Lies of the Heart (52 page)

“You talked to them about your husband?” Ben prods gently. “Your marriage?”

“A little. They asked questions.”

“They listened,” Ben says. “And they watched you back, dear. They saw.”

Those doubtful looks that Katie missed until recently, the questions about Nick and their marriage—not just light chatter to pass the time, but a lead-up to the real business of their meetings.

“Arthur was sick, wasn’t he?” Katie says.

“All the coughing? Yes. But it was nothing serious,” Ben says. “It was my mother who was becoming very ill.”

“Sarah?”

“The doctors said she had Alzheimer’s. Not a bad case yet, but she was starting to forget things. And she was starting to have trouble sorting out the present with her memories. Her thoughts were getting jumbled up quite a bit.”

Katie recalls Sarah’s looks of confusion, her blank stares, her frequent disorientation. Arthur’s gentle nudges for her to focus, or to answer Katie’s questions. And in the last reel Katie watched, the odd, girlish tone of Sarah’s voice when she described the first rape. A dozen different things that should have alerted Katie that something was wrong with her—but again, she missed what was right in front of her.

“That’s why they took their lives?” Katie says.

“They didn’t want to experience it again, to live in the past. They wanted to move on. But before that, they both wanted to leave something behind.”

Katie looks down. “I don’t think I can finish the documentary, Ben. I’m so sorry.”

He leans forward, places his hand on hers. Smiles. “They didn’t care if you finished, dear.”

“They didn’t?”

“I told you once, on the phone, but I don’t think you understood,” he says. “It was their gift to
you.
”

“I don’t understand.”

“That is what they wanted you to have. To leave behind. The peace they found. They wanted you to see. All the interviews, the stories, they were for you.”

Ben dips his head down respectfully to give Katie a moment to herself, but the generosity of their gift only makes her feel their absence more painfully.

“And now they’re gone, Ben.”

“They are home now, with God. Some people think it was selfish, but it was the right thing to do, Katie. When my mother started to relive the rapes, we were surprised. For years she had the proof in front of her, every day, but suddenly it was too much. For my father, too.”

“Proof? Of what?”

Ben opens his arms, smiles that mischievous smile that recalls Sarah in an instant.

“You?”

“My parents wanted many children. They talked about this on your films? My father wanted them all to have my mother’s eyes, but they did tests on him in the camp. Experiments that lasted over a month. When it was over, he was sterile.”

During the last taping, when Katie had met Ben, she remembers thinking how different he was from Arthur—so tall, soft-spoken. And she remembers Sarah’s description of the new general.
He was a young man. Tall and quiet . . .

“Do you mean the general—You aren’t Arthur’s real son—”

Ben meets her stunned gaze with a quiet smile: not Arthur’s biological son, this look says, and yet—
still
—Arthur’s son just the same.

“My father was proud of me, and he told me this every day,” Ben says. “I was real to him in every way that mattered.”

Before he leaves, he hands her an envelope. “When you are ready, dear,” Ben says.

She waits until her family is gone, until she is in bed with Jack snuggled up close. She opens the envelope, pulls out a letter. It’s only a short paragraph, filled with crowded, uneven sentences that slant across the page.

T
here are rules, too many. Katie remembers only three: no sharp objects, no gifts, no touching. That’s the most important one—no touching.

We don’t want to give them any reason to ask you to leave,
Patricia said to her,
so talk to him that way you do. He’ll feel that.

She’s in a small room that smells like urine and burned meat—stagnant, nursing-home air. The walls and floor are scuffed and dirty, the only furniture a long wooden table with a thin layer of grime on it and two fold-down metal chairs. A two-way mirror takes up most of the wall on her right—just like the one at the Warwick Center, where observers could watch Nick working with his clients in the adjoining room. Where Katie saw Jerry for the first time, where she filmed the interviews.

On the thin strip of wall next to the window, someone has painted over an angry, scrawled message that is still legible: EAT ME, YOU FUCKING SPIES!

The door opens, and Katie jumps to her feet. A tall guard with a shaved head and dark, bushy eyebrows that make him look angry motions for her to sit down. Katie drops back into her chair. The guard turns and pulls a shuffling Jerry into the room, another guard trailing behind them.

“Kay-tee!”

The second guard is shorter, with a kind expression on his youthful face; he nods at Katie, his hand resting lightly on Jerry’s broad back.

“Hey, Jerry,” she says.

Jerry’s face shines with excitement, despite all the chains—attached to a clamp around his neck, trailing down the middle of his orange jumper, attached to more wide clamps that circle his wrists and ankles. His left eye is swollen almost shut, the corners of his lips cracked and clotted with dried blood. The inflammation on one side of his face makes his grin crooked, painful-looking.

“I missed you, buddy,” Katie says.

Jerry’s grin stretches, and fresh blood seeps from the corner of his lips. He tries to rush forward, and the first guard pushes him back roughly with his forearm. Jerry teeters backward, the chains clanging, and the younger guard has to use both hands to steady him.

“Hold up, pal,” the younger guard says, shooting his partner an annoyed look.

If Jerry weren’t staring at her like that, Katie would fall apart right then and there from the tenderness in this guard’s voice—Jerry has had a friend here. She thanks God for that.

“I was waiting,” Jerry says.

“I know. I’m sorry it took so long.”

His swollen, happy face says he doesn’t mind, everything is okay now that Katie is here.

They settle Jerry into the chair, the younger guard patting him on the chest.

“You need to stay put,” the first guard tells Jerry, pointing at him. “You understand?”

“Kay-tee, I go home now?”

He tries to raise his chained hands, and Katie automatically raises her own until she sees the first guard watching her.

“Jerry,” she says, “it’s important that you sit in the chair, okay? If you try to get up, they’ll ask me to leave.”

His swollen face goes slack. “You leave?”

The younger guard squeezes his shoulders, leans down to his ear. “Just sit in the chair and your friend can stay.” He pushes Jerry’s hands down. “Stay put. Okay, guy?”

Jerry’s eyes never leave Katie. “Okay, Mike.”

“We’ll be right outside,” the first guard says. He points at the two-way mirror. “Try to speak up.”

The door closes behind the guards, and Katie smiles at Jerry. “How do you feel?” she asks. It’s a stupid question, not on Patricia’s list, but she wants to know this more than anything.

“I scared sometimes.” He leans into the table with his chest, the chains banging.

“You have to sit back, Jerry. I’m sorry. There are rules.”

His face darkens. “Lots of rules here, Kay-tee.”

“I know.”

“I drawed pictures for you,” he says. “Dey say I can give dem to you, but now dey don’t let me.”

“You’ll save them for me?”

Jerry’s face brightens. “Course, Kay-tee.”

“Do you remember that time,” Katie begins, “that the wind blew all those leaves into the front yard?”

“We make a pile.”

“We made a huge pile,” she says.

She draws a house with her finger onto the table. The sweat on her finger mixes with the thin layer of grime on the table, but the outline is barely visible. Yet it’s enough for Jerry, who knows this picture better than anyone.

He tracks the lines with his good eye, with the crescent of his other one. She makes a box in the middle of the house.

“Do you know what this is?” she says, tapping it.

“Window?”

“Your window, Jer.”

“
My
room?”

“Do you remember your room? Can you see it?”

“Um—”

“Close your eyes, buddy.”

He obeys her instantly, tilts his head back. “What I see?”

“Look beside the bed. On the bookstand.”

Underneath his lids his eyes track back and forth, looking around his room. “Books. My pencils.”

“What else?”

“Milk,” he says, and opens his eyes. “Only don’t leave it dere, ’cuz it cuddles.”

“Curdles?”

A small giggle, perfect for the spectators in the other room. “Yeah,” he says, “It stink.
Yuck.
”

“What else is in your room?”

Eyelids closing again, then a secret smile on his face. “Oh, no! My Bugs Bunny pillow, Kay-tee! You
forgot
?”

“No way, I love that pillow.”

“Me, too,” Jerry says, and his smile is so sweet that she wants to gather him up, whisper her apology in his ear, beg for him to forgive her. Knowing he would, that even if he could understand how she has betrayed him, he would forgive her instantly, completely, before she could finish asking.

If the people in the adjoining room can see Jerry’s face right now—if Richard and the DA can see the dreaminess on it—it must be enough. This enormous man enraptured by the memory of his stuffed pillow. But just in case:

“Poor, poor Coyote,” Katie says sadly. “He didn’t stand a chance.”

“He all burned up!” Jerry says.
“Bee-beep!”

Jerry throws his head back and laughs. His whole body shakes, the chains rattling as water pools in the corner of his mouth. A long line of saliva escapes, and his tongue snakes out to capture it back.

“I drool,” he says proudly.

“Gross.”

More giggles, his one good eye filled with happiness.

Katie scans the window quickly, imagines Patricia and Donna Treadmont nodding in approval. She takes in a deep breath.

“I have to ask you some questions, Jerry. About Nick.”

“Nick is died.”

“I know. I want to talk about the day you shot him, okay?” She uses the relaxed tone of voice she practiced with Patricia. Folds her hands on the table, leaves a small, encouraging smile on her face—just as Patricia instructed.