Easy Innocence (4 page)

Lauren was sure Sara would find her way back to the field. But then she heard the clang of the bat against the bucket. And what sounded like screams. Not just screams of surprise or annoyance. Lauren knew they were screams of pain. Unbearable, excruciating pain.

***

Lauren turned the music up. Shake it off, she ordered herself. She went to her closet, threw open the door, and pulled out a pair of jeans and her Prada jacket. She glanced at the clock-radio on her nightstand. Almost seven. Her parents had strict rules about being home on school nights, even if she didn’t have any homework. Which was usually the case. Unless there was a paper, Lauren could get most of her work done during classes or study hall. Whoever said high school was hard must have been stupid. She slipped on her clothes, then shut down the computer.

As she crept down the stairs, she stayed close to the banister. The stairs didn’t creak on that side. The wicked witch was talking on the phone in the kitchen. Lauren pictured her mother perched on a stool near the wall where the granite counter met the Mexican wall tiles. She’d have downed two glasses of wine by now, but her makeup and hair would still be perfect. So too, the body she spent hours sculpting at the gym, just so she could replicate what Lauren took for granted. Lauren couldn’t resist a smirk.

The hard part was getting out the door. Usually she went out through the garage, but that meant walking through the kitchen. If she was quiet, she could probably duck out the front. The red alarm signal would blink, but with her mother on the phone, chances were she wouldn’t notice.

She slunk past the Chagall in the hall. Her parents never tired of telling everyone it was an original, and if anyone had the gall to ask how much it cost—which was exactly what they wanted—they’d paste on a bland look and say, “Oh, that’s something we never discuss.”

She got to the door and stopped. No warm, mouth-watering aromas drifted out from the kitchen. Only the antiseptic smell of cleaner and furniture polish. Homey smells were for company only. Her mother had taken to bringing things home from FoodStuffs. There was no reason to cook, her mother claimed. Lauren’s father rarely made it home for dinner, and he didn’t like to eat things that had been sitting out. The first part was true. Her father never came home before ten. But the “sitting out” part was bullshit. The meals her mother brought home from FoodStuffs had been “sitting out” in the store for hours, sometimes days.

Lauren listened to her mother’s conversation. It was about Uncle Fred; how he died in the fire a couple of weeks ago. Just when he was struggling to come back from the stroke. Lauren had loved Uncle Fred, and she cried when she heard the news. When she was younger and her parents were out of town, he’d take her out for dinner. Sometimes a movie. But then there was the stroke, and he wasn’t the same. Her mother thought that’s how the fire started. He probably turned on the stove to cook something and forgot all about it.

Then Sara was killed by that creep a few days later, and Lauren cried again. Why did death take the people she loved? If this was what life had in store for her, she didn’t want any part of it.

Now she pulled the door open, slipped out, and quietly closed it. She skipped down the three concrete pads over the goldfish pond. Her mother always corrected her. They were koi, not goldfish. How many other people had fishponds in their front yard? Then again, how many other people lived in a house like this?

She opened the door to her Land Rover and got in. Keying the engine would give her away. Even her half-drunk mother couldn’t help but notice. She started the car anyway.

GEORGIA’S HEART
pounded, her palms were sweaty, and it was only with a huge effort that she was able to put one foot in front of other. She had been inside Cook County jail before, but each time she went in, her chest tightened and she hyperventilated. The air seemed so much thinner inside. She couldn’t wait to get out. Thank God she could. She thought about the tenuous line that separated cops and criminals and shivered.

This time, though, she’d
asked
to come down. She wanted to interview Cam Jordan. She arranged to meet his sister, Ruth, at the visitor’s entrance after she checked out the crime scene.

She hadn’t seen much. The clearing in the Forest Preserve where Sara Long was killed was fifty yards from the field where the powder puff football game took place. The only hint it had been disturbed were bits of yellow crime scene tape twisted among the fallen leaves. They’d released it fast, O’Malley said. Then again, there wasn’t any reason not to. They had their man. The had their evidence.

She trod carefully, dodging shafts of sunlight that penetrated the still dense, leafy ceiling. In heater cases, the village cops usually brought in techs from Nortaf or the Crime Lab rather than process the scene themselves. It was safer.

The ground was matted with leaves, but underneath it was bone dry. No chance of footprints. Even if there were, they probably belonged to the girls who brought Sara here. The techs would have looked for hair, fibers, even skull fragments, anything that didn’t belong. She wished she knew what they’d bagged, apart from the baseball bat and Cam Jordan’s shirt. She sighed, missing the access and information that came with being a cop.

An hour later, she met Ruth Jordan at 26
^th
and California. They introduced themselves while the guards ran their ID’s and made them fill out three forms each.

Cam’s sister was a small, slender woman with what Georgia called worry-hair: frizzy, mostly gray strands that looked like they had been scratched and pulled and chewed in frustration. An equally worried expression lined her face.

“Cam’s fifteen years younger than me,” Ruth said as they sat on a bench. Her voice was quiet and sad, and Georgia had to lean forward to catch everything. “My parents waited a long time between kids. It must have been like having a grandson, so many years had passed.” She looked at Georgia. “You have kids?”

“No.” It came out fast. Georgia avoided looking at the woman.

“Me neither. I guess with Cam—well...” She ran her fingers across her forehead, wiping away nonexistent sweat.

A burly guard called Ruth’s name, and they both stood up. After searching their bags, he gave them a sticker for their jackets and motioned them to follow him. As he led them outside and around to another building, Ruth added, “I’m not sure you’ll get much. He won’t talk. I can hardly get him to talk to me.”

The guard took them inside a gloomy building, up a flight of stairs, and down a long hallway. Beneath Georgia’s shoes the floor felt sticky. The smell was part dumpster and part gym locker, overlaid with the stench of urine and stale smoke. She breathed through her mouth.

She heard a few catcalls and whistles as she passed. Most of Cook County jail was divided into wards consisting of large, well-lit day rooms ringed by cells. Tables and benches were bolted to the floor, and a TV was mounted high on the wall. Prisoners spent most of their time lounging at the tables. A wire cage the size of a parking lot booth occupied the front of the room—it was there that guards kept watch on their prisoners. Georgia caught a glimpse of the bathrooms as she passed. Just a row of toilets. No stalls, no seats, no privacy.

The guard stopped at a closed door off the central passageway. Georgia peered through a small window in the door. They’d moved Cam Jordan from his cell, and he sat hunched over a table, his legs shackled. She was surprised they’d brought him to an interview room; she’d been prepared for the dingy glass partitions of the visitors’ area. The ceiling of the room was full of exposed pipes covered with chipped beige paint. Everything in Cook County was beige, she thought. The walls, the floor, the uniforms, sometimes even the people.

The guard opened the door. Cam started to rock back and forth. His brown hair was lank and greasy, and his beige jumpsuit hung on his frame. He might have been handsome, given the proper grooming and clothes, if not for his eyes. They were dark and glittering, fixed on some inner vision.

Ruth walked over and gently squeezed his shoulder. Cam stared straight ahead. Ruth sat across from him. Georgia sat next to her. Ruth pressed her hands and feet together. She was holding herself together with effort.

“How are you, Cammy?” She said.

He stopped rocking and issued a series of raspy, phlegmy coughs.

“He’s sick!” Ruth said sharply. She turned to the guard. “Please, can you do something for him?”

“We got nursing personnel 24 hours a day. They’re aware of his—his condition,” the guard replied.

Ruth shot Georgia a helpless look. The guard was referring to the medical staff in Division VIII, the ward where the mentals were housed. But the docs there were looking for things like schizophrenia, homicidal tendencies, and other psychotic compulsions. They’d probably just laugh at a cough.

“Are you eating all your food, Cammy?” Ruth tried again.

No answer.

She bit her lip. “Isn’t there any way we can get him out of here?”

“What was his bail?” Georgia asked.

Ruth looked down at her hands as if she’d just noticed she’d folded them. “The judge set it at three million dollars.”

Three million meant business. Big business. “Your lawyer could ask him to lower it.”

“He said he’ll try, but not to expect much.”

Georgia nodded. No one wanted the man who might have murdered a North Shore teenager walking around.

Ruth turned to her brother. “Cammy, this lady is going to try and help you. Her name is Georgia. Just like the state. You remember the states, don’t you?”

“Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland...”

“That’s good, sweetie. Very good.”

Cam’s expression didn’t change, but his rocking slowed.

Ruth looked at Georgia. “Sometimes when he’s relaxed—and in his own environment, he’ll answer questions. And, once in a while, I catch him smiling. But here...” Her voice trailed off.

“He lives with you?”

She nodded. “In the basement. It’s finished, of course. Nice carpet, paneling on the walls. Soft lights. Quiet. He likes it there. It’s a big room, and he has his own bathroom. With a shower.” She emphasized the last fact like she was proud of it.

“What does he do all day?”

“When he’s home, he plays games. Board games for kids. You know, like
Candyland, Chutes and Ladders
.
Connect Four
. He loves them.”

“By himself?”

“Sometimes I play. He watches TV, too. And he’s trying to learn how to ride a bike. But most of the time, he takes walks.”

“Alone?”

“Sometimes. He has a route he usually follows.”

“Through the Forest Preserve?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“What about your parents?”

“They’re both gone. My father died about eight years ago. Mother went a year later.”

“Run, hide.” Cam piped up. “Papa has the belt.”

Georgia and Ruth exchanged looks. “My father refused to—well, he never really accepted Cam. He thought he could work it out of him—make him better.”

“He beat him.”

“And the beat goes on,” Cam chanted softly off-key. His voice was thin, sing-song, as high-pitched as a girl’s.

“He uses songs to communicate sometimes,” Ruth explained.

Georgia wondered if there was some way to use that.

“Our father was—a strict disciplinarian. He was a born-again Christian.” Ruth looked at her hands, but Georgia heard the disdain. “I’m Catholic.”

No wonder the kid was crazy. A religious nut for a father who tried to beat Cam’s mental illness out of him. Too bad it wasn’t the kind of thing that would sway a jury. Aloud she said, “I know Cam is a registered sex offender. How did that happen?”

Cam’s rocking sped up again.

Ruth shrank into her chair. “It was about six years ago. He was... I already told you. He liked to take walks in the Forest Preserve. I went with him sometimes, you know? And he was fine. We’d just walk along the path, pick up rocks, things like that. But one day—I wasn’t with him—we got a call from the police. He’d been well, masturbating behind a tree, and this couple saw him. A man and a woman. They were jogging. When they told him to fuck off, he didn’t do anything. Or go anywhere. Just finished what he was doing. The woman thought that was ‘aggressive.’”

“Because he didn’t stop or run away.”

“It’s my fault.” A tortured look came over Ruth. “See, the thing is I knew about his... habit. I’ve known for years. But I never did anything about it. Even if I wanted to, what could I do? Despite everything, Cam is a man, with a man’s hormones... and proclivities. If he wasn’t hurting anyone, what was the harm? I doubt he understands what he’s doing. Or why. And I’m sure he doesn’t know it’s wrong.”

Any more than the monkey in the zoo, Georgia thought.

“But I know—I just know—he’d never hurt anyone. He’s just not capable of it. This business with the baseball bat...” Ruth’s eyes sparked anger. “Look at him. He hasn’t swung a bat since he was six. I’m sure he doesn’t know how.”

Georgia looked over at the waifish man, rocking back and forth, lost in his own world. He looked incapable of withstanding the slightest blow. But how did his sister know he didn’t have another side? A dark, murderous side? What if he’d been in some kind of fugue state, driven by an unknown urge or rage? Could he have summoned up enough strength to wield a bat? Things like that had happened before, especially with the mentally ill. Ruth had told her that Cam was autistic, but there was something else, too.
What was it
, she wondered.

“Does he have a doctor, a social worker, someone I could see about his—his condition?”

Ruth nodded. “He sees a social worker at North Shore Mental Health Center. I’ll put you in touch with her. And our new lawyer. My parish priest talked him into taking the case.”

“That’s a good sign,” Georgia said. “Ruth... can I talk to Cam?”

“You can try,” she motioned. “But don’t expect much.”

Georgia moved and sat directly across from Cam. His rocking sped up. “Hello. I’m a friend of your sister’s. I’m here to help you. Do you think you can tell me your name?”