Invisible Boy (37 page)

G
alloway 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.

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.

Keller’s eyebrows were penciled in, her head swathed in a royal-blue scarf knotted low at the nape of her neck. The bailiff
took the helm of her slender green oxygen tank, walking beside her chair.

If Skwarecki hadn’t said they were both forty-three, I would’ve presumed this was a woman at least twice the detective’s age.
She was hunched over, her narrow body swimming in a long-sleeved dress.

The guard backed Keller’s chair into place beside the witness stand and set its brake.

“Ms. Keller,” said Bost, “I want to thank you for coming here today. I know it can’t have been easy for you.”

Keller spoke in a soft but clear voice. “I felt it was important. Teddy Underhill was a very sweet little boy.”

“Can you tell us when you first became concerned that he might be a victim of abuse?”

“Shortly after Teddy and his mother moved into Albert Williams’s apartment, in my building. I would say within the space of
a week.”

“And when was this?”

“August before last,” said Keller.

“Where were your two apartments, in relationship to one another?”

“I lived directly beneath them.”

“And what was it that first made you concerned for Teddy’s welfare?”

“Both apartments had windows on the street, and side windows opening onto an air shaft towards the rear. When it’s nice out,
you can’t help but learn a great deal about the neighbors. I’d seen Teddy in the stairwell with his mother often enough. We
spoke occasionally. I knew his name, how old he was.”

“And what was Teddy’s age at that time?”

“He was a few months past two,” said Keller. “That’s one reason I worried when I heard him getting screamed at within the
space of a week or so.”

“Could you tell who was screaming at him?”

“Certainly. Albert Williams.”

It was Galloway who objected this time. Hetzler didn’t so much as twitch.

“Your Honor,” said Galloway, “I’m not sure how Ms. Keller could have distinguished one voice from another in the general din
of a crowded air shaft.”

Keller couldn’t see the judge from where she was sitting, so she addressed Bost. “May I answer that?”

“Please do,” said Bost.

Keller turned toward Galloway. “I recognized Albert Williams’s voice for two reasons: he has a slight lisp, and among the
residents of all five apartments in our building, there was no one else named Teddy.”

“It wasn’t just screaming that worried you, though, was it?” asked Bost.

“I worked as an emergency-room nurse for twenty years, Ms. Bost. I had a good idea what I was hearing, sadly.”

“As a nurse, were you expected to act as what’s known as a mandated reporter?”

Keller said she was, and they discussed further reporting details.

“Can you tell us what, exactly, you told the hotline?”

Keller pulled a small notebook from the side pocket of her dress. “I’d like to refer to this for specific dates, if I may?”

“Please,” said Bost. “By all means.”

Keller opened the little book and held it up before her face. “On August twenty-third, I heard Albert Underhill berating the
child for not finishing his dinner. I heard the sound of several slaps, and I believe he then smashed Teddy’s plate against
a wall in the kitchen.”

She turned the page. “Two weeks later—September sixth—

Williams was upset because Teddy had left a toy on the floor. The child had a black eye the following morning. His mother
told me that he’d run into a corner of the couch.”

She looked up at Bost. “I’m sorry to say that I was gone from the building for the next two weeks after that. When I returned,
I saw Teddy and his mother in the front entry. The boy was limping, trying to walk on a swollen ankle.”

A
broken
ankle. Bone grinding on bone.

My stomach lurched and contracted. I climbed over Cate and burst out the door for the hallway, hoping like hell I’d make it
to the ladies’ room in time.

T
he ladies’ room was less stuffy than the courtroom and my nausea went away, but I still felt light-headed and dizzy, with
little dark flea-spots crowding in at the edge of my vision.

I had to be coming down with something. Stephanie Keller’s testimony had hardly been uplifting, but I’d heard worse details
from Skwarecki and the pathologist.

I looked into the mirror above the row of sinks, noting the dark puffiness beneath my eyes, my winter-greenish pale skin.
If hardly Astrid’s equal in looks, I matched her on all the earmarks of sheer exhaustion.

The room smelled of damp paper towels and cheap pink liquid soap, and for a moment I wished it actually
were
a “restroom,” with a chaise longue or even an army cot I could’ve curled up on for a few minutes. The trial would be breaking
for lunch soon, but the thought of food made me queasy.

Grinding bones.

The phrase roiled my stomach further. I didn’t want to go back into the courtroom, but I had to find someplace to sit down.
I left the bathroom and shuffled slowly down the hallway, but didn’t see anywhere to sit except for some benches downstairs,
in the front lobby.

I chose one alongside a wall so I’d see Cate when they broke for lunch.

I closed my eyes and leaned back, hot and flushed now, my upper lip damp.

Great. Probably flu.

I stayed like that for maybe ten minutes, listening to footsteps and voices moving past me, feeling the occasional blast of
cold air as people came inside with a breath of winter as chaser.

“Miss Dare? Are you all right?” A woman’s voice. “I saw you through the window.”

I felt a light touch on one shoulder, and fluttered my eyes open.

Mrs. Underhill stood before me, her forehead wrinkled with concern.

She was sitting beside me on the bench now, holding the back of one hand against my cheek. “You don’t have a fever, dear.
How’s your stomach?”

“Not so good,” I said.

“Have you eaten anything this morning?”

I shook my head.

She reached into her purse and gave me a peppermint. “This will help.”

She was right—it did.