by Beth Harden
Hughes respected smart criminals, the kind of crooks that stuffed stolen jewelry in between slabs of steak and stored it in the freezer. But these bad guys were bad at what they did. A blizzard of prints coated the entryway, the door knobs, the light switches, and the array of broken objects on the floor. It wasn’t but a matter of days before the cops located the abandoned Corolla in South Boston with the back half burnt and the tag removed. But the same rash immaturity had lit a lousy fire with a single stream of gasoline that had petered out shortly after Carson and Turner had unloaded the artifacts into a waiting van and fled. The prints that were left fully intact on the front compartment of the car were a match to those taken from the house; however, the vehicle was completely free of blood spill. The two young black men were soon tracked down at the Anchor Bar, brought in on a warrant and interrogated for three straight days. No one could crack a criminal quicker than Hughes. It was pure talent the way he groomed his suspects with a sense of brotherly trust, throwing his arm across their shoulders and pulling up a chair on the same side of the table, leaning in to the conversation in a gesture of collusion while he began the tedious task of picking apart their psyches with small inconsistencies that slowly pitted one man against the other. But Hughes had run up against a new opponent. The Bloods had come to town and set up house in the corner of the city where they were particularly active in pushing recruits towards aggressive initiations. It was pretty clear to him that these juveniles were scared shitless of going to prison; but they were even more terrified of what would happen to them should they give up their superior. Hits were called in just as easily on the inside as on the street. Preliminary forensic testing on blood and body fluid samples could not definitively identify the person or persons who had committed the assault. As Detective Hughes had explained to the Braums, DNA testing was in its infant stages. No one had been convicted for rape based on biological evidence alone. While he argued strongly with the D.A., even Hughes had to agree that jailing two was better than letting three go free on a faulty mistrial or a locked jury that was sympathetic to poor urban kids. And he couldn’t ignore the element of doubt about the involvement of a third suspect that was certain to be brought up by the state’s prosecutors. It was very arguable that this mystery assailant existed only in the tortured mind of the victim; though Hughes didn’t believe that for a minute.
The single witness to the crime was the victim whose recollections were faulty and inconsistent. The only other reported testimony that alluded to this mystery man’s existence came from the Mrs. Schuster, the next door neighbor. She had filed her statement the following day and reported that she had been up again during the night due to her busy bladder and noticed the storm door banging in the breeze on the deck side of the adjacent house. The first floor was completely dark. Intermittent flashes of light illuminated the top story and what she believed were people running or dancing, but her cataracts and glaucoma played all kinds of nasty tricks on her eyesight. Just before she closed her swags and turned away, she saw two men come out of the garage level with several plastic garbage bags and load them into that nice college girl’s car. She thought it peculiar since the day before was rubbish collection day and the blue containers provided by the city were standing right where they always were, just a few feet from where the car was parked. But then she figured these were college friends of Lissa’s (Heavens, how could she forget that nice girl’s name) helping to pack up her gear so she could go spend the holiday week with her family, wherever it was they lived again. New Hampshire? Somewhere up north. In the final sentence of her written testimony, Mrs. Schuster swore that right after the blue Toyota with Maine plates, (that was it, Maine) drove away, a third person came out the front door and headed off on foot. No detail on hair color, skin type, height, weight, or build. Good lord, she could barely see to put one fuzzy-slippered foot in front of the other, especially after the sun went down. But she did think it was unusually irresponsible of these young people to leave the door wide open to any passersby, particularly in a cul-de-sac known to primarily house well-heeled University professors;, so she took it upon herself to go over, housecoat and all, and latch it shut. A peek in the windows revealed a disarray of messy remnants left behind in the wake of party fun, including sheets of typewriter paper, beer bottles, and an overturned chair. The Westcott’s should have known better than to ask a young co-ed to watch the property. Even a few good references didn’t necessarily root out irresponsibility. Upon the homeowners return, Mrs. Schuster would make it her first order of business to give them the name of her magna cum laude grand-niece who (poor dear) didn’t attract many boys, and thankfully was also allergic to alcohol. She was a sure bet for the job.
In the end, no one was happy with the deal. On the pled-down charges of Aggravated Assault 1 and Battery, Burglary and Grand Larceny, the agreement was fifteen years suspended after seven with ten years probation. The families of the guilty cried racism. The parents of the victim were appalled that anything less than life was considered in light of the attempted murder of their daughter. Hughes didn’t sleep for nights after the convicted were led off to the High-Security Max. In fact, he never slept the same again after this crime.
#
I read the police report through a second time while the detective sipped lousy, mud-colored coffee from a stained thermos. The details lost their clarity and were gradually caught in a swirl of pixilated color. The plot line was lost. The story became more fantasy than non-fiction. I felt sorry for the main character but I couldn’t get too emotionally attached to her. For all the noise I had made in order to get my hands on this original, the ending left me empty. I handed the document back to the plain-clothes policeman who stood solemnly at the bed rail.
“Was that hard on you?” he asked. His eyes were kind, but heavy with weariness and over-use.
“No,” I said blankly. “Just slow going.” He seemed to understand as I gestured feebly at the bulky bandage which blocked any vision on the right side.
“Did it stir up anything? Any details come to mind?” he asked. “Even the smallest one can help.” he added. I regarded him with curious detachment. He was definitely younger than my father by a lot, but he carried himself with the same kind of assurance that pushing through challenges adds to man’s stature. They were men who seemed taller and more powerful than they really were.
“What did you say your name was again?” I asked.
“Detective Hughes, honey,” he answered. His jaw clenched with tension and he kept dropping his head side to side to shake out cricks in his neck. He appeared far more shaken up by this unorthodox reading of a story he must have known by heart.
“You’re the one that wrote this?” I asked.
“Yes, I was the first officer on the scene.”
“Did the girl live?” I asked.
“Lissa, you’re…” he started to speak, and then changed his mind, perhaps reconsidering the logic of trying to re-orient a patient with fleeting delusions and narcotic overload. He pressed his lips together tightly and produced a terse smile.
“Yes, you did. You are one remarkably strong young lady,” he added.
“Thank God!” I sighed and leaned back into the rubbery pillow that was propped behind my neck. There was a crackling, raspy sound in my ear. It was my neighbor in the far bed, an ancient woman sucking tiny drabs of air through her toothless mouth and releasing it regretfully back into circulation.
“How long will I be here?” I asked my visitor.
“You’ll be going to Gaylord soon. That’s the flagship of rehabilitation centers. They’re going to fine-tune you back into mint condition.” He spoke cheerily, but his countenance relayed the gravity of a man who had seen far too much sadness. “Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt you?” he asked.
“No,” I said. No name came surfaced to fill in the blank.
“Take another look at the photographs and see if any of them look familiar,” urged Detective Hughes. He prod
uced ten wallet-size pictures of various men and spread them out in a grid across my tray table. I peered down at them, squinting against the glare of glossy paper. Who was I looking for in the rows of look-alike faces? I used to be really good at this game of Concentration. I scanned the photos again, hesitated, tapped one and then a second with my left hand.
“These two?” he asked excitedly. “You think you’ve seen them?”
“No, silly! They match.”
“Okay, sweetie. You’ve done well. I’ll be back and we can talk some more, okay?” Hughes replied, politely laying his hand on my forearm. I nodded and smiled.
“Can you bring me something else to read next time?” I asked.
“Sure thing,” he said.
After he left, I watched a redwing blackbird hop furiously back and forth from ground to branch trying to find a stable platform for its nest. A jingle of some sort started up in my head: ‘the nest on the branch and the branch on the tree and the tree in the hole and the hole in the ground and the green grass growing all around, all around, and the green grass growing all around’. The sawing slumber in the next bed dwindled down to a wheeze and finally fizzled into dead silence. When the bosomy aide came an hour later to get the old woman up for a spin, turned out she no longer had any reason to walk on this earth. Darlene removed the identifying name card from the plastic holder at the foot of the bed, folded up the walker and placed it on my side of the room, hoping it would get more use over here.
Some people claim they have memories as early as infants and have registered powerful events in their lives lying in a cradle. While we curl in our fetal tuck and suck our thumbs, important things happen that wake us, but we can’t recall the details. My second infancy was spent in a crib with hospital rails where I startled awake almost hourly to a vivid voice and immutable face that was the center point to everything that would shape me. This person demanded notice. Someone had abducted the sleeping baby of my former innocence and whisked her out of sight. But though I searched the dimly lit avenues of my past, I could not remember why or when or who.
The sequence of days and the hours became an interesting code of hash marks which the nurse on duty crossed off on the Boston Bruins calendar at the end of every shift. The scratched out squares started on the page with Wade Campbell and continued on over to the flip side. I lost count of how many days had passed. There’s little way to mark time. No sun-dial slant of light to gauge day from night, just the ever-burning overhead light. The bed faced the door so staff could easily observe patients from a tour through the hallway, so the goings-on of the rest of the world played out behind me and beyond the drawn blinds. Rotating shifts merged into an endless parade of name tags and green smocks, all exaggerated by the hypnotic effect of my pain medication. I started over from the beginning, scanning each row and mentally marking the number of cubes at the end of every Saturday. If my calculations were right, today was number twenty-nine.
Detective Hughes returned and as promised, brought some new reading material. He arrived in the early morning when the nurses were doing their reports and the corridor got thick with the aroma of coffee. I could tell he was just coming off late shift by the sweat circles and abundant creases bunching up the back of his light blue Oxford shirt. Unlike other cops, he had spared the clippers and left his hair in an arrangement of sweeping brown curls.
“Morning, pumpkin,” he said cheerily, an odd endearment coming from a straight-laced law enforcement official. He took a seat in the chair to my left and as he settled his weight onto the frame, the unforgiving plastic cushion squealed its resistance. He crossed one ankle over his knee, causing the hem of his khaki trouser to ride up and reveal a sockless ankle.
“I brought you a treat.” Hughes produced a small stack of Life magazines from a shopping bag. He held up one that featured a dark-haired woman wearing a denim shirt and blue suspenders. His broad hand covered the caption.
“Are you married?” I asked abruptly. The detective looked flustered for a moment. My out-of-context question seemed to catch him off-guard. Words just blurted from my lips, tumbled and fell stiffly between us. Hughes obliged, despite his self-consciousness
“Yes. Been together almost as long as you’ve been alive,” Hughes answered. I had under-estimated his age.
“Happily, though?”
“Yes, of course!” He raised the magazine back up to eye level and waved it slightly. He had to shake it a bit to keep it from draping over on itself. Age had worn the paper down to the luster of silk.
“Kids, too?” I persisted.
“Uh, no! Not now, anyway,” he stammered. It was a non-answer of sorts, a shield thrown up to protect old pain. I knew enough to stop there.
“So, do you recognize her?” he asked. I peered at the Jewish-looking lady and squinted hard. I certainly didn’t want to disappoint him. “This was the edition that came out just before your injury. Any recollection?”
“New York,” I replied. Hughes smiled.
“Her name?” he asked cautiously. I shook my head. Nothing.
“Gilda Radner, this came out in March. Okay, let’s back up.” His blue eyes intently scanned through the pictures of another periodical. This one had a collage of snapshots on the cover. He hesitated on a particular page.
“How about this one?” he asked, “Look familiar?” He swiveled the page around so I could see a prone body and a girl on her knees, hand raised, beseeching the skies for mercy. For a miracle. For peace. Something stirred in my memory. Flowers in gun barrels.
“Kent State,” I said.
“Wow! Amazing. How ‘bout this one? Who’s this?” he said. He flipped to a black and white photograph of a small boy in a wool coat saluting a casket.
“John-John.”
“Fabulous, girl! Alright, now tell me about this photograph” he said. A white farmhouse with dark green gingerbread overhangs on the porch and a brooding gray barn at the far end of a string of sheds and outbuildings. A woman stood the dirt driveway in a long, blue farmer’s dress. I shook my head.
“Nothing familiar about it?” he asked.
“No,” I concluded.
“Interesting. This is your home in Maine. And that’s your grandmother, Helen.” I shrugged indifferently. Might as well have been the first woman on the moon.
“Seems the closer we get to your personal circle, the more your brain throws up the blinds. We’re going to try something a little different next time. You game?” he asked, kindly pulling back a few strands of stray damp hair that had drifted into my mouth.
“Yes, goddamnit,” I said.
The expletive was not a typical go-to in my vocabulary. Hughes tried not to show his amusement, but a slight grin tugged at his cheek.
#
Two men walked into my room just as the speech pathologist was leaving. I rotated my head upwards by degrees and checked with my hockey buddies on the wall calendar. It seemed like weeks since he had last pressed the call button and in a trumped-up growl demanded that the Jamaican aide bring me some Ativan to help silence the squall of panic blowing in on the heels of his interrogation. Five more squares had been vandalized with black ink. I double-checked my bearings on the large digital clock on the night stand. The hands formed a backwards ‘L.’ Nine o’clock après minuit.
“Good morning, Lissa,” Hughes said. “This is Dr. Brown. He works with our department but he’s a licensed therapist. Remember I mentioned trying something a bit out of the box? Well, I’m hoping you will allow him to perform a little forensic hypnosis. It’s a process used to lead you back to the time of the event. I’ll let him explain more fully, but are you open to that?”
“Yes,” I replied. It had never been done to me. The closest I’d come was at the Bangor County Fair one year when my best friend Bonnie was coaxed onto stage by Darlene the Hypno-Chick who had this incurably shy girl dancing like a chicken across the stage. There was something sketchy about the spinning watch and snap of the fingers and the robotic reaction of the
volunteers but if Detective Hughes was a supporter of this method, I was willing. Any chance to escape the polarity play in my mind and all its accompanying drama was welcome relief. Dr. Brown stepped forward closer to the foot of the bed and adjusted his position to a few degrees to the left so I could see him. A stout man in his middle-age with wire-rimmed bifocals hooked over his ears.
“Hello, Lissa. I won’t confuse you with too much information, but the purpose of this exercise is to enhance recall. We use the ECI approach, or what is known as Enhanced Cognitive Interview. If nothing else, we know that simple techniques like eye closure and relaxation increase our ability to look inside and remove the distractions that cause normal distortion in memory. I do need to ask you in advance, though, whether you are willing to let the prosecutors use any of the information you provide us in court?” asked Dr. Brown.
“Shit, yeah,” I said, without meaning to add the shit at the beginning. He smiled benevolently and pulled the side chair up around to my left side. Nothing about this scene seemed to faze him; after all, he spent his working days peering down the convoluted alleys of the criminal mind. This must have been a refreshing detour. Once seated, he flipped open a tablet of notebook paper and rested it on his lap.
