A Good Killing (14 page)

He liked that I stopped moving. “There’s a good girl,” he said. He
took his hand off my face and went back to just pinning my wrists. I sucked in a rasp of air as he started to pump. He kept going for a long time. My head banged rhythmically against the car door. Tears streamed down my temples, soaking my hair and the leather seat beneath. I looked at the stars through the windshield. Then the glass fogged up, and all I could see was blurry black nothing. I closed my eyes and waited for it to end. Finally, he shuddered and collapsed on top of me. I don’t know how long he lay there. It seemed like forever.

When he sat up, I expect the world was pretty much the same for him as it had always been, only he’d just gotten laid. For me, I sat up into a whole different world, a world where I wasn’t in control of my own body, a world where a person I trusted had hurt and violated me. My whole body shook as I pulled up my pants and zipped up my winter coat. I sat there, looking at the fogged windshield and trying to get used to the dizzying feeling of existing on a different planet.

“I’m sorry it got a little rough there at the end,” Coach said, refastening his own pants. “Next time, don’t make it so hard. This can be a beautiful thing.”

Next time? Beautiful? These were words that had a real meaning in the English language, but in this context, I couldn’t process them in any logical way. He might as well have been speaking Chinese.

He started the car, three-pointed it around, and drove. I couldn’t stop shaking. We didn’t talk. When we got to my apartment building, he pulled to the curb.

He patted my leg, all friendly, like he hadn’t just raped me. “Have a good night,” he said. “Come to my office after school next week, and we’ll work on your high jump.”

I fled from the car and stumbled into the building. I could hear the Corvette zipping away. I ran up the two flights to our apartment, which was dark and empty. Mom was working the graveyard shift at the hospital. I turned on the TV, a rerun of
The Simpsons,
just so there’d be some noise to compete with the screams echoing through my head. I stripped off my clothes and left them in a pile on the bedroom floor. I looked at your empty bed and imagined telling you what had happened, and I started crying again.

I went to the shower and turned on the water as hot as I could stand. The mirror fogged up, like the windows at the house party, like the windshield of Coach’s car. I stepped under the steaming stream of water and stood there even though the water scalded my skin pink. I must have been in there for a while. The water turned lukewarm, and then cold, and even then, I still stood there, shivering.

22

T
he uniformed officer handcuffed Jody’s wrists behind her as Rob recited her rights. Jody looked terrified. Rob wore the steely expression of a man who believed in the righteousness of his actions.

Anna felt dizzy. She had seen this scene dozens of times before. It usually brought relief and the satisfaction that a bad guy was being taken off the street. Now it was all wrong. This was her sister. This was a good guy. She had to stop this.

“Wait,” Anna said. “It was Wendy. They were splitting up. She has to be the one who killed him.”

“Thanks for the info, but that’s not going to work for you,” Rob said. “Cell-phone records and hotel receipts show that Wendy Fowler was a hundred miles away, with family in Ohio, when the coach was killed.”

The officers led Jody out of the house. Anna ran after them. “Rob, does she really need to be handcuffed?”

“Procedure, sorry.” He opened the squad car door and put his hand on Jody’s head to guide her to sitting in the backseat.

“Jody, don’t say anything, to anyone!” Anna’s voice was an octave higher than usual. She recognized the tone as panic. “Not to the police, not to your cellmates, nobody. Do you understand?”

Jody nodded. Her eyes were wide with fear.

“As her lawyer, I am invoking her right to remain silent and to be represented by an attorney,” Anna told Rob. “No one is to ask her questions without me present.”

“You know you’re not her lawyer.” He got into the car. “She can talk to us if she wants to.”

She opened her mouth to tell him that Jody was pregnant. They might treat her better in lockup if they knew her medical condition. Then she paused. She didn’t know who the father of the baby was. What if it was the coach? Someone might wonder if Jody fought with the coach
because
she was pregnant. Anna had wondered it herself. She closed her mouth.

The cruiser backed out of the driveway. Her sister looked out the window at her. Anna held up her hand, not so much to wave, but as if she had some magical powers she could conjure to stop this from happening.

Anna watched the car drive off. She’d known this might be coming, but actually seeing her sister behind the cage of a police car was shocking. Whatever Jody had done, she was the only family Anna had.

She shook herself, strode back into the house, and grabbed her cell phone. She had to punch in the passcode three times before she got it right. She forced herself to stop and take a deep breath. She was no good to Jody if she was a shaky mess. She had to organize her thoughts.

First, if she was actually going to represent her sister in open court, she needed to get permission from the Department of Justice. She hadn’t filed anything with DOJ so far, because she didn’t want her bosses to know about this unless it was absolutely necessary. There was no avoiding it now. She pulled up an e-mail from her Drafts folder and hit Send.

This wasn’t the sort of request where she could wait for a return e-mail. It was 6:35
P.M.
so there was a chance that some supervisors would still be in the office. She dialed her phone. Carla didn’t answer, and neither did the ethics adviser. But the U.S. Attorney himself picked up. “Marty Zinn,” he answered. Anna was surprised to have gotten straight through.

Marty was the head of the entire office of 350 prosecutors. He was a mild-mannered guy, whom she didn’t know well. The office was so big that the boss had very little contact on anything but the most high-profile cases. Plus, Marty came from the civil side of
the office, and mostly deferred to Jack Bailey, his Homicide chief, on criminal issues.

After a minute of small talk, she told Marty why she was calling. “I have to ask a big favor. My sister has been charged with a violent crime in Michigan—by the State of Michigan, so the prosecutor is a separate sovereign, not our office. It’s a terrible mistake, and I’d like to represent her. The Code of Federal Regulations says this is doable, but I understand I need your permission first. I’m calling to ask for your permission.”

“I see. Well, in situations like this, there’s a memo for you to fill out . . .”

“I sent it to you a couple minutes ago.”

“Ah.” She heard his keyboard clicking. “Indeed you did. First-degree homicide. That
is
a violent crime.”

“She didn’t do it.” Anna’s voice sounded so certain, she almost convinced herself. “And she needs a good lawyer.”

“But how will you continue to do your own work at the office, while representing your sister in Michigan?”

“I was hoping to transfer to the Appellate section for the duration of my sister’s case. You’ll still have my full dedication and effort, but I could research and write the briefs from here in Michigan. I understand that a few prosecutors have telecommuted this way before, for example, while their spouse took a job in Europe or on a military base out of state.”

Marty paused. She could feel his discomfort radiating through the cell phone. The spouses she spoke of hadn’t been accused of murder.

“Anna, I don’t know. It could be very awkward to have one of my prosecutors arguing to keep someone
out
of jail. And it would be a burden on both the Sex Offense section, to lose you, and the Appellate section, to take on a long-distance employee.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m very sorry to put you in this position. But my sister needs me. After this detail, I’d be willing to go anywhere the office needs me, however I can help out.”

“And if I say no?”

“I can’t abandon her. I’d have to quit.” As she said it, she felt like her lungs were being squeezed inside a vise. She didn’t want to quit. She loved her job. And she had no financial cushion. But she would do what she had to do.

The U.S. Attorney sighed. She could picture him at his desk, staring out the window and running a hand over his bald head. He said, “I’ll look at your memo and make my decision in due course. But I have to warn you: I’m leaning toward no.”

“I understand. Please let me know as soon as possible. My sister will probably be arraigned tomorrow.”

“In the meantime, you may want to look at the information on our website about separating from the government. I don’t want to sound dire, but you’ll want to have some health-care coverage lined up before you resign.”

“I see. Okay.”

They hung up. Health-care coverage. Oh God. She was not in any way prepared for what resigning entailed.

Anna looked around the house, which was eerily quiet. It felt spooky to be here alone. But it wasn’t spookier than where Jody was: in the central cell block being fingerprinted and having her mug shot taken. Then she would spend the night in a holding cell with a bunch of women who’d been arrested for street crimes over the last twenty-four hours. They would not be easygoing women. A current of fear buzzed steadily through Anna’s body. Her stomach hurt more than ever.

As the sky grew black, she walked through the house turning on all the lights and TVs. Soon every room was filled with canned laughter and bright light. But the darkness she was trying to chase away wasn’t amenable to electricity.

23

T
he Lawrence P. Upperthwaite Courthouse was one of the few living buildings in Holly Grove’s old downtown. It was a stately old structure, with marble pillars, a gold dome, and big arched windows. Across the street was a square park, planted with grass and trees. That’s where the pretty part ended. Around the square, the old storefronts ranged between shabby and vacant. They’d been built when many more people worked in the nearby auto plants. As the car companies left town, so did the rest of the commerce.

Anna arrived at the courthouse promptly at 8:00
A.M.
, the time the website said the doors opened. She wore her standard black pantsuit. Her purse was overstuffed with legal pads, a
Local Rules Book
for Holly Grove County, and Clif bars. She wasn’t sure how long she’d be here today.

The courthouse was as beautiful inside as out, built in an age when the county had money for public projects. The walls alternated between peach marble veined with ivory and a green marble veined with gold. Gold trim laced every door, window, and painting. Oil portraits of old men covered the hallways.

Anna was directed to a large courtroom. The contrast between the courthouse and its current clientele was startling. People waiting for their arraignments sat in the jury box. They wore jeans and dirty T-shirts; they had the bloodshot eyes and stubbled chins of people who woke up in a cell. Several had the brown teeth of meth addicts. Anna didn’t see her sister among them. Worry twisted through her chest. What had happened to Jody?

A man in a shiny gray suit sat at the defense table, sorting
through a large stack of files. He had to be the public defender. Anna walked up to him.

“Excuse me, sir, I’m wondering if you know where my sister is. Jody Curtis?”

He looked up at her, then through a stack of files. There had to be at least twenty of them on the table. He flipped through them until he came to one in the middle. He picked it up and read the label. “Here we go, Julie Curtis. First-degree murder.”

“Jody Curtis.”

“What?”

“Her name is Jody, not Julie.”

“Okay.” He scratched a note on the file. “The violent criminals are kept in restraints in the holding cell in the back.”

Anna winced at the image of her little sister cuffed and in leg irons. The defense lawyer stuffed the papers back into the folder, crumpling several in the process. Anna watched in horror. This was her sister’s case. It was precious. Seeing him crumple the papers was like seeing her engagement ring thrown in the dishwasher for a cleaning.

She introduced herself and said, “I’d like to help.”

“Are you going to represent her?”

“I’m working on it.”

“Sorry, miss,” he said. “Either you represent her and I don’t, or I represent her and you don’t. We’re woefully understaffed here. If she’s got a lawyer, she can’t also be represented at taxpayer expense.”

“I’m waiting to hear back from my boss.”

“Let me know when you’ve either got DOJ permission to do this or you’ve officially resigned from your position at the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Until then, I’m representing Julie.”

“Jody.”

“Right.”

Anna sat in the second row and checked her e-mail. Marty Zinn had still not written or called to tell her whether DOJ would permit her to do this. She felt a hand on her arm and looked up to
find a pair of friendly blue eyes. Cooper sat next to her. “Hi,” he said. “You okay?”

“How did you know Jody was arrested?” Anna asked.

“I’m smart that way. Also, everyone knows.”

She nodded. She should’ve guessed word would travel quickly in their small town. “Thank you for coming.”

At 8:59, a woman entered the courtroom towing a giant boxy briefcase on wheels. Anna had wheeled the same cumbersome litigation bag countless times. The woman was young, African American, and wearing a black pantsuit similar to Anna’s. She set up her files on the other table, wearing the focused expression of a competent person in the process of being overworked. Anna recognized enough of herself in this woman to know that this was the prosecutor. She stood to talk to her, but at precisely nine o’clock, the judge walked in through a side door.

Both lawyers at the front stood, as did Anna; the rest of the crowd needed a little prodding from the court personnel. “All rise!”