Coming for You

by Deborah Rogers

  My eyes scan slowly left to right. It’s still dark in there, I think, inside the closet. Despite my attempts at minimalism, I should throw more things out. But not tonight. Tonight I don’t have the energy. My eyes reach the winter woolen coat and halt. Oh god, was that movement? Did I hear a breath? Did the hem of my coat shift ever so slightly? My heart begins to race.

  I fight the urge to run. Instead, I tell myself to just calm the hell down and take another look. And when I do, I see that I’m wrong. Nothing there except the imaginings of my touchy amygdala. I lower myself onto the bed and take six full breaths to calm my rising panic. No one is there. No one is there. No one is there.

  I look at the clock on the bedside table. It’s after two. I need to get some sleep or I will be a wreck in the morning. I wonder what my colleagues at the DA’s office would think if they could see me now, shaking, out of control, imagining phantoms in the wardrobe.

  Heart still pounding, I get up and leave the bedroom. There’s nothing to worry about, I tell myself, just finish checking then go to bed. I pause at the door of the spare room next to mine and turn the handle. It does not budge. Still locked. Good.

  Next I move to the bathroom, check behind the shower curtain. All clear, so I head back to the front door and turn the knob and check the locks again. Then do the circuit twice more, rechecking the living room, my bedroom, the other room, the bathroom, the front door as thoroughly as I did the first time. Even after I have done the checking three times there is always the urge to check once more.

  But I tell myself that everything is fine. The apartment is safe. I am safe. I have done enough for the night. I realize I am shivering. The apartment is freezing. I turn on the heat, twisting the thermostat way up. The crummy thing rattles into life, blows out stale air, but warms the place quickly.

  I can barely keep my eyes open and head for my bedroom. A sudden high-pitched beep stops me. My cell phone battery is dying. I turn back and dig inside my purse to put it on the charger. The screen is lit with four missed calls. I listen to them. The first is from my mother. Would Amelia please keep her eye out for the vacation brochure on Bali she’d sent her, and wouldn’t it be great if Amelia could meet a nice man to take because she’d heard there were fantastic resorts where you could get couples massages for a very good price. The second message is from Claire Watson, the New Jersey mom of the eleven-year-old child witness I am supposed to be briefing tomorrow. “Amelia? I need to talk to you. Give me a call.” Blunt and to the point, in true Claire Watson fashion. Her message was left at 7:38 p.m. It’s now nearly 2:30 a.m. Too late to call. It will have to wait until tomorrow. I swallow down the guilt, not sure how I’m going to explain my tardiness. The third is from Lorna. My therapist. She’s pissed I missed our appointment. Twice. I look down at the fourth missed call and go cold. Number unknown. No message. It’s nothing, I tell myself. I stare at the screen for a long time. It doesn’t mean anything, nothing at all. But it’s too late, it sets me off and I begin the checking all over again.

  3

  I hurry up Center Street and head toward the Civic Center District of Manhattan, finger-combing my unbrushed hair as I go. I’m late for my witness briefing with Susie Watson. The checking this morning has put me behind. It took me longer than normal to get out of the apartment because that stupid unknown call was still playing on my mind. I chide myself. I should be getting better but I’m only getting worse. It cannot go on like this. At the best of times, morning checking is generally worse than nighttime checking because of the time pressure to get to work. I hate rushing because I’m afraid I might make a mistake and overlook some critical detail. As a result, I have often found myself outside the apartment and the blinds don’t look quite right so I have to go back and start the process all over again.

  Case in point, this morning when I studied the apartment from the outside, doubts crept in. Were the venetian slats at the correct angle? Did I check the auto light timer was working? Did I look behind the shower curtain in the bathroom? I was torn about whether to return to the apartment or be late. Finally, I swallowed down my anxiety and headed for work. I could not let poor Susie down. The little girl had been through enough already.

  I reach Foley Square and the New York State Supreme Court Building, the court where serious matters are heard, serious criminal matters like the one involving Susie Watson. The building makes me feel small, with its giant Roman granite columns and sweeping stone steps leading up to the grand colonnaded entrance. I am just a limping ant with a cane. And one day this limping ant will get found out. Because I have the credentials, sure, the law degree, the will to do good, but sometimes it’s hard not to think there’s been some kind of a mistake. That I don’t really belong here, trying cases, putting the bad guys away. Some days I feel like I’m an imposter who’s making it up as she goes along, and today is definitely one of those days.

  I pause and look across the road at Thomas Paine Park. It’s quiet over there this morning, with just a smattering of people. An old-timer feeding pigeons. A twenty-something in jeans and heels getting coffee from a cart. A clean-cut Wall Street broker in a crisp Armani shirt heading to work.

  I turn back to face the courthouse, take a breath to steal myself, and, one at a time, make my way up the steps. Leading with my one good foot, I stick close to the railing running up the middle to the colonnade in case my balance deserts me.

  I make it to the top just as a single bead of sweat tumbles from my hairline. I swipe it away and enter the building through the ornate timber doors. I flash my Assistant District Attorney ID to security even though they know me by sight (there’s not too many young female lawyers with a cane), and pass my satchel through X-ray. Sometimes they have tried to wave me through without the X-ray, thinking they are doing me a favor, but that makes me nervous, because if they are doing that for me who else is getting special treatment?

  Claire and Susie Watson are waiting for me outside Courtroom No.7. Claire, the mom, a salt-of-the-earth, thick-waisted waitress, with a head full of curly black hair, is wearing her usual outfit. An old-fashioned pair of acid-wash jeans with a Budweiser T-shirt, tucked in, and a pair of soft-soled dirty blue sneakers.

  Claire worked two jobs so she could send Susie to an exclusive private school called Ashbury Preparatory and Grammar School in the Upper West Side. Every day for nearly three years, the two of them had made the two-and-a-half-hour round journey from New Jersey to Ashbury.

  “I wanted Susie to have a better life than my bullshit crappy one,” Claire had told me when we first met. “You know, give her a proper start, so she could meet the right people, go places. Well, now I know better, don’t I?” Claire had said bitterly through a haze of tears.

  Because Mr. Alistair Kennedy was definitely not the “right people” and was now the reason why her daughter was in therapy once a week, possibly for the rest of her life, and about to testify against him in a court of law.

  Next to her mom, Susie is looking slightly bewildered. She’s wearing a violet-colored top with a frill around the bottom over a denim skirt, and her dark curly hair, just like her mother’s although longer, hangs in a loose ponytail at the nape her neck. Susie is small for her age, looks more like nine than eleven (which won’t hurt the case if I’m honest), and if it’s possible, she looks even smaller today, as if the gravity of what she’s being asked to do has finally made landfall on Susie’s fragile young shoulders.

  Standing with them is a man I don’t recognize. Funny, I don’t remember Claire mentioning a boyfriend.

  By the looks of the scowl on Claire’s face, she’s angry about something. And when she sees me approaching, she doesn’t waste any time telling me what’s on her mind.

  “Amelia, I called you and you never got back to me. I’ve been going out of my mind here. You gotta do something! This guy”—she gestures to the man with distaste, her New Jersey drawl even more evident given her current state of enragement—“it’s just so freaking stupid.”

 
Like me, the man looks like he’s been up half the night. He’s in need of a shave and, given the thick dark hair skimming the collar of his shirt, he could do with a haircut, too. Late thirties or early forties, older than me, broad-shouldered but stooped as if he was apologetic for taking up too much space. Good-looking in a tired sort of way.

  He extends his hand. “Detective Ethan North.” We shake. Warm, not too firm. He withdraws a little quicker than feels normal.

  I’m puzzled. “Where’s Detective Barker?”

  Claire raises her arms, exasperated. “My point exactly.”

  Detective North shoves his hands in his pockets. There’s a whiff of stale coffee and deodorant hastily applied.

  “He was needed on another matter. I’ve been assigned to Susie’s case now.”

  “At this late stage?” I say.

  He rubs the knuckle of his forefinger along his upper lip where there’s the silvery scar of a harelip repaired some time ago.

  “Yes.”

  “But Detective Barker has been on this matter since the beginning. He has all the case knowledge. A change this late in the game is…well, quite frankly, it could be damaging to a successful conviction.”

  “That’s what I keep telling him,” says Claire, planting her hands on her hips.

  “Don’t worry,” he says, “I’m up to date on the case file.” The reason for the crumpled shirt and lack of morning shave, I suspect.

  All at once, I’m sorry. This poor schmuck has nothing to do with his stupid departmental decisions. He’s just another cog in the wheel like me.

  “This isn’t good enough,” says Claire, jabbing a finger at him. “My daughter deserves better.”

  He flinches slightly, then resumes a neutral expression. “There’s nothing I can do.”

  “It’ll be okay, Claire,” I say, conscious that Susie is only a few feet away on the bench. “We’re at the tail end of this thing now. How about we just get started?”

  Claire looks like she wants to argue some more. Instead, she gives up. “I don’t like it one little bit, Amelia. I really don’t. But I’m sane enough to realize that like most things that have happened to me in my pathetic life there is jack shit I can do about it.” She takes Susie’s hand. “Come on, baby. Let’s get this over with.”

  Detective North reaches for the door handle to the interview room.

  Claire swings round to face him. “Not you.” She looks at me. “I don’t want him in there, Amelia.”

  “But Claire, Detective North has to be present to protect the continuity of the case.”

  She shakes her head. “You can’t expect Susie to talk about what happened in front of a man she doesn’t even know. No way. Not gonna happen.”

  “But Claire—” I protest.

  Detective North holds up his hand.

  “I’ll wait here,” he says.

  “Well, if you’re sure,” I say.

  “He’s sure,” says Claire Watson. “Now are we doing this or what?”

  4

  Thanks to a favor from the court clerk, Barbara Hobbs, the long-serving bespectacled sixty-something courthouse matriarch who happened to feel sorry for me because of my disability, I have been granted access to courtroom No.7. My hope is to help demystify some of the trial process for Susie. Another hearing starts at 10 a.m. and we need to be out in twenty minutes, I’m told firmly by Barbara Hobbs. No exception.

  The room is not one of the particularly grand courtrooms in the building. On the smaller side, it has the same dark wood paneling and boxy high windows typical of the other Supreme Court rooms, but this one’s more intimate, or claustrophobic if you happen to be an eleven-year-old girl required to give evidence against your teacher. Both the defense and prosecution tables are relatively close to the witness box and judge’s bench, and even the most confident of witnesses can find that unnerving. The public gallery, with its allotment of five rows of hardwood seating, is separated from the rest of the court by a wooden balustrade, or “the bar.” The jury box is to the left of the judge’s bench, and a tiny press gallery to the right.

  Empty now, the room doesn’t seem too threatening, but it can and does feel crowded depending on how many people attend. And it’s likely to be a full house for the trial tomorrow, People vs. Kennedy. A teacher accused of sexual assault against a minor tends to draw a crowd.

  On the plus side, the trial is likely to be short. Three days at the most, including the judge’s summing up and the opening and closing arguments. On the negative side, the reason it will be so short is because all the witnesses have dropped out. One-by-one, like a slow leaking faucet. That’s because after the initial complaints were laid, parents began to realize the terrible effects the process was having on their children. Not to mention the public scandal side of things. It was too much of a burden for them to bear. So they departed like rats from a sinking ship. Not that I blame them. I probably would have done the same thing.

  So it was all down to little Susie Watson and me. I look at Susie now, sitting in the dark green leather-buttoned judge’s chair, watching Dance Moms on my tablet, and think how crazy it is that this entire case hangs on the word of this child. Yes, there was some medical evidence but that was in no way foolproof, and the defense will seek to exploit any ambiguity in the medical examiner’s interpretation of what she found when she saw Susie, months after the events.

  Right now, Susie seems oblivious to it all, to the ordeal she will have to go through tomorrow. But kids do that, don’t they? Pretend not to care, pretend everything is okay, when underneath they are positively rigid with fear.

  “Thanks for letting her play with that,” says Claire, nodding to the tablet. “She wants an iPhone. But she’s a good kid. She doesn’t pester me. Knows we can’t afford it. Give Ms. Kellaway’s iPad back, baby, and say thank you.”

  I look at Claire and Susie, this tight team of two, and feel a flash of envy. How will I ever be able to bring a child of my own into my messed-up world?

  Susie hands me the iPad. “Thank you, Ms. Kellaway.”

  “You’re welcome, Susie.”

  She gives me an uncertain smile and twists the beaded bracelet on her right wrist while she waits for me to begin. On her tiny clipped fingernails, there are remnants of faint blue nail polish from a mother-daughter pamper session sometime back. What was it like to be eleven, I wonder. Eleven and in this position. A little kid just trying to hold on to whatever childhood she can salvage in the midst of all this darkness. Both mother and daughter look at me expectantly, and I know they are hoping I can somehow fix what happened. Suddenly I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.

  I take out the trial briefing from my satchel. “Are you ready to go over your questions now, Susie?”

  “What happened to your foot?” she says, without looking up from the bracelet she’s twirling round her wrist.

  “Susie,” scolds Claire.

  “No, it’s okay,” I say. “I had an accident.”

  Susie frowns, inspects a lime green bead with great interest. “Does it hurt?”

  “Sometimes.” I turn and look at the empty courtroom. “Susie, we need to run through what you’re going to say tomorrow.” I point to the witness box. “You’ll sit right up here, but don’t worry because there will be a screen so you won’t be able to see him.”

  “Was it a car accident?”

  “No, not a car accident. The screen means he won’t be able to see you either.”

  Susie finally looks at me. “What kind of accident?”

  “Listen to Ms. Kellaway, baby, what she’s saying is important,” says Claire.

  I crouch to face Susie. “I got a splinter in my foot and it got infected. Susie, tomorrow I’m going to ask you questions. Then Mr. Kennedy’s lawyer will ask you questions, too.”

  “A splinter’s not an accident.”

  Claire throws her head back and blinks at the ceiling. “Susie, for the love of God.”

  I pause. “Would you like to see it?�
�

  The girl’s eyes widen and she nods.

  “You don’t have to do that,” says Claire.

  “It’s fine.”

  I pull out one of the hardbacked chairs and sit down and slip off my orthopedic shoe and sock. Both Claire and Susie fall silent as they stare at my ugly half lump.

  “It’s not so bad,” I say finally.

  “You must be brave,” says Susie.

  I put my shoe back on and face Susie. “Well, tomorrow it’s your turn to be brave.”

  “Can Mom sit with me?”

  “No. But Annie the social worker will be there, standing right behind you in case you need anything. All you have to do is tell the court exactly what you told me. Then your job will be done and you can go home.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “It’s going to be fine, Susie. You just need to tell the truth,” I say.

  “Will Mr. Kennedy go to jail?”

  I nod. “I hope so. Will you do it for me, Susie? So he can’t hurt any more girls?”

  She looks at me. “Will it be like last time?”

  I frown. “Last time?”

  “When I was little, when the lady called me a liar and said I was making it up but I wasn’t.”

  My foot begins to throb.

  I look at Claire. “What’s Susie talking about?”

  Claire stares at me without speaking.

  “Claire?”

  “I was gonna tell you. I swear I was, but there was never a right time.”

  I feel a weight in my chest. “Tell me what, Claire?”

  She pivots and presses her forehead to the wall. “Christ, I’m such a freaking idiot.”

  “Claire.”

  “It’s ancient history, Amelia.”

  Suddenly I’m drained. “Has Susie made a similar accusation before?”

  Claire hits the wall with her palm. Curses some more. I rub my hand over my face and long to lock myself inside the safety of my apartment.