Jude

by Kate Morgenroth

  Jude didn’t hear the question. He was stuck on the sentence before. “Who’s Anthony?” Jude asked. His father’s name was Frank.

  “I meant your father. He used to go by Anthony when he was a kid.”

  Jude tried to understand this, but the man kept talking, and it took all of Jude’s will just to follow the words.

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m sorry it had to come to this. I didn’t want to take him out, but he didn’t leave me a choice, the stupid bastard. But here’s the thing. If I was smart, I’d take you out too.”

  The fear was there again, snatching his breath from his lungs.

  The man sat for several seconds. “How old are you?” he said finally.

  “Fifteen.”

  “Big for your age,” he observed. “My boy’s seventeen, and I was just thinking what he’d be doing if he was in your situation right now. You know, I think he’d be puking, he’d be so scared. So I’m wondering why you aren’t.”

  Jude couldn’t believe the man couldn’t see that he was that scared. Then he remembered the frozen calm of his face in the mirror—how he seemed to assume the mask automatically now, without his willing it into place. He was scared so often he had just learned to live with it, like some people learned to live with pain.

  “Ten years ago, even five, this wouldn’t have been a problem. I’m getting soft,” the man muttered. “Let me ask you this, if I let you go, how do I know you’re not gonna turn around and rat me out the second I walk out of here? Your old man didn’t keep his word, how can I trust you?”

  Jude’s answer came out in passionate denial. “I’m not like my father.”

  The man cocked his head, as if listening to the conviction in Jude’s voice.

  “I told him not to dip out so much,” Jude insisted. “I told him what was gonna happen.”

  “Yeah, I know. I hope that means you also know what will happen if you say anything about tonight. I may be getting soft, but I do what I have to when people force my hand.” He glanced meaningfully down at Jude’s father.

  Jude followed his glance automatically but looked away quickly. “I’m not like my father,” he repeated desperately. “I’ll keep my word. I won’t say a thing. I promise.”

  The man studied him. Then he stood up. “I’m giving you a shot,” he said. “Don’t blow it,” and he disappeared through the doorway. A moment later Jude heard low voices from the hallway, then nothing. He was alone.

  4

  WHILE JUDE WAS PACING the interrogation room, Detectives Grant and Burwell were picking through the apartment. Grant would have been content to pull open the drawers, glance through belongings inside, and get back to the station. But Burwell insisted on methodically removing all the contents of each drawer.

  “Come on,” Grant said. “It’s not as though you’re going to find a note naming the murderer.”

  “You never know what you might find,” Burwell said.

  The next drawer that Burwell opened wasn’t filled with rumpled clothes—it was filled with junk. Grant would simply have swirled his hands through, but Burwell carefully removed the drawer and emptied its contents on the bed. When he flipped it over, he saw the envelope taped underneath.

  “I found something,” Burwell said.

  Grant glanced over and his eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Well, get a load of that. Let’s check it out.”

  Burwell pulled off the envelope and extracted some sheets of paper. He shuffled through them.

  “Anything interesting?” Grant asked.

  “You could say that.”

  “I don’t imagine it happens to say who whacked this guy?”

  “No. Nothing to do with the murder.”

  “Well, what is it then?”

  Burwell ignored the question and instead asked one of his own. “You know Anna Grady?”

  “Yeah, ’course. She’s the county DA for West Hartford. Are you suggesting we call in West Harford to collaborate on this? That would be a first. They usually ask for our help, not the other way around.”

  “Well, I think we’re going to need to call her in, but not exactly for help. That kid we have down at the station …”

  “Yeah, what about him?” Grant prompted.

  Burwell silently handed over the papers. Grant glanced at them, then looked more closely. “Holy shit,” he murmured.

  “Yeah,” Burwell said. “Can you believe it? The friggin’ DA is his mother.”

  THE NEXT MORNING Anna Grady was shown into the observation room adjoining the interrogation room. The station’s chief and the two detectives watched as she crossed to the one-way glass and stood gazing through. The men had a good view of the back of her expensive tailored suit, but all they could see of her face was a quarter moon of jaw.

  She said, “Is that him?”

  Burwell answered. “That’s him.”

  Outside those two little rooms the station was buzzing with gossip. No one could figure out why the West Hartford DA was being called in on a drug hit. The crime hadn’t even occurred in her district.

  West Hartford was the affluent suburb bordering the depressed and crime-ridden city center. The shooting itself had happened in Eastside, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Hartford. It was a neighborhood where you could hear automatic gunfire any night of the week. There were fifty to sixty homicides a year, and in a city of less than 150,000 that made it the highest homicide rate in New England. Drug-related killings were a dime a dozen, so why, the station personnel wondered, was the DA sitting in on this one? And if it was a big-deal hit, why wasn’t someone from the Hartford DA’s office there as well?

  Anna Grady stood on the other side of the glass and looked at the son she hadn’t seen in fifteen years. She didn’t speak, and the silence stretched on so long that eventually the chief had to break it with a cough.

  Still staring though the glass, she said, “Does he know anything?”

  “No. We thought it would be better coming from you.”

  She turned to look at him. After a long moment she said, “I meant does he know anything about his father’s murder.”

  “Oh.” The chief blinked. “Well, you can ask the detectives. They were the ones who interviewed him last night.”

  She turned her gaze on Grant and Burwell. Burwell said, “He says he didn’t see anything.”

  “But?” she prompted.

  Burwell shifted uncomfortably. “There are a few discrepancies in his story. We think he may be covering for someone.”

  “So you think he might have been involved?” she asked.

  There was a silence. Then the chief said, “Tell us how you want us to handle this.”

  “I want you to handle it as if it were any other investigation,” she responded tartly.

  “He’s not a suspect,” Burwell said.

  “You said yourself that he’s lying about what he knows,” she replied.

  “I said there were inconsistencies,” Burwell corrected her.

  She held his gaze until Burwell flushed and looked down.

  “If the Hartford DA is satisfied with our work, that should be good enough,” the chief said, reminding her, as mildly as possible, that she wasn’t there in an official capacity. “But of course if you discover anything different, please feel free to pass it along.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I see,” she said. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

  “If you need anything else, I’ll be in my office,” the chief said.

  “And we’ll be in the squad room,” Burwell added.

  “I’d prefer it if you stayed,” she said. “If I’m able to get any information from him, I’d like you to hear it.”

  Grant and Burwell shot desperate looks at the chief, but he gave a little shake of his head. Then he said, a little too heartily, “Of course. Grant and Burwell are at your disposal. Call me if there’s anything else I can do to help.” And then he escaped the room.

  JUDE WAS WORKING on adding his name to the dozens sc
ratched into the metal surface of the table when the door opened. He went over the J with the edge of his key, digging the letter deeper into the metal. Then he tucked the key away and looked up. He had been expecting the detectives back for another round—not a tall, elegant woman.

  He waited for her to introduce herself, but she just closed the door and sat down in the chair across from him. She watched him but didn’t say anything.

  He fidgeted, trying to find other places to look in the room, but he found it was hard to avoid someone who was staring at him so fixedly. Eventually he gave up and stared back, but still her gaze didn’t waver.

  “What?” he demanded.

  She didn’t respond.

  Jude had never spent much time around women. His only real contact with women was with his teachers—but he never had to be alone with them; he was usually sitting in the back of the room, separated by five rows of desks and thirty other kids. And this woman was very different from the women who taught at his school. She looked like something out of a magazine. Her blue blazer and skirt were so crisp it looked as if she might have just cut the tags off. Her nails were perfect ovals, brushed with a light pink polish. Her hair was glossy and smooth. And her face was steely and unreadable. Everything about her was intimidating.

  Finally she said, “Do you know me?”

  Was that why she hadn’t introduced herself? Because she expected him to know who she was? “No. Should I?” he asked.

  She smiled at this, a tight little smile, as if she thought his question was somehow funny. She said, “I’m Anna Grady.” When he didn’t respond to the name, she added, “I’m the West Hartford district attorney.”

  He wondered exactly what kind of trouble he had gotten himself into.

  “Do you know what a DA does?”

  “I know they don’t usually show up at two-bit drug hits,” he said. “Is that how you feel about your father’s murder?”

  Something in the way she said it got through his defenses and stung him. “That’s none of your business.”

  But she nodded as if he had answered her, as if he had just as much as told her that he was frightened and lost and that way deep down—and this is what scared him the most—deep down there was a part of him that felt exactly that way about it. A cold, calculating, revengeful part that felt that his father had gotten what he deserved.

  “What do you want?” he demanded, spooked by this woman in a way that the two detectives hadn’t managed.

  “I thought you might want to tell me about the men who shot your father.”

  “I already told the detectives,” he said. “I was sitting in the living room when—”

  She cut him off abruptly. “That’s not what happened.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  She nodded again in that self-assured way of hers, as if, Jude thought, she knew everything about him.

  “You were there. We know you saw everything. Why don’t you just tell us who did it?”

  “I told you I was in the living room. I didn’t see a thing.”

  “I know what you said. Do you want to hear how I know you’re not telling us the truth?”

  Jude rubbed the pad of his forefinger over the ruts of his name carved in the table.

  “Number one, the report says that whoever killed your father took enough time to wipe down the table, so I think they might have taken the time to stroll down the hallway—especially if they could hear the television, which you claimed you were watching at the time. Two, you never mentioned what you did when you heard the shot. Did you just sit there on the couch till the program you were watching ended? Or did you get up and run and hide in the bedroom? Or did you get up and run into the kitchen to see if you could help your father? That is, if you were really in the living room in the first place, which I tend to doubt. And finally, I just can’t get over those ten minutes your neighbor mentioned. Why would she lie about that? She has no reason to. You do. You know who killed your father. So now my question is, why aren’t you telling?”

  He kept his eyes down. “I already said—”

  “Do you want to be a liar like your father?” she asked quietly.

  “What the hell do you know about my father?” he said.

  “I know a lot more than you do, Michael.”

  “You’re so full of it. And you can’t even get my name right. It isn’t Michael, it’s Jude.”

  “I know,” she said. “It must be short for Judas. Your father always did have a nasty sense of humor.”

  “Stop talking about him like you know him,” Jude said savagely. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No.” He glanced at her again and said, a little less certain, “You couldn’t.”

  She tapped one fingernail against the metal table. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Staring at him. Tap. Tap. Tap. Just when he thought he couldn’t stand another second, she stopped abruptly.

  “Detective Burwell found something in your father’s apartment last night,” she said.

  “Yeah?” He tried to keep his voice from breaking.

  “It’s the reason I’m here today.”

  Oh God, he thought. What had his father done?

  She slid a yellowed, crumbling envelope across the table toward him. “Take a look.”

  Jude stared at it. Reluctantly he reached out and picked it up. When he raised the flap, tiny pieces crumbled off in his hands. Glancing up, he saw that she was looking in the other direction. He removed the papers from inside. The first was a birth certificate for an Anthony Arvelo. It meant nothing to him until a memory sparked in his brain. The man who killed his father had called him Anthony. He checked the date and saw that it was the right year, though the wrong day. Or at least it wasn’t the day they had celebrated as his father’s birthday.

  “So my father changed his name. Big deal.”

  “There’s more.”

  Jude shuffled to the next piece of paper, and he discovered that this one was a marriage certificate. And it also contained the name Anthony Arvelo.

  “So? It’s my father’s marriage certificate,” he said. “I figured he probably married my mother.”

  “Did you look at the other name?” she said.

  He hadn’t even thought to look. He glanced down. His father had never told him his mother’s name. Jude saw the name on the line next to his father’s. It read ANNA GRADY. Then he made the connection. She had introduced herself as Anna Grady.

  “It’s a coincidence, right?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  He fixed his eyes on the name etched in the metal surface of the table. He felt the same sense of unreal calm he had felt as he watched his father slide sideways in his chair and fall to the floor.

  “I’m your mother,” she said.

  5

  DETECTIVES GRANT AND Burwell were waiting for Anna in the observation room. The moment she entered, she knew she’d made a mistake in asking them to stay and watch the interview. All she needed was one look at the detectives’ faces to know that it had been a bad idea.

  They weren’t looking at her. They were looking at Jude. Anna followed the direction of their gaze, and she saw what they saw—a boy sitting slumped in his chair, his faced turned away. He seemed suddenly very young. When she’d been in the room with him, all she could see was his father’s face. The resemblance was so strong it took her breath away every time she looked at him. He had his father’s Italian good looks—the square jaw, the thick, wiry black hair, the heavy-lidded eyes. The only difference was that Anthony’s face had never been that still, his eyes never that flat. Anthony’s eyes had always been crinkled and sparkling with fun, or slitted and shining with anger, but had never had that wary blankness. But now she saw past the shell: She saw the frightened boy. What had she just done?

  She reached for her briefcase, hoping they didn’t notice that her hand was still trembling. “He’s been through a lot,” she said abruptly. “There’s something he’s not telling, but we
might all be better served if he got some rest before doing anything else. But it’s your case. Tell me how you want to proceed.”

  “For now we’ll see what we can uncover through other avenues,” Burwell said. “You can take him home. We’ll just need your number in case we have any further questions for Jude.”

  “Fine.” She pulled a pen out of her briefcase. “Do you have other papers for me to fill out?”

  “We can send those to you if you’d prefer,” Burwell offered.

  She accepted the courtesy without comment.

  “And we should be able to give you a few days’ buffer from the press. After that the investigation will likely make it necessary for everything to come out.”

  “In that case, I’m going to ask Harry Wichowski to call,” she said.

  “I’m sure the chief will be happy to talk to him about any of his concerns.”

  She nodded. “I’ll be speaking with you.”

  Grant and Burwell watched her leave the room. They remained silent as she returned to the interrogation room and spoke to the boy, but her voice was so low they couldn’t hear what she said. Whatever it was, Jude stood and followed her out without a word.

  “That was a hell of a family reunion,” Burwell said. “I mean, if your kid shows up after fifteen years, don’t you think you’d at least pretend to be happy to see him?”

  “She’s a cold bitch, that one,” Grant said. “But if you stick around a little longer, that’ll look like nothing. I’ve seen a lot of messed-up shit in my career. I seen a mother who killed her three kids. So I guess a mother who doesn’t really want a son she hasn’t seen since he was a baby doesn’t exactly shock me.”

  “Still, I feel sorry for the kid.”

  “Oh, he’ll be all right,” Grant said. “Better off than he was with his father, at least. And certainly better off than in the foster homes he would have ended up in. And it’s all thanks to you finding that envelope.”

  “I wonder if she’d thank me,” Burwell said.

  Grant grinned. “You want to know what I think? I think this is a thankless job.”