Authors: Alafair Burke
Second Acts: Confessions of a Former Victim and Current Survivor
“F
ORGIVENESS
”
Forgiveness. Such a simple word, but one of the hardest things to find within oneself and give to others.
I have heard people say that it is impossible to heal without forgiving those who have hurt you. But it is not my place to forgive the man who raped me. Shouldn’t he be the one who is expected to look into himself to understand why he did what he did? Shouldn’t he be the one who has to ask himself how he could take from me everything he stole—not just the physical act, but the trust, my power, my agency, my sense of self?
Maybe he should be the one who has to try to forgive himself. That is not for me to do.
One of the things he stole from me was my mother. I remained silent for so long—allowing that man to come to my room night after night—because of my fears for her. My loyalty to her. My utter dedication.
She had always been my only parent. Dad left before he could make any kind of impression that stayed with me. My mother was alone for long and frequent periods. Not completely alone. She had me. But alone as a woman. Now a man she had learned to love—whom she had brought into our home—was coming to me at night and threatening to kill us both if I said anything.
But I never blamed her for his presence in my life. She couldn’t know, I told myself. He put on such a kind face for others. How could she possibly suspect he carried a monster inside of him?
No, it wasn’t the abuse that took away my mother. Ironically, it was my absolute, unquestioned faith in her that eventually trumped the fear he had instilled in me. I waited until he was working late at night. It was just the two girls at home together, like the old days. We ate those silly finger sandwiches we used to make when I was younger. They were chicken salad on cut Wonder Bread, but for some reason the dainty size and funny name brought me so much joy. (Who would eat a finger sandwich? I used to squeal.)
As the hours passed, I started to feel the darkness of his imminent return. Girls’ night would soon end. He’d hug my mother and say how happy he was to be home. As she fell into sleep, he’d say he was still restless.
I’m going to read downstairs. I don’t want the light to bug you, honey
.
It had happened often enough that I could picture him entering my room. I was even beginning to note certain patterns. If he was drunk, he was clumsier. It usually hurt less, but took longer. If he was tired, he’d be in a rush to make it happen. Choking me with his belt seemed to help him go faster. I’d also learned by now that my period wouldn’t stop him. He would leave me there on a bloodied sheet, admonishing me to clean up the mess before morning.
So I told her.
I still remember the expression on her face as she raised that stupid Wonder Bread stick to her mouth. She halted midway and returned it to the fancy platter we’d taken out for the occasion, a gift I’d received from the neighbors for my confirmation.
“Maybe you had a dream.”
“Mom, I think I know the difference between reality and a nightmare. And it’s not just one time.”
“What are we going to do?”
“I can tell the police. Maybe they can protect us.”
“That’s not what I meant. What are we going to do with
you
?”
“Mom” I’m not sure what punctuation to include after that single word but I can still hear my own voice in my head. Part observation. Part scream. Part question. Period, exclamation point, question mark?
And then she’d picked up the platter and dumped the remaining sandwiches in the trash. “I had no idea you hated me so much. Making up these kinds of lies. I forgive you, but don’t ever tell these stories again.”
She
forgave
me.
You might think I hate my mother. I don’t. I never did. I simply lost her along with everything else I lost because of that man. And without making excuses for her failures as a mother, I choose now to blame him, not her. I choose to believe that, just as he broke me, he broke her. We were both his victims.
I also choose to believe that, even though it is too late to tell her, my mother knows I have forgiven her.
Forgiveness. Such a simple word.
The reader looked around to make sure no one was watching. After the last time, more caution was necessary now. Today’s screen was the public computer at a crowded luxury gym on Broadway. The distracted employees at the front desk hadn’t stopped the few people who had breezed by on cell phones with a quick wave of acknowledgment, a gesture that was easy enough to mimic. In a worst-case scenario, a cover story about forgotten running shoes would provide a nonmemorable escape.
Time to type a comment to reward the most recent posting.
“Did it ever dawn on you that your mom hated you for driving away your father and making her a single mother? Did it ever dawn on you that your desperation to have a father figure is what drew that man to your bed? He should have choked you harder. He should have made you bleed more. Keep writing. I’m reading. And I’m coming for you.”
Five minutes after the comment appeared online, a phone call would be made to Buffalo, New York. “I’m calling about a prisoner named Jimmy Grisco. James Martin Grisco.”
That phone call would change everything.
K
atherine Whitmire bolted the door after the last of the strangers finally left.
The house was quiet. It felt strange to be surrounded by silence in this house.
The Whitmires were a family that liked living with noise. Bill—on those rare occasions when he was there—was always listening to newly recorded tracks or blasting through demos in search of undiscovered talent. The kids had inherited his constant need for sound.
With Julia, it was usually music, but lately she’d developed a penchant for old-fashioned suspense movies. Billy, on the other hand, was a 24/7 news junkie, flipping incessantly between CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, the latter bringing him to frequent bouts of shouting at the television. Then, of course, there was the yelling between the townhouse floors. Despite Katherine’s efforts to persuade her family members to use the room-to-room intercom system, the rest of the Whitmires insisted on communicating with one another through screams:
Did you erase my shows off the TiVo again? . . . Is anyone else hungry? I’m calling in for sushi! . . . Julia, get down here. Tell me what you think of this tape. . . . How many times do I have to tell you not to call it “tape” anymore, Dad?
Now the house was silent in a way she could not remember since those first months, back when she was overseeing the renovation. It was quiet like this during that short period when the construction was finally done and the painters had removed their ladders and tarps but the movers had not yet arrived.
Julia was just a baby then, not even babbling yet. Billy had just celebrated his third birthday at a party only his father could have planned—twenty toddlers and their parents for a private afternoon concert at Joe’s Tavern featuring a live performance from Hootie and the Blowfish. She remembered standing in this same foyer, admiring the feel of the clean, smooth marble against her bare feet, foreseeing the life her happy family would enjoy in this spectacular home.
She’d felt so lucky back then. Bill Whitmire had lived an amazing life filled with talent, celebrity, travel, music, and beautiful women. Katherine was not his usual fare. Neither a model nor a singer ingenue, she was already in her early thirties when she met Bill. An architect with a modest career, she’d landed her biggest contract yet with the remodel of a Tribeca loft for the lead singer of the Smashing Pumpkins.
She’d been on her way out, blueprints in hand, when Bill showed up for a coffee. Coffee turned into cocktails. Cocktails evolved into dinner. And, much to her surprise, she’d woken up in his bed the next morning.
She expected it to be a one-night stand, her first—and probably only—in a lifetime. But Bill called her three days later, and three days after that. Within two months, she started to wonder if they were actually in a relationship.
And then one day, to put her mind at ease because she was nearly two weeks late for her period, she peed on a stick. And then another, and another. With the trilogy of pink plus signs lined up on the top of her toilet tank, she saw the quick end of her exciting new romance. Bill was fifty years old and had never been married. This story could not have a happy ending.
She gave him the news, fully expecting him to ask when she’d be getting it taken care of. But then, once again, Bill Whitmire surprised her. He smiled and hugged her, and then he cried and said, “Thank you for this.” He held her hair when the morning sickness started. He rubbed vitamin E lotion on her belly every night, promising to love her even if her entire abdomen ended up striped with stretch marks.
Six months into the pregnancy, he asked her to marry him, so they “could be a real family.” They exchanged vows on the beach at Montauk. Elvis Costello officiated with a minister’s certificate from the Internet. Their wedding announcement was placed prominently in the
New York Times
Sunday Styles section. She changed her name.
When she became pregnant a second time, with Julia, it was Bill who proposed buying a townhouse with ample space for the children to play. The top floor could be an apartment for a live-in nanny to help Katherine juggle the additional chaos that would accompany another child.
Bill Whitmire had settled down. He was a good father. And he’d chosen
her
to do it with. She remembered actually spinning around with glee on this marble floor that quiet day, staring up at the bright white molded ceiling so far above her, feeling like she’d won the love-and-marriage lottery. She was living a fairy tale, and Bill was her Prince Charming.
Two months later, the house was no longer empty. Billy with his
Toy Story
bedspread. Julia with her moss-green, elephant-themed nursery. Katherine’s custom closet was bigger than the apartment she’d last rented as a single woman.
Mira, the full-time nanny, had her own living space upstairs.
To this day, Katherine still wondered how long it had been going on—right beneath, or above, her nose—before she realized. She’d come home one afternoon to find the familiar sound of Bill’s music emanating from his study, but no Bill. The elevator parked on the top floor. No sign of Mira, either.
She’d taken the stairs so they wouldn’t hear the elevator. If she was wrong, she could always tell Mira she was just slipping in some extra exercise.
But her suspicions had been right. Bill was the one slipping something in.
Now, more than sixteen years later, she had watched her daughter’s body being wheeled out of that same top-floor apartment. The detectives she had insisted upon were gone. Everyone was gone.
She walked to the bar cart in the sitting area and poured a crystal highball glass full of Bill’s vodka. She hated herself for thinking about his first (known) infidelity when she should be thinking about Julia.
But in many ways, that moment was inextricably entwined with this one. When she saw Bill—panting and sweaty behind the bent-over nanny, his unzipped, age-inappropriate designer jeans clumsily dangling—everything had changed. She should have left him then. She should have taken what the prenup had to offer and made a normal life with her two, still happy children.
But by then, being Mrs. Bill Whitmire had become the very core of her identity. For their marriage to fail would mean that she was nothing but a cliché, the glamorous carriage having turned back into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight. It would mean that Bill had never really chosen her. She would be just one in a long string of women—the one who’d gotten knocked up.
And so watching and monitoring and controlling her husband became her full-time job. If Bill said he was meeting a reporter at Babbo, she would walk him there—and step inside to say a brief hello, supposedly “on her way” to some errand or another. If he had to fly to California for the Grammys, she accompanied him—even if the ceremonies coincided with Julia’s first piano recital. When he announced that he was more productive at the in-home studio out in Long Island, she chose to believe that Julia and Billy were mature enough to stay at the townhouse on their own.
She felt the vodka burn its way down her throat. She held in the sting, wanting it to burn, wanting to feel
something
. She’d seen the way those detectives looked at her. Judging her. Casting her squarely inside whatever stereotypes they held about superficial women who valued their looks, handbags, and silverware above the things that actually mattered.
She knew she deserved every last bit of their scorn. She should have been here with her baby girl. She should have been here to protect her. The least she could do now was to find out who did this to her daughter. The police might be gone, but no way was this over.
The silence was disrupted by the sound of keys in the front door. She knew who would be walking in, but part of her wished it would be her son instead. She’d called Billy at school with the awful news, but even if he made it onto the last flight to New York, he wouldn’t make it to the city before nine tonight.
“Kitty?”
Bill’s eyes were red and damp. He rushed to her and wrapped his arms around her.
“My God. Our Julia. Our baby—” His voice broke.
How many times had she wanted him to run to her like this? To need her. To hunger for her love and loyalty like an addict jonesing for the next hit. She felt tiny and fragile against his smothering embrace.
“It’s going to be okay, Kitty. We’re going to get through this. Together.”
He grabbed her even tighter, palming the back of her head and pressing her face against his cashmere overcoat. She smelled the sweet floral scent of Cartier perfume on his collar and, for the first time in nineteen years, found that she did not care what became of this marriage.
U
sually,
Ellie enjoyed her time in the Criminal Court Building. She’d heard it described
as “hurry-up-and-wait time.” She understood the term all too well.
Other people—usually the lawyers—ran up and down
the hallways, struggling to herd witnesses like cattle. They negotiated
last-minute deals, always in shorthand.
ROR—release on
recognizance. JOA—judgment of acquittal. SOR—sex offender registration.
Stip
-
facts bench trial—stipulate that the facts
offered in a bench (no jury) trial establish the material elements of the
offense.
Meanwhile, she sat and chilled on a courthouse bench,
usually with some lawyer’s discarded newspaper in hand, collecting her
pay—overtime if she wasn’t on shift.
But on this particular day, waiting in the hallway
outside Judge Frederick Knight’s courtroom, her thoughts kept jumping back to
Rogan’s look of helplessness as she’d shut the car door on him mid-sentence. She
could tell her partner was pissed. The last words he said to her before she
walked away were: “Should we place an over-under on how long it is before Tucker
gets a phone call?”
He was probably right. The Whitmires would call
their lieutenant. Or have the commissioner call their lieutenant’s captain to
call their lieutenant. Or have the mayor call the commissioner—however those
kinds of people managed to pull the strings that were beyond reach of the rest
of the population.
But Ellie was the last person on earth who was
going to make it easy for them. Nothing about their celebrity or money could
change the fact that they’d raised a sad, screwed-up kid who ended it all, drunk
and naked and bloody in a bathtub.
“Hey, you. I thought you said you had a
callout.”
She had texted Max Donovan, the assistant district
attorney handling today’s motion, on their way to the scene on Barrow Street.
She wasn’t on a texting basis with most prosecutors, but this particular ADA was
her boyfriend.
“Turned out to be a quickie.”
“Wasn’t aware we had quickie murder investigations
these days. Oh, there was that case on Wooster last year where a guy thought his
neighbor was murdering a woman, but the woman turned out to be a girlfriend
doll.”
“This one had a real body, but it was a clear-cut
suicide. Well, clear-cut to everyone but the family.”
The amusement fell from his face. “And you’re okay
with that?”
“Any reason I shouldn’t be?”
“All right. Forget I said anything. I’m glad you
could make it. Maybe time for a quick lunch when we’re done here?”
“That’d be good.”
Owing to their work schedules, they hadn’t seen
each other for four days. Given the consistent routine they’d developed over the
last year, four nights apart was practically a long-distance relationship.
The bailiff stuck her head out of the courtroom
door. “The judge is ready.”
Ellie’s testimony took all of sixteen minutes. She
was there to defend against a murderer’s postconviction motion for release. The
defendant alleged that his attorney had offered ineffective assistance of
counsel by allowing Ellie to interrogate him about the death of his girlfriend.
The necessary information was straightforward. The defendant had been the one to
call the police, claiming he’d come home and found her bludgeoned on the kitchen
floor of their shared Chinatown apartment. He wasn’t in custody. He wasn’t even
a suspect. His alleged “counsel” was a real estate lawyer who lived in the
apartment next door and came over to offer friendly support.
It wasn’t the lawyer’s fault that Ellie noticed the
tiny lacerations marking each blow on the victim’s body, or the sharp, raised
edge of the defendant’s pinkie ring, or the red marks on the defendant’s
knuckles. Just a single, plainly phrased question about a possible explanation
for those three circumstances had been enough for the defendant to break
down.
It would have been a straightforward hearing if it
weren’t for the fact that Judge Frederick Knight was known throughout the New
York criminal justice system as the Big Pig.
Maybe the term was unfair, a reference to his
considerable weight of at least three bills. But Ellie suspected the nickname
would never have come into play if the man did not strive at every second to
out-misogynize Andrew Dice Clay.
The nonsense began as she rose from the witness
chair after testifying.
“I know you.”
If Ellie had been at a nursing home in Queens, she
would have expected the line from a patient—the really, really old one, who
didn’t know anyone anymore.
“Ellie Hatcher, Your Honor. This is my fifth time
here.” She rattled off the defendants’ names. She always remembered them. She
could tell you the dates of the arrests, too. Probably their dates of births as
well. Ellie’s brain was weird that way.
It was all a blur to Judge Knight, who shook his
head with her mention of each case. “Only five times here, and I remember you?
Take that as a compliment, Officer.”
Detective.
“You keep yourself in shape. That’s good. Pretty
girl there, right, Donovan?”
Max didn’t miss a beat. “No one’s as fit as you,
Your Honor.”
Corny, Ellie thought, but what was the right
response to that question, under the circumstances?
“And what do you, Mr. Donovan, think about your
witness’s attire today?”
“Your Honor?” Donovan asked.
“Off the record for a moment,” he said to the court
reporter. “Only five visits to the courthouse and yet I remembered this witness.
And let’s be clear here. We all know what it is about her that would have stood
out in my recollection. And now here she is in these butch pants—trousers, let’s
say.”
Part of Ellie wanted to tell this man that beneath
her simple gray flat-front pants she wore a black thong bikini, but she dressed
for court this way for a reason. She dressed this way because most judges and
jurors had expectations. And they weren’t the same as Knight’s expectations.
Knight wasn’t interested in her inner monologue. He
was on his own roll.
“When I first joined the bench, I heralded the
first wave of lady litigators. They always wore skirts. High heels. Silk
blouses. And then came the menswear trend, and these women started showing up in
trousers and oxford shirts. Now the gals have it back to the way it was.
Dresses. Skirts. Legs. Heels. Except for you, Officer. Hatcher, you said? You’ve
got your best assets covered up. You look like a boy. Not to mention, my clerk
tells me that you and Donovan here are quite the item. I mean, what if Donovan
showed up here tomorrow in a dress? How would you feel about that?”
She saw Max looking at her. Willing her. Begging
her.
Don’t. Do. It.
“I would like to see that, Your Honor. But ADA
Donovan was just telling me he wore out his best red silk number modeling it for
you.”
M
ax was doing his best in the hallway to appear
annoyed, but he couldn’t help breaking a smile.
“Red silk? Really? Seems a little
hoochie-momma.”
“Oh, you’d be much classier as a lady fella, I’m
sure. Brooks Brothers. Burberry. All those blue-blood labels. Sorry, I sort of
lost it with the Big Pig.”
“Whatever. The motion’s a slam dunk. Even the
defendant’s own allegations make clear he was playing the grieving boyfriend at
the start. Besides, there’s no way for the state
not
to be all right with Knight. He sides with the prosecution like he’s on
autopilot. I could tell him the court should enter an official finding of alien
invasion, and he’d do exactly as I said.”
“I’m praying I’ll still get home at some reasonable
hour tonight. You?”
He let one hand wander to her waist. “As soon as
I’m done here, I have to go out to Rikers. Gang shooting. Guess a few weeks in a
cell has someone second-guessing his loyalty to a coconspirator. I’ve got to
hammer out the cooperation details.”
“Could the good citizens of New York please stop
fucking killing each other for a night?”
“Do you at least have time for that lunch? I’ve got
a few minutes.”
“Depends. You still got that red silk dress?”
“Those pants
are
a
little butch.”
“Not underneath,” she said. He returned her smile.
When her cell phone buzzed at her waist, she tensed up at the sight of Rogan’s
name on the screen. He had predicted a shitstorm to follow their walking away
from the Whitmires’ townhouse. Apparently it had taken little more than an hour
for Julia’s parents to work their way through their network back to her cell
phone.
She held up a finger while she took the call.
“Yeah?”
“We shouldn’t have left. You
told me yourself Donovan didn’t really need your testimony.”
“I take it Tucker tore you a new one?”
“It’s not just the Lou. We
should have at least gone through the motions. Like I said: Protect the
crime scene, talk to the friends, do what we do.”
“Like
I
said, it’s a
waste of time.”
“That’s why I let you convince
me to leave. But we screwed up.”
“And how exactly did we do that?”
“I’ll tell you when I get
there. Meet me out on Centre Street. I’m three minutes away.”
Neither one of them said goodbye.
T
hree
hundred and seventy-five miles northwest of the city, in Buffalo, New York,
Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sugarman took a call from the front desk.
“There’s a James Grisco here to see you.”
“Okay. Send him back.”
She had heard all the terms used to describe the
other stars in the office. Dan Clark was a
natural born
trial lawyer.
Joe Garrett was a
genius in front
of a jury.
Mark Munson was
a courtroom
machine.
Munson? Really? She’d popped in on him in trial one
day to see what the fuss was all about, only to hear him argue that the
defendant’s story was all an “elaborate rouge.” He even touched his fingertips
to the apple of his cheek, just in case she was wondering if she’d misheard the
word that was supposed to be “ruse.” An elaborate rouge. What an idiot.
Jennifer Sugarman? Ask around the office, and
they’d say she was a
hard worker
.
Diligent. Detail oriented. Conscientious. Burns the midnight
oil.
When men were good, they were born that way. If she was just as
good—better, even—it must have come by way of tremendous effort.
She didn’t mind those descriptions, though. She’d
made it out of misdemeanors into felonies faster than any ADA on record and was
now first-chairing murder cases after only five years in the office. Rumor was
she’d be named a unit chief in the next round of promotions. And when the big
boss finally retired, her reputation for working hard would come in handy.
Voters liked to know they were getting their money’s worth with public
employees. She planned to be Erie County’s first female district attorney.
And she was, in fact, harder-working than most.
Take the call she got from the jail this morning about Grisco, for instance.
Most of the ADAs would have blown it off. At most, they would have passed the
information on to the parole officer and forgotten about it.
But she had been the one to negotiate Grisco’s
release from prison, and she knew ex-cons feared the official power of a
prosecutor much more than they feared the often-empty threats of parole
officers. If there was some reason for a person to call the prison inquiring
about Grisco’s whereabouts, she wanted Grisco to know she hadn’t forgotten about
him. She wouldn’t hesitate to pull his ticket if it came to that.
He removed his baseball cap when he entered her
office. It was a good sign he knew who was in charge. She told him about the
call that had been made to the prison that morning. She reminded him of his
release conditions, going so far as to read them aloud from his file.
“You don’t need to remind me, ma’am. I got no plans
of messing this up.”
“Good to hear, Jimmy. I stuck my neck out for
you.”
“Yes, ma’am. I appreciate it.”
She shook his hand and walked him to the hallway.
As she watched him make his way toward the exit, she found herself hoping he
might actually find a decent life for himself. He wasn’t even forty yet.
It wasn’t until she returned to her office that she
realized she should have covered up the note pad on her desk, the one on which
she had scribbled the information she’d received from the prison. It was a
stupid mistake, but Grisco hadn’t seemed to notice. His eyes had remained on his
shoes the whole time, anyway.
She flipped the pad to the next page. It was
nothing. She was certain of it.