The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [257]
Those of us in the two rows behind Mr. Picton shot each other wide, anxious glances—for while Mr. Picton had spoken eloquently to the jury, Mr. Darrow was speaking their own language, and we all knew it.
Rubbing his neck wearily again, Mr. Darrow pulled out a handkerchief and started to wipe away beads of sweat that, as noon got closer, were starting to form faster and faster on his face. “Your Honor,” he said, his voice going very soft and sad, “gentlemen of the jury—life presents us with many events that go unexplained. Some of them are wondrous, and some of them are terrifying. A simple enough thought, maybe, but, like so many simple things, full of implications. Because the mind tends to reject what it can’t explain—reject, fear, and revile it. So it’s been with this case, especially for the men whose job it is to solve crimes and mete out justice for the state. The assistant district attorney calls my client’s explanation of what happened that night a ‘fantastic’ tale. Well … maybe it is. But that doesn’t make it false. That doesn’t even make it complicated. Look at what she’s said—that while she was driving her children home after a long day spent enjoying each other’s company in town and at the lakeshore, she was set upon by an apparently lunatic Negro, who attempted to assault her and threatened her children when she hesitated to surrender herself. The man was wild, crazed, desperate—and when my client made a sudden movement that this man interpreted as resistance, he shot the children and fled.”
Thrusting his hands into the pockets of his pants, Mr. Darrow returned to the jury box. “You don’t get a lot of behavior like that up here in Saratoga County, I know. But that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. It happens every week in Chicago. Maybe we should ask Dr. Kreizler—who’s a man in a position to know, gentlemen—how many times a day it happens in New York City. Is it ‘fantastic’ there, too? Or just here, because this is a quiet, pleasant little town? The state’s going to tell you that the fact that no one besides my client ever saw hide nor hair of the crazed lunatic means that he didn’t exist. But remember, gentlemen—it was hours before my client was coherent enough to tell anyone exactly what had happened on the Charlton road. More than enough time for such a man to make his way to the train depot and hide aboard a freight car, or to sneak unnoticed into the back of a shipping truck, and find himself the next morning somewhere far from the search parties in Ballston Spa. Maybe he showed up in Chicago. Maybe in New York, He would’ve had time. Maybe he was picked up, raving about some white children he’d shot, by the New York City police, who, after failing to find that any white children had been shot in their jurisdiction, figured he was crazy and sent him over to the famous Bellevue Hospital Insane Pavilion. And maybe Dr. Kreizler—who does a lot of work in that hospital—was called in to, as the alienists say, ‘assess’ the man’s mental condition. Maybe he thought the fellow was having delusions. Maybe the miserable creature’s still there, rotting away in a cell, tortured by dreams of those three children in the wagon …”
By now Mr. Darrow was staring at the floor, and a faraway, wandering tone had come into his voice. His brows then furrowed suddenly over his eyes, and he shook himself. “The point, gentlemen,” he continued, “is that we may never know. This case, and thousands like it every year, go unsolved and become open wounds in the soul of our society. We want to close those wounds—of course we do. Who wants to go through his everyday business with the knowledge that at any moment a lunatic may spring from the roadside and rob him of the things—or, more