February 3, 1999

Dear Mom,

I ran out of class today. It was one of my pre-law classes, and it was our first day talking about techniques the defense use. Today's topic was influencing the jury, and my hands are still shaking as I write this.

You always used to say, "When you don't have enough for reasonable doubt, make it reasonable guilt on the jury's part," and you and Dad would just share a look and laugh. I remember crawling up on your lap and you complaining I was too big for that when I was eleven and asking you what that meant. You told me that if I ever became a lawyer, I should always remember that the jury's made of everyday people snatched up out of their everyday lives. You said I should trust in the inherent goodness of people, and explain exactly what it would mean for the man on trial to be put in jail: the strain on his family, the years of his life he would lose, the irreplaceable life moments he would never get to see... You said as long as there was a tiny needle of doubt in that jury's minds, once they were made aware of all the implications of their decisions, they would think twice about convicting a man who was possibly innocent. I asked you if that had ever worked before, and you replied, "Once or twice."

My little eleven-year-old self with naïve knowledge of the real world looked up at you and promised that I would become a big, famous defense lawyer and popularize the technique, the "Johanna Beckett jury-guilting technique," and you laughed for a long time and then said it wouldn't work as well if everyone knew about it. Do you remember this? You probably thought I wasn't serious back then about becoming a defense attorney, but I was.

That's what he talked about today. He mentioned it, just in passing, about appealing to the jury's kinder human nature, but your words came back to me and I had to run out of that lecture hall in tears.

Lanie saw me on the bench in the lawn and sat down next to me. She missed her pre-med class just to put her arm around me for an hour and a half, and she didn't even know why I was so upset. What did I do to deserve a friend like that? I know I'm not very good company in this state, so I don't know what she sees in me. I really hope it's not pity, because pity only lasts so long. All my old friends from Stanford are long since gone, fallen out of contact with. I need a new best friend, and I really would like her to be Lanie.

I can't do it anymore, Mom. I can't pursue a career as a lawyer, not right now, not after everything I've gone through. I can't study when I see your face in every picture and hear your voice speak every word in my textbooks. It's not working, and I can't handle it. Maybe if I knew some attorney out there somewhere was prosecuting your case, putting away the guy who killed you, maybe then it would be different, but that's not how it is right now. Because Raglan and the rest of them at the 42nd precinct can't do their jobs.

So I've decided, and nothing anyone can say will talk me out of it. When I finally recovered enough to choke out to Lanie what had happened, she supported me wholeheartedly because she could see that's what I wanted, no, needed, to do. I'm not going to law school. I'm changing my major as of tomorrow to criminal justice, and after I finish school I'm going to do my six month stint at the Academy. I'm going to become a cop, and I'm going to solve your murder.

Love,

Kate