CHAPTER 14
A clear majority of the reporters present this afternoon believe the detectives’ testimony to be a victory for the defense. DeShields has used his putatively hostile witnesses to shine a bright light on both the city’s historic anti-Semitism and a universal loathing of dentists to explain why an upright citizen has been arrested and prosecuted for a crime he did not commit. The canny lawyer had already trotted out another half-dozen individuals whose possible involvement in the Hickman murder could summon reasonable doubt about Rose’s guilt, while establishing beyond doubt that the victim was a promiscuous woman who made herself available to dangerous men.
No one, not even Oscar Rystrom of the Star, will say the following in so many words, but the journalists’ personal admiration for Dante DeShields is obvious. If readers were able to eavesdrop on the scribes over their whiskey and short ribs at Smokey’s, the latter’s hero worship would be embarrassingly clear.
“Intellectually, the guy is head and shoulders above everyone else in the room, maybe in the building,” says George Appel, hoisting his lowball glass, and no one disagrees.
Adds a Tribune copy editor named Jimmy Hilliker, “Damn me if I don’t just love to say the guy’s name: Don-tay Duh-Sheee-ulds.” Heads nod, people laugh. No one calls Hilliker a fairy.
By contrast, the press has little good to say about the prosecution, whether in Smokey’s boozy din or on the clotted pages of their publications.
After this week’s proceedings, Appel writes, “It is the consensus of the courthouse cognoscenti that the prosecution has lost its way.” Rystrom writes, “Court-watchers agree that Scofield is overmatched and Blake has seen better days. They’ve let the defense inject the names of too many suspicious characters, making the idea that someone other than David Rose killed Teresa Hickman seem plausible. It may be that DeShields believes Rose’s ‘blackout’ defense isn’t going to be enough, so he’s putting his chips behind the suggestion that there’s another killer.
“Wisely, he will keep Rose off the stand.”
In a dispatch filed for the outstate Sunday papers, Miles Mckenzie argues that “Teresa Hickman’s devil-may-care social life made her susceptible to several horrible possibilities. It’s not out of the question, given the woman’s proclivities as enumerated by defense witnesses, that she jumped from one man’s car to another that fateful April night, had intimate relations in one or both, and died in the last one—which may not have been Rose’s Packard.”
Robert Gardner’s testimony is mentioned in all of the weekend accounts, though only in passing. Of all the “alternative possibilities,” writes the AP’s Martin Rice, “tall, skinny, and myopic as he is, Gardner must surely be the least likely. And, even given our profession’s lowly status a mere peg or two above used-car dealers and dentists, the young reporter would fit nobody’s image of a back-alley killer.”
On the Saturday following his testimony Robert plods up the narrow stairs to the bureau the way his younger self would have approached a dental appointment. Once upstairs, he slips into the bureau and as unobtrusively as possible makes his way to an empty desk. (He still doesn’t have one of his own.) “All hands are on deck,” as Miles likes to say—even Meghan, whom Robert hasn’t seen in weeks—but no one gives him more than a passing glance. Miles has not asked him to be part of the case coverage since his subpoena.
“You’re the news today, buddy,” the chief said when it became clear that Robert was going to testify. The chief didn’t tell him what his job might be when the trial is over. In fact, in the office this late Saturday morning, Robert isn’t sure he still works here. He can’t be the first Uni-presser compelled to testify in a criminal case, but he might be the first to do so in such an ambiguous role—witness, possible suspect—in such a high-profile trial. He wonders if Mckenzie, when the weekly staff meeting adjourns, is going to let him go.
In fact, now that he’s here, he’s more curious about Meghan’s presence and her role in the Rose trial coverage than his own. Robert can see her long, shiny hair, the bones of her skinny shoulders, the delicious swerve of her ass and graceful taper of her left leg as she stands, hip cocked, in the group surrounding her father-in-law’s desk. As usual, Miles is doing most of the talking, but Robert can hear her voice, when she joins the discussion, and her sunny laughter at something Tommy says. Not invited to take part, Robert pretends to find the past week’s entries in St. Peter’s Log interesting.
When the meeting breaks up, Meghan is the first one out of the chief’s cubicle. She grabs her bag and heads for the stairs. She gives Robert a fluttery wave and a little smile over her shoulder, gestures he’d expect more from a colleague than a lover, or ex-lover. She is in a hurry. Probably on her way home to make a baby with one-eyed Howie, Robert muses darkly.
Pullman and Hickok—Milt is back at work but inconvenienced by a cast and crutches—stop by the desk, where Robert tries to look engaged. Both men clap him on the shoulder.
“You survived DeShields, kid,” says Hickok with a rare grin. “Not everyone can say that.”
“Certainly not the chuckleheads who were on the stand before you—that smut peddler and that crazy cabbie,” Tommy adds. “I’m not sure I believe your story about why you were running around in the dark back there, but I don’t think you killed the girl.”
“Me neither,” Milt says, swinging past him on his crutches. “You’re not the type.”
Robert forces a smile.
“Kind of you to say so,” he replies.
When Mckenzie calls him, Robert is feeling slightly more relaxed about his situation. Amid the pervasive reek of tobacco and perspiration in the boss’s cubicle, he picks up a whiff of Meghan’s perfume, which almost makes him giddy. He is desperate for a woman, yet doesn’t have the vaguest idea who that woman might be now. He surprises himself by asking Miles if he still has a job.
Mckenzie, who’s pawing through a pile of teletype dispatches, looks up.
“You didn’t kill the girl, did you?” he says.
Robert laughs.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Well, then you still work here. You just can’t cover the trial, is all. Until the proceedings wrap up, you’ll cover everything but.”
An idea Robert has been toying with since the moment he took the stand bubbles to the surface.
“Would you be interested in a sidebar?” he asks. “What it’s like to be a witness in a high-profile murder trial? ‘The View from the Witness Stand,’ we could call it.” And, like a hyperventilating tyro in one of those goofball movies about newspapers, he forms the headline with his hands.
Mckenzie shakes his head and growls. “Aw, Jesus, Bob, you know I hate that first-person shit. We’re reporters here, not fucking diarists.”
Robert reddens and hopes Hickok and Pullman didn’t hear his suggestion.
“Just a thought,” he says.
Mckenzie lights a Viceroy and goes back to his reading.
“A bad one,” he says. “Now go pick up the damn phone and see if our new coroner, Dr. Alice Whatsisname, has the names from last night’s pile-up on the Belt Line.”
Since his testimony and the county attorney’s subsequent threat of a perjury charge, the driver has been sleeping on a cot in the supply room at Canary Cab’s cinderblock headquarters and, come morning, cleaning himself up in the employees’ bathroom.
“You’re lucky you got a roof over your head,” O’Shaughnessy has told him a half-dozen times in the past three days. “I hear you bitchin’ about the accommodations, you’re out on your ass.”
If the driver didn’t have documentation that his brother-in-law has been skimming serious money from the firm and therefore from its downtown owners—reputedly associates of Bunny Augustine—he wouldn’t be here at all. He also knows, for the same reason, that his brother-in-law will never throw him out and will continue to assure Margaret Casserly, Fat Jack’s kid sister, that the driver has committed no crime against God or the state and that all everybody needs is a little time for “the whole goddamn thing to blow over.” Besides, O’Shaughnessy is down three drivers this summer, not counting vacation days, and can’t afford to lose another one right now.
Watching the driver struggle to take a sponge bath in one of the men’s room’s cruddy wash basins, the big man says, “Maggie don’t sound like she wants you back anytime soon, Juice. Maybe what you gotta do is leave town for a while. Don’t you have a cousin in Alaska or someplace? Just do me a favor and wait until Crum and Knutsen are back here for good.”
The driver knows what Margaret said—to her brother, to the neighbors, to the busybodies at Holy Name—after his testimony was quoted (and misquoted) in the Star and run alongside an eyes-closed photo that made him look like a mental patient. The headline read:
CITY CABBIE—WITNESS OR SUSPECT?
Lurid Testimony Raises Questions in Court
He hasn’t spoken to Margaret directly, but has it on good authority—O’Shaughnessy and the driver’s own son, Benedict, the oldest of the Casserlys’ six kids—that he’s no longer welcome at home.
“Mom had a guy from the hardware store change the locks,” Benedict told him on the phone. “Then she had some guys from Holy Name clean out the garage. They burned a lot of your stuff in the alley.” The boy hung up before the driver could say a word. Not that he knew what to say. After the police raid, he merely wonders what was left of his stash.
A couple of the other drivers have asked how well he “really” knew Teresa Hickman, not sure if he should be treated as a local celebrity or the grouchy misanthrope they’ve always known. Because three-fourths of the Canary drivers have sketchy histories, no one is likely to give him much guff. If anything, his status among the other Canaries may have risen a notch with the “lurid testimony” headline. He hasn’t pulled a shift on the street yet, so who knows how fares will react when they realize who’s behind the wheel? The driver suspects that a typical fare—a typical male fare anyway—will have the same questions the other drivers have had, if more delicately phrased.
In the closing arguments scheduled for next week, DeShields will no doubt tar him as a possible suspect, along with Bud Montgomery, the Zevos punk, that weasel Ybarra, and the skinny mystery man with the goggles. But two of them for sure and, who knows, maybe all four had sexual relations with Terry Hickman while all he did was lie. If the cops have anything more than his own foolish words, he’d be bunking in a jail cell right now instead of in the supply closet at the Canary Motel.
The driver actually feels an unexpected sense of liberation. The wife and the kids, not to mention the house and yard, had gotten to be too much. He’ll be better off with a rented room where he can have his privacy and come and go as he pleases. Most of the time he spends in the car anyway, even when he’s not working, and, come dinnertime, he can sure as hell improve on the franks-and-beans, caterwauling kids, and his wife on his back for one damn thing or another. For his meals—he’s never been a big eater—he’ll find a spot like the Palace where some cute little number with a sweet ass and the top couple of buttons on her uniform undone serves him blueberry pie and tops off his coffee.
He doesn’t worry about the possible perjury charge. They have to prove he was lying, don’t they? So how are they going to do that? And like the man says, he’s not on trial, the Jew dentist is.
It will be a whole new experience to be noticed out in public. The picture in the paper didn’t do him any favors, but he imagines the likeness to be sufficient enough to spark some recognition. People will spot him reading the paper at a lunch counter and whisper, “That’s the guy that was friends with the Hickman broad. You can bet your ass he knows more than he’s let on.”
He’s always believed, given his interests and habits, the old anonymity suited him, but maybe a little notoriety will be a plus. If their marriage is annulled, the wife is going to want money, of course—for raising the kids and cash for the mortgage and utilities—but he figures that O’Shaughnessy will be willing to share a little of his unearned Canary take, lest word of his skimming reaches Bunny Augustine’s pals. If worse comes to worst, the driver can take some of the extra shifts he’s been dodging to help make ends meet.
The driver rinses his mouth, pulls on his undershirt, and squints at himself in the flyspecked mirror above the sink.
“I’m free!” he says—but not so loud that the guy who just stepped out of the stall behind him would notice.
On August 22, Fred MacMurray is laid to rest in Lakewood Cemetery, on a shady rise overlooking Lake Calhoun, surrounded by his wife of twenty-eight years, eleven children, relatives from back East (Dr. Fred grew up outside of Pittsburgh), and dozens of county and municipal employees who “did business” with the genial medical examiner over the past several years. Arne Anderson and Mel Curry are among the several police officers present, standing shoulder to shoulder in their dress blue uniforms, though Arne and Mel drove separately to the cemetery.
Closing arguments in Rose’s trial begin when proceedings resume on the twenty-fourth.
Scofield, apparently having used the break to polish his delivery, seems confident and fit—“bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” George Appel will describe the young prosecutor in the next morning’s Tribune.
“Your responsibility,” Scofield tells the jurors, who seem neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed after the better part of a month’s worth of testimony, argument, and delay, “is to right a terrible wrong. No, two terrible wrongs. Not only was Teresa Hickman murdered by the defendant, she has been defamed by the defendant’s counsel, who desperately wants you to believe that she practically begged for her own defilement and death.
“The truth is, Mrs. Hickman was a well-mannered, well-liked, albeit rather naive child of rural America who, having decided to raise her family in the big city, was seduced and victimized by a series of brutal men, the last of whom, Herschel David Rose, strangled her when she threatened to raise her voice on her own behalf, and then dumped her lifeless body in the weeds beside a desolate trolley track. Compounding the outrage is the fact that Mrs. Hickman was raped and murdered by the very man she had turned to to relieve her physical pain. Imagine that, ladies and gentlemen. This poor young wife and mother believes she is in the hands of a healer, only to discover—too late—that the healer is a killer!”
Scofield recounts Teresa Hickman’s arrival in the Twin Cities, her lodging arrangements with the Montgomerys, and her employment at the Palace Luncheonette. He describes her social life as “typical for a farm girl trying to make sense of the big city and not without an occasional error of judgment.” He moves on to her “trusted sister’s referral” of Dr. Rose, her “unfortunate interaction” with the dentist, and her “fatal, final appointment” on the night of April 8. He paints a graphic picture of the two of them arguing in his car about “their baby,” the dentist’s explosive rage, and his murderous attack—“wrapping those large, powerful hands around her slender, pale throat, then squeezing the last breath of life out of her helpless body!”
Then Scofield startles everyone, including his tablemates, and sits down. His hands shake. He is sweating profusely and looks unnaturally pale. The prosecution will have the opportunity to rebut the defense’s close, but even DeShields seems taken aback by Scofield’s abrupt conclusion.
Rose remains still as a statue. He hasn’t shown any emotion, hardly any physical movement at all, this morning. Miles Mckenzie will later write, “While his wife and brothers grimaced, exchanged horrified glances, and shook their heads during the prosecutor’s dramatic close, it’s not certain whether the defendant batted an eye.”
This will change when, after a brief recess, DeShields rises and begins to speak. “Bright-eyed” would now be an understatement—the defense attorney’s eyes burn like hot coals. He rises slowly on his short legs as though he’s preparing to bound across the attorneys’ table and attack the prosecutors with his bare hands. The jurors, the audience in the gallery, and even the judge sit still in anticipation.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, facing the jurors, “there is only one wrong you are duty-bound to make right today, and that is the state’s vicious attempt to rip an innocent man from the embrace of his wife and family, to remove him from the profession for which he trained and constantly improved himself, and send him to prison for the rest of his life.
“The state has not proved its case. It has resorted instead to the most outlandish attempt at character assassination that I have ever witnessed in a courtroom. Here’s the truth, ladies and gentlemen—Dr. H. David Rose is a good and honorable man. He is also a Jew, and a dentist, and because the detectives who investigated Mrs. Hickman’s murder are lazy and incompetent bigots, he became a convenient scapegoat in their shameless rush to condemn.”
DeShields will continue, without so much as a sip of water or a glance at the papers in front of him, for nearly three hours.
He paints a detailed portrait of his client, also a product of small-town America, a doctor’s son who earned college money selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door, a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s highly regarded dental college, a loved and honored family man and accomplished professional, with a loyal patient base and a long career untarnished by formal complaints. He has embraced innovative protocols and techniques to reduce his patients’ pain and fear, and, unusual among his colleagues in this part of the country, offered evening and weekend hours to better serve working men and women. He has even, when necessary after dark or during inclement weather, escorted his patients home following a procedure.
“Did he have a sexual relationship with Teresa Hickman?
“Mrs. Hickman said he did, that the baby she was carrying was his. But he says he didn’t have sexual relations with the woman, and there’s not a scintilla of evidence that he did. One thing for certain: that unborn baby was not her husband’s. Private Hickman was thousands of miles away in Europe and she was desperate to find a way to solve her predicament. She asked Dr. Rose—no doubt one of the few upright, honorable men, maybe the only upright, honorable man, she knew in Minneapolis—to help her. While Dr. Rose is a kindly man, ever willing to assist his patients when they need help, he is neither a fool nor a pushover.”
Then DeShields recreates the “short, unhappy life of Teresa Kubicek Hickman,” who “was tired of the boring life and callow farm boys she grew up with and, like uncounted other young people seeking work and excitement, moved to the big city, where any number of men were only too glad to show her a good time. Terry Hickman was a very attractive young woman. By all accounts, she hungered for male attention and had a difficult time saying ‘no.’ Terry Hickman, sad to say, was a classic example of the textbook nymphomaniac, who, in her best friend’s words, drew men like flies.
“Consider, for instance, the cab driver who was fixated on Terry, who made up stories about her, who lied on the stand about their relationship.
“And what about the sinister figure seen lurking in the darkness where and when Terry was murdered—the tall, thin man with glasses? Who was that man, and what was he doing skulking about down there at that hour? If he was an innocent passerby, on his way home from work or an evening out with friends, why hasn’t he come forward? Why, whoever he is, haven’t the police been able to identify him and find out what he knows about the murder?”
Yes, De Shields continues, for a while on the evening of April 8, Mrs. Hickman and Dr. Rose were together in his car, driving around the west side of town, discussing her predicament.
“She made an unreasonable demand, and Dr. Rose reasonably turned her down. They argued, and maybe said things that each would want to take back if given the opportunity, and in this highly stressful situation Dr. Rose—weakened by lack of proper nutrition and a good night’s sleep—blacked out. What happened after that no living person—with the exception of Teresa Hickman’s killer—knows for sure.”
After a brief pause, DeShields continues.
“So here we are—eight o’clock the following morning. It’s gray and chilly, and the MPD’s detectives, members of the department’s crack Homicide Squad, are roused out of bed or taken away from their breakfast tables, and sent to investigate a young woman’s body found in the weeds alongside a trolley track. They glance around the crime scene with their blurry, uninterested eyes. But besides the young woman’s body, which is fully clothed and bearing no obvious marks of trauma, there is nothing to see. No blood, no evidence of a struggle, no murder weapon, no witnesses. The investigators take another cursory look around the site, chat briefly with the citizen who happened upon the body, and call it a day.
“Detective Hessburg agreed that the police made, and I quote, ‘quick work’ of the crime scene. It was the weekend, after all, and the detectives had lawns to rake and snow tires to replace, just like the rest of us. Whatever their priorities that dreary April morning, it wasn’t determining the murderer of this twenty-one-year-old wife and mother.”
As it happened, the lawyer goes on, the “cursory investigation” required after news of Mrs. Hickman’s murder hit the papers quickly turned up a number of possible suspects—“men who preyed on young, naive, attractive women, who beat their wives, who offered employment in exchange for sex, who took compromising photographs of gullible girls, who leered and stalked and harassed and, in this case, quite possibly raped and murdered one such girl when the opportunity presented itself.”
But, he says, shaking his large head sadly, “instead of investigating and pursuing those men, our sleepy gumshoes concentrate their limited energy on a middle-aged family man with no criminal record or history of bad behavior. A man who, if anything, showed Teresa Hickman no small measure of kindness since her arrival in town. But the police found Dr. Rose an irresistible target. He was a Jew, a member of that most despised of human races, and a dentist, a member of the most detested profession in America. Here was a Jewish dentist! Here was their man!”
DeShields takes a deep breath and stares into the jury box, whose occupants now sit so still they might have been in a trance.
“And who led the vendetta against Dr. Rose?” he says at last. “MPD Sergeant Arne Anderson.
“We’ve learned a lot about Sergeant Anderson over the past several weeks. High school football player, war vet, married man, divorced man, longtime cop and investigator. But what we’ve also learned—from his own mouth as well as from his partner, who presumably knows him as well as anybody—is that he’s a lifelong anti-Semite, raised to think of Jews as Christ-killers, that he’s disreputable and dishonest, and quick to inflict bodily harm on a helpless suspect if he thinks that suspect deserves a beating. He has no Jewish colleagues, and his professional experience with Jews has to all intents and purposes been confined to a small group of North Minneapolis hoodlums.
“And think about this, ladies and gentlemen. Sergeant Anderson had been living with a woman named Lily Kline. But at the time of Teresa Hickman’s murder, their relationship was on the rocks, and shortly afterward Miss Kline, a Jewess, booted Anderson out of their apartment in what must have been an ugly scene. It’s not difficult to imagine what this no doubt painful and embarrassing rejection might have added to the sergeant’s already negative feeling about Jewish people.
“Sergeant Anderson is an angry, bitter, violent man—in police vernacular a thumper—who, our research has determined, is not only feared by private citizens but unpopular among his colleagues as well. You heard, just last week, his partner of the past several years, Detective Melvin Curry, when asked if he trusted Sergeant Anderson, give something less than a ringing endorsement. If his partner doesn’t trust Sergeant Anderson, why should we? Why should you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, when an innocent man’s life hangs in the balance?
“The fact is, Sergeant Anderson, on behalf of the state of Minnesota, had only this sad, stooped, Jewish dentist, with not a single piece of forensic evidence to connect him to Teresa Hickman’s murder. Surely a healthy, young woman, if she were being strangled, would fight back—would bite, scratch, and strike out with her fists—yet when Dr. Rose was examined by the police a day after Mrs. Hickman’s murder he bore no signs of a struggle. What we have instead of evidence—of cold, hard, irrefutable proof—is bigotry, ignorance, superstition, sloth, incompetence, and a half-dozen men far likelier to commit rape and murder than this defendant.
“If all that doesn’t add up to reasonable doubt, ladies and gentlemen, then I don’t know what does. You must do the only right thing and vote to acquit.”
The courtroom is silent for several moments. DeShields’s glowing eyes move from one juror to the next, ending with the second of the two young women seated at the end of the first row. One of them raises her hands to her mouth and begins to sob. Three other women in the box are dabbing at their eyes with tissues. Several of the men, after briefly making eye contact with DeShields, stare at their hands in their laps.
Asked by Judge Nordahl if he wished to rebut the defense’s close, Homer Scofield says nothing. Rudy Blake glances at Scofield, leans toward him, and whispers something that no one, apparently including Scofield, can hear.
Finally, Scofield shakes his head and says something so softly that no one will hear this either, forcing the judge to ask him again. Then Scofield says, in an only slightly louder voice, “I have nothing more, Your Honor.”
It is 4:10 p.m. when bailiffs lead the seven men and five women of the jury out of Courtroom No. 1, down the hallway fifty-odd steps, and into the monastic confines of Jury Room No. 3.
They had a few moments to compose themselves and listen to Dante DeShields ask the judge, first, to dismiss the murder charge against Rose and then, after the judge denied the motion, to require the jury to reach one of only two possible verdicts—guilty of murder in the first degree or acquittal—also denied. Instead, in his instructions, Nordahl told the jury that they must choose among first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree manslaughter, not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity.
The packed gallery buzzes like a shaken beehive as the jury begins its somber shuffle to the jury room. The reporters flee the press tables, those up against a deadline throwing elbows en route to one of the half-dozen pay phones in the corridor, the others expressing befuddlement at the turn of events. Even Mckenzie, Appel, and Rystrom, with sixty years of reporting experience among them, say they can’t recall a trial closing like this one, with the defense’s virulent ad hominem attack on a police officer and the prosecution’s astonishing unwillingness to rebut.
Pushing toward the exits, the journalists mentally compose their headlines:
ROSE DEFENSE CALLS COPS INCOMPETENT, BIGOTS;PROSECUTION MUM
LAWYER’S ASSAULT ON STATE’S CASE LEAVES ROSE PROSECUTORS SPEECHLESS
Rose remains seated. So do Ruth and his siblings and siblings-in-law. Only Sam’s wife, Noreen, stands and, hands on her hips, stares at the vacated jury box. The Roses look like members of the audience of a long and dizzyingly complex theatrical drama whose sudden ending has left everybody drained and confused.
Ronnie Oshinsky mumbles something about the judge’s instructions being favorable to the defense, but no one seems to be listening.
DeShields, mopping his face with an enormous checkered handkerchief that might seem comical in other circumstance, tells the Roses they can repair to the room set aside for the defendant and his family or try to enjoy an early dinner at a nearby restaurant, though he says he senses a speedy verdict and advises they stay close by. He gives them no feeling one way or the other as to what he believes the verdict will be.
The defendant says, “I’d prefer to stay pat for a few more minutes.”
He is holding Ruth’s hand, but otherwise reveals no more emotion than he has throughout the trial. His brothers decide they need a drink and excuse themselves, with wife and girlfriend trailing behind them.
Rose looks around for Arne Anderson, whom he hasn’t seen since the detective’s testimony two days ago. He knew that DeShields was going to challenge the investigation, but the personal nature of the attack surprised him. He feels no ill will toward the police, despite the obvious bias of some of the detectives, and thought Sergeant Anderson was a diligent, honest, and likable man.
If Anderson were in the room, Rose would be inclined to walk over and offer an apology for his lawyer—maybe even try to lighten the mood by saying, “Nothing personal, you understand.” But Anderson is nowhere to be seen, and, in any event, Rose is pretty sure there are rules about a defendant speaking to a witness during a trial.
Moments later, Ronnie tells him that Homer Scofield collapsed in the lavatory and was on his way to Hiawatha General Hospital.
To the surprise of nearly everybody, with the possible exception of Dante DeShields, the jury sends word to Judge Nordahl at 5:35, slightly less than an hour and a half after beginning deliberations, that they have reached a verdict.
In another fifteen minutes, everybody who departed the big room has hustled back inside. The more astute observers notice that Private Hickman and Walter Kubicek, who were not present during the closing arguments, are not in the courtroom for the verdict, either. Nor are the victim’s friends, Connie Bannister and Kenny Landa, as though the North Dakotans have finally abandoned Terry to the big city.
When the room is more or less settled, Nordahl asks the foreman if the jury has in fact come to a verdict. The foreman, a sepulchral Northern States Power Company supervisor named Lawrence Hammer, says it has. A bailiff takes the envelope from Hammer and hands it to the judge, who silently reads its contents. The judge then hands it to the clerk of court, who reads the verdict aloud:
“We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant guilty of manslaughter in the first degree.”
Rose blinks, swallows, and purses his lips. Ruth squeezes his arm, closes her eyes, tips back her head, and lets a couple of large tears roll down her lightly rouged cheeks. DeShields immediately begins squaring the papers in front of him as though he must pack up and rush to another trial. Across the table, Rudy Blake stands and nods his head toward the jury. He no doubt wonders if Scofield, whom he last saw flat on his back in a county ambulance, would be available for a congratulatory phone call. Maybe Homer will learn about his first district court victory on the radio.
When the judge gavels the court to order for a final time, he asks the defendant if there is anything he wishes to say.
After a moment of apparent indecision, Rose says he does. The room falls silent. It will be the first time most of the people in the gallery hear his voice since his “Not guilty” declaration a month ago.
“I have always thought of myself as a decent human being who has dedicated himself to reducing or eliminating pain. I still think of myself that way because I have never knowingly harmed another person in my life.”
He glances around the room as though he might have forgotten something, and then concludes that he has nothing more he wants to say.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” he adds and sits down.
Judge Nordahl sentences Rose to five to twenty years in the state prison at Stillwater, the standard punishment for first-degree manslaughter in Minnesota.
Then, while family and lawyers gather around the convicted man, the jurors, most of the reporters, and the gallery exit the courtroom like water draining out of a bathtub. A sense of exhaustion, mingled with the stink of perspiration and the dregs of abandoned tuna salad sandwiches, hangs over the chamber. The buzz is subdued. It is not one of anticipation or excitement anymore, but not one of disappointment or outrage, either. The likely truth is that while the brevity of the jurors’ deliberation was surprising, few people are shocked by the verdict. Most are relieved that the drama is finally over.
The jurors have collectively decided not to speak to the press.
Milt Hickok will later quote an anonymous source, likely an outlying member of the panel, saying that a “significant majority” went into the deliberations primed to vote first-degree murder and its automatic life sentence without parole, but that a few “moderates” argued persuasively for the lesser determination of manslaughter. No one seemed to believe Rose’s “blackout story,” Hickok will report, but no one was convinced that he’d planned to murder Mrs. Hickman.
A few moments after a sheriff’s deputy leads Rose away, in the grand atrium on the courthouse’s first floor, under the blind marble gaze of The Father of Waters, Dante DeShields, with Rose’s family behind him, says that he will appeal his client’s conviction, alleging, though not enumerating, “at least two-dozen reversible errors.” He finally looks as though the process has tired him, if only for the moment.
“Meantime,” he says, with a few degrees less heat than he radiated during the closing, “an innocent man will spend tonight in a jail cell, the victim of religious hatred and official ineptitude, while Teresa Hickman’s killer prowls the streets, seeking his next victim.”
* * *
It’s Augie Fuller’s idea to celebrate Rose’s conviction at Smokey’s. He has managed, with cash from the squad’s slush fund, to secure one of the bar’s back rooms for a cops-only party. Arne comes because he has nowhere better to go and because Mel will probably bring Janine and because the “refreshments” will be on the department’s dime.
After fulsome toasts by Augie and Ed Evangelist, the officers and a few wives, girlfriends, and “dates” spread out among the wobbly tables to eat Smokey’s spaghetti and meatballs and wash it down with pitchers of Gluek’s. Whiskey, club soda, and ginger ale bottles stand open on several tables.
Leaning close to Anderson, Charlie Riemenschneider says, “On the level, Sarge, you think we’d have won this one if Rose wasn’t a Jew?”
Only Charlie, a widower, has chosen to join Arne at his table. The others on the squad are wary of Arne’s disposition in the wake of DeShields’s bruising close and sense something off-kilter about him this evening. Arne, for his part, is trying, unsuccessfully, not to stare at Janine Curry, who is sitting with Mel and the Wrenshalls in the opposite corner of the room. Someone has fed a handful of dimes into the jukebox next to the door; it’s playing “Stranger in Paradise,” and Arne fights off the fantasy of dancing with Janine, who’s exceptionally beautiful tonight in a sleeveless, form-fitting yellow dress.
“Probably not,” Arne says, absently. “And we might not have won if DeShields had found out earlier about the shoe that turned up on Euclid Place.”
Riemenschneider squints through his smudged spectacles at nothing in particular.
“That fuckin’ shoe,” he mutters, draining his lowball glass of the last finger of Canadian Club. “What happened to that shoe anyways?”
Across the room, Janine makes eye contact with Arne, and then turns away when Mel leans close and whispers something to her. Looking over her shoulder, Mel catches Arne’s gaze.
“Damned if I know,” Arne says.
A few minutes later, Rudy Blake joins the party and asks for the group’s attention. His eyes are already rheumy, and he’s unsteady on his feet. Someone pulls the plug on the jukebox, and Blake announces that Homer Scofield has been admitted to Hiawatha General, suffering from dehydration and nervous fatigue. “The good news is he’s expected to return to work after Labor Day.” Three or four people clap halfheartedly.
Rudy smiles weakly, congratulates the detectives on “our shared victory,” and shuffles toward the door. Someone plugs the jukebox back into the wall, and Sid Hessburg, his jacket off and tie undone, starts dancing to “Rock Around the Clock” with an attractive young woman none of the assembled has seen until this evening. Across the room, Mel Curry gets to his feet and walks toward the door.
“Jesus,” Riemenschneider says, “I can’t tell you how much I hate that nigger music.”
Frenchy LeBlanc, in a natty houndstooth sport coat, has grabbed a chair at their table.
“That’s Bill Haley and the Comets, Charlie,” he says. “He’s as white as your ass.”
Riemenschneider raises his empty glass and waves at one of the waitresses.
“Well, fuck ’im,” he says. “He sounds like a nigger.”
Anderson is on his feet now and makes his way toward the door. After a moment of indecision, he’s decided to follow Curry instead of wandering across the room, sitting down beside Janine, and draping an arm around her naked shoulders. In the hallway outside the party room, he sees Rudy Blake sitting on the linoleum floor with his back against the wall, his head lolling on his chest, the silver hairpiece sliding over his right eye. A tiny white-haired woman Anderson assumes is Rudy’s wife stands beside him, apparently waiting for him to get up.
“Need help, ma’am?” Arne asks.
The woman shakes her head as though her husband slumped semiconscious in the hallway of a saloon is nothing to be concerned about. She smiles at Arne.
“He’s only resting,” she says. “It’s been a long day.”
Arne, bumping against the wall, walks down the hall, pushes open the screen door, and steps into the alley, where he knows Curry is waiting.
Mel is leaning against the building’s brick wall, on the other side of a half-dozen garbage cans, smoking a filter-tipped cigarette. Unusual for this time of night, they have this stretch of alleyway to themselves.
Arne lights a Camel. His hands shake, but he tells himself it’s the booze and the stress of the trial. Like the lady said, it’s been a long day.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Curry looks at him without replying for a moment.
“She says she’s sorry, too,” Mel says at last. He flicks his glowing cigarette butt into the alley.
He is quiet again for a moment, and then says softly, “What kind of man fucks his partner’s wife? What kind of woman fucks her husband’s best friend? She says it’s over, but she calls your name in her sleep.”
Arne takes a deep breath and says, “Mel”—but even after weeks of rehearsing his exit line the words aren’t there when he wants them.
That doesn’t matter because Curry has drawn a short-barreled Smith & Wesson revolver from the holster inside his jacket and thrusts it out toward Anderson like an accusation. He fires three shots that form a tight scalene triangle in the center of Arne’s chest, and then watches his partner—wide-eyed and mouth open—sit down in the alley and die.