Текст книги "The Hidden Man"

Автор книги: David Ellis

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

16

THE COP, BRADY, walks you down the hall to the room where they have Sammy. You find him inside, sitting in a chair in handcuffs, his head hung low.

Hey, you say, trying to be encouraging.

He shakes his head.

Hey, you repeat.

You don’t want no part of this, Koke.

But we’re—it was both—

What’s the point? He gestures in your direction. Better me than you. You got your whole football thing and all. What do I got?

It hits you hard, the distance Sammy has suddenly put between the two of you.

You got me, you say.

Tears well in his eyes, but he shakes his head. Go, he says, his voice growing hoarser.

You admit it to yourself, a sense of relief accompanied by resulting shame. You don’t want to get arrested. You want to survive this.

Go! he shouts. He still won’t look up, but you see his eyes nonetheless, filled with fire and pain.

The cop walks into the room and takes your arm. Sammy drops his head again. C’mon, the cop says to you. You turn one last time, as the door is closing, to see that Sammy is watching you leave.

I STOPPED at a pub a few blocks from my house and ate dinner. The restaurants within a two-mile radius of my house were probably the only ones that benefited from the death of my wife and daughter. I wasn’t much of a cook so I either ordered in or ate out almost every night. This night, I read through the newspaper and ate a cheeseburger. I called Pete on his cell, but he didn’t answer. Five minutes later I got a text message from him saying: No sermons.

He was still being defensive, which meant I was on to something. He was telling himself, no doubt, that his use of drugs was recreational, ignoring how easy the slide would be to addiction, not to mention the danger of onetime use alone.

It hadn’t helped Pete that we grew up poor, or that our old man put Pete down every chance he got, but he didn’t have much of an example from his older brother, either. Pete knew that Sammy and I sold weed, and he knew that the only thing that got me off the wrong track and onto the right one—football—was not available to him. He was like me—the screwup—but minus the athletic ability. It had left him free, I guess, to justify his own foray into drugs.

A Ford Taurus had been following me today, from my trip to see the witness, Tommy Butcher, to my visit with Mrs. Thomas, but I didn’t see it now. They probably figured I was eating close to home and then heading there for the night. I thought I might find the car on the block where I lived, but I didn’t. I went inside and ran on the treadmill for about half an hour before picking up a paperback mystery. By page fifty-six, I had figured out that the serial killer was the priest, and by ten o’clock I had confirmed as much.

At half past midnight, I fell asleep to an episode of MacGyver, the one where our hero finds himself in a jam and uses his knowledge of science to extricate himself. At three in the morning, I woke up to Emily’s phantom cry. I stopped shaking at about four; then I liberated my stomach of all of its contents in the bathroom and went back to bed. At five, I tried one of my mental games, imagining Talia and Emily living happily ever after, but it didn’t work for some reason. I read another paperback until eleven, showered, went to the cemetery, came back home and slept until dinner. I ordered in a pizza but lost my appetite, so I walked it down the street to the park and gave it to a homeless guy. Having done my good deed for the day, I retired for the evening and read some more until I fell asleep to a rerun of Hogan’s Heroes, the one where our indefatigable hero manages to sneak several American POWs to safety under the nose of the hapless commandante and to the bewilderment of the incompetent sergeant.

I awoke at half past three from the dream I’d had many times since Talia’s and Emily’s deaths. When I’m awake, I constantly replay the events in such a way that I am driving them to Talia’s parents’ house that night, and everything turns out fine—we are still together. In my dream, too, I am behind the wheel, but I miss the curve just like Talia did. I lace my hands with Talia’s as we come upon the dark, slick curve along the bluffs, and my eyes pop open as the SUV crashes through the guardrail.

I took a moment to orient myself: It was Friday, October 5. The trial would start in twenty-four days. I had a lot of work ahead, but my brain was fuzzy, my heartbeat slowly decelerating from my dream. I finished a mystery paperback by about ten in the morning and dozed off. I woke up again to the phone ringing. I looked at the caller ID but it was blocked so I answered it.

“This is Vic Carruthers. We did the dig, like you said.”

“Okay?” I sat up in bed.

“We found some bodies,” he said.

I COULDN’T GET anywhere near the burial site behind Hardigan Elementary School. The media had caught wind, so trucks had lined up all around the barricades, with news copters flying overhead. I parked on Hudson, about three blocks away, and walked as far as I could go. I wasn’t accomplishing anything by being here, but I thought if I could catch Detective Carruthers, he might give me some skinny.

Bodies, he’d said. Plural. A cemetery of toddlers behind a school. Griffin Perlini had taken a lot of secrets with him to the grave.

Around me, it was bedlam. Beautiful women and average-looking men were posing before cameras and speaking with urgency into microphones. Parents were parking wherever they could find an open space and hustling into the school to pick up their children. Law enforcement—local cops, sheriff ’s deputies, technical-unit agents—were scurrying about.

One of those bodies, no doubt, was Audrey Cutler. I didn’t know how to feel about that. She was dead, of course, long gone, but maybe now whatever remained of her could be laid to rest next to her mother. Maybe it would give some closure to Sammy, though I couldn’t imagine why—I just knew it was true. Families always want to find the physical remains, as if that earthly need to collect the tangible body has any relevance after death.

My cell phone rang, a blocked call.

“Four bodies,” Carruthers told me, slightly out of breath, probably a combination of exertion and excitement. “Four children.”

“I’m here,” I said.

“Go back to work. There’s nothing for you here now. I’ll be in touch.”

I hadn’t come from work, but it seemed like a good idea to go there now. It seemed like a good time to wake up.

As I worked my way slowly through the ever-expanding population of people who rushed to the school to witness the carnage, I thought about this development. Four children, presumably molested and definitely murdered by Griffin Perlini. I hoped at that moment for a God, which meant a Satan, too. Like my overall belief in the Almighty, I struggled as a child with the idea of the pearly gates and the devil. The whole thing seemed far too black-and-white for me. I remember lobbing questions at the priests: What if you were on your way to confession when you got hit by a truck? You don’t get into Heaven? What if you think you did the right thing but God doesn’t? Are you supposed to repent anyway? Those priests, who preferred black-and-white to gray, really loved having me in class. Me, I was still waiting for answers to those questions.

YOU SEE HER for the first time wrapped in a pink blanket with a tiny bow somehow fastened to the scant hair that covers her tiny, egg-shaped head. Her skin is a slight yellow—jaundiced, they say—and the only sounds that escape her mouth are throaty cries. She cries, she feeds from her mother, and she poops and pees. The adults let you close to her—Don’t touch her, they say—and you put your face close to hers. Her eyes are not focused. She smells like lotion. They say she looks like Mary—Mrs. Cutler—but you think she looks more like a shrunken old man.

Hello, Audrey, you say with mock formality. Nice to meet you.

Sammy isn’t outside as much that summer. He spends a good deal of time with her. By July, Audrey is eating food. You watch Sammy feed her, putting one hand delicately behind her tiny, bobbing head and inserting a lime-colored spoon full of food into her mouth. There you go, he says, mimicking his mother’s words and tone. It’s not exactly the same between you and Sammy now. He reserves a part of himself for his little sister. He measures himself in her presence, keeping a watchful eye, springing forth at her cry, or if she loses balance and falls to the side.

You’re like my little sister, too, you tell her that winter. She makes a noise—eh-bah—and grabs a handful of your hair and pulls hard. You don’t mind. You laugh. She doesn’t mean to hurt you, Sammy tells you. You know that. You know you’re special to Audrey, too. She is still too young to appreciate strangers. She breaks into a cry around anyone other than the Cutlers and your family. She lets go of your hair and you get your face up close to hers. She breaks into a big smile, and you feel something light up inside you. The word “beautiful” comes to mind and you think you have found a new definition of that word.

I GOT TO my car and navigated the escalating traffic as the hordes continued to flock toward Hardigan Elementary School. This would be all over the news, and Sammy probably would learn of it, so I needed to pay him a visit.

Sammy. He needed his lawyer. As the duly appointed same, my first concern was how quickly they could identify the remains. DNA testing could take months, especially for bodies that had probably been buried for years. There would be no sense of urgency, no crime to solve when the perpetrator was already dead. This would not go to the front of the line. I would need to see what I could do about that.

I had to admit it—after talking with Mrs. Thomas and Perlini’s mother, I’d had some doubts about Perlini as Audrey’s killer. One of the things that had bothered me was that pedophilia and murder were very different things, and Perlini hadn’t had any history of killing little girls. Or so we’d thought, before today.

So much of solving crimes is luck. Nobody would have bothered to question Griffin Perlini’s mother after his death, yet it was precisely because he was gone—because there was no need to protect him anymore—that his mother gave me the tip about the hill behind this school. Now, there was no doubt that Griffin Perlini had escalated several of his crimes.

“Audrey,” I said aloud. My voice cracked, betraying emotion I hadn’t acknowledged. There is something unspeakable about a child’s death under any circumstances; I didn’t know if the time would ever come that I could fully comprehend the loss of Emily. But the murder of a child exposes something so hideous that anger is not even the appropriate response. We despair. We lose hope. We lose faith.

Audrey Cutler had a plot of land in the Catholic cemetery, next to which her mother, Mary, was buried. We would have a proper funeral, I decided. Sammy and I would bury his sister.

I picked up my cell phone, dialed the number, and got voice mail. “Pete,” I said into the phone. “Pete, I—I—just give me a call when you can.”

17

YOUR LAST GOOD MEMORY of her, the weekend before she was abducted, the picnic held after the successful construction of the new wing to the university library. You are with the Cutlers, trying to throw a Frisbee with Sammy, while little Audrey tries to partake, tries in vain to intercept the flying disk. My turn, she keeps saying.

Let her have her turn. Mrs. Cutler is happy today. She is wearing a sun-dress, and the wind is playing with her bangs. Mr. Cutler is off drinking beers with some of the other guys involved in the construction. He does that a lot, always with a beer in his hand at home. You heard Sammy’s mom describe the work at the library as “good work,” saying it to Mr. Cutler—you thought they were fighting about that, about how many absences were allowed by the union before you were kicked off the job. Mr. Cutler is a plumber, but he only works sometimes; you don’t know why or when. Some days, Mr. Cutler just stays home, drinking beer and yelling at the television.

Audrey has tired of Frisbee and wants candy. They are passing it out, the company that sponsored the picnic, M&M’s candies with the company name, Emerson, on them. They’re Emerson M&M’s, Sammy says to Audrey. She tries to say it back but it ties her tongue. Something like Em-o-son-em’s comes out, and you and Sammy laugh. She keeps trying and you keep laughing, until Sammy tells her it’s okay, she did a good job, and he picks her up and puts her on his shoulders. He runs around as Audrey yells, Em-o-son-em’s and squeals with delight.

I SPENT the afternoon in my office, going through the files in Sammy’s case. Included in those files was the criminal history of Griffin Perlini. That gave me a list of people whose daughters had been victimized in some way by Perlini. It felt indecent, morosely ironic, that this list of victimized families was, for my purposes, a list of potential suspects.

It wasn’t much of a list, really. Two girls were part of his initial foray into sexual predation, which as far as anyone could tell did not reach the level of sexual contact with the children. Perlini had been convicted only of exposing himself to these children.

The other two girls had been part of the case that put Perlini in prison until 2005. Over one summer, while working at a park district, Perlini had abused these girls, who had enrolled in a summer program. The case had gone to trial, which presumably meant the children had to testify. These would not be fun conversations, both because of the obviously uncomfortable subject matter and because I might have to argue, at trial, that one of these sets of parents should be suspects in Griffin Perlini’s murder. I wasn’t sure I had the stomach to do it, to throw salt on already gaping wounds, but it would be irresponsible not to explore it. That’s the kind of thing that makes the general public hate lawyers, especially the criminal defense bar. Much of what we do, to a layperson, is counterintuitive. A guy gets caught with a kilo of cocaine in his basement and the first thing we argue is that the evidence should not be admitted, because of a Fourth Amendment violation. A guy confesses to a crime and the first thing we argue is that the jury shouldn’t hear the confession, courtesy of the Fifth Amendment. We try shaky defenses like temporary insanity or play the race card, anything plausible to free our client. People will carp and moan about every single attorney on the face of the earth except for one—their own, if they ever need one, in which case their view of the Bill of Rights becomes infinitely more expansive.

I was tired, and thinking about a cup of coffee from the shop downstairs, when my intercom buzzed. Marie, through the speaker: “Mr. Smith to see you.”

Smith. The last person I felt like seeing. But something inside me told me that I wanted to take this meeting.

My door, which I’d uncharacteristically closed, opened, and Smith walked in. “Afternoon, Jason.” He looked as polished as last time, a gray double-breasted suit with a charcoal tie, hair sharply parted. But as he moved across my small office, seating himself in front of my desk, I sensed that he was less tentative, more self-assured, than he was at our last meeting.

“Tell me your name,” I said. “Your real name.”

“I was hoping for an update on the case,” he said, not answering my question.

“Hope is a dangerous thing.”

He forced a smile. “You’re being paid well. Very well.”

“So are you. Who’s paying you? Maybe we can share information.”

At this point, it seemed clear that Smith was representing a family that had been subject to Griffin Perlini’s predatory appetites in some way or another. I could understand the desire for discretion, and really, Smith wasn’t my problem. I didn’t care who was paying. My loyalty was to Sammy only, and if someone else wanted to bankroll the defense while cloaked in anonymity, I wasn’t sure I cared.

On the other hand, I’d assumed that the people tailing me since the day Smith first appeared in my office were connected to him. On the scale of things I cared about, that issue rated a few notches higher. He was keeping tabs on me, and I didn’t know why.

“There are four aspects to Mr. Cutler’s case,” Smith graciously informed me.

At least he was capable of counting. The four areas of concern were the eyewitnesses who had Sammy running from the scene of the crime; the convenience store videotape that caught his car parked down the street from Perlini’s apartment; the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene; and Sammy’s statement to the police.

“From what little I’ve been able to gather,” said Smith, “it sounds as if you have one potentially favorable witness. I don’t recall the name. Butler, was it?”

Butcher, actually. Tommy Butcher. Again, no need to help him with information.

“Apparently a black man was spotted near the crime scene,” he continued. “Has Mr. Butler given you a description of this man beyond that?”

As luck would have it, after I had applied a healthy dose of sympathetic grease, Butcher had seemed willing to go along with the brown-jacket-green-cap story I had pitched him. But Smith didn’t know that, and I wasn’t going to illuminate him. I shook my head and opened my hands.

“I’m going to help you with that, Jason. The empty chair.”

Someone to point the finger at, he meant. Someone who was not sitting in the courtroom, who didn’t have a lawyer to defend himself, who didn’t have any constitutional protections. And he was right, of course. If I could place at the scene of the crime a black guy who had any hint of a motive or criminal background, I might have something to show the jury.

“You’re going to find me the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene, Smith?”

His head inclined ever so slightly. “I am, yes.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks. And what about the eyewitnesses? Perlini’s neighbor, and the elderly couple that ID’d Sammy running from the building?”

“Don’t worry about them,” he answered.

I didn’t like the sound of that, neither the words nor his icy delivery. “Explain that.”

“Don’t worry about the eyewitnesses. They’re my problem.” He could read the expression on my face, no doubt, so he elaborated. “It’s not what you’re thinking, Jason. It’s just that—memories are a funny thing. Sometimes, if you think back, it wasn’t the way you thought it was. Right?”

“You’re just going to help them with their memory.” Even as I said the words, careful to show my disapproval, it occurred to me that I had just done the very same thing with Tommy Butcher. I’d fed him all sorts of information to bathe my client in a sympathetic light and then spoon-fed him a description of the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene.

But that was a little different, I gathered, from what Smith had in mind for the other eyewitnesses. “If any harm comes to any of them, Smith, you’re going to answer to me.”

He stared at me, losing any trace of a smile. “Don’t ever threaten me, son.”

“Don’t think I’m going to sit idly by while you murder witnesses.”

He regarded me for a moment, then a chuckle escaped his throat. “There are ways short of physical force, my friend. Everyone has a pressure point. Everyone. Including you.”

“And you,” I volleyed.

He slowly nodded. “Believe me when I say, you don’t want to find it.”

I didn’t answer.

“Jason, one of your best friends is on trial for murder, and I’m gift-wrapping an acquittal for you. I’ll find you a scapegoat, and I’ll help you with the eyewitnesses. The only things that remain are the videotape placing Mr. Cutler’s car at the scene, and the statement Cutler gave to the police. Those are the only things that require your help. You’ll need to find a way to finesse Cutler’s incriminating statement, and you and I will have to come up with an innocent reason that Cutler’s car was in the vicinity at the time. Those two things are your only assignments. Anything beyond that is a waste of time and a distraction.”

I nodded. I thought I understood now. “You’ve been watching the news today.”

“I have, and I don’t see what you can possibly gain from the discovery of bodies behind a school. What do you intend to prove? That Griffin Perlini killed Cutler’s sister? The judge has already ruled that evidence off-limits.”

“For now,” I said.

“For now. For now.” He fell back in the chair. “Don’t make this harder than it is. The trial is only about three weeks away. There is no time for red herrings. This will end in an acquittal if you follow my directions. If you start playing Lone Ranger, you could screw everything up.” He held up two fingers. “Two items, Jason. Cutler’s incriminating statement and a reason why he would have been near the scene of the crime. The confession and an alibi. You’re expected to give us explanations on those two items and nothing more. Nothing,” he repeated, “more.”

Smith let his speech sink in for me. He was probably wondering why I hadn’t taken notes. This guy, I could see, was accustomed to giving out orders and having people follow them. He shot his cuff links and fixed his tie and said, “Good. We have an understanding.”

I watched Smith walk to the door before I answered.

“With just one caveat,” I said. “You will shove your retainer up your ass and go crawl under a rock. I will do whatever I think is best for Sammy and we’ll never talk again.”

Smith’s face dissolved into a frown.

“Tell me your real name, whom you represent, and why,” I said. “Or you’re out of the picture as of right now.”

My mysterious benefactor thought for a while, weighing the pros and cons, before answering. The fact that he was even considering responding meant something, I just wasn’t entirely sure what.

“Obviously, Jason, my clients are a family, or families, who have a particular interest in seeing that Mr. Perlini’s murder go unpunished.”

“Someone whom Perlini assaulted. Or her parents, or family.”

He waved a hand.

“Victims who testified against him in court?” I asked. “Or victims the police never knew about?” Smith didn’t answer, so I added to my question: “Victims who were buried behind Hardigan Elementary School?”

It had occurred to me, but never so keenly as now: Smith might be representing someone who killed Griffin Perlini, for the same motive Sammy had—a bitter parent, or sibling, of a child Perlini molested or even killed.

Was Smith here to steer me away from the real killer?

Was Sammy innocent?

“I strongly urge you to stick to the script,” said Smith.

“I strongly urge you to go fuck yourself.”

Smith played that around on his lips. “You’re making a mistake,” he said. “When you change your mind, I’ll be in touch.”

I detected a hint of a smile cross his lips.

“When I’ve changed my mind?” I asked.

He nodded at me. “When,” he said, as he walked out the door.