NO SAFE PLACE

by Richard North Patterson

  They slowly learned about each other—likes, prejudices, the outlines of their lives. But she seldom spoke of her marriage, and though she often asked, Kerry found it hard to speak of his work. Part of his reluctance was the Musso case: as he headed for trial, Kerry felt so responsible for both son and mother that the fear of losing kept him awake at night. He wanted Meg to be separate from his concern for the Mussos, his anger at Vincent Flavio, his bleak vision of a stalled career; at the end of a day, the mere sight of her raised Kerry’s spirits.

  One warm summer night in June, they went to Iberia, her favorite restaurant. Amidst the colorful trappings of Portugal, the sound of fado music, they drank sangria and shared radicchio, skewers of delicious meat. Meg was vibrant, laughing, full of life.

  “My friends are right,” she said.

  “About what?”

  Meg looked at him across the table, eyes smiling. “You’re better-looking than your brother. He’s much too perfect.”

  Surprised, Kerry felt slighted that Jamie mattered—that even with Meg, he could not escape comparison. With sudden intensity, he wished that she simply hadknown this, then realized that, if she did not, perhaps the fault was his. “So I’m the un-Jamie,” he said at last. “But what does that makeme ?”

  Meg seemed to study his expression, and then she touched his hand. “Human, Kerry. It makes you human.”

  They went back to her apartment.

  When Kerry kissed her, he was torn between anticipation and another feeling, less joyful: the desire to prove himself to Meg. Her remark about Jamie still unsettled him; for a moment, he had an image of two strangers, driven by whatever needs, hidden from the other, that their separate lives had created. Then Meg kissed him more deeply, and he put this out of his mind.

  When he unzipped her dress, she pressed against him, and Kerry knew that she had decided to trust him this much further.

  Her skin was lightly freckled, her breasts full. Dropping her panties to the floor, she gazed at him with uncertainty. “Be patient,” she said. “It’s been a long time for me.”

  Kerry could feel the beating of his own heart. “For both of us,” he answered, and reached out for her hand.

  Together, they walked to her bed.

  In his desire, Kerry felt unsure where best to touch her, how to know when she was ready. Meg tried to murmur her pleasure or approval, a kind of guide. At last, still tentative, Kerry entered her.

  Even as their bodies moved together, he felt too conscious of her for quick excitement, too aware of all the ways in which they still did not know each other. Suddenly Meg felt rigid beneath him, emitting one small cry. A moment later, Kerry was still.

  In his arms, Meg fell silent. It was as if, Kerry thought, she had gone away. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “You were sweet, Kerry.” Softly, Meg kissed him. “The first time’s always hard, they say.”

  Quiet, Kerry lay beside her. What more, he wondered, did he want her to say or do?

  “Pat,” he said at last. “What happened with him?”

  She looked away. “Why does it matter?”

  Gently, he touched her bare arm. “Look at us, Meg. Three weeks ago we’d barely met, and now we’re here.”

  Meg turned on her stomach, gazing at the wall behind him. “He left me,” she said in a monotone. “For a woman in his office, a lawyer. She was more interesting, he said. I’d stopped being fun.”

  The last words were muffled. Kerry traced her spine with his fingertips, barely grazing the skin, until she curled her back against him. He could feel her crying.

  Later, Meg slept. Kerry did not. They were two children of bad marriages, he thought, with little way of knowing how things should be. It was no wonder if they stumbled.

  Kerry held her close.

  FOUR

  Waiting for Bridget Musso and her son on the steps of the Essex County Courthouse, Kerry recalled Clayton Slade’s advice.

  He could not call Clayton a friend—they spoke only about work, and sparingly at that. But Clayton was older than Kerry by three years, all spent trying cases, and seemed to sense Kerry’s anxiety.

  The day before the trial, Clayton had watched Kerry outline his examination. “Mom’s clean and sober now?” he asked.

  Kerry looked up in surprise, and then nodded. “Three months.”

  “What about the boy?”

  Kerry hesitated. “I don’t know what he’ll do,” he confessed. “Iwon’t know, until the moment I put him on.”

  Clayton frowned. “Tell the jury that up front. If the kid folds, at least they’ll be expecting it.”

  Imagining John facing his father across the courtroom, Kerry drew a breath. “If hedoesn’t fold, I have to win. Or God knows what will happen to them both.”

  Now Kerry watched John Musso climb the steps, holding his mother’s hand.

  It was remarkable, Kerry thought: he had believed this woman beyond redemption, yet here she was. Though still pallid, Bridget’s skin was less blotchy, her eyes clear. This was not entirely a mercy, Kerry reflected, for she had nothing to numb her fear.

  “I knew you could do this,” he told her. When she raised her head, Kerry saw that he had been right: reminding Bridget of what she already had achieved was better than promises she knew he could not make.

  He knelt beside her son.

  For hours, Kerry had worked with him. But the boy’s eyes, veiled by dark lashes, were fixed on the stone steps. Gently, Kerry said, “I’m glad you’re helping your mom.”

  John did not look up. Yet Kerry saw his shoulders square; an attachment, tentative but touching in its hope, had grown between son and mother. When they began climbing the last steps, John Musso took both his mother’s hand and Kerry’s.

  Grasping the small fingers, Kerry felt a stirring of unease, wondering what he might symbolize to an eight-year-old boy. Within hours, John Musso would be forced to choose between his father and his mother. Between his father and Kerry Kilcannon, who had put him there.

  A social worker met them at the top of the steps. With a calm he did not feel, Kerry told the boy again that she would take him and his mother to a room with toys, until their turn had come.

  For the first time, John’s fearful eyes met his. In a thin voice, he asked Kerry, “You’ll be there, right? In court?”

  Nodding, Kerry clasped his shoulder. “When you answer the questions, just look at me. Nothing else.”

  Watching son and mother leave with a stranger, Kerry was still. Then he went to the courtroom alone.

  It was empty. Through the airy ceilings, inlaid with gold, grids of clear glass filtered light onto the marble bench of the judge, the jury box. Five rows of hand-carved benches were flanked by oil paintings of judges and a fresco of Lady Justice and her suitors. Not unlike his feelings in the sanctuary at Sacred Heart, where he still took his mother on Sundays, Kerry’s first moments in this courtroom filled him with a sense of awe and mystery. How much more awesome, he reflected, would it seem to a child.

  Sitting at the defense table, Kerry waited for his first glimpse of Anthony Musso, a man he had never met but already knew to hate, and who, in the three months of jail awaiting trial, had no doubt learned to hate Kerry.

  Slowly, the courtroom filled, stirring to life—the bailiff; the clerk; the prospective jurors; the public defender, Gary Levin, a sharp-eyed veteran who affected bow ties and gray flowing hair; Judge Frederick Weinstein, balding, cadaverous, and given to sarcasm. Then, at last, Anthony Musso.

  He was shorter than Kerry had imagined, barely taller than Kerry himself, though barrel-chested and much stockier. But there was little of the swagger of the bully; sitting next to his lawyer, Musso was unnaturally still. The olive surface of his face was flat, as if hammered on an anvil, and his hair was as black as his eyes. When at last he turned those eyes on Kerry, they were unblinking, implacable, beyond reach. It was like looking into the eyes of a horse.

  Staring back, Kerry imagined himself as John Musso, gazing
up at his father. The fear he felt was not only of sudden violence but of what lay behind this, infinitely worse—a terrible remoteness of feeling, an indifference to the lives he warped. Suddenly Kerry was a young boy in the doorway, watching Anthony Musso smash his mother’s face into the white porcelain sink. The sound of teeth breaking, the spittle of blood, had not changed the father’s eyes at all.

  I’ll get you,Kerry promised him across the courtroom, and then the trial began.

  * * *

  The morning went quickly. The jury was impaneled; largely forced on the lawyers by Judge Weinstein, it was a fair cross-section of Newark, though heavier on males than Kerry would have liked. His opening witness, the first cop on the scene, described Bridget’s injuries and Anthony Musso’s story; on cross-examination, Levin established that John Musso had said only that he thought his mother was dead. The emergency room doctor could not add much; though the injuries to Bridget’s mouth and teeth were severe, he could not be certain how this happened, and Bridget’s epilepsy and blood alcohol content suggested the possibility of motor impairment, perhaps even fainting, which could have caused her to fall by herself. At two in the afternoon, Kerry had no case.

  Gazing at the jury, he called Bridget Musso.

  A courtroom deputy escorted her in. As she walked between the benches, empty of spectators, Kerry saw Bridget will herself not to look at Anthony Musso. Instinctively, Kerry went to her, touching her elbow, and then she took the stand.

  Her green eyes were fixed, her face a frozen mask. “Make the jury see her fear,” Clayton had counseled; an emotionless victim could lose the jurors as surely as one who was shrill and vengeful. But even sober, Bridget was sparing of both words and feelings; against all her instincts, and in the presence of the man she feared, Kerry must re-create that night.

  For the first few questions, she did not look up, and her voice was toneless, a whisper. “Before Anthony came home,” Kerry asked, “where were you?”

  Bridget’s eyes narrowed; though Kerry had scoured the corners of her memory, every detail was a strain. “The living room,” she said at last. “It was dark.”

  “And you’d been drinking.”

  Still downcast, Bridget’s eyes grew vague. “Yes.”

  Kerry walked closer, hoping he could somehow reach her. “Where was John?”

  Bridget hesitated. When she spoke, her tone was shamed. “I don’t know.”

  Look at me,Kerry silently implored her, moving nearer still. “How did you know,” he asked, “when Anthony came home?”

  To Kerry’s right, from the defense table, Anthony Musso stared fixedly at his wife. Almost whispering, Bridget answered, “At first he was a shadow. Then his face came into the light.”

  “He was standing over you, wasn’t he? Just like I am now.”

  Bridget nodded. It was as if the two of them were alone now, the jury merely eavesdroppers. Quietly, Kerry asked, “What did you do?”

  Swallowing, Bridget answered, “I peed myself.”

  Kerry exhaled. “Your husband saw?”

  Her head bowed. “He called me an animal.”

  “Did he say it like this?” Suddenly Kerry’s voice cracked like a whip: “ ‘You’re like an animal—a dog.’ ”

  Bridget flinched, turning sideways.“Objection.” Behind Kerry, Levin’s voice was sharp. “Leading.”

  Kerry kept watching Bridget. Only part of him was aware of the jury; the sharp gaze of Judge Weinstein; Anthony Musso’s unremitting stare. “Sustained,” Weinstein said.

  Kerry ignored this. “After your husband called you an animal,” he asked Bridget, “what happened?”

  She hunched, closing her eyes, briefly shuddering. “He dragged me to the toilet by my hair. Then he pulled my pants down and told me to start pissing.” In profile, Bridget sat straighter, her jaw tightening in a pantomime of fright and determination. “I tried . . .”

  Kerry moved to his right, closer to her line of vision. After a long moment, Bridget’s eyes met his. Still quiet, he said, “Did that make him angry?”

  “He slapped me.” Bridget winced, as if from a blow. “My head hit the wall.”

  To his side, Kerry saw a juror—a black woman—touch her throat. “Then he hit you again, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.” Bridget’s words were choked, husky. “I caught the sink, trying to pull myself up. His face was in the mirror . . .” Once more, her eyes closed.

  Please,Kerry thought,stay with me. “What did Anthonydo , Bridget?”

  For the first time, she glanced at her husband. Her mouth opened, making no sound, and then the tears came to her eyes.

  “What did he do?” Kerry repeated.

  She turned back to him, drawing a breath. “He pushed my face into the sink—”

  “ ‘Pushed’?”

  “My teeth broke.” Her voice caught, quavering. “There were pieces in my mouth . . .”

  Kerry waited a moment. “What happened then?” he asked.

  Bridget folded her hands, lips trembling. “I was in the hospital . . .”

  No,Kerry thought. He forced himself to pause again, waiting for her eyes to meet his. “Beforethe hospital, Bridget, do you remember anything else?”

  Bridget blinked, seemingly lost to him. Kerry felt his stomach tighten.

  “Bridget?”

  Sudden tears ran down her face. “My son,” she said softly. “John was standing in the bathroom door.”

  * * *

  By the time Gary Levin rose to cross-examine, Bridget appeared drained, bloodless. Levin stood next to Anthony Musso; the tactic, Kerry saw at once, was to make her look at her husband.

  “That night,” Levin began crisply, “what alcohol were you drinking?”

  Bridget looked away. “Whiskey.”

  “How much?”

  Fidgeting, Bridget touched the hem of her skirt. “I don’t remember.”

  “Over two drinks? Or three?”

  Bridget gave a listless shrug. “I don’t remember,” she repeated.

  “You don’tremember ?” Levin’s voice and posture—hands on hips, gazing at Bridget—conveyed how unimpressed he was. “You were drunk, weren’t you? In truth, you were drunk throughout your marriage.”

  Bridget hesitated. But for three months, she had gone to AA meetings, learning to confront her shame. Dully, she said, “I’m an alcoholic.”

  “And when you drink, you lose your memory.”

  “Objection,” Kerry snapped. “Which time? Every time?All the time? Surely Mr. Levin can’t meanthat .”

  From the bench, Judge Weinstein stared at Kerry. “Are you trying to convey, Mr. Kilcannon, that the question is overbroad?”

  Kerry flushed. “Yes.”

  “Because I sustain objections, not speeches.” He turned to Levin. “Sustained.”

  Smoothly, Levin said to Bridget, “You don’t remember that night, do you? The night you blame your husband for.”

  In confusion, Bridget looked from Weinstein to Kerry. “I remember it,” she said with belated stubbornness.

  “Do you remember when you talked to the police?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t tell them about urinating, did you?”

  “I wasscared —”

  “Or about your husband shouting at you.”

  Bridget touched her forehead. “I don’t remember . . . ,” she began, then heard herself. “I was afraid.”

  “In fact,” Levin cut in, “all you told the police was that your husband hit you.”

  Bridget shook her head. “I was scared,” she insisted.

  “You were drunk, weren’t you?”

  Bridget shook her head. “Not then.”

  Levin glanced at Kerry. “But you didn’t ‘remember’ any of those details until you met with Mr. Kilcannon, correct?”

  Bridget stared into some middle distance, unable to look at Kerry, Levin, the jury. “Mr. Kilcannon helped me. For John.”

  “John,”Levin repeated. “When all this supposedly wa
s happening—the drinking, your husband coming home, you urinating down your leg—you don’t rememberwhere John was, do you?”

  Bridget’s eyes shut. “No.”

  “And then, with your teeth broken and your mouth bleeding, about to pass out—thenyou remember seeing John?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t tell the policethat , either.”

  Bridget seemed to hug herself. Watching, Kerry wished he could stop this, but to ask for a recess might, for the jury, be worse. Levin’s voice rose. “Is there some reason you won’t look at me, Mrs. Musso?”

  All at once, Kerry’s temper flared. “Maybe,” he said to Weinstein, “it’s because Mr. Levin’s standing next to her husband. Or maybe because Mr. Levin isacting like him.”

  Weinstein leaned forward, red suffusing the papery skin of his face. “Counselor . . .”

  “He can ask her without bullying.” Kerry stood, his voice as angry as Weinstein’s stare. “One bully is enough.”

  The judge paused, lips working, as if he had tasted something bitter. “If you want to be cited for contempt,Mister Kilcannon, please do that again.” Slowly, he turned to Levin. “The witness can look anywhere she wants, Counselor. Get on with it.”

  Levin walked slowly toward the witness. Kerry watched the jurors follow him, their faces intent. In his most pleasant voice, Levin asked, “You also suffer from epileptic seizures, don’t you?”

  Bridget nodded. “Yes.”

  “When you have seizures, you pass out, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sometimes you fall and hurt yourself.”

  “Yes.”

  Levin skipped a beat. “And lose your memory?” he asked.

  Frozen, Kerry watched Bridget marshal herself, knowing that the truth would hurt, resigned to telling it. “Yes,” she answered. “Sometimes.”

  Even before the defense lawyer’s eyes flickered to Kerry, Kerry knew that Levin had done enough. As of now, there was reasonable doubt.