I was at the police station fifteen minutes before the Office of Children & Family Services opened.
“No, I don’t have an appointment… Yes, sir, it’s an emergency.”
“Mrs. Dury? Barbara Dury’s on vacation. Won’t be back for another two weeks.”
It’s not always easy to accept that people have lives that focus on things other than what matters to you.
I dredged my memory. “Isn’t there anyone else I can see? Is there a Mr. Fox?”
“Lou Fox? Room two-oh-three.”
I ran up the stairs and knocked on the right door.
“Come ahead.”
Lou Fox was a man in his middle fifties, with half-glasses, balding gray hair and one of those beards cut to a length where it looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a week. He had friendly brown eyes.
I told him who I was, how I was involved, and why I was there. He didn’t bother punching it up on his computer. He said he knew the case.
“What exactly do you want, Billy?”
“I have a list.” I got it out, intending to read from it, but Mr. Fox stuck out his hand for it.
I passed it across the desk. This was it:
* Is Amy all right? Is she safe from Carter?
* Did you give her my letter?
* What’s going to happen? Will you take her from Carter?
* Will she be put into a foster home — or what?
* How can I get to see her?
Mr. Fox’s glance darted down the page. “What letter are you talking about?”
“I gave a letter to Mrs. Dury to give to Amy.”
“I don’t know anything about that. As far as these other questions… Is she all right? Yes, I’d say she’s all right, if by ‘all right’ you mean in apparent good health and good spirits. The other questions… well, they present a problem. I mean I can’t answer these questions, because it’s privileged material, and you’re not an immediate family member, and you don’t represent Amy legally, and it’s an ongoing investigation. In fact, it’s just begun. See what I’m saying?”
“You’re saying I’m not part of your team.”
Mr. Fox looked amused. “You’ve got it, Billy. Quick study.”
“Can’t you even give me a clue?”
“Didn’t you tell Susan Dury you weren’t a detective?”
He had heard the tape of our interview.
“I was being a smartass,” I said.
“Nobody’s perfect. A clue as to what?”
“Mr. Fox, Amy is twelve years old. Carter Bedford is a really bad person. He has sex with her whenever he gets drunk. And sometimes when he’s not drunk. That’s what she says. I know it’s true. You have to stop him. You have to help her. If you can’t do it, who else can?”
Mr. Fox’s eyes clouded and the smile left his face. He scratched at his bristly gray beard, and he was silent for a long minute.
“Yes,” he said, “we know that’s what you said she told you.”
“And it’s true,” I said. “I didn’t lie to Ms. Dury and Amy didn’t lie to me.”
“Well… that may be so.”
He let it hang there. And I got it.
“You mean you asked her and she wouldn’t tell you about it,” I said. “Amy denied it.”
He paused again. “I can’t discuss that with you, Billy.”
“But you know she’s lying. Covering up for Carter because she’s scared.”
“I can’t discuss my opinions, either.”
“What are you and Ms. Dury going to do?”
“We have done. Let me explain to you. We’re part of CPS, the Child Protective Service in Suffolk County. There’s an office in every county in New York State. A report like yours comes in, CPS is obliged to start an investigation within twenty-four hours. We visit the parents, we tell them about the report, although we keep the identity of the informant a secret. You follow all that?”
“I follow,” I said.
“If we decide the child’s at risk, if it’s necessary to protect her from further abuse, we can take her into protective custody. Or we can offer the family our counseling services. We have no legal authority to compel them to accept those services, although we certainly can inform the family of our obligation to petition the Family Court to mandate those services if we think the child is in need of protection. Still clear?”
“Clear.”
“But — and this a big but — it’s hard to do any of that, even the lesser things, if the child says nothing’s happening and there isn’t a shred of credible evidence. You still following?”
I nodded.
“Because, Billy, I’m not telling you anything about this particular case. I’m not permitted to do that. I’m just generalizing.”
I nodded again.
He said, “We also can, and always do, demand an immediate medical examination if we’re looking for bruises or evidence of hymenal penetration. Those words too big for you?”
“No, sir,” I said, dreading what was coming.
“But if there are no bruises, and someone has already confessed that his penis penetrated the female child in question, what are we supposed to do? Moreover, let me add, when the female child is twelve years old, that act of penetration is a felony. It’s statutory rape, and can get the perpetrator into a pisspot full of trouble. You follow my meaning? Do we want to go there? I don’t think so. But let’s back up to the report, okay? Where’s the credible evidence? Where’s any evidence? It’s just ‘he says, she says.’ No good. The whole thing gets filed as an unfounded report. No determination can be made. And life goes on. For better or for worse.”
My heart was beating hard. Beware!
“All this,” Mr. Fox said, “is just theorizing.”
He had taken my breath away. I finally got some of it back.
“Did you meet Carter Bedford?” I asked.
He peered at me over his half-glasses.
“Scumbag,” he said.
I understood the level of anger in his voice, and why he was willing to go as far as he did to enlighten me.
“Mr. Fox,” I said, “when Amy and I had—what I mean is—”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” he said.
Inez knocked on my bedroom door. I’d shut it, because I wanted to turn my back on the world. I felt awful. It boiled down to this: if I hadn’t admitted to what Amy and I had done, or, if better yet if it had never happened, the CPS-ordered medical examination would have shown that someone else had done it, and I don’t think that Carter would have been able to slither his way out of the responsibility. He could have yelled that it wasn’t true, and Amy could have stayed silent, but Mr. Fox and Ms. Dury would have had the evidence to take to the Family Court… and after that, who knows? Something good would have come of it.
Not now, though.
“Come in, Inez.”
She poked her head round the door, looking dark and glum, a little thin-lipped. She thrust the cordless phone at me.
“Call for you, Billy. That girl.”
I grabbed the phone. Inez vanished.
“Amy?“
“Hi, Billy.”
“Where are you, Amy?”
“Home.”
“Did you get my letter?”
“What letter?”
“You mean you just called me without getting a letter?”
“God, Billy, I’ve been wanting to call you for weeks. They wouldn’t let me. They don’t let me leave the house. I just sneaked the phone upstairs before Ginette went to the A & P. I found a jack up here behind the sofa she doesn’t know about.”
“Where’s Carter?”
“In Florida. In Bradenton. He drove down with his pal Woody—that was the guy in the van. Carter wants out of here. We got investigated. Did you have anything to do with that?”
“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. Can you meet me somewhere, Amy?”
“Billy, I’m locked in. I think they’re gonna keep me that way until we leave for Flori
da.”
“When’s that happening?”
Carter had quit the garbage business, she said. He and Woody were going to work at a marina in Sarasota, Florida, not too far from Bradenton. Bradenton was cheaper to live in.
“Woody’s buying a Jeep. Carter’s driving the van back up. When he gets here, we’re history. Did you know he sued your dad?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“You think I’m making it up?”
“Amy, my dad would have told me.”
“Well, the fact is, he didn’t tell you. Carter’s sued. He talks about it all the time. He’s got a lawyer.”
My heart began to race around my chest. I could hardly believe it. “And what happened?’
“He won’t tell me. I think it’s still going on. But he loves his little lawsuit.”
She told me that she had been locked in on the third floor of the yellow brick house in Springs since the night of the day Carter had snatched her off the street in front of the Winter Garden. They let her come down for meals as long as he was there. If not, her brother Stevie brought food up the stairs and handed it to her through the locked gate between the second and third floor. Stevie thought that was fun; he was a loyal son to his dad. Ginette wasn’t cooking much; she microwaved everything. What Amy ate most of was frozen french fries and frozen pizza and frozen tacos. She drank Coca-Cola and Sprite.
“It used to be a jail here,” Amy said. “So now it is again.”
“But they let you out to visit the social workers, right?”
“Carter took me there.”
“Why didn’t you tell those people the truth?”
She was quiet for a while.
“You know about that,” she said, “but I don’t want anyone else to know. I don’t want strangers butting into my life. They never really care. They say they care, but they don’t. You’re still a stranger to them.”
“Oh, Amy —”
“And if I snitched on Carter,” she said, “and they did whatever they could to him… what happens then? I live with Ginette? Forget it. Be what that woman Ginger said, a PINS kid? Get sent to one of those crummy facilities, wind up in a foster home? No, thanks. Carter got brought up in a foster home and it messed him up good. It’ll be better once we get to Florida. He won’t lock me up there. I’ll have nowhere to run away to.”
“Has he —” I didn’t know how to say it. I finally managed: “Has he come up to you at night?”
I heard her cute little laugh. “Are you worried about that, Billy?”
“Yes, I’m worried,” I said.
“Don’t worry.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Wow, you never change. You’re still a nag. You want the truth?”
“Yes.”
“He came up. Once. That’s all.”
That made me feel sick. And it made me feel I had to do something. Had to get her out of there no matter what.
I told her how I felt, and she didn’t say anything.
“Amy, did you say anything to Carter about what you and I did?”
“Are you nuts? He’d kill me.”
“Don’t you want to leave? Get free of him?”
“We tried, didn’t we? He found us.”
“But he wouldn’t find us if we were smarter this time. Went really far. Cut ourselves off completely. So that no one in the world knew where we were.”
She was quiet for a few moments, and then she said, “You couldn’t do that, Billy.”
“Do what?”
“Not keep in touch with your parents.”
“If it was the only way… I could do it.”
“Do you still have all my stuff? All the stuff I bought when we were together?”
“Sure.”
“I miss that silly stuff. My frog pen, and those lips that ran around in circles.”
“They’re here in my room, in your duffel bag. I’m keeping them for you. Do you miss me, too, Amy?”
“A lot. You’re my real friend, Billy. You’re a wonderful person.”
“So are you, Amy. My favorite person.”
“Do you have another plan, Billy?”
“You know me, Amy. I always have a plan.”
Chapter 34
Since I’d first met him, Duwayne Williams had put on ten pounds but gained another two inches, so he was still a beanpole. He’d had a good year at power forward for Bridgehampton High.
The fluorescent lights of the Brothers Four pizza parlor shone through his big ears. I sat with him in a booth at the back while he chomped his way through a large combo deluxe. After I’d blotted off most of the grease into a dozen paper napkins, I ate a couple of thin-crust slices with double anchovies.
“Man,” Duwayne said, when I’d finished telling him my plan, “you are far out.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” I said. “Maybe it’ll take ten or twenty minutes.”
“And you want to give me two hundred and fifty bucks to help you do this shit?”
“You think it’s not enough?”
“Little bro, I’m just making sure I understand you one hundred percent clear. Two-five-oh.”
“Plus another two hundred and fifty if your brother Torrance drives us out there and hangs till we’re done so we can all leave in his car.”
“The getaway car.”
“Duwayne, it’s not a bank robbery. It’s not even a crime.”
“What is it, man?”
“A status offense.”
“Can you do jail time for that whatever-it-is?”
“Absolutely not. I swear it to you. A lawyer explained it all to me. How old is Torrance?”
“Just turned eighteen.”
“Then it might be a crime for him. He’s not a minor. I’m not sure what crime, though. It’s not kidnaping. She’ll be coming of her own free will. Maybe it’s a tort.”
“A who?”
“Never mind. I still don’t think I want Torrance to be involved.”
“Hey, little bro, I can drive his car.”
“You have a license?”
“Shit, no, I’m still sixteen, but I can drive it. Probably better’n he can. I do wheelies with it down at the beach when he’s out in these dudes’ truck every Saturday night.”
“But you don’t have a license. I can’t ask you to break the law.”
“You can’t?” Duwayne shook his head, wiped the olive oil off his lips with a paper napkin, and grinned hugely, so that his teeth gleamed like ivory in the fluorescent light. “Oh, little bro, I really dig you. You are such a cool dude. Far out. Wa-a-ay out there.”
This time was a lot harder than the first time. The first time I hadn’t known that people react quickly, and vigorously, and righteously, against the flaunting of social laws by someone who won’t cut along the dotted line. Now I knew how careful we had to be.
The first time I’d known that it would be painful for my mom and dad, but I hadn’t grasped just how painful. And this time would be worse, because it would be like the second blow of a one-two punch. The first time I’d known that I’d be in touch with them and probably see them soon, whereas this time, I didn’t know that at all. That was painful for me, too.
And the first time Amy and I had just strolled away from home as if we were headed for school, and met at the railway station in Amagansett. This time I had to rescue her from the yellow brick jail.
The first time I had viewed it as an adventure. This time, I thought, it looks like hard work and maybe even dangerous.
But I had to do it. If not, the Bedfords would slip off to Florida and I’d never see Amy again. She would go downhill faster than dishwater in a drain. Her life wasn’t yet ruined. Take her away from Carter and she’d recover from what he’d done to her all these years. She just needed help from someone she trusted.
I was the only one.
Traffic crawled on the two-lane highway from Southampton to Montauk, it grew hot, the beaches and the tennis clubs crowded up, and I waited to hear from Am
y. When we’d said goodbye after that phone conversation, the plan was just a vague idea nibbling at the edge of my mind. But I knew even then, even before I got Duwayne to agree to help me, that I’d come up with something, so I said to Amy, “Call me again as soon as you can, and definitely before Carter gets back from Florida.”
She promised, and so I stayed at home. Whenever the phone rang, I jumped to pick it up, but it was never for me. I read, solved chess problems, did crossword puzzles, played with Iphigenia, watched the leaves droop in the heat on the branches of the elms — and waited for the call that didn’t come.
Amy had said, “Carter’ll be back by June 24th, latest.” Right after he arrived, they would abandon A-1 Self-Storage to the owners. Carter was just going to walk away and not look back.
It was already June 20th, a Saturday. I was nervous. Maybe he was back already. If that was so, my plan was a goner.
I biked out to Springs late that afternoon, parking my ten-speed in the woods about a hundred yards from A-1 Self-Storage. Then I snuck up on the premises, Indian-fashion: on the balls of my feet, avoiding twigs and dry leaves, staying a minute or so behind one tree before I set off for the shelter of the next. I must have been good at it — I surprised a jackrabbit, and he hopped away from me in a hurry.
There was no sign of life at the house. The Toyota pickup was there, and an old yellow VW Beetle that Ginette used for shopping. The Bedford family, minus the head man, was in residence.
I took a good long look at the house, and the pitted dirt road they called Jail Road, and the fence, and the security gate. I studied the third floor where Amy was locked up. No bars on her window. On the two second-floor windows, the old jail bars still remained. I had a pocket notebook with me and I drew a little map, and then, on another page, a diagram of the walls.
I was hoping that Amy would come to the window and I’d catch a glimpse of her, like Romeo hanging out and waiting for Juliet.
“Thus, with a kiss, I die…”
No, don’t even think that way.
Better the prince waiting for Rapunzel to let down her golden hair so that he could climb the tower. Rapunzel… her tears touched the prince’s eyes… and he wasn’t blind anymore…
A Volvo station wagon drove up the dirt road, stopping at the gate in a swirl of dust. That had to be a unit renter. A hand reached out to punch in the security code; the gate clanked, slid open. The wagon drove through the gate into the storage area and vanished down one of the alleys between the concrete buildings. The gate clanked back shut.
Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller Page 29
