Listening in from a few feet away, Toni exhaled with relief. Her father’s attorney was the best money could buy. Billy would be a free man by tomorrow. Of course, once he got out she’d have to talk to him about this marriage nonsense. Toni was fond of Billy and she owed him a lot, but matrimony was distinctly not on her agenda. Still, these would be good problems to have.
Her father was still talking.
“Good.” Walter Gilletti’s voice reverberated with authority. “If it’s a done deal then I’d like to leave tonight. The sooner we’re out of this circus the better.”
“I can’t leave, Daddy,” Toni blurted. “I have to stay for the verdict. Billy needs me here.”
Walter Gilletti turned on his daughter like a snake about to strike. “I don’t give a damn what Billy Hamlin needs. We go when I say we go,” he snarled.
In the end, the Gillettis stayed another night in Alfred.
On balance, Walter Gilletti decided it might look bad for business if they didn’t.
Chapter Seven
Superior-court justice Devon Williams took his seat, surveying the sea of faces in front of him. A big man in his early seventies with a neatly clipped, white beard and a snowy ring of hair around the tonsurelike bald spot on the crown of his head, Judge Williams had presided over many difficult cases. Thefts. Assaults. Arson. Murders. But few were as harrowing as this one. Or, in the end, as futile.
Nicholas Handemeyer’s death was a tragedy. But it was plain to Judge Williams that no murder had been committed. Here, clearly, was an example of a case where public hysteria and outrage, fueled by one family’s private grief, had gotten the better of common sense. Senator Handemeyer wanted heads to roll—the Hamlin boy’s head in particular—and truth be damned. Once the emotion was stripped away, however, what mattered in this case—in every case—was the law. And the law was clear: if Billy Hamlin was guilty of murder, Judge Devon Williams was a monkey’s uncle.
Of course, the law could not be taken in the abstract. It must be interpreted by the twelve men and women of the jury. Judge Williams watched them now as they filed back into court two. Ordinary men and women: ten white, two black, mostly middle-aged, mostly overweight, a snapshot of the great American public. And yet today these ordinary people bore an extraordinary responsibility.
Normally Judge Williams enjoyed the challenge of predicting a jury’s verdict. How would this juror respond to that witness, or that piece of evidence. Who would react emotionally and who rationally. Whose prejudices or personality would carry the day. But as he called on the foreman to address the court, he felt none of the usual excitement or tension, only sadness.
A little boy had died. Nothing could bring him back. And now the unedifying spectacle of a murder trial that should never have made it to court was about to come to an end. It was obvious which way the coin would fall.
“Have you reached a verdict?”
“We have, your honor.”
Ruth Handemeyer squeezed her daughter’s hand. She was so tense she was barely breathing. Beside her she could feel her husband’s anger and hatred coiled inside him like a spring. She had no idea how to defuse it, or what to say to comfort him. Since Nicko’s death, they’d become strangers, separated by an ocean of grief.
The teenage girl squeezed back.
“Whatever happens, Mommy, we’ll always love him.”
Ruth Handemeyer stifled a sob.
Jeff Hamlin looked to his right. Leslie Lose gave him an encouraging smile.
It’s going to be okay, Jeff told himself for the hundredth time. He blamed himself for sending Billy to Camp Williams in the first place. How foolish he’d been, thinking his son would be able to make connections there to better himself! When the chips were down, the rich, educated classes stuck together. Old Mrs. Kramer, the Gilletti girl’s family, even the Handemeyers, were all birds of a feather, looking for a sacrificial lamb to atone for a child’s death. And who better than a carpenter’s son?
Billy’s in that dock because he’s not one of them.
From the dock, Billy Hamlin looked at Toni Gilletti with eyes full of love.
Tonight he would be a free man.
Tonight it would all begin.
Toni’s stomach was churning. She felt guilty thinking it, after everything Billy had done for her, but the way he looked at her was starting to creep her out.
I have to talk to him right away. I can’t let him leave here thinking we have a future together.
Whatever Toni Gilletti had once found attractive and exciting about Billy Hamlin had died along with poor Nicholas Handemeyer. From now on Toni would always associate Billy with that day. With terror and anguish. With tragedy and regret. With blood and with water. With death.
There could be no going back.
Judge Devon Williams’s powerful baritone cut through the tension in the room like a power drill.
“And on the charge of second-degree murder, how do you find the defendant?”
Billy Hamlin closed his eyes. It was over at last.
“Guilty.”
Chapter Eight
Toni ran down the corridor, quickening her pace. Her father was yelling at her to come back, but she didn’t listen.
I have to see Billy. I have to tell him I’m sorry.
How had the jury found him guilty? It was impossible, ridiculous. The judge had clearly thought so too. You could see it in his eyes when he passed sentence: twenty years, with parole at fifteen, the minimum allowed for second-degree murder but still a lifetime.
“Sorry, miss.” A court officer blocked her path to the holding cell. “Official visitors only.”
“But he needs to see me!”
“Like hell he does.”
Before Toni knew what was happening, Billy’s father had grabbed her by the shoulders, throwing her back against the wall so hard she felt the breath leave her body.
“It was you, wasn’t it? It was you! You let my boy take the fall for you, you rich, spoiled little bitch.”
“Take your hands off my daughter.”
For once, Toni was glad to see her father. Walter Gilletti was a slight man but he radiated authority.
“I understand you’re upset,” he told Jeff Hamlin. “But Toni had nothing to do with this.”
“Yeah, right.” Jeff Hamlin backed away with tears in his eyes. “Your daughter’s shit don’t stink. They gave my Billy twenty years. Twenty years!”
Walter Gilletti shrugged. “If he keeps his nose clean, he’ll be out in fifteen.”
The rich man’s nonchalance was the last straw for Jeff Hamlin. Launching himself at Walter Gilletti with a mighty roar, he lashed out wildly with his fists as the policeman tried vainly to pry the two men apart. Seizing her chance, Toni bolted down the stairs toward the holding cell, but within seconds, another cop grabbed her.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, young lady? You can’t just barge down here without authorization.”
“It’s all right, Frank. The boy asked to see her.”
Leslie Lose seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. He looked white-faced and serious. Clearly the verdict had shocked him too.
Reluctantly, the guard stepped aside.
“Thank you,” Toni said to Billy’s lawyer.
“Please. It’s the least I can do.”
“It wasn’t your fault, you know.”
“Yes it was,” Lose said quietly.
Billy lit up when Toni walked in.
“Thank God. I thought they might not let you come.”
There she was. His Toni. His Helen of Troy. In a plain, knee-length shift dress in cream silk, teamed with low, kitten heels and a cashmere cardigan, she looked older than he remembered her. The outfit screamed rich (which she was) and demure (which she certainly wasn’t). But nothing could hide the raw sensuality of the body beneath.
Billy moved toward her, drawn like a magnet to a piece of metal, or a helpless moth to the moon. “Hi.”
Toni hugged him, squeezing tight as hot tears of guilt splashed onto his collar and trickled down his neck. “I’m so sorry, Billy.”
“For what?” Billy forced a smile, determined to be brave in front of her. “This was my decision, not yours. And if I had the time over, I’d do it again, in a heartbeat.”
“But Billy. Twenty years.”
“Fifteen,” he corrected her. “With parole.”
“But you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Neither did you.”
“Billy, come on. I did. You know I did. We both know. Nicholas was in my group.”
“It was an accident, Toni. An accident. Never forget that.” Inhaling the scent of her skin, mingled with some faint lemony perfume, he felt overwhelmed with need for her. Despite his show of bravado, he was frightened. Frightened of jail, of a future without her. Desperately he pulled her closer, kissing her passionately, forcing his tongue into her mouth like a starving chick looking for food.
Toni recoiled. His breath was sour with fear.