Defending Jacob(20)

6 | Descent


One year later.

TRANSCRIPT OF GRAND JURY INVESTIGATION.

Mr. Logiudice: When you discovered the knife, what did you do? I presume you reported it immediately.

Witness: No, I did not.

Mr. Logiudice: No? You discovered the murder weapon in an ongoing murder investigation and you did not tell anyone? Why not? You made such a pretty speech earlier this morning about how you believed in the system.

Witness: I did not report it because I did not believe that it was the murder weapon. I certainly did not know it for a fact.

Mr. Logiudice: You didn’t know it for a fact? Well, how could you? You kept it hidden! You didn’t submit the knife for forensic testing, for blood, fingerprints, comparison with the wound, and so forth. That would be the ordinary procedure, wouldn’t it?

Witness: It would be if you genuinely suspected it was the weapon.

Mr. Logiudice: Ah. So you didn’t even suspect it was the weapon?

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: The thought never crossed your mind?

Witness: This was my son. A father does not think, can’t even imagine his child in those terms.

Mr. Logiudice: Really? Can’t even imagine it?

Witness: That’s right.

Mr. Logiudice: The boy had no history of violence? No juvenile criminal record?

Witness: No. None.

Mr. Logiudice: No behavioral problems? No psychological problems?

Witness: No.

Mr. Logiudice: He had never hurt a fly, is that fair to say?

Witness: Something like that.

Mr. Logiudice: And yet when you found the knife, you covered it up. You behaved exactly as if you thought he was guilty.

Witness: That is not accurate.

Mr. Logiudice: Well, you didn’t report it.

Witness: I was slow to realize—in hindsight, I admit—

Mr. Logiudice: Mr. Barber, how could you be slow to realize when, in fact, you’d been waiting for this moment for fourteen years, from the day your son was born?

[The witness did not respond.]

Mr. Logiudice: You’d been waiting for this moment. Fearing it, dreading it. But expecting it.

Witness: That’s not true.

Mr. Logiudice: Isn’t it? Mr. Barber, isn’t it fair to say that violence runs in your family?

Witness: I object. That is a completely improper question.

Mr. Logiudice: Your objection is noted for the record.

Witness: You are trying to mislead this jury. You are suggesting that Jacob could inherit a tendency to violence, as if violence were the same as red hair or hairy ears. That’s wrong on the biology and wrong on the law. In a word, it’s bullshit. And you know it.

Mr. Logiudice: But I’m not talking about biology at all. I’m talking about your state of mind, what you believed at the moment you found that knife. Now, if you choose to believe in bullshit, that’s your business. But what you believed is perfectly relevant and perfectly admissible as evidence. And you know it. But, out of respect, I’ll withdraw the question. We’ll approach it another way. Have you ever heard the phrase “the murder gene”?

Witness: Yes.

Mr. Logiudice: You’ve heard it where?

Witness: Just in conversation. I’ve used it in conversation with my wife. It’s a figure of speech, nothing more.

Mr. Logiudice: A figure of speech.

Witness: It is not a scientific term. I’m not a scientist.

Mr. Logiudice: Of course. We’re all non-experts here. Now, when you used this, this figure of speech, “the murder gene,” what were you referring to?

[The witness did not respond.]

Mr. Logiudice: Oh, come on, Andy, there’s no reason to be shy about it. It’s all a matter of public record now. You’ve felt a lot of anxiety, haven’t you, in your life?

Witness: A long time ago. When I was a kid. Not now.

Mr. Logiudice: A long time ago, okay. You were worried—a long time ago, when you were a kid—about your own history, your own family, weren’t you?

[The witness did not respond.]

Mr. Logiudice: It’s fair to say you’re descended from a long line of violent men, aren’t you, Mr. Barber?

[The witness did not respond.]

Mr. Logiudice: It’s fair to say that, isn’t it?

Witness: [Inaudible.]

Mr. Logiudice: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. You’re descended from a long line of violent men, aren’t you? Mr. Barber?



Violence did run in my family. You could follow it like a red thread back through three generations. Probably there were more. Probably the red thread ran right the way back to Cain, but I never had any desire to trace it. A few stories, lurid, mostly unverifiable, and a few photographs had come down to me; that was affliction enough. When I was a kid, I wanted to forget these stories entirely. I used to wonder what it would be like if a magical amnesia descended and erased my mind completely, leaving only a body and some sort of blank self, all potential, all soft clay. But of course, no matter how I tried to forget, the story of my ancestors was always stored in deep memory, always ready to poke up into awareness. I learned to manage with it. Later, for Jacob’s sake, I learned to drink it down entirely, leaving nothing for anyone to see, nothing to “share.” Laurie was a great believer in sharing, in the talking cure, but I never meant to cure myself. I never believed such a thing was possible. That is what Laurie never understood. She knew that my father’s ghost troubled me, but not why. She presumed the issue was that I never knew him and there would forever be a daddy-shaped hole in my life. I never told her anything else, though she tried to pry me open like an oyster. Laurie’s own dad was a shrink, and before Jacob was born she was a teacher at the Gavin Middle School in South Boston, fifth- and sixth-grade English. She believed, based on these experiences, that she had some understanding of under-fathered young boys. “You’ll never be able to deal with it,” she would tell me, “if you won’t talk about it.” Oh, Laurie, you never got it! I never intended to “deal with it.” I intended to stop it cold. I meant to stop the whole sordid criminal line of descent by absorbing it all inside me. I would stand there and stop it like a bullet. I would simply refuse to pass it along to Jake. So I chose not to learn much. Not to research my history or analyze it for causes and effects. I purposely orphaned myself from the whole brawling lot of them. As far as I knew—as far as I chose to know—the red thread went back to my great-grandfather, a slit-eyed thug named James Burkett, who came east from North Dakota carrying in his bones some feral, wicked instinct for violence that would manifest itself over and over, in Burkett himself, in his son, and most spectacularly in his grandson, my father.