The Necklace

by Matt Witten

  “For God’s sake—”

  His voice rose. “I don’t want to see Curt Jansen’s execution. I don’t even want to think about him.” He slammed his hand on the desk. “Goddamn it, you shouldn’t have come here!”

  She looked at him and said quietly, “I almost forgot about your temper.”

  He closed his eyes and sighed, frustrated. “I didn’t mean that.” Sure you did, she thought. “I’m sorry, Susan, that was stupid. It’s good to see you looking good.”

  She just nodded. “Well, now I’ve told you, so do what you gotta do.”

  She turned to go. Danny ran his hands through his hair. “I wish you all the happiness in the world, Susan, I really do.”

  For a brief moment she thought about asking him for a loan to cover her trip. But she shook that off and started for the door. As she headed out, she saw more photos of Danny and his family on his bookshelf. There were pictures of him and his new wife getting married, him rock climbing on some Adirondack peak, him and his son playing catch, his new daughter standing by a lake—

  Wait a minute. Susan stopped in her tracks and stared at the photo of Danny’s daughter.

  The girl was wearing a multicolored beaded necklace—and it looked exactly the same as Amy’s old necklace.

  There’s the purple dolphin and the pink duck!

  But how can that be Amy’s necklace? It can’t!

  What the hell?!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  APRIL–SEPTEMBER, TWENTY YEARS AGO

  SUSAN WAS ALARMED. Curt Jansen recanted his confession?

  “It’s just standard B.S.,” Agent Pappas assured her when she rushed back home from her mom’s house. “These guys get lawyers and the first thing they do is try to take back everything they said. Don’t worry about it. This case will be a slam dunk.”

  “Sure,” Susan said, but she didn’t believe it. After Amy’s death, her faith that the world had some kind of order to it was shattered. God either didn’t exist or He was a shithead. She began gnawing at her fingers so much they started bleeding. She didn’t know what she would do if the man who had done this to her daughter went free.

  The trial was scheduled for September. Every night that whole spring and summer, she had terrible nightmares. The Monster’s hands circling Amy’s throat. Her eyes bulging. He rips off her necklace and tosses it up in the air. Susan reaches for it desperately as it floats just out of reach. The Monster laughs loudly—

  And Susan would wake up, his derision ringing in her ears.

  Danny went back to work and even had luck selling houses. Susan sensed some buyers were throwing business his way because they felt bad for him.

  But she couldn’t work. She couldn’t do anything really. She spent most of her time curled up on Molly’s sofa.

  She didn’t cook for Danny anymore. She didn’t have the energy.

  He began getting impatient with her dark cloud. “Susan, we still have lives,” he would say as gently as he could, but she could tell he was working hard not to get mad at her. “Amy wouldn’t want us to roll over and die.”

  Susan didn’t blame him for being upset. She knew how much pain he was in. She hoped that after the trial things would get better for both of them.

  But that would only happen if the Monster was convicted.

  The trial began on a rainy Tuesday after Labor Day. It would have been Amy’s first day back at school. The courtroom, in a federal courthouse down in Albany, was packed. There were a lot of reporters and they all wanted to talk to the bereaved parents. Susan was glad to have Danny do most of the talking; she felt too shaky.

  She was sitting in the wooden pews of the spectators’ gallery, with Danny on one side and her mom on the other, when the marshals brought Jansen in. He was still in jail, hadn’t raised money for the huge bail the judge set. But he’d been allowed to change into a suit for the occasion. He was freshly shaved with a haircut and looked a lot better than he did in the mug shots. He still had the same thick lips and square face, but his eyes weren’t surly and he didn’t look thuggish anymore. If she didn’t know what he’d done to her daughter, Susan might think Jansen looked like a regular-guy construction worker. Some women might even think he was handsome.

  Hopefully none of the women on the jury would feel that way.

  She stared at Jansen, unable to turn away. This was the man who enjoyed sticking his penis into little girls so much that he killed Amy so he could do it.

  Or maybe killing her made it extra fun for him.

  Blood rushed to Susan’s head. She wanted to jump over the seats and slam his face with one of the heavy wooden chairs.

  Lenora squeezed her hand. Danny took her other hand.

  She watched as Jansen waved to a woman sitting in the second row of the gallery. The woman waved back and gave him a smile, but Susan could see she was in agony. Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, like she’d been crying. Other than that, she was attractive with an open face and long curly brown hair. She wore a conservative dark blue suit and looked a few years younger than Jansen, maybe thirty-five, about Susan’s age.

  “Who’s that woman?” she asked Danny.

  “I think it’s his sister, Lisa.”

  Susan couldn’t imagine how that must feel, to love somebody who’s a monster. She thought Lisa must have known in some way that her brother was evil, even if she didn’t know she knew it.

  Jansen looked away from Lisa, and his eyes wandered the courtroom. He saw Susan and stopped.

  She was paralyzed at first. Then she threw him a fierce scowl, putting every ounce of her hatred into it. She wanted this piece of shit to know she would never rest until he was dead.

  Jansen looked back at her with the sad eyes she would always remember. She blinked, confused. She had expected him to sneer angrily or act hateful in some way.

  What was behind his sad eyes? Did a part of him feel bad he had killed Amy?

  Well fuck him, who cares how he feels. This piece of shit needs to die.

  The judge pounded his gavel and jury selection began.

  And then the trial.

  It was seven days of pure torture. First the autopsy photos. Then the M.E.’s testimony detailing what was done to Amy. The spermicide evidence, indicating her assailant used a condom. The photos of Jansen’s left hand with the small scabs, and an analysis of how Amy’s bite caused them. Agent Pappas testifying about Jansen’s confession and then reading it aloud, including his graphic description of the rape and murder.

  Susan broke down again and again. Danny and Lenora both told her she didn’t have to do this—why sit through the whole trial and relive her daughter’s pain?

  But she insisted. The jury had to see her. The two middle-aged ladies in the back row, the two younger women in the front, and all the other jurors needed to look in her eyes and know how much she was depending on them.

  The prosecutor was a slender young guy named John Hodgman with an expensive dark suit, long thin nose, and confident manner. This was his first big case, according to Agent Pappas, and she worried about him at first; but as far as she could tell, he was kicking ass. The jury didn’t seem to find him too cocky. As he walked the jurors through the evidence, she would often look over at them. She sensed they were connecting with both Hodgman and her.

  Then on the fifth day, Hodgman rested his case. The defense lawyer, a woman in her forties named Bobbi Reid who wore her hair in a bun, stood up.

  Reid had a small law firm in Schenectady that contracted with the public defenders’ office. Susan didn’t understand how any woman could possibly defend a guy who had raped and killed a child. She didn’t care how many times people told her it was an important part of the criminal justice system. It was sick.

  Reid acted businesslike, never cracking a smile or showing any emotion really. She began by calling her own expert witness, a retired medical examiner named John Sunderland, to testify about the scabs on Jansen’s hand. Sunderland was a little rumpled looking, his tie slightly askew,
but he had a strong, resonant voice.

  “Those scabs could have been caused by any number of things, not just being bitten by someone,” he proclaimed from the stand. “You could easily get them while doing construction work. And you could definitely get them if you had a drunken fall from the second floor of a house onto the sidewalk.” That’s what Jansen was claiming now.

  Susan was afraid Reid and her deep-voiced witness were making an impact on the jury. She watched them but couldn’t tell what they were thinking. None of the jurors looked back at her.

  Then Hodgman stood up and began his cross-examination. “Mr. Sunderland,” he said crisply, “when is the last time you worked as a medical examiner?”

  That very first question landed.

  “Primarily I’ve been doing consulting for the past few years,” Sunderland said.

  Hodgman repeated firmly, “When is the last time you worked as a medical examiner?”

  Sunderland finally admitted he hadn’t been a medical examiner for fifteen years.

  “What periodicals in the field have you read during the past year?” Hodgman asked.

  “Well …” Sunderland began hesitantly.

  Under Hodgman’s detailed, withering questions about what Sunderland read, or didn’t read, and what conferences he attended, or didn’t attend, it became apparent he hadn’t kept up on the new developments in forensics during these past fifteen years.

  Then Hodgman asked, in a silky, almost loving tone, “Tell me, Mr. Sunderland, why did you leave your last job?”

  Reid objected, but the judge overruled her. Sunderland tried to dance around the answer, but then it came. He was fired because he was addicted to prescription drugs and fell asleep in the middle of an autopsy.

  Susan exchanged an incredulous look with Danny. This is the best the defense could come up with? Either they had zero money to hire a real expert or Bobbi Reid had completely screwed up.

  Or maybe she couldn’t find a real expert who would agree to back up Jansen’s tale about some drunken fall causing the scabs.

  It was obvious the jury was not impressed by the old ex-medical examiner’s testimony. When he finally retreated from the witness stand in red-faced defeat, the two middle-aged women jurors looked over at Susan and smiled.

  But then Reid called Curt Jansen to the stand.

  Susan knew this was the make-or-break testimony. The entire courtroom turned utterly silent as Jansen settled in at the stand. He sat up extra straight, as if his lawyer had told him to do that. He put his hand on the Bible and swore in an unwavering voice to tell the truth.

  Susan watched the jury watching him intently. The two young women in the front row seemed intrigued by him. It would be just her luck if these two were attracted to bad boys.

  Reid started with the basics, getting Jansen’s full name, age—forty—and occupation—construction worker. Susan was afraid he would be on the stand for hours, and she’d be forced to listen to it all. But Reid didn’t waste time. Within three minutes she was already asking the key questions.

  “Mr. Jansen, what were you doing in Lake Luzerne?”

  “Drywalling. This contractor I knew from before called me up and hired me for a couple weeks. Put me up at the Homestead Motel.”

  “And where were you on the day of Amy Lentigo’s murder?”

  “I got off work about one thirty, ’cause the next apartment I was supposed to be doing wasn’t ready yet. So I bought a couple six-packs and started my weekend early.” He lifted his shoulders. “Ain’t proud of it, but I went back to my room at the Homestead and just drank for the rest of the day.”

  “Did anybody see you?”

  Jansen shook his head. “No, I wasn’t into being social. See, this girl I was going out with in Massachusetts broke up with me the week before, so I was pretty much down in the dumps. My room was on the far end, and there wasn’t too many people at the motel ’cause it was mud season, so I didn’t really see nobody.”

  Susan watched the jury’s faces. Were they buying this crap?

  Reid sipped from a glass of water and cleared her throat. “Now, Mr. Jansen,” she said. “You heard your written confession read aloud in this courtroom.”

  Jansen shifted in his seat behind the podium. “Yeah, I heard it.”

  “Did you say those words?”

  “Yeah. But they were all lies. Every one of ’em.”

  “So you didn’t kill Amy Lentigo?”

  Jansen shook his head vigorously. “No. Hell no. I never even met her.”

  If only, Susan thought bitterly.

  “Could you tell us the circumstances behind your confession?”

  Hodgman stood up. “Objection. That’s overly general, Your Honor.”

  “Please break it down, Ms. Reid,” said the judge, a jowly man in his fifties with some kind of southern accent Susan had never heard before except maybe on TV.

  Reid said, “What were you doing when the FBI came and picked you up?”

  “I was back in my motel room again. Got to admit I was doing some more drinking.” Jansen gave the jury a crooked, self-deprecating smile, and Susan worried how it would affect those two young women. “I’d been working six days straight, putting up sheetrock, and I had one day off while the crew did some framing. So I was watching some old sit-com on TV when somebody knocks at the door.”

  Jansen raised his arm and pointed at Pappas, sitting in the third row of the gallery, where he’d been ever since he finished testifying. Pappas gazed back stonily. “It’s this guy here. He says he’s FBI and starts asking me all these crazy questions. I know enough not to say anything, so he tells his partner to take me to FBI headquarters. Just a couple miles from this courtroom here.”

  “What time was it when you got there?”

  “Five or six.”

  “Did they ever tell you that you had the right to a lawyer?”

  “If they did, I don’t remember it. I’d been hitting the vodka pretty good all day.”

  Susan hoped his emphasis on drinking would work against him. Maybe the jury would decide he was so drunk he couldn’t control his disgusting urges.

  “So what happened after you got to FBI headquarters?”

  “Nothing. They left me sitting in this tiny room. My head was hurting and they wouldn’t give me anything to eat or drink. For a long time they wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom either.”

  “When did Agent Pappas return?”

  Susan glanced toward Pappas. He gave her a reassuring look, letting her know he was confident that nothing Jansen could say would hurt them.

  Jansen said, “Around ten o’clock. He comes in and starts yapping at me. I tell him, ‘Screw you, I didn’t do anything.’ He says, ‘I know it’s you. We found your fingerprints in the victim’s blood.’ Which I knew was bullshit, excuse my language, ’cause like I said, I never met her.”

  Hodgman stood up. “Objection. Not responsive to the question.”

  “Sustained.”

  Reid asked, “Mr. Jansen, what happened during the course of your conversation with Agent Pappas?”

  Hodgman rose again. “That’s awfully general again, Your Honor.”

  “Let’s see how it goes,” the judge said. He nodded to Jansen. “You may answer.”

  Jansen jumped right in, speaking quickly, like he’d been dying to explain himself for months. “This guy Pappas spends the whole night jumping down my throat, then he acts nice, then he comes at me again. I’m hungry and hung over and all I want to do is go to sleep. But every time I put my head down, he bangs the table.” Jansen slammed his podium to demonstrate. “So now it’s been like, ten hours, and it’s never gonna stop. They’ll never let me sleep! So finally I just say, ‘Yeah, I did it.’ ’Cause I know for sure it’s all a mistake and they’ll realize they got it wrong as soon as they check those damn fingerprints—see, I didn’t know they didn’t even have any fingerprints and that was all a lie.” He pounded the podium again. “I just want to go to sleep. I never been so fuck—fre
aking tired in my life. So I go, ‘Yeah, whatever. I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign.’”

  Susan looked at the jury. The two young women sat with their lips parted, entranced. The two middle-aged women she relied on for encouraging nods or smiles weren’t looking at her. One of them was actually giving a little smile to Lisa, Jansen’s sister. Susan had read quotes from Lisa in the paper, where she claimed her brother was innocent. Maybe the jurors had read the quotes too.

  She wanted to throw up. What if it all falls apart?

  And then she had to listen to her daughter’s killer testify for another full hour. It was just lies upon lies.

  Finally, Reid sat down. Hodgman stood up to begin his cross-examination.

  “Please, God,” Susan whispered quietly to the God she didn’t believe in anymore, “don’t let this rapist murderer win.”

  Hodgman straightened his sport jacket and stepped toward the witness stand. “Mr. Jansen,” he began, “you say you never met Amy. Did you ever see her?”

  “No, not ’til I was arrested and they showed me pictures of her.”

  “So you never saw her, even though the window of your motel room looked out onto the Lentigos’ driveway?”

  “Mainly I was just drinking and watching TV.”

  “Even though Amy was playing basketball out there? Dancing on the porch?”

  “I didn’t pay attention to any of that.”

  “Even with all the noise, the bouncing basketball, the country music …” Hodgman gave a little shimmy, as if he was dancing. “… Amy’s girlfriends coming around and working on their routines?”

  Reid stood up. “He’s answered the question, Your Honor.”

  The judge said, “Please move on, Mr. Hodgman.”

  Hodgman, seeming undaunted, stepped even closer to Jansen. “Do you think little girls look cute when they’re dancing?”

  Jansen glared at Hodgman and shook his head. “Not sexy cute, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Mr. Jansen, did you tell FBI Agent Robert Pappas, and I’m quoting from your signed confession, ‘I saw her necklace on her tiny little neck and it gave me a hard-on.’”