Simon smiled. He had given everything he could throw at his son, and the kid caught up to every pitch. At nine years old, he thought. What will he do when he’s a grown man!
* * *
Simon called in sick to work the next day, and spent the afternoon at the high school baseball field with Felix, pitching him fastballs, curveballs, sinkers, every trick pitch he ever used on a batter, and watching each ball get clobbered by the Louisville Slugger. It had come back to life. He beamed, not only for his son, but himself, for having at least temporarily gotten Felix to shake loose the hypnotic trance that seemed to have held him in its demonic grip. He was hitting baseballs instead of rocks, just like his old man, and Simon had taken him to the field because he wanted to see just how far his son could tattoo the ball. On a varsity field, the balls were landing softly in shallow center, but in Little League, what things he could do, he thought. He’s hitting everything. Everything! And Simon watched another fly ball sail into the bright August sky. Taking deep breaths of air, soaking in the lush green of the field, as if he could hear ghosts of the future cheering on his son for all the things he had yet to accomplish in his young life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
A MURDERED FACE MAKES FOR A POOR COMPANION. The look of disbelief in the petrified murdered eyes. The stiffening veins pulsing purple like earthworms retreating to the surface from the doomed soil. Hands clawing at the neck as though strip-mining for the obstruction stuck in the throat. A dying face is always a pleading one. It seems to always ask why. That question history can never agree on. That question sat beside David Westwood on the stainless-steel benches of his new life. A boy’s pleading face just before dying is a terrible roommate.
It was mid-September. The school year had started without him. David was in his plain clothes. Not having been convicted yet, he didn’t have to wear the issued uniform of the county jail. Other than that, there was little for David to be grateful for, and it was in his solitude, in his holding cell, that he realized something awful about himself. When he was free, on the outside, he’d spent a good deal of time thinking about the things he would do, and the things he would become. The future was always a horizon he chased, and it dawned on him, when his movement was confined with the slam of the bars, that he no longer had a future, and therefore could only think of his one, definable act. Not only would he be spending his life in prison, as the cops had told him when they brought him in, but the repetitive image of Dallas’s desperate face emerging from the darkness of his cell seemed to be the only thing that occupied his mind.
The brightness of the boy’s eyes had dimmed when David suffered the blow to his head, he remembered. He shuddered. Those eyes fell into a blank nowhere and his jaw fell loose, like a sack of marbles in David’s hand. Why hadn’t that stopped him? If anything, he remembered feeling even angrier. Like the boy was judging him. Not participating. Not giving him the satisfaction. He remembered feeling humiliated again. The rocks that struck him, like hot holes on his flesh. With each rock he shoved into the boy’s mouth, he’d hoped to wake the boy’s defenses. But the kid wouldn’t get angry; he would only stare back coldly. Disciplining David through silence. Another judgmental face in a crowd of plenty.
Then the moment fell away and the boy was gulping at the air like a goldfish. Eyes wide. His body wriggling to free itself from suffocation.
David thought first aid was stupid, when they tried to teach him about it in health class. Thought the Boy Scouts and those outdoor survival classes were dumb when his father tried to sign him up. But as he squatted in front of the dying boy, he’d never felt so helpless.
Alone in his cell, the feeling returned. In fact, every time he closed his eyes he was back in Zambrini’s Brick and Masonry Yard, kneeling in front of Dallas, imagining the disbelief, the panic, the sadness he must have felt. In that regard, he shared some of his grief. They both wished they could have left the lot in peace. That they could rewind the earth and begin anew . . . That just a few moments would have delayed their meeting. An untied shoe, a lingering minute at the bathroom sink at home. Incorrect change at Nino’s register. So the two might have never crossed paths.
In David’s calmer daydreams, the boy sits up in the morgue. The rocks fly outward from his throat. He takes a deep drink of air and his lungs inflate, as he jumps from the table to find his friends. The guard clangs on his bars and says, “Your lucky day, kid, the boy will be fine.” They both collapse into their respective beds that night, and exhale in relief.
But the steel toilet and the thin mattress pressed against the wall were persistent, and after the dreams and the fantasies faded away, David was left only with a recent history as concrete as the walls that surrounded him. His emotions had taken what was a sporting prank on some neighborhood brats and turned it into a continuous cycle of night terrors. Clanking bars. Labored sleep.
Only his lawyer had seen him in his worst state, when the public defender met him at the jail and told him he was going to save his life. He had grabbed hold of the lawyer by the sleeves of his blue suit jacket and wept on his chest. The man was a total stranger, but David saw the life-giver in him. He read a sincerity he hadn’t read in a person in his whole life, and now any chance of redemption, of happiness, hung on this man. His parents had only been to see him twice, and both times they said nothing important. His mother told him she was tired of going to bed every night petrified of what was going on inside the jail. His father bit at his lip as if he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the moment. His lawyer did neither. He just wanted to know facts. For that, David opened his soul like black storm clouds and cried until the lawyer lightly wrapped his arms around him.
That was in the early going, and he wept quietly for a few more days after that, before his grief subsided to a colder feeling of hopelessness and wonder. The only thing that still nagged and bled into his mind was the memory of running from that little boy who squirmed and gagged silently on the ground, clutching at his throat. He had plenty of time to sit and recount that day.
He’d run for Nick’s car shortly after the others took off, but when he got there, Nick looked back at him, shook his head, and jumped in. He reached for the passenger door, but Krystal had locked it. He went around the back of the car to get in behind Nick, but the car lurched forward and leaped off the shoulder, knocking him aside. Nick left rubber behind as he cut a fast left down Turnbull Road. David stumbled backward, looked down the empty street behind him, and jogged that way, passing the entrance to the side trail where the boys were still lying on the ground. His mind was frantic, but he rehearsed a short map of the back roads to his house, and began to follow them.
He figured the more back roads he took, and the more side streets he used, the further from his crime he would get, and perhaps no one would find out. When he thought about what he was doing, and what he had done, he became nauseated and had to step into the woods twice to vomit.
He wandered the streets for what seemed like hours, though when he decided against making a right, and went left down Cypress Avenue, he got no farther than ten yards before a police cruiser whipped behind him and opened both its doors. David turned away. His first impulse was to run, but both officers had drawn their guns and were shouting, so he dropped to his knees with his hands up. He called out that he had a gun but it wasn’t real. One cop ordered him on his face, slowly approached him, grabbed the weapon and threw it away from him. He cuffed David behind his back, while his partner grabbed the gun with a plastic bag and sealed it.
Inside the car, the two hefty policemen told him that he wasn’t in a lot of trouble, and that they would take care of him. They told him it wasn’t a big deal so long as he cooperated. Then when he got to the station for booking, he was approached by two other detectives who told him he was headed to prison for the rest of his life. They told him that his friends were the ones who called them, the ones who tipped them off about where he would be wandering. They had already confessed and were willing to testify
, willing to put him in jail. Then another detective walked in and told him that he believed the victim was a relative of a powerful Mafia don, and that even if he beat the rap, he’d surely be killed out on the street, so he might as well confess and let them protect him. David was dizzy with fright, and the detectives wouldn’t let him sleep. Yet their persistence was the very thing that kept David quiet, and he began to get the sense that it was all a lie. He kept recounting what he’d done in his head, and as the detectives leaned over him and filled the blanks, barking their own versions under the buzzing lights, he got more confused and argumentative. The detectives pounded, they shouted, and sometimes they even appeared to be his friend, pulling up a chair next to him and putting a large hand around the back of his neck.
“Son, it’s okay. All you have to do is let it out. You were angry, those boys practically got what they deserved, I know,” said one of the younger detectives. “I see these punk kids running around in this godforsaken town, sometimes I want run ’em over myself. Just tell us what happened, and if you’re honest with us, we can’t do anything to you.”
They made him answer the same questions repeatedly. He was so numb with fear that he couldn’t even cry out, and partly he didn’t want to. He got the feeling that he was being broken, and he got it into his imagination that whenever the detectives walked out of the room together, they were outside the door placing bets on who could make him cry first. This fantasy made him angry. The detectives picked up on his anger. They responded with their own, promising to get the judge to throw away the key. So long as they were alive, they were going to make sure he never again saw the light of day. They harped on his tone of voice. Every time he whispered, they yelled at him to speak up. Every time he spoke up, they barked at him not to get tough. When he leaned forward in his chair, they told him to sit back. When he leaned back, they ordered him to sit up straight. They told him their patience was wearing thin, and that they were sending someone in shortly to smack him around a little. He lurched forward in his chair and vomited. The detectives laughed. They threatened to give him a “tour” of the jail, where he’d make lots of friends. David didn’t believe it. But then he would believe it entirely, and then he’d only half-believe. Then he’d go back to being angry and not believing any of it.
Then his lawyer showed up. His lawyer was a tall, wiry man in a blue pin-striped suit. He had thick, curly black hair on the sides with a bald strip up the middle of his head. He stood in the doorway, his briefcase in one hand, his other jammed into his pocket. He looked David up and down and said his name was Barry Levin, and that he was there to defend him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
AT DAVID’S INDICTMENT, the prosecutor wandered around the courtroom and addressed the grand jury using exaggerated words and legal speak that David couldn’t possibly follow. Only occasionally, during the boy’s fixation with the prosecutor’s mannerisms, did he understand what the man was driving at. Those rare moments when he used words like depraved, animalistic, dangerous, and big shot.
“He thought he was a big shot,” the prosecutor said, pointing over to David sitting in his defendant’s chair wearing a suit two sizes too big, because it was on loan from Barry. “So do you know what the big shot decided to do? He decided to take a couple little boys, bash one of them over the face with a heavy pellet gun, and then choke the other little boy and watch him die.”
David trembled in his seat, even when Barry took the floor in his defense, illustrating that David had tried to help the victim, and only ran because of panic when he saw the kid couldn’t be saved without professional help. He also pointed out that David himself was just a “little boy,” scared out of his wits and coerced into telling police officers whatever they wanted to hear. David perked up at this notion. He hadn’t considered himself a little boy in a long while, and didn’t consider himself one now. Not with the way his life had changed. Not after what he’d done. What do little boys have to worry about? He tried to recall his last true memory, but his mind snapped back to the present when Barry pointed a finger at him and asked something of the grand jury.
In the end, the jury indicted David on the charge of second-degree murder. The prosecutor indicated that he would be trying all four defendants separately. Barry was frank with him after the meeting, and told David that he was facing the most severe of the charges. While they waited for transport in the back room of the courthouse, Barry wrinkled his brow and looked down at David.
“Do you understand what we’re up against?” he asked. David looked up at him and rubbed his right eye, the sleeve of the large suit hanging over his fist. “If you’re found guilty of what they’re charging you with . . . you may never get out of jail.”
David felt a throb in his chest, and the sensation in his knees disappeared for a brief moment. He put his hand on the wall to steady himself. “I didn’t mean to kill that kid,” he whispered, on the verge of tears.
Barry breathed heavy through his nostrils and looked away from his client. “Then what did you mean to do?”
David was struck dumb by the question. In his cell he had wept over how angry he’d felt in that moment, but never examined why. As if emotions happened for no reason, like an itch or a muscle cramp, David believed his anger had somehow erupted from an unknown place inside him, uninvited. But saying that to another person had broken the illusion.
“I couldn’t take being rescued by a girl anymore,” David blurted.
The words awakened Barry’s eyes. He lifted his head and looked at his client. David was drawing an imaginary square on the table, the shape of his jail cell. He shook his head in thought.
“You know, the first bet I ever lost was in gym class,” the boy said. Quietly. Backing into the memory, his eyes locked on his hands.
Barry leaned forward in his chair. “When was this?”
“I was in third grade,” David replied abruptly, as though it didn’t need to be asked. “The teacher was showing us how to ride scooters. Mr. Platz. There were only three scooters in the school, so we had to go one at a time, and Mr. Platz put a single orange rubber cone on the far end of the gym, in the middle of the floor. And he told all of us that we had to ride the scooter down the gym, around the cone, and go back to where we started.
“Vinny DeFeo was standing in line behind me, and he poked me hard in the back, and said loud enough so everyone could hear that he bet me fifty cents I would crash right into the cone. I didn’t want to take the bet, but he kept poking me and calling me chicken, and the other kids started poking me too. So I took the bet.
“I figured I would win it. I mean, how hard is it to ride a scooter around a cone when you have thirty feet of room on either side? I didn’t have fifty cents. Vinny DeFeo didn’t either—we were all on the free lunch program. I took the bet, because even if I won, I didn’t care about the fifty cents.
“When it came my turn, I got on the scooter and Vinny told me I was going to hit the cone, so I kept my eyes fixed on it. Mr. Platz blew his whistle and I took off. I kept looking at the cone to make sure I didn’t hit it, and I was pushing to get past it faster, but the closer I got to it and the more I looked, the more I started drifting right for it.
“My front wheel was wobbling and I could hear all the kids screaming behind me, and I just kept staring at it, and it was like I couldn’t control anything anymore. The more I told myself not to hit the cone, the more I seemed to be heading straight for it. I ran my wheel right into it and went over the handlebars and landed on my back. Everyone laughed and clapped.
“Mr. Platz stood over me. He was angry, and he asked me if I wanted to go down to the principal’s office for fooling around. There was more laughter . . .”
Barry reached into his inside pocket for a pack of tissues and put them on the table. David ignored them.
“After that, Vinny kept hounding me for his fifty cents. Kept yelling for it whenever he saw me in the hallways, and pretty soon all the other kids started calling out, Fifty cents!”
“Why didn’t you ask your parents for the money and be done with it?” Barry asked.
“I went to my dad, and he told me that at my age all bets should be friendly. But you know how bets are in elementary school, they’re everything but friendly. Vinny said he wanted me to meet him in the trails across the street, but I wouldn’t go. I should have gone.”
“Self-preservation,” Barry said, pushing the tissues closer to David, though he wasn’t crying now. “No shame in that.”
David laughed through his nose and stared up at the ceiling, swallowing hard. “Eventually it was Mrs. Ramiro, my art teacher, who gave me the fifty cents to pay Vinny.”
“David, what are you telling me?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” the boy said quietly, the words barely escaping through his tightening throat. “The night before, I watched Julia try to talk me out of my fight with that guy Bob, and then on that day I saw Krystal tackle the little kid and something went wrong inside of me. It was like I couldn’t fight my own battles, and another girl had to come along and rescue me again.”
* * *
A few weeks after the indictment, David started getting the newspaper regularly, and just as quickly as it became a new privilege, it proved an agonizing burden. He got the Turnbull Times, which seemed to report every detail of his hearings. Headlines like Trial Set for Young Turnbull Killer and The Monster Faces the Music. Articles about him picked apart everything his parents did through the course of a day. One issue spread out the chronology of his life, from his birth, to elementary school, to personal accounts from neighbors. The op-ed pages were filled with presumptions. Theories on David’s behavior, from people he’d never met before. Barry was always in a bad mood about it.
One piece was headlined, The Kids Are NOT All Right, and the writer “trembled” for the future of America, with kids like David Westwood roaming the streets. David read the numerous letters to the editor, where some people in neighboring towns were calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty, while others wrote in to say they were praying for the victim’s family. Such devotion to faith and prayer used to always annoy him, but now he began to know where they came from.
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