Conviction

by Julia Dahl

  “Is he armed?” Olivetti asked the man.

  “He’s got a knife. And my sister’s in there.”

  “Why didn’t she come out?”

  “She’s trying to talk to him. He showed up last night. Drunk as shit. I fucking told him to leave.”

  “But you didn’t call the cops.”

  “Come on, man, that’s my cousin.”

  “Your cousin stabbed a pregnant woman and her mother to death.”

  “He said it wasn’t him.”

  “And you believed him?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Put him in the car,” said Olivetti. “Hurry up. And radio for backup.”

  “What’d I do?” asked the man.

  “You harbored a felon, for starters.”

  Saul sat the man in the backseat of the cruiser. He got on the radio and gave their address, said they were preparing to apprehend an armed murder suspect.

  Back on the porch, Olivetti was itching to get inside the house.

  “If there’s a woman in there she’s in danger.”

  As if on cue, they heard a scream inside.

  Olivetti kicked open the screen door, his gun pointed in front of him. Saul followed.

  “Eric!” shouted Olivetti.

  Another scream, and Eric Overland appeared at the top of the staircase just inside the home. He held a young woman in front of him, a knife to her throat.

  “Drop the knife, Eric,” said Olivetti. Olivetti seemed calm, but Saul’s hands were shaking. When they crossed into the house, Olivetti stepped right and Saul left, which put him at the foot of the stairs. His vision narrowed; everything surrounding the man and the woman above him became blurry.

  “Stay the fuck down there!” shouted Eric.

  Saul heard the words, but they sounded as if they were coming from far away, inside a tin can. Both he and Olivetti had their weapons pointed up, but there was no way they could shoot and not risk hitting the woman. She was silent now; a knife at her neck and two guns pointed at her.

  “Let your cousin go,” said Olivetti.

  “Shut up!”

  “Your family’s been good to you, Eric,” he said. “You’re gonna need them. Let her go, drop the knife, and we’ll talk. Just talk.”

  “Fuck you! I ain’t stupid.”

  “Let her go, Eric. We can help you if you let her go. If you don’t let her go, things are going to get really bad really fast.”

  In the distance, sirens.

  “Let her go, man,” said Olivetti. “Those sirens are for you. When those sirens get here all hell is gonna break loose. You’re gonna die and your cousin’s gonna die. Let her go and we can still talk.”

  The cousin started wimpering. Eric pushed her sideways and started down the stairs, the knife held strong out in front of him, pointed at Saul.

  Saul pulled the trigger. Later, they told him he fired five shots. Four of the bullets hit Eric Overland.

  No one thought he’d done anything wrong. The suspect was coming at him with an edged weapon. But in one instant, Saul became a man who had killed another man. Even in those first hours afterward he knew that fact would change him in ways he could only begin to imagine. He hated Eric Overland for that. He hated the cousin who didn’t call the cops. And he hated the twelve members of the jury who had let Overland off four years earlier.

  So when the woman from the evidence collection team found him in the precinct that mid-July afternoon and handed over the “possibly relevant” items they had taken from the Davis home, Saul made a decision. He was not going to be responsible for letting another murderer go free over some bullshit reasonable doubt. They had the confession. They had the witness. They had the perp.

  If Saul is honest, and when Rebekah texts him twenty-some years later he has lost whatever ability he once had to be dishonest with himself, he has to admit that he hadn’t thought once since about the papers he tucked into a drawer in his room at Coney Island, and then carried around from apartment to apartment in a box, until her visit. When he finally did think about it, he knew he’d done wrong. But, he thought, maybe I can make it right. Let Rebekah look into the case. Let her find the evidence—meaningless or meaningful. Let the truth come out, whatever it is.

  PART 3

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Spring–Summer 1992

  Crown Heights, Brooklyn

  Once Joe had their phone number, finding the Davises’ address was simple. He started with spray paint, something dramatic: big red letters across the front door. He hand-delivered the first letter, hopping quickly onto the porch after watching the family leave in the morning, then mailed the next two, thinking better of being seen on their street.

  The letters were vague: YOUR FAMILY IS IN DANGER and YOU ARE BEING WATCHED. No details that could be traced to Isaiah.

  He made the first phone call at dinnertime and a woman answered. Children’s voices in the background; pots and pans.

  “Hello?”

  He was silent.

  “Hello? Who is this?”

  He called again a few days later and a boy answered.

  “Davis residence, this is Ontario speaking.”

  In the background a woman asked: “Who is it, Ontario?”

  “Who is it?”

  The woman—Sabrina, he assumed, the wife who was complaining to her bosses at the housing department—came to the phone.

  “Hello?”

  He hung up.

  He called every other day, at different hours, from different pay phones. If Malcolm answered, he hung up. If it was Sabrina or one of the children, he remained on the line, listening as their confusion turned to frustration and then to fear.

  “Stop calling here!” begged Sabrina one evening.

  “You are being watched,” he said.

  “What is this about?”

  He decided he could tip his hand on the phone. No hard evidence, just a voice saying words no one else would ever hear.

  “Stop bothering Isaiah Grunwald.”

  “Who? Isaiah … you mean … Oh my God. Malcolm!”

  He hung up.

  If they had just done as he asked, it would have ended there. But Malcolm Davis got self-righteous. One of Isaiah’s handymen stopped by the office about a week later and informed them that a black man named Malcolm was knocking on doors at one of the buildings in Bushwick, asking people to sign a petition.

  “What kind of petition?”

  “I didn’t get a look at it, but something about failure to maintain the building.”

  “Who does this man think he is?” shouted Isaiah. “What is this obsession with me? What have I done to him?” He turned to Joe. “I thought you were taking care of this?”

  “I am,” said Joe. “I will.”

  “This family needs to know that nothing good will come from challenging me like this.”

  Joe began to watch the Davises, to learn the patterns of their life. They attended church on Wednesday evening and Sunday morning, and went grocery shopping at the Associated market on Utica on Saturday. On Sundays after church they went to Prospect Park, sometimes with a larger group, sometimes alone. Sometimes they stopped at a restaurant and bought food for a picnic, sometimes they brought Tupperware from home. Mommy and Daddy and a little girl and boy. Sometimes a teenager was with them. Malcolm and the boy played catch, and Sabrina sat with the little girl, reading to her on a blanket, or watching as she climbed on the playground equipment.

  He got the gun from a man who worked at the bodega on Hunny’s block. All he had to do was ask, and hand over the cash.

  “Have you shot one before?”

  Joe said he hadn’t, and the man suggested he take the gun on the Metro-North to a range outside Peekskill. They won’t ask you for paperwork, he said. You should be fine.

  Joe took the train from Grand Central Station and spent the day shooting at paper targets in a field. His aim was good for a beginner. And the small pointers the instructor gave—pull the trigger on the e
xhale, be prepared for the kick—helped. But he was astute enough to realize that it would take time to become truly proficient with the weapon. And he did not have time.

  On the ride home, he noticed his ears were still ringing. The noise and his inexperience with the weapon were liabilities. He needed to attack while the family was as helpless as possible—and as isolated. On the street, they could run or fight back. On the street someone could intervene. Ideally, he would shoot the couple in their home. Ideally, he would be hiding somewhere and wait until they were asleep. But gunshots in the middle of the night would alert neighbors quickly. The train stopped to pick up more passengers and that was when he saw the red, white, and blue bunting.

  TARRYTOWN ANNUAL FOURTH OF JULY PARADE!

  Gunshots could be mistaken for firecrackers.

  It was June thirtieth. He had five days to prepare.

  When he got back to Brooklyn that night, he walked from the subway to the Davises’ address. They lived in a small house that was separated into two apartments; ground floor and above. Several things about the home worked to his advantage: it was the last house on the block, and there was a small alleyway behind it, meaning there were multiple ways in and out. The most promising entrance appeared to be a window he could reach with just a little boost. He found a paint bucket a few houses down and used it to peek inside: bunk beds and strewn clothing and posters on the walls. The window was open for the breeze, he guessed. But what kind of parents did not have bars on the window in their child’s bedroom? More proof, Joe thought, that they deserved what was coming to them.

  The paint bucket gave him the idea to disguise himself as a handyman, just in case anyone asked him what he was doing in the almost entirely black neighborhood. On July second, he tested the costume: work boots, paint-dusted pants, a roller, and a small tarp, all taken from one of Isaiah’s vans. He watched as the family left their home in the morning, then laid the tarp under the window—cracked open again—climbed onto the bucket, and let himself in. No one said a word. He took his shoes off once inside. The house hummed softly; a refrigerator, or maybe an air-conditioning unit on the floor above. He walked down the hallway to what was obviously the master bedroom. A pile of laundry sat unfolded in a basket on the bed. There were framed photographs on the bureau: a wedding day, a visit to a tropical location, school portraits. A jewelry box. A mirror with a corsage of dried flowers hanging from one corner. Matching bedside tables with matching lamps. On the woman’s side was lotion, a datebook, Kleenex. On the man’s side there was a clipboard with a piece of paper on it, and on the piece of paper, signatures. He snatched the clipboard. They would think they had misplaced it, and in two days they would be dead.

  There was a clothes closet in the bedroom, but it was small, with two sliding doors—not a good hiding place. The hall closet was also unsuitable, filled with built-in shelves that held linens and cleaning supplies. He could curl beneath the lowest shelf, but if someone opened the door, he would be cornered. Nothing presented itself in the second child’s bedroom, either. He had two choices: a small space between the wall and the living room sofa, or beneath the master bed. Both were risky, but the living room seemed more so. If the family came home and sat down to watch television, the kids might run around and find him. The bedroom, he decided, was less likely to be a center of activity. Yes, someone might look under the bed for something, but a decision had to be made. He would enter the house while the Davises were at the Independence Day festivities—he made the assumption that they were the kind of family that would take the children to some sort of celebration—and shoot the parents in their bed once the family was asleep. From inside, he could unlatch and lift the window in their room, hop into the alleyway, and walk home.

  He visited Hunny the next night and gave her a hundred dollars cash, and the addresses of the Davises’ home and the precinct on Utica Avenue.

  “Say you were in the neighborhood after the fireworks and saw a black man running out of this house. Say you saw him carrying a gun.”

  “I don’t talk to cops,” she said. She had smoked her drugs before he arrived; he could tell because of the way she kept licking her lips, and she couldn’t stop moving.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  She sat, knees bouncing, eyes moving around the room like she was following a fly. When she was like this she would fuck him more than once for the same price. But she wasn’t as attractive to him as she had been when they first met. She’d lost weight, and didn’t bother fixing herself anymore. Her apartment smelled like garbage, and she had turned lazy. At the beginning, she took charge of their nights, giving him new experiences and allowing him to relax and enjoy. But now he had to ask her to do every little thing. When this was over, he would stop seeing her.

  “I don’t talk to cops,” she repeated.

  “Five hundred dollars,” he said. “And you aren’t helping the police. You’re lying to them.”

  He wasn’t sure if she heard him. Or if she heard him, he wasn’t sure she understood. If he had thought it might help, he would have hit her. But he did not want to risk her becoming angry and stubborn. Hunny did what she did for money, pure and simple. Enough money and she’d do anything.

  “One thousand dollars,” he said. “All you have to do is go to the precinct and say what I told you.”

  “A thousand?”

  He nodded.

  She picked up the twenties from the table between them, flipped through them like she was counting, but her eyes were unfocused.

  “You trying to jam somebody up?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. She didn’t really want to know. He stood up and began to unbutton his shirt, thinking, as he did, that the next time he was in this ugly little room he would be a killer.

  The Fourth of July fell on a Saturday. He couldn’t have planned it better. The streets near the Davises’ house were swarming with people running amok, throwing bottles and blasting music, shouting and laughing. He kept his head down and his hands in his pockets as he walked up Utica from Eastern Parkway. No one noticed him. He had hidden the paint bucket in the alleyway, and he was ready with a response should someone question him as he popped the screen on the window and slipped inside. I work for the landlord. They’re having a problem with the latches. But there were no questions. Before he slid under the bed to begin waiting, Joe used the toilet in the hall bathroom. He peed and flushed and put the seat down, using his knuckles so as not to leave fingerprints. There were three toothbrushes in a plastic cup on the sink and a sticker on the mirror, an S—the symbol for Superman. He smiled as he looked at himself beside the emblem. He pulled his handgun from his waistband and posed, pointing it at the mirror, moving his wrist around and watching the way he looked with the weapon in his hand. In the planning, he had not allowed himself to indulge in excitement. What he was doing was not about him, or what he wanted; it was about his commitment to Isaiah. But, he decided there in the Superman mirror, there was nothing wrong with taking pleasure in his work.

  From beneath the bed, Joe felt the floor shudder when the Davises came in. Children running. A woman’s voice.

  “Ontario, will you help Kenya with her shoes please?”

  “Kenya! No shoes on the carpet!” said a little boy.

  “Gentle,” said Sabrina.

  Adult footsteps came into the bedroom. Joe saw gym socks. Malcolm Davis switched on a lamp.

  “Do you want me to run a bath?” he called.

  Sabrina came in. Bare feet, toenails painted pink.

  “I think we can skip it tonight. It’s late. If you do teeth and pajamas, I’ll get them down.”

  “I thought maybe he’d be home,” said Malcolm.

  “I know,” said Sabrina.

  “I don’t know what to do anymore. Does he even want to be here?”

  “I think he does. I think he’s just … having a hard time.”

  “I’m worried about how all this is affecting Ontario. It’s exactly the wrong th
ing for him to see right now.”

  “I know.”

  Malcolm sat down on the bed.

  “Red thinks he has a girlfriend. He told me she’s nice. A track star. Why wouldn’t he want to share that with us?”

  “Maybe he will.”

  “He can’t stay out all night. We can’t just let this go.”

  “It’s only eleven. He might still come home.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “I don’t know, Malcolm. If he doesn’t we … talk to him.”

  “It’s not enough. It’s not working.”

  “What else can we do? I’m not giving up on him.”

  “I’m not saying we should give up.”

  “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “We have to consider all the options. We have to consider Ontario, and Kenya.”

  “Giving up our son is not an option,” said Sabrina. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore tonight. There is nothing we can do. Stay here. I’ll get them ready. Try to relax. Try to see the big picture. He’s sixteen. He hasn’t hurt anybody.…”

  “He’s hurting me! He’s hurting you. He’s hurting this family.”

  “Shh!”

  From down the hall the little boy shouted, “Kenya needs help on the potty!”

  “It’s going to be okay, Malcolm,” said Sabrina. “If we keep loving him, it’s going to be okay.”

  Sabrina left the room, and Malcolm sat on the bed. It was very hot. Joe’s armpits and forehead itched. He heard the children talking, water running. Outside, the celebrations were ongoing. Shouting and pops; sirens, car horns. Malcolm switched on an electric fan and went into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth and changed his clothes, then got into bed. Soon, Sabrina came in and did the same.

  “We should think about an AC unit for the boys’ room,” she said. “He doesn’t complain, but even with the fan, it’s uncomfortable in there. He’s been opening the window, which makes me nervous. Should be sales coming up soon. I wouldn’t mind one in here, either.”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “What are you reading?” asked Sabrina.