"Oh, well, then. Wherever Angeline gets her perm." He holds out the coffee and fills my cup for me, but I'm laughing so hard some of it spills on the floor. Angeline is the clerk of the South District Court, and her coiffure resembles something between a muskrat curled on her head and a plate of buttered bowtie noodles.
This is our game, Peter and me. It began when we were both assistant DAs in the West District, splitting our time between Springvale and York. In Maine, defendants can come to court and plead innocent, guilty, or request to meet with the prosecutor. Peter and I would sit across from each other at a desk, trading court complaints like aces in a poker game. You do this traffic ticket, I'm sick of them.
Okay, but that means you get this trespassing charge. I see Peter far less now that we are both trying felonies in the superior court, but he is still the person I'm closest to in the office. "Best quote of the day?"
It is only ten-thirty; the best may be to come. But I put on my prosecutor's face and look solemnly at Peter, and give him an instant replay of my closing in the rape case. "In fact, ladies and gentlemen, there is only one act that would be more criminally reprehensible, more violating, than what this man did-and that would be to set him free to do it again."
Peter whistles through the space in his front teeth. "Ooh, you are the drama queen."
"That's why they pay me the big bucks." I stir creamer into my coffee, watch it clot like blood on the surface. It reminds me of the brain matter case. "How goes the domestic abuse trial?"
"Don't take this the wrong way, but I am so freaking sick of victims. They're so . . ."
"Needy?" I say dryly.
"Yes!" Peter sighs. "Wouldn't it be nice to just get through a case without having to deal with all their baggage?"
"Ah, but then you might as well be a defense attorney." I take a gulp of the coffee, leave the cup on the counter, three-quarters full. "See, if you ask me, I'd rather get through a case without them."
Peter laughs. "Poor Nina. You've got your competency hearing next, don't you?"
"So?"
"So, whenever you have to face Fisher Carrington you look . . . well, like I did in that middle school yearbook. On the verge of being scalped."
As prosecutors, we have a tenuous relationship with the local defense attorneys. Most of them we hold a grudging respect for; after all, they are just doing their jobs. But Carrington is a different breed.
Harvard-educated, silver-haired, stately-he is everyone's father; he is the distinguished elder gentleman offering advice to live by. He is the sort of man juries want to believe, just on general principle. It has happened to all of us at one time or another: We put up a mountain of hard evidence against his Newman-blue eyes and knowing smile, and the defendant walks.
Needless to say, we all hate Fisher Carrington.
Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to Hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver-insult added to injury.
Legally, competency is defined as being able to communicate in a way that the fact finder can understand. For example, a dog may be able to sniff out drug evidence but can't testify. For children at the center of sexual abuse cases-ones where the abuser hasn't confessed-the only way to get a conviction is to get the kid to testify. But before that happens, the judge has to determine that the witness can communicate, knows the difference between the truth and a lie ... and understands that in court you have to tell the truth. Which means that when I am trying a sexual abuse case with a young child, I routinely file a motion for a competency hearing.
So: Imagine you are five years old and have been brave enough to confess to your mother that your daddy rapes you every night, although he's said he'll kill you for telling. Now imagine that, as a practice run, you have to go to a courtroom that seems as big as a football stadium. You have to answer questions a prosecutor asks you. And then you have to answer questions fired at you by a stranger, a lawyer who makes you so confused that you cry and ask him to stop. And because every defendant has the right to face his accuser, you have to do all this while your daddy is staring you down just six feet away.
Two things can happen here. Either you are found incompetent to stand trial, which means the judge throws out the case, and you don't have to go to court again . . . although you have nightmares for weeks afterward about that lawyer asking you horrible questions, and the look on your father's face, and most likely, the abuse continues. Or, you are found competent, and you get to repeat this little scene all over again . . . this time, with dozens of people watching.
I may be a prosecutor, but I'm also the first to tell that if you cannot communicate in a certain way, you cannot get justice in the American legal system. I have tried hundreds of sexual abuse cases, seen hundreds of children on that stand. I have been one of the lawyers who tugs and pulls at them, until they reluctantly let go of the make-believe world they've dreamed to block out the truth. All this, in the name of a conviction. But you cannot convince me that a competency hearing itself doesn't traumatize a child. You cannot convince me that even if I win that hearing, somehow, the child doesn't.
As defense attorneys go, Fisher Carrington is quite respectful. He doesn't reduce children to jelly on their high stools in the witness box; he doesn't try to disorient them. He acts like a grandfather who will give them lollipops if they tell the truth. In all but one case we both tried, he managed to have the child declared incompetent to stand trial, and the perp walked out free. In the other case, I convicted his client.
17
The defendant spent three years in jail.
The victim spent seven years in therapy.
I look up at Peter. "Best-case scenario," I challenge.
"Huh?"
"Yeah," I say softly. "That's my point."
When Rachel was five, her parents got a divorce-the kind that involved bitter mudslinging, hidden bank accounts, and cans of paint splashed on the driveway at midnight. A week later, Rachel told her mother that her daddy used to stick his finger inside her vagina.
She has told me that one time, she was wearing a Little Mermaid nightgown and eating Froot Loops at the kitchen table. The second time, she was wearing a pink Cinderella nightgown and watching a Franklin video in her parents' bedroom. Rachel's mother, Miriam, has verified that her daughter had a Little Mermaid nightgown, and a Cinderella nightgown, the summer she was three years old. She remembers borrowing the Franklin video from her sister-in-law. Back then, she and her husband were still living together. Back then, there were times she left her husband alone with their little girl.
