In the Woods

I went to see Cassie testify, though. I sat at the back of the courtroom, which was, unusually, packed; the trial had been filling front pages and talk radio since before it even began. Cassie was wearing a neat little dove-gray suit and her curls were slicked down smoothly against her head. I hadn't seen her in a few months. She looked thinner, more subdued; the quicksilver mobility I associate with her was gone, and her new stillness brought her face home to me-the delicate, marked arches above her eyelids, the wide clean curves of her mouth-as if I had never seen it before. She was older, no longer the wicked limber girl with the stalled Vespa, but no less beautiful to me for that: whatever elliptical beauty Cassie possesses has always lain not in the vulnerable planes of color and texture but deeper, in the polished contours of her bones. I watched her on the stand in that unfamiliar suit and thought of the soft hairs at the back of her neck, warm and smelling of sun, and it seemed an impossible thing to me, it seemed the vastest and saddest miracle of my life: I touched her hair, once.

She was good; Cassie has always been good in the courtroom. Juries trust her and she holds their attention, which is harder than it sounds, especially in a long trial. She answered Mathews's questions in a quiet, clear voice, her hands folded in her lap. On cross-examination she did what she could for Damien: yes, he had appeared agitated and confused; yes, he had seemed genuinely to believe that the murder had been necessary to protect Rosalind and Jessica Devlin; yes, in her opinion he had been under Rosalind's influence and had committed the crime at her urging. Damien huddled in his seat and stared at her like a little boy watching a horror movie, his eyes dazed and huge and uncomprehending. He had tried to commit suicide, using the time-honored prison bedsheet, when he heard that Rosalind was going to testify against him.

"When Damien confessed to this crime," the defense barrister asked, "did he tell you why he had committed it?"

Cassie shook her head. "Not that day, no. My partner and I asked him about his motive a number of times, but he either refused to answer or said that he wasn't sure."

"Even though he had already confessed, and telling you his motive couldn't possibly have done him any harm. Why do you think that was?"

"Objection: calls for speculation…"

My partner. I knew from Cassie's blink on the word, from the tiny shift in the angle of her shoulders, that she had seen me tucked away there at the back; but she never looked my way, not even when the lawyers finally finished with her and she stepped down from the stand and walked out of the courtroom. I thought of Kiernan then; of what it must have been to him when, after thirty years of partnership, McCabe had that heart attack and died. More than I have ever envied anything in the world, I envied Kiernan that, that unique and unattainable grief.

Rosalind was the next witness. She tiptoed up to the stand, through the sudden flurry of whispers and journalistic scribbling, and gave Mathews a timid little rosebud smile from under her mascara. I left. I read it in the newspapers the next day: how she had sobbed when she talked about Katy, trembled as she recounted how Damien had threatened to kill her sisters if she broke up with him; how, when his barrister started digging, she had cried, "How dare you! I loved my sister!" and then fainted, forcing the judge to adjourn the court for the afternoon.

She hadn't had a trial-her parents' decision, I'm sure, rather than hers; left to herself, I can't imagine she would have passed up that amount of attention. Mathews had plea-bargained her case. Conspiracy charges are notoriously difficult to prove; there was no hard evidence against Rosalind, her confession was inadmissible and she had of course recanted it anyway (Cassie, she explained, had terrified it out of her by making throat-slitting motions); and, besides, as a juvenile she wouldn't get much of a sentence even if by some chance she were found guilty. She was also claiming, off and on, that she and I had slept together, which left O'Kelly apoplectic and me even more so and brought the general confusion to a level nothing short of paralyzing.

Mathews had played the odds and concentrated on Damien. In exchange for her testimony, he had offered Rosalind a three-year suspended sentence for reckless endangerment and resisting arrest. I'd heard, through the grapevine, that she'd already received half a dozen proposals of marriage, and that newspapers and publishers were having a bidding war over her story.

* * *

On my way out of the courthouse I saw Jonathan Devlin, leaning against the wall and smoking. He was holding the cigarette close against his chest, tilting his head back to watch the gulls wheeling over the river. I got my smokes out of my coat and joined him.

He glanced at me, then away again.

"How are you doing?" I asked.