Criminal (19 page)

We hardly got to say good-bye. She was only in our block about ten hours between her sentencing and getting transferred over to the prison, and half of that was count and lights-out. They came to get her at two a.m. I got to hug her and tell her I'd write, that I knew she would be okay, but it didn't feel like enough. Through the dark I watched her shuffle away, half the person she'd been when I got here.

I couldn't help but wonder if that was going to happen to me.

FINALLY WE WERE PREPARING FOR DEE'S TRIAL. IT WAS
March now. Everyone told me this was quick for getting into court. It meant the case was extra important.

For a week leading up to it, Hampton and her assistant visited every day. Asking me questions, showing me my statements, going over details again and again, making sure everything was correct. Bianca worked with me for hours on just trying to maintain eye contact with her while I gave my answers. Telling me to sit up straight, showing me how to speak toward the microphone but not too close. Hampton pretended to be Dee's lawyer, firing cross-examination questions that made me squirm. Getting mad when I did.

“He's going to ask you worse,” she assured me with that
unforgiving face of hers. “You're going to have to answer back strong. Stick to the story. Don't elaborate and don't get defensive. For God's sake don't mumble, and don't let anyone see that you're afraid of him. It's his
job
to make you look bad in front of the jurors. You're going to have to be stronger than this.”

On our last day, Hampton told me they weren't going to let me change into street clothes when I appeared on the witness stand. I was going to have to get up there in front of everyone—including Dee—in my jail uniform.

“But I'm going to look like a
criminal
!” I wailed.

“You
are
a criminal, Nikki,” Hampton growled. “At least in these jurors' eyes. You lied to the police to protect your boyfriend, you were an essential part of his scheme, and you did nothing to obstruct his plan. For over a week, you tried to help him cover it up. They are going. To think. You are. A killer. What I need you to stay focused on, what I need you to remember, is that
he
was the one who pulled the trigger. He was the one who planned this whole thing, down to the last detail. He brought you into this, and he was the one who wanted Deputy Palmer dead. This isn't your trial right now. What we're doing here, what is so vitally important, is working to prove beyond a reasonable doubt”—she had said this so many times, I was so tired of it—“that Denarius Pavon was the mastermind and executor of this plan, that he manipulated your feelings for him to get you to help, and he
conducted it with motive and without remorse. If you can't be on board with that, you might as well not show up tomorrow.”

I was glaring at her. Everyone told me the lawyers were supposed to be nice to you, were supposed to make you feel at ease. But Hampton could still barely stand to show me any kindness, with her brusque man voice, her unrelenting pressure.

At the same time, her strictness made me feel the way I'd felt when Priscilla's hand went over my mouth that dark night in our cell. Telling me to get something to do and quick. Something more than obsessing over my boyfriend, anyway. They both expected me to pull it together, not caring how I did it. Not praising me for it or questioning my ability. All they did was point out that I had to. Which helped me, somehow, understand that I could.

Though it was exhausting and uncomfortable—though I was so nervous, and Hampton so tough—working on this testimony was much more than just something to do, anyway. It was something to do that, if it made Dee pay for what he'd done, was going to actually be worth doing.

BUT NOTHING MARJORIE DID IN THOSE FEW DAYS BEFORE
trial could really prepare me for what it was like. Early in the morning the guards got me up. Searched me, cuffed me, took me to the courthouse, and I had to wait in a holding cell there for what felt like forever. It was worse than waiting in jail, worse than those long hours in lockdown. I tried to do what Bianca told me, to go over the questions and think about the honest answers to them, to take long slow breaths and count them to a hundred if I had to, but it was hard to focus. I hadn't seen him in so long. It had been easy—easier, anyway—to quit Dee when I was completely cut off from him. When I was surrounded by jail life, by my friends. When I had no other choice. Now I wondered if it would be like it always was with Cherry. And Bo.
And Gary. And everyone else. It didn't matter how long they'd been in rehab or how many times. All it took was one sniff, one hit, one inhale, one swallow, and they were right back where they started: helpless. Hooked.

When the deputy finally came for me, I cleared my throat and breathed as calmly as I could. I tried not to be afraid.
All you have to do
, Hampton had said,
is get up there and tell the truth.

The whole truth.

And nothing else.

WHEN THE DEPUTY SWUNG THE COURTROOM DOOR OPEN,
the first thing that hit me was how many
people
were in there. Bianca had told me they'd be there, but it was still uncomfortable, walking past. I kept my eyes on Hampton and Bianca up front, hands folded before them, waiting for me to get to my seat.

As I walked to the stand, next all I could see were the faces of the jury. You wouldn't think twelve people could look like so many. All of them watching me. Judging, but trying to keep their expressions even. Hampton had told me if I looked at any of them, I'd have to make eye contact. To be relaxed. Confident, but not cocky. Respectful, but not cowed. I didn't know, at that moment, how to be any of those things. How to be anything other than what I truthfully was: afraid, ashamed, defeated, resigned.

The deputy stood in front of me and asked me to raise my right hand. Whole truth, nothing but, etc. The judge told me I could have a seat, and the deputy stepped away.

And then, there he was.

In a suit. Blue, with a pale blue shirt and a blue-and-green-striped tie. I guessed because it was his trial, they'd let him get dressed up. And he did. His gold watch was gleaming. Cuffs pulled down neat, to cover as many of the tattoos on his wrists and hands as he could. Hair freshly cut—sharp and tight. Though I couldn't smell it, I knew he was wearing cologne, and I knew it was Drakkar Noir. I'd sprayed my pillows with it once, hoping the smell of him would follow me into my dreams. That I would wake up, my nose buried in that smell as though still buried in his warm neck. I thought this, but I couldn't feel it as I looked at him. He was shaved. Clean. Skin almost radiant with freshness, though I usually liked him a couple days unshaven. Still, he seemed so loose. Even though he was sitting straight, hands folded in front of him on the table, his whole body seemed to say he had nothing to worry about. Like this was an interview for a job he knew he'd get. Easy. Confident. Not a worry in the world.

But here was the thing.

He couldn't look at me.

And it was because of this that I got through the first series of
questions: basic things like my name, where I lived and worked, my age, did I know the defendant, how did we meet. Though my voice quivered and my knees were shaking—everything in me shaking, all those eyes on me, except for his—as I talked, the talking got a little bit easier. And every time I glanced at him, even though Hampton had told me not to, his eyes were focused at a spot on the table in front of him, nowhere else. Like there was a screen on its surface that was the source of the story instead of me. I told them about the fair, and our romance, and our breakup, and then last May when he came back to me. Every time I glanced, he was looking down into somewhere else. Anywhere but at the me I was now, without him.

“You were in love with him,” Hampton said.

“Yes.”

“
Crazy
in love with him?”

“You could say that, yes.”

“So crazy that you continued to date him even though your best friend advised you against it, is that correct?”

Bird oh Bird, I'm so sorry—

“Yes.”

“You wanted to be with him so badly, you didn't really question much of what he did, did you?”

Hampton had told me not to elaborate, to simply answer yes or no. “Not really.”

“You gave him whatever he wanted, didn't you?”

A dangerous feeling came up in me then. A feeling that if, at that moment, he looked at me, I might falter. If he only raised his eyes for a second to acknowledge what we'd had, what we'd been—even if it was destroyed now—for just a glimmer, I might take it all back. Might fight for him again. Destroy this whole case. As Hampton went on, asking questions about our relationship, what we did together, if I'd ever met his family or his other friends, a tiny, buried part of me kept aching for the wild, borderless feeling I'd had with him. It wanted to be sucked up into the tornado of wanting him again. To lose myself—all of it—in the hot, damp satisfaction of taking whatever he dished out.

“And you never knew,” Hampton said, “about Mr. Pavon's relationship with Miss Palmer, is that correct?”

For a second I looked at him. Quivered.

But he was forever blank.

“That's correct.”

“Did you ever meet Miss Palmer? Or speak to her?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Mr. Pavon never spoke about her?”

“He mentioned her I think once or twice when we got back together. To explain what had happened. That they had been out a few times but were broken up.”

“And did he tell you why they broke up?”

“Something about her family. They didn't like him.”

“Did he tell you that he was hoping to marry Nicole?”

Did I care anymore?

“No.”

“You found out about their engagement later, is that correct?”

“Yes. It was when the police came to question me.”

“Did you know anything about her at all?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Miss Dougherty, did you have any reason to dislike Miss Palmer? To be jealous of her?”

Dee's eyes finally came up. To meet mine. And in that moment I saw a pained, pathetic face wearing an expression I was sure—it gave me chills—that Bird had seen on mine too many times. Pleading. Needing. Helpless and weak at even the mention of her, so much talk of their love. I saw that he'd never been the strong man I'd looked up to—only just less weak than I was. And now I could see that his love for her was just as blind as mine had been for him: without any sense of self. A hunger that could never get fed. Because in addiction, there is never enough. His love for her would make them both suffer. It would never make him whole.

“There's no reason to be jealous at all.”

THE REST WAS GRUELING. FIRST, MY EARLY COMMENTS TO
the police, brought out and shown to me, read out loud. “You lied, didn't you?” Hampton asked, looking like she wanted to rip me in half. Then the real statement, the truth—parts enough to get them away from Bird, anyway—enough to get me in jail and get Dee out of Nicole's arms. That read out loud too. But it wasn't enough. Instead Hampton made me tell the whole story again—front to back, from Friday to the end. Question after question—questions I knew were coming but were still hard to answer—guiding me further along. Making me reveal it to this room of strangers, this group of judges. To him. Every detail, every truth.

What I had done.

What he had done.

What we had done together.

The guilt was overwhelming. I'd had distance from it, knew this was what I wanted to do. I'd practiced so many times. But still, in front of all these people, it was impossible to fight. Nicole wasn't there today—Hampton said it was too difficult for her—but I knew some of her family were. And knowing this, all of Hampton's questions were made ten times worse.
Why didn't you drive away? Why didn't you make him drive his own car? Why didn't you go to the police? Why did you lie?
The shame, the wonder at my own stupid willingness flooded over me, seeing all over again how they saw it. Saw me for the pathetic fool I was. I wanted to stop everything, lean in, say a hundred times,
I'm sorry
.
Don't you see I'm sorry?
but it was like Hampton could sense me weakening. Each time I hesitated, she came firing in with one more hard question, pushing me forward. Propping me up.

“You have your own trial coming up involving this case, don't you, Miss Dougherty?”

The mention of it made me even more nervous. And I was shaken. Spent. “Yes.”

“And this testimony can be used against you in that trial, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You are also aware that if it's revealed that you've perjured
yourself in any way during this testimony, the results could be very grave for you.”

Tears now. “Yes.”

“So what you're telling us today is the truth, is that correct?”

Shudder. “Yes.”

“The whole truth.”

“
Yes
.”

“And you're giving this testimony without any promise from me, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Her voice meaner, harder—a diamond. “We have made no exchange whatsoever for your cooperation, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“But you're still hoping that the court will be lenient with you.”

“I—”

“Answer the question, Miss Dougherty. You hope that, when it comes time for your own trial, the court will have mercy.”

“Of course.” Wiping my eyes. “I mean,
yes
.”

“That is all, your honor.”

AFTER THAT, ALL I HAD TO DO WAS STAND IT THROUGH THE
cross-examination. Hampton'd warned me Dee's lawyer would try to make me look bad, and he did, but after already baring everything like that, I didn't much care. I had already been stripped down. Everybody already knew what I was. And besides, most of the questions he asked—wasn't this really my idea, hadn't I been enraged with jealousy, didn't I make Dee do drugs—I could honestly answer no to.