Injustice (15 page)

“It's a bittern. A kind of heron.”

“How do you . . . ?”

“Ethan likes birds,” she said. “Sometimes we get up early and go out looking.”

Creak creak drip.

“And speaking of Ethan,” I said, “how are things?”

“Okay, I guess,” she said. “He really loves me.”

“Reciprocated?”

She sighed. “Yes. Sometimes.”

“You're still young,” I said, and immediately hated myself for coming up with such pablum. “I mean . . .”

“How are things?” Lizzy said.

I didn't answer. She waited. So I said, “It's been a tough few years. And now Tina's really grieving for her sister.”

Lizzy nodded.

Creak creak drip.

Renfield is a small city—the kind where you can't figure out why anyone lives there. The surrounding land is wet and shrubby. It is monotonous, lacking the mountains and picturesque lakes of the north country. The economy is depressed; towns are small and seem to run mostly on inertia. Renfield is a paper-mill town, but unlike the defunct textile mills up in the city, the economic engine of Renfield Paper, anemic though it is, still chugs.

I found the office. It was above a bank in a small business complex:
HOWLAND AND HOWLAND, ATTORNEYS
, it said.

“You go take in the sights,” I told Lizzy. “I'll call you when I'm done.”

“But if I'm going to be your investigator . . .” Liz said.

“Not on this one,” I said.

Jennifer Howland was expecting me. She'd been a new lawyer at the public defender's office when she represented Henry years ago. Now she was a fiftyish small-town general-practice lawyer.

“You'll have to go over to the public defender's offices to see the actual file,” she said, “but I reviewed it after Henry Tatlock contacted me. So we can talk first if you like.”

She made tea for the two of us. On her desk was a picture of her and her husband and two teenage boys at a high school football game. One of the boys was suited up. There was another picture of just the boys. They each had a river kayak on one shoulder, and they were wet, wearing neoprene spray skirts.

We sat down and made small talk, then the outer door opened and the man from the photo walked in. Jennifer introduced him: “Joel, my husband and law partner.” Joel and I shook. He was wearing biking shorts and fingerless gloves and shoes that sounded like tap shoes on the bare floor. He was tall and looked overjoyed to meet me, but I'm sure it was just his endorphin high attaching to anything in its path. Jennifer pushed him affectionately back into the outer office and closed her door.

“Henry Tatlock,” she said. “I haven't thought about him in years. I remember hearing he went to law school, but I didn't know if it was true. Poor Henry.”

“Why poor Henry?”

“Well, realize I only knew him through this one case. But he was an angry kid, and he seemed like a loner. A target, maybe. His mother was odd, and . . .”

“Odd how?”

“You know that painting with the pitchfork? A farmer and his wife?”

“
American Gothic
.”

“Right. That was her. She was older—maybe around seventy when Henry was in high school. The father died when Henry was young. The mother was well meaning, but I'm sure the kid didn't exactly have a rollicking family life.”

Jennifer went on reciting what little background she knew. Then she told me about the case: A girl accused Henry of date rape and of beating her up in the process.

“Did he do it?” I asked.

Jennifer shrugged. “There were three versions of events,” she said. “Henry's version, the girl's version, and mine. Take your pick.”

“I'll take yours.”

A girl named Sherry Butler asked Henry out on a date. She was pretty, but it wasn't always visible under all the makeup. Her home life was a mess. The crowd she hung with was always in trouble. She was sexually precocious and, Jennifer suspected, the victim of sexual abuse in the home. She had been referred to Children's Services twice for unexplained bruises. In high school she acquired a boyfriend with a complicated history of his own.

Henry and Sherry's date had been a dare: Her friends had dared her to go out with the burned kid. “I don't think those girls were really Sherry's friends,” Jennifer said. “I think they were the cool crowd that Sherry wanted to be part of. So they were able to get her to do their bidding.”

Jennifer said she didn't know whether the dare required Sherry to have sex with Henry or just go out with him. They did have sex; this was proved by the DNA swab Henry was compelled to provide, though the medical exam reported no evidence of forcible rape.

Jennifer stopped and shook her head. “Make no mistake,” she said, “Henry was quiet and polite, but he had a temper. He broke
down in my office once, sobbing that he hadn't done anything wrong. But right then, in my office, it turned to rage. Scary rage, yelling about all the things he'd do to her if he ever got his hands on her, calling her a lying whore cunt. That sort of thing. No way I'd have put that kid on the stand.

“Anyhow, I don't know whether Sherry got cold feet or whether the plan all along was to set Henry up. Or maybe the girls who'd goaded Sherry into it started teasing her after she'd been with him, so she tried to save face by accusing him. I don't know. I don't know if he really gave her those bruises or if it was her father or boyfriend. Even if it was Henry, I don't know whether it was because she got him all worked up, then tried to back out at the last moment, or maybe because she started ridiculing him at some point.”

“What do you
think
happened?” I said.

“It's been twenty years,” she said.

I waited.

“I believe my client's story,” she said. “I think Henry went on a date with a mean girl, or at least a girl who was more of a target than he was. It was summer, and he got lucky out in some hayfield. He lost his virginity with a girl he didn't like and went home thinking that was the end of it. I believe he thought everything was fine until the police knocked on his door the next evening. As for the girl's bruises, I believe her boyfriend got wind of things and decided to educate her on the consequences of infidelity. I believe Sherry accused Henry of rape and assault to protect her boyfriend, or to try and salvage her reputation with her friends.”

Jennifer delivered this testimonial in a monotone. I wasn't sure whether she really believed what she claimed, or if she just wasn't going to say anything against her client's interests.

I sat thinking my way through. What did I believe? I guess I believed Henry's story. But maybe I believed it in a monotone, like Jennifer.

“Nobody wanted to try this case,” Jenifer said. “The DA knew that Sherry would be the worst witness in history, and I had no idea what her friends would come up with if I called any of them as
hostile witnesses. It would have been a horrible trial, and it certainly would have played to the jurors' worst instincts. So we worked out a deal. The DA dropped the sexual assault charge, and I got Henry to plead to plain old misdemeanor assault. His record would be expunged after his eighteenth birthday if he kept his nose clean. Henry wanted to fight it, but the risk was too great. If he lost, he'd have a felony conviction and would have to register as a sex offender. It was a good deal for him.”

When we were done talking about Henry, Jennifer stood and opened her office door. We found Lizzy and Joel talking in the outer office. Joel and Jennifer invited us to have lunch with them at a diner on the main street. I liked these people. We laughed a lot at lunch, and after lunch they said we should come over for dinner to meet their sons. It would have been fun, but I didn't want to be gone so late. We parted, and they promised to get in touch next time they were up in the city.

In the public defender's office, I read through Henry's juvenile file. It had been expunged as far as the court and the state were concerned, but I'd correctly assumed his lawyers would have the physical file. That was why I'd driven down instead of just talking with Jennifer Howland on the phone. However, the file added nothing to what Jennifer had told me.

Lizzy and I headed toward home, but we had one more stop to make. Alder Creek State Penitentiary was not far out of the way.

I refer to Kenny as my foster son, though I was never actually licensed as a foster parent, and Kenny never lived with me. But he'd been in my life since he was ten. I had loved him, advocated for him as he got shunted through the foster system, helped him financially, helped him find a place to live when he aged out of foster care, given him a job, and tried to make him one of the family. Now he was doing twelve to twenty at Alder Creek for involuntary manslaughter.

Lizzy and I were patted down. We surrendered our belts and all the contents of our pockets, then waited for Kenny in an antiseptic
room where there were half a dozen round tables and no windows and a guard kept watch from a glassed-in cubicle. In the federal prison up at Ellisville, I was a VIP; in fact, I'd put a lot of those prisoners in there. But down here at Alder Creek, I was nobody special.

I tried to get down here to see Kenny every six months or so. In the past four years, Lizzy had been here twice with me. I didn't know whether she ever came to visit on her own or with Flora.

Kenny was brought in. A guard uncuffed him, releasing his hands from the chain around his waist. He was allowed to give us both a hug. He looked okay.

When he first arrived here four years earlier, I didn't know if he would survive. Within the first few months, he went from looking healthy to looking skeletal. His mischievous eyes had become wary and, later on, vacant. But he seemed better now. He'd gained back the weight and didn't seem on the verge of panic anymore.

“I heard about Tina's sister,” Kenny said. “That really sucks.”

“How are you doing?” Lizzy asked. She had picked up a game of UNO from another table and was dealing out cards for the three of us.