“No, she did not,” said Skwarecki.
“How do you know that, Detective?”
“Following her arrest,” said Skwarecki, “Angela Underhill confessed to having sat on that same bed and watched as Albert Williams punched her three-year-old son, Teddy, in the chest repeatedly, until the boy died.”
49
I expected a burst of noise in the courtroom following Skwarecki’s description of Teddy Underhill’s murder.
I leaned over to Kyle.
“Nobody makes a peep,” I whispered, “with a bombshell like that?”
“You and Cate are probably the only people here who haven’t heard it already. It would’ve been the backbone of Bost’s opening argument unless she’s an idiot. And she’s not.”
The judge smacked his gavel down three times and glared at us, looking righteously pissed.
Bost addressed the judge. “Your Honor, I have no further questions for Detective Skwarecki at this time, but I may want to call her back to the stand later tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll agree to that, Ms. Bost,” he said. “And ask that the defense address its questions to the detective at that time.”
Even from behind Hetzler looked like he’d bristled at that, but he didn’t put up any argument.
“As it’s getting rather late in the day,” continued the judge, “we’ll recess until tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” said Bost.
Cate and Kyle and I walked out into the front hallway. She had to leave so we hugged good-bye, but Kyle held back with me.
“You have a minute?” he asked as we watched her go out the front doors and back into winter.
“Sure, what’s up?”
He put his hand on my left arm and looked around the hallway. “Let’s go get a coffee or something.”
“Are you done for the day?”
“Yeah.”
“Then screw coffee. Let’s go back to the city and get a drink.”
He seemed preoccupied in the car.
“You’re not going to ask me about stealing state secrets or anything, right?” I asked, after we’d driven a number of silent blocks.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just trying to figure out how much I should tell you.”
“The number of times we all played Truth or Dare over tequila, back in college? I wouldn’t have thought we had any secrets left.”
He didn’t answer that.
“Kyle, it’s me. You can tell me anything. You know that.”
“It’s not personal, it’s about the trial. And I’m not sure about the ethical implications.”
“I’ve kept other secrets. We’ve all been through some shit since the last time you and I hung out.”
“I’m an officer of the court. It’s different.”
“I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the outcome of this trial.”
“I know.”
“So talk to me.”
He was quiet, pulling up to the tollbooths for the tunnel.
“Kyle?”
“It’s about Mrs. Underhill,” he said.
I grabbed his arm. “Is she okay? My God, I should have called her last night.”
“She’s fine, physically. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Then what? What’s wrong?”
“Let’s wait until we have some cocktails in front of us, okay?”
We ended up at a crappy Irish place on Third Avenue.
Kyle ordered a Jameson rocks. I asked for a pint of Guinness, girding my taste buds for disappointment.
We slid into a booth and the bartender put some quarters in the jukebox.
“Clancy Brothers,” I said. “Gag me.”
“You used to love Irish dives.”
“I used to love Irish guys. Thankfully, there’s a cure for that.”
“What?”
“Penicillin.”
I took a sip of the Guinness, then pushed it away. Someone had obviously dissolved a urinal cake in it despite the crappy head.
Kyle winked at me over his Jameson. “Pickled egg?”
“You first.”
He put down the drink.
“Truth or Dare, Kyle.”
He ran a fingertip along the edge of his glass. “Truth.”
“Why are we here?”
“Mrs. Underhill’s waffling on her testimony. Bost needs her to
step up.”
“She testified before the grand jury, right?”
Kyle didn’t answer. I guess he wasn’t allowed to.
“If she changes her story now it’s perjury,” I said. “Can’t Bost threaten her with jail time or something?”
“The woman’s ninety years old, or close to it. Juries don’t want to see someone like her being grilled—elderly, polite, vulnerable. She’s lost her daughter, her great-grandson, her husband—and she’s old enough to get away with saying she’s confused, or forgets things.”
“She’s sharp as a tack.”
“You know that,” he said. “The jury doesn’t.”
I looked at my Guinness.
“Look, Bost mentioned that you’d spent some time with the woman, bonded a little. Maybe you could check in with her. Give her some encouragement. That’s all I’m saying.”
“How could she back down? After what happened to that boy,
everything she knew? Jesus, we cried together….”
“Families are strange.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Tell me about it.”
“Just call her. It can’t hurt.”
“If she wants to shut down there’s nothing I can do.”
“Try anyway.”
“I will. Of course I will.”
He was quiet again for a minute.
“What?” I said.
“Truth or Dare.”
“Truth.”
“What happened that makes this matter so much to you?”
“This boyfriend of Mom’s molested my little sister. When she was eleven. I just found out about it.”
He nodded, sadly.
“It’s not—I mean, compared to the stuff you’re dealing with, Kyle? It was bad, but let’s just say he never achieved penetration.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s about the destruction of trust. The physical details aren’t predictive of how much damage that will do.”
No. They sure as shit aren’t.
I tried calling Mrs. Underhill seven times that night. She didn’t have a machine and she never picked up.
Bost called the pathologist to the stand the next morning. He looked different in a coat and tie. I hadn’t recognized him at first.
“In September of last year you examined the skeletal remains which had been discovered in Prospect Cemetery, did you not?” she asked.
“I did,” he said.
“Can you describe your preliminary findings relating to the victim’s identity?”
“The remains were those of a child, roughly three years old and of African ancestry.”
“And could you determine the child’s sex?” asked Bost.
“It’s difficult to ascertain the gender of skeletal remains in prepubescent victims. Secondary sexual characteristics aren’t apparent before an individual reaches the teenage years.”
“And yet you’re confident that these are the remains of Teddy
Underhill?”
“I am,” said Dr. Merica. “Absolutely.”
“On the basis of what evidence?”
“A comparison of the child’s skull with a photograph taken of
Underhill.”
Bost’s assistant set up another photograph on the easel. It was a head-and-shoulders close-up of a tiny little boy, smiling broadly, the same photo I’d seen on Mrs. Underhill’s piano, only ten times bigger. There was a gap between his upper front teeth I hadn’t noticed before. I could see the big patch of red behind him: the suit of the Santa whose lap he was sitting on.
“And is this the photograph you used for comparison
?” asked Bost.
“It is,” answered Merica.
Bost motioned to her assistant. The next photograph showed Teddy’s face superimposed over the image of a ghostly skull. Every feature synced with the structure of the bones beneath: eyes and eye sockets, cheeks and cheekbones, the point of his chin, the gap in his smile.
The jurors looked shocked. I was impressed. Maybe we hadn’t needed the second sneaker after all—even without a blood sample.
“And was it possible for you to determine any approximate time frame for when the child’s death occurred?” asked Bost.
“The state of his remains indicated that he had died somewhere between three to six months before his remains were discovered.”
“What else could you determine from your examination?”
“This was a battered child,” said Merica.
“How can you tell?”
“Teddy Underhill suffered extensive physical trauma on a number of occasions before his death.”
“What sort of trauma, Dr. Merica?” asked Bost.
“The injuries to his bones,” he said. “There were six fractures in various stages of healing.”
“Which stages?”
“Technically, we’d call these localized, asymmetrical areas of subperiosteal new bone formation. They were consistent with the types of fractures we associate with extreme, systematic physical abuse in children—injuries to the forearms, cranial vault, ribs, and legs. In addition to periosteal lesions.”
“What causes a periosteal lesion?” asked Bost.
“They can be caused either by blows or by the child’s arms and legs being used as ‘handles’ by the abuser. They’re a sort of damage caused by actually bruising the bones themselves, evidence of the surface of the bone being stripped away by such trauma, or of bleeding caused below the periosteal layer of the bone by the force of a blow.”
One of the jurors brought her hand up to her mouth, her eyes clenched shut.
Bost’s assistant placed a new photo on the easel, a shot of two long bones with a thick lump in the middle of one of them.
I felt my own stomach lurch and looked away.
“Can you describe what this photograph shows us?” asked Bost.
“This is a photograph of the bones in Teddy Underhill’s forearm—the radius and ulna,” said Merica. “The lumps you see in the middle of each are what we call a ‘callus’ of bone.”
“What does that indicate, Doctor?”
“This child’s right forearm was broken and never treated or immobilized. It healed on its own, hence the thickening you can see in this image.”
I covered my own right forearm’s cast, remembering how painful my first break had been—without anesthesia.
Teddy lived through that six times.
Seven.
No painkillers. Not even an X-ray.
Those fuckers.
I looked over at the jurors, hoping they saw Angela and Albert in the same nasty light. Most of them were wincing, and none were looking in the direction of Bost’s easel. The woman who’d covered her mouth was crying.
Good.
“And could you tell from Teddy’s remains what it was that killed him?” asked Bost.
“I think it’s safe to say that the massive blunt-force trauma to his chest could easily have caused the child’s death.”
“Can you tell us whether that trauma was inflicted before his death?” asked Bost.
“It was certainly inflicted when his bones were still elastic,” said Merica. “Either before—or very close to—the time of his death. What we would call ante- or peri-mortem trauma.”
“So this damage couldn’t have happened later on, when his remains were in the cemetery?”
“No,” said Dr. Merica.
“And would the trauma be consistent with someone having punched the boy in the chest repeatedly?”
“Yes, and with a great deal of force.”
“Thank you, Dr. Merica. I have no further questions at this time.”
Bost returned to her table, and the curly black head of Galloway bobbed up for the defense.
50
Galloway strode over toward the witness stand. “Dr. Merica, I’d like to ask you a few more questions about the trauma inflicted on the boy’s ribs.”
Merica nodded, his bushy eyebrows casting deep shadow over his eyes when his head tipped forward.
“You say you can tell that these bones were fractured before the boy’s death, but can you tell us what caused the fracture?”
“Well,” said Merica, “blunt force indicates that the injuries weren’t caused by anything sharp.”
“Such as a knife?”
“Exactly,” he said.
“Because a sharp object would have caused different kinds of damage to the bones?”
“Yes. We’d expect to see nicks or other marks made by the sharp edge of such an instrument.”
“And those kinds of marks can sometimes indicate what sort of instrument was used, can’t they?”
“Yes,” he said.
“But with blunt force you can’t know that, can you?”
“Know what?”
“What sort of object caused the trauma,” said Galloway.
“Not really, no.”
“You really can’t tell whether the injuries to the boy’s rib cage were caused by a fist, can you?”
“No.”
“Or any of the other injuries? Could you tell us what exactly inflicted them?” she asked.
“No.”
“And you certainly can’t tell us who inflicted them, can you?”
“There are certainly some individuals who wouldn’t have had the strength.”
“But those injuries could have been inflicted by Teddy Underhill’s mother, am I right? You have no way of knowing?”
“That’s right,” said Merica.
“Thank you, Dr. Merica. I have no further questions.”
The judge looked over to the defense table. “Mr. Hetzler?”
“Nothing at this time, Your Honor.”
The judge adjourned for the day.
I met up with Skwarecki in the hallway again. “You hear anything back about the car?”
“Nothing like it registered to anyone near Prospect,” she said. “I sent a patrol car up to drive around the neighborhood—in case maybe someone’s driving it without a registration. They didn’t
see it.”
“I don’t feel really relieved.”
“You’ve given your testimony. There’s no reason to come after you now.”
“Thank you for staying over that night.”
“Don’t mention it,” she said.
“No, seriously. I should at least cook you dinner or something, okay? I’ll take off work early. Name the night.”
“How you gonna cook with that cast on?”
“Maybe I’ll order pizza.”
“Everything but anchovies,” she said.
“You’re on.”
The clouds over Queens Boulevard brimmed with mid-winter’s gloating certainty that there was nothing between right now and your own death but a thin membrane of iron-poor blood and lonely nursing homes.
I dreaded going back to work at the Catalog.
I wanted to hash out the meaning of the day’s testimony over a couple of beers with Cate or Kyle or Skwarecki, instead.
And I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me.
Cars fishtailed homeward through slush. It was already dark enough that their brake lights cast hot bright points of blood-spatter along the hissing street.
I saluted Fat Boy with my uncasted hand and jogged downstairs toward the subway.
The platform was crowded, all of us turning like a school of minnows toward the approaching train, braced to shoulder our way inside.
I got stuck near the door without a handhold. There was one empty seat nearby, but some recent occupant had filled its shallow orange-plastic bowl with a souvenir pint of urine.
It was one of the newer cars, the kind supposedly impervious to graffiti. Frustrated taggers had etched their marks into the Plexiglas windows or scrawled indecipherable fat-marker glyphs on ad posters in lieu of actual walls.
Someone had gouged out the cardboard eyes of every Kool-smoking, condom-touting model pictured—damage as signature. We were years beyond Keith Haring’s glowing dogs and babies, the helium-bouncy colors of Fab 5 Freddy.
We screeched into a turn and all the lights went out for a long
moment.
Jammed up against strangers in the fetid dark, I wondered if Galloway and Hetzler could succeed in shoveling enough suspicion onto one another’s clients that in the end they might both go free.
The apartment was empty when I got home. I ate cold Chinese food and dialed Mrs. Underhill every fifteen minutes.
51
I’d now spent enough hours in the courtroom to have made its protocol morph from mystical to boring. It was stuffy and stale the following morning, quiet but for the rustle of papers and creak of chairs as onlookers settled in for the morning’s program.
By the time the bailiff sang out the all-rise order as the judge swept in, I felt like we’d been waiting forever.
I wanted to be here, I wanted to watch the testimony unfold, and God knows I wanted to see justice done. It was just that I had discovered the verity of how very, very slowly the mills of justice do actually grind.
Like reading Dickens. At the DMV.
The judge started leafing through some papers.
Cate cleared her throat and reached into her purse. I watched her pull forth a peppermint, which she tried to unwrap without making any noise. This is, of course, a physical impossibility.
Forget DMV, the whole thing smacked of church: same robes, same enforced solemnity, same inevitable urge to cough.
We lacked only fold-out red-velvet kneelers, stultifying dirges, and a fifth of Episcopal Manischewitz.
At long last, His Honor looked up and gave Bost the go-ahead.
She rose to her feet and squared her shoulders. “The prosecution calls Stephanie Keller.”
Cate smiled. “I guess the chemo worked.”
The side door opened and there was another long pause, until finally one of the guards conveyed a tiny woman across its threshold in a wheelchair.
Invisible Boy Page 26
