Blood Oath

by Linda Fairstein

  “May I ask you, was the ‘experience’ you’re referring to a sexual assault?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, “at least that’s what I think.”

  “Did you report it to anyone at the time?”

  “No. No, I just wrote it off to having too much to drink,” she said, “and now it kind of haunts me.”

  “Would you like to speak to someone who works with me? We have so much experience handling these circumstances,” I said. “Do you think that might help?”

  “It didn’t happen here,” she said. “It happened during my junior year abroad, in Italy.”

  “I’d still be happy to set you up with one of my lawyers, or a counselor.”

  “I just don’t want to hear about somebody else’s rape, do you get it?” she said, raising her voice at me.

  “Understood,” I said, straightening up. “I don’t intend to present any testimony in the next few days, so I’ll talk with the foreman about excusing you.”

  I hadn’t expected this amount of fallout from the onset of last year’s movement. I needed sixteen of these twenty-three jurors to constitute a quorum to hear the case, and they were beginning to drop like flies.

  Jurors 8, 14, and 19 all had similar reservations about sitting, and one of the male jurors—number 2—wanted to be relieved of his duty because his teenage daughter had been the victim of a date rape.

  I returned to the front of the room. “Thank you all for your candor. Today, I’m just opening the investigation without any witnesses, so perhaps you can regroup and make a decision about who will participate before I return next week.”

  I left the grand jury room and closed the door behind me, handing my charge slip to the warden who controlled the proceedings.

  “You look shell-shocked,” he said.

  “It’s the first rape case I’ve presented in months, and I’m down almost a quarter of the panel.”

  “The world is a different place,” he said. “You’ll have your hands full.”

  “I already do,” I said. “See you next week.”

  I walked down the ninth-floor corridor, stopping at the DA’s Squad tech office to drop off my blouse.

  “How’d it go?” the lone detective asked me.

  “I’ll know as soon as you make me a copy,” I said. “Mercer will be with me, so just call and we’ll pick it up when you’re done.”

  “Looks like your blouse is ripped,” he said, holding it up to me. “Did your target get frisky with you?”

  “Not the target,” I said with a chuckle. “Just a wardrobe malfunction on my end. See you later, and thanks.”

  I jogged down the flight of stairs to my office. Mercer was talking to Laura at her desk, and I could see Lucy sitting opposite my desk.

  “Any problem when you went to pick Lucy up this morning?” I asked Mercer.

  “None at all. She seems to like Streetwork.”

  “That’s a relief,” I said. “Did Vickee mention anything about Francie Fain, and the fact that Scully signed her out of Cornell yesterday?”

  He shook his head. “She tried to snoop around after she picked up your message last night, but the commissioner isn’t playing games. There hasn’t been a single press inquiry, so he told Vickee she gets no information about Fain unless a reporter sticks his or her nose in for a story.”

  “Something’s wrong with that picture,” I said.

  “There are so many private facilities for people with head injuries who are—well, who are slow to make medical progress,” Mercer said.

  “Yeah, but it’s not usually the police commissioner who has them committed.”

  “Between us for now, the Major Case Squad has grabbed the video surveillance cameras behind the Tombs,” Mercer said. “Vickee knows that much.”

  The entrance to the garage where buses brought prisoners from Riker’s Island to the courthouse for their appearances was adjacent to the Bridge of Sighs—the point where Francie collapsed. Cameras were there to capture any unusual behavior, record the license plates of Correction Department buses—arrivals and departures—and record escape attempts.

  “They must already know what’s on them,” I said.

  “No one seized them the first night,” Mercer said, “because Francie was a medical emergency. Once they got word from the docs yesterday that something else is going on, they hauled in the videos and hopefully watched them last night. Can you keep that news to yourself?”

  “Of course,” I said. “At least it gives me some hope someone can solve this.”

  “Be thankful it’s Major Case and not Homicide,” Mercer said. “It means your friend is still alive.”

  I bit my lip and shook my head, picking up my messages from Laura’s desk and walking in to greet Lucy.

  “Don’t you look spiffy,” I said to her. “You’ve got a new wardrobe.”

  She smiled at me. “It’s awesome at Streetwork,” she said. “I’ve already met some really nice people, and nobody thinks I’m weird for being there. Nobody questions why you’re alone or what got you there.”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” I said. I asked Lucy about her accommodations and her counselors, how many meals she had yesterday and whether they had given her pocket money to get around with. Then it was time to get started.

  “We’ve got some more critical work to do today, so I hope you’re ready.”

  Lucy looked at Mercer’s face and then back to me. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

  “You’ve made terribly serious allegations. I think we better press ahead and see where they lead us.”

  “You promised me I could have the stuff that was taken from me by the police.”

  “Sure. We’re going to talk about what you had with you when you were picked up,” I said, asking Mercer to get the manila envelope that contained Lucy’s vouchered belongings from Laura.

  He placed it in front of me, and Lucy leaned in over my desk, as though to reach for the items.

  “Slow down,” I said. “Some questions first. Is this your driver’s license?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I mean, a real one,” I said. “A valid Illinois license.”

  “Sort of real,” she said.

  “Lucy, did you pass your test?” I asked. “Or did you buy this on the street?”

  She hesitated, but not for as long as she did two days ago when she didn’t want to give me information. “On the street. Back in Illinois.”

  “And on here,” I said, holding it up with one hand, “you lied about your date of birth, didn’t you?”

  “Not a big lie,” Lucy said. “I made myself younger. People are always nicer to homeless people when they think they’re kids.”

  “Whose address is this in Chicago?”

  She was picking at her nails. “I don’t remember.”

  “Try harder.”

  “I still don’t remember.”

  I passed the license over her head to Mercer. “Would you run that address for me, please?”

  “I don’t really care,” she said. “The guys at Streetwork are hooking me up with brand-new ID. I don’t need that.”

  I held up the MetroCard. “Where did you get this?”

  “In the subway.”

  “Did you know that each MetroCard is stamped by a computer system, so we can tell the date of purchase and how it was bought?”

  It wasn’t taking long for Lucy Jenner to slip into her petulant loner mode. “I found it on the ground, okay? I didn’t say I bought it.”

  I was on to my next exhibit—an Amtrak ticket receipt from DC’s Union Station to Penn Station in Manhattan. Her aunt was right. Lucy was a facile liar, even about the little things. I didn’t know what consequences this would have for the big picture.

  “Did you find this, too?” I asked. “This train ticket? Or
did you really use it?”

  Mercer stepped out from behind Lucy’s chair and sat on the desk, facing her. “Do you get the point yet that Alex and I are trying to help you?” he asked. “Do me a favor and save your attitude for someone else.”

  “I haven’t got an attitude,” she said. “I don’t like to be picked on.”

  “And Alexandra doesn’t like to be lied to,” Mercer said. “Did you really go to Washington?”

  “Yes, I did. I took a bus there from Chicago.”

  “Why?” I asked, speaking gently and encouraging her to trust us. “Why did you go to DC?”

  “I was staying at this shelter in Chicago—it was really a dump. One day I went to the library to use a computer,” Lucy said. “You can do that at the public library in most places.”

  “Yes, in New York, too. It’s a great resource.”

  “My advocate at the shelter was pushing me to get a job.”

  “What kind of work had you done in the years before that?” I asked.

  “I was a nanny for a while, for a really nice family,” Lucy said.

  I wasn’t surprised that she couldn’t or wouldn’t remember the name of the people for whom she had worked. I wanted to check her out with them, but I would come back to that another time.

  “And I waitressed a lot,” she said. “Local restaurants, diners, small hotels. So this day, at the library, I saw an opening for waitresses at a big hotel in Chicago, that even offered them housing—like a dormitory—to live in.”

  “Sounds good,” I said.

  “I emailed them right there from the library, because I knew I could come back and check that computer in a day or two to see if they were giving me an interview.”

  She was sitting up straight, seemingly proud of herself for getting that far.

  “I like that, Lucy,” I said. “What a good idea. Do you remember the name of the hotel?”

  I was getting all the detail I could, hoping to confirm nonessential facts, as a way of gaining reliance on the important ones.

  “Yeah,” Lucy said, the corner of her mouth turning up in a grin. “The Palmer Inn, on Lake Michigan. A big old fancy Chicago hotel.”

  “A very famous one,” I said. “Good for you.”

  Now she leaned over and took her water bottle off my desk and drank from it.

  “Except I never went there to interview, ’cause the name of the place reminded me of Jake. You know, Jake Palmer. So as long as I was sitting at a computer, I Googled Jake, as Zachary Palmer.”

  She looked up at me for more approval, but I was silent. I didn’t know where she was going with this.

  “I wanted to see him again,” Lucy said. “I mean, not to hook up with him, if that’s what you’re thinking. I wanted to confront him—if that’s the right word. I wanted to make him pay for what he did to me.”

  There was no reason for me to comment on her intentions.

  “What did you learn by Googling him?”

  She started to count facts on her fingers. “First, that he’d become a really big shot as a lawyer, mostly because of my case. Second, that he’d had all these important jobs. Third, that he had a wife and kids somewhere near New York, so I didn’t want to go there and take the chance of messing them up, too. Fourth was that he was the—what’s it called—keynote? The keynote speaker at a big conference in England that week, and for sure I couldn’t get there to see him.”

  She was clutching her pinky between her fingers. “The fifth thing was that he was going to be in Washington the following week. Talking about Homeland Security,” she said. “At the Hilton Hotel. Open to the public.”

  “You had a plan?”

  “Yeah. I’d just go show up at the Hilton and wait for him to finish. Sandbag him after his speech, kind of like how he sandbagged me.”

  Not undeserved.

  “Who paid for the bus ticket?” I asked.

  “Got the cheapest one. Midweek, late at night,” Lucy said. “Sixty-four dollars.”

  “I asked who paid for it.”

  “They were glad to see me go at the shelter,” she said. “The manager loaned me some money. They trust me—I’ll pay it back.”

  “Did you see Zach Palmer—Jake, to you—in DC?”

  “Nope, I waited for hours, but the speech was canceled on account of some terrorist threat. Rich, isn’t it? He’s supposed to speak about security and someone phones in a threat. That’s when I called my half brother and he told me I could come to Brooklyn and get my father’s car.”

  “So you took the train.”

  “I know you’re going to ask me. It was forty-nine dollars,” Lucy said. “I just stayed in the station overnight, asking people for money.”

  “Begging?” I asked. “Do you mean you were begging for money?”

  “Begging, yeah. It’s not hard to do when you’re my age and kind of desperate. And you can always count on a nice police officer to give you the last ten bucks, especially when you’re in a train station,” she said, smiling at Mercer. “They’re happy you’re getting out of their town anyway.”

  “Did you come to New York,” I asked, “to make another stab at finding Jake, or to see your half brother?”

  “Both, to be honest with you,” Lucy said. “I got to Rodney’s house first, because he had things of my dad’s to give me, and I figured he’d let me stay a while. But the cops got me before I could find a way to get to Jake.”

  I had the three more personal objects in the manila envelope, and I kept my hands on it while I talked to her.

  “Mercer and I are going to work our tails off to help you,” I said, “and one of the ways we’re going to do that is to double-check every single thing you tell us.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “I think you’re quick to make things up if something looks bad for you, so if you want a jury to believe your story about Jake, every other thing you say has to be true. Where you stayed in Chicago, how you got the money for the bus to DC, whether there was really a canceled speech at the Hilton—get it? Every little thing.”

  Lucy was furious. “None of those things have to do with Jake raping me.”

  Mercer stepped in. “You’re right, but they have to do with how Alex—or a jury—can trust you.”

  “Let’s just do a hypothetical,” I said. “Suppose Mercer and I take you at your word for everything you say about Jake—about Zachary Palmer, who really is quite a big shot now, just like you called it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Suppose we don’t doubt a thing you say, and then six months from now, Jake’s lawyer has you on the witness stand, cross-examining you.”

  “I’m probably not going to like that,” she said.

  “Nobody does,” I said. “But I can protect you if you’re telling the truth. I can object to all the irrelevant things his lawyer tries to go at you for. Like, how did you buy a bus ticket to DC and how did you pay for a train ticket to New York?”

  “Those things are true.”

  “So let me give you another example,” I said, standing up, coming around the desk, and practically getting right in Lucy’s face.

  “Suppose Jake takes the witness stand, in his own defense.”

  “Yeah. I’ve seen that on TV.”

  “Suppose I get to the part where I’m going at him hard for the way he convinced you to be with him, to do everything he asked you to do, and most especially to keep quiet about him all these years.”

  Lucy flapped her hands before resting them on the arms of the chair. “He’ll just deny it all. Why am I bothering?”

  “You’ve already testified for the State,” I said, “and I had you walk in front of the jury box so that each one of the twelve jurors could see the scar across the palm of your hand.”

  She clasped her hands together and then ran the fingers of her right
hand along the line of the scar in her left palm.

  “Go on,” she said.

  “Do you remember the O. J. Simpson trial?” I asked. “Ever see that on TV?”

  Lucy gave me a blank stare.

  “The prosecutor made the famous murderer put on the glove they claimed he was wearing, but he couldn’t get it on his hand.”

  I was thinking about how the jury went on to acquit because the glove didn’t fit, but what had been current events in my life was some kind of ancient history to a twenty-four-year-old. It may have been the trial of the last century, but it was nothing to Lucy Jenner.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Here’s my point. The jury sees your hand, your deep scar, and hears you tell them that it was the sign of your blood oath with Jake.”

  She tilted her head and looked at me. “Yeah?”

  “Then it’s his turn, if he chooses to testify.”

  “He gets to choose if he does or not?” Lucy asked.

  “That’s right,” I said. “And if he wants to, if he’s able to deny all this or prove you told a lie—even a little one—then his lawyer gets the chance to let the jury see his hands—right up close. The twelve jurors might choose to disbelieve everything you’ve told them if you’re wrong about that.”

  I was fresh off looking at Zachary’s palms—both of them—the evening before. Neither one bore a scar.

  “What if,” I said, lifting her chin to make her look at me, “what if there’s not a scar on either of his hands?”

  “So what,” she said, twisting her head away from my hand. “It was ten years ago. Maybe I don’t remember everything as perfectly as you want me to.”

  “You don’t have to be perfect,” Mercer said, his deep voice calm and steady. “But you have to be honest.”

  Lucy Jenner put her elbows on my desktop and buried her head in her hands. “I’m trying. I haven’t wanted to think about this—to go back to that moment—for the longest time, and now you’re making me do it.”

  “I know you were cut,” I said, “but sometimes people cut themselves when they’re in emotional trouble. Was it that?”

  “Don’t be so stupid. There was no other reason to cut my palm, except Jake made me.”