The Whole Truth (2 page)

Stevie thought about that. “Know what I'd wish for?”

“What?”

“That I could throw as good as you.”

“You can if you practice.”

“I tried.”

“Tomorrow I'll practice with you, okay?”

“'kay.”

With the wind blowing outside, Stevie fell into a calm sleep. Deep like the desert night.

He woke up with a rough hand over his mouth. Pressing him down. Maybe it was Robert playing a game. But it wasn't. It was something big.

A monster.

Stevie tried to scream, but the monster pushed on his mouth. The monster had no face. Stevie heard something by the window and knew there was another monster in the room. Getting Robert.

The no-face leaned down and Stevie smelled cigarettes, and that both relieved and frightened him. He was sure it was a man now, not a monster, but what was he doing to him? And Robert?

The man was wearing a ski mask. It was too hot to wear that, so why was he?

The man in the mask whispered. He had a scratchy voice. “Don't make a sound, you hear me?”

Stevie tried to nod his head, but the man was holding his face hard.

“If you make one sound I'm going to kill you and your brother. I'll kill you right now.”

Stevie tried not to cry but couldn't help it. He wanted Robert. He wanted his mom. Even his dad. Anybody.

“So you listen good. I'm gonna be right outside this window, and if you move, if you make any sound — quit crying!”

Stevie couldn't stop.

“Quit crying or so help me I'll kill you both.”

For Robert,
Stevie thought.
Stop crying or they'll hurt Robert.
Ste-vie closed his eyes and sucked in air through his dribbly nose. It took him a minute, but he stopped crying.

“Good,” the man whispered. “Now here's what you do. You turn over and put your head in the pillow. If I hear you make a sound or call out anything, you're going to be dead, you and your brother. You understand?”

Stevie nodded.

The man slowly took his hand away. “I'm gonna be there all night. Not one sound. Now turn over.”

Stevie did as he was told. If he did what the man said, then Robert would be okay and so would he. They would get to live.

Oh God let us live. Oh God don't let them hurt Robert. God God
please.

Stevie started to cry again but made himself stop. They would kill Robert if he made a sound.

Oh God don't let me make any noise. Make them go away and
don't let Robert get hurt.

He had to go to the bathroom. But if he moved they would kill Robert. He had to go to the bathroom so he did it in the bed.

This was worse than nightmares. He remembered the nightmare he had before Robert told him stories, and one of the monsters took his bear and broke the eyes, shattered them. The bear looked at Stevie with shattered eyes. The eyes accused him.
Why did you let
it happen?
the shattered eyes said.

Tonight was like that for real. Stevie couldn't help Robert. Only God could help him. Stevie could only lie in the bed and not cry.

Shaken awake.

Jolted out of sleep. Somebody clutching him. Hurting his shoulders.

Mom.

She was shaking him and yelling, “Where's Robert?”

Scared, Stevie thought it was a dream. But the room was full of light and he felt the wetness and smelled it and knew it was real.

Like last night was real.

“Answer me!”

Like she was mad at him.

He didn't answer. Didn't want to make a sound. What if they were outside the window?

Now his mom was really crazy and tears were in her eyes.

“Answer me, will you!”

If she was yelling then maybe it was okay to talk now. “Outside! Look outside!”

“Outside
where
?”

“The window!”

His dad charged in. Must have been right outside the door. Ran to the window and looked out.

He turned back to Stevie, face red. “Whattaya mean
outside
?”

“A man! He had a mask. He was gonna kill us!”

His mom and dad didn't say anything. They looked at each other the way people did sometimes in movies. Not knowing what to do.

“Where's Robert?” Stevie said.

“Oh, honey.” His mother sat down on the bed and hugged him. “Frank, call the police. Hurry.”

Stevie let himself cry now. He saw Robert's train pajamas on the floor.

The police came. A lot of them. It was confusing. Everybody was talking to him, asking him questions, making him go over and over things. Stevie started sucking his thumb again. He clung to his mother.

She told the police not to make him talk anymore, that he had told them everything.

Other people came. Stevie knew they were people from TV. They had cameras and microphones.

Stevie's mother wouldn't let the people in the house.

Finally, when it was dark, the people were gone. But the house wasn't the same. Something had changed, and it wasn't just that Robert wasn't there. It was that Robert wasn't there because of Stevie. He wasn't there because Stevie didn't say anything. The man in the mask didn't stay outside the window. He just said that to scare him.

There was a moment when Stevie knew all this instantly. One look was all it took.

One look from his dad. They were sitting at the kitchen table. Too tired to eat. Mom had heated up some Tater Tots for Stevie, and he ate some, but not all of them. His parents were silent, looking down at the table.

And then Stevie saw his father looking at him. The look bore into Stevie like fists. It was a look of disgust. His father hated him. Stevie was sure of that now.

Stevie ran from the table into the bathroom and threw up and cried.

His mom came in and cleaned him up.

His father didn't come. His father didn't speak to him for a week.

Eight weeks later, Robert hadn't been found. There was no ransom note. No contact of any kind.

Stevie managed, from snippets of conversation, to piece together that the police thought a group might be involved. They called it a “religious cult,” and Stevie wondered what that was. He asked his mom once and she just shook her head like she didn't want to answer.

A couple of times he heard the word
pervert
and wondered if that was something else, but he was afraid to ask.

His father was drinking a lot of beer and stuff from a bottle. He stayed away from the house for days sometimes. When he came back he and his mom yelled at each other.

He wouldn't talk to Stevie.

When Stevie looked at his father, he thought something was taking Dad over. A bad thing. All because of Robert. What Stevie had done to Robert.

And then one day the bad thing took over completely. The day they found out Robert would not be coming home. Ever.

His mom told him it wasn't his fault. And a doctor his mom took him to also said it wasn't. The doctor, a nice lady, even got Stevie to say out loud that he knew it wasn't his fault Robert had died in a terrible way.

But Stevie didn't believe it. He knew better.

Stevie also knew that he was why his dad went away. He never saw his dad again.

When Stevie turned six he found out that his dad was dead.

And learned a new word.
Suicide.

He hated the sound of it. It was an evil-sounding word.

A word he couldn't get out of his head.

PART 1

ONE

“Mr. Conroy?”

Steve heard his name. Like someone calling from the front of a cavern with him deep inside. Inside, where his thoughts were pinging off the walls like a drunk's haphazard gunshots.

“Yes, Your Honor?”

“I said you may cross-examine.” Nasty voice. Judge O'Hara, ex-prosecutor, ex-cop, did not like screwups in his courtroom. Especially if they themselves were ex-prosecutors now prowling the defense side of the aisle. O'Hara glared at Steve from the bench, his imperious eyebrows seeming to frame the Great Seal of the State of California on the wall behind him.

“Excuse me, Your Honor.” Steve Conroy stood up, feeling the heat from all the eyes in the courtroom.

The eyes of Judge O'Hara, of course.

Everyone on the jury.

His client.

And his client's extended family, which seemed like the entire population of Guadalajara, all packed into Division 115 of the Van Nuys courthouse.

Officer Charles Siebel was on the stand. The one who'd claimed that Steve's client, an ex-felon, was packing. An ex-felon with a gun could land in the slam for up to three years, depending on priors. Which his client had a boatload of. The one hope Carlos Mendez had of getting his sorry can back on the street, free of the law's embrace, lay in Steve's ability to knock the credibility out of a dedicated veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department.

And doing it with no sleep. Steve had fought the cold sweats all night. Which always made the morning after an adventure in mental gymnastics. His brain would fire off an unending stream of random and contradictory thoughts. He'd have to practically grunt to keep focus. The chemical consequence of recovery.

“Excuse me, Your Honor,” Steve said, grabbing for his yellow pages of notes. He trucked the pages to the podium and buttoned his suit coat. It fell open. He buttoned it again. It fell open again. A yellow sheet slipped from the podium. Steve grabbed it in mid-descent, like a Venus flytrap snatching its prey, and slapped it back on the podium in front of him.

He saw a couple of jurors smiling at the show.

Steve cleared his throat. “According to your report, Officer Siebel, you saw my client standing on the corner of Sepulveda and Vanowen, is that correct?”

“Yes.” Clipped and authoritative, like the prosecutors trained them to be.

“You were in your vehicle, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Driving which way?”

“North.”

“On what street?”

Officer Siebel and Judge O'Hara sighed at the same time.

Just like a comedy team. The whole courtroom was one big sitcom, Steve playing the incompetent sidekick.

“Sepulveda,” Siebel said.

“At what time?”

“Is this cross-examination or skeet shooting?” Judge O'Hara snapped.

Steve clenched his teeth. O'Hara liked to inject himself into the thick of things, showboating for the jury. For some reason, he'd been doing it to Steve throughout the trial.

“If I may, Your Honor, I'm laying a foundation,” Steve said.

“Sounds like you're just letting the witness repeat direct testimony.”

Why thank you, Judge. I had no idea. How helpful you are! The
DA didn't even have to object!

“I'll try it this way,” Steve said, turning back to the witness.

“Officer Siebel, you were driving north on Sepulveda at 10:32 p.m., correct?”

“That's what happened.”

“It's in your report, isn't it?”

“Of course.”

Steve went to counsel table and picked up a copy of the police report. As he did, Carlos Mendez, in his jailhouse blues, gave him the look, the one that said,
I hope you know what you're doing.

Ah yes, the confident client. When was the last time he'd had one of those?

Steve held up the report. “The lighting conditions are not mentioned in your report, are they?”

“I didn't see any need, I was able to see — ”

“I'd like an answer to the question I asked, sir.”

The deputy DA, Moira Hanson, stood. “Objection. The witness should be allowed to answer.”

Steve looked at the DDA, who was about his age, thirty. That's where the resemblance ended. She was short and blond. He was an even six feet with hair as dark as the marks against him. She was new to the office. He hadn't met her when he was prosecuting for the county of Los Angeles.

“Your Honor,” he said, “the answer was clearly nonresponsive. As you pointed out so eloquently, this is cross-examination.”

O'Hara was not impressed. “Thank you very much for the endorsement, Mr. Conroy. Now if you'll let me rule? Ask your question again, and I direct the witness to answer only the question asked.”

A minor victory, Steve knew, but in this trial any bone was welcome.

“Are there any lighting conditions in your report?” Steve asked.

“No,” Siebel said.

“You are aware that the corner you mention has dark patches, aren't you?”

“Dark patches?”

“What scientists refer to as illumination absences?”

Officer Siebel squinted at Steve.

“You do know what I'm talking about, surely,” Steve said.

Moira Hanson objected again. “No foundation, Your Honor.”

“Sustained. In plain English, Mr. Conroy.”

That was fine with Steve. Because he'd just made up the term
illumination absences.
All he wanted was the jury to think he had Bill Nye the Science Guy on the defense team. These days, juries were under the spell of the
CSI
effect
.
They all thought forensic evidence was abundant and could clinch any case in an hour. Prosecutors hated that, because most cases weren't so cut, dried, preserved, and plattered. Steve intended to plant the idea that science was against the DA.

“
Illumination absences
refers to measurable dark spots. There are all sorts of dark spots on that corner, Officer Siebel, where you can't see a thing, right?”

“I don't know what you're talking about. I could see clearly.”

Steve turned to the judge. “Why don't we take the jury down there tonight, Your Honor, and we can — ”

“Approach the bench,” O'Hara ordered. “With the reporter.”

Putting on a sheepish look, Steve joined Hanson in front of the judge.

“You know better than to make a motion in front of the jury,”