The first morning of the trial was shrouded in a thin gray mist, a perfect echo of the morning after the murder. Ashley woke first, bringing in the wooden tray of coffee things from the hall; the hotel the attorney general’s office usually used was under construction, so we were staying at the Regency, a historic inn in downtown Portland. It was uncannily pleasant—each night we had mints on our pillows, along with letterpress cards predicting the next day’s weather. Small, merciful extravagances.
For that first day, I made sure to wear a suit. It had been made clear to me that having a “classy” appearance could enhance the credibility of my testimony. I tried to look my best but didn’t wear too much makeup, and I buttoned my shirt one button higher than I normally would. I wanted to wear a tie, as I sometimes did at work, but left it at home—I didn’t want the jury to find me unfamiliar or strange. I knew I should look feminine but not aware of my own attractiveness. I was my mother’s representative, and if I was seen as good, as normal, I could help keep the defense from slandering her. I hated all of this and did all of this.
Ashley and I walked the few short blocks to the courthouse, a classic building with columns on its upper stories and large bricks on its lower, made of several shades of limestone—a gray-on-gray fortress in the clinging rain. I had no memory of having visited when my father gave Carol temporary custody, didn’t give it a thought. I hadn’t heard from Tom since that day, and I knew he wouldn’t dare attend the trial. As we approached, we saw a crowd of reporters and cameramen. For years I’d thought of reporters as scavengers, but now I found their presence gratifying. The public would bear witness along with me.
As we climbed the steps to go inside, Ashley held a large umbrella over us, though she mostly used it to cover me; she would be the mysterious woman with the cascade of blond hair, shielding me from the cameras. As the days went on, observers took her to be a cousin; she fit right in.
Susie found us as we stepped off the elevator and ushered us to a conference room for last-minute preparations. She handed me a notebook with photocopies of interviews I had done with the police, and I read through it quickly to make sure my story had no major discrepancies. Everything I’d ever said to a police officer had been given to Hutchinson and his lawyer for review, which was standard procedure. I tried not to think too hard about Hutchinson reading my words, tried not to hope that it destroyed him to read them.
The notebook also contained xeroxes of several pages of my diary from the year following Mom’s death. I didn’t mind the invasion of privacy as much as the fact that people had read my feverish and flowery adolescent prose. Seeing those pages, I realized that while I was being polygraphed by Dale Keegan, Tootsie must have sifted through my room to hand my diaries and journals over to the police, then slid them back onto my shelves so carefully that I hadn’t even noticed. I shook my head and laughed. It was so like her. She could have just asked me.
When Ashley and I emerged from the conference room, Gwen and Dave were already waiting in the third-floor hallway with Carol and Carroll and a few others. Carroll gave me a tight hug; he seemed happy to see me, regardless of the circumstances. We were all friendly, as though meeting up for a holiday, but quieter than usual. There was no precedent for how to behave. Several people pointed out how thin I was, but no one told me I looked like Mom. Our resemblance has remained impossible for me to evaluate—it’s like trying to see the back of my own head. Still, throughout that week, people would sometimes slip and call me Crystal.
After a round of hellos, Susie took me and Ashley into a small, white room just off the main hallway—a refuge where the family would huddle during breaks, a place to be while the bailiff marched Hutchinson down the hall at the beginning and end of each day. It was strange to think of him using the same hallways we did, walking in the open under those fluorescent lights. Somehow I’d expected him to be smuggled in through a subterranean tunnel, like a minotaur.
I was sequestered until I gave my testimony, unable to enter the courtroom until after I had taken the stand. The defense attorney, Robert Andrews, had agreed to let me be the first witness so that I would miss only the opening statements. It was important to me to see everything I could, to bear witness in all ways possible. Our prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Lisa Marchese, reviewed the content of her opening statement with me. She agreed with Walt’s interpretation of the likely sequence of events that had led Hutchinson to our door. She would tell the jury that Hutchinson’s parents’ respective houses bracketed ours, and that Crystal Perry, this gorgeous redhead, had often walked along that corridor with her young daughter, had played and sunbathed in her exposed front yard. Hutchinson had plenty of opportunity to see her, either when she walked past his house or when he drove past hers. He’d had plenty of opportunity to become obsessed. Then finally he’d come to our house late one night, determined. Years later, Lisa would tell me, “I still believe your mother was targeted because of her beauty.”
No one else in the family would be called to testify, so they went into the courtroom while Ashley and I waited. We had an hour or two before it was time for me to go on. The waiting was difficult; I was ready to take the stand, and each passing moment made me feel more tense. Stronger than this feeling, though, was the desire to get in that room and take a good look at Michael Hutchinson. I had seen a photocopy of his mug shot from the kidnapping arrest five years earlier, and there had been more recent pictures of him in the paper, side views taken as he walked into his arraignment. I knew he was stocky, had brown hair. He wore ill-fitting sport coats, clearly purchased for court. But I wanted to know what it was like to be in a room with him, to see how his body displaced air, to watch what he did with his hands, at what angle he tilted his head. I wanted to see who this person was. And I could feel him waiting for me, too.
Susie kept dipping into our room to keep us updated, and at one point she came to tell us she had a surprise for me.
“Oh?” I said, anxious.
Susie kept smiling as she went into the hallway for a moment, then came back and pulled the door open with a flourish to let in, of all people, Dennis Lorrain.
Dennis stepped in with a huge smile on his face, filling the room with muscles I didn’t remember. I’d known him as a lanky nineteen-year-old boy with a tiny gold hoop in his ear, and here he was, broad, buzz-cut, with fine lines around his eyes. But he had the same snaggly eyeteeth, the same dimples.
Somehow, our natural response was to hug hello. He pulled back and said, “You’re all grown up!” I let out a short laugh and said, “So are you!” I had this strange sensation of being older than him, of being my mother’s age. He still emanated that unmistakable current of twitchy energy; I was relatively composed. Really, the procession of years had shrunk our effective age difference; I was twenty-five, he was thirty-three.