“You doing okay? I didn’t think Ogren was that good. You doing okay?” This from Bradley John, the lone associate at our law firm, a young guy with a lot of talent and a terrific work ethic. If I could get him to cut his hair so he didn’t look like the lead singer in some cheesy boy band, he might have a future in this profession.
“Ogren was good,” I say. “He was what he needed to be.”
“There’s water if you want it,” he says, nudging the bottle toward me.
“Okay, thanks, kid.” I stifle a snicker and catch eyes with Shauna. Among the other tasks she has delegated to young Bradley, Shauna presumably has given him the assignment of babysitting me, making sure I never get dry mouth, never come suddenly unglued in the middle of a long day of trial.
When it was bad for me, when I was scraping the bottom this past summer, I would use the dry mouth I was experiencing as an excuse to reach for my tin of Altoids. My mouth is feeling kind of sticky and dry, better pop a mint! I even used the excuse when I was alone, as if I were somehow fooling myself with the ruse. You know your life is going off the rails when you tell yourself the lie you’ve created for everyone else, and you believe it.
And the ruse was no casual thing. I did research. I bought a dozen different brands of breath mints, brought them home and opened each container, examining each mint individually to identify the one that bore the closest resemblance to a thirty-milligram tablet of OxyContin.
I ended up going with Altoids, even though they weren’t the best replica, because when I’ve eaten mints in the past, it was usually that brand. Every morning, I replenished my Altoids tin with a half dozen new Oxy pills, enough for one every two hours of a workday and a couple extra in case I went straight from work to dinner. It became my top priority, ensuring a proper supply of OxyContin before I left the house.
Of course, I also needed to have real Altoids, in case someone saw me partaking and asked me for one. Hey, could I bum one of those off you? I couldn’t very well drop a tablet of immediate-release oxycodone into their hands, which would have given them a lot more than minty breath. So I always carried around two of the mini-tins, the red peppermint tin for the painkillers and the blue tin of wintergreen mints for curiously strong breath freshening. I lived with the nagging fear of making a mistake and handing a friend or colleague the wrong tin.
More ridiculously still, I went through the same routine at home, sticking a sleeve of the Oxy tablets in a box of allergy medicine, even though I’ve never been allergic to anything in my entire life. But just in case, on the off chance that I might have a female visitor to my house, again I needed a ruse for my painkiller habit. I remember driving to the pharmacy, looking for a box of allergy medicine for my disguise, and not even knowing what to say to the pharmacist, finally settling on hay fever because my mother used to have that problem in the summer.
“I’m doing fine,” I say to Bradley, making sure Shauna hears it, too. I am fine. It’s been over four months now, and I feel separation from the drugs. And I sure as hell am not going to come apart in front of my jury, who will scan me throughout the trial for any hint of emotional instability, among other things.
But the harshest truth I’ve ever had to accept is the one I swallowed a few months back: I lost control once, and I can’t ever be one hundred percent sure I won’t lose control again. I’m now an addict, and I’ll be one for the rest of my life.
The judge reenters the room, and everyone rises. The jury filters back into their assigned seats. In response to Judge Bialek, Roger Ogren rises.
“The People call Officer Martin Garvin,” he says.
20
Shauna
Marty Garvin is a young cop, mid-twenties, with three years in uniform as a patrol officer. He looks more like an accountant, a bookish sort with a long nose that dominates his face. He is soft-spoken and careful with his words as he relates his background. It’s clear that he is not a veteran witness; he pauses before each answer, measuring his words, probably a bit too much for the liking of the jury. But I have to concede that he comes off as earnest and straightforward.
They start with the 911 call, which started this whole affair. Technically, Officer Garvin is not the one to authenticate this recording, but we stipulated to its admissibility rather than force the prosecution to drag in the 911 dispatcher. Sequentially, this is the first step in the story, and I don’t blame Roger Ogren for wanting to start with it.
The words echo through the silent courtroom, maybe the only words that the jury will ever hear directly from Jason’s mouth:
“There’s been a. . death. Someone’s been. . There’s been a murder. Please come. . please come right away.”
On the tape, Jason’s voice is ambiguous. Shaky, but not distraught-not as distraught as I would have liked him to sound, but not nonchalant, either. Sad, maybe. Disturbed, but not unhinged. If you knew Jason, you could believe that this is him sounding upset, the stoic warrior trying to keep it together. The problem is, the jurors don’t know him. It is one of the many incongruities of the courtroom: People who are making a decision that could affect the rest of Jason’s life know him less than anybody he’s ever met.
The jurors listen with furrowed brows, some of their eyes closed, trying to envision the person delivering those words. The words of a distressed man? The words of a cold-blooded killer? My take is they could interpret this 911 call in whatever way necessary to suit their conclusions.
“I arrived just after midnight-I believe it was twelve-fifty A.M.-the first hour of July thirty-first,” says Garvin. “The defendant met me at the front door of his town house.”
The defendant, not Jason. Depersonalizing the adversary. Officer Garvin has been coached well.
“Describe what happened next, if you would, Officer.”
“The defendant led me upstairs to the second floor of his town house. He made me immediately aware of a Glock handgun that was lying on the floor next to a dead body in the living room. He said the weapon might be loaded, but he wasn’t sure.”
“Is this the weapon?” Ogren asks. From the evidence table behind the prosecution, Ogren removes the handgun. We have stipulated that this was the weapon Officer Garvin found at the scene. We have stipulated that it was the murder weapon.
And we have stipulated that, according to records filed with the state police, the owner of this handgun is Jason Kolarich.
Over the defense’s objection, which Judge Bialek already overruled prior to trial, Roger Ogren shows the officer a series of photographs laying out the scene on the second floor of Jason’s town house: the dead body with a single gunshot wound to the back of the neck, the handgun lying neatly nearby on the hardwood floor. Close-ups and faraway shots, angles capturing Jason’s kitchen and shots showing his large window overlooking the street, dark at that time of night.