Tell Me No Secrets (3 page)

Sally took the box from Jess’s hands as carefully as if she were handling a poisonous snake.

Suddenly Connie was on her feet. “You know as well as I do you’ll never be able to connect this to Rick Ferguson. He’ll get away with it. He’ll get away with everything.”

“Only if you let him.” Jess returned to Connie’s side.

“What choice do I have?”

“A clear choice,” Jess told her, knowing she had only a few minutes left to change Connie’s mind. “You can refuse to testify, that way ensuring that Rick Ferguson walks away scot free, that he never has to be held accountable for what
he did to you, for what he’s
still
doing to you.” She paused, giving her words time to register. “Or you can go to court and make sure that that bastard gets what he deserves, that he gets put behind bars where he can’t hurt you or anyone else for a very long time.” She waited, watching Connie’s eyes flicker with indecision. “Face it, Connie. If you don’t testify against Rick Ferguson, you’re not helping anyone, least of all yourself. You’re only giving him permission to do it again.”

The words hung suspended in the space between them, like laundry someone had forgotten to take off the line. Jess held her breath, sensing Connie was on the verge of capitulating, afraid to do anything that might tip the delicate balance in the other direction. Another speech was already working its way to the tip of her tongue. There’s an easy way to do this, it began, and there’s a hard way. The easy way is that you agree to testify as planned. The hard way is that I’ll have to force you to testify. I’ll get the judge to issue a bench warrant for your arrest, force you to come to court, force you to take the stand. And if you still refuse to testify, the judge can, and will, hold you in contempt, send you to jail. Wouldn’t that be a tragedy—you in jail and not the man who attacked you?

Jess waited, fully prepared to use these words if she had to, silently praying they wouldn’t be necessary. “Come on, Connie,” she said, giving it one last try. “You’ve fought back before. After your husband died, you didn’t give up, you went to night school, you got a job so that you could provide for your son. You’re a fighter, Connie. You’ve always been a fighter. Don’t let Rick Ferguson take that away from you. Fight back, Connie. Fight back.”

Connie said nothing, but there was a slight stiffening of her back. Her shoulders lifted. Finally, she nodded.

Jess reached for Connie’s hands. “You’ll testify?”

Connie’s voice was a whisper. “God help me.”

“We’ll take all the help we can get.” Jess checked her watch, rose quickly to her feet. “Come on, I’ll walk you out.”

Neil and Barbara had already left for court, and Jess ushered Connie along the corridor of the state’s attorney’s offices, past the display of cut-off ties that lined one wall, symbolizing each prosecutor’s first win before a jury. The halls were decorated in preparation for Halloween, large orange paper pumpkins and witches on broomsticks taped across the walls, like in a kindergarten class, Jess thought, accepting Greg Oliver’s “good luck” salutations, and proceeding through the reception area to the bank of elevators outside the glass doors. From the large window at the far end of the six elevators, the whole west side and northwest side of the city was visible. On a nice day, O’Hare Airport could be easily discerned. Even faraway Du Page County seemed within reach.

The women said nothing on the ride down to the main floor, knowing everything important had already been said. They exited the elevator and rounded the corner, pointedly ignoring the Victim-Witness Services Office with its large picture-laden poster proclaiming
WE REMEMBER YOU
…
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
… and proceeded to the glassed-in rectangular hallway that connected the Administration Building to the courthouse next door. “Where are you parked?” Jess asked, about to guide Connie through the airportlike security to the outside.

“I took the bus,” Connie DeVuono began, then stopped abruptly, her hand lifting to her mouth. “Oh my God!”

“What? What’s the matter?” Jess followed the woman’s frightened gaze.

The man was standing at the opposite end of the corridor, leaning against the cold expanse of glass wall, his lean frame heavy with menace, his blunt features partially obscured by the thick mass of long, uncombed, dark blond hair that fell over the collar of his brown leather jacket. As his body swiveled slowly around to greet them, Jess watched the side of his lips twist into the same chilling grin that had greeted her arrival at work that morning.

I am Death
, the grin said.

Jess shuddered, then tried to pretend it was from a gust of cold air that had sneaked into the lobby through the revolving doors.

Rick Ferguson, she realized.

“I want you to take a taxi,” Jess told Connie, seeing one pull up to drop somebody off, guiding Connie through the doors onto California Avenue, and thrusting ten dollars into her hand. “I’ll take care of Rick Ferguson.”

Connie said nothing. It was as if she had expended all her energy in Jess’s office, and she simply had no more strength to argue. Tightly clutching the ten-dollar bill, she allowed Jess to put her in the cab, not bothering to look back as the car pulled away. Jess remained for a moment on the sidewalk, trying to still the loud thumping in her chest, then turned around and pushed her way back through the revolving doors.

He hadn’t moved.

Jess strode toward him across the long corridor, the heels of her black pumps clicking on the hard granite floor, watching as Rick Ferguson’s features snapped into
sharper focus with each step. The vague generic menace he projected—white male, early twenties, five feet ten inches tall, 170 pounds, blond hair, brown eyes—became more concrete, individualized: shoulders that stooped slightly, unkempt hair pulled into a loose ponytail, deeply hooded cobralike eyes, a nose that had been broken several times and never properly reset, and always that same unnerving grin.

“I’m warning you to stay away from my client,” Jess announced when she reached him, not giving him the chance to interrupt. “If you show up within fifty yards of her again, even accidentally, if you try to speak to her or contact her in any way, if you leave any more gruesome little presents outside her door, I’ll have your bail revoked and your ass in jail. Am I making myself clear?”

“You know,” he said, speaking very deliberately, as if he were in the middle of an entirely different conversation, “it’s not such a great idea to get on my bad side.”

Jess almost laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Rick Ferguson shifted his body weight from one foot to the other, then shrugged, managing to appear almost bored. He looked around, scratched at the side of his nose. “It’s just that people who annoy me have a way of … disappearing.”

Jess found herself taking an involuntary step back. A cold shiver, like a drill, snaked its way through her chest to her gut. She had to fight the sudden urge to throw up. When she spoke, her voice was hollow, lacking resonance. “Are you threatening me?”

Rick Ferguson pushed his body away from the wall. His smile widened.
I am Death
, the smile said.
I have come for you
.

Then he walked away without a backward glance.

“E
very day in the United States, 1,871 women are forcibly raped,” Jess began, her eyes tracking the seven men and seven women who made up the two rows of twelve jurors and their two alternates sitting in courtroom 706 of the State Court House at 2600 California Avenue. “That translates to 1.3 rapes of adult women every minute and a staggering 683,000 rapes each year.” She took a brief pause to let the sheer volume of her statistics sink in. “Some are attacked in the streets; others are set on in their own homes. Some are raped by the proverbial stranger in a dark alley, far more by people they know: an angry ex-boyfriend, a once-trusted friend, a casual acquaintance. Perhaps, like Erica Barnowski,” she said, indicating the plaintiff with a nod of her head, “by someone they met in a bar. The women, like the men who attack them, come in all shapes and sizes, all religious denominations and cultural backgrounds, all ages and colors. The only trait they have in
common is their sex, which is very ironic when you think about it, because rape is not about sex. Rape is a crime of violence. It is not about passion, or even lust. It is about power. It is about domination and humiliation. It is about control. It is about the infliction of pain. It is an act of rage, an act of hate. It has nothing to do with sex. It only uses sex as its weapon of choice.”

Jess surveyed the majestic old courtroom, its high ceilings and large side windows, the dark paneling along the walls, the black marble framing its large wooden doors. A sign to the right of the judge proclaimed loudly over the rear door
POSITIVELY! NO VISITING
in courtroom or cell block. To the left another sign declared
QUIET, NO SMOKING, EATING, CHILDREN, TALKING
.

The visitors block, which contained eight rows of graffiti-scarred benches, was distinguished by an old black-and-white-tile floor. Just like in the movies, Jess thought, grateful to have been assigned to Judge Harris’s court for the past eighteen months instead of one of the newer, smaller courtrooms on the lower floors.

“The defense would have you believe otherwise,” Jess continued, making deliberate eye contact with each of the jurors, before gradually switching her focus to the defendant. The defendant, Douglas Phillips, white, ordinary, quite respectable-looking in his dark blue suit and quiet paisley tie, made a small pout with his lips before looking toward the brown-carpeted floor. “The defense would have you believe that what happened between Douglas Phillips and Erica Barnowski was an act of consensual sex. They have told you that on the night of May thirteenth, 1992, Douglas Phillips met Erica Barnowski in a singles bar called the Red
Rooster, and that he bought her several drinks. They have called several witnesses who testified seeing them together, drinking and laughing, and who have sworn that Erica Barnowski left the bar with Douglas Phillips of her own free will and by her own accord. Erica Barnowski, herself, admitted as much when she took the stand.

“But the defense would also have you believe that after they left the bar what transpired was an act of runaway passion between two consenting adults. Douglas Phillips explains the bruises on the victim’s legs and arms as the unfortunate by-product of making love in a small European car. He dismisses the victim’s subsequent hysteria, witnessed by several people in the parking lot and later observed by Dr. Robert Ives at Grant Hospital, as the ravings of a hysterical woman furious at being picked up and discarded, in his sensitive phrase, ‘like a piece of used Kleenex.’”

Jess now devoted her full attentlon to Erica Barnowski, who sat beside Neil Strayhorn at the prosecutor’s table, directly across from the jury box. The woman, twenty-seven years old and very pale, very blond, sat absolutely still in her high-backed brown leather chair. The only thing about her that moved was her bottom lip, which had been trembling throughout the trial, and which had occasionally made her testimony almost indecipherable. Still, there was little about the woman that was soft. The hair was too yellow, the eyes too small, the blouse too blue, too cheap. There was nothing to inspire pity, nothing, Jess knew, to trigger automatic compassion in the hearts of the jurors.

“He has a little more trouble explaining the cuts on her neck and throat,” Jess went on. “He didn’t mean to hurt her, he says. It was just a little knife, after all, barely four
inches long. And he only brought it out when she started getting feisty. It even seemed to excite her, he told you. He thought she liked it. How was he supposed to know that she didn’t? How was he supposed to figure out that she didn’t want the same things he wanted? How was he supposed to know
what
she wanted? After all, hadn’t she come to the Red Rooster looking for a man? Hadn’t she let him buy her drinks? Hadn’t she laughed at his jokes and let him kiss her? And don’t forget, Ladies and Gentlemen, she wasn’t wearing any panties!”

Jess took a deep breath, returning her gaze to the members of the jury, who were now hanging on her every word. “The defense has made a big deal of the fact that when Erica Barnowski went to the Red Rooster that night, she wasn’t wearing any underwear. An open invitation, they would have you believe. Implied consent. Any woman who goes to a pickup bar and doesn’t wear panties is obviously asking for whatever she gets. Consent before the fact. Erica Barnowski was looking for action, the defense tells you, and that’s exactly what she got. Oh, she may have gotten a little more than she bargained for, but, hey, she should have known better.

“Well, maybe she should have. Maybe going to a bar like the Red Rooster and leaving her panties at home wasn’t the smartest thing Erica Barnowski could have done. But don’t think for a moment that a lack of common sense on one person’s part eliminates the need for common decency on another’s. Don’t believe for a second that Douglas Phillips got his signals crossed. Don’t be hoodwinked into accepting that this man, who repairs state-of-the-art computers for a living, who has no difficulty whatsoever decoding
sophisticated software terminology, has trouble understanding the difference between a simple yes and no. What part of ‘no’ is so difficult for a grown man to understand? No, quite simply, means no!

“And Erica Barnowski said no loud and clear, Ladies and Gentlemen. She not only
said
no, she
screamed
it. She screamed it so loud and so often that Douglas Phillips had to hold a knife to her throat to silence her.”

Jess found herself directing her remarks to a juror in the second row, a woman in her late fifties with auburn hair and strong, yet curiously delicate features. There was something about the woman’s face she found intriguing. She’d become aware of her early in the trial and had occasionally found herself speaking almost exclusively to her. Maybe it was the intelligence that was obvious in her soft gray eyes. Maybe it was the way she tilted her head when trying to come to terms with a difficult point. Maybe it was simply the fact that she was better dressed than most of the jurors, several of whom wore blue jeans and baggy, ill-fitting sweaters. Or maybe it was just because Jess felt she was getting through to her, and that through her, she might be able to reach the others.