by D. W. Buffa
“Not sure why it should,” he replied, shaking his head. “I come here often enough.”
There were other people in the elevator and we rode down in silence. Outside, the late morning sun, filtered through the thick-leafed trees, scattered a yellowish haze over the sidewalk in the courthouse park. We sat down on a bench across from a bronze statue turned dark green with age, honoring the dead of the First World War.
“What have you been able to find out?” I asked.
With his feet spread wide apart, Flynn rested his elbows on his thighs. “Nothing,” he said glumly. “Not a damn thing. It’s like the kid never existed. I’ve pretty well used up every inside contact I’ve got. The cops don’t know who he is. Social Services doesn’t have anything.” He sat up, pushed his elbows over the top of the bench behind him, and, tilting back his head, searched the heavens for an answer. “The adoption agencies don’t have anything. There’s only one thing left I can think of. You ever hear of a psychologist named Clifford Fox? He testified for the prosecution in a case you had a couple of years ago.”
“That son of a bitch?” I cried, as I pulled my knee onto the bench and turned to face Flynn directly. “Specializes in so-called repressed memories; testified that my client’s niece had remembered fifteen years later that her uncle had abused her as a child.
The jury didn’t believe it,” I reminded him.
Flynn’s chest heaved up as he snorted. “Yeah, you’d be the last guy to convince a jury to acquit someone guilty.” His eyes half shut, he slowly shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Listen to me.
Whatever he said at that trial, he was telling the truth, at least what he thought was the truth. He doesn’t lie.” He paused long enough to form the gruff smile that usually introduced one of his brief commentaries on human weakness. “At least when he’s sober—and he hasn’t had a drink in years.”
I should have known. Flynn had friends everywhere, and every one of them was an alcoholic.
“What are you suggesting? What can he do that will help us find out something about John Smith? I don’t think we’re dealing with a repressed memory, do you?”
Flynn’s mouth twisted to the side. “All I know is that the only person who knows anything about John Smith is John Smith.
You’re wrong about Fox. He doesn’t specialize in repressed memory; he specializes in handicapped children. If anyone can reach inside that kid’s mind, he can.”
I checked my watch. “I have to get back to the office,” I said as I got to my feet. “I have to see John Smith this afternoon.
You need to meet him anyway. Come along. Then we’ll decide about your friend, the psychologist.”
Before I turned to go, I looked at Flynn and laughed. “First Stewart, now Fox? If we’re not careful we’re going to have a defense team made up of every drunk in the city.”
He stared at me from behind hooded eyes. A wry, rueful grin creased his mouth. “Could do a lot worse,” he said with a shrug.
When I walked into the office, Helen handed me a large, heavy manila envelope. “It just came,” she explained. “It’s the list of Judge Griswald’s cases.”
I told her to hold my calls and began to examine, caption by caption, all the criminal matters that had ever come before the honorable Quincy Griswald. There were thousands of them—trials, hearings, every conceivable kind of case—stretching back through the long years of his service on the bench. I must have gone through hundreds of pages, each of them listing line by line the name of a defendant and the crime with which he had been charged. There was nothing there, nothing that could either supply a motive as to why he had been killed or offer so much as a hint as to who might have killed him. I stayed at it for hours, and there were still hundreds more pages to go. I began to read faster, skimming the words as I traced my finger down each page.
I was in such a hurry to finish that I flew right past it, and only realized what I had seen when I was halfway down the next page.
Turning back, I stared at it for a long time, wondering why I had not put it all together before.
I had worked straight through lunch and far into the afternoon and had lost all track of time.
“Call Court Records and ask them to order up from the archives the court file from State v. Elliott Winston,” I said to Helen on my way out the door. “It’s an old case—about twelve years ago—
Quincy Griswald was the judge. I don’t have a case number. Then call the state hospital and tell Dr. Friedman I’d like to see him as soon as possible.”
Twenty
_______
When I told Flynn what I had found, and what I thought, he looked at me as if I were the one who should be in the state hospital. “What are you suggesting: that Elliott Winston killed Jeffries and then Griswald?”
“No,” I objected. “I’m not suggesting that at all. I’m saying that the two murders seem to be connected somehow. All I know for sure is that Jeffries managed to drive Elliott over the brink, and Griswald was the judge who sent him away.”
“To the state hospital,” Flynn reminded me. “Not to prison.
The guy tried to kill you. Griswald did him a favor.”
“Did he?” I wondered aloud. “Elliott didn’t have a criminal record. He thought I was having an affair with his wife, and I would have testified that he only meant to scare me. The gun went off during a struggle. Even if he had been sentenced to prison—instead of probation—he would have been out years ago.”
Unconvinced, Flynn shook his head. “Griswald was just doing his job. He didn’t have any choice. When someone gets sent to the state hospital, it’s all according to the statute.”
We were standing in front of the county jail, a few minutes past four in the afternoon, waiting to see John Smith. The trees in the park across the street cast their shadows on the sidewalk as the sun slipped down the western sky. With a purse slung over her shoulder and a child clutching each hand, a stocky young woman, her legs stuffed into her jeans, hurried down the steps.
“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Flynn went on, narrowing his eyes.
“We already know who murdered Jeffries.” I was not sure we knew that, or anything else. “All right,” he said, beginning to get ex-asperated, “let’s say we don’t know who killed Jeffries; let’s say we ignore the confession, the suicide, everything. Elliott Winston is locked up tight in the forensic ward of the state hospital. It sounds like a pretty good alibi to me.”
“I told you,” I said more sharply than I intended, “I’m not suggesting Elliott killed anyone. I’m not suggesting he had anything to do with it.”
He stared at me, a puzzled expression on his face. “Then what are you suggesting?”
I was not quite sure. I had that helpless feeling of grasping at something vague and indefinable, something you thought for a moment you understood, but that suddenly, as soon as you have to explain it, vanishes from view.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, still trying to think of what it was.
“You’re right. Elliott couldn’t have done it, but it doesn’t seem possible that it’s all just a coincidence.”
Flynn peered down at his shoes and stroked his chin. “What else could it be?” he asked, raising his eyes until our gazes met.
“The one who confessed to killing Jeffries—the one who killed himself—was a mental patient.”
“And?”
“And it would be interesting to know if Elliott knew him.”
“The hospital has hundreds of patients. But even if he knew him, so what?”
“Then we have another coincidence, don’t we?”
Flynn put his hand on my shoulder as we began to walk toward the front entrance. “All you have then is that a mental patient who once knew someone who got killed happened to know another mental patient who happened to kill him. Go to the hospital; talk to the doctor—talk to Elliott: Find out everything you can about Jacob Whittaker. Maybe there is a connection between the death of Jeffries and the death of Griswald
; maybe there is a connection between the two killers … But Elliott Winston? If you didn’t know what Jeffries had done to him—if you didn’t know what his wife had done to him—you wouldn’t even be thinking about it.”
He was right of course, and at least on a conscious level I knew it. I put aside all my vague imaginings and dim suspicions and tried instead to concentrate on the reason we were there.
“Did the psychologist agree to see Smith?” I asked as we got to the door.
“He will,” Flynn replied confidently. “I haven’t called him yet.
I wanted to see what we could do first.”
We could not do much. John Smith was brought into the small, windowless conference room. His head hung down between his shoulders and swayed from side to side, while his eyes, glazed over, remained fixed on the same point. The jailer walked him to the table where Flynn and I sat waiting, helped him into the chair, then knelt down beside him and removed the handcuffs. Powerfully built, with a square jaw and broad straight shoulders, the deputy gently patted him on the back.
“You’ll be all right here,” he said in a soft voice. “This is your lawyer, Mr. Antonelli. He was in court with you today. Remember?”
The head stopped moving. A shy smile started onto his mouth and then floated away. He looked at me a moment longer and then, as he lowered his eyes, his head drooped down and began to sway slowly first to one side, then the other.
I spoke to him in the tone of voice I would have used with a child. “John, this is Mr. Flynn. He’s going to help us with your case. Would you like to say hello?”
If he heard, he gave no sign of it. His head swung like a pen-dulum, a long, looping motion that when it reached full extension at one end, hesitated for just an instant, and then fell away, speeding backward through the same trajectory until, at the other end, it stopped again.
Flynn seemed to grow nervous. Though it was against the rules, the guard had gone. He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and with his thumb flipped open the cover of a matchbook. It was barely audible, but at the sound of it, John Smith’s head froze. I turned to Flynn, but it was too late. He struck the match, and as it burst into flame, John Smith jumped away, knocking over the metal folding chair. “No!” he cried. “No! No fire! Don’t hurt!
Don’t hurt!” he screamed. He sank down in the far corner of the room, as far away as he could get, his arms crossed in front of his face, cowering with fear.
Flynn was on his feet, the unlit cigarette stuck in his mouth, the burning match still held in his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to appear calm. He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “See?
I was just going to light this. I wasn’t going to hurt you.” Cautiously, he took a step forward. The boy—and he was only that—
drew his knees farther up and tightened his arms around them.
Flynn took another step forward and went down on one knee.
He held the match in front of him. “Look,” he said. “I’ll put it out.”
Words meant nothing. At the sight of that match, he screamed,
“No, please no!”
Flynn held it there, the flame grown larger, and then slowly closed his thumb and forefinger around it and crushed it out. It must have hurt, but you could not tell it from the expression on Flynn’s face. The boy’s eyes widened in amazement and the shaking began to stop.
“I’m sorry,” Flynn repeated. He got to his feet and reached down to help him up. The boy watched him but kept gripping his knees.
“That’s all right,” Flynn told him in a quiet voice. “Take your time. Come on your own when you’re ready,” he said as he straightened up. “No one is going to hurt you. We’re going to try to help you.”
Smith’s eyes followed Flynn as he came back to the table, and stayed on him even when he stood up, picked up the chair, and sat down on it.
I have seen people, gifted in ways I could only imagine, com-municate with dogs and cats and even horses, but until now I had never seen anyone do something like that with another human being. Howard Flynn sat across the table from that unfortunate soul and something passed between them, some ineffa-ble thing that made the boy respond—not with words or even a gesture—just a look, but a look which, had you seen it, you would never forget. It was the look of someone who has no knowledge—
no conscious knowledge—of himself, the look of someone who has not, like the rest of us, permanently divorced himself from the world around him. Clear your mind of every thought, rid yourself of every felt emotion, every seeming instinct of fear, until all that is left is that essential part of yourself that is yourself, and you will begin to understand what happened. The unspoken word, the thought that is silent even to itself—the thought that does not need expression to know what it is—that was the com-munication that was taking place right in front of my eyes.
“What can you tell us about Billy?” Flynn asked finally.
“Friend,” was the one-word answer.
“Billy gave you the knife?”
Smith nodded, and Flynn asked, “Where did Billy go?”
“Away. Billy went away.”
“Where did he go?”
“Away.”
“But where away?”
“River.”
I glanced at Flynn, but he was concentrating too hard to notice. With his arms folded together on the table, he leaned forward, cocked his head, and smiled. “What is your name?” he asked simply.
The boy smiled back. “Danny.”
“What’s your last name, Danny?”
It was so still in that room I thought I could hear my own heartbeat. Without any change of expression, he looked at Flynn and said, “Danny.”
Flynn nodded patiently. “Danny is your first name. You have another name, too. My first name is Howard.”
“Howard,” the boy repeated.
“That’s right. My first name is Howard. My last name is Flynn.
Your first name is Danny. Your last name is?”
There was a flash of recognition in his eyes, the look someone gets when they first realize that something is not where it is supposed to be and that they might have lost it. He shook his head.
“Danny,” he said again. It was the only name he knew, and perhaps the only name he had.
For half an hour I watched, an interested observer, while Howard Flynn did his best to learn where Danny had come from and what he knew about the man who had given him the knife.
Flynn was as gentle, as patient, as it was possible to be, but it made no difference: Danny seemed to know nothing about his past. As innocent as the child he was, he lived in the moment, a moment that for him had no beginning and no end. He remembered me, and he remembered we had been together in a room, but he could not have said whether it had happened that morning or a year ago. When Flynn had lit that match, it did not just remind him of when he had been burned all over his body with a cigarette: It was the same event. Time did not exist.
Everything that happened—everything that happened to him—
was now.
Though none of our other questions had been answered, we had gotten his name, and that at least was a start. We had gotten something else as well: the knowledge that this was a case we had to win. It was always more difficult to defend someone you were certain was innocent: You could not comfort yourself with the thought that justice had been done if you lost. But this was worse. Danny was not just innocent, he was helpless. We were all he had. It hit Flynn harder than it hit me. When we left he was as angry as I had ever seen him.
“They should hang people like that!” he growled as we made our way to the front entrance. “And I don’t mean by the neck, either!”
I thought I knew whom he meant, but just to be sure, I asked,
“The people who burned him with cigarettes?”
“Yeah,” he muttered under his breath. His arm shot straight out in front of him and hit the door with such force I was afraid his hand was going to go right through the glas
s. At almost the same spot where we had stood talking together before, he stopped still. “Forget about that son of a bitch Jeffries. Forget about the guy who killed him,” he said, shaking his head impatiently. “Forget about whether he might have known Elliott Winston. Forget about the state hospital. Unless we find out who gave the kid the knife, we haven’t got anything.” He paused and stared hard at me. “You have to find out, and there’s only one way left to do it.”
People were swarming all around us. It was a few minutes past five and the sidewalks were filling up as civil servants walked quickly to the parking lots where they had left their cars or headed a few blocks across town to catch the light rail.
“You think the psychologist can get more out of him than you did?”
Flynn nodded, but his mind was on something else. “He’ll learn some things from him. He may learn quite a lot.” He worked his jaw back and forth, then he stopped and scratched his chin, a distant look in his eye. “He won’t learn that, though. The kid doesn’t know.”
“Then who?”
His eyes came back into focus. “The people he lived with.”
“Under the bridge?”
“Exactly.”
“Well,” I said skeptically, “we can try. But half of them are probably mentals and the rest are probably addicts or drunks.”
On the other hand, we had nothing to lose. “All right,” I agreed,
“if you think it’s worth the chance. When do you want to go?”
For the first time since we had left the jail, Flynn seemed to relax. He greeted my question as if I had just broken my own world record for stupidity. It was all he could do not to roll his eyes or laugh in my face. “Sure, why not? Let’s just go down there right now, two guys in coats and ties.”
Now I realized what he had in mind—or I thought I did. “You want to go undercover: pretend you’re one of the homeless—one of them?”
“No,” he said, looking away as he dragged out the sound. “Not exactly.”
For a few moments we did not say anything, and then I knew.
“You want me … ?”
“I can’t do it,” he said, turning to me. Earnestly, he shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t spend three or four nights—I can’t even spend one night—by myself with people who are drinking. I’m sorry. I couldn’t do it.” He looked down at the sidewalk and sighed. “But I will if you want,” he said, lifting his head.