“Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant,” the prosecutor says. “How many times, before January tenth, had you met Jacob?”
“I don’t know. Maybe five or six?”
The prosecutor walks toward the witness box. “Did you get along with him?”
Mark is looking at me again, I can tell. “I didn’t really pay attention to him,” he says.
We are in Jess’s dorm room watching a TV movie about the JonBenét Ramsey murder case, which of course was one in which Dr. Henry Lee was involved. I tell Jess what is true and what Hollywood has changed. She keeps checking her voice-mail messages, but there aren’t any. I am so excited about the movie that for a while I don’t realize she is crying. You’re crying, I say, the obvious, and I don’t get it because she didn’t know JonBenét and usually people who cry at someone’s death knew them very well. I’m just not very happy today, I guess, Jess says, and she stands up. When she does, she makes a sound like a dog that’s been kicked. She has to stand on a chair to reach a high shelf where she keeps her extra toilet paper and Ziploc bags and Kleenex. When she grabs the box of tissues, her sweater rides up on the side and I can see them, red and purple and yellow like a tattoo, but I’ve watched enough CrimeBusters to know bruises when I see them.
What happened to you? I ask, and she tells me she fell down.
I’ve watched enough CrimeBusters to know that’s what girls always say when they don’t want you to know that someone is beating them up.
“We ordered pizza,” Mark says, “the kind that Jacob can eat, without wheat in the crust. While we were waiting for it, Jacob asked Jess out. Like on a date. It was hilarious, but when I laughed at him, she got pissed off at me. I didn’t have to sit around and take that, so I left.”
Even worse than Mark’s stare, it turns out, is my mother’s.
“Did you talk to Jess at any point after that?” Helen asks.
“Yeah, on Monday. She called me and begged me to come over that night, and I did.”
“What was her state of mind?”
“She thought I was mad at her-”
“Objection,” Oliver says. “Speculation.”
The judge nods. “Sustained.”
Mark looks confused. “What was her emotional state?” Helen asks.
“She was upset.”
“Did you continue to argue?”
“No,” Mark says. “We kissed and made up, if you get my drift.”
“So you spent the night?”
“Yes.”
“What happened on Tuesday morning?”
“We were having breakfast and we started to fight again.”
“About what?” Helen Sharp asks.
“I don’t even remember. But I got really angry, and I… I sort of shoved her.”
“You mean your fight became physical?”
Mark looks down at his hands. “I didn’t mean to. But we were yelling and I grabbed her and pushed her against the wall. I stopped right away, said I was sorry. She told me to leave, so I did. I only had my hands on her for a minute.”
My head snaps up. I grab the pen in front of me and write so hard on the legal pad that it rips through the paper. HE IS LYING, I write, and I push the pad toward Oliver.
He glances at it, and writes:?
BRUISES ON HER NECK.
Oliver rips off the piece of paper and tucks it into his pocket. Meanwhile, Mark covers his eyes, and his voice cracks. “I called her all day long, to apologize again, and she wouldn’t answer her phone. I figured she was ignoring me, and I deserved it, but by Wednesday morning I was getting worried. I went over to her place, figuring I could catch her before she went to class, but she wasn’t there.”
“Did you notice anything unusual?”
“The door was open. I went in, and her coat was hanging up and her purse was on the table, but she didn’t answer when I called. I looked all over for her, but she was gone. There were clothes all over the bedroom, and the bed was messed up.”
“What did you think?”
“At first, I figured she might have left on a trip. But she would have told me that, and she had a test that day. I called her phone, but no one answered. I called her parents and her friends, and no one had seen her; and she hadn’t told anyone she was leaving. That’s when I went to the police.”
“What happened?”
“Detective Matson told me I couldn’t file a missing person’s report for thirty-six hours, but he came with me to Jess’s place. I didn’t get the sense he was taking me seriously, to be honest.” Mark looks at the jury. “I skipped class and stayed at the house, in case she came back. But she didn’t. I was sitting in the living room when I realized that someone had organized all the CDs, and I told the police that, too.”
“When the police began a formal investigation,” Helen Sharp asks, “were you cooperative in giving them forensic samples?”
“I gave them my boots,” Mark says.
The prosecutor turns around and looks at the jury. “Mr. Maguire, how did you find out what had happened to Jess?”
He sets his jaw. “A couple of cops came to my apartment and arrested me. When Detective Matson was interrogating me, he told me Jess was… was dead.”
“Were you released from custody shortly thereafter?”
“Yes. When they arrested Jacob Hunt.”
“Mr. Maguire, did you have anything to do with Jess Ogilvy’s death?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Do you know how she sustained a broken nose?”
“No,” Mark says tightly.
“Do you know how her tooth got knocked out?”
“No.”
“Do you know how she got abrasions on her back?”
“No.”
“Did you ever strike her in the face?”
“No.” Mark’s voice sounds like it is wrapped up in wool. He has been looking down at the floor, but when he lifts his face now, everyone can see how his eyes are wet, how he is swallowing hard. “When I left her,” he says, “she looked like an angel.”
As Helen Sharp finishes, Oliver stands up and buttons his suit jacket. Why do lawyers always do that? On CrimeBusters, the actors playing lawyers do it, too. Maybe it’s so that they look professional. Or they need something to do with their hands.
“Mr. Maguire, you just testified that you were actually arrested for the murder of Jess Ogilvy.”
“Yes, but they had the wrong guy.”
“Still… for a little while, anyway, the police believed you were involved, isn’t that true?”
“I suppose.”
“You also testified that you grabbed Jess Ogilvy during your fight?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“On her arms.” He touches his biceps muscle. “Here.”
“You choked her, too, didn’t you?”
He goes beet red. “No.”
“You are aware, Mr. Maguire, that the autopsy revealed bruises around Jess Ogilvy’s neck, as well as on her upper arms?”
“Objection,” the prosecutor says. “Hearsay.”
“Sustained.”
“You are aware that you’re testifying here today under oath?”
“Yes…”
“So let me ask you again if you choked Jess Ogilvy.”
“I didn’t choke her!” Mark argues. “I just… put my hands on her neck. For a second!”
“While you were fighting?”
“Yes,” Mark says.
Oliver raises his eyebrows. “Nothing further,” he says, and he sits back down beside me.
Me, I duck my head, and smile.
I was nine when my mother made me go to a therapy group for siblings of autistic kids. There were only four of us-two girls with faces that looked like ground over a sinkhole, who had a baby sister who apparently never stopped screaming; a boy whose twin was severely autistic; and me. We all had to go around a circle and say one thing we loved about our sibling, and one thing we really hated.
The girls went first. They said they hated the way the baby kept them up all night, but they liked the fact that her first word had not been Mama or Dada but instead Sissy. Then I went. I said that I hated when Jacob took my stuff without asking and how it was okay for him to interrupt me to give some dinosaur fact nobody cared about but that if I interrupted him he’d get really angry and have a meltdown. I liked the way he said things, sometimes, that were hilarious-even though they weren’t meant to be-like when a camp counselor told him swimming would be a piece of cake and he freaked out because he thought he’d have to eat underwater and surely would drown. Then it was the other boy’s turn. But before he could speak the door burst open and his twin brother ran inside and sat down on his lap. The kid reeked-and I mean reeked. All of a sudden their mom poked her head into the room. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “Harry doesn’t like anyone but Stephen to change his diaper.”