Chapter 11
Without Prejudice
It took four minutes.
She had expected longer. She had been in rooms like this one for a year, and she had learned to measure the pace of a hearing by the thickness of the file, the number of lawyers at each table, the weather. In her experience, the great events of the law took hours and were announced by the sound of a gavel, and the small ones took no time at all and were announced by nothing.
This one was announced by a cough.
It was Monday, the fifth of October. It was a quarter to nine. The gallery of Courtroom B had been opened to the public for the first time in seven months, and twenty-two people sat in it at the prescribed intervals, in masks, with their hands in their laps: a reporter from the Ledger, two from Atlanta, a woman from the sheriff's office, a pair of retired men who came to everything, a deacon, a high-school civics class with a clipboard. Corinne sat in the second row between her mother and Nate Feldman. She wore the navy dress. She had a pen in her hand and a notebook open on her knee, and she did not remember bringing either.
The five men were at the defense table. Four were. The fifth chair was empty.
"Where's Caleb?" Nate whispered.
"I don't know."
"His lawyer's here."
It was true. A pale young man in a brown suit, whose name she had never learned, sat beside the empty chair with his hands flat on a closed file. He looked as if he had been asked to hold something heavy, and had forgotten why.
"All rise," said the bailiff.
Judge Whitcomb-Rhodes came in with her mask round her chin. She sat. She looked down over her glasses at the room, and Corinne saw that she, too, was looking for something, and not finding it.
"Be seated. We are here in the matter of State of Georgia versus Pruitt, Maddox, Boyle, Sutter, and Moss. Counsel will state their appearances."
They did. Hollis Crane stood, in a pearl-grey suit, with a white handkerchief in his pocket, and gave his name as if it were a gift. Marcia Lenoir stood. She was wearing black. She said her name in a very low voice, and sat again, and did not look at anyone.
"Mr. Moss's counsel?"
"Your Honor." The young man in the brown suit had risen. "Marcus Dell, for Mr. Moss. Your Honor, my client is not present."
"I can see that, Mr. Dell."
"I have been unable to reach him since Thursday. I've left several messages. He's, I believe he's unwell."
"Unwell."
"I'm told he has not been at work."
"The court notes that Mr. Moss's bond is conditioned on his appearance."
"Yes, Your Honor. I'd ask that the court, I'd ask for a short continuance."
"We'll come to it." The judge took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. She looked tired. "Ms. Lenoir. Are you prepared to proceed with the motions in limine, as set?"
For a moment, nobody breathed.
Marcia Lenoir stood. She had both hands on the table. She did not look at the judge. She was looking, Corinne realized, at a point on the wall about two feet to the right of the witness stand, where a small brass plaque had been set into the plaster. It was the kind of plaque that was put up in a courthouse to commemorate a donor. It said THE PRUITT FAMILY.
"Your Honor," she said. "The State is not prepared to proceed."
"I see."
"The State has a motion."
She said it quite steadily. She said it in a voice that Corinne had come to know well, the voice of a woman reading aloud from a page she had written at three in the morning and been unable to improve.
"The State moves for leave to enter a nolle prosequi, as to all defendants, on all counts, in this indictment."
There was no sound at all.
Then somebody in the gallery let out a breath, a long, ragged exhalation, and it was only afterwards that Corinne understood it had been her.
"Ms. Lenoir," said the judge, very carefully. "On whose motion?"
"The District Attorney's, Your Honor."
"I see." The pause was long. "Is it the State's representation that it is unable to meet its burden?"
"The State's representation is that, in light of the court's evidentiary rulings and the unavailability of certain witnesses, the District Attorney has determined that the interests of justice are not served by proceeding."
"The interests of justice."
"Yes, Your Honor."
It was a phrase, Corinne knew, that had a specific legal meaning. It was a formula. It was in the statute. It was the sentence that every prosecutor in Georgia was obliged to say, with a straight face, when she was dropping a case she did not wish to drop. It did not mean anything. It was a door in the shape of a sentence.
The interests of justice are not served.
"Without prejudice?" said the judge.
"Without prejudice, Your Honor. The State reserves the right to re-indict."
"Mr. Crane?"
"No objection, Your Honor." He had not stood. He said it from his chair, very quietly, with a small inclination of the head. "My clients are grateful for the court's consideration."
"I'm sure they are." Judge Whitcomb-Rhodes picked up her pen. Her face was an expressionless slab. "The motion is granted. The indictment is dismissed. The defendants are discharged. The bond of each is exonerated."
She wrote something.
She looked up.
"I wish to say," she said, "for the record, a thing that I am not obliged to say. I have sat on this bench for nineteen years. I have presided over, by my count, four hundred and six felony cases. In all that time I have seen the State dismiss a case against a sitting defendant, on the morning of a hearing, on the instructions of its elected prosecutor, without notice to the court or the complainant, on exactly one occasion." She laid down the pen. "This is it."
"Your Honor—" said Crane.
"I am not finished, Mr. Crane."
"Of course."
"I will say only that I find the manner of this dismissal to be, in my experience, unusual. I will direct the clerk to include that observation in the record. And I will say to the complainant, who I understand is present—"
Corinne stood up.
She did not know why. She had not meant to. It was something her body did, as a reflex, as a student stands when the teacher says her name.
"Ms. Bellamy," said the judge.
"Yes, Your Honor."
"I want to say that the court believes that you have conducted yourself throughout this proceeding with extraordinary dignity."
She could not answer. Her throat had closed.
"Nothing in this order is a finding that you were not telling the truth. I would like that written down. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Your Honor."
"I'm sorry, Ms. Bellamy." The judge's mouth was not quite steady. "This court is adjourned."
The court reporter, a heavyset young woman Corinne had never seen, who had been substituted that morning for the young man with the ponytail, was packing up her machine when Corinne came down the aisle.
She was doing it with great gentleness. She folded the tripod with her hands, and slid the machine into its padded case, and zipped it, and set her paper in a tray. She did not look up. She did not look at the defense table, where five men were rising, in their masks, and the pale lawyer was gathering his files, and Hollis Crane was bending to say something quiet in the ear of Grant Pruitt Sr.
"Excuse me," said Corinne.
The reporter looked up.
"The record," said Corinne. "Is it, will it say, what she said? The judge. About the, that I wasn't—"
"Yes, ma'am." The woman had round brown eyes. "I got every word."
"It'll be in the transcript."
"It'll be in the transcript." She hesitated. "I could have a copy made. I could have it certified, if you wanted. For fifty dollars."
"Please."
"I'll do it today."
"Thank you." She said it as if she had been handed a coat. She said it again. And then, because she did not know what else to do, she put out her hand, and the reporter took it, and for a moment the two of them stood in the aisle of an almost empty courtroom, shaking hands like women who have just concluded a negotiation.
"I'm sorry," said the reporter, softly. "I'm only the court reporter. I'm not supposed to say."
"It's all right."
"But I wanted you to know that I, that we, the ones who type it, we don't, we don't forget the ones that don't go right."
"I know."
"We keep them."
She could not answer. She nodded, and let go, and turned.
Outside it was a bright blue October morning, with the first real coolness of the year in it. A wind was stirring the oak leaves in the courthouse square. A school bus went by. At the foot of the steps, in the sun, a knot of men in suits had gathered, with the hushed, genial, ceremonious look of a congregation after a christening.
Grant Pruitt Sr. was shaking hands.
He did it well. He did it with both of his own, enclosing the other man's, with a slight forward lean and a murmured word, and each time he did it, the man on the receiving end seemed to stand a little straighter. There was a lawyer. There was a county commissioner. There was a man in a tan uniform with a star pinned to his chest, a large, ruddy, smiling man in his late fifties with a white moustache and a stomach, whom Corinne recognized from the newspaper as Sheriff Hoyt Brannock.
At the edge of the group, in a navy blazer, with his hands clasped before him, stood Grant Jr.
He looked about twelve years old. He looked as if he had been told he could go home early. He was nodding politely at a woman in a hat. He turned his head, and for the first time in sixteen months, his eyes met Corinne's across thirty feet of concrete.
She waited.
She had imagined this. She had imagined it in the dark, in her bed, in the long hours between three and five. She had imagined that he would look away. She had imagined that he would smirk. She had imagined, at her most generous, that he would feel something she could call shame.
What he did was nod.
It was a small, civil, regretful nod, the nod of a man acknowledging, from the other side of a funeral, a distant relative of the deceased. It said, with perfect courtesy, I am sorry that it has been so difficult for everyone.
Then he turned back to the woman in the hat.
"Don't," said Nate, at her elbow. "Corinne. Don't."
She had not realized she'd taken a step. She stood on the second stair, with her hands at her sides. The sun was in her eyes. She could feel her mother's arm go round her waist, strong and cool and shaking.
Somewhere to her left, a camera clicked.
"I'm so sorry," said a voice.
It was Marcia Lenoir.
She had come out of a side door. She was standing alone, in her black suit, with her briefcase against her chest, on the courthouse lawn, beneath a tall water oak. She looked like a person who has been sick for a long time, and has come outside for air.
"Don't," said Corinne.
"I want to—"
"I know what you want."
"I fought," said Lenoir. "I fought him, I fought him for two days. I want you to know that. He gave me till Monday. I found no one."
"I'm sure you tried."
"I did."
"I'm sure you did."
"Corinne." Lenoir was crying. She did it without any sound at all. The tears ran down and dripped off her chin, one after another, onto the lapel of her suit, and she did not wipe them. "Without prejudice means that it isn't over. It means that if somebody comes forward, if there's new evidence, if a witness, I can bring it back. The door is not locked."
"But it's closed."
"It's closed."
"And who's going to open it?"
Lenoir opened her mouth. She closed it.
"You can't," said Corinne. "Not alone. You'd have to find a witness, and the witnesses are the men who did it. And they won't. You said so. You told me that in August. You told me you'd need a miracle."
"I did."
"Do you believe in those?"
"No," said Marcia Lenoir. It came out as a whisper. "I'm sorry. I stopped a long time ago."
"Then it isn't open. It's just not locked. There's a difference."
There was a long silence. A leaf fell from the water oak, and turned in the air, and landed on the DA's shoulder. She did not brush it off.
"Yes," she said. "I suppose there is."
She put her hand in her coat pocket and took out a business card, a plain white one, with her name and a telephone number. She held it out. On the back, in pen, in a small, tilted, impatient hand, she had written another number, and beside it, the word personal.
"If there's ever anything," she said.
Corinne took it. She did not look at it. She slid it into the pocket of her dress.
"Thank you," she said. And then, because she could not help it, because it was the only thing she had ever known how to do: "Ms. Lenoir. You said the record was on my side."
"I know."
"It isn't, is it?"
"No," said the district attorney, quietly. "The record is only ever on the side of the person who writes it."
She did not cry in the car.
She sat in the back seat of the Camry, with her mother driving, and Nate in the front, silent, with his hands between his knees, and watched the town go past. The feed store. The Piggly Wiggly. The Baptist church with its sign: WHO IS ON THE LORD'S SIDE? The two-lane road along the river, the willows going yellow, a man on a tractor.
At a red light, on Pine Street, she saw him.
He was on the far corner, outside the dry-cleaner's, in a grey hooded sweatshirt, with his back to a lamp post. He was standing absolutely still, with his arms wrapped round himself. His face was the colour of paper. He looked, she thought, like a man who had been out all night in the cold. He was not wearing a mask.
He was looking at the Camry.
She knew that face. She knew the line of the jaw, and the way the head tilted to the left when he was listening, and the soft brown eyes. For a moment, through the glass, across a street, their eyes met.
Caleb, she thought.
She did not move. She did not breathe.
And then, as the light turned, she saw him lift one hand, slowly, to the level of his chest, and open it. It was a small gesture. It was palm up, and empty, and unmistakable. A man showing that he had nothing.
Or a man asking for something to be put in it.
"Mom," she said. "Stop the car."
"What? Honey, we're—"
"Stop."
The Camry slowed. Behind them, a pickup honked. Corinne had her hand on the door, and her heart was going in a way she did not understand. But when she looked again, the corner was empty. The lamp post stood in the sun. A newspaper rolled across the pavement.
"What did you see?" said Nate.
"Nothing."
"Corinne."
"I saw nothing," she said. "Drive."
They drove.
She sat in the back seat, with her hands in her lap, and looked down at them. The pen was still there, between her fingers. She did not remember picking it up. She pushed back her sleeve, and in small neat block capitals, on the inside of her left wrist, directly under the line she had written in August, she wrote:
10/5/20. 9:04 a.m. WITHOUT PREJUDICE.
And then, after a moment, in smaller letters:
C. at the corner. Hand open. Why?
She looked at it for a long time.
Her mother turned onto Dellwood Street. The streetlight on the corner, which had been fixed in September, was already on, in the morning, a hard white glare in the daylight, not blinking, not stuttering, shining on nothing.
It would never blink again.
That, she would think, was how she knew. Not the judge's voice. Not the plaque on the wall. It was the light. When she understood that it was never going to flicker, she understood that nothing was going to change.
The door was not locked.
It was only that nobody, in the whole State of Georgia, had been given the key.