“There are islands inside the Great Salt Lake,” she said.
“I’ve never been there,” I said. “Did you see any of them?”
“We drove to one called Antelope Island.”
“You drove to an island in the lake?”
Lucy grimaced and slapped her thighs with both hands. “Why do you doubt everything I say?” she asked. “What’s that about?”
I apologized again. “I’m not familiar with what you’re talking about. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“There’s a bridge to the island. I think they call it a causeway,” she said. “If you don’t believe me, you can Google it.”
We were both getting tired and I understood that she had every reason to be cranky.
“I believe you, Lucy. And then?”
“There were beaches on the island. Lots of white-sand beaches everywhere, and the water really sparkled in the sunlight. We walked and we walked until we found one that had nobody on it, and Jake spread out the picnic.”
I waited while she cleared her throat.
“He had the hotel kitchen make all this delicious food,” she said. “Grilled chicken and coleslaw and an avocado salad—I’d never had an avocado before. I didn’t even know what it was. There were brownies and chocolate chip cookies. And we ate with real silver forks, and napkins made of cloth that had the hotel’s name on it.”
“Sounds really good,” I said.
But Lucy could envision that afternoon in her mind’s eye, and she was barreling forward without waiting for questions.
“It wasn’t like I needed another reason to stay close to Jake, but he gave me one,” she said. “He asked me how many black people I’d seen since I got to Salt Lake the night before. I thought about it and told him only two—one of the maids in the hotel and the kid parking cars.”
“How about the agents?” I asked.
“There were a couple of black guys on the team, but they hadn’t made this trip,” she said, “and the number two prosecutor was white, too.”
“But—” I said, trying to interject something.
“Jake just went on telling me how lonely it was for him on the road, traveling to all these places where there was still such prejudice and so many bigots, trying to prosecute crimes that were all about race and hate,” Lucy said. “And he told me that it was going to be lonely for me, too, even though my skin wasn’t as dark as his. That I needed to know I could always rely on him, I could always come to him, and we would get through this time together.”
It was impossible for me to speak to Lucy about race the way Jake had. I saw his point and couldn’t challenge it.
“Then Jake got to his feet and stretched out his hand to me,” Lucy said, with a lightness she had lost moments ago. “‘Come with me, Lucy,’ he said. ‘We’re going into the water.’”
“Really?” I asked.
“‘Jake,’” I said to him, “‘I can’t swim, Jake! We can’t go in the water!’”
Lucy was shaking her hands back and forth, like she was shooing the spirits away.
“But he pulled me to my feet and started running to the edge of the sand. ‘It’s okay, Lucy. I know you told the agents in your first interview that you didn’t go to the park that day to swim, because you didn’t know how. But nobody can sink in this lake. The salt will keep you on top.’”
Her countenance changed again, and she was somber. “‘You’ve got to trust me, girl,’ he said. ‘I promise you’ll be fine. Didn’t I tell you that relying on me was all I needed you to do? You trust me, and I’ll do the rest.’”
Lucy paused and took a sip of her soda. “Jake had me by the hand and I waded in the water up to my ankles. Warm water, but I was shivering with fear, just by the thought of sinking to the bottom.”
“I don’t blame you,” I said.
“‘You’re going to have to walk into where it’s deeper,’ Jake said. ‘Up to your waist at least, and then you’re going to lean back and I’ll hold you up with both my arms till you see for yourself that you can float.’”
Lucy put her elbows on my desk and rested her head in her hands. “I looked all around for other people—not for help or anything—but to see if they were really floating. But all I could see were the gulls—dozens of them—flying over my head.”
“Did you try to do it?” I asked.
“You’re not judging me, are you?” she said, looking up at me.
“There’s no reason for me to do that. You didn’t do anything wrong.” It was fourteen-year-old Lucy Jenner who wanted that answer from me. A fourteen-year-old on a semi-deserted island in the middle of an enormous lake, and in the stranglehold of a thirtysomething-year-old federal prosecutor.
“That’s when Jake stopped me,” she said.
I swallowed hard, relieved that Zachary Palmer might have come to his senses.
“I mean, he stopped me for a minute. That’s when he told me there was one more thing I had to do,” Lucy said. “He told me my jeans were too heavy—the fabric, I mean—and that I’d better take them off before I got in any deeper.”
“What did you—?”
“Jake said just to be on even ground with me, he’d take his off, too,” she said.
Now I was ready to put my head in my hands. The next step in cementing the predator’s grooming process—getting naked with his prey.
“So we both took off our jeans, Ms. Cooper, and threw them back onto the beach,” Lucy said. “I walked out a foot or two, till the water covered my knees, to where Jake was standing.”
“What were you wearing then, Lucy?” I hadn’t wanted to interrupt her narrative—there was really no need to at this point—but I also didn’t have the stomach tonight to hear what he did to this child. I was hoping to slow down the introduction of any sexual abuse.
“Panties. Just white cotton panties and my T-shirt.”
“A bra?”
“No. No bra.”
“And Jake?”
“Just his underwear,” she said. “White ones, too. You know, the kind that are tight, not baggy.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
Lucy looked up at the light fixture over my head. “Jake kept saying ‘trust me’—over and over again as I walked toward him. Five times, maybe six, he said it. He held out his hand and pulled me closer to him, then sort of cradled me in his arms until I was on my back, floating on top of the salt water.”
“And then?” I asked, waiting for something bad to happen.
“I floated, Ms. Cooper,” Lucy said, almost triumphantly. “I’d never learned to swim and I’d been afraid of anything deeper than a bathtub my whole life. But I trusted Jake, just like he told me to do, and there I was—in the middle of the Great Salt Lake in Utah—floating on my back for almost five minutes.”
“That must have been a great moment for you,” I said.
“Yes, it was.”
“And Jake,” I said, “he didn’t take advantage of you while you were in the water, with just your underwear and T-shirt on?”
“No, ma’am. We got back on the beach and I was kind of like giddy from my first swim—or whatever you want to call it. I was even over the embarrassment of being without my pants on.”
“He didn’t try to touch you, or kiss you?”
“Oh, he did kiss me,” Lucy said. “Just right here on the forehead, just sweet, not sexy or anything.”
“Nothing else you want to tell me that happened at the beach?” I asked, putting the first leg of an X through the word “UTAH” that I had scribbled on my pad as a possible site for the sexual abuse to begin. It looked like I was wrong, that Jake and Lucy were still in the state of foreplay. “Nothing sexual?”
Lucy leaned back in the chair and rubbed her eyes. “I’m not sure if he meant to do this or not,” she said, “but when I bent down to pick up my j
eans, Jake held me by the waist with both hands, from behind me.”
She stopped talking, and I waited.
“It felt like he was rubbing himself against me—against my bum, my rear end. His penis was hard, Ms. Cooper. Real hard,” Lucy said. “I just froze and held still for like half a minute or so, maybe a little longer. Then Jake let go and he said something I couldn’t understand. I wasn’t even sure if he was talking to me or to himself.”
Lucy wouldn’t look at me again, but she seemed determined to finish her story. “I felt something running down the back of my leg. Something sticky and warm, that mixed with the salt from the lake that had stuck to me.”
“That sticky, warm stuff,” I said. “Did you know what it was?”
“Not that day, I didn’t,” Lucy said. “I didn’t know for sure until I met up with Jake again in Iowa City—until he raped me in the John Wayne Motor Inn.”
THIRTEEN
A steaming-hot shower at the end of a difficult day usually cleared my head. But my mind seemed as fogged up as my bathroom mirror when I stepped out to towel myself off at eleven fifteen that night.
I slipped into a navy blue negligee and walked to the den, where Mike was pouring my favorite Scotch over a mass of ice cubes. I sat on one end of the leather love seat and waited for him to settle in on the other end so that I could put my feet in his lap.
“Why did you leave the hospital?” I asked.
“The docs will be running neurological tests all night,” Mike said. “Francie will either be in the neuro lab or the ICU. There was no reason for me to hang around.”
“I can’t bear to think that she’s all alone,” I said, taking my first sip, “and do not tell me she isn’t aware of that right now.”
“Someone from her office should be there by now. They’ll have her covered.”
Mike reached over to grab an envelope that was on the coffee table in front of us. “This was in Francie’s briefcase, which the medics picked up,” he said. “One of the nurses asked me if I knew who to give it to.”
He handed it to me. It was addressed to Ms. Hamilton Burger, which made me laugh in spite of Francie’s current status.
Francie loved to call me Ms. Burger, referring to the hapless prosecutor in the Perry Mason television series, who only won three cases in 271 episodes of the show.
I opened the envelope and took out the store-bought greeting card—which featured a colorful picture of an empty life-preserver floating on a calm sea.
Inside, Francie had written in bright red ink BURGER’S BACK! at the top of the page.
Dear Alex—I’ve got so many perps lined up, waiting to meet you now that you’re back on your feet. Let’s go to trial together before you get your mojo in full gear. Why not give some deserving felon a break?
I tried to throw you a lifeline when you went missing, but all your crew had you covered. Can’t stay long at the party—just a hug, if I can plow through that horde of prosecutors. Call me tomorrow and let’s have lunch.
Missed you at the conference at Oxford. Awesome stuff. I’m thinking of taking a new job and want your advice.
Most sincerely, except for the part about wanting to try a case against you.—Clara (Francie) Darrow
I rested my head against a cushion and bit my lip. “God, how I’d love to call her tomorrow and have a great gossipy lunch, like we always do.”
“Miracles happen,” Mike said.
“At Bellevue?”
Bellevue was the country’s oldest public hospital, founded in the 1730s for patients from nearby poorhouses, on the East Side of Manhattan. It had become a level one trauma center—and its one hundred thousand ER visits a year saved more patient lives than I could count. I wouldn’t choose to go there for an elective procedure, but it was the first place medics and cops took people with gunshot or stab wounds, car crash injuries, major burns, and extreme cases—like Francie’s—in which there was an issue of immediate survival.
“You bet,” Mike said, reaching for Francie’s card. “Talk to me about Lucy Jenner. Tell me how you’re going to attack the case.”
“I’m formulating my investigative plan,” I said.
“How did you get Lucy to Streetwork?”
“Mercer drove her there. They held it open past midnight to let her process in.”
“Is she coming back for more of a pounding from you tomorrow?”
“I gave her the day off,” I said. “She needs to get into the drill at the program.”
“What do you mean?” Mike asked.
“Streetwork counselors do all the social service work with their residents. Get them valid ID, offer them medical services so they can have proper exams, start to advise about job possibilities and eventually housing options,” I said. “I want Lucy to get started with all that. Public benefits, too, so she gets whatever income she’s entitled to.”
“You really think she’ll show up on Wednesday?”
“I do.”
“Not because she’s reliable, right?”
“Not at all for that reason,” I said. “But so far, Mercer and I have believed her, which seems to give her a bit of hope. And secondly, we were all so tired by the time we quit for the night that she forgot to ask for her personal belongings again, and I forgot to give them to her.”
“She’ll be back,” Mike said. “You’re right about that, when those things are all that someone has in the world.”
“Her aunt was pretty direct about Lucy’s ability to manipulate and to lie. So far, she seemed credible in her abuse allegations, but I didn’t like finding her hand in my desk drawer when we walked back in my office, so we’ll use the day to verify the parts of her information that we can check on.”
“Sensible.”
“Besides, I didn’t want to pry any more information out of her before I had my sit-down with Zach. The less I know going in about any criminal allegations against him when he talks to me, the more likely it is I can keep the case.”
“Did you say sit-down?”
“I’m having a drink with him tomorrow evening,” I said. “To talk about the special election in the spring to fill Battaglia’s job.”
“I can’t believe you’re keeping that meet.”
“It’s a chance I’ll never have again, and Zach requested it himself. He can’t scream entrapment.”
“You’re sure he raped Lucy?”
“She’s used the word, but I stopped the questioning tonight before she described the act. So far, I have a statutory sexual abuse in Utah,” I said, thinking of Jake rubbing his penis against Lucy’s buttocks after their float in the lake, “and no crime in New York.”
“So you’re just chumming for his shark bite right now?” Mike said.
“I’ve got all the predatory grooming,” I said. “Kind of textbook.”
“You and Mercer are always talking about grooming. We don’t have any of that crap in Homicide. You just point the gun at your target and shoot it. What’s it supposed to mean, and can you use it in court?”
“You bet I can,” I said. “You know how Battaglia taught us to write our closing arguments first whenever we took a case to trial? Know where you want to take the jury at the end of the People’s case, then go back and structure your prosecution that way.”
“People of the State of New York against Zachary Palmer,” Mike said, reaching over with his vodka to clink my glass. “You’ve already got a closing?”
I pointed to my head. “It’s rolling around up here.”
“Give me the section on grooming.”
I cleared my throat and took a slug of Scotch this time, sitting up straight. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, grooming is the process by which a perpetrator draws a victim into a sexual relationship and sustains that criminal relationship in secrecy,” I said to my imaginary twelve jurors, then turned back to Mike. �
��Cloaking the relationship, hiding it from everyone else, is a key element of the procedure. It’s what allows the perp to ensnare kids into this private world in which they become willing actors in what we would call abuse.”
“Give me the steps,” Mike said.
“The first stage is targeting the victim,” I said. “The molester is looking for the most vulnerable child—emotionally needy, already isolated in some way, and especially if they have little or no parental oversight.”
“Enter Lucy Jenner.”
“Stage two is getting all the information possible about the child,” I said. “A big part of this is mixing with the responsible caretakers while giving off warm and carefully attuned attention.”
“So Lucy’s caretaker was an FBI agent,” Mike said.
“You got it. One parent was dead and the other not the least bit involved in Lucy’s life. Agent Kathy Crain was the caretaker—smart and expertly trained, and already an admirer of Zachary Palmer, with all his concerns and smooth moves. An obtrusive pervert, an awkward interloper—that kind of guy would arouse suspicion, but a stealth groomer never reveals himself to the caretaker.”
“I’m getting it,” Mike said.
“Third stage. The guy is filling all the needs that have been wanting for this child. Everything from gifts—new clothes, special trips, lavish picnic lunches—and I would bet the farm that I’m going to hear about more things in two days—to special attention, even affection. It’s little wonder that the giver becomes idealized to the child and assumes a much greater importance in her life.”
“Is all this premeditated?” Mike asked.
“Aren’t most murders?”
“Yeah, but this takes some real skill to pull off. Any jackass can pull a trigger.”
“Which brings me to stage four,” I said. “Our guy has built up this relationship to the point where he can arrange time alone with his prey, which reinforces their special connection.”
“And the sex?” Mike asked.
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