The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [253]
Mr. Picton paused, staring up at the ceiling. “The Charlton road …” He turned to the jury again. “We are here—reluctantly, gentlemen, never doubt it—because something unspeakable occurred three years ago on the Charlton road. An event of a kind that we, as a community, pray never to see repeated—and would, perhaps, like to forget. But we cannot. There are two graves in the Ballston Avenue Cemetery that will not let us forget it, and there is a little girl—half paralyzed and, until several days ago, stricken dumb with terror—who will not let us forget it. Her very existence has been a reminder, for these three years, of the horror that took place that night. Yet now, suddenly, she can offer us more than simply her poignant presence. Finally, after three long years during which she has endured a private torment that is beyond the imagination even of those brave men who survived the carnage of our great Civil-War, finally, little Clara Hatch can speak! And can anyone believe, gentlemen, that when she at last feels safe enough to give voice to her terrible memories, such a child could be persuaded to lie? Can any of you seriously believe that after all she has endured, this eight-year-old girl could be approached by agents of the state and persuaded to fabricate a history of what occurred on the Charlton road, where her two brothers were shot to death and she herself received a wound that her assailant clearly hoped was mortal?”
Taking a moment to stare at the jury, Mr. Picton made a visible effort to get his passions under control—an effort what I could already tell, knowing him as well as I did, was going to fail.
“The defense would have you believe so,” he went on, nodding. “Indeed, the defense would have you believe many things. They will refer you to the sworn affidavit of the woman who was then known as Mrs. Libby Hatch, and will call her to the stand to again tell her strange, unsupported story concerning a mysterious Negro assailant who attacked her children but not herself and then vanished into the night, never to be seen or detected again despite the most vigorous of searches. But the facts as the only other witness to the events of that night tells them are too simple and too clear, even in all their horror, for you to be further led down any fantastic garden paths by the defense. I am sure of that—sure, because I have heard little Clara’s version of the events from her own lips. And it is only because I have heard that fateful tale that the state brings these charges against the former Mrs. Hatch. Do not doubt that, gentlemen. Do not doubt that if Clara Hatch had not stated—in this very building, under oath and before all the frightening power of a court of law—that it was her own mother who did the infamous deed, who coldly put the muzzle of a forty-five-caliber revolver against those three small chests and deliberately pulled the trigger not once but repeatedly, until she was convinced that all her children were dead—I tell you, do not doubt that if anyone but Clara Hatch had made such an assertion, the state would never have had the temerity to bring this awful charge against this woman! No, gentlemen! We serve no ulterior motive here. We would not trifle with the mental composure, with the very sanity, of a child, simply to close the books on an unsolved crime. Better a hundred crimes go unsolved than that the state engage in such behavior! We—you—are here for a single reason: because the only person who witnessed what happened on the Charlton road that May night three years ago has come forward to tell her story. And when such a horrifying account is presented to the state, it has no choice but to reluctantly—I say it again, gentlemen, reluctantly!—to reluctantly set the machinery of justice into motion, no matter