Monday morning her husband drives her to court in case of sequestration—they share the Prius. Their other vehicle, a rusty beater they had driven down from New York City twelve years ago, has sprouted lichen after an especially rainy summer and then sunk into the gum-mud by the lake, a hairy mammoth caught in a tar pit.
The courthouse is a four-story utilitarian marble cube in a sunstruck plaza, more Soviet than Le Corbusier. The town is the county seat, the biggest employer a land-grant university. Her husband had taken an endowed professorship at the journalism college after retiring from the Times but resigned after only two semesters. He told C-2 that he didn’t want to give away to youth all the tricks it had taken him a lifetime to figure out for himself. But C-2 knew the real reason: he was worried he would become a blowhard and talk away his memoir before he wrote it. They stayed because C-2 had started photographing her Mother series, and the lake by the house provided a scaly menagerie of predators.
As C-2 and her husband drive by the courthouse, television reporters and crews mill around the entrance, vying for the meager shade of three date palms. Armed with satellite dishes, a convoy of news vans block the curb, and a bus from the Villages—a megalopolis-size retirement community sixty miles south—idles across the street.
“I’m going to be sequestered, aren’t I?” C-2 says.
“How would I know?” her husband asks.
“You went online. Who did she kill?”
“She’s accused of killing her eighteen-month-old brother.”
“How?”
“Setting him on fire.”
Her husband steers them into the courthouse’s underground garage, a maze of deep contrasts after such a sunny morning. He parks outside the jury entrance and gets out of the car, walking toward her with the caution of someone who can hardly find his way in the dim light. They embrace. He has lost three inches over the years and she is now taller than he is. Whenever her chin rests on his head, she feels more protective than passionate.
“I may not see you for three weeks,” he says. “I love you so much.”
He kisses her, open-mouthed. He wants to make this a lover’s parting, but C-2 can feel his anxiety about returning to the empty house.
She whispers, “I’ll ask for conjugal visits.”
Inside the building, after her overnight bag with its provisions of pills is searched, and her phone and tablet requisitioned and bagged, the deputy escorts C-2 to the jury lounge, a classroom-size windowless hold filled with dentist waiting room furniture and old issues of AARP and Entertainment Weekly.
As she enters the room, F-17 looks up from his book, a sci-fi paperback fat enough to last three weeks. He shares the sofa with the chemical engineer, who is eating a power bar, and the alternate, who is reading a greyhound racing tip sheet. Everyone has brought an overnight bag.
“Are we being sequestered?” C-2 asks.
“No one has told us anything,” F-17 says.
“You saw the news trucks,” the alternate says.
“I understand the media frenzy over George Zimmerman or the loud-music murderer, but why a teenage girl?” the schoolteacher asks.
“She’s rich and she’s white,” the chemical engineer says.
“Quiet,” the deputy chides.
Cornrows arrives next, hauling an extra-large suitcase, as if she were going on a cruise.
“I brought a bathing suit,” she announces to no one in particular. “My boyfriend’s sister cleans at the Econo Lodge off I-75 and she says that’s where they’ll put us. It has a pool.”
The deputy lines them up, the six jurors and the alternate, according to their assigned seats, and they file through the door.
Even festooned with flags and gold seals, the courtroom is nondescript, with beige walls and an acoustic-board ceiling. The chairs look like they were purchased in bulk from an online catalog, the court reporter is a blowsy blonde chewing gum, the judge has a sixteen-ounce Jamba Juice by her gavel, yet C-2 is humbled. She doesn’t consider herself a judgmental person, though judge she does—all the time. She judges her friend and colleague who got a MacArthur grant for her random, blurry snapshots; she judges her mother for choosing cruel boyfriends; she judges photography contests where she’d rather go blind than give an honorable mention to the tasteless photo of a homeless person. But this judgment is something else entirely. This judgment is as close as mortals get to God. She can sense that the other jurors are humbled as well. Even Cornrows, wearing her flip-flops, comports herself with dignity.
The gallery is packed with press and seniors. C-2 had read somewhere that the Villages bus their citizens all over Central Florida to attend celebrity trials, a pastime more engrossing than shuffleboard.
“Good morning,” the judge says to the jury after they take their seats. “I am sequestering you. I am also ruling that your identities will remain undisclosed during the trial. Attorneys will refer to you only by your letter and number, not name. In addition, I am warning the media not to photograph you. Anyone”—she looks out at the gallery—“including the public caught publishing or posting photos of the jurors on Instagram or Facebook will be held in contempt of court. You will do jail time, ladies and gentlemen.”
She waits for the bailiff to hand out notebooks and pencils to the jury.
“You are allowed to takes notes for your own use,” the judge instructs them, “but don’t get so distracted taking notes that you don’t pay attention to other clues. Notes are not a substitute for memory. Transcripts are not a substitute for memory. It’s not only what a witness says, it is also whether or not you believe them.”
Only C-2, F-17, and the twitchy alternate open their notebooks. The rest leave them on their laps or put them under their chairs.
The judge reads the charges—one count of second-degree murder and three counts of first-degree arson—and asks if the state is ready to proceed with opening remarks.
The rotund prosecutor stands, faces the jury, and wishes them a good morning. This time as he tries to button his jacket, the button slips easily into place. On an empty easel that was standing at the ready when the jury walked in, he places a poster-size full-color photograph of a not particularly pretty baby. C-2 catches a glimpse of the back of the photograph. It was printed at OfficeMax.
“Caleb Karl Butler, eighteen months old, didn’t die in a fire. Caleb was set on fire. How do we know?” He points to the defendant. “Because she told us.”
Someone has taken the defendant to the beauty parlor. Her black fringe has been shorn off and the blond strands shaped into an old-fashioned pageboy.
C-2 writes down:
somebody loves her
“Caleb’s diaper had been soaked in paint thinner,” the prosecutor continues. “Paint thinner isn’t a good accelerant. When the arson expert tried to replicate the origin of the fire, it took him nine minutes and forty-three matches to light a similar diaper.”
C-2 writes:
defendant blinks 68 xs a minute
“What was Caleb doing as his sister struck match after match and couldn’t get his diaper to catch fire? Let yourself imagine.” He mimics striking forty-three wooden matches. He takes his full nine minutes, waiting for the imaginary flames to burn out before striking the next one. If C-2 had her camera, she would take a close-up of Caleb’s mother’s face. She sits in the front row, on the defense side of the aisle, directly behind the defendant, but she won’t look in her daughter’s direction. If she did, she would only see the back of the newly coiffed pageboy. The prettier sister isn’t with her today.
The prosecutor asks permission to show the jury a photograph, but the defense objects. When the judge studies the picture, her civic veneer falters and her eyes widen. She rules the photograph too prejudicial, but the prosecutor has another picture to share, and this time the defense lets it slide.
The chemical engineer, seated in the first chair, is offered the photograph. She stiffens before daring to look, and then quickly hands it to F-17. He examines it thoroughly, jots something in his notebook, and hands it to the church lady. It is apparent that the church lady has no idea what she is looking at—and then she does. She quickly passes it along until it reaches C-2. It’s an eight-by-ten of the melted crib.
“After the defendant sets her brother’s diaper on fire, she closes the nursery door on what must have been Caleb’s screams. He was eighteen months old, for God’s sake. She sets two more fires—one in her twin sister’s bedroom and one in her own. She calls 911 at 4:38—six minutes after she closes the nursery door—and tells the operator, I quote, ‘I think I smell smoke.’ ” He says this in a falsetto key to imitate a young girl’s high register, presumably the defendant’s, though C-2 knows the jury may never hear her voice. “ ‘Thinks’? ‘Smoke’? She doesn’t mention that there is a baby inside the house.”
The defense objects to something the prosecutor just said and another sidebar is called.
C-2 is still holding the image of the melted crib. No one has come to retrieve it from her and enter it into evidence. She doesn’t know what to do with it. Facedown so she can concentrate on the proceedings, or faceup so she can confront exactly what she is being asked to judge?
At noon sharp, the court recesses for lunch.
Without being told where they will be dining, the jury is ushered into a windowless van. Minutes later, the van parks and the deputy rolls back the door. They are eating at Nic & Gladys Luncheonette, courtesy of the court. C-2 has driven by this place for years and always thought it was abandoned. But there really are a Nic and Gladys, two older West Indians. The jury and the deputy are the only customers this afternoon. The choices are chalked on a board, in pristine handwriting. Fried pork chop or London broil. C-2 is a vegetarian. She asks if she can just order sides, rice and green beans. Gladys puts on a hairnet to scoop up the sides, while Nic works the deep fryer. When the food comes out, before anyone has had a chance to dig in, the church lady says grace by herself while the twitchy alternate asks the deputy where they will be having dinner tonight.
“Outback Steakhouse.”
“We get to order anything we want? Does that include alcohol?” the alternate wants to know.
“The state isn’t paying for your drinks,” says the deputy.
“Are we allowed a glass of wine with dinner if we pay for it ourselves?” asks the chemical engineer.
“One,” says the deputy.
“You’re shitting me,” says the alternate.
While the jury waits for dessert—a choice between red velvet cake or Neapolitan ice cream—Cornrows turns to the chemical engineer and, indicating her fraying stalks, asks, “How do I wash them? No offense or anything, I just thought you’d know.”
“You don’t wash them, you soak them in a cup of olive oil overnight,” says the chemical engineer. She wears her hair meticulously clipped on the sides with a sculpted plateau overhead. “Don’t forget to mix it with a cup of coconut oil. You don’t want your hair smelling like a salad.”
“How do I keep the oil from dripping on everything?”
The chemical engineer smiles. In profile, she makes a striking Nefertiti. She has no more idea of how to wash cornrows than C-2 does. “Did you bring a bathing cap?”
“Do you want to go outside for a smoke?” F-17 asks C-2.
“Are we allowed?” she asks the deputy—ex-military, by his scars and stance.
He tells her and F-17 to stand just outside the door where he can see them. On the far side of the glass window, C-2 stations herself in the sun. F-17 leans against the faded Nic & Gladys Luncheonette sign, painted decades ago in the same penmanship found on the blackboard.
He offers her a cigarette.
“I don’t smoke,” she reminds him.
“Neither do I.”
He lights her cigarette and then his own. They both hold the burning tips away and downwind. The sun feels kind after the artificial chill of indoor Florida.
“I brought a carton,” he says, smiling.
The deputy hands C-2 a note when they return to the jury room. It reads: Your husband called.
“He wants to know if you’ve been sequestered,” the deputy says.
“Did you tell him yes? Am I allowed to call him back?”
“You can give me the message and I’ll relay it.”
We are being sequestered, she writes on a page torn from her notebook. I will phone you as soon as I am allowed. Call Jimmy if you need anything. Don’t be a martyr.
She crosses out the last line and hands the note to the bailiff.
“We are being sequestered,” she hears the bailiff tell her husband. “I will call you as soon as I am allowed. Phone Jimmy if you need anything. Don’t be a martyr.”
She can’t hear her husband’s lengthy reply, but she can see the bailiff growing impatient.
“No, you can’t talk to her at this time,” the bailiff says.
The prosecutor is restless to get started. He doesn’t bother to button his jacket. “We know how she did it, now I’m going to tell you why. Jealousy, oldest motive in the world. Caleb was a miracle baby. Mr. Butler was fifty and Mrs. Butler was forty-four when she discovered she was pregnant after a lifetime of trying. Twelve years before, the Butlers had adopted the defendant, Anca, and her twin sister, Stephana, age five, from a Romanian orphanage.” The italics are his. He waits a beat for the jurors to construct their own internal visions of a Romanian orphanage—neglected infants in factory-size rooms, the back of their heads flattened from never being picked up.
The defense objects, and another sidebar is called. The prosecutor looks over at the jury and all but rolls his eyes, letting them know that he’s got motive galore, if only the defense would shut up.
All afternoon, C-2 takes notes as the prosecutor tells tales about Anca’s tantrums and the revolving specialists and the evolving diagnoses, a checklist of all the things that can go wrong in childhood and adolescence—friendless, fat, bullied, and bullying.
C-2’s final note of the day:
The prosecution has no idea why she did it