“So you’d only heard she was a bad person?”
“Petrak saw her,” Stefan said. “He didn’t see her in the courtroom that day, but when he heard she was the judge I would have to see, he went to the courthouse and hung around until he saw her. They won’t let anyone into the hearings who are not part of the hearings, so he said he had to wait around a very long time and he only saw her by accident. He said he had to walk around in the corridors and then it was just an accident and he only knew who she was because another woman said her name. He said she was like that woman in Harry Potter.”
“Woman in Harry Potter?”
Stefan considered this. “Umbridge,” he said. “Dolores Umbridge. She is an evil woman in the Harry Potter movies. I know there are Harry Potter books, but my English is not good enough for them. And I don’t like to read, even in Armenian.”
If Tibor were here, he would have staged a fit at that one, but Gregor didn’t bother.
“So you’ve never seen her,” he said, “and on the day in the courtroom, you were seated at the desk for the defense?”
“I was seated at a table,” Stefan said. “It was probably the table for the defense, yes. And Mr. Donahue was there. And there were chairs behind us, there was a railing right behind us and there were chairs behind that, and Petrak and our aunt Sophie were sitting in the chairs. We were waiting for the judge and we were waiting for Father Kasparian, because he had promised to come, and to speak for me. But Mr. Donahue was not happy. He did not think there was much hope. He said that this judge sent everybody to jail and sent them to jail for a very long time. I think—”
“Yes?”
“I know it is wrong, what I did,” Stefan said. “I am not trying to say it was not wrong. They say that to you here over and over again. You cannot go home from here if you say what you did was not wrong. I am trying only to say that it was a stupid thing, not an evil thing. It was wrong but it was only stupid.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “From what I’ve heard, it was pretty damned stupid.”
“There is a boy here who has murdered his mother,” Stefan said. His eyes got that blinkless stare again, the one he’d worn when the policewoman was still here. “He is eight years old and he took a kitchen knife and stabbed her seven times in the throat. He knocked her over and he stabbed her. He talks about it all the time. He talks about the blood and he talks about how awful she was and all the things she did to him, but I do not know what is the truth and what is not the truth. When I first got here, there was a boy who screamed all the time, screamed and said bad words, but they took him away. They said they took him to a hospital.”
“You do need to get out of here,” Gregor said. “I’m sure they’re doing the best they can. I’ll go ask questions of the people in charge, if you want me to.”
“I want to go home,” Stefan said. He was over six feet tall, but he suddenly looked as small as a toddler, and as scared. “I want to go to Aunt Sophie’s or to Canada or even to Armenia. I want to go home. I did a stupid thing and it was wrong, but it was not evil. It was not evil.”
“Yes,” Gregor said. “I know that. I think most of the people involved in this know that.”
“It was not evil,” Stefan said again.
“Try to think of something else for just a minute,” Gregor said. “It may make a lot of difference to figuring out what happened that day. And if we can figure out what happened that day, maybe we can get all this straightened out.”
“Petrak said that Father Kasparian killed that judge for me,” Stefan said. “He said that Father Kasparian killed that judge because she gave long sentences and the next judge would not and it would be better for me.”
“Did you see him leave the courtroom the day the judge died?”
“Everybody left the courtroom the day the judge died,” Stefan said. “Not everybody. Everybody with me. Mr. Donahue went to see if Father Kasparian was outside, and Petrak went out to find them, and Aunt Sophie went out because they were gone so long, and then she was gone long and when she came back she said something had happened but she didn’t know what. And it was all very crazy and it took a very long time, but I couldn’t go anywhere because the police guards were always there. So I just sat at the table and waited. I stared straight ahead so nobody could say I was thinking of something.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t see anything,” Gregor said. “You didn’t see the judge, you didn’t see anything unusual on any of the people when they came back to the courtroom.”