We Begin at the End(92)

Walk took the stand next, did not need to introduce himself or run his credentials again. Martha ran him through the break-in. He spoke with calm. He did not meet Vincent’s eye once, though felt the stare.

And then Deschamps was up. “I feel a little blindsided here.”

“Leah only found it last night. She works evenings sometimes, when her husband can be home with the kids. It bothers her more than me, the system, I know where everything is.”

“So, Chief Walker, if you know where everything is, how come you didn’t bring this to attention earlier?”

“I forgot about the break-in.”

“You forgot?” She looked at the jury, confusion on her face. “You grew up with Vincent King. You knew the family. You used to visit him in prison. It doesn’t strike me, with all that’s going on, as something you’d forget.”

Walk swallowed and took a last breath. He knew it would change after. All of it.

“I’m sick.”

He looked around the room, reporters at the back, a line of watchers. He felt the quiet, the eyes on him.

“I have Parkinson’s disease. My memory is not what it was. I haven’t told anyone yet, thought I could deal with it. I guess I … I guess I didn’t want to lose my place.”

He glanced at the jury and saw compassion. And then across at Vincent, who watched him with sad eyes.

And then he looked down at the break-in report, and he knew that if they studied it, if they looked hard enough, they’d see a slight lean to the scrawl, like it was written with a shaking hand.

*

Closing statements began at five, Rhodes said he’d rather give the jury the case late than move into another day. Martha was up first, and she took the floor, every eye on her. She didn’t use notes, Walk could imagine she’d had a late night. She was brief, she’d detailed the facts. She spoke of Star and the tragedy that became of her. She talked of the Radley children, and how they deserved justice, but for the right person. And then Milton, the facts could not be denied. She painted a portrait so tragically accurate that the jurors sat mesmerized. And then on to Vincent. She asked them to imagine entering the prison system at fifteen years old, a frightened child in a prison with the darkest men. She spoke of his regret, his battle to serve the hardest time he could. Maybe he was institutionalized, maybe he did kill a man in self-defense. And maybe he did make the kind of mistake you don’t ever deserve to recover from. But that didn’t mean he’d killed Star Radley. And his silence did not speak of guilt, but rather a crushing self-hatred that burned so fierce he’d rather be punished for another’s crime than take his place in a world where the child he’d killed could not.

*

A thousand miles from that courthouse, Robin found the yellow flower from a rabbitbrush and brought it back. Duchess helped him flatten it, then pin it to their board, beside Jet. She placed an arm around him, her mind elsewhere. Rick Tide had begun again, trying for a rise, a kid that did not know when to quit. He’d spit on her back, told her that was from Mary Lou. She’d gone to the bathroom and washed her shirt, thought of Walk and how he’d told her to be good.

That evening after they ate Duchess took Robin out to the swing set in the big garden and pushed him before a sun that sat blazing beyond the trees. He squinted and smiled and she told him he was a prince.

Then she helped him ready for bed, brushed his teeth and read him a chapter from a story about a pig named Wilbur and a spider named Charlotte.

“He’s an emotional pig,” Robin said.

“He is.”

That night they said a prayer. Robin looked over to his sister and she made him close his eyes and steeple his fingers.

“Why did we pray tonight?” he asked.

“Just checking in.”

After he fell asleep she crept from the room. She passed the beds, the forgotten children slept, dead to the world for those precious hours when they could forget their place and occupy another.

The room in darkness, just the television glow. She flipped channels till she found the right news station, and watched as reporters gathered outside the courthouse.

She’d called Walk, collect, he sounded beat as he told her the jury would think on it, that they could come back anytime at all. She guessed it was soon.

Her mind ran to her mother, to the past year and all that came with it.

She turned and saw her brother standing in the doorway, his eyes fixed on her.

“You’re not in the bed.”

“Sorry.”

He walked over and sat beside her, and they watched scenes so distant it was hard to believe their connection.

They saw reporters fill, cut to commercials. In silence she sat and wondered what was on her brother’s mind. When they retuned they ran through the trial and detailed things they did and did not know about their mother and about Vincent King.

When the verdict flashed red she sat up, heart beating fast.

“What does it say?”

“They said he didn’t kill Mom.”

She watched, mouth slightly open, as the reporter found a juror. The man looked tired, but still managed a smile. He detailed the testimony of the Cape Haven Chief of Police. How the cop had found a break-in report that showed the suspected murder weapon, a gun once owned by the suspect’s father, could not have been in the possession of Vincent King. The jury had been on the fence, it gave them the out they needed.