Perfect Match Read Free Page B

school yearbook. On the verge of being scalped.” As prosecutors, we have a tenuous relationship with the local defense attorn eys. Most of them we hold a grudging respect for; after all, they are just d oing their jobs. But Carrington is a different breed. Harvard-educated, silv er-haired, stately-he is everyone's father; he is the distinguished elder ge ntleman offering advice to live by. He is the sort of man juries want to bel ieve, just on general principle. It has happened to all of us at one time or another: We put up a mountain of hard evidence against his Newman-blue eyes and knowing smile, and the defendant walks.
    Needless to say, we all hate Fisher Carrington.
    Having to face him at a competency hearing is like getting to Hell and finding out that the only food available is raw liver-insult added to injury. Legally, competency is defined as being able to communicate in a way that th e fact finder can understand. For example, a dog may be able to sniff out dr ug evidence but can't testify. For children at the center of sexual abuse ca ses-ones where the abuser hasn't confessed-the only way to get a conviction is to get the kid to testify. But before that happens, the judge has to determine that the witness can communicate, knows the difference betw een the truth and a lie ... and understands that in court you have to tell t he truth. Which means that when I am trying a sexual abuse case with a young child, I routinely file a motion for a competency hearing.
    So: Imagine you are five years old and have been brave enough to confess to your mother that your daddy rapes you every night, although he's said he'l l kill you for telling. Now imagine that, as a practice run, you have to go to a courtroom that seems as big as a football stadium. You have to answer questions a prosecutor asks you. And then you have to answer questions fir ed at you by a stranger, a lawyer who makes you so confused that you cry an d ask him to stop. And because every defendant has the right to face his ac cuser, you have to do all this while your daddy is staring you down just si x feet away.
    Two things can happen here. Either you are found incompetent to stand trial, which means the judge throws out the case, and you don't have to go to cour t again . . . although you have nightmares for weeks afterward about that la wyer asking you horrible questions, and the look on your father's face, and most likely, the abuse continues. Or, you are found competent, and you get t o repeat this little scene all over again . . . this time, with dozens of pe ople watching.
    I may be a prosecutor, but I'm also the first to tell that if you cannot com municate in a certain way, you cannot get justice in the American legal syst em. I have tried hundreds of sexual abuse cases, seen hundreds of children o n that stand. I have been one of the lawyers who tugs and pulls at them, unt il they reluctantly let go of the make-believe world they've dreamed to bloc k out the truth. All this, in the name of a conviction. But you cannot convi nce me that a competency hearing itself doesn't traumatize a child. You cann ot convince me that even if I win that hearing, somehow, the child doesn't. As defense attorneys go, Fisher Carrington is quite respectful. He doesn't red uce children to jelly on their high stools in the witness box; he doesn't try to disorient them. He acts like a grandfather who will give them lollipops if they tell the truth. In all but one case we both tried, he managed to have the child declared incompetent to stand trial, and the perp walked out free. In t he other case, I convicted his client.
    17 The defendant spent three years in jail.
    The victim spent seven years in therapy.
    I look up at Peter. “Best-case scenario,” I challenge.
    “Huh?”
    “Yeah,” I say softly. “That's my point.”
    When Rachel was five, her parents got a divorce-the kind that involved bitt er mudslinging, hidden bank accounts, and cans of paint splashed on the dri