She shook her head, glancing up at the sky, but even it was a dirty shade of gray, heavy with the threat of snow. Snow in October, Jess thought, unable to recall the last time it had snowed before Halloween. Despite the weather forecast, she hadn’t worn boots. They leaked and had unsightly salt rings around the toes, like the age lines of a tree. Maybe she’d go out later and buy herself a new pair.
The phone rang. Barely past eight o’clock and already the phone was ringing. She picked it up before it had a chance to ring again. “Jess Koster,” she said simply.
“Jess Koster, Maureen Peppler,” the voice said with a girlish giggle. “Am I interrupting anything?”
“Never,” Jess told her older sister, picturing Maureen’s crinkly smile and warm green eyes. “I’m glad you called.” Jess had always likened Maureen to one of those delicate sketches of ballet dancers by Edgar Degas, all soft and fuzzy around the edges. Even her voice was soft. People often said the sisters looked alike. But while the two women shared basic variations of the same oval face, and were both tall
and slender, there was nothing fuzzy around the edges about Jess. Her brown shoulder-length hair was darker than Maureen’s, her eyes a more disturbing shade of green, her small-boned frame less curvaceous, more angular. It was as if the artist had drawn the same sketch twice, then rendered one in pastels, the other in oil. “What’s doing?” Jess asked. “How are Tyler and the twins?”
“The twins are great. Tyler’s still not thrilled. He keeps asking when we’re sending them back. You didn’t ask about Barry.”
Jess felt her jaw tighten. Maureen’s husband, Barry, was a successful accountant, and the vanity license plates on his late-model Jaguar said EARND IT. Did she really need to know more? “How is he?” she asked anyway.
“He’s fine. Business is terrific despite the economy. Or maybe because of it. Anyway, he’s very happy. We want you to come to dinner tomorrow night, and please don’t tell me you already have a date.”
Jess almost laughed. When was the last time she’d had a date? When was the last time she’d been anywhere socially that wasn’t connected, in some way, to the law? Where had she gotten the idea that only doctors were on call twenty-four hours a day? “No, I don’t have a date,” she answered.
“Good, then you’ll come. I don’t get to see nearly enough of you these days. I think I saw more of you when I was working.”
“So go back to work.”
“Not on your life. Anyway, tomorrow at six. Dad’s coming.”
Jess smiled into the phone. “See you tomorrow.” She replaced the receiver to the sound of a baby’s distant cry.
She pictured Maureen running toward the sound, cooing over the cribs of her six-month-old twins, changing their diapers, seeing to their needs, while making sure that the three-year-old at her feet was getting the attention he craved. A far cry from the hallowed halls of the Harvard Business School where she’d earned her M.B.A. Jess shrugged. We all make choices, she thought. Her sister had obviously made hers.
She sat back down at her desk, trying to concentrate on the morning that lay ahead, praying she would be able to prove Greg Oliver wrong. She knew that securing a conviction in this case would be next to impossible. She and her partner would have to be very convincing.
The state’s attorney’s office always tried jury cases in pairs. Her second chair, Neil Strayhorn, was set to deliver the initial closing argument, recounting for the jury the straight, unpleasant facts of the case. This would be followed by the defense attorney’s closing remarks, and then Jess would handle the rebuttal, a position that allowed ample room for creative moral indignation. “Every day in the United States, 1,871 women are forcibly raped,” she began, rehearsing the words in the safety of her office. “That translates to 1.3 rapes of adult women every minute and a staggering 683,000 rapes each year.” She took a deep breath, tossing the sentences over in her mind, like errant pieces of lettuce in a large unwieldy salad. She was still tossing them over when Barbara Cohen arrived some twenty minutes later.
“How’s it going?” At five feet eleven inches, and with bright red hair that cascaded halfway down her back in frenzied ripples, Barbara Cohen often seemed the anthropomorphic
version of a carrot. She was almost a head taller than Jess, and her long, skinny legs gave the impression that she was standing on stilts. No matter how bad Jess was feeling, just looking at the young woman who was her third chair always made her smile.
“Hanging in there.” Jess checked her watch. Unlike Greg Oliver’s, it was a simple Timex with a plain black leather band. “Listen, I’d like you and Neil to handle the Alvarez drug case when it comes to trial.”
The look on Barbara Cohen’s face reflected a mixture of excitement and apprehension. “I thought you wanted to take that one.”
“I can’t. I’m swamped. Besides, you guys can handle it. I’ll be here if you need any help.”
Barbara Cohen tried, and failed, to keep the smile that was spreading across her face from overtaking her more professional demeanor. “Can I get you some coffee?” she asked.
“If I drink any more coffee, I’ll be excusing myself from the courtroom every five minutes to pee. Think that would win me any sympathy points with the jury?”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“How could she not wear panties, for God’s sake,” Jess muttered. “At the very least, you’d think she’d worry about discharge.”
“You’re so practical,” Barbara stated, and laughed, readying her cart with files for the judge’s morning call.
Neil Strayhorn arrived a few minutes later with the news that he thought he was coming down with a cold, then went straight to his desk. Jess could see his lips moving, silently mouthing the words to his initial closing statement. All around her, the offices of the state’s attorney for
Cook County were coming to life, like a flower opening to the sun.
Jess was aware of each new arrival, of chairs being pushed back, pulled in, computers being activated, fax machines delivering messages, phones ringing. She unconsciously monitored the arrival of each of the four secretaries who served the eighteen lawyers in the wing, was able to distinguish the heavy steps of Tom Olinsky, her trial supervisor, as he walked toward his office at the end of the long hall.
“Every day in the United States, 1,871 women are forcibly raped,” she began again, trying to refocus.
One of the secretaries, a pear-shaped black woman who could have passed for either twenty or forty, stuck her head through the doorway, her long, dangly red earrings falling almost to her shoulders. “Connie DeVuono’s here,” she said, then took a step back, as if she half expected Jess to hurl something at her head.
“What do you mean she’s here?”
“I mean she’s outside the door. Apparently, she walked right past the receptionist. She says she has to talk to you.”
Jess scanned her appointment calendar. “Our meeting isn’t until four o’clock. Did you tell her I have to be in court in a few minutes?”
“I told her. She says she has to see you now. She’s very upset.”
“That’s not too surprising,” Jess said, picturing the middle-aged widow who’d been brutally beaten and raped by a man who’d subsequently threatened to kill her if she testified against him, an event that was scheduled for ten days from today. “Take her to the conference room, will you, Sally? I’ll be right there.”
“Do you want me to talk to her?” Barbara Cohen volunteered.
“No, I’ll do it.”
“Think it could be trouble?” Neil Strayhorn asked as Jess stepped into the hall.
“What else?”
The conference room was a small, windowless office, taken up almost entirely by an old walnut table and eight low-backed, mismatched brown chairs. The walls were the same dull white as the rest of the rooms, the carpet a well-worn beige.
Connie DeVuono stood just inside the doorway. She seemed to have shrunk since the last time Jess saw her, and her black coat hung on her body as if on a coatrack. Her complexion was so white it appeared tinged with green, and the bags under her eyes lay in soft, unflattering folds, sad testament to the fact that she probably hadn’t slept in weeks. Only the dark eyes themselves radiated an angry energy, hinting at the beautiful woman Connie DeVuono had once been. “I’m sorry to be disturbing you,” she began.
“It’s just that we don’t have a lot of time,” Jess said softly, afraid that if she spoke above a whisper, the woman might shatter, like glass. “I have to be in court in about half an hour.” Jess pulled out one of the small chairs for Connie to sit in. The woman needed no further encouragement. She collapsed like an accordion inside it. “Are you all right? Would you like some coffee? Some water? Here, let me take your coat.”
Connie DeVuono waved away each suggestion with shaking hands. Jess noticed that her nails were bitten to
the quick and her cuticles had been picked raw. “I can’t testify,” she said, looking away, her voice so low as to be almost inaudible.
Still, the words had the force of a shout. “What?” Jess asked, though she’d heard every word.
“I said I can’t testify.”
Jess lowered herself into one of the other chairs and leaned toward Connie DeVuono so that their knees were touching. She reached for the woman’s hands and cupped them inside her own. They were freezing. “Connie,” she began slowly, trying to warm them, “you’re our whole case. If you don’t testify, the man who attacked you goes free.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“I can’t go through with it. I can’t. I can’t.” She started crying.
Jess quickly drew a tissue from the pocket of her gray jacket and handed it to Connie, who ignored it. Her cries grew louder. Jess thought of her sister, the effortless way she seemed able to comfort her crying babies. Jess had no such talents. She could only sit by helplessly and watch.
“I know I’m letting you down,” Connie DeVuono continued, her shoulders shaking. “I know I’m letting everybody down. …”
“Don’t worry about us,” Jess told her. “Worry about you. Think about what that monster did to you.”
The woman’s angry eyes bore deeply into Jess’s. “Do you think I could ever forget it?”
“Then you have to make sure he isn’t in a position to do it again.”
“I can’t testify. I just can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
“Okay, okay, calm down. It’s okay. Try to stop crying.” Jess leaned back in her chair and tried to crawl inside Connie’s mind. Something had obviously happened since the last time they had spoken. At each of their previous meetings, Connie, though frightened, had been adamant about testifying. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she had grown up in a household that believed fiercely in the American system of justice. Jess had been very impressed with that belief. After four years with the state’s attorney’s office, Jess thought it probably stronger than her own. “Has something happened?” she asked, watching Connie’s racking shoulders shudder to a halt.
“I have to think about my son,” Connie said forcefully. “He’s only eight years old. His father died of cancer two years ago. If something happens to me, then he has no one.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you.”
“My mother is too old to look after him. Her English is very poor. What will happen to Steffan if I die? Who will take care of him? Will you?”
Jess understood the question was rhetorical, but answered anyway. “I’m afraid I’m not very good with men,” she said softly, hoping to elicit a smile, watching Connie DeVuono struggle to oblige. “But, Connie, nothing is going to happen to you once we put Rick Ferguson behind bars.”
The very mention of the man’s name caused Connie’s body to visibly tremble. “It was hard enough for Steffan to lose his father at so young an age. What could be worse than losing his mother too?”
Jess felt her eyes instantly well up with tears. She nodded. There could be nothing worse.
“Connie,” she began, surprised by the trembling in her voice, “believe me, I hear what you’re saying. I understand what you’re going through. But what makes you think that if you don’t testify, you’ll be safe? Rick Ferguson already broke into your apartment once and raped you. He beat you so badly you could barely open your eyes for a month. He didn’t know that your son wasn’t home. He didn’t care. What makes you think he won’t try it again? Especially once he knows that he can get away with it, because you’re too frightened to stop him. What makes you think that the next time he won’t hurt your son too?”
“Not if I refuse to testify.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I only know he said I’d never live to testify against him.”
“He made that threat months ago and it didn’t stop you.” There was a moment’s silence. “What happened, Connie? What’s frightening you? Has he contacted you in any way? Because if he has, we can have his bail revoked. …”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“There’s plenty we can do.”
Connie DeVuono reached inside her floppy black leather purse and pulled out a small white box.
“What’s that?”
Connie DeVuono said nothing as she handed the box to Jess.
Jess opened it, gingerly working her way through layers of tissues, feeling something small and hard beneath her fingers.
“The box was in front of my door when I opened it this morning,” Connie said, watching as Jess pulled away the final tissue.
Jess felt her stomach lurch. The turtle that lay lifeless and exposed in her hands was missing its head and two of its feet.
“It was Steffan’s,” Connie said, her voice flat. “We came home a few nights ago and it wasn’t in its tank. We couldn’t understand how it could have gotten out. We looked everywhere.”
Instantly Jess understood Connie’s terror. Three months ago, Rick Ferguson had broken into her apartment, raped her, sodomized her, beaten her, then threatened her life. Now, he was showing her how easy it would be to make good on his threats. He’d broken into her apartment again, as effortlessly as if he’d been handed the key. He’d killed and mutilated her child’s pet. No one had seen him. No one had stopped him.
Jess rewrapped the dead turtle in its shroud of tissues and placed it back in its cardboard casket. “Not that I think it’ll do any good, but I’d like to show this to forensics.” She walked to the door and quickly signaled for Sally. “Get this over to forensics for me, will you?”