Chapter 27
Both Halves
On the second day they played the video.
Judge Okafor had warned the gallery. He had done it in his own way, mildly, without raising his voice. He said that the court would hear an audio recording of a certain event, that it would last a little over eleven minutes, and that anyone who felt unable to hear it should leave now, without embarrassment. He said the doors would then be closed. He said he would not tolerate a sound.
Nine people left.
Corinne watched them go. She watched an elderly man in a blazer, a young woman with a stroller, a reporter who had gone green. They went out quickly, with their heads down. A deputy shut the door behind them. It made a heavy, soft, final noise, like a lid on a box.
Castellano rose.
"The State calls Special Agent Dana Prescott, for the limited purpose of authenticating the file."
It took four minutes. The agent was young, crisp, and exact. She described the phone, the chain of custody, the forensic copy, the hash. She said that the file had not been altered. She said that the metadata matched the date and time of June 15, 2019. She said the device had been sealed in an evidence bag on the eleventh of August, 2024, at 9:32 in the morning, and had not left the possession of the Bureau since.
"Thank you," said Castellano. "Your Honor. The State offers Exhibit Fifty-One."
"Any objection?"
"None, Your Honor," said Nate.
"Admitted. You may play it."
A technician in the corner pressed a key.
There was a small click.
For the first thirty seconds there was only the sound of breathing. It was close and uneven, the breath of a person very frightened, standing in a dark place with his arm held out. Somewhere below, muffled by a floor and a wall, there was music, a country song, and a drunken shout of laughter. Then a door-latch. Then the faint creak of a bed.
And a voice.
Easy, easy. She's out cold.
She did not know whose voice it was. She had never been able to separate them. They came down the years as a single sound, a pitch of male amusement, soft and thick with whisky.
She kept her eyes on the table.
It was not graphic. Nate had made sure of that. The video was nearly black, and the audio, which had been enhanced, made no attempt to describe what was being done. A person who had never been told would not have known. But a person who listened would have understood, as the jurors understood, one after the other, in the grey light of the courtroom, with their hands knotted in their laps.
They understood from the pauses.
They understood from the things that were said and the things that were not. They understood from a young man's voice, high and wavering, saying, dude, I don't think, maybe we should, and a cold flat answer, shut up, Boyle. They understood from the long, long stretch in the middle of the recording in which nobody spoke at all, and the only sound in the room was the small, irregular rasp of the person holding the phone.
She did not look at the jury. She had promised herself. But she could not help seeing, at the edge of her vision, the old man in the corduroy jacket.
Mr. Tolliver had taken off his glasses.
He was holding them in his lap, in both hands. He was looking straight ahead, at the wall. His mouth was shut. A single drop ran down the side of his nose, slowly, and fell, and darkened the cloth of his knee.
Don't look at him.
Don't.
At eight minutes and twelve seconds, a new voice came on.
What's going on in here.
It was a pleasant voice. It was a deputy's voice, level and clear. She heard it enter the room. She heard it stop.
I told you to wait until I got the rest of it in her.
Clean her up.
It never happened. You hear me? None of this happened. By morning, there won't be any room.
Then the light changed. It was the door, opening wider. And a sound like a gasp. And in the dark, a hand came out of nowhere and the picture spun, and swung, and showed for one-twentieth of a second a ceiling, a lamp, and the clean pale oval of a face with no glasses.
Cal, said Dale Sutter. Come in, son.
The recording ran another two minutes and thirty-one seconds. Then it ended.
Nobody moved.
For a long time the courtroom was entirely silent. It was the silence of a room in which something has been taken out, and the shape of it remains. The rain went on. A clock somewhere ticked. On the bench, Judge Okafor sat motionless with his hands folded in front of him and his eyes on the ceiling.
At last he said, very quietly: "We will take a fifteen-minute recess."
No one rose.
They sat there, all of them, the whole room, as people sit in a church after the last hymn. And then someone in the gallery began, very softly, to weep, and the sound broke the stillness, and the deputies came forward to open the doors.
The State's case ran two more days.
It was thorough. Castellano did not hurry. She called the forensic pathologist, who spoke of the drowning of Owen Maddox. She called the ballistics examiner, who spoke of the Taurus and the two other weapons. She called a locksmith, a gun dealer from Anniston, a clerk in the pawnshop in Macon where the recording device had been purchased. She called Rick Pickett.
He came in his best suit. It was brown, and the wrong size, and he had had his hair cut that morning. His hands shook on the Bible. He sat with his neck stretched forward, like a heron, and looked at the prosecutor with an expression of anxious, almost painful sincerity.
"Mr. Pickett. What was your position in June of 2019?"
"Night officer. At the sheriff's department."
"Did you see Lieutenant Dale Sutter sign out an item of evidence?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"What item?"
"The, a sexual assault kit. Number 19-0614-A."
"At what time?"
"Two-fourteen in the morning."
"On what date?"
"The sixteenth of June."
"And when did he return it?"
"Six-oh-nine."
"Was there anything unusual about his appearance?"
"He was wet." Pickett swallowed. "All over. His hair, his shirt, his boots. And there was a scratch on his hand."
"Did you write that down?"
"In a notebook. The next day. I didn't put it in the log."
"Why not?"
"Because I was afraid."
"Of whom?"
The young man looked at his hands. They were large and red and chapped. A small gold ring gleamed on the left.
"Of everybody," said Pickett. "That's the honest answer. I was twenty-one. He was a lieutenant. He had the sheriff. He had, I thought he had God. And I thought, if I say it, I'll be nobody. I'll lose my job, and my father's name, and nobody'll believe me. So I just." He stopped. "I was a coward."
"Mr. Pickett. You also saw the defendant, on the night of the eighth of August of last year, in a car outside her house."
"Yes."
"You'd been watching her."
"For twenty nights. I was told to."
"And on the night of the tenth, you saw Lieutenant Sutter enter her kitchen through a window."
"At twelve-oh-nine."
"Did you intervene?"
"No, ma'am."
"Why not?"
"I was in the wrong spot. I'd, I told him I wasn't coming." His voice broke. "I came anyway. I got there after. I heard the shots. I didn't see who fired first."
Castellano nodded. "Thank you."
She sat.
Nate rose, in his turn, and walked to the witness box. He did not use any tricks. He stood a few feet away and spoke in the voice of a man talking to a younger brother.
"Mr. Pickett. When you saw her on the porch. After the shooting. Did she point the gun at you?"
"No, sir."
"Did she threaten you?"
"No."
"What did she say?"
"She said, go home." Pickett wiped his face with his sleeve. "She said, give the notebook to Agent Ames. She said, don't tell him where I went."
"And did you do that?"
"I did the first two."
"Did she ever, in any of her dealings with you, show you the slightest hostility?"
"She said, I'm not going to hurt you." The young man laughed, a small, wet, helpless sound. "Everybody says that. But she did the, she did what she said. She let me go. She could've, she's, I'd have been the next. I knew that. I've known that every day since. And I'm here."
"Why are you here?"
"Because she didn't," said Rick Pickett. "That's all. I think about it all the time. She had every reason, and she didn't. And that's, I can't, I don't know what that is. But I think it matters."
"Nothing further."
There was a faint stir in the gallery. In the jury box, a young woman in the back row, a hygienist with dark hair, took out a tissue.
On the Thursday, the State called the families.
It was not a surprise. Castellano had told Nate at the start. She had a duty to the dead, she said, and a right to put their faces before the jury. She did it cleanly. She did not exploit them. She called the sister of Owen Maddox, a girl of nineteen with a high, scared voice, who said, he taught me to fish. She called Tee Boyle's mother, a small woman in a brown dress who said nothing at all, only looked at the defendant from the stand with a face like a closed door.
And she called Lauren Pruitt.
She came in a black dress, with her hair drawn back. She was thirty-one. She had been pretty, once, with a long neck and a light-brown fringe, and the prettiness was still there but it had shut down, like a house with the shutters drawn. She sat very straight. She did not look at the defendant. She held a folded handkerchief in her lap and did not touch it.
"Mrs. Pruitt," said Castellano. "You were married to Grant Pruitt Junior."
"For six years."
"You have a daughter."
"Hannah. She's four." A faint tremor. "She asks where he is. I say he's on a trip."
"I'm sorry."
"Thank you."
"Mrs. Pruitt. Did you receive a note, in January of last year, from the defendant?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell the jury what it said?"
Lauren Pruitt closed her eyes.
"It said, Grant asked me to tell you about the yellow roses. That was all." Her voice shook. "It said, he said you'd know."
"Did you?"
"Yes."
"What are the yellow roses?"
"He bought them every year. On the day we met. Yellow, because I'd said once, I'd said it was my favourite, and I'd forgotten I'd said it. He never forgot." She opened her eyes. They were very wide and dry. "He always put a card. And the card always said, thank you for staying. I used to think it was a joke. I thought it was something, you know. Sweet. A thing he said."
"And now?"
"I don't know what it meant."
She stopped.
For a moment she sat quite still, with the handkerchief in her hands. Then, abruptly, she turned her head. For the first time since she had come in, she looked straight at Corinne.
"I want to ask her something," she said.
"Mrs. Pruitt—" began Castellano.
"Your Honor," said Lauren. "Please."
Judge Okafor hesitated. He looked from the witness to the defendant. He looked, long and thoughtfully, at the jury.
"Ms. Castellano, any objection?"
"It's, I'd prefer she not, Your Honor, it's irregular."
"It is." He turned. "Mrs. Pruitt, I can't permit you to question the defendant. But if there's something you wish the jury to hear, I'll hear it. Briefly."
Lauren Pruitt swallowed.
"I read the note," she said. "I kept it. I read it every night for a month. And I thought, what kind of woman would, what kind of person kills somebody and then writes a letter about flowers? And I thought she must be a monster. I wanted her to be." She drew a long, ragged breath. "But that's not what it is. Is it."
Corinne said nothing.
"A monster wouldn't have written it. A monster wouldn't have remembered. She did it for him. She did it because he asked." The woman's voice cracked and steadied. "I know what he did. I watched the video. I'm sorry. I had to. I sat in the lawyer's office and watched it, and I threw up in the wastebasket. And I thought, I married that man. And I thought, he was kind to me. And I couldn't make the two things fit."
"Mrs. Pruitt."
"I still can't." She turned to the jury, and her face crumpled. "That's what I want to say. I can't. He was kind and he did that. He was both. I loved him, and I'm so ashamed. And I don't know what to want. I don't know if I want her to die. I don't. I don't know if I want her to live. I only want it to have not happened. And it did. And she's the only person in this room who's, who's, who looks as if she knows."
She put her handkerchief to her mouth.
There was a long, terrible, fragile silence.
Castellano, to her credit, did not interrupt. She stood with her hand on the table and her eyes on the floor. When the sound had passed, she said, quite gently, "Thank you, Mrs. Pruitt. I have no further questions."
Nate rose.
"Mrs. Pruitt," he said. "I'm sorry for your loss."
"Thank you."
"I have nothing to ask."
He sat. Lauren Pruitt stepped down from the box with the help of a deputy. She walked to the rail, and then, to the astonishment of the room, instead of going to her seat, she stopped in front of the defence table.
She stood there, small, and black, and trembling.
She did not speak. She only held out her hand.
Corinne looked at it.
It was a small, cold, thin, ringless hand. It shook. Behind her, the deputy said, "Ma'am," and Lauren said, "It's all right," and did not take it back.
Corinne took it.
She held it for two seconds. That was all. A woman in a black dress, and a woman in grey, with a rail between them, and a hundred people watching.
Then the deputy said, "Ma'am," again, and Lauren let go, and went back to her seat, and sat down with her face in her hands.
Both, thought Corinne.
Both of us.
She took the stand on the Friday.
She had not expected to. She and Nate had argued about it for a week. He said she would be torn to pieces. He said Castellano had a gift for cross-examination that he had seen turn a saint into a fiend. He said there was no need; they had the video; they had Pickett and Ames and the recording. The jury understood.
"The jury understands what happened to me," she said. "It doesn't understand what I thought."
"They'll hate what you thought."
"Maybe."
"It'll be used against you."
"I know."
"Corinne." He rubbed his eyes. "Why?"
"Because I'm the only one who can say it," said Corinne. "And because if I don't, someone else will. And they'll get it wrong."
He had given in.
She walked to the witness box in her grey suit with her hands loose at her sides. She was sworn. She sat. She looked out over the room, at the high windows and the dust and the gallery, and the jury with their faces turned toward her like leaves toward the sun.
Nate took her through it. It took the whole morning. She told the story from the beginning: the lake house, the blue cup, the ceiling, the long wrong year. She told about the kit and the tape and the judge's bench. She told about the call centre and the notebook and the dead mother. She told about Owen, in the water. She told about Grant, in the boathouse. She did not soften any of it. She did not raise her voice. She used the plain flat words that had been trained into her in the evenings of her youth, with a steno pad on her knee: he said. I said. I did.
When she described the dock, someone in the gallery cried out.
She paused. Then she went on.
At twenty to one, Nate said, "Thank you, Ms. Bellamy," and sat, and Miriam Castellano rose.
She did not hurry. She picked up a single sheet of paper. She walked to the box, and stood with it in both hands, and for a long moment she looked at the witness with a face that gave nothing away.
"Ms. Bellamy," she said. "Did you intend to kill Owen Maddox?"
"Yes."
"Grant Pruitt?"
"Yes."
"Terrence Boyle?"
"I intended to question him. I didn't intend to kill him. When he said he'd testify, I shot him anyway." She said it steadily. "I don't have an excuse. I'd like to say that I did. I don't."
"Dale Sutter?"
"He was going to kill me. I fired first. I'm not sure I'd have fired if I hadn't wanted to." She drew a breath. "I didn't call an ambulance. I could have. I stood there and let him die."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know."
"I've asked myself every night since." She looked at the prosecutor. "I think I wanted to see what it felt like. And I think it felt like nothing. And I think that was the worst thing I've ever learned about myself."
Castellano nodded slowly.
"And Caleb Moss."
The word hung in the air.
"Yes," said Corinne.
"You intended to kill him."
"Yes."
"He'd given you the video. He'd come to you, unarmed, to hand over the evidence. He'd saved your life. He'd carried you out of that house."
"Yes."
"Why did you shoot him?"
She had known the question was coming. She had known it for seven months. She had written an answer a hundred times, in a hundred forms, on the back of a hundred sheets of steno paper. She had read them over. She had thrown them away.
She said, simply, "Because he asked me to."
"That's all?"
"No."
"What else?"
"Because he was the one I couldn't solve," said Corinne. "The others, I could. They were clear. They'd done what they'd done, and I knew how to hate them. But Caleb held the door and he carried me out. It was the same hands. And I couldn't make him into one thing. And I couldn't bear it. I thought, if I let him live, I'll have to live with a person who is both. And I'll never know what he was."
"So you killed him."
"So I killed him. And now I'll never know what he was anyway." She laughed, a small dry breath. "It didn't even work."
"Ms. Bellamy." Castellano put down the paper. "Do you regret it?"
The courtroom was entirely still.
Corinne looked past her. She looked at the high windows. At the bars of light across the floor. At the dust, turning, turning.
"No," she said.
She heard her own voice, level, in the great quiet.
"Not one. I'd do each of them again."
A sound went through the gallery.
"I grieve for Caleb. I will grieve for him every day I'm alive. But that isn't regret. Regret would mean I believe there was another door. There wasn't. I looked. I looked for four years, and I knocked on every one, and I'd like twelve people to know that." She looked at the jury. "I'm not asking you to say I was right. I'm asking you not to say I had a choice. I'm only a witness. I only say what happened."
Castellano looked at her for a long time.
"No further questions," she said.
She walked back to her table and sat. She did not look at anyone. And in the jury box, in the first seat of the second row, the old man in the corduroy jacket put on his glasses again, and folded his hands, and bowed his white head, as a man does who has been present at something he will not forget.