Defending Jacob(38)

“Your Honor,” Logiudice said with an unctuous shrug, “as an officer of the court, it is my duty to report an issue like this. If Mr. Klein is offended …”

“Is it your duty to deny the defendant the counsel of his choosing? Or to call him a liar before the case even begins?”

“All right,” Lard-Ass said, “both of you. Mr. Logiudice, the Commonwealth’s objection to the entry of Mr. Klein’s appearance as counsel is noted and overruled.” She glanced up from her papers and eyed him over the top of the judge’s bench. “Don’t get carried away.”

Logiudice limited his response to a pantomime of disagreement—a tip of the head, eyebrows raised—so as not to provoke the judge. But in the shadow trial of public opinion, he had probably scored a point. In the next day’s papers, on talk radio, on the Internet chat boards that dissected the case, they would be discussing whether Jacob Barber was trying to pull a fast one. Anyway, it was never Logiudice’s intention to be liked.

“I’m sending this case out to Judge French for trial,” Lard-Ass Rivera said with finality. She flipped the file toward the clerk. “We’ll recess for ten minutes.” She frowned at the cameraman and the reporters in the back and—I may have imagined this—at Logiudice.

The bail was arranged quickly, and Jacob was released to us. Together we left the courthouse through a gauntlet of reporters that seemed to have grown since we arrived. Grown more aggressive too: out on Thorndike Street, they tried to stop us by standing in our path. Somebody—it may have been a reporter, though no one saw him—pushed Jacob in the chest, knocking him back a few steps, trying to elicit a response. Jacob gave none. His blank face never wavered. Even the more polite ones had a slippery tactic to get us to stop and talk: they asked, “Can you just tell us what happened in there?” as if they did not know, as if the whole thing had not been broadcast to them via the live video feed and text messages from their colleagues.

By the time we rounded the corner and drove up to our home, we were exhausted. Laurie in particular looked wrung out. Her hair was beginning to craze in the humidity. Her face looked drawn. Since the catastrophe, she had been losing weight steadily and her lovely heart-shaped face was becoming gaunt. As I began to turn the car into the driveway, Laurie gasped, “Oh my God,” and clapped her hand over her mouth.

There was graffiti on the front of our house, drawn with a thick black marker.

MURDERER

WE HATE YOU

ROT IN HELL



The letters were big, blocky, and neat, written in no particular haste. Our house was faced with tan shingles, and the edges of these shingles caused the pen to skip as it crossed from one to the next. Otherwise it had been done carefully, in broad daylight, while we were gone. The graffiti had not been there when we left that morning, I am sure of that.

I looked up and down the street. The sidewalks were empty. Down the block a gardening crew had parked a truck, and their mowers and leaf blowers buzzed loudly. No sign of neighbors. No people at all. Just neat green lawns, rhododendrons blooming pink and purple, a cordon of big old maples running the length of the block, shading the street.

Laurie jumped out and ran into the house, leaving Jacob and me to stare at the graffiti.

“Don’t let them get to you, Jake. They’re just trying to scare you.”

“I know.”

“This is just one idiot. That’s all it takes is one idiot. It’s not everyone. It’s not how people feel.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Not everyone.”

“Of course it is. It’s okay, Dad. I don’t really care.”

I twisted to look at him in the back seat. “Really? This doesn’t bother you?”

“No.” He sat with his arms crossed, eyes narrow, lips tight.

“If it did, you’d tell me, right?”

“I guess.”

“Because it’s okay to feel … hurt. You know that?”

He frowned disdainfully and shook his head, like an emperor declining to grant an indulgence. They can’t hurt me.

“So tell me. What are you feeling inside, Jake, right now, this minute?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? That’s not possible.”

“Like you said, it’s just one *. One idiot, whatever. I mean, it’s not like kids have never said anything bad about me, Dad. They do it to my face. What do you think school is? This”—he gestured with his chin toward the graffiti on the house—“this is just a different platform.”

I gazed at him a moment. He did not move, except that his eyes traveled from me to the passenger window. I patted his knee, though it was awkward to reach and the best I could manage was to tap my fingertip against the hard bone of his kneecap. It occurred to me that I had given him the wrong advice the night before, when I had told him to “be strong.” I was telling him, in so many words, to be like me. But now that I saw he had taken my words to heart and swaddled himself in theatrical toughness, like an adolescent Clint Eastwood, I regretted the comment. I wanted the other Jacob, my goofy, awkward son, to show his face again. But it was too late. Anyway, his tough-guy act was oddly moving to me.

“You’re a great kid, Jake. I’m proud of you. I mean, the way you stood up there today, now this. You’re a good kid.”