Small Great Things(125)

“It was the public transport sys—”

“I don’t care. You don’t give the court any extra reasons to dislike you.”

We race into the courtroom, where Odette is sitting smugly at the prosecution table, looking like she arrived at 6:00 A.M. For all I know, she sleeps here. Judge Thunder enters, bent at the waist, and we all rise. “I was rear-ended by a cretin on the way to work, and as a result, my back is officially out,” he says. “My apologies for the delay.”

“Are you all right, Your Honor?” Kennedy says. “Do you need to call a doctor?”

“As much as I appreciate your display of sympathy, Ms. McQuarrie, I imagine you’d prefer I was incapacitated somewhere in a hospital. Preferably without painkillers available. Ms. Lawton, call your witness before I forgo this judicial bravery and take a Vicodin.”

The first witness for the prosecution today is the detective who interviewed me after my arrest. “Detective MacDougall,” Odette begins, after walking him through his name and address, “where are you employed?”

“In the town of East End, Connecticut.”

“How did you become involved in the case we’re examining today?”

He leans back. He seems to spill over the chair, to fill the entire witness stand. “I got a call from Mr. Bauer, and I told him to come down to the station so I could take his complaint. He was pretty distraught at the time. He believed that the nurse who had been taking care of his son had intentionally withheld emergency care, which led to the baby’s death. I interviewed the medical personnel involved in the case, and had several meetings with the medical examiner…and with you, ma’am.”

“Did you interview the defendant?”

“Yes. After securing an arrest warrant, we went to Ms. Jefferson’s house and knocked on the door—loudly—but she didn’t come.”

At that, I nearly rise out of my chair. Howard and Kennedy each put a hand on my shoulder, holding me down. It was 3:00 A.M. They did not knock, they pounded until the doorjamb was busted. They held me at gunpoint.

I lean toward Kennedy, my nostrils flaring. “This is a lie. He is lying on the stand,” I whisper.

“Ssh,” she says.

“What happened next?” asks the prosecutor.

“No one answered the door.”

Kennedy’s hand clamps tighter on my shoulder.

“We were concerned that she might be fleeing through the back door. So I advised my team to use the battering ram to gain entrance to the home.”

“Did you in fact gain entrance and arrest Ms. Jefferson?”

“Yes,” the detective says, “but first we were confronted with a large Black subject—”

“No,” I say under my breath, and Howard kicks me under the table.

“—whom we later determined to be Ms. Jefferson’s son. We were also concerned about officer safety, so we conducted a cursory search of the bedroom, while we handcuffed Ms. Jefferson.”

They tossed aside my furniture. They broke my dishes. They pulled my clothes off hangers. They tackled my son.

“I advised her of her rights,” Detective MacDougall continues, “and read her the charges.”

“How did she react?”

He grimaces. “She was uncooperative.”

“What happened next?”

“We brought her to the East End station. She was fingerprinted and photographed and put in a holding cell. Then my colleague, Detective Leong, and I brought her into a conference room and again advised her she had the right to have her lawyer there, to not say anything, and that if she wanted to stop answering questions at any time she was free to do so. We told her that her responses could and would be used in court. And then I asked her if she understood all that. She initialed every paragraph, saying that she did.”

“Did the defendant request an attorney?”

“Not at that time. She was very willing to explain her version of events. She maintained that she did not touch the infant until he started to code. She also admitted that she and Mr. Bauer did not—how did she put it?—see eye to eye.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, we wanted to let her know that we were looking out for her. If it was an accident, we said, just tell us, and then the judge would go easy on her and we could straighten out the mess and she could get on with raising her boy. But she clammed up and said she didn’t want to talk anymore.” He shrugs. “I guess it wasn’t an accident.”

“Objection,” Kennedy says.

Judge Thunder winces, trying to pivot toward the court reporter. “Sustained. Strike the witness’s last comment from the record.”

But it hangs in the space between us, like the glow of a neon sign after the plug has been pulled.

I feel negative pressure on my shoulder and realize Kennedy has released me. She stands in front of the detective. “You had a warrant?”

“Yes.”

“Did you call Ruth to tell her you’d be coming? Ask her to come voluntarily to the station?”

“That’s not what we do with murder warrants,” MacDougall says.

“What time was your warrant issued?”

“Five P.M. or so.”

“And what time did you actually get to Ruth’s house?”