“Now we know that they raped you and scared you to death,” he’d said, real calm. “You told us they did that.” She’d said ‘Yes, that was true.’ So then he said “And when they brought you back to the motel you were practically passed out and you hardly remember them leaving, you were probably passed out by then,” and she’d answered that this was true, also. “And somebody did knock on the wall while this was happening, back at the motel,” he’d said. Again, yes. “Could it have been Richard?” She thinks; it could have been, his room was next door, she was so fucked up by then she couldn’t say. But it could have been.
“Okay,” he’d said. He moved his chair closer to hers, lit her another cigarette. He had sad eyes, nice eyes, dark brown like hers, looking at her like he really cared about her, that he wanted her to be all right, and not get booked for murder, which she didn’t do, which she knew he knew she didn’t do.
“Okay. You don’t remember anything else until you woke up, much later.” He looked at her when he said that, like he was totally sincere. And she’d looked back at him and said ‘yes,’ that was true. At that point she had passed out and didn’t remember anything else until she woke up several hours later.
So then he took one of her hands in both of his, they were big hands, they covered her hand completely, but they were gentle hands, they felt good holding her hand, he held her hand softly, like a man holds a woman’s hand when he likes her, as a person and a woman, not just something to fuck, but as a real person, and he said “So it’s possible that you were so strung out, so tired, so scared, that they did take you back up to the mountains with them, with them and Richard Bartless, and that those things did happen, killing Richard and the rest, and you were so tired, so strung out, so scared, that you don’t remember. That your brain isn’t letting you remember.”
She had felt her heart stop for a minute. He was holding her hand in his hands and looking right into her eyes and she said Yes, it could have happened that way even though she was pretty sure it hadn’t, but it could have, anything’s possible. And he’d said That’s how the brain works sometimes, when something’s so bad it doesn’t want to remember, it shuts down, like it’s a storehouse and that stuff is locked away in a file somewhere so you don’t have to know it’s there, except it is, but you put it somewhere where you don’t have to look at it, because it’s too ugly to look at. It’s how the brain protects us from ourselves.’
So she’d looked at him and nodded, like she understood what he was saying. She did understand; she understood what he was saying, and what was expected from her.
They had another cigarette together, and split a Coke, and he told her everything was going to be all right, that he would take care of her, protect her. That nobody would hit her again, if anyone did, Moseby or anyone, he didn’t care if it was his boss (which Moseby was, technically), he’d punch their lights out, he wasn’t going to let her get hurt anymore, she’d been hurt too much already. Then he’d held her hand again in his, like he really liked her, as a person and as a woman.
They had stayed there three more days, her and the detectives and Moseby. They bought her new clothes, treated her nicely. They went over and over what happened that night, over and over again, until she really did start to believe it was the way Gomez had said it was, that it had happened like what they had said and her brain had blocked it out, the part with Richard, because it was too awful to think about. And after a while she did believe it, or she thought she did, it was easier that way, to really think she did, and they went over it with her, again and again, looking at the pictures, going over what happened, who did what, when. Until finally she really did believe it, at least she did then, later she started not to believe it but she did then, and she could tell them the story better than they could, because she did believe it so she could tell it better than anyone because she’d been there, she’d seen it, it had happened to her. For real, so she believed then.
They brought her back down to Santa Fe and she dictated her statement to a court stenographer, with a witness, that everything she said was true, that she was giving her statement without any coercion or pressure, that it was her own statement that she was giving without anyone telling her what to say. And she’d told it to the grand jury and later at the trial.
I don’t know whether to shit or go blind. She’s looking at me, waiting for my reaction. I have one; several. Right now, what I want more than anything is a drink: I realize I’m shaking like a leaf. Then something kicks in, maybe there is a better part of me, maybe last night was the real start of something better. Fuck the drink, man, that’s the last thing you need. What you need is clarity.
“But you know now in your heart that it was all a lie,” I tell her. “For real.”
She nods, mute.
“There was no storehouse in your brain where you were hiding the truth, the awful truth.”
She nods again.
“It was all a lie,” I continue. “All bullshit lies.” I’m outraged, I’m fucking outraged; but I have to maintain my cool, this sad excuse for a girl is so fragile one wrong word or move could send her around the bend. “Everything you said at the trial, from the time they brought you back to the motel. Everything about Richard Bartless. All lies.”
“But not the other stuff,” she says. “They did kidnap me. And rape me.”
“Yes,” I answer.
“They ought to be punished for that, shouldn’t they?”
“Absolutely. But for that, for that, not for a murder they didn’t do.”
“Yeh. I guess that’s right,” she says.
I know what I have to do. One more question.
“Why did you leave Santa Fe? Why did you leave New Mexico?”
“They told me to. They told me I’d never have to see or hear about any of this again. I didn’t want to,” she says.
“Did they give you money? To relocate?”
She nods. “Five hundred dollars.”
“We have to go somewhere,” I tell her. “Someplace where I can get this recorded; what you’ve told me.”
I can see the fear in her eyes.
“They’ll throw me in jail. They told me they would,” she says, pleadingly.
“No.” I shake my head. “They won’t; I’ll make sure of that, that’s a promise. Anyway, we’re not going to the police. Not after this. I’m going to get your statement, then I’m going to hide you someplace. I’ll pay for it myself. Someplace where they won’t be able to find you.”
“What about the bikers?” she asks.
“They’re in jail, lady,” I tell her. “You put them in there, remember?”
“But what about their friends?” she asks. “They’re going to come after me, too.”
“No, they won’t. I promise.”
She looks at me; she doesn’t believe that for a second. I can’t blame her. Why should she? Every time someone’s told her to believe them it’s exploded in her face.
DON STRICKLAND’S a member of a Denver law firm who I’ve worked with before. Everything’s all set up when Mercado and I arrive at his office with Rita—court stenographer, witnesses (Don and his secretary), videotape. She gives her statement, soup to nuts, she’s resigned to telling the truth at last. I show her the tape, we make the necessary corrections, she signs an affidavit attesting to what she’s seen.
“This is going to blow someone’s little red caboose sky-high,” Don says.
“Tell me about it.” Robertson’s caboose is what it’s going to blow. At least he’s clean, for now anyway. A dupe. I don’t know what’s worse: to be the ring-leader, or to not even know what the troops are doing behind your back. Bad scenario either way.
Moseby’ll be disbarred. There’ll be some heavy toasting to that around the choice watering holes. Sanchez and Gomez’ll probably get a slap on the wrist and be pensioned off. Cops take care of their own.
I don’t care. I want to see my four walk out of prison—period. Society can take care of itself; I’ll be satisfied
with my singular victory.
Don’s secretary sets me up with a furnished apartment for Rita, one of those corporate deals you rent by the month. A phone comes with it; I make sure it’s unlisted. We’re settled in by late afternoon; I give them a two-month’s deposit. And I arrange through Mercado to have a local detective agency check up on her at random intervals, so that she knows she’s being watched but doesn’t know precisely when. I want her staying put.
I’d thought about bringing her back with me, but nixed that fast. If the wrong people spotted her back in Santa Fe, before I took her deposition to court and it was public knowledge, the odds are she’d be dead in a day. If they played this rough before, they certainly wouldn’t back off now.
Rita looks around, pleased with her new digs. Probably the nicest place she’s ever lived; beats the shit out of my current place. That’s good; I want her to be comfortable, I want her to stay put, not get antsy. We’ve been grocery shopping, enough to last a couple weeks. She’s got her staples, some beer, a few girl-things, color TV with cable, a couple new changes of clothes: what more could she want?
“It’s nice,” she says, running her hand along the fabric of the curtains. “I like it’s got a swimming pool.”
“Make sure you don’t make any friends out by that pool,” I tell her. “Nobody.”
“All right already. You done told me that ten times.”
“I want to make sure it sinks in. We’ve got to be super-careful until we get back into court. If those cops found out about this …” I leave the rest unsaid.
She nods solemnly. She’s already on enough shit-lists.
“I’ll try to call you every day,” I say. “And you can call me if you have to. You have my numbers.”
She holds out the paper with my office and home numbers on it.
“Okay.” I take a last look around. “This’ll all be over soon.”
“I sure hope so. I been cooped-up enough over all this shit. I don’t like it.”
“Beats the alternative,” I tell her.
“What?” She doesn’t have an extensive vocabulary.
“What it could be instead,” I explain. Like sleeping in a pine box, or worse, buried under a thousand tons of trash in a landfill somewhere.
“Oh. Yeh.” She gets it now. “I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”
“Lock the door when I’m gone. Both locks.”
Easy to say: don’t worry. While you’re asleep, Rita, will you be calm? Will all your dreams be peaceful, the dreams of babies? No outlaw motorcycle gangs with knives for dicks, tearing you apart rape by rape, no venal cops threatening you with life in jail, or worse? Will you be able to live, day after day until this stink is over, without ever worrying, without once feeling those cold tentacles of fear? Because once you let them in, let them touch you, get hold of you, the worrying never stops. Is that possible for you, Rita? Maybe you can live on blind faith. I sure hope so.
I can’t; I’m already worried. For her, for the bikers, for all of us dancing to this fucked-up dirge.
YOU SHITTING ME or what? I mean is this the fucking truth? Tell me, goddam it!” Lone Wolf thunders, leaning forward towards me, his body raised on his knuckles which are white with tension, his breath clouding the glass between us as he gets as close to me as he can. “Tell me for real, motherfucker!”
“It’s true,” I tell him. “Now sit down before they throw your ass into solitary.”
He sits back, breathing heavily, sweating, his shirt is suddenly wet down the front, under the arms. He’s shut all his feelings down for months, now he has to deal with them again.
“I don’t fucking believe it. I do not believe this.”
“Believe it.”
We look at each other. All of a sudden he breaks into a huge smile.
“Glory hallelujah. Maybe there is a God.”
Maybe there is, although I don’t think that matters one way or the other in this case.
“So now what? How soon do we get out of here?”
“You don’t. Not for a while.”
“But she turned her story. She’s their whole case,” he says, un-comprehendingly. “Fair’s fair … isn’t it?”
“Fair doesn’t count. You ought to know that by now.”
“But still …”
He’s scared again, already. A minute of euphoria; less. Then what it is.
I explain how it’s going to work. (Later today, I’ll go through this same exercise with the other three. I’d asked to be allowed to see them all at once, that this was a special one-time situation, but my request was summarily vetoed, especially since I didn’t give the warden particulars, which I have to save for the court.) I’ll take Rita Gomez’s video to the Supreme Court and petition for a motion for a new trial, based on this recanted testimony, which was suppressed during the original trial. Once they’ve granted it, assuming they do, I’ll move that the charges against the bikers be dropped because her stuff won’t be usable anymore, without it the state doesn’t have a case, and anyway the whole original trial was riddled with perjury and coercion. I feel pretty confident that’s the way it’ll go; Robertson wanted to burn these puppies, but he’s not an idiot.
“So how long?” he asks.
“Count on six months,” I answer. “It could be less but the wheels of justice grind slowly, especially when the state’s got egg all over its face.”
“Yeh.”
He can do six months standing on his head. They all can. He doesn’t like it, none of them will, but at least they can see the end coming.
I look at him.
“How are you?”
He looks back at me; the look I remember from before, when we first met.
“Innocent, man. Like I always was.”
IN THE SUPREME COURT for the State of New Mexico. Order: Upon motion by the defendants in the State vs. Jensen et al., the Court hereby remands this matter for a hearing on defendants’ motion for a new trial.
SIMPLE ENOUGH STATEMENT. Of course, it took two months to get to it. I couldn’t get hold of Paul, that first night back, but Tommy and Mary Lou and I celebrated, the three of us far into the night, then she and I the remainder. She has a nice place, the new girl of my dreams, just north of town, an adobe house with a stellar city view, new but authentic, exposed piñon vegas running the length inside. I stayed that night; the first time I slept at a woman’s place since Holly left me (which technically was my place, too, although she claimed otherwise). The first of many, hopefully. So it’s the next morning, I’m in Robertson’s office, he kept me waiting forty-five minutes, what else is new, old friendships may die hard but they do die. I’m sitting across from him, trying not to look like the cat that ate the canary, he’s impatient, ‘I’ve got a full schedule today, this better be important.’ Wordlessly, I hand him the affidavit.
He starts to skim it, stops short, looks at me with alarm, reads it slowly. I’m watching him, sipping my coffee. He reads with concentration, a couple times flipping back to check something he’s already read. It’s a longish document, twenty-odd pages, he takes his sweet time. I’m in no hurry; he can take all morning if he desires, I want this to sink in.
He finishes it. It falls from his fingers to the desk. I reach over, deftly pick it up, put it back in my briefcase. He steeples his fingers, looking at the far wall, the ceiling. Getting his thoughts together as best he can. I’m patient; I can sit him out this time.
“Can I have a copy of that?” he asks.
“At the appropriate time.”
“When are you going to file it?”
“This afternoon if I can. Otherwise tomorrow.”
He nods.
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” he says finally.
“It’s a good thing for my clients you’re not me,” I answer. “Why not?”
“Because it’s a pack of lies. A complete and utter fabrication. It stinks to high hell, Will, and it could ruin your career.” He picks up a pencil, nervously twirls it between his fingers
like a drum majorette.
“I disagree.”
We stare at each other, a Mexican face-off. The psychic wall between us at this moment is thicker and more impenetrable than the real glass one that separates me from the bikers in prison.
“I’m a liar,” he says flatly. “A perjurer. A fabricator of false evidence. A criminal.”
“No one’s saying that,” I reply. Cautious, boy, don’t get into a spitting match with him.
“It says so.” He points to my briefcase. “That rag in there.”
“The two cops. Moseby. Not you.”
He shakes his head. “The buck stops here,” he intones, finger stabbing hard on his desk, “my department, my men.” Long exhale of breath. “My life.”
“You were duped.”
“Screw you, Will.”
“I’m serious, John. Your own people sandbagged you. Can’t you see that? For Godsakes, can’t you see that now? Finally?”
His face is turning red, the veins bulging in his forehead. If he wasn’t such a physical specimen I’d be scared for him. I’m already scared for me.
“I’m supposed to take the word of some goddam whore, some chippy greaser who can’t add two and two, I’m supposed to now believe that everything she said was a lie, that now she’s telling the truth, that my number one deputy and two of the best men in this county’s sheriff’s office, who between them have forty or more years of experience, with a couple hundred commendations, not a blemish on either one’s record, I’m supposed to believe they concocted the whole thing?”
“I do,” I answer as calmly as I can. I’m very calm; I know I’m right, I know he knows it, or at least is harboring strong doubts about everything in this case. About his own judgment.
“Funny,” I muse, pressing my luck a tad. Sometimes I just can’t help myself. “When she was your witness she was a paradigm of truth. Now she’s a chippy liar.”
“Shit.” He waves that off. “Don’t confuse the issue.” He looks at me like I just stepped in a pile of dogshit and tracked it into his office.
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