The 3rd Victim

by Sydney Bauer

  ‘Vinnie,’ began Camilla.

  ‘No, Cam,’ he said. ‘We have a right to know.’

  Joe nodded. ‘Your husband is right, Mrs De Lorenzo,’ he said, turning to a flushed Camilla, ‘he has every right to ask why we are here. You see,’ Joe turned back to face the husband, ‘the man who died, Jim Walker, he left behind a wife and kid and now the family have suffered a second tragedy.’

  ‘I read the papers,’ interrupted De Lorenzo. ‘The wife had some sort of breakdown and killed the kid.’

  Joe knew he was just voicing what everyone in America was thinking. ‘That's to be decided by the courts, Mr De Lorenzo,’ he said, and the man managed a weary nod before falling silent once again.

  Joe looked at De Lorenzo. It was obvious the responsibility for Jim Walker's death was sitting thick and heavy on his shoulders. Joe had seen it happen time and time again – a life destroyed because someone was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Vincent De Lorenzo's face was lined with the burden of regret and a large dose of self-loathing – and Joe guessed that he not only blamed himself for Jim Walker's death, but for the series of calamities it put in motion.

  Joe leant forward as Camilla De Lorenzo took a seat on the arm of her husband's chair, her hand resting on his shoulder in a gesture of concern and comfort and love. ‘Like I said before, Mr De Lorenzo,’ Joe continued, ‘none of this is your fault. And despite what this might look like, we didn't come here to bust your balls. We just came to ask you if – if there is anything that you might have remembered since you gave your statement to the Baltimore PD – any last-minute detail, any tiny flash of recall. We know you explained that Jim Walker's car crossed over and drove head on into your truck. We don't doubt you did everything you could to avoid the collision, but that it all happened so quickly and Walker left you nowhere to go.’

  Camilla De Lorenzo's hand stopped rubbing her husband's shoulder, her fingers lifting ever so slightly before giving him the tiniest of pats. ‘God sent them for a reason, Vinnie,’ she said, talking to her husband but looking directly at Joe. ‘You said holding on to it would kill you – so this is your chance, Vinnie, perhaps your one and only chance to finally pull the thorn from your side.’

  Joe glanced at Frank once again. Frank responded by putting down his tea. ‘Mr De Lorenzo,’ Frank began, ‘I've been a cop for as long as I can remember, and over the years I've seen the best and the worst of it – dealt with all sorts of people, the good ones and the bad. And if you asked me what one thing I have learnt for sure, what one piece of wisdom I have garnered from all the crap that I've seen going down around me, it is that there is no running from the truth. People think the truth is their enemy but it's not so, Mr De Lorenzo. The reason truth is chasing you down is because it is your friend and it wants you to make amends. You can't keep denying the truth, Mr De Lorenzo. I can tell you're a good man, and the denial is eating away at you. So my advice to you, sir, for yours and your good wife's sake, is to come clean and tell us what really happened on the night of Jim Walker's death. Not for us – and not even for Jim Walker and what is left of his family – but for yourself, Mr De Lorenzo, for yourself.’

  The room fell silent as the clock plate ticked and the heater moaned and Vincent De Lorenzo's dark brown eyes stared steadfastly into Frank's.

  De Lorenzo lifted his right hand to place it over his wife's. He squeezed it and looked up at her, a single teardrop falling from his bloodshot left eye, before turning back to Frank and Joe.

  ‘I wasn't driving the truck,’ he said. ‘It wasn't me that ran him down.’

  Joe felt his breath catch, sensing that he, alongside all the religious paraphernalia in the room, was about to bear witness to a very significant truth. ‘It wasn't you?’ he asked.

  De Lorenzo shook his head. ‘I was meant to be on that long haul to Augusta but I …’ he hesitated, ‘two days before the job my brother turned up out of the blue. Marco is a nomad – a drifter who dips in and out of our lives depending on the mood that strikes him and how much money he needs.

  ‘Marco said he was jammed up – that he owed some bad people some serious money and he needed to pay them back or he might not live to regret it. Me and Camilla,’ he squeezed his wife's hand once again, ‘we've helped Marco out on more than one occasion and while we know helping family is important, and we certainly didn't want to see Marco run into any serious kinda trouble, we didn't have the two grand he needed.’

  Joe nodded. ‘I understand, Mr De Lorenzo. Please go on.’

  ‘Well, the idea came to me. The next haul north was going to coincide with a cash bonus that was waiting for me in Maine. Pandinski has an office up there that handles their accounts. He gives the drivers a regular pay packet and bonuses on the side depending on the length and difficulty of their hauls. The trip was a one-way job because another driver was taking that truck west to Minnesota, so I was going to have to train it back in any case, and I thought that – you know, it was a chance to get Marco the cash and maybe a new start up north.’

  ‘So it was Marco who drove the truck – and collided with Walker?’ said Frank, needing De Lorenzo to confirm it.

  De Lorenzo nodded. ‘Yes. We got a call, late, or more to the point, early – 2 am. It was Marco. He was on his cell. He said he was in an accident, that some car ran into him.’

  ‘He said the car ran into him, not the other way around?’ said a slightly disappointed Joe, knowing this revelation could lead them nowhere, if De Lorenzo's brother's story was just a mirror image of his own.

  De Lorenzo nodded. ‘I jumped in my utility and drove out to the crash scene. It wasn't far from here, he'd only made it a few miles out of town when … well … I found Marco on the side of the road, confused, and the other car, the one belonging to the man named Walker, it was ablaze, a real inferno. It stank of gasoline. The flames were twenty feet high.’ De Lorenzo took a breath. ‘My brother said that his nerves were playing up, that he'd had a drink to calm them, that if he got arrested he'd go down for driving under the influence and the accident would be put on him, even if it was the other guy who drove over to his side of the highway.’

  ‘You and your brother swapped places? Your brother left in your utility?’

  De Lorenzo nodded. ‘What other choice did I have? I knew I'd be fired for allowing my brother to take the job. My brother has a record, he would have gone away for a very long time.’

  ‘So you waited for the police to arrive and you told them exactly what your brother had told you – that the driver swerved over to the wrong side of the road?’

  De Lorenzo nodded again. ‘The police said the evidence – you know, the crime scene stuff – confirmed it, so whatever else, Marco was telling the truth.’

  ‘Where is your brother now, Mr De Lorenzo?’

  ‘I have no idea. Marco knows how to disappear. He did call once but it was only for a minute and just to say he was sorry. He called late, he was drunk, he said he was okay and not to worry.’

  ‘When was this?’ asked Frank, taking out his notepad to record it. They would requisition the De Lorenzos' phone records and try to pinpoint his brother's location.

  ‘It was back in January – around the Martin Luther King Jnr weekend,’ chimed in Camilla.

  Joe sighed. That was over four months ago. Marco De Lorenzo could be anywhere by now.

  De Lorenzo met Joe's eye. ‘I know we shouldn't have lied like we did,’ he began. ‘Camilla and me, we try to live like good people. We work hard, share what we can. We weren't lucky enough to have kids, so any spare cash we had went to the odd charity and my brother Marco.’

  Joe nodded, feeling an overwhelming regret for the couple before him. ‘It's okay, Mr De Lorenzo. If it was my brother I might have done the same thing.’

  Camilla De Lorenzo swallowed. ‘You mean, you aren't going to arrest Vinnie?’

  ‘No, ma'am,’ replied Joe. ‘But I will ask you to call me the moment you hear from your brother-in-law and …’ Joe tur
ned back to her husband. ‘Might I offer a piece of advice, Mr De Lorenzo?’ he said.

  A grateful De Lorenzo nodded.

  ‘You need to get back in your truck. Don't let what happened rob you of your job – or you and your wife of a future.’

  Vincent De Lorenzo shook his head before wiping his palms on his trouser legs and getting to his feet. ‘I owe you a lot, Detectives,’ he said as he extended his hand to Joe and then Frank.

  ‘This conversation remains in this room, Mr De Lorenzo,’ said Joe, knowing the benefits of such an agreement would work both ways.

  De Lorenzo nodded. ‘You going looking for Marco?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Joe.

  ‘Then tell him he's welcome here – just in case he doesn't know it.’

  ‘You're a decent man, Mr De Lorenzo.’

  And Camilla De Lorenzo began to cry.

  54

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Too late and nowhere to go.

  It was obviously a set-up as most things tend to be – the cries from the toilet area, a girl pretending to collapse with stomach pains, the deputy going to her aid, the shower stalls left temporarily unattended.

  Sienna felt her feet give way under her. She was wet, slippery. The floor was cold despite the fact that it was covered with warm soapy water.

  She had seen them coming out of the corner of her eye. Two of them, then three … four. Two large and two smaller women filled with determination and fuelled by hate. It was a pack mentality thing. Their hair was wet and swinging left and right as they came at her. They looked like savages, teeth bared, muscles tensing, two going low and two attacking from the top.

  She had no time to think, so she reacted on instinct. She extended her legs and scissor kicked, linking her calves around one of the smaller ones and bringing her down with a thud. She pulled back, pushed up with her hands. She reached up and grabbed one of the bigger ones by her hair – long, dark dreadlocks which Sienna yanked so hard that the woman slipped and her head came crashing down hard against the tiles.

  This fed the frenzy. The other big one – a Filipina woman who went by the name of Xena – retaliated by copying Sienna's actions. Sienna felt her chin jam hard against her chest as her long blonde hair was yanked up hard from behind. Xena was strong. She managed to pull Sienna all the way to her feet which allowed the small one to punch her in her stomach, the skin across her ribs pink and pulled tight. She heard them crack then, her ribs, one, two, maybe three. The sound made her sick, as one of her attackers saw another opportunity to humiliate her before the now running deputies reached them. She reached for Sienna's pubic hair and pulled so hard that Sienna's entire body thrust forward in an arch. Her ribs screamed out in protest as the deputies reached them and the woman finally let go, a handful of pale hair in her hand.

  Even as the deputies beat the woman about the buttocks with batons, she looked at Sienna with a grimace and the words escaped her macabre smile with venom. ‘Baby killer,’ she said, before filling her mouth with a mixture of saliva and blood and spitting Sienna in the face.

  And then Sienna collapsed, her head falling sideways against the wet concrete, her eyes unblinking as the water beat down on her.

  *

  Roger Katz heard about it first – not by design, but by chance.

  He was at the jail, taking the statement of a piece of scum who'd decided to rat out his partner. The scum was one of two pieces of shit who'd robbed a convenience store in Mattapan. An old woman was shot and there was some question over who fired the bullet that paralysed her – shitbag one, or shitbag two. Katz suspected it was shitbag one, the filthy pock-faced individual now hunched over the table before him. But ‘one’ was willing to spill his guts for a reduced sentence so he took dibs over ‘two’, who was slightly retarded and couldn't string two words together to rat out his friend in any case. Luck of the draw. First in best dressed.

  Sienna Walker was in the infirmary and needed treatment. The treatment involved the taping of her ribs and the administration of anti-inflammatories and painkillers to ease the stabbing in her middle. The doctor wanted to have Walker transported to Mass Gen for X-rays and, as with any detainee transportation in the state of Massachusetts, this required permission from the District Attorney's office – and Katz's signature on a temporary release form.

  All this was standard procedure and Katz certainly did not need to see the defendant in order to sign the form. But Katz lived by the philosophy that an opportunity lost was an opportunity wasted, and given that experience had taught him that a defendant at her lowest was like a whore willing to turn tricks for free, he decided to pay a visit to the baby killer before Cavanaugh and his politically correct sidekick arrived.

  ‘Mrs Walker.’ He maintained a tone of troubled disquiet as he took the liberty of sitting not in the chair beside her bed, but on the bed itself. ‘I am so terribly sorry for what happened and I can assure you that a full investigation will be made into the events that led to your injuries.’

  Katz had dismissed the deputies, explaining he wanted some time alone with the injured detainee in the desire to express his office's concern.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, not giving a shit.

  And when she did not answer he glanced toward the infirmary door. He guessed he had five, ten minutes tops before the ambulance transport arrived or, worse, before Cavanaugh and his Halle Berry shadow came striding through the door like the cast of Law & Order.

  ‘Have you been given something for the pain?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she answered.

  He knew this was the case given it was he who had asked the doctor to delay any medication until he'd had a chance to speak with her. The last thing Katz needed was for Walker to provide him with something usable only to have Cavanaugh claim that her comments were inadmissible because she was under the influence of narcotics.

  ‘Mrs Walker, just because I am the man responsible for prosecuting your case does not mean I am not concerned for your physical welfare. I want to make sure everything is done to treat your injuries properly, which is why I have given my permission for you to be transported to Massachusetts General for X-rays.’

  Walker said nothing.

  Katz checked the infirmary door again.

  ‘I am sure today's events have left you feeling particularly angry – isolated.’

  The woman finally met his eye.

  ‘It's all right,’ he egged her on. ‘If I were you I would be feeling incredibly defenceless too. Perhaps you need to vent to someone who understands. Believe me, I have seen many a distraught detainee in my years at the District Attorney's office, and as I explained, just because it is my job to –’

  ‘Put me away for the rest of my life,’ Sienna finished through gritted teeth.

  Katz was getting somewhere. ‘Actually, I was about to say it is my job to represent the people and –’

  ‘The people?’ she cut him off again. ‘And who are these people so determined to see me punished for something I did not do? Do you truly believe you carry the opinions of Massachusetts in your pocket, Mr Katz? That you are that clever, that influential, that good at what you do?’

  Katz could think of a million sharp comebacks to this one, but knew he had to play this modestly. ‘I understand how you are feeling. Anger is a very natural reaction to your circumstances.’

  ‘I don't need your permission to be angry, Mr Katz.’

  ‘Of course you don't. Life has dealt you some serious blows, Mrs Walker – the death of your husband, your lack of family support in the aftermath, the birth of a daughter when you were still struggling to come to terms with her father's untimely demise. It is no surprise that some of those intense feelings were expressed in the form of resentment toward your daughter.’

  She took a slow painful breath and Katz had to stop his eyes from straying to her unexpectedly substantial breasts, which were bare under the bandaging. And then her eyes narrowed as she winced at the pain she no doubt ex
perienced as she lifted herself up onto her elbows, and looked at him to say, ‘Is this what it has come to, Mr Katz, your robbing an injured woman of painkillers so that she might confess her feelings of anger, of outrage in a moment of unbridled rage?’

  Katz shifted back down the mattress, ruing the bitch before him for being so goddamned savvy even when under the influence of some serious fucking pain.

  But she hadn't finished. ‘Is this where you expected me to yell? To scream that if not for my daughter, none of this would be happening to me? Is this where you pictured me writhing with fury at the bloody injustice of it all?’

  She rose up then, her ribs cracking with her movement as she caught Katz by such surprise that he found himself sliding off of the bed. But then her right arm shot from underneath the blanket to grab him by the front of his shirt and yank him back toward her with an impossible to anticipate strength.

  ‘Have you ever experienced real pain, Mr Katz? And I am not talking about the physical kind – not the type brought on by a beating, or that experienced by a woman giving birth. Yes, I cried out when my baby daughter entered this world, but that is not real pain, Mr Katz, that is life and real pain is death, life is hope and real pain is the complete and utter despair at being robbed of any future happiness.

  ‘I expect you have not experienced such pain as yet, but everyone does at some point, Mr Katz and when you do, you will recognise it and remember what I said. And perhaps then you will understand that no matter how many bloody people you represent, your self-serving actions have nothing to do with justice and everything to do with ignorance.’ She took a breath. ‘Which is why you know nothing, Mr Katz.’ She met his eye then, and he sensed she was talking on more levels than the obvious. ‘Never have done, and never will.’

  *

  Moments later, a somewhat shaken Katz was making his way through the infirmary entryway, his heart (dare he admit it) racing from the confrontation with the bruised and battered waif. But Katz was the ultimate survivor, denial being his unacknowledged specialty, and as he heard Cavanaugh's voice echo down the corridor, he felt a fresh wave of rage push through his veins at the hide of the British baby-killer who had attempted to lecture him on the meaning of life. Anger, fear, pain, grief … oh yes, he told himself, she is yet to feel the true depths of it.