“Well,” said Adams, looking at the first page again, “it is a felony.”
“And that means?”
“That means they could indict you. Worse comes to worst, you’re looking at four years. But with a clean record, and-”
“Four years?”
“You ready, Flynt?” called Homer Quackenbush. “It’s gettin’ dark out there, and my dinner’ll be waitin’.”
“Two minutes,” said Adams.
“Four years?” Stephen repeated. He still couldn’t believe it.
“That’s what we call the worst-case scenario,” Adams explained. “Right now, we’ve got to talk about bail. Where do you work?”
“I’m a writer,” Stephen explained. “I work at home.”
“How long have you lived there?”
“Two years.”
“Are you married?”
“Divorced.”
“How much cash do you have on hand?”
“On hand?”
“In your pocket, for starters.”
“Thirty bucks.”
“And in the bank?”
“Seven, eight thousand.”
“Is there someone who can get at it?”
“Just me, I guess.”
“Hmmmm,” said Flynt Adams.
“Okay,” said Homer Quackenbush. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Stephen stood at the front of the room, Adams to his right, and the town attorney to his right. All three of them faced the judge, or justice, or whatever he was. The clerk read a bunch of stuff, beginning with the name of the case, The People of the State of New York versus Stephen Barrow.
The People of the State of New York? It was a phrase Stephen had heard before but never given any thought to. Now it suddenly struck him that those were the sides: everyone else in the entire state against him. Hadn’t it been humiliating enough to be arrested, to be the defendant? Now it seemed that wasn’t bad enough; now he was Public Enemy Number One.
“Are the People requesting bail?” the judge asked.
“Yes, your honor,” said the town attorney.
“Go ahead.”
“These are serious felony charges,” he began. “I’ve already spoken with District Attorney Jim Hall, who says he plans on presenting them to a grand jury next week. He says he’s got a very strong case, including testimony from several witnesses employed at the Drug Mart here in town, as well as a confession by the defendant himself. Mr. Hall feels there’s a significant risk of flight. We’re therefore asking for bail in the amount of $25,000.”
“Mr. Adams?”
“This is a case of a man taking family photographs of his daughter. We may not like several of the photographs he took, but there’s no suggestion he intended to sell them, publish them, or otherwise exploit the child. Besides that, Mr. Barrow has a clean record. He lives right here, outside of East Chatham. Writes books. He’s not going anywhere. I’m asking you to R-O-R him.”
The judge turned back to the town attorney. “What makes you think there’s a significant risk of flight here?” he asked.
“The seriousness of the case, your honor.”
“Anything else?”
“The strength of the case?”
“You already told me about those things,” said the judge. “Anything else specific you got?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
“Okay then. The matter will be adjourned till February twenty-eighth for grand jury action. The defendant is ordered released on his own recognizance. Dinnertime.”
Theresa Mulholland had been sitting off to the side, trying to place the defendant, the man called Stephen Barrow. So far, she’d been able to understand about half of the proceedings. She’d been jotting down key phrases on her notepad - things like serious felony, grand jury, and several witnesses - hoping to get one of the participants to fill her in with more detail afterward, when another phrase suddenly woke her up. That other phrase was the Drug Mart here in town.
That’s who he was!
The guy in line yesterday, in front of her. The one buying Safari Barbie for his daughter! Only now he stood accused of taking lewd photos of that same daughter. Hadn’t he dropped off a roll of film while she waited? The roll of film, it had to be. And Barbie - was she some sort of a prop he’d used in the photos? No, that couldn’t be; he was already dropping the film off when he was buying the doll. So Barbie had to be a bribe, a reward for posing. Talk about a creep!
Theresa tried to picture the man’s daughter. She came up with a pretty little girl, seductive beyond her years. A pouty, lipsticked mouth; loose, blond ringlets for hair; and big, blue eyes with a haunting suggestion of sadness in them.
The picture she’d come up with, of course, was that of JonBenét Ramsey.
The guy was a writer, she was hearing now, a local man living somewhere outside of East Chatham. She guessed he was divorced, or at least separated: Otherwise, he would have left the Barbie-buying to his wife. Then again, we were dealing with a total pervert here. Maybe his wife went off to work in the morning, and he was one of those guys that stayed home and played housewife. Or househusband, if you wanted to get technical about it. One of those sensitive, new-age guys. Maybe he was even gay. Sure, he had a kid - like that wasn’t possible? Yeah, that was it: He had to be gay. When they were that good looking, they always turned out to be gay.
And suddenly, it was over. The gay pervert househusband was being released without having to put up any bail at all, simply because it happened to be the judge’s dinnertime. Theresa looked at her watch. For God’s sake, it was barely four o’clock. What’d the guy do, live on a farm or something?
For once, she was right on the money.
I’m going home.
Stephen heard nothing after that, and understood nothing but that. But it was enough. Had they told him he’d be executed in a month, it wouldn’t have mattered. The only thing he cared about was that he was going home.
Tonight.
Now.
Outside on the sidewalk, he pumped Flynt Adams’s hand in thanks until Adams finally had to pull free.
“What happens now?” Stephen asked.
“You go home,” said Adams. “And you keep your mouth shut, okay? I’m the only one you talk to. That’s important.”
“Okay,” said Stephen. This wasn’t exactly the kind of stuff you ran to tell friends about, anyway. “But what I mean is, where can I get my daughter?”
To his considerable credit, Flynt Adams met Stephen’s eyes this time without flinching. “You can’t,” he said softly.
“I can’t?”
“That’s right. CPS has her. They’re-”
“Who’s CPS?”
“Child Protective Services.”
“But who are they? Do they know what they’re doing!”
“They’re going to turn her over to your ex-wife, as soon as they locate her.”
“But I have custody, I, she lives with me.”
“Not right now she doesn’t. A County Court judge signed an order an hour ago, transferring custody to your ex-wife. He also signed a temporary order of protection against you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that for now, you can’t go anywhere near your daughter. You can’t see her, you can’t call her, you can’t write her. You do any of those things, you’ll be arrested.”
Stephen suddenly felt as though he’d been enveloped by a thick cloud. He could still hear what Adams was saying, but the words sounded funny, like maybe they were being played too slowly. He fought to understand them, but the cloud grew even thicker. “How long is for now?” he managed to ask.
Adams considered that for a moment. “We can’t go into court to challenge it until next week,” he said. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“Mr. Barrow-”
“Stephen.”
“Stephen, think about it for a moment. We’re going to be asking a judge to return a six-year-old child to a father who’s admi
tted to taking what may amount to pornographic photos of her. No judge in the world is going to take a chance doing that. Hell, we’ll be lucky if they don’t set bail when we get over to Hudson.”
“Judge Quackenbush said-”
“Judge Quackenbush. Homer Quackenbush isn’t a judge. He’s a goat farmer. He’ll be a town justice till they drop him in the ground and shovel dirt over him. Homer could care less what people think. The rest of them, the real judges, the first thing they do when they wake up in the morning is to check the newspaper, see if anyone they cut loose the day before went and shot up the high school basketball game overnight.”
“So when can my daughter come back?”
Flynt Adams would remember those words for the rest of his life. Not when can I get my daughter back?, which was what he might have expected. But when can my daughter come back? If the distinction was a subtle one, it wasn’t lost on Adams. Even that first day, when Stephen had just heard the news and had barely had time to digest it, his thoughts hadn’t been centered on his own loss, as huge as it was; his only concern had been for his daughter, for her loss.
“Not till the criminal case is over,” said Adams. “Provided we win it, that is.”
“Oh, we’ll win it,” Stephen assured him. “Just tell me how long it’ll take.”
“All told?”
Stephen nodded. He was fully prepared to hear three weeks, a month, two at the outside. It was simply inconceivable it could any longer than that. So when Flynt Adams answered him, it almost knocked him over. It likely would have knocked him over, too, but for the fact that the enveloping cloud suddenly thickened even more, and served to protect him from the words.
“Could be six months,” is what Adams said. “Could be a year, maybe even more.”
“No,” said Stephen Barrow. “No, it can’t.”
It had been cold out there on the sidewalk in front of the town hall, and almost full dark. Flynt Adams had been ready to call it a day.
“Listen,” he’d told Stephen. “Go home and get some sleep. What’s your schedule like Monday morning? I’d like you to come to my office first thing, so we can start talking strategy.”
“Monday,” Stephen had mumbled, trying to focus on what seemed like the far-off future. His weekday routine was to get up at 6:30, have breakfast, and do the dishes, so they’d be ready to leave the house by 8:00. By the time he got back from Hillsdale, it would be 9:30, 9:45. Reflexively, he built in an extra fifteen minutes for unforeseen emergencies. “How’s ten o’clock?” he’d asked. “I’ve got to drive my daughter to school first.”
For a long and uncomfortable moment, he hadn’t been able to understand why Adams was staring at him. Then it had hit him: He wouldn’t be driving Penny to school. Not Monday, not for weeks, not for months. A year was out of the question; he couldn’t even begin to deal with that.
He’d smiled nervously and tried to laugh off his mistake, but it had come out sounding more like a sob. “I guess,” he’d finally said, “I can come in anytime you like.”
Flynt Adams had reached out and put a hand on Stephen’s arm. It was a nice gesture, but it had reminded Stephen of the way Investigator Stickley had led him around by the same arm, earlier in the day. One had been about control, the other about compassion; but to Stephen, they’d ended up feeling remarkably similar.
“Eight o’clock too early?” Adams had asked.
“No,” Stephen had said. “Eight’ll be fine.”
And with that, Flynt Adams had nodded and walked up the block.
Theresa Mulholland been standing on the sidewalk, off to one side. She’d wanted to ask Flynt Adams a few questions, but had backed off when she’d seen he needed to talk with his client. She’d been almost out of earshot, but not quite, and though she hadn’t been able to hear all of their conversation, she’d caught the drift of it, and she’d heard the part about how Stephen Barrow wouldn’t be getting his daughter back anytime soon. And she’d heard what sounded like a tiny sob escape from Stephen Barrow’s mouth, and she’d seen his lower lip quiver uncontrollably a moment later. Then, when the two men had finally parted, and Flynt Adams had begun walking away, Theresa had found herself inexplicably glued to the sidewalk, unable to follow him.
Later on, she’d try to rationalize her behavior and do her best to convince herself that, since she already knew where Flynt Adams’s law office was, she’d be able to find him anytime she wanted to speak with him. On the other hand, this might be her only opportunity to question Stephen Barrow. But Theresa knew better; she knew that really wasn’t it at all. What it came down to was this: At that particular moment, it simply wasn’t within Theresa’s power to turn her back and walk away from that sob, and that quivering lower lip.
And yet, she wasn’t just some bystander; she was a reporter. It wasn’t like she could just walk over to the man and introduce herself. Hi, I’m Terry Mulholland from the Hudson Valley Herald. Got any choice comments you ‘d like to share with our readers?
So she’d ended up just standing there on the sidewalk, her notepad clasped in her hands, her arms crossed tightly in front of her for extra warmth, the collar of her down jacket pulled up to protect the back of her neck from the wind. And she’d watched Stephen Barrow, and waited to see what he’d do.
What Stephen Barrow did was to look up and down the block. Anyone watching him - and under the circumstances, anyone would have been a designation pretty much limited to the pretty redhead standing by the curb, some twenty-five feet away - might have thought he was confused, disoriented, and trying to get his bearings in an unfamiliar situation.
They would have been only half right.
The other half, the half that troubled Stephen Barrow most immediately at that moment - and prompted him to look up and down Main Street - was that it had suddenly dawned on him that he had no car, and, therefore, no way of getting home. Sure, there were taxis in Columbia County, but they were pretty much confined to the train station over in Hudson, a good half an hour away. This wasn’t New York City, after all, where cabbies cruised around at all hours of day and night, and you simply walked into the street and waved until one stopped or ran you over.
It was only after he’d looked up and down the street three or four times in vain that Stephen finally noticed the redheaded woman standing off to one side of him. With her collar pulled up it was hard for him to be certain, but he was pretty sure she was the same woman who’d been inside the courtroom earlier, the one who’d looked familiar to him but whom he couldn’t quite place.
Now he took a tentative step toward her, squinting to get a better look at her. “Can I help you?” he asked.
Her only response was to laugh. It was a little laugh, one that struck him as slightly curious, but at the same time was neither condescending nor cruel. It was just enough, in fact, to encourage him to continue walking, until he found himself standing in front of her, looking slightly down into eyes that were teary from the cold, but were at the same time extraordinarily green. The same pair of extraordinary green eyes he was certain he’d seen somewhere, recently.
“Do I know you?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Well, we met once, sort of. I’m Terry Mulholland, from the Hudson Valley Herald.”
“You’re a reporter?”
“Yes, but-”
It was as far as she got. Stephen spun around and walked away. It didn’t matter that he happened to be walking in the direction completely opposite from his home. It didn’t matter, because home was a good twelve miles away, and if he had to go another mile out of his way, he didn’t care. At that point, he was resigned to walking home. What was the difference whether it took him three hours or four? Either way, he was going home to an empty house. And he knew this much: The last thing on earth he wanted to do right now was to talk to some reporter and end up getting his name in the paper as some kind of child pornographer.
His failure to realize that that was going to happen anyway, with or without his cooperation,
was a testament to just how poorly his mind was working that evening.
so here’s this guy, standing out there on the sidewalk on what’s rapidly becoming a seriously cold February night. In the space of the last six hours, he’s been arrested on felony sex charges and had his daughter taken away from him, and now he suddenly finds himself alone and stranded. When he finally looks up and notices her standing there, what does he ask her?
Can I help you?
Not Can you help me? Not Could you possibly give me a lift home? Not Do you know anyplace where I can call a cab?
But Can I help you?
So she laughed - it had simply been too absurd a thing for him to say for her not to have laughed. But as crazy as his question had been, it had also been totally disarming, so much so that when she’d introduced herself a moment later, she’d suddenly felt compelled to not only tell him her name, but to confess who she was as well.
And that had been the last of him.
Neil Witt was always telling his writers to get the story, but to be ethical about the way you went about it. Driving home now, she knew it had been the ethical thing for her to do, telling Stephen Barrow right up front like that that she was a reporter. Ethical? Hell, anything else would have been downright indecent.
Still, it had ended up costing her the defense slant. By the time she’d recovered from Stephen Barrow’s departure and thought to take a walk over to Flynt Adams’s office, the lights were out, and the door locked. And tomorrow was Sunday.
Ethics and decency had their own drawbacks, she was learning. She found herself trying to imagine how Tom Grady would have handled things.
Hey, buddy, you look like you could use a drink.
And an hour or so later, after he’d gotten the rest of the story, he might or might not have gotten around to mentioning who he worked for.
Well, she’d never asked to be a crime reporter in the first place. And she still wanted no part of it, not if that’s what it took. Just the same, it sure would have been interesting to hear what Stephen Barrow had to say.
“Shit!” is what Stephen Barrow had to say.
He said it as he circled back around the town hall and began his idiotic walk home. He said it again as he realized his moccasins were not exactly the ideal footwear for an extended trek. He said it on at least five more occasions in the first half hour, each time he turned an ankle, stubbed a toe, or just felt like cursing. Still, he was beginning to find a rhythm, and was considering the possibility that he might actually live long enough to make it home when a blue pickup truck with a mismatched white cap roared by him, nearly knocking him into the ditch that ran alongside the road. He watched the brake lights come on as the driver screeched to a stop in a spray of gravel and dirt.
Best Intentions Page 9