Hold Still (8 page)

FOURTEEN

October 6th

Jocelyn’s breath caught in her
throat. She swallowed, and, keeping her expression blank, said, “Why not, Larry?”

His fingers thrummed against the stack of pages Angel had written on. “Wasn’t nobody else.”

“Who are you lying for, Larry?”

“Nobody.”

Jocelyn knew that continuing the interrogation was pointless. Warner and Donovan had worked this out ahead of time—what they would say if they were caught or questioned by the police. Their plan did not involve ratting out their associate. The staccato beats of Larry’s fingers against the table grew faster and louder. Jocelyn watched him until he shifted in his chair and went back to bobbing his right heel. When the moment became painfully awkward, she leaned toward him and caught his gaze once more.

“I can’t believe you’re this fucking stupid, Larry.”

She went at him for another half hour, but he wasn’t budging. He was like a broken record.
Wasn’t nobody else. Don’t know no Face.
She and Kevin left both men in the CCTV holding area and went upstairs to regroup. Most of the other detectives had dispersed, sent out on calls. The television still played silently in the corner, flashing images of evening sitcoms with an occasional “Breaking News” alert.

Kevin plopped into his desk chair and loosened his tie. “I’m tired of talking to these two fuckers. Let’s call SVU and have them picked up.”

Chen breezed by, a stack of files in his arms, a pen hanging from the corner of his mouth. “Forget it, Sully. They got their hands full. The Kaufman suspect barricaded himself in someone’s house. Hostages and all. They’re in a standoff. Oh, and the Germantown Groper struck twice tonight.”

Kevin rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. “Jesus H.,” he said. “It’ll take them forever to get here. Well, fuck it. Those two can sit in a holding cell for the next day for all I care.”

Pacing, Jocelyn loosened the brace on her wrist and rubbed the skin lightly before tightening it again. Exhaustion made her legs ache. It was nearing the end of her shift, but she knew they’d be there well after their shift doing paperwork. She remembered she’d promised Olivia they would go get a Halloween costume in the morning.

“This isn’t right,” Jocelyn said. “Why are they protecting this guy?”

Kevin sighed. “Who cares? It isn’t our problem anyway. Let’s just charge ’em and leave ’em down there till SVU picks them up.”

“With what?”

Kevin ran a hand over the thinning hair at his scalp. “Jesus Christ, Rush. With whatever we can. Rape, kidnapping, aggravated assault.”

She stopped pacing and looked at Kevin. “We need the third guy.”

“This is not our case. We’re not going after the third guy. We’re charging these fuckers, and we’re going home.”

Jocelyn stood before him and put her hands on her hips. She arched her brow until Kevin groaned loudly, leaning back in his chair and looking at the ceiling as if he wished aliens would abduct him right that very second. “What the hell, Rush?”

“When SVU takes over, I want to make sure we did our job.”

Kevin shook his head and looked back at her. “We did our job. Look, we’re not getting the third guy through these fuckers. Did you offer Warner a deal?”

Jocelyn nodded. She rifled through her desk for the bottle of ibuprofen she kept there. “He’s not taking a deal.”

“Neither is Donovan.”

She found the bottle, opened it, and shook two pills out onto her desk. “Donovan is just the muscle. He does whatever Warner says because Warner is in charge. They practiced this. They planned this—how they would handle it and what they would say if they were ever questioned.”

Kevin pulled a pack of Nicorette gum out of his jacket pocket and popped two tabs. “So we charge them. SVU can check out their known associates. They’ll write up a warrant for the car, the phones, and Warner’s computer. These guys must be calling this Face guy on the phone. SVU will track him that way. But this is not our problem anymore.”

Jocelyn fished a warm bottle of Pepsi from beneath the paperwork on her desk and used it to swallow the ibuprofen, grimacing at the flat, saccharine taste. “I don’t think SVU is going to find Face that way. Warner and Donovan had the foresight to get their stories straight. What makes you think a simple check of their phones is going to lead us right to the other guy?”

“So they try some other way. Who cares, Rush? Look, I know you and Anita know each other from when you were on patrol, but SVU handles all sex cases. That is not news to you. This is out of our hands.”

Jocelyn reached up to rub her eyes with both hands, flinching as the coarse material of the splint scratched her cheek. She kept forgetting she had it on, despite the throbbing in her wrist. She dropped into her chair, leaned her head back against the headrest, and closed her eyes. Kevin was right, of course. Neither their boss nor the Special Victims Unit would take kindly to them pursuing a case that was not theirs, no matter how good their work was. There were plenty of other crimes in their own jurisdiction to handle.

She thought of Anita cowering in a hospital bed, blood-soaked bandages on her trembling hands. Jocelyn understood why Anita had returned to prostitution. The money was easy, and Anita was not wealthy by any standards. The prostitution had never been the worst of Anita’s problems anyway. It was always the drugs—like it was for so many people. Like Camille. But unlike Jocelyn’s sister, Anita had found it within herself to kick them and had been strong enough to stay off them the last several years. On the Stroll, Anita had been tough and resourceful. She was strong. Those were the qualities that had enabled her to clean herself up finally, to stop using drugs and make a life for herself and her children.

Jocelyn hated that anyone could reduce the vibrant, spirited woman she knew into a quivering mess. It burned her. Deep in her stomach, in her core. The things she wanted to do to the men who had hurt Anita tested the very limits of her humanity.

But she had to let go of the case.

She could always check up on Anita, but she had to do her job, and her job was not investigating sex crimes.

She sighed. “Okay, let’s charge them.”

Kevin turned to his computer. “Gladly.”

FIFTEEN

October 7th

Jocelyn woke from the dream
kicking, her mouth working to release the scream lodged in her throat. A glance at her alarm clock showed it was 3:24 a.m. Attempting to catch her breath, she extricated her legs from the tangled blanket and threw them over the side of her bed, sitting upright. She was relieved that Olivia had not yet crept into her bed. A thick bead of sweat slid down the side of her face. She swiped it away with the back of her wrist, scratching her cheek with the splint and making her wrist throb. She tried to slow her breathing.

It was the same dream from the other night. She had stood peering through the crack of her sister’s bedroom door while those boys hurt Camille. Five altogether. One of them only watched. Then she ran, her parents’ Main Line mansion turning into an endless maze of hallways. She ran and ran and ran, but she couldn’t find her father or anyone who could help.

Is that how it had been? Had she been there? Had she really seen it? She couldn’t remember—had never remembered, in fact. Only two weeks after the rape, at seventeen, she’d been in a car accident. She’d lost all memories from the week before the rape to the week after her accident, a month of her life completely gone. Her doctor had said it wasn’t unheard of with major head injuries.

The last thing Jocelyn remembered was getting into her car after school sometime before all the bad things happened. She remembered waving good-bye to friends in the parking lot and driving to the exit. Then she was at home, in her bed. Her whole body ached. Her hair had been shaved where they did the craniotomy. Her mother kept vigil beside her bed.

“An accident,” her mother had said. “You’ve been in an accident.”

No one explained what had happened in the month she had lost. Her family scrupulously avoided the subject, no matter how incessantly she brought it up.
An accident
, was all her mother said.

The six months after that was a blur. Doctors, physical therapists, and schoolwork at home. Her family was wealthy enough that her father could afford to have almost all her medical treatment take place in their home. She rarely left the house, rarely had the time to think past walking and feeding herself again. All she knew was that her mother was weepy and tremulous, a tissue pressed against her mouth as if she was holding back a great wave of grief. Camille was moody and withdrawn. She wouldn’t talk to any of them. She wouldn’t look at any of them either. Jocelyn’s father was exactly the same as he had always been—cold, distant, and mostly absent.

Jocelyn found out about Camille’s rape by accident. She’d been unable to sleep most nights and spent them prowling the house, pacing mindlessly, willing the limp in her left leg to go away. One night, she headed for her father’s study to look for a book that might interest her. When she reached the closed doors, she heard her mother’s raised voice.

“We can’t just do nothing, Bruce.”

Her father’s voice was considerably lower, and even with her ear pressed against the door, Jocelyn could only make out snippets of what he said.

“. . . just boys. Do you understand how many lives would be ruined?”

“How can you even say that?” her mother had shouted. “Those boys gang-raped our daughter. Our daughter.”

Something crashed behind the doors. Jocelyn jumped, her heart racing. Her father’s voice sounded alarmed, almost afraid. “Elizabeth,” he said.

“You bastard!” her mother railed. “You shit. You prick!”

Another crash.

“Elizabeth!” her father shouted, the sternness returning to his tone. Then he lowered his voice again. “I’ve already made this decision. We’re talking about teenagers . . . no good will come of dragging this out . . . press coverage . . . out of control. I know what’s best for this family. Let me handle this my way . . . not in court and not in the press. Those boys will be punished.”

Her mother’s voice was still loud but deadly calm. “What about Camille?”

Jocelyn heard what she thought was her father sighing. “I’ll handle Camille,” he said.

“And Jocelyn? She saw them.”

Another sigh. “Jocelyn doesn’t remember any of it. Not a thing—not after that accident. You know as well as I do that she will never recover those memories. Look at her, for God’s sake. She can hardly even walk. We don’t need to worry about her.”

Her mother was silent for what felt like several minutes. Then the sound of glass shattering broke the silence. Jocelyn had never heard her mother sound so angry or so threatening. “I will not forget this,” was the last thing she said.

Jocelyn kept replaying the conversation from that night in her mind. She could not let it go. She tried for a long time to talk to Camille about it, but Camille always shut her down. After many attempts, she refused to talk to Jocelyn at all. In spite of that, Jocelyn made every effort to undermine her father’s plan to brush the whole thing under the carpet. She went first to the sheriff, then to the district attorney’s office, where two ADAs listened to her with rapt attention and promised to thoroughly investigate the rape. They brought Camille in, along with their father, but Camille would not admit that any crime had taken place.

Jocelyn had then gone to a reporter at the
Times Herald
who was very interested in the story, but after a few weeks, he called to tell her there was no story. He too had spoken with Camille. There was no evidence whatsoever that a crime had been committed, and without Camille’s testimony, without her confirming that the rape had, in fact, happened, there was nothing that they could do.

By the time Jocelyn left for college, several months after the accident, Camille had run away from home. Their parents tracked her down a few times on the streets of nearby Philadelphia. Camille was two years younger than Jocelyn. Since she was still a minor, their parents were able to take custody of her. By the time she was eighteen, she’d been in three different rehab facilities.

Elizabeth Rush’s face had taken on a permanently shattered and bitter look. Gone was the loving, vivacious woman Jocelyn had known all her life. The woman who wrapped each one of their Christmas ornaments individually in bubble wrap to ensure that none of them broke, even the cheap ones. The woman who cradled other people’s babies as if they were made of dandelion fluff. The woman who wrote motivational sayings and professions of love on napkins in her children’s lunches.
You grow more wonderful all the time. Your brilliance will win the day.
Or just simply:
I love you with all my heart.

Elizabeth Rush had become a dark, thorny husk of her former self. She was so angry, not even her oldest friends could stand to be around her. Only her brother continued to speak to her, and, as far as Jocelyn could remember, Elizabeth never spoke to her husband again unless it was absolutely necessary. She never even slept in the same bed as him again. She spent the years before her death trying futilely to track Camille down and keep her out of trouble. But Camille was too far gone.

“Mommy?”

Olivia’s sleepy voice startled Jocelyn, making her body spasm a little and her heartbeat quicken momentarily. The hallway night-light illuminated Olivia’s tiny form. The girl stood in Jocelyn’s bedroom doorway in bare feet, her nightgown clinging to her with static, blankie clutched in her right hand. With her left hand, she rubbed her eyes one by one. Jocelyn reached a hand out to her daughter, and Olivia shuffled over. They lay down in bed, Olivia fitting her body perfectly against Jocelyn’s with a contented sigh. Together, they fell into an easy, dreamless sleep.

SIXTEEN

October 7th

The rustling of bodies pulled
Larry from the brink of sleep. His eyes popped open, and he turned his head to his right. On the cot beside him, Angel snored peacefully. The kid always slept well, no matter where they were. As big as he was, he didn’t have to worry about other inmates making advances. Still, Larry didn’t know how he slept with all the noise. Eighty men in one large room made for a lot of snoring, tossing and turning, groaning, farting, and even crying.

Larry sat up and looked up and down the cots lining Holmesburg Prison’s retrofitted gymnasium. The prison, which sat like a medieval castle in the middle of one of Northeast Philadelphia’s working-class neighborhoods, had been closed down in 1995. Then, in 2006, the city of Philadelphia had refurbished Holmesburg’s gymnasium and reopened the prison to accommodate the overflow of prisoners from the larger Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. Larry had been in both before, and he preferred neither. He and Angel would likely be here while they awaited trial on the charges the lady cop had slapped them with.

“Bitch,” he muttered.

As his eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, he found the source of the rustling about ten cots to his left. The bodies of two men rutting were just vague shapes. Soon Larry could hear the other sounds he’d come to associate with prison—the rhythmic creaking of a cot, skin slapping against skin, and guttural moans. He turned away, pulled the pillow from behind his head, and swatted Angel with it.

Angel woke at once, his heavy fist shooting out and landing on the edge of Larry’s cot. Larry waited for him to wake more fully before he threw his legs over the side of the cot and sat on its edge. Angel did the same so that they were face-to-face. The kid’s eyes were small, black marbles gleaming in the dimmed overhead lights on either side of the gym. Angel held up his left hand, palm facing away from Larry.
What?

It was a shorthand the two had developed over the years. Angel didn’t know real sign language, and neither one of them could be bothered with learning it, so they’d come up with their own language composed of gestures, mouthed words, and facial expressions.

“Why’d you snitch to the cops?” Larry whispered.

Angel rolled his eyes and wagged his index finger at Larry.
I didn’t.

“Yes, you did,” Larry hissed.

Angel swiped a hand down his face and shook his head.
I didn’t tell them about Face.

Larry considered this. It wouldn’t be the first time a cop had tried to trick him into confessing. The lady cop probably made the whole thing up.

“Did you tell them about the hooker?”

Angel shrugged. That was a yes.

Larry sighed. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. “That’s why they got us on rape, you dumbass. You were supposed to stick to the story.”

Angel raised both hands, palms up, and shrugged.
What for?

Larry poked Angel’s chest with his index finger. “So we don’t go to prison, that’s why!”

Angel waved a hand in dismissal. He pointed back and forth from him to Larry. Then he made the gesture for Face and a slitting motion across his thick throat. He ended the motion by flicking his wrist, as if he were trying to shake water off his hand.
We should cut Face loose.

Larry scratched at his scalp. Face had been a thorn in their sides for years; it was true. The guy was a freak too, but their arrangement had been lucrative, especially after Dwayne’s death.

“We still need him,” Larry said.

Angel made a rolling motion with his fists, then hooked his thumbs together and fluttered his fingers, like a bird flying.
Let’s roll on him and get out of here.

Larry shook his head. “No. Not now. He’s gotta do what he promised.”

Angel shifted his bulk, and the cot squeaked like a mouse being crushed beneath his girth. He shook his head slowly from side to side. He rubbed his thumb over the index and middle fingers of his right hand.
We’ll never get that money back.

Larry met Angel’s eyes. “Not just about the money—you know that.”

Angel made the gesture for Face and flipped his middle finger.
Fuck him.

“Not yet,” Larry said.

Angel’s normally flat expression pinched, the corners of his mouth dimpling. He pointed upward and tapped the top of his wrist with a finger.
I want to get out of here now.

“We’ll make bail,” Larry assured him.

Angel’s brow bunched up over the bridge of his nose.
How?
he mouthed.

“My mama will know what to do.”

Angel rolled his eyes and then made a swirling motion with one finger near his temple.
She’s crazy.
He made the rolling motion again. They’d have a better chance of getting out and staying out if they rolled on Face.

“I left her instructions.”

Angel’s shoulders quaked with silent laughter. It always freaked Larry out when he laughed. It was unnatural—him not making any kind of noise. Larry knew the bullet had severed Angel’s vocal cords, but still, the sight of Angel laughing noiselessly made Larry’s scalp itch.
She won’t remember
, Angel mouthed.

It was quite possible that Hattie Warner wouldn’t remember the instructions Larry had given her. She might not even realize he was gone, but she’d never let him down before, dementia or no dementia.

“Fifty bucks says she will,” Larry said.