Coming for You

by Deborah Rogers

  “I’m going to ask you the question again, Claire. This time I need an answer. Has Susie made a similar accusation before?”

  A barely perceptible nod.

  “When?”

  “Preschool. She was four.”

  “Where?”

  “Seattle. I lived out there with Susie’s father.”

  “They said I made it up,” says Susie. “But I didn’t, did I, Momma? You helped me remember, didn’t you? I was telling the truth. That man Lucas touched me.”

  Claire begins to cry. “No, baby.”

  Susie frowns. “He did. I remember.”

  “No, baby. It was a mistake. Nothing happened to you.”

  Susie touches her mother’s shoulder. “Don’t cry, Momma.”

  The last thing I want is Susie getting distressed so I make a suggestion. “Hey, Susie, how would you like to play on my iPad again while I talk with your mom?”

  Susie glances at her mother, uncertain.

  Claire nods. “It’s okay, baby. Go ahead.”

  I unlock my tablet, hand it to Susie, and steer Claire toward the last row in the public gallery.

  “Talk to me, Claire,” I whisper, my frustration rising.

  She wipes the tears with the heel of her hand. “I’m sorry.”

  “Just tell me what happened.”

  “She was in day care because I had to work two shitty jobs. Her dumb-ass father had taken off for the first time and left me to do everything. I started hearing rumors about one of the staff. This guy named Lucas. I didn’t trust him so one night I questioned Susie. I know I wasn’t supposed to, that only specialists should do that kind of thing, but I did it anyway. You gotta understand, I was just trying to protect my daughter. Then Susie started saying all this crazy stuff about how Lucas had touched her behind and made her kiss like people on the TV kissed. As I kept questioning her, the story just got worse and worse. I panicked and pulled her right out of the day care and went straight to the police.”

  “And they charged him? It went to court?”

  There’s a knock on the door. The court registrar pokes his head in. Behind him people are gathering.

  “I need to set up,” he says.

  I glance at the clock. Ten before ten. “Five more minutes?”

  He doesn’t look happy.

  “Please,” I say. “We’re nearly done here.”

  He rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath but closes the door.

  I turn back to Claire. “What happened with the case?”

  She emits a long sigh. “It got thrown out. There were CCTV cameras in the day care that showed he couldn’t have possibly done it.” She looks down at her hands. “It was my fault, I see that now. I had my own abuse issues and I think it drove me to ask Susie more and more questions, leading questions. She was just giving me answers she thought I wanted to hear.”

  “Did you get money, Claire?”

  Claire looks at me sharply. “What?”

  “Compensation? A payout? Insurance of any kind?”

  She’s obviously sickened by the question. “What kind of mother do you think I am?”

  I remain calm. “I have to ask. Were the accusations aimed at making money in any way?”

  Claire looks like she might hit me.

  “Of course not. No amount of money would make me put my own daughter through that.”

  Another knock. This time insistent. I get to my feet and open the door a crack.

  “We’ll be out in a minute,” I say.

  “I need to get started,” whines the registrar. His front tooth on the right is going black at the root. I wonder if it hurts.

  “I understand. Two minutes. Promise.” I shut the door, ignoring the look of exasperation on his face.

  “I never questioned her this time, Amelia. I swear. This time she came to me and told me everything. And it wasn’t just Susie saying it, there were six other girls. You know that.”

  Yes. That was true. There was no doubt in my mind that Kennedy had done it. I had seen the evidence for myself. It was overwhelming. The catalog of the victims’ injuries in the ME’s reports. The consistency in the victims’ statement. The child pornography found on his work computer.

  I glance at Susie. Caught in the middle of all of this.

  “You should have told me, Claire.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “This jeopardizes the whole case.”

  “It was so long ago and halfway across the country. I just wanted to put it behind us. Don’t pull her out, Amelia. You know as well as I do Kennedy’s as guilty as sin. He needs to be stopped and Susie deserves justice.”

  “This puts me in a very difficult position, Claire.”

  She grabs my hands between hers. “Please, Amelia. We’ve got to see this through. Please tell me I haven’t royally fucked this up?”

  The door bursts open. Barbara Hobbs appears in the void, hands on her substantial hips, face angry and red. She points a finger at me.

  “You,” she says. “Out. Now.”

  5

  How they think I’m ever going to fix this. Me, the big lawyer. They don’t even know. I spend most of the day in a haze trying to organize my thoughts. But it’s a mess inside my head. The lack of sleep hasn’t helped and the mind fog is worse than usual. And now this? A false allegation of sexual abuse from my one and only witness.

  I’ve been sitting at my desk staring at the computer for two hours. My colleagues are too busy to notice. Knee-deep and lost in their own earnestness to change the world. That’s why everyone works here in the New York District Attorney’s Office, or mostly everyone, to help put the bad guys away, to do good. It’s not about the money, that’s for sure.

  It’s a busy, noisy open-plan office, but somehow I manage to shut it all out. Noise-cancelling headphones help. No one bothers me when I have them on and I focus better without all that sound. Usually. Because the headphones are not working today. Today I’m too much on edge.

  I don’t know what to do. The word DISCLOSURE flashes above my head like a neon sign. I should have reported Susie’s admission by now, but I haven’t. I have picked up the phone exactly three times to call the lead defense counsel Eileen Mercer but hung up before I was put through.

  A year ago I wouldn’t have questioned my duty to do this. I’m a sworn officer of the court and it’s my obligation to uphold the law. Disclosure, full disclosure, is a fundamental part of the system, like the right to the presumption of innocence. It means there’s a level playing field for everyone. The accused has a right to know all the details of the case against them. They certainly have the right to know a key witness has made false allegations in the past. It goes to credibility. And Mercer is a good lawyer. She would make a meal out of this.

  Besides the duty thing, there are the practical implications. Should Kennedy get convicted, and if some way down the track the defense finds out about the lack of disclosure, the conviction would, in all likeliness, get overturned on appeal.

  If they found out. And that was the thing. How would they ever know? Claire would never say anything. And the situation took place over seven years ago, far away on the West Coast. I think of Detective Ethan North. In the ruckus with the very cross Barbara Hobbs and incensed registrar with the bad tooth, I had managed to avoid him by rushing from the courthouse, muttering I needed to get to another appointment. I should really tell him. But the false allegation was seven years ago. Susie had been a toddler. It had been a mistake. And without Susie’s testimony there will be no conviction for Kennedy. She is critical to the case. The testimony and evidence relating to the other girls could not be admitted because they had pulled out. Without Susie, not only will Alistair Kennedy get away with it, he will likely do it again.

  And what would it do to Susie and Claire to not have their day in court? I remember when I first met them last year when I got assigned the case, how vulnerable they both looked. I could see through the veneer of Claire’s “don’t-give-a-s
hit” exterior in an instant. I recognized it for the self-preservation mechanism it was.

  But it isn’t my job to knowingly break the law. I’m just supposed to follow the rules and work within the system and I always have and I’m not sure why this time is any different.

  So then, why don’t I just pick up the goddamn phone?

  I rub my temples and sit back in my office chair. I close my eyes and imagine riding the subway. The stale air and dirty breeze. The hollow sound of a half-empty car.

  “Hey, Amelia. Your phone’s ringing.”

  Jacob, at the desk next to mine, is shouting over the partition. I open my eyes and look at my vibrating phone. Mercer’s number flashes up. I ignore it and it stops and I sit there thinking.

  I look around the buzzing office, take in all the heartfelt, sincere intention imbued in the atmosphere like a cologne. I pick up my bag and go.

  6

  I turn left and clap my way up the street, fighting against a biting wind. The gym bag hooked over my shoulder is weighing me down, a counterweight upsetting the delicate balance I need to maintain upright and mobile. This is what I have had to relearn. How to walk in a different way than I did before. How to rely on a man-made instrument more than my own body. How not to think about the missing metatarsals and bone and cartridge. Or the toes that still itch even though they aren’t even there.

  I think back to the hot and cold water therapy. The painful exercises I had to do. The hatred I felt toward my cane. At the time I told myself that a disability would not define me. That I would be just like I was before, only without a full foot. That I would rise above what happened to me and move forward in my life a stronger, better, braver person.

  But that was a lie. There is nothing brave about me at all.

  Tonight was fifty/fifty between riding the subway or going to the gym. My first inclination was to ride the subway because I figured it might give me time to think through the disclosure dilemma. But I couldn’t face the ugly possibility of passing out in some strange borough again (and not having the fortune of a portly gentlemanly savior like I had last night), so I elected to go to the gym instead.

  As I do with my apartment, I mix up my routes to the gym. Because patterns and the usual are the Hansel and Gretel crumbs that could lead to my downfall.

  Tonight I take two different trains and walk my way in and around the blocks surrounding the Port Authority Bus Terminal on the corner of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street. I head north toward Hell’s Kitchen, dodging overstuffed trash bags piled in clumps on the curb, passing by the dingy steak houses and dimly lit bars and deep-fried aroma of greasy spoon joints. Wedged here and there, between the various restaurants, is the occasional eclectic boutique, selling vintage apparel like a pair of 1960s leather block-heeled pumps and tweed winter coat with a rabbit fur collar.

  I keep walking until I reach a nondescript door halfway up a quiet alleyway and step inside. I pause there and take in the smell of well-used yoga mats and pine disinfectant. The fluorescent rod flickers overhead, illuminating the poster of Venus Williams in her purple Berlei bounce-less sports bra, stained by a water leak sometime back but never replaced. I hear a whoosh in the labyrinth of pipes lacing the ceiling as someone flushes the toilet.

  I see Beth. Thank God for Beth. With her sober square face and frank eyes and broad shoulders. Thank God for the strength of her spine, so much stronger than mine, and the way her arm darts out whenever I’m about to fall, ready to catch me like a brace, then reposition me upright over and over. Thank God, too, for her unsmiling lips and her “I-don’t-give-a-fuck-what-anyone-thinks-of-me-attitude,” because that’s why I trust her second only to myself.

  We first met eighteen months ago when I spied the flyer on the noticeboard in the work cafeteria. Amongst the ads for secondhand cars, roommates wanted, private yoga sessions, and Reiki training was one for self-defense classes at a women’s-only gym. It took me a month to decide whether or not to go. In the end, I did, which turned out to be one of my better ideas because I met Beth and Beth taught me many useful self-defense techniques I could master, even with a cumbersome half foot.

  Tonight the gym is quiet because class does not start for another hour yet. I head for the changing rooms and spot Beth in the studio skipping like a maniac in front of the wall mirror. Her eyes shift to my reflection.

  “Twice in one week,” she says, not breaking a beat.

  The black peony rose on her shoulder is slick with sweat.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Glutton for punishment.”

  “One-on-one?” she offers, thrusting her chin at the container of Everlast boxing gloves and mitts.

  I nod. “Why not.”

  I go change and when I return, she’s got the equipment out. The medicine balls, the gloves, but the rope is back on its hook because for me it’s the sandbag across my shoulders and lunges back and forth the length of the room and Beth walking beside me in case I lose balance. After the warm-up, we are into it. Every fifteen seconds, Beth calls it. Jab. Jab. Left uppercut. Cross punch and uppercut. Knees and jabs. I love it. Getting into the zone. I feel alive, jabbing and ducking, my hair a mess, my muscles and biceps hardening, my tendons flexing. But most of all I love learning how to fight. For when the day comes. For the day he arrives on my doorstep. Because it will happen. And I will be ready.

  Today I punch hard. To get it all out. I grit my teeth and grunt with every connection. I listen to Beth’s instructions with laser focus. I try to knock her off balance. But she’s too strong. Like a brick wall. Finally, she calls time a little before 7 p.m. so she can prepare for class.

  “You’re were a million miles away tonight,” she says, putting the equipment back.

  “Yeah.”

  She doesn’t say anything else, like, do you want to talk about it? Or do you need a shoulder to cry on? That’s not Beth’s style. Her style is to be there if you need her. She’s a woman of few words and I like it that way.

  Women filter into the gym, ready for class.

  “You did good today,” she says, without looking back.

  7

  It’s cold and dark by the time I leave the gym. It’s always a downer when a session is over. You would think I would have a nice endorphin hit, and I do, but the reality of my life is a great leveler because inside the gym I can reach great heights but out here I am back to just being a cripple. It’s like having a dream you can fly only to wake up and realize you can’t.

  The disclosure problem returns with a thud and all at once I’m weighed down and all my good gym work is out the window. Don’t get distracted, I tell myself, get distracted and you’ll make mistakes. Miss something that might be out of place, a person, a vehicle, and you’ll be at risk. Think about the disclosure issue when you are safe at home.

  I manage to cast it aside and advance along the pavement, taking a hard left, passing a fast food joint with a flickering old-school neon sign. I smell cooked hamburger meat and my stomach growls.

  The sidewalk is unusually busy with people and I feel a little skip in my heart. Too many faces to scrutinize at once. I double my pace, but it’s hard with the cane, and I’m soon short of breath. Forced to pause for a second, I hike my gym bag up my shoulder. Glancing behind me, I catch sight of a man a few yards back. A cold finger runs down my spine. His gait, the way he holds his shoulders, the straightness of his back, the baseball cap down low. Especially the baseball cap. It could be Him. Bending to pick up my bag, I dare to look again. He’s paused now, studying the menu of a diner. Stalling? Waiting for me?

  My every nerve ending screams. I need to leave. I need to leave now. I double my efforts and pick up speed, ignoring the shooting pain in my foot, trying to keep my cane from swinging out too wide so I won’t accidentally fall flat on my face. I’m sure he’s on the move again, even though I don’t stop to look. I can sense him, eyes trained on the back of my head, walking up behind me to do Lord knows what.

  Do not turn around, I tell myself, turn around and he�
��ll know that you’ve clocked him.

  I duck into an unfamiliar subway entrance. I know this is a mistake as soon as I do it because unfamiliar routes and deviations could mean blind alleyways and unexpected obstacles. Stupid me. Panic is taking over. I am losing control.

  Thankfully there’s nothing but a subway platform and a train about to depart. I race for it and my gym bag slips from my shoulder and falls to the ground. I leave it where it lands, breaking into a woeful half-jog, desperate to reach the train before it takes off, and I do, a millisecond before the doors close, narrowly avoiding catching my cane in the gap between the train and the platform.

  Breathless, I look up through the dirty windows as the train rolls away. No one is there. Just my blue and gray gym bag on the platform, sitting there like a bomb about to explode.

  8

  In the beginning, after the incident, I used to see him all the time. Everywhere. In the grocery store, at the hospital, the courthouse, a face in a passing cab, my apartment building. I’d feel the terror of being choked all over again, the tightness around my throat, the suffocation of the dirt on top of my body. I had panic attacks on an almost daily basis. Lorna said it was natural and that with time it would pass. She said that the brain is remarkable and can’t tell the difference between the real and the intensely imagined. That didn’t help. If you can’t tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t, how are you ever supposed to know if someone is really following you or not?

  I reach up to check the latch on the bedroom window. The morning sun is pushing its way through the glass. My watch alarm beeps. The 8 a.m. reminder. I have to get to court.

  Satisfied the window is secure, I step back and the sleeve of my suit skims soot-colored dust from the window architrave. Cursing, I go to the bathroom and turn on the faucet to clean it off. I catch my face in the mirror, the lank hair, the dark circles under my eyes, the grim, downward pull of my mouth. It’s been weeks since I’ve slept properly, and last night, after the scare, I couldn’t stop myself from checking. I was like two selves, an observer and a crazy person, circling each other like dogs. Rather than stop at my normal three times, I checked four, then five times. I couldn’t help myself. It was as if someone had taken over my body. I stunk from the gym and needed a shower and had to prepare for the next day at court. But on and on I went, checking the blinds, the locks on the doors, closet, and windows. Checking and checking and checking. So the call to Eileen Mercer about the disclosure issue never happened.