“Pretty careful, for a man who went about his business with his bare face hanging out.”
“Samuels will tell the jury you were in a kill-frenzy. And they’ll believe it.”
“Will they still believe it after Ev, Billy, and Debbie testify? And after Howie shows the jury that tape of Coben’s lecture?”
Ralph didn’t want to go there. At least not yet. “Did you know Frank Peterson?”
Terry uttered a bark of laughter. “That’s one of those questions Howie wouldn’t want me to answer.”
“Does that mean you won’t?”
“As a matter of fact, I will. I knew him to say hi to—I know most of the kids on the West Side—but I didn’t know him know him, if you see what I mean. He was still in grade school and didn’t play sports. Couldn’t miss that red hair, though. Like a stop sign. Him and his brother both. I had Ollie in Little League, but he didn’t move up to City League when he turned thirteen. He wasn’t bad in the outfield, and he could hit a little, but he lost interest. Some of them do.”
“So you didn’t have your eye on Frankie?”
“No, Ralph. I have no sexual interest in children.”
“Didn’t just happen to see him walking his bike across the parking lot of Gerald’s Fine Groceries and say ‘Aha, here’s my chance’？”
Terry looked at him with a silent contempt that Ralph found hard to bear. But he didn’t drop his eyes. After a moment, Terry sighed, raised his cuffed hands to the mirror side of the one-way glass, and called, “We’re done here.”
“Not quite,” Ralph said. “I need you to answer one more question, and I want you to look me right in the eyes when you do it. Did you kill Frank Peterson?”
Terry’s gaze didn’t waver. “I did not.”
Officer Keene took Terry away. Ralph sat where he was, waiting for Keene to come back and escort him through the three locked doors between this interview room and free air. So now he had the answer to the question Jeannie had told him to ask, and the answer, given with unwavering eye contact, was I did not.
Ralph wanted to believe him.
And could not.
THE ARRAIGNMENT
July 16th
1
“No,” Howie Gold said. “No, no, no.”
“It’s for his own protection,” Ralph said. “Surely you see—”
“What I see is a front-page photograph in the paper. What I see is lead story footage on every channel, showing my client walking into district court wearing a bulletproof vest over his suit. Looking already convicted, in other words. The cuffs are bad enough.”
There were seven men in the county jail’s visitors’ room, where the toys had been neatened away in their colorful plastic boxes and the chairs had been upturned on the tables. Terry Maitland stood with Howie at his side. Facing them were County Sheriff Dick Doolin, Ralph Anderson, and Vernon Gilstrap, the assistant district attorney. Samuels would already be at the county courthouse, awaiting their arrival. Sheriff Doolin continued to hold out the bulletproof vest, saying nothing. On it, in bright accusatory yellow, were the letters FCDC, standing for Flint County Department of Corrections. Its three Velcro straps—one for each arm, one to cinch the waist—hung down.
Two jail officers （call them guards and they would correct you） stood by the door to the lobby, meaty arms folded. One had supervised Terry as he shaved with a disposable razor; the other had gone through the pockets of the suit and shirt Marcy had brought, not neglecting to check the seam down the back of the blue tie.
ADA Gilstrap looked at Terry. “What do you say, chum? Want to risk getting shot? Okay by me if you do. Save the state the expense of a bunch of appeals before you take the needle.”
“That’s uncalled-for,” Howie said.
Gilstrap, a long-timer who would almost certainly choose to retire （and with a fat pension） if Bill Samuels lost the upcoming election, only smirked.
“Hey, Mitchell,” Terry said. The guard who had monitored Terry’s shave, making sure the prisoner did not try to cut his throat with a single-blade Bic, raised his eyebrows but didn’t unfold his arms. “How hot is it outside?”
“Eighty-four when I came in,” Mitchell said. “Going up close on a hundred come noon, they said on the radio.”
“No vest,” Terry said to the sheriff, and broke into a smile that made him look very young. “I don’t want to stand in front of Judge Horton in a sweaty shirt. I coached his grandson in Little League.”