“Maybe it’s cooler inside,” Williams says hopefully.
“Yeah,” I agree – but I wouldn’t put any money on it.
We open the gate and start to walk across the front yard. There are maybe a dozen kids there. Some of them sitting alone, quietly nodding their heads like they are playing at being mesmerized bears. Others run around with manic energy. A couple of the kids have bulging cheeks and broad, dull foreheads, but the rest could probably pass for normal.
I stop and squat down in front of one of the sitting boys, who is maybe ten years old. “Hi, how ya doing?” I say in my best Uncle Mike voice.
The kid looks up at me with blank eyes, watches me for about three seconds, then loses interest and returns to his grizzly bear impersonation. Behind me, I hear Williams taking a deep breath.
“Can I help you?” asks a voice to my left.
I stand up and find myself facing a middle-aged blonde in a white, starched nurse’s uniform.
“Police,” I say, showing her my tin.
“Are you here to see Dr Maddox?” the nurse asks.
Just by the way she says his name, I can tell she thinks he’s the best thing since sliced bread.
“Yeah, we’re here to see Dr Maddox,” I agree.
We follow her across the yard to the front porch. The steps groan as we mount them, but – almost surprisingly – manage to hold our weight. The nurse opens the screen door, leads us into the main hallway and knocks on the first door on the left. When a voice the other side shouts: “Come in”, she turns the handle and ushers us inside.
The room we find ourselves in is square. Every available inch of wall space is taken up by bookcases crammed with files, educational toys and learned journals. A battered desk stands by the window, and sitting behind it is a man wearing a button-down cotton shirt and a green knitted necktie which he’s loosened to the point at which the knot hangs a couple of inches below his collar.
“Police,” he says, and it is not a question.
“Yeah,” I tell him.
He nods his head. “I’ve been expecting you.”
I would guess he is around 40. He has a thin, tired face and the big, caring eyes of a professional do-gooder. Hey, I’m not knocking it – I’m a bit of a do-gooder myself.
“Is it okay if I go now?” the nurse asks. “The children are on their own in the yard, and I don’t want—”
“Sure, Nancy, you get back to the children,” the doctor says. He stands up and holds out his hand to me. “Howerd Maddox.”
“Lieutenant Mike Kaleta,” I answer, pumping the hand. “And this is my partner …”
Here, I hit a problem. Williams has always acted as if her first name was Sergeant, and though I know that I have seen her surname on the sign-in sheet, I can’t remember what it is.
“Caroline Williams,” my partner supplies, stretching out her hand to Maddox.
Caroline! It suits her.
Maddox asks us to sit down, and we do. Facing him across the desk, I feel like an anxious parent who’s here to get a progress report on my difficult kid, and from the way Williams is sitting – hands on her lap – I guess she is feeling the same way.
“This is about Bobbie Hopgood, isn’t it?” Maddox asks.
“You’ve heard, then?”
“The whole town must have heard by now.”
“Yeah,” I agree. “You remember him well?”
“Very well indeed. Bobbie was one of those children who almost drive me to the point of despair.”
“Because you can’t help them?”
“Yes,” Maddox agrees, nodding again, “though not in the way you mean. You’ve seen enough of this place, Lieutenant, to realize we are badly understaffed and under-financed. I am afraid the Board of Elders doesn’t give the education of the mentally challenged a very high priority.”
That I can believe. If he thought he could get away with it, Porky would probably wait until one dark night and dump all the kids from the special school over the other side of the state line.
“About Bobbie,” Williams prompts.
“Yes, Bobbie. We are fully aware that, because of our lack of resources, we are not developing the full potential in our children. That hurts – especially in a case like Bobbie’s. He was a very worthwhile child.”
“In what way was he particularly worthwhile?” I ask.
Maddox sighs, like he is about to make a speech he has made many times before – a speech he’ll probably have to go on making until they take him out of here in a box.
“It is wrong to think of the mentally disadvantaged as having no personality,” he says. “Most of them lack imagination, it is true, but they still have very distinct characters of their own, if you only take the trouble to discover them.”
“That’s right,” Williams says, with conviction.
“There are mean ones, and there are good ones,” the doctor continues. “Bobbie was one of the good ones, and, given the sort of home-life he had, that was quite remarkable.”
Oh yeah, his home-life…
“These children are all confused by a world which is moving much too fast for them,” Maddox says. “What they need most is love – unqualified affection.”
“And Bobbie didn’t get that?”
“Can I speak frankly?” the doctor asks, looking around as if he thinks Mrs Hopgood may be lurking in one of the corners. “Frankly and … and perhaps a little unprofessionally?”
“Go right ahead.”
“Bobbie’s mother wouldn’t have been the perfect parent in any circumstances, but the situation was made considerably worse by the fact that she blamed Bobbie for her husband’s desertion.”
“Blamed him for being born the way he was,” Williams says sympathetically.
“Exactly – blamed him for being born the way he was. And yet he was always trying to win her affection by doing things around the house. Of course, without the proper guidance he managed to screw up most of the time.”
“Could you give us an example?” I asked.
“Two come to mind straight away. He’d watched his mother doing the laundry and one day, while she was out at the market, he tried it himself. He’d mastered most of the principles – but not all of them. He put in far too much powder, the machine overflowed, and when his mother got home she found the kitchen awash with soapy water.”
“How did she react to that?” I ask, although I already know the answer.
“She gave him hell. Beat him, I think – though I can’t prove it. The point is that most other children, whatever their mental ability, would have given up then and there. But not Bobbie. The porch door was squeaking, he’d heard his mother complain about it, so he tried to fix it. He didn’t know it only needed oil. How could he? He was strong, even then, and in trying to make things better for his mom, he succeeded in pulling it off its hinges. I could give you other instances – heaps of them – but you get the general idea.”
“Any decent mother would have understood,” Williams interjects. “Any decent mother would have shown him she appreciated what he was trying to do.”
“I agree,” the doctor says. “Bobbie was like a little dog, wagging its tail, trying to please – and getting nothing but a good kicking in return.”
“So he was a nice kid and he only wanted affection,” I say. “Does that mean he couldn’t have raped those little children?”
“Yes, that’s what it means,” Maddox replies instantly – and with total conviction.
“And you’re prepared to say that from the witness stand, if and when the case comes to trial?”
“I am.”
Sure he is – but how good a witness is he going to make? The trouble with people like Maddox is that they’re so wrapped up in caring for others that they’ve no idea how to handle a world where everybody is only looking out for Number One.
“Giving evidence isn’t like having a cozy chat,” I warn him. “The prosecution will bring its own expert witnesses, and the DA will attempt to te
ar your evidence – your entire credibility – to shreds.”
“I’m sure I can field anything they might care to pitch at me,” he says.
Thinking baseball, you see – thinking fair and sportsman-like.
“You want me to run through the kind of cross-examination you’ll be getting?” I ask.
“Certainly, if it will make you feel happier.”
He is not exactly smug – but he is only just this side of it.
I stand up, so that now I am looking down on him, and point my finger at the center of his forehead.
“I ask you again, can you state categorically that Bobbie Hopgood could not have raped those little children?” I demand, my voice rising, imitating the hectoring disbelief of the prosecuting attorney homing in on a weak link in the defense’s case.
Even this early on, Maddox hesitates.
“Bobbie would never willingly hurt anybody,” he says finally.
He looks away. He knows he is being evasive, and he knows that I know it.
I walk to the other side of the room and can feel his eyes following me. I stop in front of the bookshelf, like I’m going to ask him if I can borrow one of his magazines, then suddenly swing round and bring the finger into action again.
“Does that mean he couldn’t have raped those little children?” I repeat. “Answer the question!”
Maddox looks confused. He is a fair-minded man – and that is no advantage when acting as an expert witness.
“A major problem we have with the special children in this school is trying to teach them to socialize,” he says. “It was particularly difficult in Bobbie’s case because his mother never let him play with any of the neighborhood kids. What that means in terms of behavioral patterns is that while he was always eager to relate to adults, he became very self-conscious and inhibited with his peer group.”
I do not move, but I let my eyes say that I consider him nothing but a quack.
“I’ll ask for a third time,” I tell him. “Could Bobbie Hopgood have raped those little children?”
Maddox takes a handkerchief out of his pants’ pocket and wipes his brow.
“If he did, then he didn’t know he was hurting them – simply didn’t have the experience to read the signs right.”
“Come on, doctor, some of those children received internal injuries!” I sneer. “Are you trying to tell me that they didn’t scream and that he didn’t recognize those screams as expressions of pain?”
“He could have been deaf at the time. There have been a number of well-documented cases of temporary blindness and deafness which were purely psychological.”
I stride back the desk and rest my palms on it, so that our faces are only a couple of feet apart.
“Deaf?” I repeat. “And just what are the chances of that kind of thing happening?”
“Very low,” the doctor admits. “All I’m trying to explain is that, for Bobbie to commit those crimes, there would have to have been some factor at play outside his normal psychological make-up.”
I have seen enough. I sit down.
“So it’s not impossible that he could have done it?” I say in my normal voice.
“Nothing is impossible,” Maddox confesses.
He looks like he thinks he has failed. But he hasn’t. He may have tried to dodge the issue and hedge around difficult areas, yet what he’s said has been enough to reaffirm my belief that Bobbie Hopgood is innocent.
But would he convince an untrained jury of that – after a real prosecutor had spent hours taking him to pieces?
No way!
So he’s less than useless as a witness, but there is another way we can use him, because he’s made me realize something very important – I am not the one to talk to Bobbie, the one who can drag from his brain the fuzzily stored facts that will save him. Doctor Maddox is the man we need.
“If I can make an appointment,” I say, “would you visit with Bobbie? I know you’re under pressure here and that it’s a lot to ask—”
“It’s not a lot to ask,” Maddox interrupts. “If it will help Bobbie, I’ve got all the time in the world.”
10
On the way back from the Heights, we hit a jam at the corner of Davies and 7th, and for the next five minutes we all move along like snails on tranquilizers. Williams still doesn’t seem to want to talk, and I use the time to do a little thinking myself. And what I think, as the sweat pours off me, is that maybe my partner is right about getting air-conditioning fitted.
We have just crawled past PS 7 when Williams suddenly says: “I need to take some personal time.”
The urgency in her voice startles me.
“Is this something to do with the case?” I ask.
“Might be,” my sergeant admits.
“Want to tell me about it?”
Williams shakes her head.
“Not till I’ve checked it out.”
“And how long is that going to take?”
“About two hours.”
I look toward the sidewalk. The inside lane is all parked up, which means if I’m going to drop Williams off, I’ll be blocking the middle lane as well. But what the hell – nobody’s going anywhere fast, are they?
I signal I’m pulling in, give the driver behind me a couple of seconds to register the fact, then come to a halt.
Williams opens her door and steps out.
“If you’re going to be any more than two hours, you better call in,” I tell her.
Williams puts her hand on her hip, like she’s the daughter in Father Knows Best. For a second, I think the pose is accidental, and then she says: “Call in if it’s more than two hours? Aw, come on Daddy, give me a break!”
I try to look like Robert Young and say: “I’m only concerned about your welfare, Princess.”
The guy in the car behind me honks his horn impatiently, and like any other peace-loving motorist, I give him the finger. Shit, if he doesn’t like it, he can always call the cops!
My sergeant is already squeezing her way through the narrow gap between two parked cars.
“Keep the faith, Williams,” I shout as I start to pull away.
“You betcha, Loot,” she calls back.
How ‘bout that? I think as I watch Williams recede in my mirror. We’ve just been joking together – like real partners.
*
The Squad Room cooling system is a series of brass fans, hanging down with about 20ft of ceiling space separating them from each other. They were installed when the building was first constructed, and in their day they must have been considered a marvel. But the fans, like headquarters itself, are past their best. Some still swish round at almost the speed they were intended to, but others make heavy work of completing a full circle. There are even a few which have good days and bad days, alternating bouts of feverish activity with periods of lethargy.
The fan above my desk is one of the off/on variety, and as I sit here – waiting for my request for a meeting between Bobbie Hopgood and Dr Maddox to be processed – it whirrs lazily, like it knows it isn’t doing its job and just doesn’t give a damn.
On the desk in front of me are a thick pile of transcripts – the interviews with the rape victims and their parents. All morning there has been something nagging at my brain, pricking me just below the level of consciousness.
It’s not a fact – I’m pretty sure of that.
It’s not a witness we’ve overlooked, or a piece of evidence which will point the finger elsewhere.
Whatever it is – this jagged-edged broken bottle of an idea – it is much more negative than that.
“So what is it, Mr Intellectual?” my brain taunts me – and I realize it’s speaking in the voice of my drunken bum of a father. “Why can’t you put your finger on it, Mr Yale Graduate? Highest SAT scores in Brooklyn and you can’t see that one of your basic assumptions is wrong. You dumb shit!”
I try to drag the idea to the surface, but it will not come unaided. Maybe the transcripts will tease it out.
I pick up the first one, and the moment I start to read I can picture the interview as if it was happening right now.
Conversations in family living rooms – once happy, open places, but now seeming cramped and stifling, the walls dripping fear, the drapes drawn tight against the threat of the sunlight outside. I can see all the parents, (watchful, suspicious, guilty), slowly merging in my mind’s eye into a single couple – ‘Portrait of a Victim’s Family’. And I can see the kids themselves – nervous, fidgety, not responding to my smiles because they know, deep inside themselves, that they can never trust an adult again.
The children’s names, looking strangely clinical in double print black type, swim before my eyes.
*
Chuck Wagstaff
“What were you doing on the Interstate, Chuck?”
“Pardon me?”
“You were found near McDonald’s. Why were you there?”
“I was looking for Ronald McDonald.”
“Tell me about the man.”
“He hurt me.”
“Did you see his face?”
“No, I didn’t. He grabbed me from behind. It really hurt.”
*
Jerry Schmitt
“Did you see the man, Jerry?”
“No, sir. He put a sack over my head. He said it was a game.”
“What was his voice like?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could you tell whether he was young or old?”
“I … I don’t know.”
*
Patricia Walker
“It was dark. He was big. He lay on top of me and I couldn’t see anything.”
*
Violation Page 7
