Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

“And five grams of powder?” I asked.

  “Misdemeanor,” he said. “One year, max.”

  “Like that’s gonna help,” said Pagan. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I think crack is God’s gift to humanity, guaranteed to build strong bodies in twelve ways and get the crabgrass out of your lawn, but even so—”

  “Supply-side economics,” I said. “Only thing you can do is legalize everything. Make it bonded, like bourbon. Generate some tax revenue.”

  “Why the hell not?” asked Pagan. “When the drinking age was twenty-one in California, we could get anything illegal we wanted, even in middle school—mushrooms, coke, LSD, mescaline, sinsemilla that’d knock you flat on your ass—but no booze.”

  “I’m not sure Seagram’s wants the competition,” said Sue.

  “Seagram’s already has the competition,” I said. “But maybe fewer people would die fighting over the profits and distribution. Maybe it’s time to take Al Capone out of the equation across the board.”

  “Madeline, there’s a lot more to it,” said Kyle. “It’s not that easy.”

  “I know. But still—”

  “It’s not. Look at the case you’re involved with, what happened to Teddy Underhill. What’s happened to this city, all the violence—it’s not just strictly some offshoot of misguided prohibition.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “But is there a higher rate of crack addiction than alcoholism in this country? And aren’t more kids beaten to death by parents that’re just plain drunk?”

  “Yes,” he said, “and the majority of drug-related homicides are dealer-on-dealer, not committed by users.”

  “So what do we do?” I asked. “How do we protect children? Prohibition doesn’t work. What else is there?”

  “I don’t know, Maddie,” he replied. “There’s nothing I can do about the big picture. I just try to make sure the bad guys go down so they stop hurting kids.”

  “One day at a time,” I said.

  Sue looked at Kyle. “What’s going to happen with the people who killed the little boy Madeline found? Will you guys get them?”

  “We’re doing everything we can,” he said. “I just hope it’s enough.”

  “And it’s not the only case any of you guys are dealing with,” I said. “It’s not even officially yours at all. You must have a ton of other things on your plate.”

  “Today I’ve got a guy who burned his kid to death with an iron,” said Kyle. “I think Skwarecki caught the little girl left in a Dumpster.”

  The rest of us put our chopsticks down, our interest in dinner officially finished as we contemplated those images.

  “Sorry,” he said, looking at our pale faces around the table.

  “Thank you for what you do,” said Sue, raising her beer toward Kyle. “I couldn’t handle your job for five minutes. I really couldn’t.”

  We all joined her in toasting him.

  “Nightmare,” said Pagan. “The whole thing is a fucking nightmare.”

  Dean called at midnight, his time, just after I’d drifted off to sleep.

  “ ’Lo?” I croaked.

  “Hey, Bunny, I wake you up?”

  “No problem.”

  “It’s an hour earlier here, but I figured you’d be awake.” His voice was soft, a little drunk.

  I checked out the clock-radio: quarter after one. “How’s Houston?”

  “Flat and wide, with shitty Chinese food.”

  “I can meet you at the airport, with sesame noodles.”

  “Naked?”

  “Not sure how that’d go over on the PATH train.”

  He laughed. “Wear my trench coat.”

  “You don’t own a trench coat.”

  “My old coveralls, then.”

  “In public? Dream on.”

  “In private, then. Don’t bother with the airport.”

  “You’re on.”

  “In that case, I’ll spring for a taxi home.”

  “I miss you,” I said.

  “See you at eight. Don’t forget the noodles.”

  33

  Wednesday morning I’d put on the only suit I owned for the grand jury, a college pal’s castoff first-interview getup in navy gabardine. The stiff double-breasted jacket and pleated skirt made me look like a stumpy maiden aunt on alumnae day.

  I thanked God Dean wasn’t back yet; he would’ve given me no end of grief.

  Bost was pretty sharp by comparison, in tailored gray with a skirt that hit above the knee.

  The grand-jury venue was smaller than the courtrooms I’d walked past Tuesday on the way to Bost’s office.

  There were two doors, both solid wood with no glass panels. I’d been shown in through one of them from a little waiting area. I presumed the second door led out to the main hallway.

  I took my seat and glanced over at the jurors, maybe twenty faces. Everybody looked like they were my parents’ age and up.

  Bost stepped forward and nodded at me. “Could you please state your full name for the record, please?”

  “Madeline Ludlam Fabyan Dare,” I replied.

  One of the jurors’ eyebrows shot up, an older Irish-looking guy in a brown cardigan.

  Who could blame him? It was a mouthful.

  “Ms. Dare,” said Bost, “to begin with, I’d like to ask you about the events of September nineteenth.”

  “Certainly,” I said.

  And we were off. I described meeting Cate, the cemetery, the whole nine yards.

  Bost paused for a moment.

  I looked around the room while she consulted her paperwork. It was a stark little place, with one wall paneled in unrelieved teak as testament to the enduring banality of Bauhaus: “Mid-Century,” though that wasn’t what anyone would have called it in 1990.

  I would’ve just called it motel-ugly, then and now, being the sort of person who considers Danish Modern the Velveeta of furniture.

  “Can you describe what happened next?” asked Bost.

  “Cate gave me a machete and some big clippers, and some garbage bags. And then I went to work.”

  “Can you describe the area you were working on?”

  “I was hacking into a pretty thick section of vines and bushes. I think I filled up two bags, and then hit a bit of a tunnel, low to the ground.”

  I described crawling into the thicket.

  “What happened then?” asked Bost.

  “I could see something round and white lying on top of the leaves,” I said.

  “Did you know what it was?”

  “I’d crawled in a little further before I realized it was a skull. By that point I could see the rib cage and everything. I realized the bones were a child’s.”

  “And after that?”

  “I backed out and ran to find Cate,” I said, then related what happened up until Skwarecki’s and her own arrival at Prospect.

  “And did you return the following week?”

  “Detective Skwarecki got in touch with Cate a few days later, and gave her the go-ahead to bring in the next scheduled group of volunteers.”

  “Had Detective Skwarecki asked you to be on the lookout for anything in particular?”

  I looked at the jurors and described the clothes in the missing-persons report.

  “Did you find any objects of that sort?” asked Bost

  “We found a shoe,” I said. “A little sneaker.”

  A few of the jurors nodded.

  “Can you describe the sneaker?” asked Bost.

  “It was white, and there were two words written on it.”

  “And what were those?”

  “ ‘Club Melmac,’ ” I said.

  I expected her to ask me whether I knew the significance of that, but she didn’t. Or maybe she did and it would have been hearsay or something, unless the details in the missing-persons report were related by Skwarecki directly.

  “What did you do then?”

  “We waited for Detective Skwarecki to come back.”

  “The
detective had been there already that day?” asked Bost.

  I explained about the vertebra.

  “And when the detective returned,” said Bost, “you and Ms. Ludlam showed her the sneaker?”

  “We did, yes,” I said, “and she bagged that as well.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Dare,” said Bost. “I’m going to ask now whether the jurors have any questions for you.”

  She and I both turned toward them.

  A silver-haired African American woman leaned forward. “I have a question.”

  Bost said, “Yes ma’am?”

  The woman raised a pair of glasses, suspended around her neck by a fine chain dotted with tiny pearls. “May I ask who found the sneaker?”

  Bost looked at me. “Ms. Dare?”

  “One of the other volunteers,” I said.

  The juror nodded. “And do you know which one?”

  Bost relayed the question to me. “Did you know at that time which of the volunteers had discovered the sneaker?”

  “I didn’t,” I said, looking from her to the juror. “Someone left it sitting on this little granite post, near the central path.”

  “So you don’t know where, exactly, the shoe was first discovered?” asked the juror.

  “Did you know its original location, Ms. Dare?” relayed Bost.

  I spoke directly to the juror. “No ma’am. I only saw it after it had been placed on the post. The other volunteers had gone home by then. Cate and I left it right there until the detective arrived.”

  I left out the part about poking it with a stick.

  “I see. Thank you,” said the juror, settling back in her seat.

  Bost waited a moment. “Are there any further questions?”

  The jurors shook their heads.

  Bost turned toward me.

  “All right, Ms. Dare,” she said. “Thank you.”

  I stood up to walk back out through the waiting room.

  Kyle had asked me to find him once I was finished.

  The security guy let me through into the DA’s offices. Rosemary the receptionist had me sign in again before handing me a GUEST sticker. This one was blue.

  She called Kyle and he came to the desk to get me.

  “Do I need an umbrella this time?” I asked as I followed him back down a different hallway, away from the one leading to Bost’s office.

  “You should be safe,” he said. “Things seem to be moving along today. And we don’t get as much leakage on my side.”

  His office was a little white cubby with a view of the parking lot. Where Bost had had her photo of the Unisphere he had a bulletin board jammed with Kyle-at-the-beach-with-friends photos and a dozen shots of a little beige dog with a mushed-in face.

  “That’s Mason,” Kyle explained. “Is he not the most adorable thing ever?”

  I peered at the photos, squinting. “That guy in the Speedo?”

  “My dog, Madeline.”

  I am not the hugest dog person who ever lived, but I agreed that Mason looked precious and well behaved and remarkably brilliant, for a non-human.

  Satisfied with my level of Mason worship, Kyle asked, “So how’d it go with the grand jury?”

  “Okay, I guess. Bost just asked me about finding the skeleton, and then the sneaker, a week later.”

  “That makes sense,” he said. “She’ll want to show the basis on which Skwarecki established the victim’s identity.”

  “So if the jurors come back with a true bill, what happens next?”

  “This is the hurry-up-and-wait part of things. They have to do another arraignment, first of all.”

  “The same as the first one?” I asked.

  “This will be the ‘arraignment on indictment.’” And then he got into the details, explaining why I didn’t really need to show up for anything until the actual trial.

  “And they’ll definitely plead ‘not guilty’?” I asked.

  “We’d know by now, otherwise.”

  “No plea bargains?”

  “We don’t really do that in Queens, after the indictment,” he said. “Safe to say that your guys are going to trial.”

  “Even if they change their minds?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “Like that case I just had with Marty? I was begging the defendant to change his plea to guilty the whole time.”

  “Why?”

  “So his daughter wouldn’t have to testify. There was no reason to put her through it.”

  “Skwarecki said you had the guy confessing to everything beforehand.”

  “Exactly,” he said, “and that asshole knew we had him, but he made her get up on the stand anyway.”

  “I can’t imagine,” I said.

  “I tell you, Maddie, this little girl? She was magnificent. She showed up the day she had to testify wearing this fuzzy pink hat with a kitten on the front, and underneath the kitten it said ‘Fabulous’ in hot-pink sequins. So she looks up at me and says, ‘Kyle, I know you’re going to make me take my hat off, but I just wanted to wear it as long as I could.’ ”

  He was making me get all teary-eyed.

  “And did you make her take it off?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? I knelt down right next to her and I said, ‘Honey, if you hadn’t shown up in that hat today, I would have had to go out and buy it for you, because if the people on that jury need to know anything, they need to know You. Are. Fabulous.”

  “Oh, crap,” I said, reaching for the box of Kleenex on his desk because now my eyes were brimming, ready to spill over.

  “I’m telling you, Madwoman, that little girl climbed up into the box and she didn’t flinch once, just spoke into the microphone with all the guts in the world and told us exactly what happened. Horrible, explicit, evil things she’d already been forced to live through once.”

  “So you got him? The father?”

  “He changed his plea then and there, the bastard.”

  I blew my nose.

  “Good,” I said. “And I hope he has a really shitty time for the entire rest of his life.”

  Kyle shrugged. “Twenty-five years. I bet he’s out in fifteen.”

  “Maybe he’ll get killed in prison.”

  “Sure,” he said. “If we’re lucky.”

  I thought about Pierce, wishing him the same fate.

  I looked at Kyle. “Is it ever the creepy-drifter guy with free candy—this kind of stuff?”

  “Stranger Danger,” he said. “The last great myth.”

  “Yeah. I mean, your little girl with the hat, that kid Lisa Steinberg getting beaten to death by her adoptive father, Teddy…”

  Pagan…

  “Don’t get me wrong, it happens,” he said, “but it’s an infinitesimal percentage overall. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, the kind of abuse you’re talking about? It’s the nonbiological male in the family orbit. The stepfather, the mother’s boyfriend…”

  “And the mothers?”

  “Sometimes they don’t know. Sometimes they’re too scared to do anything about it. Maybe they’re financially dependent on the guy.”

  “Fuck that.”

  “My sentiments exactly,” said Kyle.

  I tossed my Kleenex into the wastepaper basket next to his desk. “Wanna go get some lunch?”

  34

  Kyle and I planned to dawdle over lunch.

  “I’m working late tonight anyway,” he said. “I might as well take a decent break now.”

  We had a window booth at the same Italian restaurant where I’d run into him days earlier with Skwarecki and Bost.

  “There’s really nowhere else to eat around here,” Kyle explained. “Sooner or later you run into everyone—cops, defense attorneys,

  everyone in the DA’s office. I guess it keeps us all honest. Or at least polite.”

  The minute he said that I saw Skwarecki and Cate standing in the main dining room’s arched doorway and waved them over.

  I introduced Kyle and Cate to one another, and we ordered a round of iced teas and
sodas while perusing our menus for more solid fare.

  “Are you guys done with your stuff for the day?” I asked Skwarecki and Cate.

  Cate nodded.

  Skwarecki said, “Should be another hour or so. Bost said she’d

  beep me.”

  “So will we know today about the indictment?” I asked.

  “Sure,” she said. “Late afternoon, probably.”

  “I think it’s so interesting that they’ll both be tried at once,” said Cate. “It seems a bit counterintuitive, to me.”

  “Well, you really want the codefendants in the room at the same time,” said Kyle. “Nothing creates more doubt in a jury than an empty chair. The defense has a field day with that. And then it’s a lot more time and expense to have to go through the process more than once.”

  Skwarecki traced an index-fingertip line through the beads of condensation on her water glass. “Not to mention that when you have witnesses testifying in separate cases, they might remember slightly different details each time. Even if it’s something small—‘He was wearing a gray suit,’ ‘He was wearing a blue jacket,’ the defense’ll use the contradictions to make a jury question the entire statement.”

  I said, “They’ll have separate lawyers, though, won’t they? Albert Williams and Teddy’s mother.”

  “With codefendants,” said Kyle, “having both defense attorneys working for the public defender’s office would be a conflict of interest. That’s how the mother ended up with Marty as counsel.”

  “I was wondering about that,” I said. “I mean, judging from his tailor alone the guy doesn’t look exactly affordable.”

  Kyle took a sip of his ice water. “There’s a rotation of local criminal defense attorneys who are called upon to step in. She got lucky.”

  “Marty’s going to milk this thing for airtime,” said Skwarecki. “Mark my fucking words.”

  “Our Mr. Hetzler has been called many things,” agreed Kyle, “but shrinking violet is not among them.”

  An hour later we were debating the merits of coffee and/or dessert when a group of young gang-affiliated-looking guys took over the table beside us: pants hung low, thick gold chains weighed down with medallions the size of hood ornaments.

  Kyle and Skwarecki gave them a solid once-over, eyes hooded. The boys glared right back, bristling.