Injustice (4 page)

I went into the kitchen for more beers. On my way back, I stopped in the doorway and just watched the four of them—Tina, Lydia, Barnaby, and Henry. Barn had fallen asleep in his chair. Tina and Lydia were sitting with their backs toward me. They both had
long auburn hair in ponytails, and both of them were wearing sundresses. They were slender, dark-shouldered, scrubbed women, and in the curve of their necks and the tapering of waist and erectness of posture and tilt of head as they lifted forks to their mouths, you could see they were intelligent and radiated warmth. And if I hadn't known them but was merely seeing them for the first time—eating and laughing together—I'd have recognized that they were sisters, and I probably would have envisioned getting to know them and perhaps falling in love with one of them. I picked up my phone and snapped a picture.

Across from them, facing me, sat Henry. Lydia first brought Henry over for dinner half a year earlier. I remember thinking how like her it was to not even see the disfigurement but just the man. We liked him right away. Tina and I talked about what a relief it would be if Lydia settled down with this stable and intelligent lawyer who might be able to calm the chaotic waters of her life.

It turned out Henry had just passed the bar exam and was clerking for a state court judge, but he hadn't been able to land a job after his clerkship ended. If Henry and Lydia had been married or engaged when he applied for his job in the U.S. Attorney's Office, I probably couldn't have hired him. Nepotism. And maybe if things had been better between Tina and me, I wouldn't have hired him. It wasn't because I didn't like him or that I thought him unqualified, it was just that I might have been wary of having my brother-in-law working for me. But when Lydia first introduced me to this new guy she was dating, I had already felt some ominous oscillations in the status quo of my marriage (which I attributed to the emotional impact of Tina's lumpectomy). So I was especially eager to please Tina and to do anything I could to make her see me as an indulgent and valuable husband.

At my suggestion, Henry had dropped off his résumé at my office.

I went back out to the picnic table. Henry was laughing, retelling the story of Kendall Vance's switcheroo. He was hamming it up. I handed the beers around and joined in the telling, feeding him lines but keeping him in the spotlight, making it his story.

Henry and Lydia left. Henry said he wanted to read over my draft of the memo for Judge Baxter. Lydia said she had a few errands she needed to do. We would meet at the park later. I carried the sleeping Barnaby to his bed. The longer he slept in the afternoon, the less cranky he'd be during the concert and fireworks.

R
okeby Park lies at the southern end of town paralleling the river. The land was ceded to the city a century ago by one of the big mill families, but it remained undeveloped woodlands until twenty years ago, when a public interest group discovered that a huge chunk of money had been left in trust for the city to develop the park “for the enjoyment of all.” The money was long gone. A lawsuit followed, and the resulting consent decree created a system of trails, recreational areas, groomed woodlands, and an outdoor amphitheater.

In my years as a prosecutor, I've read the name Rokeby Park in scores of police reports and investigative summaries. In different epochs of the city's tortured economic history, the park has seen homeless camps, gang wars, meth and heroin shooting galleries, and a thriving economy of drugs and prostitution. It has hosted the predictable continuum of bodies discovered under leaves or in shallow graves, sexual assaults, muggings, abductions, and suicides. How many times have I driven by one of the entrances at night and noticed the vehicle barriers removed, and seen, from deep inside the woods, the evening mist beautifully illuminated by the strobing of blue and red police lights?

But that's just a prosecutor's view of things: Exterminators probably see writhing populations of vermin where others see homes and parks and schools. Maybe prosecutors (and cops) are the same: We see the disease and the rot.

In reality, Rokeby is much more than a breeding site of social pestilence. The park is home to tai chi at noon, to joggers, to Rollerbladers, bird-watchers, picnickers, love-addled couples strolling hand in hand, kindergarten field trips, stargazers, botanizers, dog walkers, Frisbee golfers, and philosophers.

Tina and Barnaby and I spread our blanket on the grass of the amphitheater amid scores of other families. ZZ was on his leash and ecstatically trying to entangle himself with every other dog we saw. The orchestra was tuning up, creating that lovely mishmash of orphaned notes weaving themselves into ephemeral compositions. Firecrackers and cherry bombs went off in the woods,
pop, pop, pop,
and poor ZZ started trembling.

“I don't know if he'll make it through the fireworks,” Tina said.

I pulled ZZ onto my lap and cradled him. Barnaby hugged him. “It's okay, ZZ,” he said, “I'm here.”

Pop. Pop.

We were expecting a big group, but so far it was just the three of us. Henry had called to say he was still working on the memo and he'd meet us after the concert began. I didn't know where Lydia was.

Pop.

ZZ trembled.

Flora called me on my cell. “We're just parking,” she said. “We'll be along soon. Tell me how we can find you guys.”

“Green plaid blanket,” I said, “right near the statue. Is Lizzy with you?”

“Lizzy? No, isn't she there yet? She drove with Ethan. They should be there by now.”

I hung up with Flora and called Lizzy.

“Concert's about to begin,” I said when she answered.

“Okay. We're actually here already. But it's so crowded in the amphitheater. We're out walking in the woods. We'll head back now, okay?”

We hung up.

Pop. Pop pop.

Now ZZ was panting terribly. The trembling was getting worse, and he had a wild look in his eyes.

“I don't think this is going to work,” Tina said.

“I love you, ZZ,” Barnaby said.

“I'm going to take him home,” Tina said.

“I can do it if you'd rather.”

“No. You stay and wait for the others. I'll go.”

“But you'll come right back?” I asked.

“Of course, sweetie,” Tina said. “I'll just get him settled. It'll be quick.”

“I'm going with Mommy,” Barnaby said.

“No, you stay here with me, Barn. Mommy will be back soon.”

“I'm going with ZZ. I'm going with Mommy,” he said.

“Barnaby,” I said sternly. But he was gone, running after Tina, grabbing her hand, taking ZZ's leash from her. The three of them—Tina, Barnaby, and the dog—disappeared through the crowd.

I sat by myself on the blanket. It felt odd being alone, a little surreal, as the strands of music played through the low static of all the voices chattering around me, and the screams of children playing at the edge of the woods, and a quick deafening blast of resonance when someone brought the mike too close to a speaker.

My cell rang. It was Lizzy, but when I picked it up, she wasn't there. I tried calling Tina to remind her to leave a light on in the house for ZZ so the poor pup wouldn't be left terrified and alone in the dark, but Tina didn't answer.

Pop pop pop
.

I waited, expecting any second to see Lizzy and Ethan approach through the crowd and plunk down on the blanket with me; to see Flora and Chip; to see Lydia.

I mentally did the math of how long it should take Tina and Barn to weave through the crowd to the parking area, drive home, get ZZ settled, and then make it back here to be with me on the blanket . . .

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

T
here was screaming.

Then sirens.

And later the nighttime mist was illuminated from within by the strobing of blue and red police lights.

An announcement through the speakers informed us that the concert and fireworks were delayed. A little later, someone announced that the concert was about to begin. And there were rumors that seemed to spread across the crowd by invisible vectors.
A shooting. A killing.

All around me, families like mine sat on blankets with their loved ones. Children were wrapped fiercely in the arms of parents. Lovers had their four hands knotted tightly together. People were up and walking toward the woods, toward the blues and reds flashing through the trees. A cop took the mike and shushed the orchestra and announced that the area of “the incident” was off-limits; everything except the amphitheater was off-limits, and as soon as police had facilities in place for recording our names and identification, we'd be allowed to leave the park through designated exits. Until then, we would please all go back to wherever we'd been sitting.

I'd never gotten up. I'd been clinging to my blanket on the grass, feeling it was the only place in the universe; that if there was any hope of my loved ones finding me in the chaos, I had to stay put. We had only this patch of ground.

The orchestra had started playing again. There was a vocalist.

. . . stand beside her, and guide her,

Through the night with a light from above.

Around me, families and couples huddled. I couldn't spot anyone else sitting alone. Just me sitting by myself while everybody I cared about was adrift in the night.

But if I was the only one whose whole family was at large, I was also about the only one who could walk right past the sentries and step over the yellow tape to part the crowd of responders, wading into the nucleus of medics and detectives and forensic technicians. I could go demand to know what had happened.

I had my badge out and with it I scythed my way into the chaos.

“I will comport myself with dignity,” I whispered—as if the formality of those words could somehow create the stoicism I might need.

I had to go farther into the woods than I expected. I followed the paved path. It was lighted here and there with streetlamps, but they were few and dim enough not to overwhelm the feeling of woods and nighttime. The path wound through the trees. It led through a tunnel where another path crossed overhead. Whenever I was approached by a cop, I fended him off with my badge: “DOJ,” I said, or “U.S. Attorney's Office.”

There were police vehicles and unmarked cars and an ambulance. I recognized many of the enforcement personnel, but I beelined toward my target. The body was just beyond another culvert tunnel, maybe twenty yards from the trail, suggesting that the perp had muscled the victim off into the woods.

A foil blanket covered what needed covering.

When I stepped from the trail, I was again stopped by a uniformed cop. My badge failed to work its magic.

“I'm sorry, sir,” the guy said, “just the evidence response team beyond here.”

“But I'm—”

A strong hand encircled my arm, and a voice beside me said, “It's okay, Officer, I'll escort Mr. Davis.”

This was a guy I knew. Captain Dorsey of the state troopers. He walked me forward and we stopped. Whatever the blanket covered, it was too big to be a four-year-old boy.

“Do you know who it is?” I asked.

“Adult female,” Dorsey said.

One of the technicians looked up, saw Dorsey, and raised an eyebrow questioningly. Dorsey nodded, and the guy pulled the blanket back from the victim's head. She lay turned away from us and facedown in the dirt.

My first thought was Lizzy, but her hair was the wrong color. Lizzy is a honey blonde. The victim's hair was auburn.

Comport myself with dignity.

The color and texture of her hair, the shape of her head, the way she lay—it was all so familiar.

In a roar of unreality, I watched the crime scene tech squat down and, with gloved hands, gently cradle her head and lift her face from the dirt. The woods breathed with electric pulses of blue light.

“Tina,” I said aloud, and the sound was odd to me and I wondered for a moment if I'd misremembered my wife's name. “Tina.” But now the technician turned her head and set it back down on the dirt facing us, and my first thought was that people must look younger in death than when they're alive.

And I realized she was younger because it wasn't Tina. It was Lydia.

T
hat night exists in strobing pulses of blue and red. In my memory, I see stop-action tableaux. Crime scene techs placing things in plastic bags, a detective pointing out something about the geography of the crime, EMTs sliding a gurney into the ambulance.

And sound: After the ambulance moved slowly down the bike path toward the amphitheater, its siren burped once, not because it was in any hurry but to clear a path through the gawkers.