Retribution (39 page)

She remembered her bedroom and Dominick’s warm hands, softly rubbing the small of her back as he gently
kissed her, his tongue touching hers, those hands moving slowly to undo the buttons on her blouse, and to press his own shirtless chest against hers. And she remembered the instant, sobering wave of terrifying anxiety that had come over her, because she knew he would feel them. Maybe even see them once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the ugly raised lines that haphazardly crisscrossed her chest and abdomen.

They had had a couple of bottles of wine – too much wine – while watching the boats pass on the Intercoastal below. Wine and funny conversation. She had felt relaxed and comfortable and
happy
for the first time since she could remember. And when he had leaned over in his chair on the small balcony with the moonlit palm trees as a backdrop and kissed her, she did not resist. Instead she had moved closer and they had ended up in the blackness of her bedroom, his probing hands electrifying her body and terrifying her mind. But then her blouse, and then her bra, had come off and their skin had touched and he had said nothing. He hadn’t even paused. He just kept kissing her in the darkness, his body dancing slowly in time with hers to soundless music, as if nothing else in the world mattered. And that morning when she had awoken, he was still next to her, playing softly with her hair and the back of her neck.

‘… but he didn’t care,’ she continued. ‘He never said anything. I knew he must have felt them, so I told him I was in a car accident. I just blurted it out.’

‘And what was his reaction?’

‘He asked me if they hurt me now. He asked me if they hurt when he touched them. I told him no, but that it had been a very long time since I had been with
someone. And then he made love to me. Very slow, very gentle…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘I shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s very intimate, and you know everyone involved. But you’re the only one who knows the whole story at play here, Greg – Dr Chambers. I know I am falling for him, that I may already have fallen for him. I need to know if I am a fool to see a future in this.’

‘Only you can answer that, C.J.’

‘I can’t even bring myself to tell him about the rape. He can never know about Cupid. There are so many secrets now, so many lies…’

What about the motion to suppress? Didn’t you say it detailed your rape? Won’t he learn about your assault when the motion is heard?’

‘Yes, the draft of the motion that Lourdes gave me did detail the rape. But I guess after I talked to her outside the jail she must have had second thoughts. At least for the time being. The rape is not mentioned in the copy of the motion she actually filed a week later with the court. Chaskel is hearing the motion next Tuesday morning. Halloween, of all days. Of course, she may surprise me still and call Bantling to the stand. If that happens, I guess the world will then find out about my rape at the same time Dominick does.’

‘How do you feel about that possibility? Your inability to control these events?’

‘Everything
is out of my control, it seems. But I can’t let go of this case; I won’t. And in the event that it does happen and I fall apart in front of the world, I was hoping that… well, that you might be there for support. Because if he does take the stand, I just might go crazy again.’

‘If you would like me there, then I will be there.’

C.J. felt relieved; she would have at least one person in her corner should the world collapse in around her. You’d better come early to get a seat – it’s a hot ticket. CBS pitches a tent the night before, I’ve heard.’

He laughed.

She mused aloud. ‘Maybe Lourdes has a conscience in that pretty head of hers. Maybe she thinks her client is lying about the rape: Maybe she knows better than to raise this as a defense. I guess we’ll see on Tuesday.’

He folded his hands under his chin and rested his elbows easily on his knees. ‘I’m glad you’ve decided to resume therapy, C.J. I really am. I would like to see you back on Wednesday evenings, at least weekly while this case progresses. I believe it will be more stressful than even you can realize.’

She smiled. ‘Do I look as if I’m going crazy? Do my eyes roll? Do I sound coherent to a nonlawyer?’

‘Let’s not let it get to that point. You are not sharing these events with anyone else, and that is a factor to consider in returning to a weekly therapy schedule. It doesn’t mean I think that you are “going crazy” again, as you call it’

She nodded nervously.
If the metamorphosis did begin again, would she recognise the signs, or would someone have to point them out to her?

‘I’m sorry,’ she began in a low voice, ‘about ending therapy the way I did last spring – without… without speaking to you first. I wanted to see if I could muddle through life on my own…’

‘Say no more. I understand. The important thing is that you’ve recognized that you need help, that you won’t go through this alone. Now,’ he continued, changing the
subject and letting the awkward moment pass as quickly as it had come, ‘how is the case going otherwise?’

‘Everything else has fallen into place. The feds have backed off a bit. I think de la Flors is waiting to see how the motion goes. If I lose, he’ll hang me high and rush in like a hero with an indictment. If I win, well, he might just do the same. It depends how the political winds are blowing.

‘I just got Bantling’s medical records from that doctor in New York City,’ she went on. ‘The diagnosis, anyway. Chaskel took a look at the records in his chambers and said only the diagnosis was relevant since Bantling has not yet placed his sanity in issue. So I’ll get that and his meds into evidence. That will give me another link to Anna Prado, and a link to the other six girls that the ME has found haloperidol in. His doc had him on twenty milligrams of Haldol a day.’

‘That’s an extremely high dosage. Was he still being treated by this doctor?’

‘Dr Fineburg. Occasionally. Enough so that he kept writing him refills every three months.’

‘And what was the actual diagnosis?’

She stubbed out her last cigarette and sighed wearily before rising to leave. ‘Borderline personality disorder with extreme and violent antisocial tendencies. In other words, he’s a complete sociopath. As if I needed a doctor to tell
me
that.’

57

Halloween morning was hot as hell. A warm front had come in and sat over Miami for two days, cursing it with 88-degree temperatures, 95 percent humidity, and nasty afternoon thunderstorms. Dominick stood outside the Graham Building, his dress shirt already sticking to his chest under his suit jacket. It was a quarter of ten in the morning; he’d barely made it.

He had cut short his meeting on the Cupid case with RD Black and the FDLE Commissioner because he knew he had to be here. Even though she had not asked him, and would probably never ask him, he knew he had to be here. He had witnessed her anxiety at the mere mention of Bantling’s name enough times; and he had seen her strange, tense reaction when she was forced to be in the same room as him. Her eyes full of fear, her body trembling slightly, uncontrollably. In the past few days as she prepared for today’s motion to suppress he had watched her become more withdrawn, definitely more stressed. And she did not want to discuss it with him, instead blaming her mounting stress on the pressures of trying a capital murder case where the stakes were high if she failed. Too high. He still did not know what it was, but he did know it was more than the stress of a murder case that drove the fear in her eyes. And he knew that he had to be here now, even if she protested, to escort her into the courtroom through the mob of nosy and pushy and completely obnoxious reporters, the
curious onlookers, and those who silently prayed behind a smile for her downfall. To, if nothing else, sit behind her, while she struggled with the unseen, untold demons before her.

The glass doors of the Graham Building opened. She stopped when she saw him, a look of surprise on her face that he could detect even behind her dark sunglasses. She was dressed in a sharp black suit, her dark blond hair pulled into a soft bun. With her heavy briefcase on her shoulder, she towed a pull cart of three file boxes behind her.

‘I just figured I’d give you a hand with those files,’ he said finally.

‘I thought you had a meeting with Black,’ she replied slowly.

‘I did. But this seemed more important.’

It was still so new, this
relationship
they had fallen into. Even though they had spent the night together last night, it felt awkward between them at that very moment. He wasn’t quite sure where they were headed, where he even wanted them to go, but right now what he did know was that she was worried about appearances. Their appearance together. So he kept a comfortable distance as they walked across the street to the courthouse in silence side by side, with him carting the enormous box of files behind him.

58

Victor Chavez was nervous. Hell, he was sweating bullets what with all those damned reporters buzzing about like vultures inside, waiting for a chunk of meat to fall from the bone so they could take it back to their nests and pick it over. Waiting for someone to fuck up in this case so they could be the very first to report it. He sat on the bench just outside Courtroom 2-8 waiting for his turn on stage to be called. Everyone was here. Everyone was watching. His sarge, his lieutenant, all the boys downtown.

It wasn’t as if he’d never testified before. In fact, this was his third felony arrest that he had to come in on, and he thought he was rather smooth on the stand. But of course, nothing was like Cupid. And, of course, he hadn’t totally fucked up those other cases. And now he was being called as a witness for the defense in this stupid motion to suppress. Suppress
his
stop.
His
search. Guy drives around Miami with a dead girl in his trunk and it’s a bad stop?
What the fuck was that about?

Sergeant Ribero hadn’t let him out of his sight, practically, since it had happened. Shit, he had to report taking a fucking leak when he was on duty now, and it was damn annoying being baby-sat, no doubt. But he knew it would be much worse if he fucked it up now, at a crucial motion to suppress, on the record with the lights and cameras on. Not only would he be out of a job; he would also become the subject of a criminal
investigation himself. And of course, that fucking nut job would walk. He had to remember the story down to the last letter.

That was the hard part. Remembering every fucking detail, just as the prosecutor had said, in the order that she had said it.
That’s the problem with telling a tale,
his mother had always said.
You often can’t remember exactly what tale it was that you told.
Especially since he was always being asked by somebody what had gone down that night, how he had caught Cupid on the causeway. Not just downtown, either. It was everyone, it was everybody, it was everywhere. His neighbors in the building. High-school buddies. Strangers on the street. Girls at the beach. Girls by the pool. Girls in bars. Girls on patrol. He was a regular celebrity now,
The Cop Who Caught Cupid,
and even though his Sarge had told him to shut up unless he was in court, it wasn’t Sarge that the girls wanted to blow to hear him tell his story. How he, Victor Chavez, while still on probation, basically single-handedly and on intuition, had caught the most notorious serial killer in America.

But now was the midnight hour, and he had to make sure every detail was right. Every single one. They ran together in his head like a garbled tape.

He sat on the bench in his MBPD uniform, his sweaty hands clasped together, just waiting his turn to walk the plank, when the mahogany doors swung open and in a loud, deliberate voice the bailiff called out his name.

59

Bantling was already seated in his red jumpsuit at the defense table next to Lourdes when C.J. walked in the courtroom. She felt his eyes move with her as she crossed the gallery before the bench to the prosecution’s table and, with Dominick’s help, unpacked all the files. Even though she could not see him, she knew he was smiling. She could feel it .
Focus. Focus. Just like any other case
.

Dominick took a seat with Manny and Jimmy Fulton behind her in the front row. Chris Masterson and Eddie Bowman had shown up late and had to badge their way into a seat in the back row next to Greg Chambers. On the other side of the courtroom, still in their black suits, dark sunglasses tucked into their pockets, were the Blues Brothers, Carmedy and Stevens, and the band-sleader, Gracker. Although she had not seen him, she was sure de la Flors was here, or had at least sent two Assistant U.S. Attorneys in his place, probably readied with a federal indictment in each hand, in case C.J. lost. As usual, every network was here, their cameras set up all over the courtroom. And then there were the newspaper reporters who were present from every major paper in the country. It was a packed house.

Lourdes had not looked at her when she walked in, instead keeping her head down, purposely focused on reading the paperwork before her. C.J. still did not know what to expect from her today, and her heart was definitely caught in her throat. The door to the judge’s
hallway swung open and Hank the bailiff quickly shouted, ‘Court is now in session. The Honorable Leopold Chaskel III presiding. Be seated and be quiet. No cell phones. No beepers.’

Judge Chaskel took the bench and wasted no time with speeches or announcements to the anxious crowd; he appeared not to notice they even existed. With ten years on the bench and another twenty as a prosecutor, he had seen it all, and seeing his name in the papers was no longer a thrill. It was simply an irritating part of the job. He turned to Lourdes and started in right away.

‘Well, Ms Rubio, we are gathered here today to hear your motion to suppress the stop and subsequent search in the case of
The State
v.
William Bantling.
I’ve read your motion, so go ahead and entertain us. Call your first witness.’