“Why not?”
“I was ashamed of what I had done.” I could see Michael flush with emotion. The response seemed genuine, but it could easily have come from something other than shame. Fear of imprisonment. Or rage. I took a deep breath. Something clicked into place: I knew exactly what he was about to do.
“Did you kill her?” Andrews asked gently, as though referring to an unfortunate mistake. His tone implied forthcoming forgiveness.
“No.”
“What were you ashamed of, then?”
Michael reached out a thick arm, extended his finger, and pointed at me. I heard the loud whisper of many simultaneous gasps, like fire suddenly eating air.
I held bolt upright, still. My face became very, very hot. I held my neutral expression while desperately hoping I wouldn’t faint. I kept my eyes on Michael. I would not give him the satisfaction of a response.
Andrews stepped back. “I don’t understand what that means, Michael.” Here he indicated the jury with a dramatic sweep of his arm. “You’ve got to tell us.”
“I knew Sarah was there. I did nothing. Am I done? Can I leave?”
He wasn’t done. Andrews had a few more questions to wrap things up. He paused, apparently allowing Michael to recover.
“Michael, did you like Crystal Perry?”
“Yes.”
“Why were you there that night?”
“She invited me over.”
“Did you have sex with her?”
“Yes.”
“Did you force her?”
“No.”
“Was it consensual?”
“Yes.”
“Did she want to?”
“Yes.”
“Your Honor, I have nothing further.”
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* * *
Lisa destroyed Michael in cross-examination. She handed him a long wooden pointer and made him walk out from behind the witness stand to indicate the position of the three players in his story—him, Mom, and the faceless man—on the diagram of our house. I’d held that pointer, too, indicating to the jury the positions of windows and contents of rooms, and it felt strange to see it in his hand. His choreography was terrible, and Lisa was relentless. He claimed that he had struggled with the other man in the tiny area between the door and the kitchen table. But the police had found only one set of boot prints, and the table had several greeting cards still standing on it, undisturbed. The cards had been from me and Dennis, for Mother’s Day.
While Michael was still standing out in the open, Lisa got close to him and pointed her finger in his face, and in that moment, he became real to me, as though color had suddenly flooded into a black-and-white scene. Oh my God, Lisa, I thought. Oh my God, that man is a killer. Michael is short, but Lisa is even smaller. He had no weapon, and still I thought, He’s a killer. You’re the bravest woman alive.
Our kitchen had consisted of two small areas in an L shape: a longer rectangle containing our dining table, with a wall broken by the external side door, and a narrow aisle with counters on either side. Michael claimed he’d bled droplets on the right side of the kitchen next to the sink, not because he was reaching for a paper towel, but because he was reaching into a drawer for a weapon after he “woke up”—anything to defend himself against the “real killer,” the one with the knife up his sleeve. He must have meant for this to explain the drawer noise I’d heard from my room. Lisa let him finish his story, gave him a big, slow nod, then showed him a photo of that right-side counter: the paper towel holder, the sink, and the cabinets below. She urged him to take a close look. “There’s no drawers there, Mr. Hutchinson.”
She was right; there were no drawers on that side. The drawers with the utensils and all the knives were on the left side of the kitchen, and there was no blood over there—on the counter or the drawer handles or anywhere else—so yet another part of Michael’s story didn’t hold. The only record of there ever having been drawers on the right was one of my old police interviews. Just before the trial, Lisa had asked me which side the knife drawer was on. “On the right,” I’d said, blithely unaware of the mistake. “Next to the sink.” She’d nodded, moved on to her next question, wisely not correcting me. If Andrews had asked me about the drawers during the trial, my answer would have been consistent with the old interviews he’d reviewed with his client. My mistaken memory had helped Lisa lead Hutchinson right into a trap. I nearly laughed out loud. I was so happy to have remembered it wrong.
Lisa continued, detailing more of Hutchinson’s lies, painting a picture of a killer who had stayed close by, deceiving everyone around him.
“You lied to people about how you cut your hand, right?”
“Yes,” he replied.
“You lied to people about where you were that night?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the victim of a crime, according to you, but you never came forward. You knew the police were begging for information about Crystal Perry’s murder, didn’t you? You saw the signs. You live in Bridgton. There were signs all over Bridgton. Did you see them?”
“I believe I saw one, yes.”
“Did you see the ten-thousand-dollar reward?”
“Yes.”
As Lisa continued to push forward, methodically dismantling everything Hutchinson had said, I thought of him driving around town in the months after the murder, Mom’s face following him from telephone pole to telephone pole.
There was only one moment when I felt like Lisa disregarded my feelings and those of my family, when she must have known she’d hurt us and decided it was worth it. When she brought Michael to the point where he ran out of the house, when he claimed the last thing he saw was Mom gazing up at him, covered in blood, she countered, “Are you sure you don’t remember her eyes as you were stabbing her in the head, Mr. Hutchinson?” I felt revolted and heartbroken and exhilarated, and I knew then that we were going to win.
* * *
On day six, the jury went in to deliberate the case. After less than two hours, they came out with a verdict: guilty. Three months later, Michael Hutchinson was sentenced to a term of life with no parole. It was August 2, 2007: thirteen years, two months, and twenty-two days after my mother, Crystal Perry, was killed.
44
* * *