A Good Killing (18 page)

“I do. But I also think Wendy might have killed him. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to put Wendy or her kid through any more than I already have.”

“We’re not putting her through anything. We’re not charging her with a crime. We’re just saying someone else had a motive to kill the man.”

“We don’t need to destroy her to win. I didn’t kill the coach. They won’t be able to prove I killed him. There won’t be any evidence, because I didn’t do it.”

“The system doesn’t always reach the right result,” Anna said softly. And, she thought,
I’m not even sure what the right result is.

“But I’ve got you on my side,” Jody said. “So this time it will.”

29

O
n a warm Tuesday afternoon a few days after Jody’s arrest, Anna got a call from Rob.

“Hello?” she answered.

“You’re asking for my disciplinary record?”

“And anything else I can cross-examine you on.”

“Anna, you have to realize, this is not about me. This is about Jody.”

“Sure. She’s the one facing life in prison—because of you.”

“No, because she killed Coach Fowler. You act like she’s some innocent little dove.”

“She’s not a dove. She is innocent.”

“Meet me today,” Rob said. “I’ll show you something. Then tell me if you still think she’s innocent.”

Anna paused. Her gut clenched at the thought of meeting him. She was always telling women to trust their instincts. She thought of the many times she had said,
Trust that feeling in the pit of your stomach. If your body is telling you not to meet with a guy, don’t do it.
But she needed whatever information she could get.

“Okay,” she said.

He told her where and when. The pit in her stomach deepened. She called Jody but didn’t get through. Anna left a voice mail telling her sister where she was going.

She followed Google Maps’ directions to the address Rob gave her: a building in downtown Detroit. There was no problem finding parking on Washington Street. Tall buildings rose up around her, most of them unoccupied. She pulled to the curb right in front of the address, turned off the car, and looked around in amazement.
The Metropolitan Building was a fifteen-story neo-Gothic tower that had obviously been abandoned years ago. Its windows were either glassless and open to the air or boarded over in plywood. Multiple layers of graffiti covered the bottom. Anna got out of the car. Instead of city sounds, she heard only insects and a faraway siren.

The glass doors to the lobby were all boarded up. She was only slightly surprised to find one of them propped open. She walked into an entrance hall that had been completely gutted. Shattered bits of plaster and glass covered the floor, and the wind whistled through holes that used to be windows. Wires hung from the ceiling. Rob stood in the middle of the lobby, looking at her quietly. She suppressed a shudder and walked up to him.

“Hey, Rob. You always knew how to show a girl a good time,” she said. “This is . . . extraordinary.”

“I can’t be seen talking to you like this. Here, there’s solitude.”

She walked over to a glassless window and looked out. She could see the Detroit River flowing a few blocks away. On the other side of the river was Windsor, Canada. It was a pretty view, gray and green, surreal to see from an abandoned skyscraper.

“You want to go up?” Rob said. “The view is worth the hike.”

She looked at him. She saw no malice in his face. And she did want to see this.

“Yeah,” she said.

Rob smiled. “There’s the Anna I knew.”

She followed him up a stairwell. Anna had no problem going up fifteen stories—she ran miles every day at home—although Rob was winded by the end. But he must have done this before, because he knew exactly where to go. He led her through a grim, graffiti-covered hallway to another set of stairs, and up to a deck marked
ROOFTOP
.

He pushed through the door, and Anna found herself on the top of the tall building. She could see a 360-degree view of Detroit from up here. It was incredible. The river shimmered to the east, with flat Windsor sprawling as far as the eye could see beyond it. The Renaissance Center was a few blocks away, tall, gleaming, only half occu
pied. And she could see the rest of the buildings of Detroit, dozens of which were abandoned. It was like looking at archaeological ruins, standing before Machu Picchu or the Roman Forum.

“Wow,” Anna said. She walked to the edge and looked down. There was no one down there. Several blocks away, inland, she saw a rectangular patch of green, with trees planted in neat, symmetrical rows. She realized she was looking at Cooper’s farm. It was one of the small patches of life in an otherwise decimated landscape.

She could feel Rob coming up behind her. His meaty hand was on her shoulder. She tensed, realizing how alone they were, how little effort it would take to push her over the ledge.

“I’m sorry things ended badly, ten years ago,” he said. “I always felt bad about that.”

She turned slowly and met his eyes. She couldn’t gauge his intentions. She stepped back, away from him and the ledge.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s just one of those things. Growing up.”

He turned to face her and rested his rear on the ledge. “Yeah. But I didn’t behave very well as it was happening. I shouldn’t have called you those names. I’m sorry about that.”

He wasn’t going to push her. She half thought he wanted to kiss her.

“I’m sorry too,” she said.

He ran his thumb over his mustache. “But I want you to know: this isn’t because of us. I hate to be in this position. But your sister is not the saint you think she is.”

“You keep saying that. Do you have anything to back it up?”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to her. She was starting to dread every time Rob showed her a piece of paper. She looked at him as she unfolded it. Someone had put an evidence bag on a Xerox machine and made a color copy. The bag was clear and Anna could see that inside it was a single white athletic sock. On the sock were several rust-colored stains, ranging in size from pinprick to lima bean.

Anna recognized bloodstains. Most of these were long and teardrop shaped. The pattern indicated that the blood had landed on
the sock after the liquid flew through the air, launched at fairly high speed. It was the sort of pattern that happened during stabbings or beatings, where blood flew off the victim onto the assailant. The pit in Anna’s stomach became a sinkhole.

“What’s this from?” she asked, although she could guess.

“That was found in your sister’s home,” Rob said. “Behind the washing machine. No other clothes had blood on them. We think she washed everything else, but overlooked this one.”

Anna started to make arguments about all the reasons there might be a few bloodstains on a sock in Jody’s house. But she wouldn’t be standing here if it were Jody’s blood.

“You tested it?”

“The blood is Coach Fowler’s. You’ll get the full DNA results from the prosecutor in a few weeks. But I wanted to tell you now. For old times’ sake. And because you deserve to know what you’re defending.”

He was looking at Anna with pity, which was far worse than anger. She liked the world better when Rob was a bad guy from whom she had to defend her sister. If her sister was the bad guy, and Rob was just a beleaguered public servant trying to do his job . . . she didn’t know where she fit in that world. She stepped next to Rob, put her hands on the ledge, and threw up over the side.

30

B
y the time she got back to Jody’s house, Anna had already come up with multiple scenarios where Coach Fowler’s blood got on Jody’s sock in a perfectly innocent way. One thing Anna had learned as a sex-crimes prosecutor was: fluids are exchanged in romantic relationships. One speck of blood does not a murder case make.

The coach had probably been to Jody’s house many times. He could have cut himself while slicing an apple, for example, and if Jody had been standing near him, his blood easily could have dripped onto her sock. He might have slipped while clipping his toenails, and . . . Jody had been sitting next to him, their feet touching. Maybe he had a nosebleed . . . right onto Jody’s sock. Each theory grew less plausible, but Anna kept spinning them out, rolling her mind over each scenario like a penitent rolling her fingers over rosary beads, for comfort and with a little prayer.

Her prayers weren’t answered. Later that afternoon, as she sat at her computer trying to concentrate on an appellate brief, Desiree Williams called.

“I’m calling about some more discovery issues,” the prosecutor said. “You requested every case involving the decedent or the defendant. There are six cases involving Coach Fowler, but they’ve all been filed under seal. And there’s no reason to unseal them now, except for one.”

“Why is that?”

“It involves both the defendant and the decedent.”

“Jody and Coach Fowler?”

“Yes. Ten years ago, your sister accused him of sexually assaulting her.”

“What?”

That couldn’t be true. Anna would know about it if it were true. She calculated back; ten years ago, Anna had been in her freshman year at college. Jody would have been a sophomore at Holly Grove High School. It was possible that something happened to Jody that Anna wasn’t present for. But Anna couldn’t believe Jody wouldn’t tell her.

“I take it you didn’t know about that?” Desiree asked.

Anna didn’t want to answer and make herself a witness in her sister’s case. “Were charges brought?” she replied.

“The case was declined.”

“What was the basis for the declination?”

“Complainant did not wish to press charges.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll have to ask her that. I’ll e-mail you the file and you’ll have everything I have.”

A few minutes after they hung up, Anna had a PDF of the police report on her computer. It was a witness statement form dated December 4, 2004. The complainant was listed as Jody Curtis; the suspect was Owen Fowler. Their DOBs were listed, showing Jody was fifteen at the time and the coach was forty. The text of the report was two sentences long.

CW reports that S-1 had vaginal intercourse with her while in S-1’s car. The event took place at approximately 23:30 hours on 12/3/04.

CW was shorthand for “complaining witness”—Jody—while S-1 stood for “Subject #1”—the coach. A line had been drawn diagonally across the entire report, above which was an illegible signature and the handwritten words
CW not cooperative, doesn’t want to press charges.

Anna had seen similar reports hundreds of times. Whenever someone told the police about a crime, the police were supposed to write it up and present the paperwork to a prosecutor, who would decide whether to bring charges, decline charges, or investigate further. A common reason for declining a sex-assault case was because the victim didn’t wish to press charges or wouldn’t cooperate.

But in the case of a sexual assault of a
child
, more work should have been done, even if the child wasn’t cooperative. Here, the prosecutor might have been able to make the case if Jody had gone to the hospital and had a sex kit done, and they found the coach’s semen. Just the presence of his semen and their two birth certificates would be enough—even if Jody had “consented”—because consent was not a defense to statutory rape. But there was no indication that any other work had been done.

Anna printed the report and stared at it for a while. Each time she learned another fact about the coach’s death, Anna had the sensation of being a boat with a deep keel. Each bit of evidence against Jody knocked her to the side, almost capsizing her. But her deep belief in her sister eventually righted her, as she found a way to fit the information into a narrative where her sister was innocent. But what Anna learned today swamped her.

A monstrous theory began to form in her mind. She tried to push the idea away, but the more she fought it, the bigger it grew.

•  •  •

When Jody came home that night, Anna was sitting at the kitchen table waiting for her. The evening was still light; Michigan is on the western edge of the Eastern time zone, and the sky doesn’t get dark until after ten
P.M.
in the summer. Jody wore jeans, a T-shirt, and hiking boots, her usual work attire.

“Hey, sis.” Jody took the last sip of a yogurt smoothie and threw the plastic bottle into the recycling bin. “I got your voice mail. Glad to see you made it back from your date with Rob. Did he try to kiss you at the end?”

Anna shook her head and didn’t smile.

“Uh-oh.” Jody said. “What’s wrong?”

Anna had two pieces of paper lined up in front of her. She slid the first across the table. It was the 2004 police report of Coach Fowler’s assault. Jody sat down next to Anna and looked at the report. She read the handwriting aloud: “‘CW not cooperative, doesn’t want to press charges.’” She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

“What happened, Jo?” Anna asked.

Jody looked out the window. “We had sex. Mom found out. She made me go to the police. It was considered an assault because I was fifteen. But I didn’t want to press charges, I guess. So they dropped it.”

“Why didn’t you want to press charges?”

Jody looked out the window. “Because I loved him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me ten years ago? Or any time since? For example, when I moved to Michigan to represent you because you were charged with his murder?”

“Oh, Annie,” Jody met her eyes, looking pained. “You were always the golden girl. The smart one, the one who was going to make it out of here. Ten years ago, you were doing so well at college. You’d come home with these stories about parties, and clubs, and the debate team, and I thought you were living the most glamorous life. I didn’t want any more evidence that I was the fuck-up sister. The bad one. I didn’t want your sympathy or pity. I still don’t.”

Anna felt like she had the wind knocked out of her.