Chapter 13
Hedge
He came to court in a brown tweed jacket and a tie his wife had bought him in 1998, and the first thing he did when he sat down in the witness box was look for his daughter.
She was in the third row, a tall gray woman with her father's pale eyes and her handbag clamped on her knees. He found her, and nodded, and she nodded back, and something passed between them that had the shape of a long, private, unspoken argument. Then Gerald Pruett turned and faced the room, with his big pale hands on the rail, and said his name, spelling it twice, because the clerk could not hear him over the whistle of his hearing aid.
It was the eleventh day of trial. A blustery gray afternoon, with a wind pushing rain against the north windows in long diagonal strokes. I had not slept well. I had gone through the cross-examination so many times that the sentences had worn smooth, like the stones in a river, and I could no longer tell whether they were good.
Whitlock took him through it gently. She did not need to do more. He told it exactly as he had told it to me in his front room, the tea, the dark window, the road wet and shining. The silver Bentley with its two pairs of round lamps. The gate. The turn. The sweep of the headlights across the hedge.
"And what did you see, Mr. Pruett?"
"The driver."
"Can you describe him?"
"A tall man. Gray hair. Dark suit. The dome light was on, for a second or two, and I saw his face."
"Do you see that man in the courtroom today?"
He looked across the room. He did it slowly, with an old man's dignity, and his gaze passed over the jury and the clerk and Judge Teague and came to rest on the defense table. On Victor, in his navy suit, with his hands on the wood. He looked at him for what seemed a very long time. I do not think he enjoyed it.
"That's him," said Mr. Pruett. "I'm sorry. But that's him."
"Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant."
"So noted."
"Thank you, Mr. Pruett. Nothing further."
I stood.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Pruett."
"Good afternoon." He peered at me. "You're the one who came to the house."
"I am."
"You've got a nice voice. You sound like a man who's about to tell me something I'd rather not hear."
There was a small, kindly ripple of laughter from the gallery. It was the first all week. I let it go, and smiled, and said, "I hope not. I'd like to ask you some questions about the evening. Some of them you've already answered, and I'm sorry. I'll try to be brief."
"Take your time. I've got nowhere to be." He glanced at his daughter. "Except at one o'clock tomorrow, for the shopping."
I walked to the evidence table. I had four photographs on it, mounted on gray board, each the size of a magazine page, each labeled with a plain number. I had asked Hollis to take them on a Saturday night a month before, at nine forty-eight, from the window of Mr. Pruett's front room, with his consent. I had not told him what they were for.
"Mr. Pruett, you've lived at 22 Cranmoor Lane for thirty-one years."
"Thirty-one in June."
"And you sit at the front window, most nights."
"Since my wife died."
"Do you keep a record of what you see?"
"I do." He lifted his chin. "I'm a surveyor. I keep records of everything."
"Could you tell the jury what kind?"
"A notebook." He smiled, with a trace of pride. "I write down the plate of any car I don't recognize. Time and date. I started in the year my wife was ill, because of the burglaries. I've got eleven of them."
"Eleven notebooks."
"Spiral-bound. In the kitchen."
"Did you write down the car you saw on the fourteenth of October?"
"Of course."
"May I show you a document?"
Whitlock was half out of her chair. "Your Honor, the State has no objection. We've provided it."
"Thank you." I carried it across the well. It was a photocopy of a single page, enlarged to twice its size, taken from a spiral notebook with a green cover. The handwriting was small, upright, and meticulous, a surveyor's hand. I held it up so that the jury could see, and then gave it to the witness.
"Is that your writing?"
"It is."
"Would you read the entry for the fourteenth of October?"
He took out a pair of glasses. He read it to himself first, his lips moving slightly. Then he read it aloud.
"Tuesday, 14 Oct. 9:48. Silver B. into Hales'. V.H.? Drove in at speed. Gone by 9:52."
"Thank you. Do you see the symbol after the initials?"
He hesitated. "A question mark."
"You put a question mark after V.H."
"I did."
"Why?"
"I'd say that was, well." He took off the glasses and folded them. "I'd say I wasn't sure, at the moment. When I wrote it. It was a quick note."
"Were you sure later?"
"I became sure."
"When?"
A pause. In the third row, his daughter was sitting very still, with her mouth pressed into a line. "When the police told me it was Mr. Hale who'd been arrested."
"So you wrote the question mark that night, at 9:52. And you became certain after you learned that Mr. Hale had been arrested."
"I suppose that's right."
"Mr. Pruett, did you write that question mark because you weren't sure the driver was Victor Hale?"
He did not answer at once. I saw his gaze go to the notebook page, to the faint small mark, and then, briefly and helplessly, to his daughter. And I saw what I had been afraid of, and had done anyway: a kind, careful, honest old man, being asked to see his own handwriting as another person might.
"I wrote it," said Gerald Pruett, "because I'm careful."
"I'm sure you are."
"I always put a mark when I haven't seen the plate."
"You didn't see the plate."
"No."
"Did you see the face of the driver?"
"I saw the shape of him."
"A moment ago you said you saw his face."
"I did. For a second."
"But on the night, in your notebook, you didn't write Mr. Hale. You wrote V.H., and then a question mark."
"I'd say that was habit."
"And you hadn't recognized the man."
"I recognized the car."
"You recognized the car."
"Yes."
"Not the man."
He was silent.
I took the first of the photographs from the table and carried it to the easel and set it there. It was a long, dark, grainy photograph of a stretch of wet road under street lamps, shot from a height, with a hedge on each side and a pale gate in the middle distance. A silver car sat at the gate with its headlamps on.
"Mr. Pruett, do you recognize this?"
"That's the view from my window."
"It was taken at nine forty-eight p.m., from your window, on the fourteenth of February, with your consent, by my investigator. The weather was similar. The car you see is a silver Bentley Continental." I paused. "Can you tell me, from this photograph, whether the car belongs to Mr. Victor Hale?"
He leaned forward. He narrowed his eyes. For a long time he said nothing.
"It looks like his."
"It does. It isn't."
A murmur went through the gallery. I did not turn.
"It's the car of a gentleman in Calder Heights who is a patient at the university hospital," I said. "He kindly lent it to us for the evening." I placed the second photograph beside the first. This one was almost identical: the same road, the same hedges, the same gate, a silver car in the same position. "And this?"
"That, ah." He swallowed. "That also looks like his."
"It's another car. Owned by another man, who also lives on the hill." The third photograph. The fourth. In every one a silver car stood at the gate, low-slung, wide-fendered, with its four round lamps. "Mr. Pruett, you've seen, I imagine, a good many Bentleys in thirty-one years."
"I have."
"Is it fair to say that, at a distance of a hundred and eighty feet, at night, in the rain, one might look very much like another?"
"Objection," said Whitlock. "Calls for speculation."
"I'll rephrase. Mr. Pruett, from this window, at this distance, can you tell the difference between one silver Bentley Continental and another?"
"I, no."
"You can't."
"Not at night." He said it very low. "Not from there."
"Thank you." I let the silence stand a moment. It filled the room: the faint rain, the radiator's slow knock, the click of Alma Finch's needles, which had resumed. "Now, you've told the jury that the dome light came on, and that you saw the driver's face."
"Yes."
"Do you recall how that happened?"
"The light just came on. For a second."
"Did the driver open a door?"
"No."
"Did he lean forward? Reach up?"
"I don't think so."
"Do you know much about Bentley Continentals, Mr. Pruett?"
"I know the sound."
"Do you know how the interior lights work?"
"I can't say I do."
"Would it surprise you to learn that, in that model, the dome light does not come on spontaneously? That it activates when a door is opened, or when the car is unlocked, or when the driver switches it on by hand?"
"Objection," said Whitlock again. "Counsel is testifying."
"I'll withdraw it." I walked back toward the lectern, slowly, and stopped, and turned. "Mr. Pruett. I'm going to ask you one more question. And I'd like you to take as long as you like."
"All right."
"When you say that you saw Mr. Hale's face, and when you say you saw the gray hair, and the dark suit, and the dome light: is it possible that your mind supplied some of that afterwards? That having been told it was Mr. Hale, your memory filled in what you hadn't actually seen?"
He took a very long time.
I have been in a great many courtrooms. I have been in rooms where a man's life hung on a single word, and rooms where the only sound was the scratching of a clerk's pen. I have never forgotten that silence. It was not the silence of embarrassment, or of fear. It was the silence of a very old and honest person looking, for the first time in his life, directly at a thing he had been unable to see.
"I've thought about that," said Gerald Pruett.
"Have you?"
"A good deal." His hands had come together on the rail. He was looking not at me but at his own knuckles, very white. "I told myself I was sure, you see. Because my wife used to say, Gerald, you never admit when you don't know. And I thought, well, I'll be sure about this one." He raised his eyes. They were pale and wet, and a little ashamed. "I saw a silver car. I saw a tall man. I put the rest in myself. I think I did."
In the third row, his daughter put her hand over her mouth.
"Thank you, Mr. Pruett," I said gently. "I'm very sorry."
"No." He shook his head. "No, you did it very politely."
It was meant kindly. It was the cruelest thing anyone had said to me all year.
Whitlock's redirect lasted six minutes. She was graceful, and clear, and she did what could be done. She asked Mr. Pruett whether he was sure it was a silver Bentley, and he said yes. She asked him whether he was sure it entered the Hales' gate at 9:48, and he said yes. She asked whether he had any doubt that the car he had seen was the car of someone who knew the family, and he said, slowly, no, because it had gone straight in.
"No further questions," said Whitlock, and sat.
I watched the jurors file out for the afternoon recess. I had learned to read their backs. Teresa Ouellette walked slowly, with her hand on the rail, her face composed and troubled. The software tester was writing something in his notebook as he went, and did not look up. The bus driver, Raymond Teague, glanced once toward the witness stand, where the old man was being helped down by a deputy, and then toward the defense table, toward Victor. His face was unreadable. But he was not nodding.
When the courtroom had emptied, I stood at the table alone for a minute. Priya had gone to find coffee. Victor had been escorted down to the holding cell. The wind threw a handful of rain at the glass, and I looked at the exhibit easel, where the four gray photographs still stood, four silver cars at a gate, indistinguishable, and I thought: That is a good cross-examination. It was the kind that law students would be shown. It had been fair, gentle, and quietly lethal, and it had done what I had set out to do.
I felt nothing. That was what was strange. I waited for the pleasure. It had always come before, the clean bright rush in the chest, the little private flare. I stood there with the rain on the window and waited, and it did not come, and I realized that what I felt was a small steady ache, like a muscle that has been used for something it was not meant for.
In the corridor I met the old man's daughter. She was standing by the water cooler with a paper cup in her hand, very upright, and as I passed she said, in a low, level voice, without raising her eyes:
"He hasn't slept properly since October."
I stopped.
"He thought he'd seen a murderer," she said. "Do you know what that does to a man of seventy-four? He thought, I've watched this man go by for thirty years, and I didn't know." Her mouth trembled and was still. "He was proud of it. That he could help. And you've shown him he was wrong, and I suppose that's your job, and I suppose he was." She finally looked at me. "But I'd like you to know that it wasn't easy."
"I know," I said. "I'm sorry."
"No," said the daughter. "I don't think you do."
She turned and went away down the corridor, carrying the paper cup in both hands as though it were full to the brim, and did not spill a drop.