A Quiet Belief in Angels (43 page)

“What? What the hell are you talking about? You don’t seriously think—”

“I’m not done. I’d appreciate if you wouldn’t interrupt me, Mr. Vaughan. As I was saying, taking into consideration the time of death, you had more than enough chance to go back to the house and do this terrible thing, so opportunity is not in question. Method? Well, that seems simple enough. The girl was attacked, and there are indications that she was raped. Seems, at least from the coroner’s initial report, that she was attacked with such violence that her neck was broken as she was pushed against the wall. Subsequently it appears that an attempt was made to actually sever the body in two. So that was method, Mr. Vaughan—”

My mind was closing down. Images battered me. The sound of screaming, the vision of blood. The thought of Bridget . . . “You’re insane—”

“Mr. Vaughan!” Lansford barked forcibly. “I asked you once, politely I think, if you would not interrupt me. I’ll ask you again now, and I will be most unhappy if you don’t cooperate. Now, as I was going to say . . . if you understand police investigative procedure, you’d know that the first facts that have to be established are threefold. Method,
motive,
and opportunity. The first and the last are evident, but the middle one, the motive for this brutal attack, has yet to be determined. But we believe that we may have something substantial to consider.”

I said nothing. A thousand questions filled my mind. My entire body was wracked with anguish, a pain that was more than mental, a pain that drove right through me. I could barely breathe. I realized where this was going. I realized what this police sergeant thought.

Lansford seemed to be waiting for me to say something, but I was unable to speak.

“You understand, of course, Mr. Vaughan, that in this democratic system of ours a man is innocent until proven guilty?”

He paused again. I still could not speak. A multitude of words were there, but not one single sound came forth.

“So until we can demonstrate someone’s guilt without doubt, we work on the basis that he has every right to defend himself, to seek legal counsel. In your case, Mr. Vaughan, I suggest you attend to this right away. Secure yourself a lawyer, and be prepared for a lengthy interrogation regarding the death of this unfortunate girl. You are, shall we say, somewhat in the line of fire as far as this matter is concerned.”

Lansford said nothing for a moment, and then he rose from his chair, lifted it and returned it to its place against the wall.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I mumbled. My throat was tight. My head pounded mercilessly. “I don’t see what possible motive I could have had.”

Lansford smiled, it seemed at first a little sympathetically, and then his face hardened. “The girl,” he said. “This Bridget McCormack, she was pregnant, Mr. Vaughan. Just a few weeks pregnant.”

I felt every ounce of life I possessed drain from within me.

“And, well, it is a sorry state of affairs when an unwanted child provokes an act of murder, but the truth is what we see, is it not?”

Lansford backed up and turned toward the door. When he reached it he turned back to face me. “I will send an orderly to make arrangements for you to call a lawyer. Like I said before, I would recommend that you do this immediately.”

I remembered hearing the door close with a metallic crash. I remembered the sound of the key grating in the lock, and then there was silence but for the sound of my own labored breathing, and close behind it the wracking grief in my chest.

I think I dreamed. Bridget came to me. She stood over me where I lay and said nothing. I reached out my hand to touch her and she dissipated like a cloud. Every piece of her broke up and disappeared with the sound of a breeze.

The orderly came after a long time and told me it was Sunday. There was no one I could call until the following day. He brought food which I did not eat. He asked if I wanted anything.

“My life back,” I said. “I just want my life back.”

The orderly smiled. “That, I’m afraid, is something I cannot do.”

I watched him disappear, and only then, as he closed the door with such finality, did I begin to face the truth of what had happened. I believed I understood what had happened. I believed I understood what had taken place in the house on Throop and Quincy, but more importantly, I started to understand why.

TWENTY-SEVEN

M
ONDAY EVENING A LAWYER CAME. THOMAS BILLICK, THE STATE-APPOINTED public defender. My shackles had been released enough to permit me to sit up, and once Billick arrived I was allowed to use a chair.

Billick was a man out of place. He carried a battered attaché case and clutched it fervently as if it were an object of defense. When he spoke his words were faltering and hesitant.

“I . . . I am not at all too familiar with such things,” Billick explained. He shook his head, fiddled with the arm of his glasses. When he let go they were slightly lopsided. “The charge has been made—”

“Charge?” I said. “What charge?”

“The charge of murder, Mr. Vaughan,” Billick said. “You weren’t aware that this charge had been made against you?”

“What are you talking about? You can’t be serious—”

“Oh, it is most serious, Mr. Vaughan, most serious indeed. The charge was filed against you on Saturday—”

“Jesus, this can’t be happening. I wasn’t even conscious on Saturday . . . you’re telling me that they filed a charge against me while I was unconscious?”

Billick shrugged. “I have nothing here that says you were unconscious, Mr. Vaughan.” He awkwardly opened the attaché case. Papers spilled out across the floor, which he spent a moment gathering together. “Here,” he finally said. He held up a single sheet of paper. “It says here that at ten minutes after one on the afternoon of Saturday the twenty-second of November you were formally charged with the murder of Bridget McCormack, that your rights were read to you, and that you were advised to seek legal counsel immediately. Apparently you chose to do nothing until this morning.” Billick looked up from the page and frowned at me. “Why was that, Mr. Vaughan? Why did you choose to do nothing about seeking legal representation until this morning?”

“This is utterly insane!” I said. “I can’t believe this is happening. I wasn’t even told that I should get a lawyer until yesterday, and as far as any charges being filed or rights being read . . . I can’t believe they did that! They charged me and read me my rights while I was unconscious.”

Billick was shaking his head. “Not according to this document.” He held the single page out toward me, and when I reached for it he swiftly returned it to his case. “I need to keep that,” he said. “That has to stay with the rest of your case file.”

“So what now? What the hell is supposed to happen now?” I asked.

“Tomorrow morning you will be arraigned, and once the arraignment is over you will be transferred to Auburn State Prison in upstate New York. There you will reside until a trial date has been set, and during your incarceration, which we hope won’t be too long, the police will prepare their case for the District Attorney’s Office, and I will be working on your defense.”

“Trial? I’m going to trial?”

“Yes, Mr. Vaughan, most definitely. The trial date will be more than likely sometime in the next four to six months. In the meanwhile you should try to remember everything that happened that morning. My initial thoughts are that we should try for a plea of manslaughter.” He smiled sincerely.

I couldn’t speak. I looked at Billick as he closed up his case and rose from his chair.

“So until we speak again tomorrow, you take good care of yourself, Mr. Vaughan.”

Billick smiled again, and then he walked across the room and knocked twice. The orderly beyond opened the door and let him out. He paused for a moment, looking through the bars that traversed the narrow window, and then vanished.

A few minutes later the orderly came in and asked if I wanted to remain seated, or return to the bed.

I didn’t move, didn’t say a word, so he shackled me to the chair right where I sat.

Paul Hennessy was there, Ben Godfrey too, as was Joyce Spragg, Aggie Boyle, her sister, and other people whose faces I vaguely recognized from the St. Joseph’s Writers’ Forum. They were silent and expressionless, seated there in the gallery of the Brooklyn City Courthouse on Tuesday morning. The proceedings were perfunctory and brief. Thomas Billick said almost nothing in response to the representative from the District Attorney’s Office, Albert Oswald. I was called before the judge, a man who looked no older than forty, a man who peered down at me with an air of condescending disdain. The D.A.’s representative, in a three-piece suit and patent-leather shoes, waved his hand in a dismissive fashion when Billick implied that the charge of first-degree murder was yet to be established.

“The charge has been raised and recorded,” Oswald said. “While the defendant remains on remand in Auburn State there will be ample time for the public defender to present any information to the district attorney, Your Honor.”

The judge nodded and indicated that the arraignment was at a close. “I have heard everything I need to hear. Defendant is bound over to the custody of the Auburn State Correctional Facility until such time as a trial date is set.” He smiled nonchalantly. “Mr. Billick?”

Billick looked up nervously.

“If there are any questions regarding the veracity or validity of the charge as stated here then I suggest you present yourself for plea bargaining at the Office of the District Attorney with all due haste. The court will not be tardy in the execution of its duty. A great deal of time and money will be spent in the jury selection process and in preparation for trial. I will not take kindly to any unexpected surprises regarding charges or defense . . . you understand?”

Billick glanced at me and then nodded at the judge.

“Mr. Billick?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Billick said. “Of course, everything will be arranged in a prompt and orderly fashion.”

“Well, I do hope so,” the judge replied. “It is, after all, a man’s life that’s at stake, is it not?”

Two court officials stepped forward and handcuffed me. They turned to lead me away.

“Be strong!” a voice called from the gallery, and looking up I saw Paul Hennessy standing there, tears running down his face, his hands gripping the bar ahead of him.

I bowed my head and was led away, Billick a few paces behind me.

I could not look back at my friends.

By Christmas Day of 1952 I had lost my name.

By the end of January I had forsaken my identity.

A month later I had ceased to be a human being.

From some vague recess of my mind I recalled words from de Toc queville’s
Democracy in America
: “We felt as if we traversed catacombs; there were a thousand living beings, and yet it was a desert solitude.”

He wrote these words about Auburn State Prison, Cayuga County, somewhere in a wilderness of humanity between Buffalo and Syracuse.

Upon arrival, that night at the latter end of November, my head had been shaved. My clothes were taken from me, and then we stood naked—myself and twelve others—as a doctor roughly and cursorily examined us. We were led through to an open courtyard circumvented by high walls, and in the bitter chill of dawn we were instructed to stand—legs apart, arms horizontal at shoulder height—and we were sprayed with a fine, acrid delousing powder. For a further thirty minutes we stood there, the acidic burning in nostrils and eyes, the urge to scream, to cry, to faint where we stood. One man did, a narrow-shouldered bald-headed man, and an orderly beat him with a stick until he stood again.

From there we were walked down a long, stone-tiled corridor and into a shower house. The water came like ice needles, stinging my skin until I felt blood was being drawn. Each of us was given a low-ceilinged white-painted room, known as “the cubes,” and on a thin horsehair mattress I lay shivering and stunned until sleep caught me unawares and made my nightmare vanish for the briefest of times.

My first day was a premonition of everything that was to come. We stayed within those narrow four walls, nothing to see but white paintwork and the weak shifts between daylight and darkness through a high porthole in the outer wall. For three weeks there was no movement but for pacing the seven and a half feet from one side to the next. Food came on a metal tray through a slot in the lower half of the door, and each time the narrow mailbox grate was slammed shut, I felt that metallic clash reverberate through every bone, every nerve, every sinew of my body. Spiritually, I was elsewhere. I walked with Bridget, I sat at my desk and wrote a book for Arthur Morrison, something that possessed spirit and passion and human dynamics. I felt Joseph Calvin Vaughan slipping silently away. I watched him go. He did not turn back, for to turn back would have been to see me, to perhaps take pity on me enough to return. This he could never risk, and so he remained selectively blind.

After three weeks we were transferred to three-man cells. I was housed with a pair of brothers, Jack and William Randall, armed robbers from Odessa in Schuyler County. Eleven months apart in age, their resemblance to one another was uncanny: blunt, porcine features, squint eyes, shoulders hunched forward as they walked, like gunfighters out of time and place.

I spoke to them of my innocence.

Jack Randall smiled and placed his hand firmly on my shoulder. “In here,” he said, “there’s only two types of people . . . the orderlies and the innocents.”

William laughed enthusiastically, and proceeded to punch me on the shoulder.

“We seen these places all too many times,” he said. “You get used to it. It has its own ways and means of doing things, and as long as you sit tight and mind yourself you’ll be fine.” He grinned heartily. “Me an’ Jack here, we’ll keep an eye on you . . . make sure some brute from down the corridor doesn’t make you his pony, eh?”

They laughed again, looking at one another, as if each was a reflection of his brother, and I closed down a little further, a little closer inside, and I pulled what little of myself remained tight to my chest.