Текст книги "Defending Jacob"

Автор книги: William Landay

Соавторы: William Landay
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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

15

|Playing Detective

At the Starbucks in Newton Centre, Sarah Groehl had plugged herself into a MacBook. Seeing me, she disengaged herself from the computer, canting her head left then right to remove her earphones, just as women do when they take off earrings. She looked at me sleepily, blinking, rousing herself from a Web-trance.

“Hi, Sarah. Am I disturbing you?”

“No, I was just… I don’t know.”

“Can I talk to you?”

“About what?

I gave her a look: Come on. “We can go somewhere else if you want.”

She did not immediately answer. The tables were crowded together, and people pretended not to be listening, obeying the etiquette of coffee shops. But the ordinary awkwardness of having a conversation within others’ hearing was multiplied by my family’s infamy and by Sarah’s own awkwardness. She was embarrassed to be seen with me. She may have been afraid of me too, after all she had heard. With so much to consider, she seemed unable to answer. I suggested we sit on the park bench across the street, where I figured she would feel safe in the sight of others yet out of hearing range, and she made a sweeping motion with her head to swing her bangs off her forehead, away from her eyes, and said okay.

“Can I buy you another coffee?”

“I don’t drink coffee.”

We sat side by side on the green-slatted bench across the street. Sarah held herself royally erect. She was not fat, but she was not thin enough for the tight T-shirt she wore. A little roll of flesh blossomed over her shorts-a “muffin top,” the kids called it without embarrassment. I thought she might be a nice girl for Jacob when all this was over.

I held my Starbucks paper cup. I’d lost interest in it but there was no place to dump it now. I turned it in my hands.

“Sarah, I’m trying to find out what really happened to Ben Rifkin. I need to find the guy who really did this.”

She gave me a skeptical sidelong gaze. “What do you mean, ‘the guy who really did this’?”

“Jacob didn’t do it. They have the wrong guy.”

“I thought that wasn’t your job anymore. You’re playing detective?”

“It’s my job as a father now.”

“O – kay.” She smirked and shook her head.

“Does that sound crazy, to say he’s innocent?”

“No. I guess not.”

“I think maybe you know Jacob is innocent too. The things you said…”

“I never said that.”

“Sarah, you know we adults don’t really have any idea what’s going on in your lives. How could we? But somebody has to open up to us a little bit. Some of you kids have to help.”

“We have.”

“Not enough. Don’t you see, Sarah? A friend of yours is going to go to prison for a murder he didn’t commit.”

“How do I know he didn’t commit it? Isn’t that, like, the whole thing? It’s like, how would anyone know that? Including you.”

“Well, do you think he’s guilty?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you have doubts.”

“I just said, I don’t know.”

“I do know, Sarah. Okay? I’ve been doing this for a long time and I know: Jacob did not do it. I promise you. He didn’t do it. He’s completely innocent.”

“Of course you think that. You’re his father.”

“I am, it’s true. But I’m not just his father. There’s evidence, Sarah. You haven’t seen it but I have.”

She looked at me with a beneficent little smile, and briefly she was the adult and I was a foolish child. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Mr. Barber. What do I know? It’s not like I was tight with either one of them, Jacob or Ben.”

“Sarah, you were the one who told me to look on Facebook.”

“I did not.”

“Okay, well, let’s just say if– if you were the one who told me to look on Facebook. Why did you do that? What did you want me to find?”

“Okay, I’m not saying it was me that told you anything, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Because I don’t want to be, like, involved, okay?”

“Okay.”

“It was just, you know, there were these rumors going around and I thought you should know what kids were saying. ’Cause nobody seemed to know, you know? Like, nobody who was in charge. No offense, but you all seemed kind of clueless. Kids knew. Kids were saying Jacob had a knife, and Jake and Ben had a fight. But you guys were running around totally clueless. Actually Ben had been kind of a bully to Jake for a long time, you know? It wasn’t like that makes anyone a murderer, all right? But it was just kind of something I thought you guys should know.”

“What was Ben bullying Jake about?”

“Why don’t you just ask Jake? He’s your kid.”

“I have. He never mentioned anything about Ben bullying him. All he tells me is everything was just fine, he had no problems with Ben or anyone else.”

“Okay, then maybe-I don’t know, I mean, maybe I’m just wrong.”

“Come on, you don’t think you’re wrong, Sarah. What was Jake being bullied about?”

She shrugged. “Look, it’s not like it’s such a big deal. Everyone gets bullied. Well, not bullied-teased, okay? I see how your eyes light up when I say ‘bullied,’ like it’s some big thing. Adults love to talk about bullying. We’ve had all these training classes in bullying and all that.” She shook her head.

“Okay, so not bullied-teased. What about? What were they getting on him about?”

“The usual stuff: he’s gay, he’s a geek, he’s a loser.”

“Who was saying that?”

“Just kids. Everyone. It was not a big thing. It happens for a while, then it moves on to the next kid.”

“Was Ben teasing Jacob?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t, like, only Ben. Don’t take this the wrong way, but Jacob isn’t exactly in the cool crowd.”

“No? What crowd is he in?”

“I don’t know. He’s not really in a crowd. He’s just kind of nothing. It’s hard to explain. Jacob’s kind of like a cool geek, I’d say, only there kind of isn’t really such a thing. Does that make sense?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s like there’s jocks? He definitely isn’t one of those. And there’s smart kids? Only he isn’t really smart enough to be one of them either. I mean, he’s smart, okay? but he isn’t like that smart. It’s like you need to have a thing, you know? You need to play an instrument or be on a team or be in a play or whatever, or like be ethnic or lesbian or retarded or something-not that there’s anything wrong with those things. It’s just, like, if you don’t have any of those things then you’re just kind of one of those kids, you know? Like just a regular kid, and nobody knows what to call you-you’re nothing, but not in a bad way. And that’s kind of like what Jacob was, you know? He was just like a regular kid. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense.”

“Really?”

“Yes. What are you, Sarah? What’s your ‘thing’?”

“I don’t have one. Same as Jacob. I’m nothing.”

“But not in a bad way.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I don’t want to get all Cliff Huxtable here, but I don’t think you’re nothing.”

“Who’s Cliff Huxtable?”

“Never mind.”

Across the street, people stole glances at us as they went in and out of Starbucks, though it was not clear if they recognized me. Maybe I was being paranoid.

“I just want to say, like”-she searched around for the words-“I think it’s really cool what you’re trying to do? Like trying to prove Jacob innocent and all? You seem like a really good dad. Only Jacob isn’t like you. You know that, don’t you?”

“No? Why?”

“Just, like, his manner? He’s kind of quiet? He’s really shy? I’m not saying he’s a bad kid. I mean, not at all. But he doesn’t have a lot of friends, y’know? He has, like, his little circle? Like Derek and that kid Josh? (That kid is totally weird, by the way. I mean, like, totally random.) But Jacob doesn’t really have a lot of friends in, like, his network. I mean, I guess he likes it that way, y’know? Which is okay, it’s totally fine. I’m not saying anything. It’s just like, there must be a lot going on inside there, in his-y’know, inside. I just, I don’t know if he’s happy.”

“Does he seem unhappy to you, Sarah?”

“Yeah, a little. But I mean, everyone’s unhappy, right? I mean sometimes?”

I didn’t answer.

“You need to talk to Derek. Derek Yoo? He knows more about all this than I do.”

“Right now I’m talking to you, Sarah.”

“No, go talk to Derek. I don’t want to get in the middle of it, you know? Derek and Jacob have been really tight, like, since they were little kids. I’m sure Derek can tell you more than I can. I mean, I’m sure he’ll want to help Jacob. He’s like Jacob’s best friend.”

“Why don’t you want to help Jacob, Sarah?”

“I do want to. I just, I don’t really know. I don’t know enough about it. But Derek does.”

I wanted to pat her on the hand or the shoulder or something, but that sort of fatherly contact has been drummed out of us. So I tipped my paper cup toward her in a sort of toast, and I said, “There’s something we always asked when we ended an interview in my old job: is there anything you think I ought to know that I didn’t ask about? Anything at all?”

“No. Not that I can think of.”

“You’re sure?”

She held up her pinkie. “Promise.”

“Okay, Sarah, thank you. I know Jacob’s probably not the most popular kid right now, and I think it’s very brave of you to talk to me like this.”

“It’s not brave. If it was brave, I wouldn’t do it. I’m not a brave person. It’s more like, I like Jake. I mean, I don’t know about the case and all that? But I used to like Jake, you know, like before. He was a good kid.”

“Is. Is a good kid.”

“Is. Right.”

“Thanks.”

“You know what, Mr. Barber? I bet you had like a really good father. Because, you know, you’re like a really good father, so I bet you had a good father who kind of taught you. Am I right?”

Jesus, didn’t this kid read the papers?

“Not exactly,” I said.

“Not exactly but close?”

“I didn’t have a father.”

“Stepfather?”

I shook my head.

“Everybody has a father, Mr. Barber. Except, like, God or something.”

“Not me, Sarah.”

“Oh. Well, then, maybe that’s kind of a good thing. Just, like, take fathers totally out of the equation.”

“Maybe. I’m probably not the best guy to ask.”

The Yoos lived on one of the mazy, shady streets behind the library, near the elementary school where all these kids first met. The house was a tidy little center-entrance colonial on a small lot, white with black shutters. A previous owner had built a brick shelter around the front door, which stood out on the white face of the building like a red-lipsticked mouth. I remembered crowding into this little compartment when Laurie and I used to visit during the winter months. That was back when Jacob and Derek were in grade school. Our families had been friendly then. Those were the days when the parents of Jacob’s friends tended to become our friends too. We used to line up other families like puzzle pieces, father to father, mother to mother, kid to kid, to see if we had a match. The Yoos were not a perfect fit for us-Derek had a little sister named Abigail, three years younger than the boys-but the friendship between our families had been convenient for a while. That we saw them less now was not the result of a breakup. The kids had simply outgrown us. They socialized among themselves now, and there had not been enough left of the family friendship to cause either of the parent couples to seek out the other. Still, I felt we were friends, even now. I was naive.

It was Derek who answered the door when I rang. He froze. Just gawped at me with his big dumb syrupy brown eyes until I finally said, “Hi, Derek.”

“Hey, Andy.”

The Yoo kids had always called Laurie and me by our first names, a permissive practice I never quite got used to and which, under the current circumstances, grated all the more.

“Can I talk to you a minute?”

Again, Derek seemed unable to formulate any answer at all. He stared at me.

From the kitchen, Derek’s dad, David Yoo, called, “Derek, who is it?”

“It’s all right, Derek,” I reassured him. His panic seemed almost comical. Why on earth was he so rattled? He had seen me a thousand times.

“Derek, who is it?”

I heard a chair scrape along the kitchen floor. David Yoo came out into the front hall and, with a hand placed lightly around the back of Derek’s neck, he drew his son back away from the door. “Hi, Andy.”

“Hi, David.”

“Was there something we can do for you?”

“I just wanted to talk to Derek.”

“Talk about what?”

“About the case. What happened. I’m trying to find out who really did it. Jacob is innocent, you know. I’m helping prepare for the trial.”

David nodded in an understanding way.

His wife, Karen, now came out of the kitchen and greeted me briefly, and they all stood together in the doorway like a family portrait.

“Can I come in, David?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“We’re on the witness list, Andy. I don’t think we’re supposed to talk to anyone.”

“That’s ridiculous. This is America-you can talk to whoever you want.”

“The prosecutor told us not to talk to anyone.”

“Logiudice?”

“That’s right. He said, don’t talk to anyone.”

“Well, he meant reporters. He didn’t want you running around making conflicting statements. He’s just thinking about the cross-examination. I’m trying to find the tru-”

“That’s not what he said, Andy. He said, don’t talk to anyone.”

“Yes, but he can’t say that. Nobody can tell you not to talk to anyone.”

“I’m sorry.”

“David, this is my son. You know Jacob. You’ve known him since he was a kid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Well, can I at least come in and we’ll talk about it?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

We locked eyes.

“Andy,” he said, “this is our family time. I really don’t appreciate you being here.”

He went to close the door. His wife stopped him, holding the edge of the door, imploring him with her eyes.

“Please don’t come back here,” David Yoo told me. He added, weakly, “Good luck.”

He removed Karen’s hand from the door and gently closed it and, I could hear, he slid the chain into the lock.

16

Witness

I was greeted at the Magraths’ apartment door by a dumpy, pie-faced woman with a frizz of unsprung black hair. She wore black spandex leggings and an oversized T-shirt with an equally oversized message stamped across the front: Don’t Give Me Attitude, I Have One of My Own. This witticism ran six full lines, drawing my eyes southward over her person from wavering bosom to detumescent belly, a journey I regret even now.

I said, “Is Matthew here?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I represent Jacob Barber.”

A blank look.

“The murder in Cold Spring Park.”

“Ah. You his lawyer?”

“Father, actually.”

“It’s about time. I was beginning to think that kid was all alone in the world.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s just we been waiting for someone to show up here. It’s been weeks. Where’s the cops already?”

“Can I just-is Matthew Magrath here? That’s your son, I assume?”

“You sure you’re not a cop?”

“Pretty sure, yeah.”

“Probation officer?”

“No.”

She put a hand on her hip, tucking it under the little skirt of fat that circled her waist.

“I’d like to ask him about Leonard Patz.”

“I know.”

The woman’s behavior was so strange-not just her cryptic answers but the oddball way she looked up at me-that I was slow to grasp what she was saying about Patz.

“Is Matt here?” I repeated, anxious to be rid of her.

“Yeah.” She swung the door open. “Matt! There’s someone here to see you.”

She shuffled back into the apartment as if she had lost interest in the whole thing. The apartment was small and cluttered. Posh a suburb as Newton is, there are still corners that working people can afford. The Magraths lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in a white vinyl-sided house subdivided into four units. It was early evening, and the light inside was dim. A Red Sox game played on an enormous, ancient rear-projection TV. Facing the TV was a mottled, mustard-colored plush armchair, into which Mrs. Magrath dropped herself.

“You like baseball?” she said over her shoulder. “ ’Cuz I do.”

“Sure.”

“You know who they’re playing?”

“No.”

“I thought you said you liked baseball.”

“I’ve had some other things on my mind.”

“It’s the Blue Jays.”

“Ah. The Blue Jays. How could I forget?”

“Matt!” she blasted. Then, to me: “He’s in there with his girlfriend doing God knows what. Kristin, that’s the girlfriend. Kid hasn’t said two words to me all the times she’s been over here. Treats me like I’m a piece of shit. Just wants to go running off with Matt like I don’t even exist. Matt too. He only wants to be with Kristin. They got no time for me, the both of them.”

I nodded. “Oh.”

“How’d you get our name? I thought sex victims are supposed to be confidential.”

“I used to be with the DA’s office.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right, I knew that. You’re the one. I read about you in the papers. So you seen the whole file?”

“Yeah.”

“So you know about this guy Leonard Patz? What he did to Matt?”

“Yeah. Sounds like he groped him in the library.”

“He groped him in the balls.”

“Well, the-okay, there too.”

“Matt!”

“If this is a bad time…”

“No. You’re lucky he’s here. Usually he goes off with the girlfriend and I don’t even see him. His curfew’s eight-thirty but he doesn’t care. He just goes off. His probation officer knows all about it. I guess I can tell you that, can’t I, he’s got a probation officer? I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t know what to tell anyone anymore, you know? DYS had him for a while, then they sent him back. I moved here from Quincy so he wouldn’t be around his friends, who were no good. So I came here ’cuz I thought it would help him, you know? You ever try to find a section-eight apartment in this town? Pfft. Me, I don’t care where I live. It doesn’t matter to me. So you know what? You know what he says to me now? After I do all this for him? He says, ‘Oh, you’ve changed, Ma. Now you moved to Newton, you think you’re fancy. You wear your fancy glasses, your fancy clothes, you think you’re like these Newton people.’ You know why I wear these glasses?” She picked up a pair of glasses from a table beside the armrest. “ ’Cuz I can’t see! Only now he’s got me so crazy I don’t even wear them in my own house. I wore these same glasses in Quincy and he didn’t say a thing. It’s like, no matter what I do for him, it’s never enough.”

“It’s not easy being a mother,” I ventured.

“Oh, well, he says he doesn’t want me to be his mother anymore. He says that all the time. You know why? I think it’s because I’m overweight, it’s because I’m not attractive. I don’t have a skinny body like Kristin and I don’t go to the gym and I don’t have nice hair. I can’t help it! This is what I am! I’m still his mother! You know what he calls me when he gets mad? He calls me a fat shit. Imagine saying something like that to your mother, calling her a fat shit. I do everything for this kid, everything. Does he ever thank me? Does he ever say, ‘Oh, I love you, Ma, thank you’? No. He just tells me, ‘I need money.’ He asks me for money and I tell him, ‘I don’t have any money to give you, Matty.’ And he says, ‘Come on, Ma, not even a couple a bucks?’ And I tell him I need that money to buy him all these things he likes, like this Celtics jacket he had to have, for a hundred fifty bucks, and like a fool I go and buy it for him, just to make him happy.”

The bedroom door opened and Matt Magrath came out, barefoot, wearing only Adidas gym shorts and a T-shirt. “Ma, give it a rest, would you? You’re freaking the guy out.”

The police reports in Leonard Patz’s indecent A amp;B case described the victim as fourteen years old, but Matt Magrath seemed a few years older than that. He was handsome, square-jawed, with a slouchy, wised-up manner.

The girlfriend, Kristin, followed him out of the bedroom door. She was not as pretty as Matt. She had a thin face, small mouth, freckles, flat chest. She wore a wide-necked shirt that hung off one side, exposing a milky shoulder and a vampy lavender bra strap. I knew instantly that this boy did not care about her. He would break her heart, probably very soon. I felt sorry for her before she even got all the way out of the bedroom door. She looked about thirteen or fourteen. How many men would break her heart before she was through?

“ You’re Matthew Magrath?”

“Yeah. Why? Who are you?”

“How old are you, Matthew? What’s your birth date?”

“August 17, 1992.”

I was distracted momentarily by the thought of it: 1992. How recent it sounded, how far along in my life I was already. In 1992 I had already been a lawyer for eight years. Laurie and I were trying to conceive Jacob, in both senses.

“You’re not even fifteen years old yet.”

“So?”

“So nothing.” I glanced at Kristin, who was watching me with a lidded expression like a proper bad girl. “I came to ask you about Leonard Patz.”

“Len? What do you want to know?”

“ ‘Len’? Is that what you call him?”

“Sometimes. Who are you again?”

“I’m Jacob Barber’s father. The boy who’s accused in the Cold Spring Park murder.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I figured you were something like that. I figured you might be a cop or something. The way you were looking at me. Like I done something wrong.”

“Do you think you’ve done something wrong, Matt?”

“No.”

“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you? Doesn’t matter if I’m a cop or not.”

“What about her?” He inclined his head toward the girl.

“What about her?”

“Isn’t it a crime if you have sex with a kid and she’s, like, too young-so it’s like, what do they call it?”

“Statutory rape.”

“Right. Only it doesn’t count if I’m too young too, does it? Like, if two kids have sex, you know, with each other, and they’re both under the age and they’re boning each other-”

His mother gasped, “Matt!”

“The age of consent in Massachusetts is sixteen. If two fourteen-year-olds have sex, they’re both committing rape.”

“You mean they’re raping each other?”

“Technically, yes.”

He gave Kristin a conspiratorial look. “How old are you, girl?”

“Sixteen,” she said.

“My lucky day.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, son. The day’s not over yet.”

“You know what? I don’t think I better talk to you, about Len or anything else.”

“Matt, I’m not a cop. I don’t care how old your girlfriend is, I don’t care what you do. I’m only concerned with Leonard Patz.”

“You’re that kid’s father?” Touch of a Boston accent: fatha.

“Yeah.”

“Your kid didn’t do it, you know.”

I waited. My heart began to pound.

“Len did.”

“How do you know that, Matt?”

“I just know.”

“You know how? I thought you were the victim in an indecent A amp;B. I didn’t think you knew… Len.”

“Well, it’s complicated.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. Lenny and me are friends, kind of.”

“He’s the kind of friend you report to the cops for indecent A amp;B?”

“I’ll be honest with you. What I reported him for? Lenny never did that.”

“No? So why’d you report him?”

A little grin. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”

“Did he grab you or not?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“So what’s complicated?”

“Hey, you know what? I’m not really comfortable with this. I don’t think I should be talking to you. I have a right to remain silent. I think I’ll go ahead and take that, a’ight?”

“You have a right to remain silent with the cops. I’m not a cop. The Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply to me. In this room right now, there is no Fifth Amendment.”

“I could get in trouble.”

“Matt-son. Listen to me. I’m a very patient man. But you’re beginning to try my patience. I’m starting to feel”-deep breath-“angry, Matt, okay? That’s not something I like to feel. So let’s stop playing games here, all right?”

I felt the enormity of the body that houses me. How much bigger I was than this kid. I had the sense I was expanding, I was becoming too big for the room to hold me.

“If you know something about that murder in Cold Spring Park, Matt, you’re going to give it to me. Because, son, you have no idea what I’ve been through.”

“I don’t want to talk in front of them.”

“Fine.”

I clamped my fist around the kid’s right upper arm and twisted it-but not twisting it anywhere near the limits of my strength at that moment, because I felt how easily I could separate that arm from his body with just a little torque, how I could tear it off him, skin, muscle, and bone-and I led him into his mother’s bedroom, which was furnished, memorably, with a night table comprised of two Hood milk crates stacked and turned upside down and a collage of photos of male movie stars carefully cut out of magazines and Scotch-taped to the wall. I closed the door and stood in front of it, arms crossed. As quickly as it had formed, the adrenaline was already receding from my arms and shoulders, as if my body sensed the crisis had passed its peak, the kid had already folded.

“Tell me about Leonard. How do you know him?”

“Leonard came up to me once at McDonald’s, like all greasy and pathetic, and he asked me if I wanted anything, like a burger or anything. He said he’d buy me whatever I wanted if I’d just eat it with him, like just sit at the table with him. I knew he was a fag, but if he wanted to buy me a Big Mac, what did I care? I know I’m not gay, so what does it matter to me? So I said okay, and we’re eating and he’s trying to be all beast, like he’s this cool dude, like he’s my buddy, and he asks me if I want to come see his apartment. He says he’s got a bunch of DVDs there and we can watch a movie or whatever. So I knew what he was after. So I told him straight up I wasn’t going to do anything with him, but if he had some money maybe we could work something out. So he says he’ll give me fifty bucks if he can, like, touch my package or whatever, like over my pants. I told him he could do it if he gave me a hundred bucks. So he did.”

“He gave you a hundred bucks?”

“Yeah. Just, like, to touch my ass and stuff.” The kid snorted at the price he had extorted for such a small thing.

“Go on.”

“So after that he kept saying he wanted to keep doing it. So he’d give me a hundred bucks every time.”

“And what did you do for him?”

“Nothing. I swear.”

“Come on, Matt. A hundred bucks?”

“Really. Alls I ever did was let him touch my ass and, like… my front.”

“Did you take anything off?”

“No. My clothes were on the whole time.”

“Every time?”

“Every time.”

“How many times were there?”

“Five.”

“Five hundred bucks?”

“That’s right.” The kid sniggered again. Easy money.

“Did he reach inside your pants?”

Hesitation. “Once.”

“Once?”

“Really. Once.”

“How long did this go on?”

“A few weeks. He said it was all he could afford.”

“So what happened at the library?”

“Nothing. I’ve never even been to the library. I don’t even know where it is.”

“So why’d you report him?”

“He said he didn’t want to pay me anymore. He said he didn’t like paying, he shouldn’t have to pay if we were, like, friends. I told him if he didn’t pay me, I’d report him. I knew he was on probation, I knew he was on the sex offender list. If he got violated on his probation, he was going away. Even he knew that.”

“And he wouldn’t pay?”

“He paid some. He comes to me all like, ‘I’ll pay you half.’ So I told him, ‘You’ll pay me all.’ He had it. He’s got lots of it. Anyway, it wasn’t like I wanted to. But I need money, you know? I mean, look at this place. You know what it’s like to have no money? It’s like you can’t do anything.”

“So you were shaking him down for money. So what? What’s this got to do with Cold Spring Park?”

“That was his whole reason, like, for dropping me. He said there was this other kid he liked, some kid who walked through the park in the morning near his apartment.”

“What kid?”

“The one who got killed.”

“How do you know it’s the same kid?”

“ ’Cuz Leonard said he was going to try and meet him. He was, like, scouting him out. Like, walking through the park in the morning trying to meet him. He even knew the kid’s name. He heard his friends say it. It was Ben. He said he was going to try to talk to him. This was all before it happened he’s saying these things. I didn’t even think anything about it until the kid got killed.”

“What did Leonard say about him?”

“He said he was beautiful. That was the word he used, beautiful.”

“What makes you think he could be violent? Did he ever threaten you?”

“No. Are you kidding? I’d fuck him up. That’s just it. Lenny’s kind of a pussy. That’s why he likes kids, I think, because he’s a big guy but he figures kids are smaller.”

“So why would he be violent with Ben Rifkin if he met him in the park?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. But I know Lenny had a knife and he took it with him when he thought he might be meeting people, because he said sometimes, you know, if you’re like a fag and you go up to the wrong guy, it can be bad.”

“You saw the knife?”

“Yeah, he had it with him the day I met him.”

“What did it look like?”

“Just, I don’t know, it was a knife.”

“Like a kitchen knife?”

“No, more like a fighting knife, I guess. It had, like, teeth. I almost took it from him. It was pretty cool.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell anyone about this? You knew that kid got murdered.”

“I’m on probation too. I couldn’t really tell anyone I was, like, getting money out of him or, like, that I lied about him grabbing me in the library. That’s like a crime.”

“Stop saying ‘like.’ It’s not like a crime. It is a crime.”

“Right. Exactly.”

“Matt, how long were you going to go before you told anyone this? Were you going to let my son get convicted of a murder he didn’t commit just so you wouldn’t have to be embarrassed you were letting some guy grab your nuts every week? Were you going to just keep your mouth shut while they sent my son off to Walpole?”

The kid did not answer.

The anger I felt was of an old, familiar kind now. A simple, righteous, soothing anger I knew like an old friend. I was not angry at this smart-ass punk. Life tends to punish fools like Matt Magrath anyway, sooner or later. No, I was angry at Patz himself, because he was a murderer-and the worst kind of murderer, a child murderer, a category for which cops and prosecutors reserve a special contempt.

“I figured no one would believe me. ’Cuz my whole problem was, like, I couldn’t tell about the kid that got killed because I already lied about the thing in the library. So if I told the truth, they were just going to say, ‘Well, you already lied once. Why should we believe you now?’ So what would be the point?”

He was right, of course. Matt Magrath was about as bad a witness as you could dream up. An admitted liar, no jury would ever trust him. The only trouble was, like the boy who cried wolf, he happened to be telling the truth this time.