Lies of the Heart (22 page)

“I didn’t have to.”

“Why is that?” Donna asks, looking meaningfully at the jurors.

“Because Jerry always went to the time-out room when he felt confused or scared.”

“Do you know why that was?”

Daniel explains how Jerry retreated to the time-out room because of its size, because there’s only one way in, because it’s so bright and Jerry is afraid of the dark.

Donna locks her hands behind her back. “It appears that he felt safe there.”

“Yes, definitely.”

Donna purses her lips, looks contemplative for a moment. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Redirect?” Judge Hwang asks Richard.

“Thank you, Judge,” Richard says from the table. “Mr. Quinlin, why are clients sent to this time-out room?”

“Well, if a client took something that didn’t belong to them,” Daniel says, struggling to keep his eyes on Richard, “like another client’s candy bar, or if he or she said something inappropriate, they’d spend some time there. Little things like that.”

Richard nods thoughtfully. “So if a client broke a rule, or they did something wrong and they knew it, they’d also know about spending some time in that room? Thinking about their mistake?”

“I guess,” Daniel admits with a blush. “But it’s usually only small—”

“Thank you, sir,” Richard interrupts. “Nothing further.”

Richard stands facing the rows behind the prosecution table, addressing the spectators quietly.

“I just want to warn you all again about the nature of the 911 tape,” he says. “Some of you might consider leaving the room before we play it.”

More than once Richard has offered to let Katie listen to the tape, to prepare herself, but she refused each time; she could already see that day too clearly in her head, didn’t want to add the sound track to accompany it until necessary.

Richard leans down to Katie. “It will be better with you here, but I’ll understand if you want to leave.”

“I’m fine,” she says.

Richard waits on Judge Hwang, his finger suspended over the button on the tape player. Two speakers sit on a cart facing the jurors; one of Richard’s paralegals stands nearby.

“Jurors will raise their hands if they can’t hear it clearly,” Judge Hwang instructs, and motions to Richard.

At first there’s just static and then the sound of ringing.

“This is 911 Dispatch, what’s your emergency? . . .
There’s been a shooting, a man has been shot
. . . A man has been shot? . . .
Yes, you need to get here, three thirty-three Post Road in Warwick, around the back, the blue building
. . . That’s 333 Post Road? . . .
You have to hurry, please . . .”

There’s a low howling sound, like wind rushing around tall buildings. It takes a few seconds before Katie realizes that it’s Joey, moaning in fear.

“ . . . Do you know who’s been shot, sir? . . .
He’s my friend, it’s Nick, Nick Burrell . . .
Sir, can you tell where he’s been shot? . . .
I don’t know, in the head or the face, I can’t tell . . .
Is he breathing? . . .
Yes, no, I don’t know
. . . Is the shooter still there? Do you see the shooter? . . .
He isn’t, he wouldn’t know . . . I can’t tell if he’s breathing or not . . . Nick?
”

The sound of tapping keys, the female dispatcher’s calm voice trying to reassure Daniel, and Joey’s howling, which overwhelms everything else for a few seconds.

“ . . . Get them out of here!”
Daniel yells, and then Carly’s tentative voice comes from a distance:
“It’s not a game?”
The howling fades away. More static, the sound of Daniel crying now, his panicked voice.

“
. . . Sir? . . .
Jesus, oh. God, there’s blood spreading all over
. . . Sir, can you get a pulse, is he breathing? . . .
I can’t tell, I don’t know, this is wrong, it’s so wrong . . .
Sir? Hello? Sir, can you hear me? . . .
I don’t think he’s here anymore, I think he’s gone, you need to hurry
. . . An ambulance is en route right now, just keep talking to me . . .
Jesus, Nick
. . . What’s happening right now, can you tell me? . . .
I turned him over, there’s so much blood I can’t even see his face. I’m going to give him CPR, but I need something to wipe off the blood, it’s everywhere . . . Nick? . . .”

Static, and the sound of Daniel’s sobbing.

“ . . . What’s happening there? Can you tell me what you’re doing? . . .
I’m wiping his face with my shirt . . . It’s, his face is . . . it’s . . . Oh, God . . .
”

She isn’t ready to go home yet, so she takes a left off Warwick Neck Avenue onto Rocky Point Drive. At the end of the road is the entrance to the Rocky Point Amusement Park, shut down and abandoned for over seven years now. The gate is open, so she steers her way into the park, blinking into the darkness on both sides of the tall metal fence. It’s eerie driving through like this, without the carnival noise and bright lights to greet her.

The summer they were married, Katie asked Nick to take her out on the boat so she could see those colored lights flashing into the sky, to see the yellows and reds and blues rippling over the water and touching up against their hull. They rounded the Warwick Neck lighthouse, saw the crumbling mansion that stands less than three hundred yards from the park on the narrow, rocky beach leading to it: a seminary built sometime in the 1800s, only four deteriorating walls and a couple of arched windows at that point. Nick cut the engine, and the sound of Katie’s past rushed into her ears—the same faint music she heard that first night she met Nick. He clicked off the running lights, jumped up onto the bow, and threw down the anchor. Watching him there on the bow, silhouetted by the lights of her childhood, Katie was suddenly overcome by the terrifying, hopeful power of living in this world, with the promise of finally sharing it with a man who truly loved her.—Nick, she said, and he jumped down instantly at the quavering in her voice.

—Nick, I can’t even put it in words, I don’t know how, she said, reaching for him.—I’ve wanted you my whole life, she said, her voice choking up. He grabbed her hair, then, a fistful in both hands, and pulled her to him. Pulled her face right up to his.—You mean that, he said quietly. —You really mean it. And then they came together, they collided into each other, undressing themselves and each other with stumbling fingers. At one point the sides of Katie’s mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood—gone before she could ask whose it was, if it was his blood or her own they passed between them, unacknowledged.

She rounds the corner where the flume used to be (just some girders and a couple of brown plastic logs turned upside down now), hugging the winding road that follows the coastline on the right. The ocean is invisible except for an occasional whitecap, and in the rearview mirror Katie can barely make out the outline of the mansion on the beach. She winds up the hill, past the Shore Dinner Hall on the left, and then down the hill, past the takeout window where her family used to get clam cakes and chowder after church every Sunday in the summer. The same takeout where she and Nick would go when the weather turned and the crowds gathered: dozens of people milling around them, but they were the only two there, leaning into each other and listening to the cries of the greedy seagulls circling above. Now, on the other side of the road and across from the takeout, all the picnic tables are gone and the long dock has boards and big signs nailed across the front: KEEP OUT
,
DANGER
.

She curves around again, passes the Palladium Hall on the left, where both she and Dana had their high-school graduation banquets, and then there is only parking lot on both sides of the car; she leaves the ocean behind her, still unseen.

Close to the exit, right before the road dead-ends into Palmer Avenue, is the plunging hill that her father would race over when they left the amusement park after a long day—a lifetime ago. He’d slam the gas pedal, and they’d cruise over it like they were still on the Cyclone, and lose their stomachs for the last time of the day. Dana would throw her hands up in the air every time, and Katie would hug herself, already nauseous from so much spinning and falling. But she loved what came right after, and it made getting a little sick worth it: her mother grumbling (
For God’s sake, Jimmy, haven’t we been on the verge of vomiting enough today
?) and looking into the backseat to trade a disgusted look with Katie. Katie, who would wait for that look, the perfect way to end the day. For once she and her mother teamed up, while Dana rolled her eyes at their father, who only smiled and shook his head, unrepentant. Years later, a whole lifetime later, Katie would see this same look on Nick’s face as he zoomed over the hill, laughing at her, his warm hand on her leg.

Katie floors the pedal at the last second, feels her stomach bounce as she flies over the hill. Back when she was a teenager and Jill and Amy were off together, meeting boys or trading secrets that didn’t include her, she’d get into her secondhand Buick Skylark and sail over this hill—picturing her mother’s face, feeling that secret thrill again of being in total concert with her.

She reaches Palmer Avenue, gives one last glance back at the park in the rearview mirror. She’ll have to call her parents when she gets home, fill them in on the trial, ask them if they’ll come by to let Jack out during the days. But she won’t tell them about this trip through the park, because her father has told her about the rumors more than once over the phone; she doesn’t need to hear again how the park will be closed up completely soon, how the owners will sell it to developers. Tearing everything down to build condos, or auctioning it all off into private lots.
And don’t even think about protests or petitions, sweetie,
her father told her.
You don’t want to mess with these guys. I’ve heard they’re linked to the mob.

Her breath fogs the windshield as she stares up at her house: total darkness inside. Katie wonders how Jack is making out in there, how he’s finding his way around the unfamiliar rooms and corners.

Her eyes travel over the door, the windows, the small red maple that bends toward the side of the house where the gutter empties onto the lawn.—
Feels like home already, doesn’t it?
Nick had said one night, soon after they moved in. Just sitting in the car like this, staring up at their new house.—
Ours, Katie.

Katie pops open the car door, listens to Jack barking inside—hoarse, like he’s been stuck on autopilot all day. She stares at the bay window on her way up the walk, looks for signs of the little dog in the blackness inside.

Katie crunches up her front stairs, still thick with salt, and kicks her shoes into the cement below the door; Jack’s barking grows urgent until she inserts the key and it stops altogether.

“Jack?” She snaps on the lamp by the door.

A pile of damp and chewed up envelopes is on the floor in front of her. Jack cowers into the curve of the blue sofa, ears flattened. His toys are spread out from the living room to the kitchen, a line that begins with a squeaking newspaper and ends with a purple stuffed elephant wearing a maniacal ear-to-ear smile.