The Pact (21 page)

The man shrugged. “Shook his baby to death. Frigging animal.”

Chris looked over the barbed wire, and thought of honor among thieves.

He called home collect.

“Chris?”

“Mom,” he said, just that word, over and over, with his head leaning against the blue pay phone.

“Oh, honey. I tried to come to see you, did they tell you?”

Chris closed his eyes. “No,” he said tightly.

“Well, I did. But they said visiting hours aren't until Saturday. So I'll be there first thing.” She took a deep breath. “This is a horrible mistake, you know. Jordan's already got the prosecution's files. He's going to find a way to get you out as quickly as possible.”

“When is he coming to see me?”

“I'll call him and ask,” his mother said. “Are you eating all right? Can I bring you anything?” He thought about that, unsure what was allowed in. “Money,” he said.

“Hang on, Chris. Your father wants to talk to you.”

“I... no. I've got to go. Someone needs the phone,” he lied.

“Oh ... all right. You call here whenever you want, do you understand? We don't care about your reversing the charges.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Suddenly there was a tinny, recorded voice: “This call,” it announced, “is being made from the county correctional facility.” Both Chris and his mother were silent for a moment. “I love you, sweetheart,” Gus finally said.

Chris swallowed, and slipped the receiver back into the cradle. He stayed there for a moment, leaning his head against the pay phone, until he felt the hard press of a body behind him. Damon was rubbing his spine, his breath on Chris's neck. “You miss your mama, professor?” He pushed his hips forward, his groin coming in contact with Chris's behind.

Wasn't this what he had been expecting? Wasn't this what he had been afraid of? Chris whirled around, catching the bigger man by surprise. “Get away from me,” he said, his eyes glittering, and he backed into his cell.

Even with the covers over his head, he heard Damon laughing.

Chris thanked God for his lack of a cellmate. He lived in fear of suddenly having Damon thrown into his bunk, because although the officers were fairly good about keeping control during the day, who knew what they bothered to hear at night? He picked up the story lines on Days of Our Lives. He went to an AA meeting on Wednesday night, just to get out of the pod.

He filled out a commissary order, which reminded him of the room service breakfast sheet at the hotel in Canada his family had visited last summer. An eight-ounce jar of coffee was $5.25; a Three Musketeers bar was sixty cents. Thongs were $2. His items were delivered to him that afternoon by an officer, and the total amount was deducted from his prison account.

He slept a lot, pretending even when he wasn't tired so that people would leave him alone. And when clusters of men gathered in the exercise yard, Chris was always standing by himself. A LONG TIME AGO, Jordan had stopped believing in the truth.

There was no truth, at least not in his profession. There were versions. And a trial was not based on truth, anyway, but on what the police had, and how you could respond to it. A good criminal defense lawyer did not think about the truth, and focused instead on what a jury was going to hear. Years earlier, Jordan had stopped asking his clients for the real story. Now he went in with a blank face, and simply said, “What happened?”

He was standing at the control area of the maximum security unit, waiting for the officer in charge to slide the clipboard out so that he could sign in as a visitor. For his first post-arraignment interview with Chris, he'd brought along Selena Damascus, a six-foot-one black female private investigator who seemed better suited to fashion runways than doing Jordan's legwork, but who had been doing a damn good job all the same for several years.

“Where are they keeping him?” Selena asked.

Jordan leaned against the table, next to Chris. “If you need someone to confide in,” he said, “that person will be me.” He began walking back to his seat. “Any other questions?”

“Yeah,” Chris said. “Do you have any kids?”

Jordan stopped dead. “Do I what?”

“You heard me.”

“I don't see why that has anything to do with your case.”

“It doesn't,” Chris admitted. “It's just that if you're going to know me inside out by the time this is all over, I thought I ought to know something about you.”

Jordan heard Selena snicker. “I have a son,” he said. “He's thirteen. Now, if we're finished with the introductions, I want to get down to business. Today's agenda involves getting as much information as possible. We need you to sign release forms so that we can get your medical records. Are there any hospitalizations we should know about? Physical or mental disabilities that would make you incapable of physically pulling a trigger?”

“The only time I've been hospitalized was after that night. For my head, and I cut that when I passed out.” Chris bit his lip. “I've been hunting since I was eight.”

“Where did you get the gun that night?” Selena asked.

“It was my father's. It was in the gun cabinet with all the hunting rifles and shotguns.”

“So you're accustomed to firearms.”

“Sure,” Chris said.

“Who loaded the revolver?”

“I did.”

“Before you left your house?”

“No,” Chris stared at his hands.

Jordan raked his hand through his hair. “Can you give me the names of people who would be able to describe your relationship with Emily?”

“My parents,” Chris said. “Her parents. I guess just about anyone at school.” Selena looked up from her notepad. “What should I expect these people to tell us?” Chris shrugged. “That Emily and I were, you know, together.”

“Might these people also have noticed that Emily was suicidal?” Selena asked.

“I don't know,” Chris said. “She kept it pretty close to her chest.”

“We'll also need to show a jury that you were planning to kill yourself that night. Any counselors you spoke to? Mental health people you'd seen?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that,” Chris said, licking his dry lips. “There isn't anyone who's going to tell you I was planning on killing my-self.”

“Maybe you mentioned it in a journal?” Selena suggested. “A note you wrote to Emily?” Chris shook his head. “The thing is, I wasn't.” He cleared his throat. “Suicidal.” Jordan briskly pushed the admission aside. “We'll talk about that later,” he said, silently groaning. It was better, in Jordan's opinion, not to know any more than you needed to about a client's crime. That way you could proceed with your defense without violating any ethics. But once a client told you his story, that was the story. And if he took the stand he had to stick to it. Confused, Chris looked from Jordan to Selena. “Wait,” he said, “don't you want me to tell you what really happened?”

Jordan flipped his pad to a new, blank page. “Actually,” he said, “I don't.” THAT AFTERNOON, Chris got a cellmate.

Shortly before dinner, he'd been curled up on his bunk, his thoughts pulled close around him, when an officer brought the man in. He was wearing a jumpsuit and sneakers, like everyone else, but there was something different about him. Something removed and standoffish. He nodded at Chris and climbed into the top bunk.

Hector came to the cell door. “Get tired of seeing your own face, man?”

“Get lost, Hector,” the man sighed, without turning over.

“Don't you be telling me to get lost, you-”

“Chow,” an officer called.

As Hector left to get into his cell for lockdown, the man unfolded himself from the bunk and came down to accept his tray. Chris, on the bottom bunk, realized there was nowhere for the other guy to sit. If he crawled back into the top bunk, he'd have to eat lying down. “You, uh, can sit here,” he said, glancing at the far end of his bunk.

“Thanks.” The man uncovered his tray. An unappetizing tricolored lump sat in the center. “Name's Steve Vernon.”

“Chris Harte.”

Steve nodded and began to eat. Chris noticed that Steve was not much older than he was. And seemed just as inclined to stay uninvolved.

“Hey, Harte,” Hector called from his own cell. “You better sleep with your eyes open tonight. Youngsters ain't safe around him.”

Chris's gaze flew to Steve, who was still methodically eating. This was the guy who'd killed a baby?

Chris forced his attention back to his plate, trying to remember that a man was innocent until proven guilty. He was proof of that.

All the same, Chris remembered the things Hector had said when they passed the isolation cell: Picked up his kid in the middle of the night, and went crazy, man. Shook him so hard to stop crying his neck snapped. Who knew what set someone like that off?

Chris's insides went to jelly. He set his plate down and started for the door of the cell, intending to head for the bathroom at the end of the hall. But it was lockdown for another half hour at least, and for the first time since his arrival, he did not have the cell to himself. He stared at the gray toilet, just inches from Steve Vernon's knee, and reddened with embarrassment. Dropping his pants, Chris sat down and tried not to think about what he was doing. He kept his arms crossed over his middle, his gaze on the floor.

He finished and stood to find Steve in the upper bunk again, his half-cleaned plate on the lower bed. Vernon's face was turned away from the toilet, toward the bare wall, offering Chris as much dignity as possible.

The TELEPHONE RANG JUST AS Michael was getting ready to leave for a house call. “Hello?” he asked impatiently, his body already beginning to sweat beneath the weight of his winter jacket.

“Oh, Mikey,” said his cousin Phoebe, from California-the only person who ever called him Mikey.

“I just wanted to call and tell you how very, very sorry I am.”

He had never liked Phoebe. She was his aunt's child; she must have been alerted by his own mother after the funeral, since Michael had done no calling around of his own to let relatives know of Emily's death. She wore her hair in Haight-Ashbury braids and had made a career out of throwing pots that were intentionally lopsided. When Michael spoke to her, which was infrequently at family gatherings, he was reminded of the time they'd been four, and she'd snickered when he wet his pants.

“Phoebe,” he said. “Thanks for calling.”

“Your mother told me,” she added, which Michael found interesting: How could his mother pass along information that Michael could not yet accept? “I thought you might want to talk.” To you? Michael almost asked, before he remembered himself. And then he recalled that Phoebe's common-law husband had hanged himself from a closet rod two years ago. “I know what it's1 like,” Phoebe continued. “Suddenly discovering something you should have noticed a long time ago. They go on to this better place, you know, which is what they wanted all along. But you and me, we're still left behind with all the questions they couldn't answer.”

Michael remained silent. Was she still grieving, then, after two years? Was she suggesting that he had anything at all in common with her? He closed his eyes and felt himself shiver, in spite of his heavy coat. It wasn't true; it simply wasn't true. He had not known Phoebe's husband, but she couldn't have known him as well as he had known Emily.

So well, Michael thought, that this would come out of the blue?

He felt a stab of pain in his chest and realized that guilt came from all angles: from not being able to see his daughter's distress in the first place; from being so selfish that even now he focused on what Emily's suicide said about his parenting skills, and not about Emily herself.

“What do I do?” he murmured, unaware he'd spoken aloud until he heard Phoebe's answer.

“You survive,” she said. “You do what they couldn't.” On the other end of the telephone line, Phoebe sighed. “You know, Michael, I used to sit around looking for a way to make sense of what had happened, like there was some kind of answer I could find if I just looked hard enough. Then one day I realized that if there had been one, Dave would still be here. And I wondered if this ... this feeling that I couldn't figure it all out... was what Dave had been feeling, too.” She cleared her throat. “I still don't get why he did it; and I don't like that he did it; but at least I understand a little better what was going through his head.”

Michael imagined Emily's stomach tied up in the same Gordian knots as his own, Emily's thoughts equally tangled. And he wished, for the millionth time, that he'd been vigilant enough to have spared her such pain.

He murmured his thanks to Phoebe again and hung up the phone. Then, still wearing his shearling coat, he trudged upstairs in the empty house. He entered Emily's room and stretched out on the bed, staring in turn at the mirror, the schoolbooks, the discarded clothing, as he tried to see the world through his daughter's eyes.

Francis Cassavetes had been sentenced to six months in jail, but he was serving it on weekends. It was a common punishment for those who were employed and contributing to society-a judge would have them come into the jail on Friday and leave on Sunday, allowing them to work the rest of the days in between. Weekenders were visiting royalty in the jail, and spent most of their serving time taking bribes from inmates less fortunate in their sentencing. They smuggled in cigarettes, needles, Tylenol-anything-for a price.

When Francis entered the maximum security pod, he cupped Hector's face in his hands. “Am I your man?” he said. He pushed past Hector, heading toward the John.

Francis returned, his hand fisted around something. “You owe me double for this, Hector. Fucking things made me bleed.”

Chris watched as Hector's hand brushed Francis's and a small, white tube winked in the transfer. He turned and walked back into his cell.

Steve folded down a corner of the magazine he was reading. “Francis brought him cigarettes again?”

“I guess,” Chris said.

Steve shook his head. “Hector ought to ask for a nicotine patch, instead,” he muttered. “Probably easier for Francis to smuggle in, too.”

“How does he?” Chris asked, curious. “Smuggle them in?”

“Used to hide them in his mouth, I hear. But he got caught, so now he's using a different opening.” When Chris continued to stare at him blankly, Steve shook his head. “How many holes have you got?” he asked pointedly.