Order in the Court (19 page)

Forms were handed back and forth between the bailiff, the judge, and juror number one. Finally, it was handed to the clerk, whose voice was squeaky as he read into a microphone:

“In the matter of the People versus Dustin James Adams, we, the jury, find the defendant, Dustin James Adams, guilty of murder in the first degree, a felony, upon Katherine Anne Barrett, a human being, as charged in Count One of the indictment.”

I had to slap both hands over my mouth to stop myself from screaming, or maybe throwing up. My heart was going a mile a minute. Guilty? Had they really said guilty?

“In the matter of the People versus Dustin James Adams, we, the jury, find the defendant, Dustin James Adams, guilty of murder in the second degree, a felony, upon Erica Rose O’Brien, Jessa Inez Fuentes, and Jacob Hastings, human beings, as charged in Counts Two, Three, and Four of the indictment.”

I couldn’t help it: a squeak escaped past my lips. Or maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was Amanda Barrett, who was seated behind her son. Her son, standing while the verdict was pronounced. Her son, found guilty of murder four times over.

There was a rushing in my ears. I didn’t hear the sentence, or the judge excuse the jury and thank them for their service, two things I knew must have happened. All I could hear was the blood in my ears, the blood pumping, still alive. I covered my face with my hands and pitched forward, resting my forehead on my knees as hot tears spilled through my fingers.

Someone’s hand was on my back, rubbing it hard in small circles as I began to choke on air, the tears filling my nose. There was no flood of relief. No dam breaking. I cried because I was frustrated and angry. Dustin Adams spending the rest of his life in prison would not bring back Kate or Jessa or Ricky or Jake. Dustin Adams being named guilty meant nothing.

I looked up when it was all over. Brandon was telling me how strong I was, how brave, to have come to see the verdict read. I did not feel brave. I felt unsatisfied. But I smiled anyway when anyone looked my way, the best grateful smile I could manage.

We had won, after all.

STARS DANCED
across the ceiling of Abby’s bedroom, projected from a slowly rotating nightlight in the corner. I watched them raptly, trying to identify the constellations from my astronomy book. Abby leaned against the wall as Libra wandered across her closed eyelids.

There was nothing to say, really.

“It still doesn’t feel over.”

I had said it so many times the words had lost their meaning. Dustin Adams was going to prison. He was a convicted
mass murderer
, because his victims totaled four. His name had already joined the Wikipedia page, according to Abby. I never wanted to hear his name again, but it was everywhere: in the papers, on the Internet, whispered on the street. I couldn’t go ten minutes without seeing it, hearing it.

“I know.”

Abby had washed all her makeup off. Without her customary red lipstick, her mouth looked smaller, younger. Her cheeks were naturally ruddy, mild rosacea usually hidden under a cake of foundation.

The projected stars whirled silently around us, over our bodies and the soft shapes of stuffed animals piled on the bed, the bookshelves, and the floor. I could hear the faint sounds of her parent’s television over my own breathing.

“I don’t know what to do now.”

Abby nodded again, Virgo catching on the corner of her mouth. “You go on as you did before, I guess. You go to school, make friends, find a pretty girl, and ask her out.”

My heart jumped into my throat, same as it always did when someone mentioned dating. “I’ve tried that,” I said. Although, had I, really? “I can’t just go on like it never happened. Things are different now.”

“Then do different things,” Abby said placidly, tipping her chin up as though feeling sunlight on her face instead of the faint points of light from the rotating nightlight. “Skip class, get a job, date a boy.”

The suggestion was so ludicrous as to sound credible. Why couldn’t I change the way my life was going? I was in control of my own future, after all, without a gun to my head or a trial looming.

There was a boy, a very sweet and handsome boy, the thought of whom filled me with a nervous flutter. But there was the
wrong, wrong, wrong
feel of it too, of the idea of dating anyone again, let alone—

“I might declare a prelaw major,” I said, as if that were the change of the century. It was practically expected of me now, with the legacy of my mother and my involvement in the murder trial.

“Criminal law?” Abby asked, her eyes still closed.

I shrugged and closed my own eyes. The wavering light created nebulas on the insides of my eyelids. “Child advocacy, maybe. Or a master’s in social work… that’s possible after prelaw, right?”

It was something that had been sitting, half-formed in the back of my mind—homeless youth, foster children, abused minors, juvenile delinquents with petty crimes on their records. Maybe forming a network of safe houses for youth in trouble, like LGBT kids put out on the streets by homophobic parents.

Abby let out a noncommittal “Hmm,” and then we lapsed into comfortable silence, sitting on her bedroom floor in our pajamas. I hadn’t had a sleepover in more than a year. Memories of Kate and I sitting on the bathroom floor exchanging lazy, intoxicated kisses came to mind.

I didn’t hear Abby stand up, but the lights flicked on and when I opened my eyes, she was on her feet by the door, her hand on the light switch.

“I’m not going to tell you how to feel,” Abby began seriously, and I blinked stupidly in the sudden light.

“Good. That would be ridiculous,” I interrupted, trying to rub the stars from my eyes.

“
But
…,” she continued, and I sighed, feeling the weight of that
but
. “It’s not psychologically healthy to go on letting something feel unfinished. Your grieving process is nowhere near over, and I get that, but you need to bring some closure into your life, or you’ll never move past it.”

“And how
exactly
am I supposed to get closure?” I demanded, feeling defensiveness igniting in my chest. “None of this feels finished, but it is. Dustin—” His name tasted sour in my mouth. “—is convicted. It’s over.”

“From the way you describe it, the trial created more questions than it answered.” Abby flopped onto her bed and pulled her knees up to her chest, looking, in her cat-covered pj’s and hair in two braids, more like a serious psychology student than I had ever seen her. “That’s not closure, that’s opening all kinds of new avenues for obsession.”

“Well, I can’t do anything about
that
, now can I?” I asked bitterly. “Trials are not about finding out the truth. They’re about two sides presenting conflicting stories and a jury picking which one sounds more convincing. I didn’t even stick around to hear his side, because I know it was all a story.”

I had become cynical over the last few weeks, critical of the process. And why shouldn’t I? Being a part of it had disillusioned me of the grandness of the judicial system.

“He’s being transferred on the sixteenth, right?” Abby asked.

“Yeah.” I didn’t bother to ask her how she knew that. I knew, from my mother’s updates, which facility Dustin would be moved to and when, now that he’d been convicted and sentenced. He had just over two weeks left in the county jail, barring any unforeseen consequences. “So?”

“You’re eighteen on the tenth.”

My birthday was creeping up on me, a daunting X on the calendar.
The day you become an adult
, I’d think with a twist in my stomach. The birthday Ricky and Kate never made it to, the one Jessa had only just passed.
You’re growing up without them.

“Yeah, so?” I repeated, trying not to let my unease show.

Abby made a face at me, as if I should get it by now. “You’ll be eighteen, and he’ll still be in county. You could go… talk to him. Get your answers. Hear his side.” She bit her lip and hugged her knees a little tighter to her chest. “Or, you know what, never mind. You never want to see him again. But if you
could
stand it….” She sounded wistful in a way I didn’t want to analyze, as if the idea of talking to a murderer were somehow appealing.

“That’s a terrible idea” is what I said, but my thoughts were racing. I wanted,
needed
, the truth about what happened… not the fairy tale of the defense, nor the horror show of the prosecution. The Truth, with a capital T, about why Dustin Adams picked up a gun that night and ended four lives.

“Yeah, of course. Sorry,” Abby mumbled, and we fell into silence again, although the silence was more charged than before, an undercurrent of unease having entered our comfortable bubble of safe “girl talk.”

All that night, while Abby slept, my brain ran over the possibilities of how such a visit would go. Would he even agree to see me? To answer my questions? What if the answers weren’t what I wanted to hear, if he gave them?

I fell into a restless sleep after I decided, once and for all, that no, I was
not
going to pay a visit to the man who murdered my friends in cold blood. I would not. The temptation to know what had really transpired was not enough to make myself endure my name in his voice, his eyes meeting my eyes. I would not. I
could
not.

It was never going to happen.

I EXPECTED
the place to be dirtier. The white tiled floor was swept clean, the chairs in the waiting room were the same connected seats from Dr. Wagner’s waiting room, but the copies of the
Times
and
Vogue
and
Men’s Health
were newer, less vandalized. The walls were the mint green of doctor’s offices; it was as though, in this little spot, they were trying to make you forget this was a prison.

They had two kinds of visiting areas, an open room with tables or a phone booth. You were allowed to choose. There was a longer line for the phones, but I chose that option anyway, not wanting even the possibility of him touching me. I didn’t want to feel his breath on my face, didn’t want to smell him, to have him reach for me. Even the thought made my skin crawl.

So I waited in the deceptively clean waiting room with women with screaming babies waiting to see daddy, with anxious parents visiting their children, with girlfriends who looked too damn young fixing their hair and makeup in the reflection of their iPhone screens. And me, waiting to speak to the man who had taken everything from me.

“Nguyen?”

They’d said my name correctly. I was somehow unsurprised. The surrealness of the place and the situation made anything possible, even the correct pronunciation that sometimes even my mother’s family couldn’t get quite right even with years of practice.

I followed an armed guard through door after buzzing door. Each time the door buzzed and slammed, buzzed and slammed, I felt more and more trapped. I flinched when we finally entered the room, a long rectangle with ten booths. I was directed into the third one, where I sat on a metal stool that groaned as I adjusted my weight on it.

I was too short for the booth. The counter hit me at chest level, and the phone was far above my head. The cord was long; it would reach, but I felt silly knowing I’d have to stretch to pick it up. I felt small. I felt weak. I wanted to feel in charge, powerful, in control. I was on the outside and he was in a cage.

The door on his side of the glass buzzed. I could feel it more than hear it. Other people were speaking into the phones with their loved ones. Dustin came into view, and my breath caught. He seemed surprised to see me as well.

He sat shakily down on his own stool. He was taller than I remembered, but willowy, thin as a branch. He picked up the phone, and I waited a moment. I was in control. He gestured toward my phone, and I stretched up to reach it and then put the black plastic receiver to my ear.

“I thought there’d been some mistake when they told me you were my visitor,” he said, and I felt slighted. He’d taken my opportunity to open, stolen the moment. He laughed and I shivered. “I didn’t think you would ever want to see me again.”

“I don’t,” I answered quickly, knowing that if I didn’t steer the conversation, he’d be in control. He’d manipulate his way into my head and see all the cracks he’d made, all the damage. “I don’t want to see you. But I need to know why you did it.”

Dustin paused to brush a limp curl of brown hair off his forehead. It was lank and unkempt.

“I’m still maintaining my innocence,” he said dutifully, parroting his lawyer, no doubt. “We’re calling for a mistrial, or an appeal, or something.” He shrugged in the classic “can’t help you, sorry” kind of way. I wasn’t buying it.

“I’m not a lawyer. You don’t have your lawyer present. Nothing you say to me can be used in court.” I wasn’t sure about this, but it seemed likely. “It would be hearsay, inadmissible.” I’d been watching too much
Judge Judy
.

Dustin didn’t reply. He slowly hit the receiver against his temple, once, twice, three times, dislodging the lock of hair he’d slicked back.

“Dustin, this is me. It’s just me.” I hated appealing to him. Everything about him made my skin crawl. I would rather bathe in raw sewage than have him in the same room as me again. He was sitting a foot away, separated by plexiglass. “I need to know what really happened.”

“No you don’t.” He continued to hit the phone against his temple. Once, twice, three times again. “You don’t want the truth. You want a neat little package, a fantasy wrapped up in a bow.” Once, twice, three times.

The slope of his forehead, the jut of his jaw, the button nose, and the blue eyes—there was so much of Kate there; they were so similar when you knew what to look for. Dustin Adams. Murderer. His heart-shaped face and blue eyes didn’t fit the description.

“No,” I said. “I want the truth.” And I did. I so desperately needed to know the
truth
. So many lies in the courtroom had muddled everything, had muddled what really happened in my head. Had I really seen him turn his face toward me when he shot Jacob Hastings? Had his feet really stopped just in front of the stall while I held my breath?