“Steve,” the driver called out. “That you?”
Through the darkness, he recognized Louie the plumber, a Brooklyn-born transplant who’d once spent a day and a half up at Stephen’s house sweating leaky pipes that had frozen over the winter. When at last he was done, he’d asked for $75 for the job. Stephen had given him $100 and had still felt guilty about it.
“Yeah,” Stephen said. “It’s me.”
The passenger door swung open, and Stephen accepted the invitation and climbed in.
“Jesus Christ,” said Lou. “What the fuck’s amatta witchoo, out walkin’ on a night like this?”
“Don’t ask,” said Stephen.
And something about his tone must have told Lou that he meant it. They spent the ten-minute ride talking about the weather, and when they were done talking about the weather, they rode in silence. When Lou turned up Stephen’s driveway, he must have noticed that all the lights were out, and there was no Jeep Renegade in sight, but if he was curious about what was going on, or where Stephen’s little girl was, he kept his thoughts to himself.
“Thanks, Lou,” said Stephen.
“Any time, Steve.”
Inside, the house was cold and dark. It was Stephen’s habit to turn the heat down and the lights off when no one was home. Some of his neighbors considered such behavior foolish and even unwise from a security standpoint, but Stephen had inherited his father’s penny-pinching ways and couldn’t help himself. And as far as security was concerned, hell, he’d grown up in the South Bronx, where you got robbed once a month, like clockwork. To him, his house in the woods - whether lit up or pitch dark - was the most secure place on earth.
He turned on a single floor lamp and lit a fire in the wood-burning stove. It occurred to him that he’d had nothing to eat since breakfast with his daughter, an event that now seemed days ago, weeks ago. It was hard to believe it had been that very morning. Still, he wasn’t hungry. In fact, the thought of food sent a wave of nausea through him.
What he was, was tired. Enormously tired. Tired beyond words. This is what they call clinical depression, he told himself as he sat down on the sofa, this is escape. He pulled a comforter around his shoulders, allowed himself to lie down and stretch out. There was no way he could make it up to his bedroom, he knew, no way he wanted to be upstairs, up there where his daughter’s empty room was. The sofa was fine. He’d just lie there for a few minutes and close his eyes, trying his hardest not to think about anything at all, except maybe to pretend that everything was fine, and that the whole day had never happened.
He was a writer, after all, a writer of fiction. He could make things happen or not happen, as he chose. He could give people cute names, fill their mouths with clever dialogue, and steer them safely through terrible predicaments. He had it within his power to create sad or happy endings. Surely he could exercise that same power in real life, on his own behalf, if only this once. So that when he’d wake up in the morning, he’d find that none of this had happened, that his daughter was right there in her room where she belonged, and that in spite of how real it had all seemed at the time, everything else had just been a dream.
That’s all - nothing but a dream.
Local Man Arrested in Child Pornography Case
By Theresa Mulholland Special to the Hudson Valley Herald
An East Chatham man was arrested early Saturday by state police investigators and charged with Possessing a Sexual Performance of a Child, his own 6-year-old daughter.
Stephen Barrow, a published novelist, was taken into custody as he left the South Chatham Drug Mart, immediately after having picked up photographs that he had dropped off for developing the previous day.
An alert clerk had noticed that among the photos were several of a young girl, in various stages of undress. At least one of the photos lewdly displayed the child’s private parts, according to a source close to the investigation.
Barrow appeared Saturday afternoon before South Chatham Town Justice Homer Quackenbush, who released him without bail over the objection of the town attorney. The charge is a felony that carries as much as four years in state prison, according to Columbia County District Attorney Jim Hall, who will present the case to a grand jury in Hudson early next week.
Well, if it wasn’t quite Pulitzer Prize material, there it was on the right-hand column of page one: Her very first crime story, beneath her own byline.
It was Monday morning, and within hours, copies of the edition would be stuffed into thousands of specially marked green-and-white letterboxes throughout the area; stacked up into neat piles in scores of convenience stores, supermarkets, and diners; and on their way by mail to hundreds of readers who lived beyond the immediate delivery area.
Reading the article in its entirety for the tenth time, Theresa decided she liked its compactness, its matter-of-fact tone, its careful attribution of sources. Not that she’d actually spoken to Jim Hall, of course. But she’d paid attention to what the town attorney had said, and one of the things he’d said was that the DA intended to present the case to a grand jury early next week, in Hudson. She’d have liked to include some comment from the defense, and had even toyed with the idea of saying that Stephen Barrow himself had refused to comment on the charges. But that seemed like a stretch, seeing as she’d never had the chance to ask him for a comment once he’d turned tail and walked away from her in a huff.
Well, she could always get around to him in a follow-up story, get his side of things or nail him for refusing to talk to her. Assuming, that was, that Neil Witt wanted her to do a follow-up. Or would he give it back to Tom Grady, once Tom got back? Though that hardly seemed fair, at this point. After all, she’d given up an entire Saturday just to get the story in the first place.
Didn’t that make it hers?
She finished her second cup of coffee, put the dishes in the sink to soak, and looked around for her car keys. She felt full of energy, and it seemed like a good morning to take a drive over to Pittsfield, get a little workout on the bags with Tony the Trainer.
Although he was a regular subscriber to the Hudson Valley Herald - a year ago, he’d succumbed to a telephone sales pitch from a teenager trying to raise money for a class trip - Stephen Barrow hadn’t seen his copy of the paper yet. It waited for him in a green-and-white letter box at the bottom of his driveway, next to where his mailbox would have been if he’d had a mailbox. It would wait there for him for three full days before he finally got around to noticing it.
On this particular Monday morning, Stephen was noticing very little. He’d spent what he considered a lost weekend. He’d collapsed on the downstairs sofa Saturday evening, after Lou the plumber had picked him up on Route 295 and driven him the rest of the way home. He’d awakened in a panic an hour later, realizing he had no idea where his daughter was. For all he knew, she could still be down at the state police barracks in Claverack. He’d gotten on the phone, placing more than a dozen frantic calls to his ex-wife’s home, her cell phone, her mother, the state police, the county sheriff’s office, and anyone else he could think of. Finally, between calls, his own phone had rung, nearly scaring him out of his wits.
“Hello?” he’d shouted into the receiver.
“Stop screaming.” It was Ada’s voice.
“Is Penny with you?” he asked, holding his breath for the answer.
“Yes, she’s with me. Where did you think she was?”
“I didn’t know, I’ve been calling all over-”
“I know” she said. “Your phone’s been busy forever. When are you going to get call waiting?”
He refused to get call waiting. He hated when people put him on hold while answering another call, and refused to do it to others. But he didn’t much feel like arguing with her right now, so he let it go.
“Is she okay?”
“Sure, she’s okay. She just loves being a child porno star. It was so thoughtful of you to prepare her for a career in-”
“Can I speak to her?”
That would be the order of protection they’d told him about. He’d completely forgotten about it. “You’re sure she’s okay?” he asked, but even as he waited for her answer, the feeling of total exhaustion suddenly came over him again and engulfed him, like some huge ocean wave. He pressed the receiver hard against his ear, straining to hear what she was saying, but the noise of the wave drowned out her words. He felt himself losing his footing, falling over, slipping under the wave. . . .
It would be light out when he awakened.
He would spend the next twelve hours going through the motions of his Sunday routine. He would try to eat breakfast. He would walk by the open door of Penny’s room a dozen times, on each occasion staring at the neatly made bed and put-away toys. He would wander outside, figuring to take a drive over to Queechy Lake, so that he could buy the Times and busy himself with the crossword puzzle - only to discover all over again that he didn’t have his car. He would sit in front of the computer for an hour at a time, trying to compose a single sentence. He would stare at images flickering silently on the television set, having earlier turned the volume all the way down because he couldn’t stand the babble that poured out of it. He would sit for long stretches watching the phone, waiting in vain for it to ring.
Around eight, the wave would roll over him again, suggesting that there was something tidal about it, something cyclical. This time he would make it upstairs, to his bed, where he would bury himself under the covers, press his face into his pillow, and finally cry himself to sleep.
A grown man of forty-two, crying himself to sleep.
And in the morning, when at last he could sleep no more, he forced himself to climb out of bed. It took monumental energy just to shower and dry off, and he didn’t have the strength left to shave. Downstairs, he found the phone directory, thumbed through the yellow pages, found the listing for John’s Chatham Taxi, and waited to be picked up and driven to his lawyer’s office.
He arrived there a full hour and a half late for his appointment, unshaven, his hair uncombed. In spite of the fact that about the only thing he’d done all weekend was to sleep, he looked like he’d been up for a month. Now, as he sat across the desk from Flynt Adams, waiting for Adams to tell him what their strategy would be, he couldn’t remember if he’d even brushed his teeth.
“You look terrible,” said Adams.
“Thanks.”
“I’m not joking,” said the lawyer. “You’ve got to take care of yourself.”
Stephen managed a nod.
“You have to understand,” Adams said, “this thing could take a long time.”
“You already told me that,” said Stephen.
They talked for almost an hour, Stephen describing for the first time how he’d meant no harm in taking the photographs of Penny, even the one where she’d mooned him. “I’d completely forgotten about it,” he explained.
“Had you ever taken nude photos of your daughter before?” Adams asked.
“Sure,” said Stephen. “I mean, doesn’t every parent?”
Then again, from the way Adams had stared at him without saying anything, maybe not.
“Have you ever had copies made of any of them?”
“Not that I can recall.”
“Put any of them on the Internet?”
“I wouldn’t even know how to do that.”
“Have you ever developed your own film?”
“No.”
“Do you know how to?”
“No.”
“Did you pose your daughter?”
“What do you mean?”
“In the one where she’s, uh, bending over like that. Did you tell her to do that?”
“No, I told you, she mooned me. She’d seen it in a movie.”
Adams raised an eyebrow. “What movie?” he asked.
Stephen couldn’t remember.
“I’ve already gotten a call from your ex-wife’s lawyer,” Adams said. “They’re going to go into county court to try to get permanent custody of your daughter.”
“Can’t we fight them?”
“You can. I can’t.”
“Why not? Don’t you do that kind of thing?”
“I do,” said Adams, who pretty much did everything. “The thing is, the court appointed me only to represent you on the criminal case, because you said you couldn’t afford your own lawyer. A custody battle, even though it obviously grows out of the criminal case and is therefore related to it, is a separate matter, in a separate court.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you’d have to hire counsel.”
“Can’t I hire you?”
Adams explained that there was a Catch-22 to that: If Stephen were to hire him on the custody matter, that would demonstrate that he had money, meaning Adams could no longer represent him for free on the criminal case.
“So,” Stephen said, “if I want you, it’s double or nothing.”
Adams smiled. “Something like that,” he said.
“How much are we talking about?”
Adams explained that, assuming he got the court’s permission to represent Stephen on a private basis, his fee was $125 an hour.
“Jesus,” said Stephen.
“How about a hundred?”
Stephen closed his eyes, tried to visualize his last monthly bank statement. He was always losing track of his balance and depended on the bank’s figures. The figure $8,000 came back to him, and he was busy dividing it by 100, wondering just how far eighty hours would get him, and deciding not all that far, when Adams spoke first.
“The very best I can do is seventy-five.”
Stephen opened his eyes. “Thank you,” he said.
They talked a while longer. Adams explained that Stephen had a right to testify before the grand jury, but that he thought it would be a bad idea.
“Why’s that?” Stephen asked.
“Because they’d only indict you anyway,” Adams explained, “and then you’d be stuck with what you said.”
“It’s not like my story’s going to change, you know.”
“Oh, yes it is.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s going to get better,” said Adams. “It’s going to get so good that no one’ll be able to listen to it without breaking into tears.”
“And that’s what we want?”
“No,” said Flynt Adams. “That’s what we need”
What Jim Hall neded was a grand jury.
Columbia County didn’t have enough serious crime to keep a standing grand jury to hear felony cases. In these times of inflation, jurors got paid at the rate of $40 a day for their services, in spite of the fact that a day was really only half a day, either a morning or an afternoon session. Unlike a trial jury, which was made up of twelve jurors plus maybe a couple of alternates, for a grand jury you needed twenty-three people. That meant it cost the county $920 a day for the privilege of having a bunch of folks sitting around, waiting to hear maybe thirty minutes’ worth of testimony before calling it a day.
So with a wink from the district attorney and a nod from the judiciary, the county clerk had quietly drawn up a list of forty or fifty volunteers who were only too happy to get an occasional phone call telling them there was about to be a felony presentation, requiring their services for an hour or so the following morning - as long as they had nothing better to do with their time, that was. Never mind that such an arrangement was of dubious constitutional value; with no one ever having raised a voice to challenge it, it had stood the test of time and eventually come to pass for the way things were done.
So on this Monday morning, anxious to press forward with the sex-abuse case they’d sent him over from South Chatham, Jim Hall turned to one of his assistants. “We’re going to need us a grand jury for Wednesday morning,” he said. “Go see Hanna Lovejoy, down in the cler
k’s office, willya? Tell her to get on the horn, round up a buncha the usual suspects. And while you’re at it-”
The assistant looked up from his notepad, waiting for the rest of his instructions.
“-why don’t you get to work on a draft of a search-warrant application? Might be intrestin’ to know what else that Barrow creep keeps tucked away in his house. Besides naked pictures of his little girl, that is.”
the last thing Stephen Barrow had remembered to ask Flynt Adams was how he was supposed to go about getting his Jeep back.
“Getting it back?”
“Yeah,” Stephen had said. “They left it down in, wherever I was-”
“Claverack.”
“Claverack, right. How do I get it back?”
“You don’t.”
Stephen had cocked his head slightly to one side, as though maybe he hadn’t heard correctly the first time. “Say that again?”
“You don’t get it back,” Adams had repeated. “Under New York law, any motor vehicle, vessel, or airplane used in the commission of a crime is subject to civil forfeiture.”
“But I didn’t use it in the commission of a crime.”
“According to the troopers, you drove it to the Drug Mart to pick up the photos. Isn’t that true?”
“Well, yes, but-”
“I’m afraid that constitutes use in the commission. See, the crime you’re charged with is a possessory one - specifically, possession of the photos. Their theory is, you used your car in order to obtain that possession.”
“And that makes sense to you?”
Best Intentions Page 10