Life Penalty by Joy Fielding Page B

were bringing her home, but then I saw that they were alone, and that they were walking very slowly, like they didn’t really want to come to the house at all, and suddenly I felt sick to mystomach. Charlotte and me, we’d always been real close, especially since her father had left.
    “Well, then the rest gets kind of blurry. I blocked out as much as I could. They said they’d found a body and they thought it might be Charlotte but that they’d have to get hold of her dental charts. The body had been found out in some field and was pretty badly decomposed and the animals had gotten to it. It was another day before we knew for sure that it was Charlotte. They said that she’d been raped and beaten to death, probably with a blunt object. It didn’t take much. She wasn’t any bigger than I am.
    “I didn’t go out of the house for almost a year.
    “Danny moved in with my brother. I didn’t hear from Charlotte’s father till about a month after she died, and when he did call, he blamed me. I didn’t try to argue with him. I thought he was probably right. I blamed myself too.” She stopped talking and for several moments no one made a sound. Then she resumed speaking.
    “Like I said, I didn’t go out of the house for almost a year. I lost close to forty pounds. A neighbor finally forced me to see a doctor and he put me into the hospital for about a month.
    “When I got out, I tried to kill myself. The first time, my neighbor found me and got me to the hospital in time. The second time, Danny came home—he’d run away from my brother’s—and he found me, and that was when I knew I couldn’t do anything like that again. And I haven’t. Even if I’ve never stopped wanting to.
    “That was four years ago. Danny’s failed twice in school since then and he still has nightmares almost every night. His teachers have warned me he’s going to fail again this year the way things are going. I can’t hold a job. Oh God, it just gets worse and worse. What am I telling you for? You all know. You’re the only ones who
do
know.”
    Her eyes searched those of the others, who blinkedback tears in silent understanding. Gail held her breath, afraid to release it. Why was she here? Why had Jack been so insistent that they come? She wanted to leave. She had to get out of this room, away from these people.
    “About a week after they found Charlotte’s body,” the woman continued, “the police arrested two boys. Juveniles. Both under eighteen. They confessed. There was no particular reason for what they did, they told the police. They just wanted to see what it would feel like to watch somebody die. They picked Charlotte. They saw her standing at the bus stop, and they shoved her into this car they’d stolen earlier and drove off with her to that field.” The woman looked helplessly around the room. “They were juveniles, you understand, so they don’t actually go to jail. They go to a reformatory for a little while. One boy’s out already. The other one still has another few months left on his sentence. But I’m sure he’ll be out in time for summer camp, and of course, being a juvenile, his record will be wiped clean.” She looked at the floor. “I don’t know what I expected. I guess I still had some sort of faith in the justice system. The fact that my daughter’s killers were caught at all gave me reason to believe that justice might somehow be served. Now, of course, I know better. I know there is no such thing as justice, that the right of my daughter to a long and happy life pales in comparison to the rights of her killers, that a good lawyer can make mincemeat out of already weak laws, all in the name of justice. Can somebody please tell me one thing?” the woman asked, her eyes moving from face to face, although it was clear her question was purely rhetorical. “Can somebody please tell me why there seem to be so many brilliant defense lawyers and so few competent prosecuting attorneys?” She