That night, over dinner, in the safety of our kitchen, we chattered excitedly. Words came tumbling, grumbles, boasts, fears. We were working off nervous energy more than anything else.
Laurie did her best to keep all the talk going. She was evidently exhausted from a sleepless night and a long day, but she always believed that the more we talked, the better off we would all be. So she posed questions and confessed her own fears and kept passing dishes of food, inviting us to talk and talk. In these light moments, I glimpsed the old effervescent Laurie—or rather, I heard her, for her voice never aged. In every other way Laurie withered during Jacob’s crisis: her eyes looked sunken and haunted, her peaches-and-cream complexion became sallow and cracked. But her voice was gloriously untouched. When she opened her mouth, out came the same teenage girl’s voice I had first heard nearly thirty-five years before. It was like a phone call from 1974.
At one point Jacob said of the jury, “I don’t think they liked me, just the way they were looking at me.”
“Jacob, they’ve only been in the box one day. Give them a chance. Besides, so far all they know about you is that you’ve been accused of murder. What do you expect them to think?”
“They’re not supposed to think anything yet.”
“They’re human, Jake. Just don’t give them any reason to dislike you, that’s all you can do. Stay cool. No reactions. None of your faces.”
“What faces?”
“You have a face you make when you’re not paying attention. You scowl.”
“I don’t scowl!”
“You do.”
“Mom, do I scowl?”
“I haven’t noticed it. Sometimes your father gets carried away with the strategy.”
“You do, Jake. It’s like—” I made the scowling face.
“Dad, that’s not a scowl. You just look constipated.”
“Hey, I’m serious. That’s what you look like when you’re not paying attention. It makes you look angry. Don’t let the jury see that face.”
“That’s my face! What can I do?”
“Just be your handsome self, Jacob,” Laurie said sweetly. She gave him a broken little smile. Her sweatshirt was on backward. She seemed unaware of it, though the tag rubbed against her throat.
“Hey, speaking of my handsome self, did you guys know there’s a Twitter hashtag about me?”
Laurie: “What does that mean?”
“It’s a way for people to talk about me on Twitter. And what they’re saying? It’s all like: Jacob Barber is gorgeous. I want to have his baby. Jacob Barber is innocent.”
Me: “Yeah, what else are they saying?”
“All right, there’s some bad things, but mostly it’s positive. Like seventy percent.”
“Seventy percent positive?”
“About.”
“You’ve been following it that closely?”
“It only happened today. But yeah, of course I read it. You’ve got to check it out, Dad. Just go to Twitter and search for ‘pound sign Jacob Barber,’ no spaces.” He wrote it on his paper napkin: #jacobbarber. “I was a trending topic! Do you know what that means? Usually that’s like Kobe Bryant or Justin Timberlake or people like that.”
“That’s, um, great, Jacob.” I gave a skeptical look to the boy’s mother.
This was not the first time our son’s Internet celebrity had come up. Someone—probably a school friend—had put together a website, JacobBarber.com, to support him. The site featured a message board where people could declare Jacob’s innocence or wish him well or expound on his saintly character. Negative messages were filtered out. There was a Facebook group supporting him too. The consensus online was that Jacob was a little odd, possibly homicidal, definitely attractive, conclusions that were not unrelated. He also got occasional text messages on his cell phone from strangers. Most were vicious, but not all. Some were from girls who told him he was cute or made sexual propositions. He claimed these messages ran about two to one negative versus positive, and this seemed to be enough for him. He knew he was innocent, after all. Anyway, he did not want to change his cell phone number.
Laurie: “Maybe you should stay off Facebook and all that, Jacob. At least until this is over.”
“I just read, Mom. I never write anything. I’m a lurker.”
“A lurker? Don’t use that word. Do me a favor, just stay away from the Internet for a while, will you? You could get hurt.”
“Jacob, I think what your mother is saying is that the next couple of weeks may go easier if we just try to stay on an even keel. So maybe we should all just close our ears a little bit.”
“I’ll miss my fifteen minutes of fame,” he said. He grinned, oblivious and blithely brave, as only a kid can be.
Laurie looked horrified.
“That’d be a real shame,” I grumbled.
“Jacob, let’s hope you have your fifteen minutes of fame for something else.”
We all went quiet. Silverware clinked on plates.
Laurie said, “I wish that guy would turn off his engine.”
“What guy?”
“That guy.” She gestured with her knife toward the window. “Don’t you hear him? There’s a guy sitting in his car out there with the engine running. It’s giving me a headache. It’s like this buzz in my ear that won’t go away. What’s the word for that, when you get a buzz in your ear?”
“Tinnitus,” I said.
She made a face.
“Crossword puzzles,” I explained.
I got up to look out the window, more curious than concerned. It was a big sedan. I couldn’t make out precisely what model. Some oversized end-of-the-American-auto-industry crap four-door, maybe a Lincoln. It was parked across the street, two houses down, in a dark area between streetlights where I could not see the driver at all, even in silhouette. Inside there was a dot of amber light like a star as the driver took a drag from a cigarette, then the little star winked out.
“Probably just waiting for someone.”
“So let him wait with the engine off. Hasn’t this guy heard of global warming?”
“Probably an older guy.” I was inferring from the cigarette, the idling engine, the aircraft-carrier-sized car—all habits that belonged to an older generation, I thought.
“Asshole’s probably a reporter,” Jacob said.
“Jake!”
“Sorry, Mom.”
“Laurie, why don’t I go talk to him? I’ll tell him to turn it off.”
“No. Who knows what he wants? Whatever he’s up to, it can’t be good. Just stay put.”
“Honey, you’re being paranoid.” I never used words like honey or sweetie or dear, but the gentle tone seemed necessary. “It’s probably just some old geezer smoking a butt, listening to the radio. He probably doesn’t realize he’s bothering anyone leaving the engine running.”
She frowned skeptically. “You’re the one who keeps saying we have to keep our heads down, stay out of trouble. Maybe he wants you to come out there and try something. Maybe he’s trying to bait you into it.”
“Laurie, come on. It’s just a car.”
“Just a car, huh?”
“Just a car.”
But it was not just a car.
Around nine I took out the garbage: one plastic barrel of trash, one awkward rectangular green bucket of recycling. The recycling bucket was sized in such a way that it could not quite be carried in one hand comfortably. Your fingers always began to cramp halfway up the driveway, so that carrying both items to the sidewalk in one trip involved a fast-waddling race-walk out to the street before the recycling spilled all over. It was not until I had put the barrel and the recycling bucket down and arranged them neatly side by side that I noticed the same car again. It had moved. This time it was parked a few houses away from ours in the other direction, again across the street. The engine was off. No firefly of a burning cigarette inside. The car might even have been empty. It was impossible to tell in the dark.
I peered into the dark to make out some details about the car.
The engine came on, then the headlights. The car had no front license plate.
I began to pace toward it, curious.
The car backed away from me slowly, like an animal sensing a threat, then it backed away fast. At the first cross street, it did a quick, expert turnaround and drove off. I never got closer than twenty yards. In the dark, I could not make out anything about the car, not even the color or the make. It was reckless driving on such a small street. Reckless and good.
Later still, after Laurie had sensibly gone to sleep, I sat watching Jon Stewart with Jacob in the living room. I had spread myself across the couch with my right foot propped on the cushion and my right arm dangled over the backrest. I felt an itch, a faint sensation of being watched, and I lifted the blind to peek out again.
I went out the back door, through the neighbor’s backyard, and emerged behind the car. It was a Lincoln Town Car, license plate 75K S82. The interior was dark.
I walked up slowly alongside the driver’s door. I felt ready to knock on the glass, to open the door, pull the guy out of the car, to pin him down on the sidewalk and warn him to stay away from us.
But the car was empty. I looked around briefly for the driver, a man with a cigarette. But I was being a fool. Laurie was making me paranoid too. It was just a parked car. Probably the driver was in one of the adjacent houses sound asleep or screwing his wife or watching the tube or doing any of the things normal people do, the things we used to do. What had I really seen, after all?
Still, better safe than sorry. I called Paul Duffy.
“Counselor,” he answered in his old laconic way, as if he was pleased to hear from me, pleased and not surprised, even after months of silence, at eleven-thirty on the eve of opening statements.
“Duff, sorry to bother you.”
“No bother. What’s wrong?”
“It’s probably nothing. I think there might be someone watching us. He’s been parked outside all night.”
“It’s a man?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t see him. Just the car.”
“You said ‘him.’ ”
“I’m assuming.”
“What was he doing?”
“It was just a car parked out front of the house with his engine running. This was around six, dinnertime. Then I saw him again around nine o’clock. But as soon as I started to walk toward him, he turned around and took off.”
“Has he threatened you in any way?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen the car before?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
Deep breath into the phone. “Andy, can I give you a piece of advice?”
“I wish somebody would.”
“Go to bed. Tomorrow’s a big day for you. You’re all under a lot of pressure.”
“You think it’s just a parked car.”
“Sounds to me like it’s just a parked car.”
“Would you do me a favor and run the plate? Just to be sure. Laurie’s really stressed. It’d make her feel better.”
“Just between you and me?”
“Of course, Duff.”
“Okay, give it to me.”
“It’s Mass. plate number 75K S82. It’s a Lincoln Town Car.”
“All right, hold on.”
There was a long silence as he called it in. I watched Steven Colbert with the sound muted.
When he came back, he said, “That plate belongs on a Honda Accord.”
“Shit. It’s stolen.”
“No. It hasn’t been reported stolen, at least.”
“So what’s it doing on a Lincoln?”
“Probably just borrowed it, in case somebody noticed him and reported the plate to the cops. All you need is a screwdriver.”
“Shit.”
“Andy, you need to call this in to Newton P. D. It’s still probably nothing, but file a report and at least get it on the record.”
“I don’t want to do that right now. The trial starts tomorrow. If I report it, it’ll find its way into the news. I can’t have that. It’s important we seem normal and stable right now. I want that jury to see a regular family, just like them. Because we are just like them.”
“Andy, if someone’s threatening you …”
“No. No one’s threatened us. No one’s actually done anything. You said yourself, it looks like just a parked car.”
“But you were worried enough that you called me.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll deal with it. If the jury hears about it, half of them would think we’re full of shit. They’d think we’re faking it to drum up sympathy, like we’re trying to play the victim in all this. No drama. Anything that makes us look odd, untrustworthy, phony, strange, makes it harder to get them to say not guilty.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“Maybe you could send a cruiser by without filing a report? Just move him along, scare him off. Just so I can tell Laurie she doesn’t have to worry.”
“I better do it myself, otherwise there’ll have to be a report.”
“I appreciate it. There’s no way I can ever pay you back.”
“Just get your kid home safe, Andy.”
“You mean that?”
A pause.
“I don’t know. This whole thing just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s just seeing you and Jacob at the defense table. I’ve known that kid since he was born.”
“Paul, he didn’t do it. I guarantee it.”
He grunted, unconvinced. “Andy, who would be watching your house?”
“The victim’s family? Maybe some kid who knew Ben Rifkin? Some nut who read about the case in the paper? Could be anyone. Did you guys ever follow up on Patz?”
“Who knows? Andy, I have no idea what’s going on over there. They’ve got me in a friggin’ public relations unit. Next thing, they’ll have me riding up and down the turnpike giving speeding tickets. They pulled me off the case as soon as Jacob got indicted. I half expected them to investigate me, like I was in some kind of cover-up with you. So I don’t have much information. But there was no reason for them to keep going after Patz once they charged someone else. The case was already solved.”
We both considered that in silence a moment.
“All right,” he said, “I’ll be by. Tell Laurie it’s okay.”
“I already told her it’s okay. She doesn’t believe me.”
“She won’t believe me either. Whatever. You go get some sleep too. You two won’t make it like this. It’s only the first night.”
I thanked him and went upstairs to climb in bed with Laurie.
She lay curled up like a cat, her back to me. “Who was that?” she murmured into her pillow.
“Paul.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said it’s probably just a parked car. Everything’s okay.”
She groaned.
“He said you wouldn’t believe him.”
“He was right.”