WE WENT TO THE bail hearing of course. Not that anything we can do now dulls the pain of losing our son. But you wanted to look her in the eye. You wanted the judge to see you sitting there, so he couldn’t forget for a moment this human being that got snuffed out at the age of twenty-four had a mother and a father who loved him with all their hearts, and now those hearts are broken. You didn’t want to let him get away with thinking, for even one second, that maybe our son’s life didn’t matter so much as her precious rights, her precious freedom, innocent until proven guilty, and all that. You knew her lawyers were going to talk about the injustice of keeping her locked up all those months, while the state prepared its case. When the judge heard those remarks, we wanted him to be looking at us, sitting there. Talk about the pain of having to go to jail, I’ll give you pain. The pain of going to the cemetery and putting flowers on your boy’s gravestone. Pain of walking through the door of the restaurant, still expecting to see him standing there whistling as he polishes the bar. Let the judge see that with his own eyes.
I tried to concentrate on what the DA said, but my mind kept wandering. I know he said something about the gold chain showing up at the pawn shop. The tattoo. A kid that saw Suzanne driving with the Emmet boy one time. Position of the body on the carpet. Didn’t fit the MO of a burglary. And why didn’t these so-called burglars take the TV set?
The big news was the tape of course, of what Suzanne said to Lydia that day at the mall, when the police had her wired for sound. We were so sure once that came out Suzanne would be nailed for good. I looked over at Suzanne’s mother when it got to the part about her saying “send us to the fucking penitentiary for the rest of our lives.” I wanted to scream, “Still think your little girl is such an angel, Earl?” But of course I held my tongue.
It was what happened next that did me in. Her lawyers moving in on some technicality about the way the girl got Suzanne over to the mall in the first place. I started to go dizzy at this point, but it had to do with crazy things, pointless things, how she phrased her questions, the way she put it when she mentioned the gun. Next thing you know one of Suzanne’s high-price lawyers is making a motion to rule the tape as inadmissable evidence on the grounds of entrapment. Next thing you know the judge is doing it. Bail granted. $200,000. That’s when Joey had to carry me out of the courtroom, but our daughter tells us the Stones approached the bench after that, turned over the deed to their home—which believe me, is well over the $200,000 mark.
My husband and I were long gone by the time the court adjourned, but we watched it on the news that night. Her walking out the door of the courthouse, free as a bird, and smiling like she’s about to start giving the weather report. She stops to talk to a reporter that’s sticking a microphone in her face. “Today’s decision to grant me bail only reaffirms my faith in the American justice system,” she said, and blah blah blah. “I want to thank all the wonderful people whose thoughts and prayers have sustained me during these trying times. The first thing I’m going to do when I get home? Walk my dog.” You wanted to throw up.
“How do you plan to spend the months ahead, as you await your trial?” says the reporter.
“I know my husband would have wanted me to go on with my life,” she says. “My lawyers and I will be busy preparing our case, naturally. And then, there have been so many television and movie offers to consider. There just aren’t enough hours in a day.”