Damage (2 page)

Her coffee had gone cold. She’d been sitting here now for twenty-five minutes. Outside, the fog advanced in bleary wisps.

If he was waiting for her, he would be very cold by now. She would wrap her coat up tightly and walk by at the end of the block to see if he was still there, and if he was, she would keep going and decide where she would hide.

But when she got there, he was gone.

She crossed the street and continued past until the next corner. She came up around the block and at it from the opposite direction.

He was gone.

Still, she kept herself bundled into her coat, her head down and the collar up as she passed first one building and then the next, darting quick looks into the doorways where he might be hiding. At her apartment’s front door recess, she stopped to make sure that the door was locked. It was.

Turning around, she chanced another look out to the street. The asphalt shimmered in light rain. Seeing her name, NUÑEZ, clearly labeled under the mailboxes as the resident in number six, she clicked her tongue.

Not careful enough.

Inside the door, she began the trudge up the three steep flights of stairs, finally making it to the top and through her door to safety—a bedroom, a tiny living room, a kitchen.

She closed the door and threw the dead bolt. Going to the front window, she again looked down at the rain-glistening street. Turning, she wondered if she had pulled the bedroom door closed behind her this morning. She didn’t specifically remember doing that.

But then finally she allowed herself a small smile. It might not even have been him to begin with. She’d let herself get all worked up again over something that had happened so very long ago. The paranoia, the memories, the relived fear had happened before and would happen again.

She couldn’t let it dominate her life.

She had to get over it. Maybe there was still time to change and not live in the shadow of that one moment of horror and despair. People had survived worse and gone on to do great things.

She let out a long breath and crossed the three steps over to the bedroom door. Gently, gently, she kicked it open.

See? she told herself. No one is here. Her apartment door was locked when she came in just now. The front door was locked downstairs.

What could he possibly want with her out of all the women in the world anyway?

She was no longer the beauty she’d been at eighteen. She didn’t want to be pretty and mostly avoided the temptation of trying to be.

Pretty had ruined her life.

She walked through the bedroom door.

On the morning of what was going to be his first day at his new job, a good-looking, well-built man with his hair trimmed to just over his ears stood in front of his bedroom closet in a pair of Jockey shorts. He pulled a T-shirt from the top of a large pile of them on their special shelf. Putting it on, he checked himself in the dresser’s mirror, sucked in an imagined gut, then turned around with a small flourish. The T-shirt read: SHOTGUN WEDDING: A CASE OF WIFE OR DEATH
.

“No.” His girlfriend sat up against the bed’s headboard. “Absolutely not.”

“I like it,” he said.

“Wes, you like them all.”

“True. It’s a foolish man who buys a shirt he doesn’t like.”

“It’s a more foolish man who goes to work as the district attorney of San Francisco wearing a shirt that can only be misinterpreted, and will be.”

“By who?”

“Everybody. And all for different reasons.”

“Sam.” Wes walked across the room, sat on the bed, and put a hand on her thigh. “Nobody’s going to see it. It’s not like I’m wearing it outside with my tie. And besides, if I have a heart attack and they have to rip open my dress shirt and somebody sees it, so what? It’s not exactly inflammatory. It’s just a pun, for God’s sake.”

“It’s not just a pun. It’s a political statement.”

“Saying what?”

“That you’re in favor of shotgun weddings. That getting married isn’t sacred. That you don’t think women are equal. Pick one. That you’re not sensitive enough in a general way.”

“Well, we already know that.”

“You laugh, but it’s nothing to laugh at. Everything you do, innocent or not, is going to be a political statement from now on. Don’t you see that? I thought you would have learned that during the election.”

“Nope. I guess not. And, might I remind you, I won.”

Sam made a face. “Wes, you won by ninety votes out of three hundred and fifteen thousand after your opponent died the week before the election.”

“As though it’s a bad thing. No, listen. It’s proof that God wanted me to win. He wouldn’t have taken Mr. Dexter back into His bosom if He didn’t want me to win. It’s self-evident. Maybe even cosmic.”

“It’s hopeless.”

“Well, I hope not that. It’s only my first day. I’m sure I’ll be way more hopeless as time goes by.” He got up and crossed back to the closet. “But if you really think it’s going to matter,” he said, “I’ll consider going with tomorrow’s T-shirt instead.”

“You’re wearing one tomorrow, too?”

“Sam, I wear a T-shirt every day. It provides clues to my secret persona.”

“Not so secret. The press is going to start wanting to see it if word gets out.”

“Good. That’ll just make me more
je ne sais quoi
. Quirky and lovable. But if you want, for the inaugural, I’ll trade out this one with tomorrow’s.” He turned and held out the next shirt on the pile: HEAVILY MEDICATED FOR YOUR SAFETY
.

“Much better. No, really, I mean it.” Her head fell forward and she sighed. “Never mind,” she said. “Never, never, never mind.”

“Hey, Sam,” he said. “If you can’t have fun with all this, what’s the point?”

Four days later, the fun part wasn’t much in evidence.

Wes Farrell’s office on the third floor of the Hall of Justice looked more like a janitor’s space. A couple dozen unpacked moving boxes lay stacked by the windows that looked out on Bryant Street. His predecessor’s comfortable and elegant furnishings were gone. Meanwhile, Farrell had commandeered a desk and several chairs from some offices down the hall. He’d also brought the Nerf ball basket from his old office and mounted it on the bookshelf.

Sitting in two of the folding chairs across from Farrell, Cliff and Theresa Curtlee had already congratulated him on his election victory. Now they exchanged glances with each other. Owners of San Francisco’s number-two newspaper, the
Courier
, the Curtlees had a lot of experience getting what they wanted in several different businesses—waste management, towing, import/export—and their tag-team approach had a long history of success. For this current campaign, their expectations were high because they had been large donors to Farrell’s campaign. Additionally the
Courier
had run some flattering profiles of him before the election and in the end had endorsed him.

Farrell had done as much homework as he could. The Curtlees’ son, Ro, had spent the past nine years in prison serving a twenty-five-to-life term for the rape and murder of one of their housekeepers, Dolores Sandoval. On the day before Farrell’s election, the U.S. Supreme Court had refused to review the decision of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal that had sent the case back to San Francisco for a new trial. The Ninth Circuit had reversed the conviction, overruling both the California Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court.

Cliff evidently gave Theresa the green light to begin. Her face, rigid with Botox, twitched in a semblance of a smile, and she cleared her throat. “We wanted to talk to you about our son, Roland, as you may have already guessed.”

Farrell grinned to make himself look amicable. “I thought that might be what it was.”

“What it is”—Cliff came forward for emphasis—“is that he’s innocent.”

“This whole thing has just been such a travesty of justice,” Theresa added, “and we were hoping that with someone new at the helm here, together we could find a way to make up for some of the time we’ve all lost over his case and possibly give us all a chance for the healing to begin.”

“I can appreciate that,” Farrell said, “but I don’t think too much of what happens next is within my power.”

“But it is,” Theresa said. “You don’t have to try him again. That’s within the DA’s discretion.”

“Yes, well, but ... I hope you both understand that I can hardly do that. The victim’s family alone . . .”

Theresa’s voice was low pitched, almost soothing. “But she wasn’t
his
victim, Wes. That’s the point. He didn’t hurt her in any way. If you could make the family understand—”

Cliff huffed and interrupted, “What family? You’d have to find them first wherever the hell they’re hiding out in Guatemala, and good luck with that. There’s no family to concern yourself over. But there is my son.”

Farrell cleared his throat. “I understood that the appeal wasn’t based on the evidence presented at the trial.” Farrell was referring to the two other women who testified they’d been raped by Ro.

Farrell knew that the successful appeal had been based on the fact that several members of the victim’s family had worn a button with a picture of a smiling Dolores Sandoval on it in the courtroom during the trial. This, the Ninth Circuit had ruled, must have hopelessly prejudiced the jury against the defendant. It was as wacky a decision as Farrell had ever heard, even from a court renowned for its bizarre rulings.

Cliff Curtlee waved off Farrell’s objection. “The evidence won’t hold up in a new trial. You read the old transcript, you’ll see. The two other so-called victims. Who are they? They shouldn’t have been allowed to testify at all. And Ro admits he had sex with the girl, but she wanted it, too. There’s no case anymore. There wasn’t any to begin with.”

“Well ...”

Theresa cleared her throat again. “But whatever you decide on the trial, and I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision, at the very least you can recommend a bail figure.”

Here Farrell shook his head. “I don’t want to seem unsympathetic to your son’s situation, but I can’t do that. There’s no bail in a special circumstances case.”

“Ah.” The muscles in Theresa’s face couldn’t get traction and—perhaps to compensate for the lack of expression—she held up her index finger. “But that’s the whole point. It’s not a special circumstances case. It’s never been one.”

Farrell showed his confusion. “I’m sorry?”

“It was Sharron Pratt’s one concession to us. After all we’d done for her.” Cliff obviously didn’t harbor any warm feelings for the former DA who’d prosecuted their son.

Well practiced, possibly even rehearsed, Theresa picked up the thread. “The charges were rape and murder, not murder in the commission of rape.”

Farrell noted the logical impossibility. If her son did it, the crime had to be rape/murder. But evidently this hadn’t bothered Sharron Pratt. “So it wasn’t special circumstances,” Wes said.

In other words, it wasn’t a no-bail case.

Theresa bared her teeth slightly. “Exactly. So he was eligible for bail, and will be again this time.”