City of Liars and Thieves (24 page)

Burr's mouth curved slyly as he strode to the center of the courtroom. “Gentlemen, the patience with which you have listened to this lengthy and tedious testimony is honorable to your characters.”

Jurors and some members of the audience chuckled, and I could not deny that the prosecution's case had been long-winded. Colonel Burr allowed the laughter to die down before striking a more somber note.

“Have the witnesses spoken with candor or have they spoken from temper, hatred, and revenge?”

I couldn't help but feel that he was talking directly to me.

“Notwithst
anding the intimacy between the prisoner and the deceased, it did not amount to courtship. Nothing like a real courtship passed between them.” Burr stood absolutely still, seeming to measure the intensity of his listeners' involvement. He lowered his voice and, as if they were aboard a lurching ship, every member of the audience tipped forward. “It will be seen that the deceased manifested equal partiality for other persons as for Mr. Weeks.”

Elias sat up so forcefully that our bench wobbled. Only the horror of Burr's accusations kept me glued in place. Colden stood but did not, or could not, object. Necks stretched, jaws dropped, and the audience began to murmur.

Burr raised his voice above the din. “We shall show you that, if suspicions may be attached anywhere, there are those on whom they may be fastened with more appearance of truth than on the prisoner at the bar.”

Burr's penetrating eyes searched the audience, Elias's leg tensed against mine, and, in that instant, all my doubts and suspicions turned to dread.

Burr's features softened as he addressed the jury. “Certainly, you are not in this place to condemn others, yet it will relieve your minds of a burden.”

“In other words,” Hardie said, scribbling notes as he spoke, “free my client and you won't have to accuse anyone.”

“We will show that the deceased sometimes appeared melancholy. She was dependent upon—”

Burr's eyes searched the audience and found mine. My fingertips clasped the edge of our bench, certain that he was going to say that Elma was dependent on laudanum. But it was not mentioned, not yet.

“She was dependent upon Mr. and Mrs. Ring, and that gloomy sense of her situation might have led her to destroy herself.”

“Woe,” a man behind me said. He sounded as if he were trying to slow a runaway horse.

“Which is it? Did someone do her in or did she do it herself?”

“Why should he say?” Hardie answered, “as long as Levi Weeks is set free.”

Led by Hamilton, the defense called a string of witnesses. Unlike Burr, whose gestures were slow and deliberate, Hamilton moved with a flurry of activity.

Ezra Weeks's stable boy swore he had not noticed anything unusual about Ezra's horse the morning after Elma went missing. Our boarder, Isaac Hatfield, gave a damning account of what he called “Elma's melancholy temperament,” seemingly pleased to impart every vice she ever possessed. Perhaps he was offended because Elma never returned his attention, but it didn't quite explain the intensity of his criticism.

“I saw her once take out a vial,” he said. “This was after Elias Ring yelled at her about something. She held up a small glass bottle full of reddish-brown liquid—”

“Laudanum?”

“I suppose. I did not recognize what it was, but Levi was there. He snatched it away and said it would kill her.”

The audience began to stir. Hamilton spoke above the fray. “Though Elias Ring was excused from the oath, he testified that he had never threatened the prisoner—or at least he said
he could not recall doing so.
Is that your recollection?”

Hatfield shook his head. “The day Elma was found, after they brought her back to the house, I heard Ring say that if he ever met Levi in the dark, he would put a loaded pistol to his head.”

My heart pounded as I remembered Elias's threats. Sadness seeped into me. I was drowning in it.

Condensation collected on the windowpanes as Ezra Weeks defended his brother. He spent the better part of two hours rambling on about Levi's efficiency, even producing notes of the business discussion he and Levi had the day Elma vanished. According to Ezra, Levi arrived at his home “just as we drank tea and were yet sitting at the table before we lit candles” and “tarried till about eight o'clock.”

Spectators began to calculate time. One woman considered the lethal act as if listing chores. “Levi Weeks would have had to take off the harness bells, tack the horse, drive to the Ring's house, get Elma, go to the well, get back, unhitch the horse, and retie the bells. That's a lot to do in an hour.”

“And he had to kill her,” someone else said. “Don't forget that.”

As the dreadful day ebbed into an equally dismal evening, the defense called the doctor who had examined Elma's body in our home.

“I was called upon by the sheriff on the third of January to serve as coroner to the body of Elma Sands,” Dr. Prince said, implying that, unlike Colden's medical experts, he had made a full and authorized exam. “I was asked specifically by the sheriff to examine and see if Miss Sands was pregnant.”

Clamor broke out in the courtroom. “I knew it!” a woman cried. Though I did not turn to look, I was sure she was the same woman who had camped outside our home. Elias squeezed my hand, cautioning me.

“And what did you determine?” Hamilton asked.

I braced myself.

“I concluded that Elma Sands was not pregnant.”

Elias's hand relaxed, while the room erupted.

“Impossible,” said Elma's staunch supporter. I agreed. But everyone else seemed to take the doctor at his word.

“If she wasn't carrying his child,” one man said, “he had no reason to kill her.”

Though Dr. Prince looked perfectly composed, I could not understand his assurance. There were many variables, none of which he addressed. Could Elma have miscarried during the violent struggle? Would eleven days at the bottom of a well minimize signs of a pregnancy?

Hamilton drew a deep breath. “Is it your opinion, Dr. Prince, from all you saw, that the death was caused by drowning?”

Distinguished creases surfaced around the doctor's eyes as he closed them and nodded. “I saw no marks of violence,” he said. “No appearance but what might be accounted for by supposing she drowned herself.”

My knuckles were white against the bench.
Beating, kicking, pushing, choking, suffocating, and drowning:
The indictment's agonizing refrain ran through my thoughts. I was certain it would be lodged in my head forever.

Beside me, Hardie was flipping through his notes. “ ‘Murdered by some person or persons,' ” he read. “That was the verdict after he examined her.”

Undeterred, Dr. Prince addressed the court. “At first I believed she was murdered, but after giving the matter considerable thought, my opinion changed.”

“Why was that?” Colden asked.

“I've seen a number of drowned people at the almshouse and have seen livid spots upon the skin, much as I saw on Miss Sands. What I initially thought to be marks of violence were merely the result of suffocation.”

“Would suffocation produce a row of spots around the neck?” Colden asked, grasping his collar.

“If the body was gangrened, it might.”

The din died down. I marveled at how easily people were willing to accept the opinion of these supposed experts and wondered if I had once been the same way.

The courtroom stirred as the public came and went, but the jury was not offered any relief.

Joseph Watkins was called to the stand. He did not acknowledge Elias or me as he walked up. He repeated the oath with the somberness of a eulogy.

Burr was equally grave. “Was there anything in the conduct of Elias Ring that led you to suspect an improper intimacy between him and Elma?” he asked.

Thinking I had misunderstood, I looked around to gauge the reaction of others. The audience looked as shocked as I felt. I heard a soft moan, and though I recognized that it came from my lips, I was outside myself, past denial and beyond shame.

“Elias Ring seduced Elma?” rang through the room. The crowd was shouting, fists raised, feet stomping.

“Upon my soul! I knew it!” the crazed woman exclaimed.

Burr stood in the midst of the turmoil like a commander in the field, while I was as helpless as a felled soldier.

Next to me, Hardie crouched and shifted as he took notes, his back turned away, his expression hidden.

“Elias?” I pleaded. I wanted to ask what Burr was talking about, but asking outright would mean acknowledging the accusation.

“Lies,” he muttered. His voice was angry and weak. “Burr's spewing lies at our expense. Caty.” It was the first time he had addressed me by name since the trial began. “It's a tactic. He's trying to confuse the issues.”

The defense had suggested many alternatives to the prosecution's argument. One moment Burr proposed that someone other than Levi had murdered Elma. The next he posited that Elma had killed herself. Was this just another attempt to muddle the facts?

Watkins's gaze settled above the audience as if he were focusing on the distant horizon. “When in the time of sickness Catherine Ring was in the country, I imagined one night I heard the shaking of a bed in the third story, where Elma's bed stood within four inches of the partition. I heard a man's voice. I am positive that it was not Levi's.” Watkins shook his head, managing to look both regretful and outraged. “I told my wife, ‘That girl will be ruined.' ”

“Dear Lord,” I gasped, feeling short of breath. Watkins was correct about Elma's bed. I looked over to Levi. He had his head in his hands, but his fingers were splayed so that his expression was hidden.

“Did you recognize the man's voice?” Burr asked.

“Yes. I said to my wife, ‘It's Elias Ring's voice.' ”

Elias was staring at Watkins, slowly shaking his head with melancholy exhaustion. People turned and looked. Some pointed.

“Did you ever hear the shaking of the bed or voices after Mrs. Ring returned from the country?”

“No. I never did.”

Elias set a clammy hand on mine, but the gesture seemed intended to stifle, not soothe.

Colden was on his feet. I held my breath, praying for him to discredit Watkins. “When was the last time you saw the room in which Elma slept?” he asked.

Watkins shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Were you not there on the afternoon the deceased's body was brought home?”

“Yes,” Watkins nodded. “I was there then.”

Colden shook his head as if marveling at Watkins's selective memory. “Before that day, when was the last time you saw the room and the placement of the bed?”

“I can't say when.”

“Were you there any time last fall?”

“I don't know that I was.”

“Before the afternoon that you brought Elma's body back to the Ring's house, had you ever seen Elma's bed?” The question was directed at Watkins, but Colden faced the jury.

“I don't know that I had,” Watkins said.

“But you said the bed was next to your room. In fact,” Colden consulted his notes, “you said it was situated ‘within four inches of the partition.' How did you know that?”

Watkins leaned forward, looking past Colden to Burr. “I've seen the bed placed so,” he answered.

“
After
her death,” Colden clarified.

Watkins shook his head. “No. Before.”

Colden held up his hands.

“See,” Elias said loudly. “Watkins has no idea what he's saying.”

The jurors looked puzzled. Even Judge Lansing frowned at Watkins's unfounded accusations. “No one believes him,” I muttered. But I felt angry hives spring up on my neck, and I sat on my hands to keep from scratching.

Burr tried to reestablish Watkins's credibility. “Did you ever speak to anyone else of this noise that you and your wife heard?”

“I don't know.” Watkins gazed out into the audience. His focus settled at the back of the room. “I once told Croucher that I believed he had a hand in it.”

“You told Richard Croucher that you thought Elias Ring had a hand in Elma's death?”

“No. It was Croucher I suspected. I asked him where he was that night.”

Burr returned to the attorneys' table, put on his glasses, and flipped through his notes. It was the first time he seemed ill prepared, and the audience began to murmur. The instant Burr wavered, Hamilton leapt to his feet. He patted Burr on the shoulder, patronizing and firm, as if pushing him down into the chair. Burr shot him a furious glance, but Hamilton smiled amicably and approached the witness.

“You say you asked Richard Croucher where he was on the night of December twenty-second.” He made Croucher's surname sound like a curse.