40 | No Way Out
Evening was coming on now. Outside, daylight was withdrawing, the sky going dull, the familiar sunless gray sky of a cold spring in New England. The grand-jury room, no longer flooded with clear sunlight, went yellow under the fluorescent lights.
The jurors’ attention had come and gone the last few hours, but now they sat up attentively. They knew what was coming.
I had been in the chair testifying all day. I must have looked a little haggard. Logiudice circled me excitedly, like a boxer sizing up a woozy opponent.
Mr. Logiudice: Do you have any information about what happened to Hope Connors?
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: When did you learn she had vanished?
Witness: I don’t recall exactly. I remember how it began. We got a call in our room at the resort around dinnertime. It was Hope’s mother, asking if she was with Jacob. They had not heard from her all afternoon.
Mr. Logiudice: What did you tell her?
Witness: That we hadn’t seen her.
Mr. Logiudice: And Jacob? What did he say about it?
Witness: Jake was with us. I asked him if he knew where Hope was. He said no.
Mr. Logiudice: Was there anything unusual about Jacob’s reaction when you asked him that question?
Witness: No. He just shrugged. There was no reason to worry. We all figured she’d probably just gone off to explore. Probably she lost track of time. There was no cell phone reception there, so the kids were constantly disappearing. But the resort was very safe. It was completely fenced in. No one could get in to harm her. Hope’s mom wasn’t panicked either. I told her not to worry, Hope would probably be back any minute.
Mr. Logiudice: But Hope Connors never did come back.
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: In fact, her body was not found for several weeks, isn’t that right?
Witness: Seven weeks.
Mr. Logiudice: And when it was found?
Witness: The body was washed up on the shore several miles away from the resort. She drowned, apparently.
Mr. Logiudice: Apparently?
Witness: When a body is in the water that long—It had deteriorated. My understanding is that it had also been fed on by marine life. I don’t know for certain; I was not privy to that investigation. Suffice it to say, the body did not yield much evidence.
Mr. Logiudice: The case is considered an unsolved homicide?
Witness: I don’t know. It shouldn’t be. There’s no evidence to support that. The evidence suggests only that she went swimming and drowned.
Mr. Logiudice: Well, that’s not quite true, is it? There is some evidence that Hope Connors’s windpipe was crushed before she went into the water.
Witness: That inference is not supported by the evidence. The body was badly degraded. The cops down there—there was so much pressure, so much media. That investigation was not conducted properly.
Mr. Logiudice: That happened quite a bit around Jacob, didn’t it? A murder, a botched investigation. He must have been the unluckiest boy.
Witness: Is that a question?
Mr. Logiudice: We’ll move on. Your son’s name has been widely linked to the case, hasn’t it?
Witness: In the tabloids and some sleazy websites. They’ll say anything for money. There’s no profit in saying Jacob was innocent.
Mr. Logiudice: How did Jacob react to the girl’s disappearance?
Witness: He was concerned, of course. Hope was someone he cared about.
Mr. Logiudice: And your wife?
Witness: She was also very, very concerned.
Mr. Logiudice: That’s all, “very, very concerned”?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: Isn’t it fair to say she concluded Jacob had something to do with that girl’s disappearance?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: Was there anything in particular that convinced her of this?
Witness: There was something that happened at the beach. It was the day the girl disappeared. Jacob got there—this was late afternoon, to watch the sunset—and he sat on my right. Laurie was on my left. We said, “Where’s Hope?” Jacob said, “With her family, I guess. I haven’t seen her.” So we made some kind of joke—I think it was Laurie who asked—if everything was all right between them, if they’d had a fight. He said no, he just hadn’t seen her for a few hours. I—
Mr. Logiudice: Andy? Are you all right?
Witness: Yeah. Sorry, yes. Jake—he had these spots on his bathing suit, these little red spots.
Mr. Logiudice: Describe the spots.
Witness: They were spatters.
Mr. Logiudice: What color?
Witness: Brownish red.
Mr. Logiudice: Blood spatters?
Witness: I don’t know. I didn’t think so. I asked him what it was, what did he do to his bathing suit? He said he must have dripped something he’d been eating, ketchup or something.
Mr. Logiudice: And your wife? What did she think of the red spatters?
Witness: She didn’t think anything at the time. It was nothing, because we didn’t know the girl was missing yet. I told him to just go jump in the water and swim around until the bathing suit was clean.
Mr. Logiudice: And how did Jacob react?
Witness: He didn’t react at all. He just got up and he walked out on the dock—it was an H-shaped dock; he walked out the right-hand dock—and he dove in.
Mr. Logiudice: Interesting that it was you who told him to wash the bloodstains off his bathing suit.
Witness: I had no idea if they were bloodstains. I still don’t know if that’s true.
Mr. Logiudice: You still don’t know? Really? Then why were you so quick to tell him to jump in the water?
Witness: Laurie said something to him about how the bathing suit was expensive and Jacob should take better care of his things. He was so careless, such a slob. I didn’t want him to get in trouble with his mother. We were all having such a good time. That’s all it was.
Mr. Logiudice: But this was why Laurie was upset when Hope Connors first went missing?
Witness: Partly, yes. It was the whole situation, everything we’d been through.
Mr. Logiudice: Laurie wanted to go home immediately, isn’t that right?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: But you refused.
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: Why?
Witness: Because I knew what people would say: that Jacob was guilty and he was running away before the cops could pick him up. They would call him a killer. I wasn’t going to let anyone say that about him.
Mr. Logiudice: In fact, the authorities in Jamaica did question Jacob, didn’t they?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: But they never arrested him?
Witness: No. There was no reason to arrest him. He didn’t do anything.
Mr. Logiudice: Jesus, Andy, how can you be so damn sure? How can you be sure of that?
Witness: How can anyone be sure of anything? I trust my kid. I have to.
Mr. Logiudice: You have to why?
Witness: Because I’m his father. I owe him that.
Mr. Logiudice: That’s it?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: What about Hope Connors? What did you owe her?
Witness: Jacob did not kill that girl.
Mr. Logiudice: Kids just kept dying around him, is that it?
Witness: That’s an improper question.
Mr. Logiudice: I’ll withdraw it. Andy, do you honestly think you’re a reliable witness? Do you honestly think you see your son right?
Witness: I think I’m reliable, yes, generally. I don’t think any parent can be completely objective about his kid, I’ll concede that.
Mr. Logiudice: And yet Laurie had no trouble seeing Jacob for what he was, did she?
Witness: You’ll have to ask her.
Mr. Logiudice: Laurie had no trouble believing Jacob had something to do with that girl’s vanishing?
Witness: As I said, Laurie was very shaken by the whole thing. She was not herself. She came to her own conclusions.
Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss her suspicions with you?
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: I’ll repeat the question. Did your wife ever discuss her suspicions about Jacob?
Witness: No, she did not.
Mr. Logiudice: Your own wife never confided in you?
Witness: She did not feel that she could. Not about this. We’d talked about the Rifkin case, of course. I think she knew there were some things I just could not discuss; there were some places I just could not go. Those things she would just have to handle by herself.
Mr. Logiudice: So after two weeks in Jamaica?
Witness: We came home.
Mr. Logiudice: And when you got home, at that point did Laurie finally voice her suspicions about Jacob?
Witness: Not really.
Mr. Logiudice: “Not really”—what does that mean?
Witness: When we got home from Jamaica, Laurie was very, very quiet. She wouldn’t discuss anything at all with me, really. She was very wary, very upset. She was scared. I tried to talk to her, draw her out, but she didn’t trust me, I think.
Mr. Logiudice: Did she ever discuss what you two ought to do, morally, as parents?
Witness: No.
Mr. Logiudice: If she had asked you, what would you have said? What do you think your moral obligation was as parents of a murderer?
Witness: It’s a hypothetical question. I don’t believe we were parents of a murderer.
Mr. Logiudice: All right, hypothetically then: If Jacob was guilty, what should you and your wife have done about it?
Witness: You can ask the question as many ways as you like, Neal. I won’t answer it. It never happened.
What happened then I can honestly say was the most genuine, spontaneous reaction I ever saw out of Neal Logiudice. He flung his yellow pad in frustration. It fluttered like a shotgunned bird tumbling out of the sky, settling in the far corner of the room.
An older woman on the grand jury gasped.
I thought for a moment it was one of Logiudice’s phony gestures—a cue to the jury: Can’t you see he’s lying?—the better because it would not show up in the transcript. But Logiudice just stood there, hands on hips, looking at his shoes, faintly shaking his head.
After a moment he collected himself. He folded his arms and took a deep breath. Back to it. Lure, trap, fuck.
He raised his eyes to me and saw—what? A criminal? A victim? In any event, a disappointment. I rather doubt he had the sense to see the truth: that there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law’s little binary distinctions—guilty/innocent, criminal/victim—cannot fathom, let alone fix. The law is a hammer, not a scalpel.
Mr. Logiudice: You understand this grand jury is investigating your wife, Laurie Barber?
Witness: Of course.
Mr. Logiudice: We’ve been here all day talking about her, about why she did this.
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: I don’t give a damn about Jacob.
Witness: If you say so.
Mr. Logiudice: And you know that you’re not under any suspicion, of anything at all?
Witness: If you say so.
Mr. Logiudice: But you are under oath. I don’t need to remind you of that?
Witness: Yes, I know the rules, Neal.
Mr. Logiudice: What your wife did, Andy—I don’t understand why you won’t help us. This was your family.
Witness: Pose a question, Neal. Don’t make speeches.
Mr. Logiudice: What Laurie did—doesn’t it bother y—
Witness: Objection! Pose a proper question!
Mr. Logiudice: She should be indicted!
Witness: Next question.
Mr. Logiudice: She should be indicted and brought to trial and locked up, and you know it!
Witness: Next question!
Mr. Logiudice: On the date of offense, March 19, 2008, did you receive news about the defendant, Laurie Barber?
Witness: Yes.
Mr. Logiudice: How?
Witness: Around nine A.M. the doorbell rang. It was Paul Duffy.
Mr. Logiudice: What did Lieutenant Duffy say?
Witness: He asked if he could come inside and sit down. He said he had terrible news. I told him, Just say it, whatever it was, just tell me right there at the door. He said there’d been an accident. Laurie and Jacob were in the car, on the pike, and it went off the road. He said Jacob was dead. Laurie was banged up pretty bad but she would make it.
Mr. Logiudice: Go on.
[The witness did not respond.]
Mr. Logiudice: What happened next, Mr. Barber?
[The witness did not respond.]
Mr. Logiudice: Andy?
Witness: I, um—I felt my knees begin to buckle, I started to fall straight down. Paul reached out to grab me. He held me up. He helped me into the living room to a chair.
Mr. Logiudice: What else did he tell you?
Witness: He said—
Mr. Logiudice: Do you need to take a break?
Witness: No. Sorry. I’m all right.
Mr. Logiudice: What else did Lieutenant Duffy tell you?
Witness: He said there were no other cars involved. There were witnesses, other drivers, who saw the car aim directly at a bridge abutment. She did not put on the brakes or try to steer away from it. The witnesses said she accelerated as she headed for the collision. She actually accelerated. The witnesses thought the driver must have passed out or had a heart attack or something.
Mr. Logiudice: It was murder, Andy. She murdered your son.
[The witness did not respond.]
Mr. Logiudice: This grand jury wants to indict her. Look at them. They want to do the right thing. We all do. But you have to help us. You have to tell us the truth. What happened to your son?
[The witness did not respond.]
Mr. Logiudice: What happened to Jacob?
[The witness did not respond.]
Mr. Logiudice: This can still come out right, Andy.
Witness: Can it?