TWENTY-NINE

There was another, more subtle reason for walking away from high school, although I didn’t like to admit it. Mrs. Hean and the crude, ignorant fellow students weren’t altogether to blame.

Somewhere inside I knew that I could never be like my dad—urbane, knowledgeable, someone who flew all over the world to tell people what he thought. I was playing my dad’s game by staying in school. It was a sport he would always be better at than I was.

Bea brought one of her books along to the hearing at the hospital, a dog-eared insight-into-the-mind paperback, but she never opened it, sitting with the novel in her lap the way Steven Ray McNorr’s mother sat with her Bible. Bea must have expected that the preliminary hearing would take all day, with many breaks and many sidebars, the judge conferring with attorneys, the sort of long delays Court TV fills with expert commentary.

I wished I had brought something to read, too, a way to keep my mind off this slow, unreal passage of time. Bea and I sat together but we didn’t talk much, both of us silenced by the procedure around us, a bailiff with a holstered pistol making sure the folding chairs were lined up straight in the brightly lit hospital conference room.

A court clerk said, “Raise your right hand.”

The witness had thin white hair, combed straight back, and his hand twitched on the crook of a cane. The hand he held up to swear to tell the truth was gnarled and had a slight tremor, a vibration that never ceased throughout his testimony.

“Shall I sit here?” the witness asked.

It was not such a ridiculous question. The judge was not behind a bench, only a table with chrome legs. The judge was dressed in a dark suit. The court recorder sat looking up vaguely, fingers ready at his machine. The witness’s chair looked like an afterthought, a piece of furniture left there by mistake, one of the few wooden chairs in the room.

“Yes, that’s fine, Mr. Van Kastern,” said Mr. Dingman.

My father’s eyes were steady, watching the witness. The truth, my father must have been thinking—now we will hear what really happened.

The witness looked at the chair, put a hand out to the chair’s arm, and let himself down into it in stages, getting his body settled, arranging his pants front free of wrinkles, finding a place for his cane. He put a hand to his bolo tie and gazed up at the assistant district attorney with a desire to please so keen it was nearly a smile.

Mr. Dingman, the assistant DA, had tight brown curls all over his head, like a scrub pad. He led the witness through the questions with the sympathetic voice a man would use on a child.

The witness’s name was Wiebrand Van Kastern. “People call me Weebs.”

He was a retired jeweler who still helped around the shop on Nineteenth Avenue. He had been born in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. He had trained in Geneva as a young man, learning the repair and maintenance of time pieces. “Real watches,” he said. “No batteries.” He was a naturalized U.S. citizen, but he had an accent, American with the spice of other places. He had lived in San Francisco for thirty years.

“You’re the owner of Golden Gate Jewelers, aren’t you, Mr. Van Kastern?” asked Mr. Dingman.

“Yes, I’m the owner,” said Mr. Van Kastern, a man who didn’t like to brag. But there was a trace of impatience, too.

It was the first time I had ever seen my father in a wheelchair. The chair had gray rubber tires, plump, with a knobby tread, like a child’s bicycle. The shirt and pants I had picked out looked good. His shoes gleamed with the unnecessary touch of Kiwi neutral polish I had given them. His hands were on his knees, unmoving, a yellow canister of oxygen in a wheeled rack like a luggage carrier beside him.

Sofia’s eye makeup was too dark. Mom wore dark glasses and a black scarf. She was burning up the vacation days she had saved for years and was considering a leave of absence. I could tell when she was looking at me by the twin wrinkles, one in each cheek, all she could manage of a smile.

The witness was telling us what he had seen that Saturday, just past noon. Mr. Van Kastern had been changing the display, setting out Seikos and putting the Pulsars into a drawer, getting ready for a sale.

Mr. Van Kastern had seen what happened outside in the street. A young man had approached a Mercedes at the stoplight. He saw the young man bend over the driver’s side of the car.

“Do you see that man in this room today?”

The witness pointed to the defendant. McNorr wore a jail jumpsuit, but his hands were not cuffed.

“Let the record show that the witness has identified the defendant,” said Mr. Dingman.

McNorr was leaning on his elbows, one hand on a sheet of paper, like someone taking an exam, working a problem in his head.

“What happened then?” Mr. Dingman asked.

“Then?” asked Mr. Van Kastern.

The defendant picked at the paper, loosening a staple.

“I heard a shot,” said the witness before the DA could repeat his question. He said this assertively, his voice rising, as though recounting the event made him experience his surprise again, his rush out onto the sidewalk. “The Mercedes rolled through the red light and collided into some cars parked along the street.”

“And what else did you see?”

“Running.”

“Did you see someone running from the scene?”

“I saw him,” said the witness, emphasizing the last word, his eyes steady behind his glasses. McNorr pinched the staple, worked it loose, the paper tearing slightly.

McNorr’s attorney wore the same sandy tweed as before, a man with pink cheeks and smart, quick movements, smiling, putting his hands in his pockets, not wandering all over the room like lawyers on TV, but leaning over the table. His voice was pleasant, his manner polite.

The witness had not seen a firearm in the hand of the defendant. The witness had not seen a gun go off. The witness had not seen blood, had not seen a wound.

“No,” he answered each time. No, he had not seen the witness dispose of any weapon. He had not seen a wallet in the defendant’s hand.

Mr. Van Kastern was able to answer yes to some questions. Yes, he had medical problems, and, yes, he was due for cataract surgery next month. The witness suffered from arthritis that affected his joints, and he had trouble moving quickly. “Have you been diagnosed with hearing problems?” asked the attorney.

Mr. Van Kastern turned to the judge. The judge told him to answer the question as honestly as he could.

“I don’t hear as well as I used to,” said Mr. Van Kastern after a long moment.

“Why did it take you so long to report what you saw to the police?” asked the attorney.

“I had to think,” said Mr. Van Kastern. Then he looked over at Mr. Dingman, an expression of apology, as though another answer to this question had been rehearsed and forgotten.

“What was it you thought about?” queried the attorney.

“I had to think about what I saw,” said Mr. Van Kastern, but there was defeat in his voice.

Bea put her hand on mine. I knew what Mr. Van Kastern meant. When a terrible event takes place sometimes the mind has to climb back down inside itself and study the episode.

When the judge said that it was time for a recess, I sat there, not moving, my eyes closed, listening to the steps shuffling out, the room emptying, the wheels of my father’s chair squeaking on the floor.

I put my hand over my father’s hand, before I remembered that he could not feel my touch.

“We’re just heading back to our room,” said the nurse sweetly, meaning: get out of the way.

Dad had trouble focusing. His face was blank with fatigue. He found me with his eyes as I knelt down beside him and told him everything would be all right.