I FEEL SORRY for the sheriff’s deputy who must testify about the incident in the tunnel. I think we all do. In many ways he is the headliner, the one we’ve all been waiting for, and he appears temperamentally unsuited to the task, out of his element and shy. Since my plan has formed and taken shape and I’ve begun the implementation, I’ve been viewing my trial differently, half-a-step removed, not divorced from my reality, not like the pills, or how I felt at the Center and prior to the shooting and my arrest, but not a full part of it either. Maybe it’s me remembering the teachings from the Center, temporarily abandoned in the postarrest-and-start-of-the-trial panic, but I tend to think it’s because I now believe that what I intend to do, what I most desire, is going to come true.
Bonnie is fulfilling her part of the equation. After the coded messages started to arrive, her game soared out of its lovesick trough, as she slid through the clay at Roland Garros for her first major ever. The sports weekly called her a champion, and I flushed with pride. In the pictures she never looked too pleased. Wimbledon is next and if all goes well there, we are on target.
The sheriff’s deputy holds his wide-brimmed hat in his hands as he takes the stand. His hair is cut so close he looks bald. He looks solid in his formal uniform, reassuring, the kind of law enforcement you’d be glad to see if you were in trouble, yet not too intimidating when he pulls you over for that broken taillight. As he tells us at the outset of his testimony, it was a fluke that he was even there that day, not being part of the city or even county police. He plies his trade where the roads are two lanes and bracketed by wheat and soybeans. He was going to a regional conference, a chance to exchange techniques and strategies with other law enforcers and eat some rubber chicken dinners. They had discount tickets to some midweek theater. The sheriff’s deputy drove his cruiser rather than flying because he wasn’t keen on planes and it would save a little money. The county he worked for was the kind of place where sheriff’s deputies take their cruisers home with them because even when they’re not on duty, they’re on duty. He wasn’t even going to go this time, but changed his mind because he was scheduled to get a citation at the conference for his organizing a youth basketball program in the town where he worked. The chain of choices that led him to that moment is almost endless.
Clearly, he never expected this to happen to him, and on the stand he looks a little shell-shocked. Barry is as impassive as ever, and the prosecutor jitters, but without purpose or focus. From his perspective, there’s apparently nothing to object to since the sum total of our defense has been to demonstrate the bottomless depths of my horribleness. If he has worked out Barry’s angle, he must be resigned to whatever is going to happen.
First we see the video in its uncut, grainy, black-and-white glory. Out of instinct the deputy flicked his dash camera on, and as he hit his flashers and weaved closer, the horror of the moment became apparent. It’s likely that everyone in the jury has seen it before, but in the courtroom it takes on a different gravity. The screen is large, the video enhanced as much as possible. Superimposed circles and pointers direct attention to the relevant figures. After the first showing, the deputy goes through it again, scene by scene, narrating, coached by Barry the whole way, explaining why he did what he did, speeding forward, the sirens and lights, then the gestures, drawing his gun, firing. Jurors hold their hands over their mouths and shake their heads. I may owe them an apology letter as well.
I got a surprise call this morning before I left for court. I was heading out and the phone started ringing and I decided to let the machine pick it up, but as I was about to close the door I heard my ex-wife’s voice.
Oh, hey, I guess you left already. I just wanted to say that … you know … I know this is probably going to be a bad day for you and I’ve been thinking that …
I hesitated for a moment on the threshold of the door, but then I ran to pick it up.
“Hey,” I said.
“Oh … oh … hi. I thought maybe you’d left.” She sounded flustered, like maybe she was hoping she’d get to make her speech into the machine.
“Just on my way out.”
“How much did you hear?”
“All of it. I was listening.”
“Okay, good.”
“Yeah.” There was a long pause and I listened to her breathe. I remembered this breathing. It is familiar to me as my own, more so, because I’ve never paid attention to my own breathing, whereas, Beth’s, as she slept, I could watch her for hours.
“So how are you doing?” she said.
“Okay, considering … not bad.”
“That’s good,” she said. I thought that maybe there was a nagging something about to be appended, how maybe I wasn’t looking all that good, but she swallowed it back. “Like I was saying,” she said, “I just wanted to tell you that I hope it doesn’t go too terribly and everything.”
“Nothing I don’t have coming to me.”
“No, no,” she said, like she was forcing the words out. “You don’t. They’re judging you on your worst moments and it isn’t totally fair.”
“How else am I to be judged?”
We listened to each other breathe. We held the line, just listening. She said, “Good luck, all right? I’m thinking of you today.”
She hung up before I could thank her. I can say it here, for what it’s worth. Thank you to the love of my (first) life.