“He came to me about eight or nine years ago,” Laura sniffed, pouring us all tea from the chipped china teapot. “He wanted to know how to track down victims of sex trafficking, he was looking for you. He’d promised you he’d rescue you.”
Laura hadn’t given Leo any information, women like this don’t trust men easily, they don’t trust people. He never gave up.
“So he kept pushing? Overstepping boundaries?” I pushed.
“No, not at all,” Laura sighed, misty-eyed as she sunk into the past, filling us in on every last detail of Leo’s involvement with her charity.
It started with donations, huge lump sums of cash, gifts of groceries, books and cosmetics. He’d email her weekly, asking what they needed, within hours it would be on their doorstep, nothing was too big to ask of him. Laura and her charges had seen it all before, all men shower you with gifts and attention, in the beginning, our race would wither and die if they didn’t. No women would ever have sex if men revealed their truest selves the second you met them. The nicer they are at the start, the nastier they turn out to be. But Leo didn’t get nasty, for a year he kept his distance, limited contact to email and gifts.
“It was when he emailed me to ask me to help a friend of his, I really started paying attention,” Laura carried on her story. “He asked me to meet him at his place, said he had someone who needed my help. I went, took two of my brothers with me.”
One of Laura’s brothers had a conceal carry license, if Leo as much as took a breath in a way they didn’t like, they’d been willing to risk the rest of their life in prison to protect their sister from more pain.
They pulled up outside a rundown apartment block, with a sense of foreboding. This man donated thousands of dollars a month to their charity and this is where he lived? It didn’t sit right with them. Leo answered the intercom, buzzing them right in, no questions asked about who was with Laura. He didn’t show any signs of nerves when he spotted to the two big guys by Laura’s side, at least not for himself.
A spaced out woman sat on his sofa, resigned to her fate, tears slowly rolling her cheeks, eyeing the big men. Leo’s shoulders squared, he placed himself between her and his uninvited guests.
“I’ll leave if you want? But they come with me,” he eyed her brothers. Her oldest brother checked out the apartment. Leo was alone, unarmed with this broken, beaten down addict. His eyes blackened, swollen, his lip split, bruises lined his knuckles.
“He’d hired her every week,” Laura told us, “never laid a finger on her, just paid her to sit in a motel room with him, watching cartoons and eating candy. He let her shower, always bringing her the best shampoos and conditioners, plying her with cigarettes, earning her trust. Her pimp tried to stop him when he left the motel with her, beat the Hell outta him. Two guys pulled him off, he got away with the girl and came straight to me for help. You’d think that’d be enough to stop him trying again, but it didn’t. He did the same thing again and again. His actions single-handedly saved at least six women. Leo’s no killer, he’s a hero.”
That’s when Laura’s charity moved forward. Once a month, Leo would pose as a client, Laura and a therapist would hide in his room, hoping to reach out to the girls. They worked alongside Vice, helping gather evidence against pimps and traffickers, freeing women from the sex trade. Leo still went out alone every weekend he wasn’t in Mexico, spending his time and money on the most vulnerable women, addicts, young teens, illegal immigrants, even if it only meant they got nothing more than an hour off. He never gave up on any of them.
“Did he ever get hands on with any of them?” Schilling asked.
“Not a one of them. He’d keep his distance, leave the room if they looked uncomfortable around him. The only thing he asked of them was that they look at a picture of Dani and tell him if they recognised her.”
“And did they?” I asked.
“Only Stacey.”
“Stacey, his victim?”
“He’s innocent.”
“But that’s the Stacey you mean, Stacey Charles, Maia’s mother?”
“Yeah, she told him she was with you in Chicago. He flew straight there, spent a month visiting every brothel, calling every hooker he could find, but you’d already been moved on.”
I’d spent a year in Chicago, working the streets, controlled by a local gang. They sold me on to a guy who took me to Florida, after hearing about someone asking questions about a girl who fit my description. I’d assumed it was one of my father’s men. They had contacts in Chicago. Never for a second did I believe it might be Leo. I’d have run if I’d known, searched for him, saved us both from the nightmare that was to come.
“And then he became intimate with the victim?” Schilling asked.
“No. Him and Stacey were never together. She and Maia didn’t fit in well here. Maia’s… was… a little firecracker. The noise she made upset the other residents, Stacey would get into fights with them. Leo offered his place to her. He’d been willing to move out, rent a second place for himself, but Stacey trusted him.”
“Worst mistake she ever made,” Schilling huffed.
“Leo’s the one who rescued Stacey in the first place,” Laura hissed. “He spent five months hiring her every weekend. Did he have defensive wounds when he was arrested?”
“No. We believe he killed Stacey first.”
“Stacey agreed to let Leo help her after Maia stabbed her pimp with a kitchen knife. He’d been beating Stacey. Maia grabbed a knife, stabbed him in the leg. He beat the poor thing bloody, then he raped her. When he fell asleep Maia begged Stacey to give her the knife back so she could finish what she’d started. Stacey swears the kid would’ve killed him if she’d let her. She grabbed Maia and ran, called Leo from a cafe. He took Maia to straight to the emergency room. Neither of those girls would have sat back while he hurt the other. If he’d been abusing Maia, like the Police say, he’d have marks all over his body where she fought back.”
“Jesus,” Schilling hissed.
“Leo is innocent. You’ve locked up an innocent man. In a month’s time, you will execute an innocent man and the world will be a much poorer place for it.”
“You know he confessed, don’t you?” I asked her.
“He’s doing what Leo does,” she sniffed, “sacrificing himself for the sake of others. Can you imagine watching your son die, knowing he was innocent? If people believe he did what he’s accused of, it’ll be easier for them hate him, to accept that he’s getting what he deserves.”
“He told you that?”
“No. I just know Leo. He bought this place you know? Our first place got too small. He cashed in his trust fund, bought this house and signed it over to me.”
“Did you ever doubt him?”
“Never.”
◆◆◆
“You still think he’s guilty?” I asked Schilling on the drive back to my house.
“The evidence…”
“I didn’t ask about evidence.”
“It doesn’t lie, kid, people do. What do you wanna do next?”
“You have any contacts in Vice?”
“Sure do.”
“I talk to them. If what Laura said is true, Vice will know him. Then we go back to Leo, start trying to figure out who had motive to frame him, starting with Stacey, her pimp, any clients who might’ve tracked her down. Find out if he was still hiring any trafficked women on a weekend, if so who? I want to talk to them. They might be involved.”
“And when that leads nowhere?”
I fixed my eyes on the road, refusing to answer. If those leads went nowhere, we’d have to follow the blindingly obvious one - my father.
◆◆◆
Schilling’s contact in Vice sat at my kitchen table, swigging on one of my beers.
“Yeah, I remember, Leo,” he said between mouthfuls, “weird case, that one.”
“What was weird about it?” I asked.
“Well, him. He’s the last person I’d have pegged as a psycho. He came
across as a genuine guy you know? Started out wanting to find his girlfriend, ended up trying to save the world. There’s not a whore I’ve met who’d speak badly of him.”
“Did he use any of them, the working girls?”
“Nope. He’d give ‘em money, buy ‘em coffees, make sure they had condoms. Never asked for anything in return. I used to ask him why he never became a cop, he said needed to find his girlfriend before he could start his life. That baby, the one he killed, Maia was it? Adored him she did. He took her on as his own, used to take her to the same grade school as my kid. Good guy, at least I thought he was. You find out what made him flip like that?”
“No.”
Chapter Six
Leo
You never get used to living in a concrete box. I paced the tiny, claustrophobic space day after day, month after month, year after year, never more than a few inches away from the metal shelf prison officials told me was a bed.
Under that bed, my scheduled execution date had been added to the box of legal papers. No man should know the exact time and date they’ll die. I could count my remaining time in this world by the second, it’s as if a giant timer had started in my head the second I’d been told and I was helpless to watch it tick down. It was there when I paced. When I tried to read it’s ticking grew louder, when I slept it seemed to speed up, crying out I wasting my final days on sleep.
This was it. Hope had evaded me. I’d never walk in the free world again, never set a toe in the ocean, experience the sand under my feet. My body would never rest in a bed, my arms would never hug a loved one. I couldn’t remember the last person who’d held me, no matter how hard I tried, the memory escaped me. Had it been Maia? My mother? I prayed it’d been Maia. Her tiny fingers hooking around my neck whispering tales of her day into my ear. She’d throw herself into my arms every time I collected her from school. I’d grab her in my arms, swing her around, her face lighting up, streams of carefree giggles falling from her lips.
The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is admit out loud that my hands had snuffed the life from her small, innocent body. I’d take life in this concrete tomb over repeating those words again. My mother swore at me when I’d told her I’d confessed. Six years, she’s been a pillar of strength, never letting me see her cry, even when they read the sentence out in court, condemning me to death, not a single tear fell from her eyes.
I watched helplessly as she faded in front of my eyes, her body thinning, her hair greying, her eyes dulled more with every visit. She never once questioned me, never showed any sorrow, but it was there, etched into her face. It all changed with that confession. She cussed, she cried, hysterical, agonised wails tore from her mouth, refusing to believe what I said. No-one believed it. Laura told me I was a fool, but she supported my choice to end it, to give up the fight. She wouldn’t turn her back on me, she wouldn’t accept my guilt, but she’d be there, to the end.
I sank to the bed, the thin mattress did little to protect me from the cold, hard metal beneath it. The clock in my head ticked off another second.
The slot in my heavy, iron cell door squealed open.
“Roman, you got a visitor.”
My mother wasn’t due today. Carly couldn’t face me, not in here. We spoke on the phone, but she couldn't face seeing me in chains. Laura cancelled her visit. I figured it must be Theo, my brother. He liked to surprise me. I’d guessed someone would come, they never let a visit pass. My friends, family, the women I’d met through Laura’s work, they all banded together to make sure every visit was filled.
I took to my knees in front of the thick door that trapped me in this box, leaning forward, my arms stuck through the slot behind me. Cuffs snapped closed around my wrists, you grew used to them, but they never got any less painful or humiliating. I had to stay that way, on my knees, my back to the door as it slid open. Two guards, armed with batons, tasers and pepper spray, fastened a belt around my waist, securing my wrists to it. My legs were shackled, those too, chained to my waist. The metal clinked as I shuffled to the visitation area, another box.
That’s my life. I was caged, boxed. Never free. Never with company. The guards escorted me there in silence. Silence filled most of my life now, I spent twenty-two hours a day alone in a concrete box. When I wasn’t alone in the box, I was alone in an outdoor cage or alone in a metal shower box, the metal door had holes in so we didn’t suffocate. Even at visitation, I was alone in a box, my visitors shielded from me by three-inch thick plexiglass, forced to speak to me through a plastic phone. My mother would see me for the final time in that box, not permitted to hold her son one last time. The next time she laid a hand on me, I’d be dead, cold on a slab in a funeral home.
The guards opened the gate to the visitation box. Dani, her face drawn, her olive skin dull, pale, her partner by her side, sat outside the box. They each reached for their plastic phone as I shuffled towards the metal stool in the middle of my box. I tried to stifle the giggle as the morbid thought hit me.
“What’s funny?” Dani frowned.
“Nothing.”
I’d just realised, I’d be buried in a box too, to spend all of eternity, boxed underground. I’d die in a box, a bigger one than I’d grown used to, but the execution chamber was still a sealed box. People in a different box would pump poison into my veins, the life would drain from me. My body would be transported to the funeral home in a box, where I’d be prepared for burial, placed in my coffin, my final box. That’s when I decided to ask my mother for cremation. I’d ask for my ashes to be scattered in Mexico, on the beach where Dani had given her virginity to me. Maia had loved it there when I took her once, declared it to be her favourite place in the world. I liked to imagine her spirit there, jumping the waves, hand in hand with Stacey, pleading with me to join them as they had in life.
“I took your brother’s visit, I’m sorry,” Dani told me.
“It’s fine. Theo wasn’t supposed to see me today anyway, his visit is next week, Lau… the person supposed to come today had to cancel, things came up.”
“Laura?”
My heart stopped.
“How do you know Laura?”
“I spoke to her yesterday. I asked her to cancel her visit, I needed to see you.”
“Oh.”
I didn’t like where this was going. Dani had asked me if I was a monster, I’d given her the answer I knew she needed to hear, the one that would make this easier for her to bear. She had to believe it was true.
“I read your confession too.”
My stomach lurched, I couldn't breathe, that's not what I'd wanted, I'd guessed she would but prayed she wouldn't. The thought of her reading the sickening details they'd asked me for; Who died first, who did you rape first, why did you do it? They'd made me say it out loud, recording every word. The words I raped Maia fell from my mouth, their taste vile and bitter. No-one should read that.
"Oh." It's all I could say.
"Tell me, tell me here and now what you did and why."
"Why?"
"I need you to."
Fuck. Not again. Bile rose in my throat, I gazed down at my white jumpsuit, the chains around my ankles, the floor, anywhere but Dani’s face. The words poured from my mouth, each one as sickening and bitter as the last time I spoke them out loud.
“Leo…” Dani interrupted.
I kept speaking, kept my eyes on the floor. If I stopped speaking, I’d never find the strength to start again.
“LEO!”
Keep talking, Leo, just keep talking. Don’t stop. Give her what she needs.
“LEO, please!”
My heart was racing when I looked up at her. Her lips pursed, her face had paled even more. Schilling narrowed his eyes at me, stroking his thick hand over his chin.
“Look at me, Leo. Tell me to my face what you did.”
No. Don’t make me repeat those terrible things again.
“You can’t do it, can you?” Dani asked.
“No.”
“What did she smell like, the first time you abused her?”
What? They’d never asked me that during my confession.
“I don’t remember.”
“Think, Leo. This is something you’d remember. You’d remember every detail, it would be burned into your brain. I worked serious crimes before homicide, people like you remember things like that.”
Schilling’s eyes drilled into my, he studied every inch of my face, searching my eyes, waiting for my answer. Dani sat, passive, by his side, her gaze expectant.
“Cheerios, she smelled of Cheerios. Stacey used to give her them for supper.”
It’s the first thing that came into my head. Dani sighed, shaking her head. Schilling reeled, the mother fucker who’d fingered me for this first place, actually reeled, pushing back on his stool, the colour draining from his cheeks, his eyes wide in horror. He’d seen them, witnessed first hand the horrors inflicted on their tiny, helpless bodies, but hearing me remember what she smelled of disgusted him. I disgusted him.
“It’s not easier you know, believing the man you’ve loved for ten years is a monster?” Dani whispered, “It’s not easier than thinking he’s being executed for a crime he didn’t commit. I’ve spent the last two months laid awake at night, wondering if I did something, said something, if it was my kidnapping that turned you into this. God only knows how your mother is coping. If you think you’re saving us, you’re wrong.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say? I told them everything during my interview.”
“I want you to tell me about Stacey and the women you were helping in the weeks leading up to the murders.”
For the rest of the hour she drilled me relentlessly, question after question about Stace, about the girls I saw on the weekend, the stripper I’d been visiting the night of the slayings.
“That’s everything, for now, Leo, thank you.”
My whole body exhaled, shrinking with relief. It was over. I’d made it through.
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