doing the moment she stood up and shot Father Szyszynski in cold blood."
Quentin addresses each juror in turn. "To find Mrs. Frost guilty, you must first believe that the state of Maine has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Father Szyszynski was unlawfully killed." He spreads his hands. "Well, you all saw it happen on videotape. Second, you must believe that the defendant was the one who killed Father Szyszynski. Again, there's no doubt in this case that this is true. And finally, you must believe that Mrs. Frost killed Father Szyszynski with premeditation. It's a big word, a legal word, but you all know what it is."
He hesitates. "This morning, as you were driving to court, at least one of you came upon a four-way intersection with a traffic light that was turning yellow. You needed to make a decision about whether or not to take your foot off the gas and stop ... or whether you should speed through it. I don't know what choice you made; I don't need to. All I need to know-all you need to know-is that the split second when you made the decision to stop or to go was premeditation. That's all it takes. And when Mrs.
Frost told you yesterday that at the moment she held the gun to Father Szyszynski's head, she was thinking that she needed to keep him from leaving the courtroom alive in order to protect her son-that, too, was premeditation."
Quentin walks back toward the defense table and points at Nina. "This is not a case about emotions; this is a case about facts. And the facts in this case are that an innocent man is dead, that this woman killed him, and that she believed her son deserved special treatment that only she could give." He turns toward the jury one last time. "Don't give her any special treatment for breaking the law."
"I have two daughters," Fisher says, standing up beside me. "One's a high school junior; the other goes to Dartmouth." He smiles at the jury. "I'm crazy about them. I'm sure many of you feel the same about your kids. And that's the way Nina Frost feels about her son, Nathaniel." He puts his hand on my shoulder. "However, one completely ordinary morning, Nina found herself facing a horrible truth no parent ever wants to face: Someone had anally raped her little boy. And Nina had to face a second horrible truth-she knew what a molestation trial would do to her son's fragile emotional balance."
He walks toward the jury. "How did she know? Because she'd made other parents' children go through it. Because she had witnessed, time after time, children coming to court and dissolving into tears on the witness stand. Because she had seen abusers walk free even as these children were trying to fathom why they had to relive this nightmare all over again in front of a room full of strangers." Fisher shakes his head. "This was a tragedy. Adding to it is the fact that Father Szyszynski was not the man who had hurt this little boy, after all. But on October thirtieth, the police believed that he was the abuser. The prosecutor's office believed it. Nina Frost believed it. And on that morning, she also believed that she had run out of options. What happened in court that morning was not a premeditated, malicious act but a desperate one. The woman you saw shooting that man might have looked like Nina Frost, might have moved like Nina Frost- but ladies and gentlemen, that woman on the videotape was someone different.
Someone not mentally capable of stopping herself at that moment."
As Fisher takes another breath to launch into the definition of not guilty by reason of insanity, I get to my feet. "Excuse me, but I'd like to finish."
He turns around, the wind gone from his sails. "You what?"
I wait until he is close enough for me to speak privately. "Fisher, I think I can handle a closing argument."
"You are not representing yourself!"
"Well, I'm not misrepresenting myself either." I glance at the judge, and at Quentin Brown, who is absolutely gaping. "May I approach, Your Honor?"
"Oh, by all means, go right ahead," Judge Neal says.
