“What! Please, just tell me. Get it over with!” Chad pleaded with Stuart as he returned to the room.
“Chad,” Stuart started slowly, “I just got some bad news about your father.”
“My father?” Chad asked in disbelief.
“Yes.” Stuart sat down again across from Chad and motioned for him to sit down again, too. Stuart began rubbing the nonexistent stubble on his chin and began speaking. “A group of women walking along the Brandywine River early this morning saw a pickup truck half submerged in the water. They called 9-1-1 and the rescue folks pulled your father out of the cab of that truck. There’s no official cause of death yet, but the officer just told me that, based on their initial investigation, they think he was in the river since late last night.” Stuart stopped speaking and looked across the table at Chad. He was surprised to see the color return to Chad’s face. “Chad?” Stuart asked, “Are you all right?”
“Um, yeah,” Chad said, expressionless. It was not at all the reaction that Stuart had expected. “Are they sure it was my father?”
“The police told me they pulled his license out of a wallet in his pocket.” Stuart saw nothing that resembled grief or sadness on Chad’s face. “Should I get someone, like a grief counselor or a doctor or something?”
“No, really, I’m fine. Actually, I am quite relieved.”
“What?”
“Well,” Chad started, “for one thing, I thought you were coming in here to tell me the police had more damning but bogus evidence against me.”
“Chad, we’re talking about your father. He’s dead.” Stuart spoke as if Chad hadn’t heard him accurately the first time. “Do you want me to get someone trained that you can talk to about this—to uh, help you process this?”
“You don’t get it,” Chad said a little too quickly. “My father was a no-good, drunken, bitter, son-of-a-bitch who made my mother miserable and then ultimately drove her away. He made me feel small, weak, like a loser. And the worst part is…” Chad started to choke up as he spoke. Stuart averted his eyes as tears welled up in Chad’s eyes. “The worst part is, he deliberately and constantly tried to make us feel like shit so he could keep us with him, keep us too small and weak and lost to go anywhere and break free from him. I wish this had happened years ago. My mother and I would have been a lot better off.”
After a long silence, Chad wiped his eyes with the shirt of his prison uniform.
“Well, I am sorry for everything you have been through and sorry about your mother. But the good news is, I think I can get this thing dismissed based on the DNA. But it may take a little while.” Stuart closed his briefcase on the table and stood. “Oh, and I will find out from the Warden’s Office or Social Services about making funeral arrangements for your father. I’m certain they will take you to the funeral, too, of course, once it is arranged.”
Chad sat silently, his head staring down at the table in front of him. “Thank you. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”
Stuart, feeling a little embarrassed at this remark, shrugged his shoulders and replied, “I’m just doing my job.” He laughed a little and made an attempt at lightening the mood. “Why do you think the State pays me the big bucks?”
As Chad waked back to his cell with the guard right behind him, his thoughts were whirling. Pictures of his father over the years flashed through his head. In one image he was chopping wood and screaming for his “no good, lazy son” to come collect it. In the next he was seated at the kitchen table, staring at his mother’s pot roast in disgust and telling her that “there was only one thing she did worse than cooking,” and that was “everything.”
Chad felt a sudden lightness, despite the prison guard and the metal bars and locks everywhere. He was free of his father forever. There would be no more of his derision, contempt, orders, opinions, bitterness or bullying. He was free of Charlie McCloskey’s misery, at least.
CHAPTER 26
KELLY: SEPTEMBER 29, 2011
THE RHYTHMIC TICKING of the antique clock on her desk lulled Kelly into a trance. The girls were at school and Dan was at work. Exhausted, Kelly struggled to concentrate on her laptop screen. Outside the window she saw a bright red cardinal perched in a branch of a young oak tree. Then the phone next to her elbow rang shrilly and unexpectedly, jostling her.
“Kel, it’s Sam. We have Barnard in custody. The bastard was tipped off by someone; probably a friend in the police force. He was driving on I-95 early this morning when we stopped him. He said he was going to visit a friend, but then he got a little foggy on the details when we asked him who, so we could verify. He also had his passport in a suitcase filled with his clothes, so that didn’t look so good for him, either. In any event, we had the arrest warrant signed first thing this morning, so the police were able to nab him. He’s had his initial appearance already and now we start preparing for a preliminary hearing, which is scheduled for October seventh.”
“And the preliminary hearing is what, again?” Kelly asked, growing frustrated by her lack of knowledge on criminal law and procedure.
“That’s where we show the judge that there is probable cause to believe that the crimes have been committed and that Barnard committed them, and why he should be held over to answer in Superior Court. We can use hearsay evidence at this juncture and, of course, probable cause is a pretty low standard of proof, you know, in contrast to the beyond a reasonable doubt we’ll have to establish at trial.”
“What about the preliminary hearing with the guy they’re holding, Chad McCloskey?” Kelly asked. “I didn’t even attend that.”
“Well,” Sam replied, “I was not on the case then, but I saw from the record that they waived the preliminary hearing. Like I said, it’s not a high burden for the prosecution. We have a witness report of a man with McCloskey’s description and his car transporting you, unconscious and wrapped in a blanket, into the woods where you were rescued. Then we have evidence that he was about to leave town, with a one-way ticket to Arizona that he purchased immediately after you were attacked. That was certainly probably cause to hold him over for this crime before the DNA results, and for now, it’s still sufficient probable cause. He could still have been involved in your attack, along with someone else who did leave the DNA sample on your shorts, or he could at least have been an accomplice.”
“Will I have to testify at Barnard’s preliminary hearing?” Kelly tried to swallow the dread that was climbing up her throat.
“Kel, I know that testifying in front of Jack Barnard is going to be really difficult for you. But Barnard has retained a hotshot defense attorney who is brutal. So, yes, you are going to have to try to mentally prepare for this. You’ll just tell your story to the judge, giving him specific reasons why Barnard poses a danger to the public, and to you. You will have to describe the horror, pain and trauma he inflicted on you with the attack, and how you saw his hand, with the unique ring and scar. I’ll probably ask you to also describe his recent verbal threats against you, how he knows your running routine, and maybe even about his aggression toward you years ago when you refused to dance with him.”
“Can I tell the Court that I would be terrified for my safety if he was out free pending trial?”
“Yeah, Kel,” Sam said softly, “you should mention that too.” He sat helpless, phone in hand, as he heard Kelly start sobbing. He felt a familiar pull, an old tug in his chest and stomach, as he yearned to be next to her, to hold her in his arms and to make her feel safe. “Kelly, it is going to be okay. I am going to nail this guy, with a boatload of evidence to show he poses a real danger to the public and he’s a flight risk. He’s in custody now, he will not touch you before trial no matter what happens at the preliminary hearing, and he will be put away for a long time.” Sam then surprised Kelly with a little laugh that sounded like a snort. “Barnard is unwittingly helping us, too, with his arrogance. But his arrogance will be his Achilles heel, Kel, you wait and see.” “Unfortunately, Sam, being arrogant is not a crime.”
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“Kel, DNA is everything and we will nail him.”
“But we don’t have a DNA match, do we?” Kelly said in a defeated tone.
“Not yet, but we got his sample already and it is in the lab’s hands. That’s what I mean about his arrogance. There was press there already when they led him in for his initial appearance, so he took the opportunity to grandstand, making some declaration about volunteering his DNA to avoid any further miscarriage of justice. I thought his lawyer was going to bust a gut. It’s like Christmas for a prosecutor when the defendant thinks he is smarter than his own counsel.” Sam laughed through the phone. “He said the same thing at his initial appearance, in front of the judge. So, we immediately obtained a cheek sample and a blood sample and they were both delivered to the lab.”
“Why would he give that up so easily?” Kelly asked, worried that maybe she was wrong about Barnard’s guilt.
“Kel, think about it. The guy knows evidence and he knows grandstanding. First, he made this big gesture to convince the public and the Court that he’s innocent.” Sam lowered his voice for the next part. “But, I think that he is arrogant enough to believe that he committed the perfect crime, and that there is no DNA trace to worry about. He used a condom, which he probably disposed of carefully, and he never had to struggle with you, remember? He thinks there is no semen, no blood, no skin under your fingernails, no fingerprints; he is convinced he is clean here.”
“But I thought you said you have a sample from my shorts?” Kelly surprised herself when this question came out without any semblance of embarrassment.
“We do, Kel. It has been confirmed and it is protected in the lab. I guess your shorts were in the right place when he removed his condom and he has no idea. I have the report: there was definitely semen on your shorts. But we are keeping that under wraps until we have to disclose it through discovery. We did not need that to get the arrest warrant. For now, it is our smoking gun.”
Kelly pictured a disheveled and red-faced Jack Barnard peeling a condom off of himself over her discarded running shorts and inadvertently sealing his fate. She clasped her hands together and made her knuckles turn white. She felt bile come up into her throat and though she swallowed hard, she started to gag.
“Kel?” Sam asked. “Kel? Are you OK?”
“Sam?” Kelly recovered herself and replied, hesitantly, “I’m scared. I can’t explain it. I know he is in custody, but you know how well-connected this guy is. You mentioned that he even got tipped off by someone inside about his impending arrest this morning. Are we safe on all the physical evidence, you know, the custody of it? It’s not going to disappear or be swapped out or altered, is it?”
“No, Kel. I am being very, very careful on this. I have a dependable and trustworthy guy on it. He is maintaining custody of the specimens and the reports, and on top of that he split the specimens and is preserving the split samples somewhere else. Even I don’t know where they are.”
“Okay, Sam. Thank you again for everything. You are the only thing keeping me sane at this point.” Kelly felt a twinge of guilt toward her sweet, steady husband as those words left her lips. She put the phone back on its receiver, and quickly walked over to the alarm panel by the mudroom door. She felt a little paranoid turning the alarm on mid-morning while she worked at home, but she needed to feel safe. She went and sat back down in front of her laptop, went back to working on a brief, and mercifully lost herself in someone else’s problems for almost two hours.
*****
“Hey, Kel!” Sam’s voice boomed through the receiver into Kelly’s ear. She pulled it away from her head and looked at the clock on her desk.
“Do you have the DNA results?” Kelly asked, breathlessly.
“Geez, Kel, I’m good but I am not a miracle worker. I just submitted them this morning, remember? I am using an independent lab that has the quickest turnaround time I know of, but they are never same-day results.” Sam spoke quickly, brimming with excitement. “I had a chance to talk by phone with the eyewitness who called the Wilmington police tip line, Maria Hernandez. Her boyfriend has an immigration lawyer through the Latin American Community Center, Sara Nuñez. She doesn’t practice criminal defense, but she explained to Maria that she had no choice but to cooperate as a witness. So Maria talked to me. She gave me a lot of information and it is all consistent with her call to the tip line. She saw someone matching Jack Barnard’s description shoot you with something as you ran by Breck’s Mill and then she saw him carry you away. But later she saw someone matching that other guy’s description. Sounds just like the kid they locked up already, Chad McCloskey. He carried you into the woods from a different spot near the mill.”
“That’s great, Sam. With DNA and my testimony, she is like the nail in his coffin!” Kelly’s heart pounded.
“I agree, except we have a few issues with her.”
“What do you mean?”
“She is a sweet woman, Kel, not much more than a kid. Her lawyer told me that she came from Mexico and is living with her Mexican boyfriend. The good news is, she speaks great English. The bad news is, she is not legal yet. He has a green card, and they are working on it, but right now they are not comfortable having anything to do with this. And, to make matters worse, they had a baby just a few days ago.”
“So what does this all mean, Sam?” Kelly asked. She had taken a course in immigration law a zillion years ago in law school and only remembered the basics.
“Worse-case scenario? I guess she could be deported. Their kid’s a citizen because he was born here, but she obviously can’t leave him here. She is terrified, and reluctant doesn’t even begin to describe the kind of witness she’ll make.”
“Why did she come forward then?”
“She told me that she knew you had been hurt badly and that maybe she was the only one who saw these men and what they did. She was scared, but she felt like she had to call the police because it weighed too heavily on her conscience.”
“Sam, I want to meet her. I want to tell her we’ll do what we can to protect her and her family. I want to thank her and get an immigration lawyer from my firm to help them. Is that possible?”
“Kel, you know that can’t happen. You are a victim and therefore a witness in this case, and she is a witness. You can thank her and help her when this whole proceeding is over. But you’ll have no contact at all with her before then. Got that?
“It’s just that this guy… this selfish monster… has wrecked so many people’s lives. First, some kid, who already had a miserable life, may have been falsely accused and then locked up for this. Now, this scared woman, with a new baby and a tremendous amount at stake, is fearful that she is going to be deported.” Kelly stopped to catch her breath and wipe away a tear with the back of her hand. “I should also mention that I have become toxic to my husband and daughters, who, I am afraid, will be affected for the rest of their lives.”
Sam heard her sobbing again and bit his lip. “Kel, I’m sorry about all of that, but these are the circumstances of every victim that I work with. It is time now to suck it up, look forward and do what you can to fix whatever parts of this can be fixed. We have a job to do. You just listed more reasons why you have to help me put this guy behind bars forever, so he can’t wreck any more lives, and so you and this woman Maria and the boy Chad can all get some closure.” He softened a bit. “I am just saying that we all want the same thing, and crying is not going to help, okay?”
Kelly took a deep breath and wiped her face with her sleeve. “Sorry, I am not a robot, Sam. I’ll try to toughen up. But, I do think it will help our case and me if I can meet with the woman, Maria. I want to help her if I can, or at least try to make her feel safer. And I need to thank her.”
“Okay, Kel. I’ll see what I can do to reach out to her or her lawyer with some assurances, at least in the short term. But you will have no contact with her until this is over. Are you hearing me?”
He continued, “And while we are on this subje
ct, if we get to a point where we’re convinced that there’s no basis to pursue prosecution against Chad McCloskey, I was thinking I’d have to try to smooth things over with him, and thank him for helping you, because he’ll still have to be a witness for us, too.”
“I am not too warm and fuzzy about him though, Sam,” Kelly replied. “He should have called 9-1-1 when he first found me. Why in hell would someone leave me bound and lying in the woods?”
“Come on, Kel, I have explained this already. The kid had a rough life and he may have been just a scared, messed-up teenager reacting with bad judgment to a very frightening set of circumstances. If his story pans out, it seems to me he had good intentions and he did go out of his way to get you somewhere where you’d be rescued. He claims that he watched over you until that happened, too—don’t forget that.”
“Are you getting soft on me, Sam? Where are you going with this?” Kelly asked, with irritation sounding in her voice.
“There’s good press in it for the kid. Remember, his arrest for the crime was on the front page. And, hopefully, an apology and a thank you improves his feelings about the police and prosecutors—after what he was put through—because we need his testimony.” Sam paused. “I guess you should see for yourself who these people are, what they have been through also, and how they fit here. Maybe it will help you become less angry and possibly even a little grateful.”
Kelly winced when she heard Sam’s growing frustration. She thought he was being unfair, judging her to be angry instead of grateful.
“It’s all coming together, you’ll see.” Sam said. “I gotta run, call you soon.”
“Thank you, Sam. Later.”
“Later.”
As Kelly hung up the phone, she caught her reflection in a gilt-framed mirror that hung on the wall across from her desk chair. Her new chin-length hair was a mess. Her eyes were sunken into her head, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She was shocked to see this shrunken and frail-looking person where her reflection had once beamed health and confidence. Sam’s words echoed in her head, “become less angry.”
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