Defending Jacob(128)

Mr. Logiudice: I’ll withdraw it. Andy, do you honestly think you’re a reliable witness? Do you honestly think you see your son right?

Witness: I think I’m reliable, yes, generally. I don’t think any parent can be completely objective about his kid, I’ll concede that.

Mr. Logiudice: And yet Laurie had no trouble seeing Jacob for what he was, did she?

Witness: You’ll have to ask her.

Mr. Logiudice: Laurie had no trouble believing Jacob had something to do with that girl’s vanishing?

Witness: As I said, Laurie was very shaken by the whole thing. She was not herself. She came to her own conclusions.

Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss her suspicions with you?

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: I’ll repeat the question. Did your wife ever discuss her suspicions about Jacob?

Witness: No, she did not.

Mr. Logiudice: Your own wife never confided in you?

Witness: She did not feel that she could. Not about this. We’d talked about the Rifkin case, of course. I think she knew there were some things I just could not discuss; there were some places I just could not go. Those things she would just have to handle by herself.

Mr. Logiudice: So after two weeks in Jamaica?

Witness: We came home.

Mr. Logiudice: And when you got home, at that point did Laurie finally voice her suspicions about Jacob?

Witness: Not really.

Mr. Logiudice: “Not really”—what does that mean?

Witness: When we got home from Jamaica, Laurie was very, very quiet. She wouldn’t discuss anything at all with me, really. She was very wary, very upset. She was scared. I tried to talk to her, draw her out, but she didn’t trust me, I think.

Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss what you two ought to do, morally, as parents?

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: If she had asked you, what would you have said? What do you think your moral obligation was as parents of a murderer?

Witness: It’s a hypothetical question. I don’t believe we were parents of a murderer.

Mr. Logiudice: All right, hypothetically then: If Jacob was guilty, what should you and your wife have done about it?

Witness: You can ask the question as many ways as you like, Neal. I won’t answer it. It never happened.



What happened then I can honestly say was the most genuine, spontaneous reaction I ever saw out of Neal Logiudice. He flung his yellow pad in frustration. It fluttered like a shotgunned bird tumbling out of the sky, settling in the far corner of the room.

An older woman on the grand jury gasped.

I thought for a moment it was one of Logiudice’s phony gestures—a cue to the jury: Can’t you see he’s lying?—the better because it would not show up in the transcript. But Logiudice just stood there, hands on hips, looking at his shoes, faintly shaking his head.

After a moment he collected himself. He folded his arms and took a deep breath. Back to it. Lure, trap, f*ck.

He raised his eyes to me and saw—what? A criminal? A victim? In any event, a disappointment. I rather doubt he had the sense to see the truth: that there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law’s little binary distinctions—guilty/innocent, criminal/victim—cannot fathom, let alone fix. The law is a hammer, not a scalpel.

Mr. Logiudice: You understand this grand jury is investigating your wife, Laurie Barber?

Witness: Of course.

Mr. Logiudice: We’ve been here all day talking about her, about why she did this.

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: I don’t give a damn about Jacob.

Witness: If you say so.

Mr. Logiudice: And you know that you’re not under any suspicion, of anything at all?

Witness: If you say so.

Mr. Logiudice: But you are under oath. I don’t need to remind you of that?

Witness: Yes, I know the rules, Neal.

Mr. Logiudice: What your wife did, Andy—I don’t understand why you won’t help us. This was your family.

Witness: Pose a question, Neal. Don’t make speeches.

Mr. Logiudice: What Laurie did—doesn’t it bother y—

Witness: Objection! Pose a proper question!

Mr. Logiudice: She should be indicted!

Witness: Next question.

Mr. Logiudice: She should be indicted and brought to trial and locked up, and you know it!

Witness: Next question!

Mr. Logiudice: On the date of offense, March 19, 2008, did you receive news about the defendant, Laurie Barber?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: How?

Witness: Around nine A.M. the doorbell rang. It was Paul Duffy.

Mr. Logiudice: What did Lieutenant Duffy say?

Witness: He asked if he could come inside and sit down. He said he had terrible news. I told him, Just say it, whatever it was, just tell me right there at the door. He said there’d been an accident. Laurie and Jacob were in the car, on the pike, and it went off the road. He said Jacob was dead. Laurie was banged up pretty bad but she would make it.

Mr. Logiudice: Go on.

[The witness did not respond.]

Mr. Logiudice: What happened next, Mr. Barber?

[The witness did not respond.]

Mr. Logiudice: Andy?

Witness: I, um—I felt my knees begin to buckle, I started to fall straight down. Paul reached out to grab me. He held me up. He helped me into the living room to a chair.

Mr. Logiudice: What else did he tell you?