Rose-colored Glasses

by Downing, John

  “Look, anyway,” Langley told him, and hung up before Wickersham could object further.

  Then, after locking up the office, he headed home.

  ***

  Had DeBrough and Luray met at Columbia? Assuming they had met at all, Langley thought, it would have had to have been at Columbia. It would be pushing coincidence too far for them to have met subsequently.

  In his four years at Columbia, he had bought one yearbook, that of his freshman year, 1938/39. He had purchased it, at a price he could ill afford, to show to his father, in the hope that the feel of the book in his hands, its actual physical weight, might succeed where abstract words had failed, in changing his father’s attitude about college… His father had never gotten to see the book. Between the time Langley ordered the book and the time he received it, his father died of a heart attack.

  Langley rooted through two dressers and an old steamer trunk before finally locating the yearbook in a box in the bottom of his closet. Wiping it clean of dust, he carried it into the dining room. He sat down at the table to read it.

  As he thumbed through the pages, he felt no strains of nostalgia stirring around inside him. Columbia was where he had bought several college credits; Ralston’s market on Seventh Avenue was where he bought his groceries. He felt no more allegiance to the former than he did to the latter.

  He concentrated on the photographs of the various clubs and organizations. DeBrough appeared in several of the pictures. There was no way he could have been an active member of so many groups. Langley guessed that in many cases DeBrough had just showed up for the team pictures. Already the politician.

  If there were several pictures of DeBrough, there was not one of Luray. And so none of them together. DeBrough had not changed that much over the years. But perhaps Luray had. And then the look that Langley had gotten of Luray, with his head all swathed in bandages, hadn’t been all that clear to begin with. Could he have passed Luray’s photograph and not recognized him? Perhaps. But the team pictures were labeled: row 2, So-and-So, Whatshisname, etc. Luray’s name hadn’t turned up in any of them.

  But finally it did. Charles Luray had been a member of the Slide Rule Club. Unfortunately, the Slide Rule Club was one of the few clubs DeBrough had not belonged to.

  In the back of the book were the candid photographs. Most of these had been taken on the University grounds, at St. Paul’s Chapel, in the gymnasium, on the campus greens; a few at Baker Field. Again, several of the pictures featured DeBrough. “Featured” being the operative word: in virtually all of the photographs, DeBrough was clearly the center of attention. Even as a callow youth, he had learned the knack of surrounding himself with toadies ever ready to fawn over him. Scanning the faces of the various toadies, Langley compared them to the likeness of Luray he’d seen in the photograph of the Slide Rule Club.

  No match. No. No. No. Page after page, there was no match. None of the photographs that showed DeBrough also showed Luray.

  And then he found one that showed them both.

  ***

  To make amends for his behavior of a week earlier, he had promised to take Fay to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. Today was her last day of school; she didn’t have to go back to work until January 2. The next morning they were to drive up to her parents’ home, where they planned to stay through New Year’s. Which left only tonight to see the tree. Fay had told Langley that she would meet him at his apartment sometime in the late afternoon, depending upon when the staff party ended. Not knowing when she would arrive, he had not gotten dressed. He answered the door in his robe and slippers.

  “Owen,” she said when she saw him, “you’ve forgotten again.”

  “No, I haven’t. Give me a minute to get ready and we’ll be on our way.” As she stepped past him into the apartment, he noticed the mantle of white on her shoulders. “Is it snowing?” he asked foolishly.

  “‘Is it snowing?’” Playfully she flicked some snow in his direction. “Where have you been, Owen? It’s been snowing all afternoon.” Moving past him, she entered the dining room. “Are you trying to save on your electric bill, Owen?”

  “I hadn’t realized how dark it’d gotten.” He switched on the light. “Would you like something to drink?”

  She nodded. “Something hot.”

  He went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. When he returned to the dining room, he found Fay bent over the yearbook.

  “I’ve been looking at your book, Owen. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “I’m not in it,” he told her.

  In truth, he wasn’t. Busy with work and study, he hadn’t had the time to join any clubs. Nor had he wound up in any of the candid photographs. The expression on Fay’s face asked why in that case he was looking at the yearbook.

  He opened the book to the page containing the photograph he had found earlier. Taken on the steps of the library, it showed nine people lined up in a ragged row facing the camera.

  “DeBrough,” Langley said, indicating the figure in the middle. “And that,” he said, pointing to the third person to DeBrough’s left, “is Charles Luray.”

  Looking up from the book, Fay stared at him. “What does it mean, Owen?”

  He’d spent the hours since finding the picture asking himself that same question. If he’d found no photograph showing DeBrough and Luray together, it might have been possible to infer, given DeBrough’s ubiquitous presence on the campus, that the two of them had not known each other. Conversely, if he’d found a photograph of the two of them shaking hands, it would have been fair to conclude that they had not only known each other but known each other well. But this picture…

  “The photograph means nothing,” he said. “By itself.”

  After finding the picture he’d wondered what else he would find, if he looked. He took out the list Wickersham had given him of the places where Laurel Rose had worked. He had examined the list a dozen times previously, and nothing of note had registered. But this time, he no sooner glanced at the paper than a name jumped out at him. PrestonPierce.

  “PrestonPierce,” he told Fay now, “is the law firm that represents the DeBrough family. Laurel Rose worked there for two weeks starting the first of February. A week or so later, she and this guy”‌—‌he pointed to DeBrough in the photograph‌—‌“are caught in a compromising position by her roommate. Three or four weeks after that, Laurel is ‘attacked,’ and ‘rescued’ by Burden. They marry. Six months later he murders Laurel. We know that because this guy”‌—‌he pointed to Luray‌—‌“was there to witness the crime.”

  Fay’s expression darkened. “What are you saying, Owen?”

  What, indeed? he thought.

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Not a thing… What time is it getting to be? I’d better get dressed if we’re going to go and see the tree.”

  “The tree can wait, Owen. I think we should talk about this. Are you saying what I think you’re saying, that you think Burden might be innocent?”

  “Were you listening before: how Luray is linked to DeBrough, who is linked to Laurel, who is linked to Burden, who is linked to Luray? All those connections…” Langley said.

  “You didn’t answer my question, Owen. Do you think Burden is innocent?”

  He couldn’t meet Fay’s eyes. He felt like a horse’s ass even entertaining the idea of Burden’s innocence.

  “I don’t know,” he said at length. “I think what bothers me most is that I will probably never know. The evidence points to Burden because a) he did it or because b) he was framed. A frame is useless unless the framer covers his own tracks completely. As we speak, I have my investigator out looking for evidence that will link DeBrough to Luray. He told me it was a waste of time, and he’s right. He can look from now until Hell freezes over and he’ll find no evidence linking the two of them. Because it doesn’t exist? Or because DeBrough has successfully covered his tracks?”

  Fay said, “A week ago you didn’t think Burden was i
nnocent.”

  “A week ago I didn’t know what I know now.”

  “Coincidences,” Fay said, dismissing with a wave of her hand both the photograph and the list.

  “Coincidences?” he said, annoyed at the offhand way in which she shrugged off questions he had spent all afternoon agonizing over, questions that troubled him even now, questions that he feared would trouble him the rest of his life if he wasn’t able to come up with better answers for them than he had so far.

  “In real life, coincidences happen all the time.”

  “Don’t you think there’s just a bit too much here to be coincidence?”

  “Have you considered the possibility that Burden knew that his brother and Luray were in college together?”

  “And I thought Burden was paranoid,” he said. But even as he said this his mind began to reel with speculations spawned by the question Fay had just asked.

  Burden could have elicited from Luray the fact that he and DeBrough had gone to college together. Had he in fact planned the murder of Laurel Rose around that knowledge? Was that why he killed her so close to the place where he worked, the place where Luray worked, anticipating that the connection between Luray and DeBrough would be brought out during the trial, confident that he could count on the revelation to plant the seed of doubt in the mind of at least one juror? Of course Burden couldn’t be the one to disclose the connection between DeBrough and Luray. That would be too obvious. Better if it was the lawyer who unearthed the connection in the course of his investigation. Then not only might the schnook begin to believe that he was defending an innocent man, but so believing, he could be relied upon to fight all the more zealously in that man’s defense. Now, Langley thought, who was being paranoid?

  He shook his head. His mind was positively spinning from the mental contortions he had put it through. Enough.

  He looked at his watch. “If we’re going to see the tree,” he said, “we’d better get going.”

  “I think we should postpone the tree until tomorrow night,” Fay said.

  “Tomorrow night we’re going to be in Connecticut, remember?”

  “I don’t think so, Owen. Take a look out the window.”

  He crossed the darkened living room to the window and looked out. The snow had covered everything, and it was still coming down heavily. He heard Fay enter the room behind him.

  “I think we should delay our trip until Sunday, maybe even Monday,” she said. “For tonight, why don’t we just sit here and enjoy the snow.”

  They sat in the dark by the window, watching the snow fall. For some time they sat in silence. Fay was the first to speak.

  “Owen.”

  He looked at her. The room, lit by the reflection of the streetlights off the snow, was bright enough that he could see her clearly.

  She said, “You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Owen.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about. “Doing what to myself?”

  “Second-guessing yourself. You did the same thing after you defended‌—‌I forget his name, the man who murdered his daughter.”

  “Gregor Mylong was his name. What are you talking about, Fay?”

  “We went out together the night you won the case, do you remember? I thought you’d be in a celebratory mood.” She shook her head. “You were not a happy man that night.”

  It just happened that the Mylong case had wrapped up on a day that they had made plans to go out together. In the course of the evening, he told Fay how the case had come out. She had wanted to celebrate large. Pretending modesty, keeping his true feelings (he thought) to himself, he requested that they keep their celebration low-key. In the end, they had toasted his success with a glass of champagne.

  “You felt bad,” Fay said, “that you bad gotten a guilty man, a man you thought was guilty, off. What made it worse was that, right up until the verdict, you had allowed yourself to believe he was innocent.”

  He was amazed at the accuracy of her reading of the situation. “This case is different,” he said.

  “How?”

  “In Mylong’s case, it didn’t really matter whether he was innocent or not. My job was to make the jury think he was innocent, which I succeeded in doing. In Burden’s case, unless I can prove that he is innocent, prove it with concrete, irrefutable facts, he’s going to be convicted and executed.”

  “Do you actually think it’s possible that Burden was framed?” Fay asked, her tone of voice indicating she thought the idea preposterous.

  “In the world you and I live in, no; such a thing could never happen,” he admitted. “In Burden’s world…”

  “We all live in the same world, Owen.”

  “I’m not so sure we do,” he said. “In our world, there’s love and kindness. They don’t exist in Burden’s world. You and I have people who care about us. Nobody has cared about Burden in his life. In his life, Fay. He’s been fucked over‌—‌” He broke off. “I’m sorry.”

  Fay said, “I’ve heard the word before, Owen. I’m a schoolteacher, remember? ‘Fucked over’ by who?” she asked.

  “By everybody. His natural mother dumped him‌—‌I mean, literally, dumped him‌—‌in a garbage can. His adoptive mother and brother ignored him, and that’s putting it kindly. His wife‌—‌the love of his life, Laurel Rose‌—‌used their marriage bed to cheat on him with another man. Only this morning, I found out that two of his guards have been abusing him.”

  “It’s one thing to sympathize with Burden, Owen, to try to understand how he came to be the way he is. It’s another thing to let your sympathy cloud your judgment.”

  “Give me some credit,” he said.

  “Owen, if you had conclusive proof that Burden was innocent‌—‌or, conversely, that he was guilty‌—‌would it change the way you defended him?”

  What was she getting at?

  “You would do your best for him in either case, wouldn’t you? That’s what you have to do, Owen: put aside all thought of guilt or innocence and just do your best for him. Then whatever happens, happens.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “I know,” Fay said. “But if you can’t do it, Owen, then maybe you should consider another line of work.”

  He glanced out at the falling snow. “I’ve thought about that,” he said.

  She didn’t seem surprised by his admission. “And?”

  “I’ve just toyed with the idea,” he said, backing away from the thought. But then, turning to her, he asked, “If I were to give up the law, how would it affect us, our marriage plans?”

  “What has it got to do with our marriage plans, Owen?”

  “It wouldn’t matter to you that you wouldn’t be marrying a lawyer?”

  “Well,” she said, “that depends on what you did instead, Owen. If you intend to become a bum and collect sea shells by the sea shore, then, yes, you can consider our marriage off. On the other hand, I would be much happier married to a bricklayer who comes home smiling than I would be to a lawyer who comes home depressed and grumpy.”

  He couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed by the flippant way in which she had responded to his question or, as she clearly hoped would be his reaction, to allow himself to be appeased by it. He was saved from having to make a reply by the phone, which shattered the silence with a sudden loud brinnngg. He crossed the room in the dark to answer it.

  It was Wickersham.

  “Are you sitting down, O?”

  “Knock it off, Harry; I’m not in the mood. What is it?”

  “Seriously,” Wickersham said. “Brace yourself, O… Burden has escaped.”

  ***

  When, barely eight hours earlier, Langley left Kings County Hospital, Burden was lying flat on his back in a bed, one hand cuffed to the bed frame, and a uniformed cop stationed outside his door.

  Langley had had to plead to have him transferred to the hospital. The warden had wanted to have Burden treated in the pr
ison infirmary. Not until Langley threatened to raise all kinds of hell if it turned out there was anything seriously wrong with Burden did the warden relent. Even then, Langley guessed, it was less concern for Burden’s welfare that moved him to change his mind than fear of the scandal that would result if Burden should die from wounds inflicted by prison guards.

  Langley’s fears had turned out to be well-founded. At the hospital, the doctors determined that Burden had three cracked ribs and possible internal injuries. In their eyes, his condition was serious enough to warrant his being kept overnight for further observation.

  And now he had escaped!

  “How the hell could that happen, Harry?”

  “Apparently, he got the jump on the cop guarding him. He stole some clothes belonging to a doctor and walked out wearing them. He stole the cop’s gun, by the way, meaning he’s considered armed and dangerous.”

  Meaning he’ll be shot on sight, Langley thought. He remembered the question Burden had asked him that morning. Would he, Burden had wanted to know, be held responsible for criminal acts committed while he was in prison? Like killing two guards. How about killing the cop guarding him in the hospital?

  “What did he do to the cop, Harry?”

  “Bopped him on the head with his own gun. The cop’s got a king-size headache, but otherwise he’s okay.”

  Langley sensed there was more coming.

  “Burden kidnaped a nurse, O. Got away in her car. He may be holding her as a hostage. As you can imagine, there’s a massive manhunt under way for him… You there, O?”

  “This is my fault, Harry.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I arranged to have him transferred to the hospital from the prison.”

  “How does that make it your fault?”

  “I think he was using me, Harry.”

  “I don’t get you, O.”

  “I think it was his plan all along to break out of the hospital.”

  “Are you saying he got himself beat up so he could be transferred to the hospital so he could break out of there?”