A Quiet Belief in Angels

by R.J. Ellory

  I remembered hearing the door close with a metallic crash. I remembered the sound of the key grating in the lock, and then there was silence but for the sound of my own labored breathing, and close behind it the wracking grief in my chest.

  I think I dreamed. Bridget came to me. She stood over me where I lay and said nothing. I reached out my hand to touch her and she dissipated like a cloud. Every piece of her broke up and disappeared with the sound of a breeze.

  The orderly came after a long time and told me it was Sunday. There was no one I could call until the following day. He brought food which I did not eat. He asked if I wanted anything.

  “My life back,” I said. “I just want my life back.”

  The orderly smiled. “That, I’m afraid, is something I cannot do.”

  I watched him disappear, and only then, as he closed the door with such finality, did I begin to face the truth of what had happened. I believed I understood what had happened. I believed I understood what had taken place in the house on Throop and Quincy, but more importantly, I started to understand why.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  MONDAY EVENING A LAWYER CAME. THOMAS BILLICK, THE STATE-APPOINTED public defender. My shackles had been released enough to permit me to sit up, and once Billick arrived I was allowed to use a chair.

  Billick was a man out of place. He carried a battered attaché case and clutched it fervently as if it were an object of defense. When he spoke his words were faltering and hesitant.

  “I . . . I am not at all too familiar with such things,” Billick explained. He shook his head, fiddled with the arm of his glasses. When he let go they were slightly lopsided. “The charge has been made—”

  “Charge?” I said. “What charge?”

  “The charge of murder, Mr. Vaughan,” Billick said. “You weren’t aware that this charge had been made against you?”

  “What are you talking about? You can’t be serious—”

  “Oh, it is most serious, Mr. Vaughan, most serious indeed. The charge was filed against you on Saturday—”

  “Jesus, this can’t be happening. I wasn’t even conscious on Saturday . . . you’re telling me that they filed a charge against me while I was unconscious?”

  Billick shrugged. “I have nothing here that says you were unconscious, Mr. Vaughan.” He awkwardly opened the attaché case. Papers spilled out across the floor, which he spent a moment gathering together. “Here,” he finally said. He held up a single sheet of paper. “It says here that at ten minutes after one on the afternoon of Saturday the twenty-second of November you were formally charged with the murder of Bridget McCormack, that your rights were read to you, and that you were advised to seek legal counsel immediately. Apparently you chose to do nothing until this morning.” Billick looked up from the page and frowned at me. “Why was that, Mr. Vaughan? Why did you choose to do nothing about seeking legal representation until this morning?”

  “This is utterly insane!” I said. “I can’t believe this is happening. I wasn’t even told that I should get a lawyer until yesterday, and as far as any charges being filed or rights being read . . . I can’t believe they did that! They charged me and read me my rights while I was unconscious.”

  Billick was shaking his head. “Not according to this document.” He held the single page out toward me, and when I reached for it he swiftly returned it to his case. “I need to keep that,” he said. “That has to stay with the rest of your case file.”

  “So what now? What the hell is supposed to happen now?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow morning you will be arraigned, and once the arraignment is over you will be transferred to Auburn State Prison in upstate New York. There you will reside until a trial date has been set, and during your incarceration, which we hope won’t be too long, the police will prepare their case for the District Attorney’s Office, and I will be working on your defense.”

  “Trial? I’m going to trial?”

  “Yes, Mr. Vaughan, most definitely. The trial date will be more than likely sometime in the next four to six months. In the meanwhile you should try to remember everything that happened that morning. My initial thoughts are that we should try for a plea of manslaughter.” He smiled sincerely.

  I couldn’t speak. I looked at Billick as he closed up his case and rose from his chair.

  “So until we speak again tomorrow, you take good care of yourself, Mr. Vaughan.”

  Billick smiled again, and then he walked across the room and knocked twice. The orderly beyond opened the door and let him out. He paused for a moment, looking through the bars that traversed the narrow window, and then vanished.

  A few minutes later the orderly came in and asked if I wanted to remain seated, or return to the bed.

  I didn’t move, didn’t say a word, so he shackled me to the chair right where I sat.

  Paul Hennessy was there, Ben Godfrey too, as was Joyce Spragg, Aggie Boyle, her sister, and other people whose faces I vaguely recognized from the St. Joseph’s Writers’ Forum. They were silent and expressionless, seated there in the gallery of the Brooklyn City Courthouse on Tuesday morning. The proceedings were perfunctory and brief. Thomas Billick said almost nothing in response to the representative from the District Attorney’s Office, Albert Oswald. I was called before the judge, a man who looked no older than forty, a man who peered down at me with an air of condescending disdain. The D.A.’s representative, in a three-piece suit and patent-leather shoes, waved his hand in a dismissive fashion when Billick implied that the charge of first-degree murder was yet to be established.

  “The charge has been raised and recorded,” Oswald said. “While the defendant remains on remand in Auburn State there will be ample time for the public defender to present any information to the district attorney, Your Honor.”

  The judge nodded and indicated that the arraignment was at a close. “I have heard everything I need to hear. Defendant is bound over to the custody of the Auburn State Correctional Facility until such time as a trial date is set.” He smiled nonchalantly. “Mr. Billick?”

  Billick looked up nervously.

  “If there are any questions regarding the veracity or validity of the charge as stated here then I suggest you present yourself for plea bargaining at the Office of the District Attorney with all due haste. The court will not be tardy in the execution of its duty. A great deal of time and money will be spent in the jury selection process and in preparation for trial. I will not take kindly to any unexpected surprises regarding charges or defense . . . you understand?”

  Billick glanced at me and then nodded at the judge.

  “Mr. Billick?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Billick said. “Of course, everything will be arranged in a prompt and orderly fashion.”

  “Well, I do hope so,” the judge replied. “It is, after all, a man’s life that’s at stake, is it not?”

  Two court officials stepped forward and handcuffed me. They turned to lead me away.

  “Be strong!” a voice called from the gallery, and looking up I saw Paul Hennessy standing there, tears running down his face, his hands gripping the bar ahead of him.

  I bowed my head and was led away, Billick a few paces behind me.

  I could not look back at my friends.

  By Christmas Day of 1952 I had lost my name.

  By the end of January I had forsaken my identity.

  A month later I had ceased to be a human being.

  From some vague recess of my mind I recalled words from de Toc queville’s Democracy in America: “We felt as if we traversed catacombs; there were a thousand living beings, and yet it was a desert solitude.”

  He wrote these words about Auburn State Prison, Cayuga County, somewhere in a wilderness of humanity between Buffalo and Syracuse.

  Upon arrival, that night at the latter end of November, my head had been shaved. My clothes were taken from me, and then we stood naked—myself and twelve others—as a doctor roughly and cursorily examined us. We were led through to an open c
ourtyard circumvented by high walls, and in the bitter chill of dawn we were instructed to stand—legs apart, arms horizontal at shoulder height—and we were sprayed with a fine, acrid delousing powder. For a further thirty minutes we stood there, the acidic burning in nostrils and eyes, the urge to scream, to cry, to faint where we stood. One man did, a narrow-shouldered bald-headed man, and an orderly beat him with a stick until he stood again.

  From there we were walked down a long, stone-tiled corridor and into a shower house. The water came like ice needles, stinging my skin until I felt blood was being drawn. Each of us was given a low-ceilinged white-painted room, known as “the cubes,” and on a thin horsehair mattress I lay shivering and stunned until sleep caught me unawares and made my nightmare vanish for the briefest of times.

  My first day was a premonition of everything that was to come. We stayed within those narrow four walls, nothing to see but white paintwork and the weak shifts between daylight and darkness through a high porthole in the outer wall. For three weeks there was no movement but for pacing the seven and a half feet from one side to the next. Food came on a metal tray through a slot in the lower half of the door, and each time the narrow mailbox grate was slammed shut, I felt that metallic clash reverberate through every bone, every nerve, every sinew of my body. Spiritually, I was elsewhere. I walked with Bridget, I sat at my desk and wrote a book for Arthur Morrison, something that possessed spirit and passion and human dynamics. I felt Joseph Calvin Vaughan slipping silently away. I watched him go. He did not turn back, for to turn back would have been to see me, to perhaps take pity on me enough to return. This he could never risk, and so he remained selectively blind.

  After three weeks we were transferred to three-man cells. I was housed with a pair of brothers, Jack and William Randall, armed robbers from Odessa in Schuyler County. Eleven months apart in age, their resemblance to one another was uncanny: blunt, porcine features, squint eyes, shoulders hunched forward as they walked, like gunfighters out of time and place.

  I spoke to them of my innocence.

  Jack Randall smiled and placed his hand firmly on my shoulder. “In here,” he said, “there’s only two types of people . . . the orderlies and the innocents.”

  William laughed enthusiastically, and proceeded to punch me on the shoulder.

  “We seen these places all too many times,” he said. “You get used to it. It has its own ways and means of doing things, and as long as you sit tight and mind yourself you’ll be fine.” He grinned heartily. “Me an’ Jack here, we’ll keep an eye on you . . . make sure some brute from down the corridor doesn’t make you his pony, eh?”

  They laughed again, looking at one another, as if each was a reflection of his brother, and I closed down a little further, a little closer inside, and I pulled what little of myself remained tight to my chest.

  Thomas Billick came in the third week of February. I was taken from my cell and shackled, both wrists and ankles. I walked a long way down featureless and identical corridors, shuffling awkwardly between two wordless orderlies. The chain between my ankles dragged heavily, and the metal bands cut into the skin of my heels. I was shown into a narrow, poorly lit room, and there—seated quietly against the wall—was my defense lawyer, looking as ill-at-ease and nervous as a man could be.

  “You are well?” he asked unnecessarily.

  I was pushed down in a chair facing Billick, and then the two orderlies stepped back and exited the room. The harsh grating of an external bar, the jangle of keys in the lock, the sense that everywhere I turned there was yet another means of preventing my free movement.

  “So, we have good news,” Billick said. “The district attorney has heard our presentation of the case, and has agreed to accept a plea of guilty on the count of second-degree murder.” Billick opened his attaché case and removed a sheaf of papers. “Second-degree murder is considered intentional but neither premeditated nor planned.” He looked up to see if I was paying attention. “It says here that such a crime is not committed in the reasonable heat of passion, but is caused by the offender’s obvious lack of concern for human life.” Billick smiled like he was giving a birthday gift to a small child. “That means no death penalty, Joseph, isn’t that good news?”

  I lowered my head, looked down at the cuffs on my wrists.

  “So all you need to do is plead guilty to second-degree murder, and not only will we remove any risk of a capital trial, we will also limit the length of the proceedings dramatically. A judge is always more favorable when such a case is presented. It is far less expensive to the state and the county when a straightforward plea of guilty is entered—”

  I looked up at Billick. “But I am not guilty, Mr. Billick. I am not guilty of any kind of murder, and I will not plead guilty to something I have not done.”

  Billick looked at first shocked, and then he became flustered and agitated. “I don’t think you fully comprehend the gravity of your situation, Mr. Vaughan. There is a very strong case against you, and I would not be remiss in my trust of confidentiality if I told you that there are no other lines of investigation currently ongoing. The police have exhausted all their inquiries as to any other party that may or may not have been involved—”

  “Meaning what?”

  Billick cleared his throat. “Meaning that your trial date has been set for March thirtieth, a little more than a month from now, and you will stand trial for this murder, Mr. Vaughan, let there be no mistake about it.”

  I tried to raise my hands but the shackles prevented me. “I don’t understand what’s happening here, Mr. Billick. Someone killed Bridget, someone came into the house where I was living and killed the woman I loved—”

  Billick was shaking his head. “For all intents and purposes, Mr. Vaughan, that person was you.”

  “No,” I said forcefully. I felt the swell of fear and anger in my chest. Once again I tried to move my arms, to somehow emphasize what I was saying. “I didn’t kill anyone, for God’s sake!” I shouted. “I didn’t fucking kill anyone, Mr. Billick. What the hell is it going to take to get someone to understand what’s happening here. This is a travesty. Go find Paul Hennessy. Go talk to Ben Godfrey . . . he will tell you that I couldn’t have done something like this. I have money, Mr. Billick. I have three thousand dollars—”

  Billick shook his head again. “You had three thousand dollars, Mr. Vaughan.”

  I stopped suddenly. I frowned. “What do you mean? What the hell are you talking about? I have three thousand dollars from the sale of my mother’s house.”

  “An account which has now been frozen by the state, Mr. Vaughan. That money is no more at your disposal than it is at mine.”

  “You can’t do that! What the hell gives you the right to do that?”

  “Me?” Billick asked. “I am not doing anything, Mr. Vaughan. I am not the one who has charged you with the crime of murder, and whether that murder was planned or not, whether it was first or second degree, it was still murder. The murder of a helpless and innocent young girl. A pregnant girl, Mr. Vaughan.”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. I saw their faces. Virgina Perlman, Laverna Stowell . . . all of them. I heard their voices somewhere. I glanced over my shoulder, half expecting to see one of them there, white and beatific, as innocent as Bridget, as Alexandra . . . and I believed that I might have been the envoy of Death.

  My father, my mother, Alex . . . ten little girls . . . Elena, Gunther . . .

  And now Bridget . . . consigned to the same fate, and that fate delivered by the very same hand.

  I knew with everything I owned that her death had been my doing. Indirectly yes, but I was nevertheless to blame. This was my punishment for what I had done in Augusta Falls. I knew that Haynes Dearing would be the only one to truly understand, but Haynes Dearing would be the very last person to come to my assistance.

  I started to cry. I leaned forward and felt my chest heave. I was wracked with such pain I could barely breathe.

  Billick rose fro
m his chair and backed up toward the door. He knocked on it without turning, and within a moment I heard the grating of bars, the keys in the lock, and the orderlies released him. I looked up as the door closed once again, and Billick was there—his small, white face peering in at me through the narrow porthole.

  “Get me out of here!” I screamed at him. “GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”

  Billick’s face disappeared.

  There was nothing in the room but my own labored breathing.

  I knew then—without doubt or hesitation—that the end was rapidly approaching.

  My trial began on March thirtieth at five minutes past nine in the morning. The charge was of murder in the first degree, for refusing to plead guilty to second degree put me at the mercy of the District Attorney’s Office. It was a Monday, and the presiding judge was the same man who had overseen my arraignment. His name was Marvin Baxter. He seemed older than I recalled him, his hair cut scalp-close, his eyes set too far apart, his mouth a thin and bloodless line of determination and austerity. Prosecutor Oswald stood silent and determined, looking at me just once as I entered the court. Everything seemed ponderous and oppressive, and yet somehow insubstantial, as if with a wave of my hand I could have vanished it all away like a pall of mist. But I could not move my hands. They were cuffed to the arms of the chair.

  Billick said little, raised few objections, even when the words spoken about me could only have been uttered about some other man entirely. The whole of my past seemed to unfold from the lips of people I had never met, never spoken to. They talked about my mother, the death of my father; they spoke about how I had discovered the dead body of a little girl on a hilltop. They mentioned it in passing, as if it were nothing at all, but I watched the faces of the jury and they seemed intense and serious and very alert. They carried in boxes of papers, things I had written, and they read those things aloud as if they were references of my character. Questions were left hanging in the air like ghosts.