With a quick, abbreviated smile and an even quicker nod, Bingham sat up, glanced inside the case file, closed it, and nodded once more. “Mr. Smith,” he said, leaning forward.
There was no response, none that I could hear. I looked to the side and was surprised to find John Smith looking up at the bench, waiting for what the judge was going to say next.
“Do you understand what we’re doing here today?”
Smith said nothing, but he seemed completely attentive. More than that, he seemed drawn to the judge in a way I had not seen before. Perhaps it was the sound of Bingham’s voice: soft, quiet, the sound of someone you could trust, the sound of someone who would never hurt you.
“Mr. Antonelli has indicated that he wants to be your lawyer.
Do you want him to be your lawyer, Mr. Smith?”
I moved a quarter turn away to watch more clearly, hoping he would do something, make some sign so that we could satisfy at least the minimal requirement that the defendant know that he has been charged with a crime and that he has a right to an attorney. To my astonishment, he answered out loud, a single three-letter word that seemed to stretch out forever between the beginning and the end, a long, quivering cry that until it was over you were not sure he would have the strength to finish. It was like the first full word spoken by a child, who then wants to see if he got it right.
Biting on his lip, Bingham stared at him, and then stared hard at me, as if there was something he would have liked to know.
“Very well,” he said presently. “The order previously entered for a psychiatric examination of the defendant is withdrawn. Is there anything else, Mr. Antonelli?”
“Yes, your honor. I would ask that the defendant be released on his own recognizance.”
Startled out of a reverie, Cassandra Loescher shot up from her chair. “Your honor,” she sputtered, barely able to contain herself.
“The defendant is charged with capital murder. Even if he wasn’t, he has no job, no family, no ties to the community. For that matter, your honor,” she said, putting her hand on her hip, “he doesn’t even have a name. The police called him John Smith because they had to call him something. They ran his prints: Nothing came back. There are no records of any kind. We don’t know who he is, and if he were let out there would be no way to find him.” Glancing across to where I stood, she added caustically,
“Perhaps Mr. Antonelli can tell the court who his client is. Someone hired him to represent him.”
I waited until Bingham’s eyes left her and came to me. “The terms under which I have agreed to represent Mr. Smith are a private matter between myself and my client.”
Bingham did not need to be told what he already knew. Without expression, he waited for more.
“The court will notice that Ms. Loescher did not say that Mr.
Smith has a criminal record. She did not say that Mr. Smith has a history of violence. We may not know who he is, but if he had a criminal record-if he had ever been arrested-Ms. Loescher would have known that, because his fingerprints would have told her that. We have, your honor, a man without a name; a man, as nearly as I can tell, without much in the way of a memory; someone who has almost certainly never hurt another human being, now charged with a crime to which he has pled not guilty, held in confinement for something he did not do.”
Bingham threw out his hands and spread open his fingers, tilted his head and looked at me, waiting. I answered his unspoken question with the same sort of gesture. “I know,” I agreed. “I just wanted to point out the unfairness of it all.”
“In light of the seriousness of the charge… without a stable home… someone to take responsibility… the defendant will remain in custody,” he said reluctantly. “Trial will be set for…”
He looked down at the clerk and waited until she found the next available date on his calendar.
“I’ll see you later today,” I said to my client, carefully pronouncing the words as the deputy put his hand on John Smith’s shoulder and led him away.
Howard Flynn was waiting for me in the corridor, a solemn expression on his rough-edged mouth. I started to ask him why he had not come inside. Then I remembered.
“It still bothers you, doesn’t it?” I asked as we walked toward the elevator.
“Not sure why it should,” he replied, shaking his head. “I come here often enough.”
There were other people in the elevator and we rode down in silence. Outside, the late morning sun, filtered through the thick-leafed trees, scattered a yellowish haze over the sidewalk in the courthouse park. We sat down on a bench across from a bronze statue turned dark green with age, honoring the dead of the First World War.
“What have you been able to find out?” I asked.
With his feet spread wide apart, Flynn rested his elbows on his thighs. “Nothing,” he said glumly. “Not a damn thing. It’s like the kid never existed. I’ve pretty well used up every inside contact I’ve got. The cops don’t know who he is. Social Services doesn’t have anything.” He sat up, pushed his elbows over the top of the bench behind him, and, tilting back his head, searched the heavens for an answer. “The adoption agencies don’t have anything. There’s only one thing left I can think of. You ever hear of a psychologist named Clifford Fox? He testified for the prosecution in a case you had a couple of years ago.”
“That son of a bitch?” I cried, as I pulled my knee onto the bench and turned to face Flynn directly. “Specializes in so-called repressed memories; testified that my client’s niece had remembered fifteen years later that her uncle had abused her as a child.
The jury didn’t believe it,” I reminded him.
Flynn’s chest heaved up as he snorted. “Yeah, you’d be the last guy to convince a jury to acquit someone guilty.” His eyes half shut, he slowly shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Listen to me.
Whatever he said at that trial, he was telling the truth, at least what he thought was the truth. He doesn’t lie.” He paused long enough to form the gruff smile that usually introduced one of his brief commentaries on human weakness. “At least when he’s sober-and he hasn’t had a drink in years.”
I should have known. Flynn had friends everywhere, and every one of them was an alcoholic.
“What are you suggesting? What can he do that will help us find out something about John Smith? I don’t think we’re dealing with a repressed memory, do you?”
Flynn’s mouth twisted to the side. “All I know is that the only person who knows anything about John Smith is John Smith.
You’re wrong about Fox. He doesn’t specialize in repressed memory; he specializes in handicapped children. If anyone can reach inside that kid’s mind, he can.”
I checked my watch. “I have to get back to the office,” I said as I got to my feet. “I have to see John Smith this afternoon.
You need to meet him anyway. Come along. Then we’ll decide about your friend, the psychologist.”
Before I turned to go, I looked at Flynn and laughed. “First Stewart, now Fox? If we’re not careful we’re going to have a defense team made up of every drunk in the city.”
He stared at me from behind hooded eyes. A wry, rueful grin creased his mouth. “Could do a lot worse,” he said with a shrug.
When I walked into the office, Helen handed me a large, heavy manila envelope. “It just came,” she explained. “It’s the list of Judge Griswald’s cases.”
I told her to hold my calls and began to examine, caption by caption, all the criminal matters that had ever come before the honorable Quincy Griswald. There were thousands of them-trials, hearings, every conceivable kind of case-stretching back through the long years of his service on the bench. I must have gone through hundreds of pages, each of them listing line by line the name of a defendant and the crime with which he had been charged. There was nothing there, nothing that could either supply a motive as to why he had been killed or offer so much as a hint as to who might have killed him. I stayed at it for hours, and there were still hundreds more pages to go. I began to read faster, skimming the words as I traced my finger down each page.