Slipping Into Darkness (17 page)

 

Francis snuck a look over at Eileen Wallis to see how she was handling this. But she was distracted, fingering the clasp of her Coach pocketbook. In the pitiless courtroom light, her skin, which had remained so fair and flawless in her forties, was just beginning to show the smallest of cracks, like a vase left too long in a kiln.

 

“Your Honor, we’d like to begin jury selection on December second, since Thanksgiving and Hanukkah run together this year.” Paul bowed his head, trying to strike a more modest tone.

 

“That’s almost three months!” Debbie A. protested. “My client has had this case hanging over him for twenty years. He deserves a speedy disposition.”

 

“That
is
a long time to prepare, Mr. Raedo,” the judge agreed, donning her glasses again. “What’s the holdup?”

 

“Judge, we believe there’s evidence in the case file that will allow us to prove Mr. Vega’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Advances in DNA technology that will absolutely show that Julian Vega murdered Allison Wallis.”

 

“Then where is it?!” Deb threw up her arms with a kind of mock-exasperation Francis recognized all too well. “My client has been asking for that evidence since 1995!”

 

“Yes, what’s going on?” The judge turned on Paul, her irritation renewed. “Why hasn’t it been produced?”

 

“Your Honor, none of us are naive here. We all know our archival facilities are overtaxed and understaffed. Everyone’s working to capacity, even if Ms. Aaron likes to pretend otherwise. We’ve had people out at the evidence warehouse in Queens for the past four days. The evidence is there. It’s just been mislaid.”

 

“Mis-laid?” Deb broke the two syllables into mini-aria.
“Mis-laid?”
She raised her hands higher, making sure the press rows were getting the point. “Your Honor,
why
should my client pay the price for someone else’s clerical mistakes? Presuming that’s all it is. It’s sounding like we might have to ask for a special prosecutor to investigate what happened here.”

 

“Oh, come on.” The judge reached for her gavel, ready to call everyone into her chambers. “Can we just stick to one set of inflammatory issues at a time?”

 

Francis nodded, thinking this was just why he admired Deb. Who wouldn’t want to be represented by an attorney who could make any occasion a pretext for a holy war? She was one of the Tribe, a Go-for-Broke Girl, a true Hellcat Maggie. Every slight had to be answered, every plea bargain was a personal blow to her integrity.

 

In the meantime, he sensed the momentum from the press section changing. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Dov Ashman flipping back through the pages of his notebook, shaking his head, seeing that Paul had raised the issue of Hoolian’s disciplinary record to distract from the glaring absence of the DNA evidence.

 

“Achh.” Judge Bronstein frowned, not necessarily accustomed to being the most reasonable person in her own courtroom. “I don’t see why you two couldn’t have worked this out before you came here. Mr. Raedo, couldn’t you have just given Mr. Vega credit for time served and let things stand after twenty years?”

 

“Your Honor, with all due respect, Mr. Vega has made it very clear that he’s not interested in taking a guilty plea. And more important, Ms. Wallis’s family is here today.” Paul turned, acknowledging Tom and Eileen with a respectful nod. “Whatever so-called suffering Mr. Vega claims to have been through, he is still alive. But they haven’t had a moment’s peace since 1983. This was a young woman with boundless potential. And you can be sure that her mother wouldn’t be sitting in the front row today if she felt the cause of justice had already been adequately served.”

 

Francis saw Eileen start to fumble with the clasp of her pocketbook and take out a wad of folded-over yellow papers, covered in inky scrawl on both sides.

 

“Not now, Mom,” Tom murmured, reaching over and trying to keep her seated.

 

Hoolian turned around to look at her as well, his bottom lip thrust out slightly. Francis told himself that it was nothing, lots of the sociopaths were good at faking normal human emotions. Still, it bothered him. How many of those guys actually
looked
at the crucial moment? Usually when faced with the victim’s family, they’d stare into the mid-distance and mouth some pious nonsense about finding God and knowing the power of his eternal forgiveness.

 

“Enough.”
The judge picked up her pen. “I’m putting this on the calendar for October seventeenth. Mr. Raedo, be there or be square. That’s plenty of time for you to locate that evidence.”

 

“Your Honor, there may also be witnesses we need to locate. It’s been nearly twenty years.”

 

“If you don’t have a case to put on by the seventeenth, I’m dismissing this indictment.” The judge signed the papers and handed them off to a clerk. “Anything else?”

 

“No, Your Honor.” Debbie A. nodded, knowing for once to leave well enough alone.

 

“Next case.” The judge rapped the gavel as another defendant and his attorney sidled over to replace Hoolian and Deb at the defense table, like substitutes in a hockey game.

 

Whaddaya gonna do?
Paul turned up his palms as Debbie A. gave Francis a sullen stare, her mouth a tidy red dash.
I know what you did, you bastard.
But what did either of them know? Lawyers. Always thinking they were above everything, never dreaming they could get any actual blood splashed up on their Donna Karan and Armani suits. Looking down on the working-class yobs and gutter grunts who were supposed to clean things up.

 

Why should he care anymore? He’d done his job, played his part. If somebody wanted to spread the dirt around and say he’d stepped over the line a little, let them prove it. Go ahead. Take him to court next time. He’d find his way to the stand. He gave a terse nod as Hoolian went out through the side door with Deb. Catch you later,
compańero.

 

A rustle of papers distracted him. “But I didn’t get to read the statement,” Eileen was protesting, yellow pages trembling in her hands.

 

“It wasn’t the time, Mom.” Tom gently extracted them.

 

“You’ll get your chance, Eileen,” Francis tried to assure her. “We’ll make sure of it.”

 

“Oh, Francis, there you are.” She turned, finally recognizing him, looking from the top of his balding head to his stomach. “How you’ve let yourself go!”

 

“It happens.” He laughed.

 

She grabbed his wrist and gave it a surprisingly strong squeeze. “Remember what you promised me. . . .”

 

“Believe me. I haven’t forgotten.”

 

“You said you wouldn’t forget my baby. You have to find her for me.”

 

“But —”

 

“They buried the wrong child.”

 

Before Francis could think of a sensible answer, Tom had his mother by the arm. “Thank you, Francis,” he said, leading her out of the pew and down the aisle as the press began to surround them and follow them out, like religious icons at an Italian street fair. “We’ll keep in touch.”

 

“Please leave quietly,” a court officer announced as Francis lost sight of them. “Court’s still in session.”

 

 

PART III

THE SILENCE OF A FALLING STAR

 

 

16

 

 

 

THERE’S A CERTAIN uneasy stillness to a house where men just out of prison are sleeping, a restlessness that breathes through the walls. People tend to stay on the very edge of mattresses made lumpy by the prized possessions secreted underneath. The clockwork of each body’s mechanics becomes amplified and newsworthy. A loud belch in the middle of the night, a muffled fart, a stifled groan from a nightmare, all become part of the common volatile atmosphere; the use of the bathroom can become as highly contested and politicized as the Golan Heights.

 

On the first day of October, Hoolian woke up and lay on his side, afraid to turn over, waiting for the pearly speck of sunlight to grow in the corner of the dingy barred window. At quarter to six, he carefully descended the ladder from the top bunk and crept past his three snoring roommates with his clothes under his arm. In a few minutes they’d be lined up in the hallway outside the bathroom, banging on the door and bitching about him using up all the hot water.

 

He closed the door after him and turned on the light. Again, there was his father’s face in the mirror above the sink, rebuking him.
You proud of yourself, bobo?
He pulled his long-sleeved jersey off over his head and checked the long dark scratches that had scabbed over across his rib cage. His chest looked oddly bare and exposed with the Saint Christopher’s medal gone, and the back of his neck still felt burned where the chain had been ripped away.

 

The door started to open and he roughly pushed it shut with his bandaged hand.

 

“Yo, open up, man,” an urgent voice moaned on the other side.

 

“Gimme a second.”

 

“Come on, G. I ain’t playing. I’m about to bust out here.”

 

He pulled the jersey back on and opened the door. A dreadlock-wearing loudmouth called Cow, who was always trying to convince everyone he’d been the Superfly of Mother Gaston Boulevard, stepped in, instantly taking up most of the space on the tiles.

 

He reached into his drawstring sweatpants, fished around for a while, and finally extracted a prim little dick.

 

“You know, I been clockin’ you, son.” He casually glanced over his shoulder as he sprinkled into the bowl, his face swollen, almost feminine-looking like an overseasoned geisha girl’s.

 

“Yeah, how’s that?”

 

Cow smirked at the dressing on the back of Hoolian’s hand. “I say, I know what you been doing, acting all shady.”

 

“Niggah, say wha?”

 

“You’re not like you say you are.”

 

“Man, just take your piss and get the hell on outta here.” Hoolian found himself trying to tug his sleeve down over the bandage. “I’m trying to get ready for work.”

 

He’d only just started the job at the supermarket, but he’d made up his mind to be the first one there every day.

 

“Knowledge is power.” Cow pulled up his waistband and turned away from the bowl without flushing.

 

“Motherfucker, you don’t know anything about me.”

 

Cow planted himself in front of the door, blocking him. “I checked you out on the ’Net at the library, booyy. I know you didn’t do no twenty for breaking any Rockefeller drug laws.”

 

“Why don’t you mind your business?”

 

“You been lying at every group therapy session you been to. You ain’t no junkie.” He reached for Hoolian’s sleeve. “Let me see your arms. I bet you never even picked up a needle.”

 

“Man, get your hands off me.” Hoolian pushed him away. “Did I ask you to touch me?”

 

“Yeah, I knew you were a fucking liar the moment I laid eyes on you, G.”

 

“Yeah?” Hoolian suddenly grabbed a fistful of the bigger man’s shirt. “Well, I been checking you too,
pendejo.
And I hear you weren’t no majorweight heroin dealer. I hear you were in for sodomy one with a little girl in a stairwell. You want me to bring that up at the next group meeting?”

 

Cow tried to smile as his piss fermented loudly in the toilet.

 

“Maybe we best avoid each other’s company awhile.” He gently tugged his shirt from Hoolian’s grip.

 

“Damn right.” Hoolian poked him hard in the flabby chest to make sure the point had been made. “Now why don’t you go play with yourself somewhere else? I need to finish getting ready for work.”

 

 

17

 

 

 

TOP OF THE morning.” Francis shook off the rain and flashed his tin at the uniform officer guarding the door. “What’s the word, Johannesburg?”

 

“She’s still in the bathtub.” The patrolman looked about twelve. Parochial-school acne, snub nose, the jittery eyes of the paperboy caught looking through the neighbors’ windows. “Hope you got a strong stomach.”

 

Francis slapped his gut as he sidled by. “Inspectors have used it like a trampoline.”

 

He noted his time of arrival on his pad and scanned the door for signs of forced entry.

 

“So I’m guessing you got a good look at her,” he said offhandedly. “Chalk fairy hasn’t been here as well, has he?”

 

“Who?”

 

“One of those morons thinks it’s a good idea to draw a line around the body.”

 

“I didn’t touch anything.”

 

“Good. Dangerous business mixing fine art and foot patrol.”

 

He nodded, put the pad in his back pocket, and shoved his hands into his front pockets, making sure he wouldn’t touch anything. Had to be doubly careful these days about stepping on evidence.
Slow down. Take your time.
He stepped through the little foyer and into the living room like an elephant on a tightrope.

 

He scanned the room, still trying to get used to having to look around for things other people could spot right away.

 

Somebody’s first grown-up apartment. One of those cramped $2,200-a-month Upper East Side shoeboxes with no doorman, seventy-year-old plumbing, and a partial view of an airshaft. He noticed the subtle quickening of his pulse, the internal Geiger counter that went off when he first entered a victim’s home. A potted fern hung under the Venetian blinds. A plump blue upholstered chair with an antimacassar sat at the far end of a shawl-covered coffee table, with a thin-necked halogen lamp leaning over the side like a mother looking over her daughter’s shoulder. He went around the side and saw a brown teddy bear leaning back against the cushions in an old-fashioned nurse’s apron with a Red Cross hat.

 

He was conscious of himself as a big man moving through a young woman’s apartment, a musky unwelcome presence like a derelict in a beauty parlor. If it were his daughter’s place, she would’ve told him to get the hell out already.

 

Moving his head in the four-square motion that was becoming second nature, he quickly scoped out the pine IKEA bookcases on the right side of the room, the shelves lined with CDs and volumes arranged by size. Never knew when somebody would have a copy of