Defending Jacob(40)
“Well,” Jonathan said, looking up from his papers, “this is just the initial package from Neal Logiudice. All I have here is the indictment and some of the police reports, so obviously we don’t have all the prosecution’s evidence yet. But we have a general picture of the case against Jacob. We can begin talking, at least, and try to get a general picture of what the trial will look like. We can start to figure out what we need to do between now and then.
“Jacob, before we begin, I want to say a couple of things to you in particular.”
“Okay.”
“First, you’re the client here. That means that, as far as possible, you are the decision maker. Not your parents, not me, not anyone else. This is your case. You are always in control. Nothing is going to happen here that you don’t agree with. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“To the extent you want to leave the decision-making up to your mom and dad or to me, that’s perfectly understandable. But you should not feel like you don’t have a say in your own case. The law is treating you as an adult. For better or worse, by law in Massachusetts every kid your age charged with first-degree murder is charged as an adult. So I’m going to do my best to treat you as an adult too. Okay?”
Jacob said, “ ’Kay.”
Not a wasted syllable. If Jonathan was expecting an outpouring of gratitude, he had the wrong kid.
“The other thing is, I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed. I want to warn you: in every case like this, there’s an ‘oh shit’ moment. That’s when you look up at the case against you, you see all the evidence, all the people on the DA’s team, you hear all the things the DA is saying in court, and you panic. You feel hopeless. Deep down, a little voice says, ‘Oh shit!’ I want you to understand, it happens every time. If it hasn’t hit you yet, it will. And what I want you to remember, when that ‘oh shit’ feeling hits, is that we have enough resources right here in this room to win. There’s no reason to panic. It does not matter how big the DA’s team is, it doesn’t matter how strong the DA’s case looks, or how confident Logiudice seems. We are not outgunned. We do need to stay cool. And if we do, we have everything we need to win. Now, do you believe that?”
“I don’t know. Not really, I guess.”
“Well, I’m telling you it’s true.”
Jacob’s eyes dropped to his lap.
A microexpression, a disappointed pucker, fluttered across Jonathan’s face.
So much for the pep talk.
Giving up, he slipped on his half-moon glasses and paged through the papers in front of him, mostly photocopies of police reports and the “statement of the case” filed by Logiudice, which laid out the essentials of the government’s evidence. Without his jacket, wearing the same black turtleneck he’d worn in court, Jonathan’s shoulders looked slight and bony.
“The theory,” he said, “seems to be that Ben Rifkin was bullying you, therefore you got a knife and, when the opportunity presented itself or perhaps when the victim bullied you one time too many, you took your revenge. There don’t seem to be any direct witnesses. A woman who was walking in Cold Spring Park places you in the area that morning. Another walker in the park heard the victim cry out, ‘Stop, you’re hurting me,’ but she didn’t actually see anything. And a fellow student—that’s Logiudice’s phrase, a fellow student—alleges you had a knife. That fellow student is not named in the reports I have here. Jacob, any idea who that is?”
“It’s Derek. Derek Yoo.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He said the same thing on Facebook. He’s been saying it for a while.”
Jonathan nodded but did not ask the obvious question: Is it true?
“Well,” he said, “it’s a very circumstantial case. There’s the thumbprint, which I want to talk about. But fingerprints are a very limited kind of evidence. There is no way to tell exactly when or how a fingerprint got there. There’s often an innocent explanation.”
He dropped this remark in an offhand way, without looking up.
I squirmed.
Laurie said, “There is something else.” A beat, a curious feeling in the room.
Laurie glanced around the table apprehensively. Her voice was momentarily husky, congested. “What if they say Jacob inherited something, like a disease?”
“I don’t understand. Inherited what?”
“Violence.”
Jacob: “What!?”
“I don’t know if my husband has told you: there is a history of violence in our family. Apparently.”
I noticed that she said our family, plural. I clung to that to prevent myself from falling off a cliff.
Jonathan sat back and slipped off his glasses, let them dangle from the lanyard. He looked at her with a puzzled expression.
“Not Andy and me,” Laurie said. “Jacob’s grandfather, his great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather. Et cetera.”
Jacob: “Mom, what are you talking about?”
“I’m just wondering, could they say Jacob has a … a tendency? A … genetic tendency?”
“What sort of tendency?”
“To violence.”
“A genetic tendency to violence? No. Of course not.” Jonathan shook his head, then his curiosity got the better of him. “Whose father and grandfather are we talking about?”