34 | Jacob Was Mad
Trial day six.
Father O’Leary was in the audience at the back of the courtroom when the trial resumed next morning.
Laurie, looking gray and depleted, was at her lonely post in the front row of the gallery.
Logiudice, his confidence buoyed by the performances of a series of professional witnesses, moved with a little strut. It is a peculiarity of trials that, though the witness is ostensibly the star, the lawyer who is asking the questions is the only one in the courtroom who is free to move around as he pleases. Good lawyers tend not to move much, since they want the jurors’ eyes to remain on the witness. But Logiudice could not seem to find a comfortable perch as he flitted from the witness stand to the jury box to the prosecution table and various points in between before finally coming to roost at the lectern. I suspect he was on edge about the day’s slate of civilian witnesses, Jacob’s classmates, determined not to let these amateur witnesses run away with his case the way the last ones had.
On the stand was Derek Yoo. Derek who had eaten in our kitchen a thousand times. Who had lounged on our couch watching football games and scattering Doritos on the carpet. Derek who had jumped around the living room playing GameCube and Wii with Jacob. Derek who had blissfully nodded his head for hours, probably stoned, to the pounding bass beat of his iPod while Jacob did the same beside him—the music so loud we could hear it murmuring in his headphones; it was like hearing their thoughts. Now, seeing this same Derek Yoo on the stand, I would happily have skinned him alive, with his limp brush-proof garage-band hair and sleepy slacker expression, who now threatened to send my son to Walpole forever. For the event, Derek wore a tweed sport coat that hung off his narrow shoulders. His shirt collar was too big. Cinched under his tie, it bunched and twisted, and dangled from his skinny neck like a waiting noose.
“How long have you known the defendant, Derek?”
“Since kindergarten, I guess.”
“You went to elementary school together?”
“Yes.”
“Where was that?”
“Mason-Rice in Newton.”
“And you’ve been friendly ever since?”
“Yes.”
“Best friends?”
“I guess so. Sometimes.”
“You’ve been to each other’s houses?”
“Yeah.”
“Hung out together after school and on weekends?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you been in the same homeroom?”
“Sometimes.”
“When was the last time?”
“Not last year. This year Jake is not in school. I guess he has a tutor. So I guess two years ago.”
“But even in years when you weren’t in the same homeroom, you remained close friends?”
“Yeah.”
“So how many years is it that you and the defendant have been close friends?”
“Eight.”
“Eight. And you’re how old?”
“I’m fifteen now.”
“Is it fair to say that, as of the day Ben Rifkin was murdered, April 12, 2007, Jacob Barber was your best friend?”
Derek’s voice went quiet. The thought made him either sad or embarrassed. “Yeah.”
“Okay. Directing your attention to the morning of April 12, 2007, do you remember where you were that morning?”
“In school.”
“About what time did you get to school?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“How did you get to school that day?”
“Walked.”
“Did your route take you through Cold Spring Park?”
“No, I come from the other direction.”
“Okay. When you got to school, where did you go?”
“I stopped at my locker to put my stuff away, then I went to homeroom.”
“And the defendant was not in your homeroom that year, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see him before homeroom that morning?”
“Yeah, I saw him at the lockers.”
“What was he doing?”
“He was just putting his stuff in his locker.”
“Was there anything unusual about his appearance?”
“No.”
“About his clothes?”
“No.”
“Was there anything on his hand?”
“There was a big spot. It looked like blood.”
“Describe the spot.”
“It was just, like, a red spot, like the size of a quarter.”
“Did you ask him about it?”
“Yes. I said, ‘Dude, what did you do to your hand?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just a scratch.’ ”
“Did you see the defendant try to remove the blood?”
“Not right then.”
“Did he deny that the spot on his hand was blood?”
“No.”
“Okay, what happened next?”
“I went off to homeroom.”
“Was Ben Rifkin in your homeroom that year?”
“Yes.”
“But he wasn’t in homeroom that morning.”
“No.”
“Did that seem strange to you?”
“No. I don’t know if I even noticed. I guess I would have figured he was just out sick.”
“So what happened in homeroom?”
“Nothing. Just the usual: attendance, some announcements, then we went off to class.”
“What was your first class that day?”
“English.”
“Did you go?”
“Yeah.”
“Was the defendant in your English class?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you see him in the classroom that morning?”
“Yes.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“We just said hello, that’s all.”
“Was there anything unusual about the defendant’s manner or anything he said?”
“No, not really.”
“He didn’t seem upset.”
“No.”
“Anything unusual about his appearance?”
“No.”
“No blood on his clothes, nothing like that?”
“Objection.”
“Sustained.”
“Would you describe the defendant’s appearance when you saw him in English class that morning?”
“I think he was just wearing, like, regular clothes: jeans, sneakers, whatever. There was no blood on his clothes, if that’s what you mean.”
“What about on his hands?”
“The spot was gone.”
“He’d washed his hands?”
“I guess.”
“Were there any cuts or scratches on his hands? Any reason he might have been bleeding?”
“Not that I remember. I wasn’t really paying attention. It didn’t matter then.”
“Okay, what happened next?”
“We had English class for like fifteen minutes, then there was an announcement that the school was being put in a lockdown.”
“What is a lockdown?”
“It’s when you have to go back to your homeroom and they take attendance and lock all the doors and keep everyone there.”
“Do you know why the school gets put in a lockdown?”
“Because there’s some kind of danger.”
“What did you think when you heard the school was going into a lockdown?”
“Columbine.”
“You thought somebody was at the school with a gun?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have any idea who?”
“No.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Yeah, of course. Everybody was.”
“Do you remember how the defendant reacted when the principal announced the lockdown?”
“He didn’t say anything. He just kind of smiled. There wasn’t much time. We just heard it and everybody ran.”
“Did the defendant seem nervous or frightened?”
“No.”
“At the time, did anybody know what the lockdown was about?”
“No.”
“Did anyone connect it to Ben Rifkin?”
“No. I mean, later that morning they told us, but not at the start.”
“What happened next?”
“We just stayed in our homerooms with the doors locked. They came on the intercom and they told us we weren’t in any danger, there were no guns or anything, so the teachers unlocked the door and we just kind of waited there. It was like a drill or something.”
“You had practiced lockdowns before?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened next?”
“We stayed there. They told us to take out our books and read or do homework or whatever. Then they canceled school for the rest of the day and we went home around eleven.”
“Nobody ever questioned you or the other students?”
“Not that day, no.”
“Nobody ever searched the school or the lockers or any of the students?”
“Not that I saw.”
“So when school got out and they finally let you leave the room, what did you see?”
“There were just a lot of parents waiting outside the school to get their kids. All the parents came to the school.”
“When did you see the defendant next?”
“We were texting that afternoon, I guess?”
“By texting, you mean you were exchanging text messages on your cell phones?”
“Yes.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Well, at that point all we knew was that Ben got killed. We didn’t know, like, exactly what happened or anything. So we were just both like, Did you hear anything? What did you hear? What’s going on?”
“And what did the defendant say to you?”
“Well, I was just like, Dude, isn’t that the way you go to school? Did you see anything? And Jake just said no.”
“He said no?”
“That’s right.”
“He didn’t say that he’d seen Ben lying on the ground and he tried to revive him or see if he was okay?”
“No.”
“What else did he say while you were texting?”
“Well, we were just kind of joking because Ben had been kind of picking on Jacob for a while. So we were all like, ‘Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy’ and ‘Your wishes came true’ and stuff like that. I know that sounds really bad now but it was just, like, joking.”
“When you say Ben Rifkin had been picking on Jacob, describe what you mean. What exactly had been going on between those two?”
“Ben was just like, he was in a different group. He was just—I don’t want to say not-nice things about him after what happened and everything—but he was not very nice to Jake or to me, or to anyone in our group.”
“Who is in your group?”
“It was pretty much me, Jake, and this other kid, Dylan.”
“And what was your group like? What was your reputation in school?”
“We were geeks.” Derek said this without embarrassment or bitterness. Did not bother him. Just the way it was.
“And Ben, what was he like?”
“I don’t know. He was handsome.”
“He was handsome?”
Derek flushed. “I don’t know. He was just in a different group than us.”
“Were you friends with Ben Rifkin?”
“No. I mean, I knew him, like, to say hello, but we weren’t friends.”
“But he never picked on you?”
“I don’t know. He probably called me a fag or whatever. I wouldn’t call it bullying or anything. Somebody calls you a fag, it’s just like, whatever. It was no big deal.”
“Did Ben call other people names?”
“Yes.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, fag, geek, slut, bitch, loser, whatever. It was just the way he was, it was kind of the way he talked.”
“To everyone?”
“No, not everyone. Just kids he didn’t like. Kids he didn’t think were cool.”
“Was Jacob cool?”
Shy smile. “No. None of us were.”
“Did Ben like Jacob?”
“No. Definitely not.”
“Why not?”
“Just didn’t.”
“For no reason? Was there some kind of beef between them? Anything specific?”
“No. It was just like, Ben didn’t think Jake was cool. None of us were. He said stuff to all of us.”
“But it was worse for Jacob than for you or Dylan?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I think he just kind of saw that it got to Jake. Like I said, for me, if somebody calls you a fag or a geek or whatever, what can you do? I just kind of didn’t fight back. But Jake got all bent out of shape, so Ben just kept on doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“Calling him names.”
“What names?”
“ ‘Fag’ mostly. Some other things, worse things.”
“What worse things? Go ahead. You can say them.”