She told me that mine was not the only charge Gregory faced. He had an outstanding charge for an aggravated assault against a police officer. While out on bail since Christmas, she said, he had also been arrested for a burglary.
We went over the preliminary and some affidavits dating back to the night of the rape. She told me that the police had already testified.
"Clapper got up there and talked about knowing Gregory from around the neighborhood, indicating he had former knowledge of him. If Madison takes the stand, Billy will try to go after that."
Here my father was paying close attention.
"So his record could be used?" he asked.
"Nothing juvenile," she said. "That's not admissible. But we'll make an attempt to establish that Greg is no stranger to the police. If he trips up and mentions it himself, then we can ask."
I described the outfit my mother and I had bought. Gail approved. "A skirt is important," she said. "I don't go anywhere near a courtroom in slacks. Gorman is particular on this point. Billy once got thrown out of his courtroom for wearing madras plaid!" Gail stood up. "I have to get this one home," she said, indicating her stomach. "Be direct," she said to me. "Be clear, and if you're confused, look over at that prosecution table. I'll be sitting right there."
That night was one of the worst in my memory for physical pain. I had begun, during the year, to have migraine headaches, although I didn't know they were migraines at the time. I had hid the fact I'd had them from my parents. I remember standing in the hotel bathroom and realizing I was going to have one that night. I could feel the drum beating in the back of my head as I brushed my teeth and dressed for bed. Over the rush of the water I heard my father calling my mother to report on Gail. Having met her, he was flooded with relief.
But that night, as my headache grew worse, my father became frantic. I felt the pain most acutely in my eyes. I couldn't open or close them. I was sweating intensely and alternated between sitting bent over on the edge of one of the beds, rocking my head in my hands, and pacing back and forth between the balcony window and the bed.
My father hovered. He fired questions at me. "What is it? Where is the pain? Should I get a doctor? Maybe we should call your mother."
I didn't want to talk, because it hurt. "My eyes,,my eyes," I moaned. "I can't see, they hurt so much, Dad."
My father decided that I needed to cry.
"Cry," he said. "Cry."
I begged him to leave me alone. But he was convinced he'd found the key.
"Cry," he said. "You need to cry. Cry."
"That's not it, Dad."
"Yes, it is," he said. "You are refusing to cry and you need to. Now cry!"
"You just can't will me to cry," I said to him. "Crying doesn't win a trial!"
I went to the bathroom to throw up, and closed the door against him.
Eventually, out in the other room, he fell asleep. I stayed in the bathroom with the lights on and then off, trying to soothe or shock my eyes back to their normal state. In the early-morning hours I sat on the edge of the bed as the headache began to lift. I read the Bible from the drawer beside my bed as a way to test that I hadn't begun to go blind.
The nausea hung on. Gail met us in the hotel cafe at eight. John Murphy arrived and sat with my father. Gail and Murphy tag-teamed me. I drank coffee and picked at the scales of a croissant.
"Whatever you do," Murphy said, "don't look him in the eyes. Am I right, Gail?"
I sensed she didn't want to get this aggressive this fast.
"He'll look at you real mean, try and throw you off," Murphy said. "When they ask you to point him out, stare in the direction of the table."
"Agreed," Gail said.
"Will you be there?" I asked Murphy.
"Your father and I will be sitting in the gallery," he said. "Right, Bud?"
It was time to drive to the Onondaga courthouse. Gail went in her own car. We would see her there. Murphy, my father, and I went in the official county car.
Inside the building, Murphy led us toward the courtroom, but stopped us midway down.
"We'll wait here until we're called," he said. "You okay, Bud?"
"Fine, thank you," my father said.
"Alice?"
"As good as I can be," I said, but I was thinking of only one thing. "Where is he?"
"That's why I stopped you here," Murphy confided. "To avoid any run-ins."
Gail came out of the courtroom and advanced toward us.
"Here's Gail," Murphy said.
"We've got a closed courtroom."
"What's that?" I asked.
"It means Paquette is trying to do what he did in the lineup. He's closing the courtroom so you can't have family sit in."
"I don't understand," my father said.
"He wouldn't let Tricia stay in the lineup," I said to my dad. "I hate him," I said. "He's a slimy asshole."
Murphy smiled.
"How can he do that?" my father asked.
"The defendant has the right to request a courtroom be closed if he thinks it will rob the witness of support," Gail said. "Look on the bright side, Gregory's father is here too. By closing the court, he won't have his father there either."
"How could he support a rapist anyway?"
"It's his son," Murphy said quietly.
Gail walked back to the courtroom.
"It might be easier for you without your father there," Murphy offered. "Some of what you'll have to say is harder in front of family."
I wanted to ask why, but I knew what he was saying. No father wanted to hear the story of how a stranger shoved his whole hand up his daughter's vagina.
Detective Murphy and my father stood facing me. Murphy offered words of condolence to my father. He pointed to a bench nearby, saying they could wait right there the whole time. My father had brought a small, leather-bound book along.
In the distance I saw Gregory Madison walking toward the courtroom. He had come from the hallway perpendicular to the one where I stood. I looked at him for a second. He did not see me. He was moving slowly. He wore a light gray suit. Paquette and another white man were with him.
I waited a second and then interrupted my father and Detective Murphy.
"Do you want to see him?" I asked my dad. I grabbed his arm to make him turn. "There he is, Dad."
But it was just Madison's back now, entering the courtroom, a flash of gray polyester suit.
"He's smaller than I thought," my father said.
There was a beat. A silence. Murphy rushed in.
"But wide. Believe me, he's all muscle."
"Did you see his shoulders?" I asked my dad. I'm sure my father had imagined Madison as towering.
Then I saw another man. He had a softer version of his son's build, white hair around the temples. He hesitated, for a moment, near the courtroom door, then spotted our little group down the hall. I didn't point him out to my father. Murphy's earlier comment had made me see him differently. After a second, and a look at me, he disappeared back down the other hall. He must have realized who I was. I didn't see him again, but I remembered him. Gregory Madison had a father. It was a simple fact but it stayed with me. Two fathers, both of them helpless to control their children's lives, would sit out the trial in their separate hallways.
The courtroom door opened. A bailiff stood in the open doorway and made eye contact with Murphy.
"You're up, Alice," Murphy said. "Remember, don't look at him. He'll be sitting at the defense table. When you turn around, look for Bill Mastine."
The bailiff came to get me. He looked like a cross between a theater usher and someone in the military. Detective Murphy and he nodded to each other. The pass-off.