Entombed (17 page)

"That after the
movies, he bought a bottle of wine for eight bucks. It was too cold to
hang out on the street, and neither one of them had enough money for a
hotel, so they rode around on the subway, drinking and making
love-well, having sex-until they got stopped."

Yolanda seemed
entirely disinterested in Ryan's facts, as reported by the police
officer. It was as though she had no role in Laquon's arrest and
incarceration for a violent felony charge.

"Where were you going
when you got on the train?" I asked.

"Home. I was cold and
tired. I told him I wanted to go home."

I looked at the
complaint report. "But you live uptown, Yolanda. Why were you on the
downtown train?"

She looked up at the
ceiling. "I'm the victim here. I don't have to be answering all these
questions."

"Actually, Yolanda,
you do have to answer these questions. So why don't you tell us when
and how you got on the train?"

"We got on right
before this happened. Laquon made me get on the subway."

"What did he do to
'make' you?"

"You know, like he
dragged me by the arm and pulled me down the steps."

"Onto the platform?
Wasn't anybody else there?"

"I didn't see nobody.
And when the train came along, he just pulled me inside and told me to
shut up." She was swinging her legs back and forth now, staring at a
photograph on the wall over my computer.

"And that's when the
attack happened, between Lincoln Center and Times Square, just minutes
before the officer got on the train?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"Where's your
pocketbook, Yolanda?"

She held up a small
bag that was on a long strap, looped around her neck and across her
chest.

"Why don't you open
that up and empty it out on my desk?"

"Huh?"

I stood up and reached
for the bag as she lifted it off.

"Do I have to do this?"

"Yes, I've asked you
to empty your purse."

"First could I go to
the bathroom for a minute?"

"Not until we're done."

She looked to Ryan and
Stewart for help, but got none. Reluctantly, she dumped the contents of
the small bag onto the desk.

I picked up the three
joints that were on top and held them out in my palm.

"Damn," Yolanda said.
"I bet Laquon put those there. They not mines. I swear I didn't know
they was there."

"Was Laquon smoking
that night?"

"Must have been.
I-I-uh, I don't do no dope."

"And the box cutter?"
I asked, holding up a slim metal case and pressing the release that
popped out a short, lethal blade.

"I got that for
protection."

"You have it with you
last Wednesday?"

"Yeah, but I didn't
have no time to use it. I was so scared I forget I had it."

I spread out the small
scraps of paper that were wadded together. "What are these?"

"Friends. Names and
numbers of my friends."

I unfolded each one
and read the names of more than a dozen men. "You got any girl friends,
Yolanda, or just guys? You mind if we call some of these guys and ask
how you met them?"

She was getting
truculent now, defiantly picking glitter off her nails and flicking it
on the floor. "Do what you want. I didn't want to be here anyway."

"What time was it when
you started liking Laquon better? Was it after the movie?"

"I told him," Yolanda
said, pointing to Ryan, "that I never be liking him. I was afraid of
him the whole time after the movie."

"So when did you stop
to write down his beeper number?" I asked. "When did you draw those
little hearts all around it?"

She reached over and
tried to grab the paper from my hand. "That's a different Laquon. That
have nothing to do with my rape."

"Ryan, why don't you
ask Wanda to come on back in here?"

"You can't be telling
her any of this. This is all privacy between me and the judge."

"First I'm going to
see whether you told your sister the same things you're telling me.
Then," I said, reaching for her Metro-Card, which was mixed in with the
assorted papers, "I'm going to give this card to the police, and
they're going to check a couple of things for me."

"It's mines. I bought
it last month. It ain't stolen."

"Even better, Yolanda.
Because the police can tell me exactly what time you used it on
Wednesday to get into the subway. What time and where."

"They can't do that,"
she said, getting angrier and more defiant.

"It's all
computerized. I'll know exactly how long you were on the train. And
we'll also be able to find out how many people were on whichever
platform you were on when you say Laquon dragged you."

"Why does that
matter?" Her head snapped around when she heard Ryan reenter the room
with her sister.

"Because if you don't
tell the judge the truth, you're going to be arrested."

Yolanda was crying
now, clearly more afraid of her sister than of me. "But I told all of
you I don't remember what happened."

"And I'm telling you
that I don't believe that. If you weren't drunk or you weren't high or
you weren't hit over the head with a baseball bat, you're the only one
of us who knows exactly what happened last Wednesday."

I started to tell
Wanda some of the inconsistencies between the story her sister had
originally told the police and what she was saying today. I handed her
the piece of paper with Laquon's name and beeper number on it, ringed
with the hearts that Yolanda had drawn.

Wanda pinched the girl
on the shoulder. "Why you be actin' all 'I don't remember this' and 'I
don't remember that'? Why you be telling me you don't like this boy but
you writin' down all his information? Girl, you ain't half as stupid as
you pretendin' to be."

"I'll tell you what,
Yolanda. The two of you can go down to Ryan's office and wait while he
sends this MetroCard over to the transit office to be decoded and gets
the information about your subway ride last week. I'm going to hang on
to your weapon," I said, holding up the box cutter, "and we'll just
toss your marijuana."

Wanda smacked her
sister on the back of her head. "What you doing with-"

"Don't hit her again.
Don't ever let me hear you laid a hand on her," I said. "And, Yolanda,
if you decide there's anything about your story you want to change
before you meet the judge, you tell Ryan as soon as you get down to his
office."

"If I do, do I have to
come back and see you again?" she asked, clearly anxious to avoid that
possibility.

"Not if the
information Ryan gets from the Transit Authority helps jog your memory."

"You mean, if I tell
him everything I can just go home?"

"If it's the truth,
yes."

Yolanda followed Wanda
out the door before I could pick up the file and return it to Stewart.
"I didn't know you could get all that information from MetroCards."

"That's what you're
here to learn," Ryan said, winking at me. "Laquon and Yolanda-can't you
just feel the love, Alex? I never saw you do the pocketbook trick
before."

"Teenage girls carry
half their lives in those things. The older women get, the more you can
find in the handbag. Pills, condoms, diaries, weapons, love letters.
I've broken more cases with a peek in the purse than everything I
learned in law school. I'd guess that little Yolanda's probably half a
hooker already."

"That's what Laquon
claims."

"Well, if the subway
records are more consistent with his story and you can't break her,
bring her back up and we'll beep a few of her conquests. See what they
can tell us about her."

Each MetroCard is
encoded with a unique ten-digit serial number, which generates a
fare-card history report with every use. It would tell me the time
Yolanda went through the turnstile in one-tenth-of-an-hour intervals,
what train station or bus she used, and even what her remaining balance
was. I wouldn't have to be the sole judge of her credibility-the
transit records would prove she had lied.

I walked Ryan and
Stewart to the door and picked up my messages from Laura. "These are
the only calls?"

"And you just missed
an update from Mike. Scotty Taren's still waiting it out on Sixth
Avenue. But they think Dr. Ichiko pulled a fast one, to avoid the
police and save his best stuff for his television debut. He didn't show
up for work today."

17

Mercer arrived in my
office with Annika Jelt at one, to prepare for the afternoon grand
jury. An attendant from the hospital accompanied the young student, who
was brought to me in a wheelchair because of her still-fragile physical
condition.

He sat beside her and
held her hand as she went over all the details of her attack. Her
English was excellent as she spoke softly but with determination.
Annika described how her assailant had appeared quite suddenly, out of
nowhere. Like the others before her, she had no idea whether she had
been followed for any distance to the stoop of her building.

It took me the better
part of an hour to get from Annika every nuance of the aborted assault,
and then another fifteen minutes-once the afternoon grand jurors
reconvened-to present her testimony to them. It was clear now that it
was only the resistance she mounted at the top of the
staircase-unwilling to give her assailant the opportunity to get her
alone behind her closed apartment door-that led to the frenzied
stabbing.

Mercer wheeled her
back to my office to get her coat and turn her over to the attendant
from the hospital.

"It's so wonderful to
see how much stronger you are, how much you've improved, in just this
short time. I know you've got a long way to go, Annika, but you've made
a great start. Do you know when you're leaving for Sweden?" I asked.

"As soon as the
doctors tell me it's safe for me to fly. The pressurized cabins are not
good for my lungs yet, and the flight is so long. But you'll call me
there if you catch the man, no?"

"The City of New York
will buy you the ticket back here to testify and I'll be your personal
escort," Mercer said.

"The posters-may I ask
you a question about them?" Annika said. "One of the nurses showed me a
poster."

Neighborhood groups
had reproduced the composite sketch and circulated it to stores and
businesses on the Upper East Side, urging them to hang it in their
windows and behind their counters, in case the rapist made an
appearance.

"What about it?"

"The poster has one of
the drawings on it from the group Detective Wallace showed to me, the
one I identified last week. It looks just like him-exactly like the man
who did this to me. But what it says on the writing below the picture,
well…"

"You don't have to be
hesitant," I said. "If you noticed something different, you can tell
us." Some people were more accurate at estimating height or weight.
Some could remember the feel of facial hair rubbing against them that
others hadn't even observed, or notice the smallest of scars or
blemishes on the skin of a perpetrator.

"The drawing the
detective showed me didn't have any writing on it. But the poster does."

Mercer and I both
nodded.

"You know where it
says the guy is African-American?" Annika asked.

Mercer seated himself
on a chair opposite his witness and let her talk directly to him.
"Yeah, you told me he was a black man."

"Of course, yes. But,
maybe this is because I'm foreign, because English is a second language
for me and I hear it differently."

I didn't know where
she was going with this.

"The other women," she
asked, "were any of them foreign-born?"

Mercer thought for a
moment. "No."

"Well, I don't think
the man is American. That's the word that troubles me. Black, yes.
African-American, no."

"What then? Caribbean?"

"I can't say that. I
haven't had much experience with people from the islands. It wasn't
all-how you say?-singsong, like a few of the Jamaicans in my class at
school. Not like that at all."

"Can you give me an
example?" Mercer said. "He didn't speak very many words to you."

"No, no. It's-well,
maybe it's not important then," Annika said, rolling the wheels of her
chair backward and averting Mercer's glance, as though she feared
wasting his time.

"It's all in the
details," he repeated to her, gripping the arm of the chair. "What is
it you remember? Every bit of it is important."

"Perhaps it's silly.
It's just a single word that I noticed."

"Which word?"

She looked at Mercer.
"Ass. When he tried to get me to open the door, he told me to get my
ass inside."

"Go on."

Annika was doing what
we had watched hundreds of other victims do. She was putting herself
back in the moment, watching a slow-motion replay of the attack in her
mind's eye, and fighting the emotions that bubbled to the surface as
she did.

"I can hear him say
that, just before I braced myself against the wall with my leg," she
said, reminding me of the footprint on her door. "It's what I believed
at the time. I thought he was from England, or that he went to school
there."

"Why?" Mercer asked.

"A lot of my friends
in Sweden, they learned their English in boarding school or college. My
accent is from speaking it in class, as a second language. But the
British pronunciation is different from you Americans'."

Annika smiled for the
first time since I had seen her greet Mercer from her hospital bed. "My
boyfriend? He spent a summer at Oxford. He says the word 'ass' exactly
the same way. It's silly, no? I didn't think at the time, but whenever
that night comes back to me, I realized that's what was so jarring,
when I heard the man speak that word."