slept in his suit and, well, smelling pretty much as might have been expected. The one-night rate, it turned out, hadn't included shower privileges. And unlike even the cheap motels he was used to on the rare occasion when he traveled, there'd been no cute little soaps, shampoos and conditioners arrayed on the bathroom sink. In fact, there'd been no bathroom. There'd been a sink, a steel thing with a single faucet producing cold water, and a matching toilet, no seat, no lid.
With no mirror in sight, the best he could do was to run a hand through his hair and over the stubble on his chin. He had to tie his tie three times to get the ends right. His shirt was badly wrinkled, but that was nothing compared to how it smelled.
So when Jaywalker walked into the courtroom Tuesday morning to find Amanda waiting for him with a fresh suit and shirt, clean undershorts and socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a comb and-most welcome of all-a stick of deodorant, he was beyond grateful. She'd found his address among his identification, she explained, and used his keys to let herself into his apartment. Security had been no problem, there being none.
Justice Hinkley allowed him ten minutes to use a public restroom to change and defumigate. By the time he reappeared, he looked pretty much himself, give or take a day's stubble. Not that pretty much himself was ever going to land him on the pages of GQ magazine. But at least he smelled good, thanks to a generous underarm and overbody coating of Old Spice Original Scent.
Most murder cases involve a single victim. Yet prosecutors invariably feel compelled to offer not one but two witnesses when it comes to identifying the body for the jury. The first is typically a police witness, often a detective or officer who viewed the victim at the crime scene and later at the medical examiner's office, to assure the jurors that the bodies are one and the same. Chain of custody, so to speak.
In Carter Drake's trial, that had posed a problem, but only a bit of one. By the time the police arrived at the scene of the crash, the victims were already unrecognizable. But between the testimony of Lone Thanning and Oliver Jacoby, all nine of them had been fully identified for the jury.
The second identifier at a murder trial is generally a next of kin or other close relative of the deceased. The avowed purpose of this exercise is to have someone who knew the victim in life, and subsequently saw him or her in death, vouch for the fact that the now-lifeless body is indeed the person named in the indictment. So much for the avowed purpose. What's really going on, of course, is that the prosecutor wants to humanize the victim, wants to bring in a grieving mother or father, son or daughter, to take the long walk to the witness stand and, choking back tears, describe having to see an only child or beloved parent laid out on a cold slab in the morgue.
Abe Firestone had weeks ago signaled his intention to call eight family members, one per child, in order to make civilian identifications of their loved ones. Jaywalker had immediately screamed foul, pointing out that because none of the eight could in fact identify the remains of their children, the tactic was nothing but an appeal to emotion. And when Justice Hinkley had wavered, he'd threatened to test each of the witnesses by displaying a huge blowup of the photo showing the eight charred bodies, and seeing if the parent could truly pick out his or her child.
Not that he would have done it, of course. But with Jaywalker, you never knew, and the specter had evidently been too much for the judge. For once, she'd sided with the defense. But at the same time she'd invited Firestone to come up with an alternative, some less inflammatory way of personalizing the victims. A week later, Firestone had unveiled his plan B. He intended to have a single parent stand in for the others. She-and the choice of gender was a pretty good indication that the prosecution was still hoping to maximize the emotional impact-would describe her own child, and then go on to name and say a little bit about each of the other seven. Again Jaywalker had objected. If the names of the children were what needed mentioning, surely some school official was in a better position to say who'd been on the van and who hadn't been, as opposed to some mother who might have been forty miles away, getting her hair done while the kids were climbing aboard.
In the end, the judge had agreed once again with Jaywalker, though not before scolding him for his sexist remark and warning him about his cavalier attitude. But there'd been no jurors around, and no members of the media. Still, she'd been right, and he'd apologized. He should have used a working mother in his example, rather than a well-coiffed one. So Firestone and his team had reluctantly moved on to plan C, eventually reporting that they'd taken the defense up on its suggestion and enlisted someone from the school to do the job.
Now, once the spectators had been allowed back inside the courtroom and the jurors led in, Julie Napolitano stood and announced that the People were ready to call their final witness, Rabbi Mordecai Lubovich.
Oy.
All eyes turned to see a small man, not much more than five feet tall, flanked by a pair of uniformed troopers, enter the courtroom. To Jaywalker, he looked to be in his seventies, maybe even his eighties. Then again, maybe it was the sadness he seemed to carry in with him that added to his years. The deep lines in his face gave him an uncanny resemblance to Edward G. Robinson. Not the early tough-talking one, though. More the weary warrior, the one who'd seen too much and wanted out. The one from Soylent Green.
NAPOLITANO: By whom are you employed, Rabbi Lubovich?
LUBOVICH: I'm employed by the Ramaz Yeshiva, here in New City.
NAPOLITANO: In what capacity?
LUBOVICH: I'm the equivalent of the principal.
NAPOLITANO: For how long have you been so employed?
LUBOVICH: For thirty-two years.
NAPOLITANO: Do you recall the day of May 27 of last year?
LUBOVICH: How can I forget?
But there was no glibness, nothing the least bit clever about the way he said it. With those four little words, he was telling the jurors what his life had been ever since that day, and what it would be until the day he died. And even as Jaywalker's heart reached out to the poor man as it hadn't done to any previous witness, he found himself thinking Shit, I should have let them bring in the parents.
NAPOLITANO: Did there come a time that day when a number of children from your school boarded a van to be taken somewhere?
LUBOVICH: Yes. Eight of my children, from different classes, had been selected to attend the groundbreaking ceremony for a new shul, a synagogue, in Haverstraw.
NAPOLITANO: How were they selected?
LUBOVICH: They were among my most promising students. They were the best and the brightest, you could say.
NAPOLITANO: Who loaded them onto the van?
LUBOVICH: I did, along with another teacher. I made sure they were each buckled into their seats. The seats they would die in.
NAPOLITANO: Can you tell us their names and ages?
LUBOVICH: In my sleep I can tell you.
And he proceeded to list them. Not reading from some list, but staring off into space. 'Michael Fishbein, eleven. Sarah Teitelbaum, also eleven. Anna Moskowitz Zorn, ten. Andrew Tucker, nine. Sheilah Zucker, nine. Steven Sonnenshein, eight. Beth Levy-Strauss, seven. Richard Abraham Lubovich, six. He happened to be my greatgrandson, my only great-grandson.'
There comes a moment in every murder trial when the victim or victims cease to be a name and suddenly come to life. Up until that moment, Jaywalker had thought the moment had occurred when Adam Faulkner, the first trooper to arrive on the scene, had described the tiny charred bodies he'd encountered, some of them still smoking. Or when the veteran EMT Tracy D'Agostino had told how she'd climbed out of the van, walked twenty yards away, and vomited her guts out. But he'd been wrong. The prosecution, foiled by Jaywalker's own objections, had been forced to go to plan C and recruit an official from the school. They'd come up with what might have seemed to be an unlikely candidate in Rabbi Lubovich. He was a man, for one thing, less likely than a woman to stir emotions. And he was old, far too old to be looked upon as the parent of a young child. But in their selection, Firestone and his staff had stumbled upon the perfect witness, and right now that perfect witness had created The Moment.
Mordecai Lubovich had done his crying long ago. He had no tears left. But suddenly everyone else in the courtroom did, and had enough to make up for what the rabbi could no longer do.
Julie Napolitano should have left it right there, having not only choreographed The Moment, but having done so at the perfect time, with what should have been the very last words to come from the mouth of the prosecution's final witness. But she evidently had more on her notepad, so she forged ahead.
