“Before you saw that story on the Cutting Room, did you ever report your suspicions about Jacob to the police?”
“Not exactly.”
“Why not?”
“Because I wasn’t totally sure. Plus, the cop in charge of the case was Jacob’s dad.”
“And what did you think when you realized that it was Jacob’s dad who was running the case?”
“Ob-jec-tion.” Jonathan’s voice was disgusted.
“Sustained.”
“Derek, one last question. It was you that sought out the police to share this information, isn’t that right? Nobody had to come ask you?”
“That’s right.”
“You felt you had to turn in your own best friend?”
“Yeah.”
“No further questions.”
Jonathan stood up. He seemed for all the world to be unfazed by what he had just heard. And he would conduct a gallant cross, I knew. But something had obviously changed in the courtroom. The atmosphere was electric. It was as if we had all just decided something. You could read it in the faces of the jurors and Judge French, you could hear it in the supreme quiet of the crowd: Jacob was not going to walk out of that courtroom, not out the front door anyway. The excitement was a mix of relief—everyone’s doubts were resolved at last, about whether Jacob did it and whether he would get away with it—and palpable eagerness for revenge. The rest of the trial would be only details, formalities, tying up loose ends. Even my friend Ernie the court officer looked at Jacob with a wary eye, assessing how he would react to the handcuffs. But Jonathan seemed not to notice the drop in air pressure. He moved to the lectern and slipped on the half-glasses he wore on a chain around his neck and began to take it apart piece by piece.
“These things you’ve told us about, they bothered you, but not so much that you broke off your friendship with Jacob?”
“No.”
“In fact, you two continued to be friends for days and even weeks after the murder, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t it true that you even went to Jacob’s house after the murder?”
“Yes.”
“So it’s fair to say that you weren’t too sure at the time that Jacob really was the murderer?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Because you wouldn’t want to remain friends with a murderer, of course?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Even after you posted that message on Facebook where you accused Jacob of the murder, you still remained friends with him? You still remained in contact, still hung around?”
“Yes.”
“Were you ever afraid of Jacob?”
“No.”
“Did he ever threaten or intimidate you in any way? Or lose his temper at you?”
“No.”
“Isn’t it true that it was your parents who told you you couldn’t stay with friends with Jacob, that you never decided to stop being friends with Jacob?”
“Kind of.”
Jonathan backed off, sensing Derek beginning to hedge, and he moved to a new topic. “The day of the murder, you said you saw Jacob before school and again in English class right after school started?”
“Yes.”
“But there was no indication that he had been involved in any kind of struggle?”
“No.”
“No blood?”
“Just the little spot on his hand.”
“No scratches, no torn clothes, nothing like that? No mud?”
“No.”
“In fact, it never even occurred to you, looking at Jacob in English class that morning, that he might have been involved in anything on the way to school?”
“No.”
“When you later came to the conclusion that Jacob might have committed the murder, as you’ve suggested here, did you take that into account? That after a bloody, fatal knife attack, Jacob somehow emerged without a drop of blood on him, without so much as a scratch? Did you think about that, Derek?”
“Kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“Yes.”
“You said Ben Rifkin was a bigger kid than Jacob, bigger and tougher?”
“Yes.”
“But still Jacob came out of this struggle without a mark on him?”
Derek did not answer.
“Now, you said something about Jacob grinning when the lockdown was announced. Did other kids grin? Is it natural enough for a kid to grin when there’s excitement, when you’re nervous?”
“Probably.”
“It’s just something kids do sometimes.”
“I guess.”
“Now, the knife you saw, Jacob’s knife. Just to be clear, you have no idea whether that was the knife that was used in the murder?”
“No.”
“And Jacob never said anything to you about intending to use the knife on Ben Rifkin, because of the bullying?”
“Intending? No, he didn’t say that.”
“And when he showed the knife to you, it never occurred to you that he planned to kill Ben Rifkin? Because if it did, you would have done something about it, right?”
“I guess.”
“So, as far as you knew, Jacob never had a plan to kill Ben Rifkin?”
“A plan? No.”
“Never talked about when or how he was going to kill Ben Rifkin?”
“No.”
“Then, later, he just sent you the story?”
“Yeah.”
“He sent you a link by email, you said?”
“Yes.”
“Did you save that email?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It didn’t seem smart. I mean, for Jake—from Jacob’s point of view.”
“So you deleted the email because you were protecting him?”
“I guess.”
“Can you tell me, of all the details in that story, was there anything that was new to you, anything you didn’t already know either from the Web or from news stories or from other kids talking?”
“No, not really.”
“The knife, the park, the three stab wounds—that was all well known by then, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Hardly a confession, then, is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“And did he say in the email that he’d written the story? Or just found it?”
“I don’t remember exactly what the email said. I think it was just, like, ‘Dude, check this out’ or something like that.”
“But you’re sure Jacob told you he wrote the story, not that he just read it?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
Jonathan went on in this way for some time, doing what he could, shaving away and shaving away at Derek Yoo’s testimony, scoring what points he could. Who knows what the jurors were really making of it. All I can tell you is that the half dozen jurors who were furiously taking notes during Derek’s direct testimony had put down their pens now. Some were no longer even looking at him; they had dropped their eyes to their laps. Maybe Jonathan had won the day and they had decided to discount Derek’s testimony entirely. But it did not seem that way. It seemed like I had been fooling myself, and for the first time I began to imagine in realistic terms what it would be like when Jacob was in Concord prison.