Change of Heart Read online

  He took a huge, eleven-by-fourteen photo of Elizabeth Nealon and held it up right in front of me. Elizabeth had been one of those little girls who seem to be made out of something lighter than flesh, with their filly legs and their moonlight hair; the ones you think would float off the jungle gym if not for the weight of their sneakers. But this photo had been taken after she was shot. Blood splattered her face and matted her hair; her eyes were still wide open. Her dress, hiked up when she had fallen, showed that she was naked from the waist down. "Elizabeth Nealon will never learn how to do long division, or how to ride a horse, or do a back handspring. She'll never go to sleep-away camp or her junior prom or high school graduation. She'll never try on her first pair of high heels or experience her first kiss. She'll never bring a boy home to meet her mother; she'll never be walked down a wedding aisle by her stepfather; she'll never get to know her sister, Claire. She will miss all of these moments, and a thousand more--not because of a tragedy like a car accident or childhood leukemia--but because Shay Bourne made the decision that she didn't deserve any of these things."

  He then took another photo out from behind Elizabeth's and held it up. Kurt Nealon had been shot in the stomach. His blue uniform shirt was purpled with his blood, and Elizabeth's. During the trial we'd heard that when the paramedics reached him, he wouldn't let go of Elizabeth, even as he was bleeding out. "Shay Bourne didn't stop at ending Elizabeth's life. He took Kurt Nealon's life, as well. And he didn't just take away Claire's father and June's husband--he took away Officer Kurt Nealon of the Lynley Police. He took away the coach of the Grafton County championship Little League team. He took away the founder of Bike Safety Day at Lynley Elementary School. Shay Bourne took away a public servant who, at the time of his death, was not just protecting his daughter ... but protecting a citizen, and a community. A community that includes each and every one of you."

  The prosecutor placed the photos facedown on the table. "There's a reason that New Hampshire hasn't used the death penalty for fifty-eight years, ladies and gentlemen. That's because, in spite of the many cases that come through our doors, we hadn't seen one that merited that sentence. However, by the same token, there's a reason why the good people of this state have reserved the option to use the death penalty ... instead of overturning the capital punishment statute, as so many other states have done. And that reason is sitting in this courtroom today."

  My gaze followed the prosecutor's, coming to rest on Shay Bourne. "If any case in the past fifty-eight years has ever cried out for the ultimate punishment to be imposed," the attorney said, "this is it."

  College is a bubble. You enter it for four years and forget there is a real world outside of your paper deadlines and midterm exams and beer-pong championships. You don't read the newspaper--you read textbooks. You don't watch the news--you watch Letterman. But even so, bits and snatches of the universe manage to leak in: a mother who locked her children in a car and let it roll into a lake to drown them; an estranged husband who shot his wife in front of their kids; a serial rapist who kept a teenager tied up in a basement for a month before he slit her throat. The murders of Kurt and Elizabeth Nealon were horrible, sure--but were the others any less horrible?

  Shay Bourne's attorney stood up. "You've found my client guilty of two counts of capital murder, and he's not contesting that. We accept your verdict; we respect your verdict. At this point in time, however, the state is asking you to wrap up this case--one that involves the death of two people--by taking the life of a third person."

  I felt a bead of sweat run down the valley between my shoulder blades.

  "You're not going to make anyone safer by killing Shay Bourne. Even if you decide not to execute him, he's not going anywhere. He'll be serving two life sentences without parole." He put his hand on Bourne's shoulder. "You've heard about Shay Bourne's childhood. Where was he supposed to learn what all the rest of you had a chance to learn from your families? Where was he supposed to learn right from wrong, good from bad? For that matter, where was he even supposed to learn his colors and his numbers? Who was supposed to read him bedtime stories, like Elizabeth Nealon's parents had?"

  The attorney walked toward us. "You've heard that Shay Bourne has bipolar disorder, which was going untreated. You heard that he suffers from learning disabilities, so tasks that are simple for us become unbelievably frustrating for him. You've heard how hard it is for him to communicate his thoughts. These all contributed to Shay making poor choices--which you agreed with, beyond a reasonable doubt." He looked at each of us in turn. "Shay Bourne made poor choices," the attorney said. "But don't compound that by making one of your own."

  June

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  It was up to the jury. Again.

  It's a strange thing, putting justice in the hands of twelve strangers. I had spent most of the sentencing phase of the trial watching their faces. There were a few mothers; I would catch their eye and smile at them when I could. A few men who looked like maybe they'd been in the military. And the boy, the one who barely looked old enough to shave, much less make the right decision.

  I wanted to sit down with each and every one of them. I wanted to show them the note Kurt had written me after our first official date. I wanted them to touch the soft cotton cap that Elizabeth had worn home from the hospital as a newborn. I wanted to play them the answering machine message that still had their voices on it, the one I couldn't bear to erase, even though it felt like I was being cut to ribbons every time I heard it. I wanted to take them on a field trip to see Elizabeth's bedroom, with its Tinker Bell night-light and dress-up clothes; I wanted them to bury their faces in Kurt's pillow, breathe him in. I wanted them to live my life, because that was the only way they'd really know what had been lost.

  That night after the closing arguments, I nursed Claire in the middle of the night and then fell asleep with her in my arms. But I dreamed that she was upstairs, distant, and crying. I climbed the stairs to the nursery, the one that still smelled of virgin wood and drying paint, and opened the door. "I'm coming," I said, and I crossed the threshold only to realize that the room had never been built, that I had no baby, that I was falling through the air.

  MICHAEL

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  Only certain people wind up on a jury for a trial like this. Mothers who have kids to take care of, the accountants with deadlines, doctors attending conferences--they all get excused. What's left are retired folks, housewives, disabled folks, and students like me, because none of us have to be any particular place at any particular time.

  Ted, our foreman, was an older man who reminded me of my grandfather. Not in the way he looked or even the way he spoke, but because of the gift he had of making us measure up to a task. My grandfather had been like that, too--you wanted to be your best around him, not because he demanded it, but because there was nothing like that grin when you knew you'd impressed him.

  My grandfather was the reason I'd been picked for this jury. Even though I had no personal experience with murder, I knew what it was like to lose someone you loved. You didn't get past something like that, you got through it--and for that simple reason alone, I understood more about June Nealon than she ever would have guessed. This past winter, four years after my grandfather's death, someone had broken into my dorm and stolen my computer, my bike, and the only picture I had of my grandfather and me together. The thief left behind the sterling silver frame, but when I'd reported the theft to the cops, it was the loss of that photograph that hurt the most.

  Ted waited for Maureen to reapply her lipstick, for Jack to go to the bathroom, for everyone to take a moment for themselves before we settled down to the task of acting as a unified body. "Well," he said, flattening his hands on the conference table. "I suppose we should just get down to business."

  As it turned out, though, it was a lot easier to say that someone deserved to die for what they did than it was to take the responsibility to make that happen.

  "I'm