Bear Is Broken (8 page)

After the judge had finished polling the jurors she sent them back
out into the hall. They filed out as meekly and mysteriously as they
had entered, resigned by now to the interminable routine of entering
and leaving and waiting without any explanations, their paperbacks
and their knitting baskets always close at hand.

When they’d filed out she denied the mistrial motion on the record,
finding that the jury had not been tainted. Beside me Ellis had begun
sketching furiously on his legal pad, his usual reaction to moments
of stress and tension in the trial. “All right,” Judge Iris said, giving me
a significant look, her eyebrows raised seemingly in encouragement.
“Let’s bring the jury back in. If you need anything moved around in
here, Counselor, why don’t you go ahead and do that.”

Teddy always made a point of changing something in the courtroom
before he gave his opening and closing statements, a subtle way of
demonstrating to the jurors that he owned the space he was about to
occupy, that he belonged in it just as much as the DA or the deputy
or the judge. But that would mean my coming out from behind the
defense table and wrestling with the podium or the easel. I shook my
head.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Judge Iris droned when the jurors were
back in their places, “the defense will now give its closing argument.
Since it’s been a whole day I will repeat the instructions I gave you
yesterday morning before the assistant district attorney gave her closing
argument. What the lawyers say is not evidence…”

They didn’t listen to the instructions then, I thought, and they won’t
listen now. They’ll decide based on some illogical detail that has nothing
to do with the facts, something they think makes them cleverer than
the attorneys or the police or anyone else, some coincidence that has
nothing to do with anything. She was finishing: “After Mr. Maxwell
speaks, Ms. McRae will have ten minutes for rebuttal. Counselor, you
may proceed.”

I thought of giving the whole thing sitting down, staring at my notes.
But then I was standing and moving away from the relative safety of
the defense table, walking around it to the well at the center of the
courtroom and turning to address the jury as I’d seen Teddy address
them. I was like a swimmer who’d cast off from the edge of the pool
and was treading water; now I had to put my face down and open my
eyes. I had to take a deep breath. I had to swim.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” I began, “I want to thank you for your
service in this difficult case.” I had to pause for breath. “I’m not going
to tell you how this case should come out. It’s not my job to do your
thinking for you. You heard the evidence, you saw the witnesses. Often
in these cases we have expert witnesses who come in and tell the jury
all about some technical aspect. Forensics, fingerprint analysis, that
sort of thing. But in this case you are the experts. This case does not
hinge on chemical analysis or accident reconstruction or any of those
things. This case hinges on human nature, on basic questions like who
has a motive to lie and what that person stands to gain. And every one
of you, based on your lifetime of experience as a human being, is an
expert in human nature.”

My pants had not fallen down. My voice had not cracked. I was
starting to feel as if I could breathe again. “The night before last I had
a chance to listen to my brother practice the closing statement he was
planning to give.” I waited half a beat for an objection, since I was
arguably appealing for personal sympathy from the jurors, but Melanie
kept her seat. “Yesterday afternoon he was planning to stand where I’m
standing now and tell you that the one of those two women, either
Lorlee Bradley or Sharla Johnson, sat in that witness stand, took an oath
to tell the truth, and then immediately began to tell the most fabulous
lies. Now, I don’t know about you, but I cringed when I heard that. I
like to think the best of people. When a person’s story doesn’t square
with the truth I like to tell myself that human memory is uncertain, that
my fellow citizens make mistakes and don’t intentionally lie, especially
not in a courtroom when they’ve taken an oath to tell the truth, the
whole truth, and nothing but the truth, under the penalty of perjury.

“In this case, however, it simply isn’t possible that we’re dealing with
just a mistake, given that the testimony of these women is diametrically
opposed.” I gave a summary of the differences. “With the contradictions
between these women’s stories, there are only two possible conclusions.

Either Lorlee invented the rape accusation to get back at Ellis
and get custody of her kids, lying about it when she called the police
and lying again here in court. Or Sharla Johnson came in here in a
matter in which she has no direct stake in the outcome, took the oath,
and lied about those phone conversations with Lorlee in which Lorlee
admitted making up the rape.

“Now, I’m not going to tell you who lied and who told the truth.
I’m sure you can guess what I think, but that’s beside the point. The
point is what you think, what you heard, what you saw, and what you
know. You heard those two witnesses testify. You listened to their words
and you listened to the sound of their voices. You watched their faces,
and you noticed the way they held themselves. With all your lifetime’s
knowledge of human nature, you know in your heart of hearts which
one was lying and which one was telling the truth. That knowledge
may sit well with you, or it may not. You may feel in your mind that
my client is a scoundrel for having an affair with his wife’s best friend,
and it would be hard not to agree with you. But that’s not what you’re
here to decide today, whether Ellis Bradley is a scoundrel. What you’re
here to decide is whether the DA proved beyond a reasonable doubt
that he raped his wife and beat her on those specific occasions named
in the charges.

“It’s the DA’s burden to prove her case beyond a reasonable doubt.
This means that if at any point in the DA’s chain of proof you have a
doubt, and a reason for that doubt, you must vote to acquit Mr. Bradley.
In that sense your job is easy. If you have a doubt, and you have a
reason, you’re finished. That’s the safeguard that’s built into our system,
because our forefathers decreed that before a man can be branded a
criminal, the state must bring an extraordinary amount of proof. Proof
beyond a reasonable doubt.”

I launched into a fairly standard set piece about Ellis’s decision
not to testify, explaining that he had the right to remain silent, that
the DA was required to prove the case against him and that he was
not obligated to prove himself innocent. Also, that neither he nor
Teddy nor I had to say one word, that we could have sat there with
our arms folded all through the trial. Then I talked about the other
evidence in the case, showing how ultimately everything came back
to Lorlee’s credibility.

I’d stopped being aware of myself as a person standing in a courtroom
giving a closing statement. Instead, I was wholly the words I was
speaking, the jurors I was persuading; for several minutes now I had
been living not in myself but in their gazes. Their eyes were still on
me, some guarded and hostile, others open and frank, but all engaged,
all listening. Their pens were poised over their notebooks, but they
were not writing. The only person who was writing was Ellis. I heard
the scratch of his pen as he furiously sketched.

“What you saw revealed here in court was an ugly situation, a
situation that must fill you with distaste. Ellis Bradley was having an
affair with his wife’s best friend, and Sharla was sleeping with her best
friend’s husband. That’s repugnant. But Sharla was Lorlee’s best friend,
and Lorlee had no reason to suspect that Sharla would reveal what
she told her in confidence. What she didn’t know was that Sharla was
Ellis’s lover, and that she couldn’t stand to see Lorlee do that to him.
Remember, too, Lorlee’s stake in the outcome. If Ellis Bradley is convicted,
she’ll get full custody of the children.”

At last Melanie rose. “Your Honor, that’s completely speculative.”

Judge Iris looked over her glasses at the jury. “I’ll remind the jurors
that what the lawyers say is not evidence. Proceed.”

The objection took the wind out of my sails. I ran through a
shortened version of the conclusion I’d planned, a quick summary
of the points I’d made. “When you get back there in the jury room
and start talking about the evidence, and thinking about how what
you’ve heard fits into what you know about human nature from
your life experiences, I’m confident you’ll come to only one conclusion.
I’m confident that you’ll find Mr. Bradley not guilty on
every charge.”

I walked back to my chair on stiff legs, feeling the way I’d once felt
after I’d hiked up Mount Diablo in the heat of summer with Jeanie and
had to come back down on burned-out quads, my legs wobbling every
step of the way. Ellis gave me a nod, and relief flooded through me.

Melanie strode confidently around the table to the far side of the
courtroom, lifted the easel and her gigantic writing pad, and carried
them into a position in the well right in front of the jury, placing the
easel at an angle where neither Ellis nor I could see what she wrote
on the pad. I knew my brother would have taken the opportunity to
move both himself and Ellis over to the gallery right beside the jurors,
but after speaking for an hour I didn’t have the energy to budge.

I checked my cell phone under the table. The hospital hadn’t called.
Teddy must still be alive. I wished, suddenly, that I was with him.
Beside me Ellis was still drawing.

Melanie was ready. “Ladies and Gentlemen, you’ve just heard the
defense attorney concede that his client is, in his words, a scoundrel
who was sleeping with his wife’s best friend and that the only witness
in Mr. Bradley’s favor is the woman with whom for four years
he cheated and lied. When you look at this situation from your life
experiences, you’ll see at once that Sharla Johnson is the obvious liar,
the kind of woman who would chase after her friend’s husband. What
motive does she have to lie? To get him off the hook, of course, and to
harm and humiliate Lorlee, supposedly her best friend but in reality
her rival, the person who stands in the way of her being with Mr.
Bradley. You’re all experts in human nature, the defense attorney said.
Think about the attitude of a mistress toward her lover’s wife. Think
about the jealousy Sharla Johnson feels for Lorlee. The hatred. You all
saw it in her face, the sheer ill will that comes from having to settle
for another woman’s leftovers.”

She went on like that for ten minutes. As she spoke, my breath
seemed to die in my throat, and all the exhilaration and satisfaction I’d
felt after my own performance withered away, my heartbeat slowing to
a crawl. It seemed to me that Melanie had picked up my whole speech
and neatly inverted it against me, showing all the points I shouldn’t
have conceded, showing the jurors that the portrait I’d painted of Ellis
was in fact the portrait of a guilty man.

By the time Melanie finished with her rebuttal I was certain Ellis
was going down, guilty on all counts. Judge Iris was kind enough, but
she would throw the book at him.

Ellis was still sketching, withdrawn into his private world. It was a
good hobby for prison. He would have a lot of time to work on his art.
I glanced back and saw Detective Anderson sitting in the back row
of the courtroom.

All that was left now was the jury instructions. The judge had to
read them verbatim. This usually took more than an hour. We had
to sit there pretending to follow along while the jury pretended
to listen.

About halfway through, between the instructions for the battery
charge and the rape charge, Ellis ripped the sheet from the pad and
pushed it over to me. It was the page he’d been drawing on all through
the closing arguments, a lifelike caricature of a hero, half-monkey, halfboy,
wearing an oversize suit but with bare clawed feet and a short cape
embroidered with a stylized “MB.” The monkey boy was swinging
down into the courtroom with a law book in one hand, his lips parted
in savage ferocity, while a sexed-up version of Melanie cowered behind
the prosecution table, her easel and pad fallen beside her.

Monkey Boy to the rescue. I supposed it was his way of saying no
hard feelings, Monkey Boy, you did your best.

Ellis’s drawing remained in the file for over a year. Eventually I
rediscovered it and had it enlarged on matte paper. I even got him to
sign it and had it framed. To this day it occupies a place of honor on
the wall behind my desk.

The daylight surprised me. A high wisp of cloud dispersed the light
without dimming it, leaving nowhere to rest the eyes. I had to fight
the urge to close mine and leave them closed.

I walked down across Market and managed to hail a cab before I
reached Teddy’s office. “SFGH,” I told the driver, then let myself back
into the corner of the stinking vinyl seat and closed my eyes.
I’d shaken Ellis’s hand and left him to the peanut butter sandwiches
and daytime television in the lockup. Judge Iris’s clerk had my cell
phone number so the court could call me if there was any news, a
verdict or a question from the jury.

Teddy was in the neurotrauma intensive-care unit at San Francisco
General. I later learned that there was no better place for him to have
ended up, that he was in the care of some of the best neurologists in
the country.

At the desk in the ward I told the nurse I was there to see Teddy
Maxwell. I had to present an ID before she showed me to his room.
She pointed out a chair, promising to be back in a minute.

My brother lay surrounded by equipment on all sides, his bulk
covered by a doubled sheet. His head and eyes were thickly bandaged.

An ooze of bloody fluid showed through the brown elastic overwrapping.
A faint beard had grown on his neck and cheeks, and the skin
underneath his stubble looked very pale. The respirator tube was in
his throat rather than his mouth, connected to an accordionlike air
pump on a stand beside the bed. The air smelled drily of disinfectant.