NO SAFE PLACE

by Richard North Patterson

  Sitting down, Kerry was depressed. The jurors appeared neither antagonistic nor persuaded, as if reserving both their judgment and their emotions. The quiet of the courtroom seemed distant from the night that Kerry imagined, filled with rage and violence.

  Gary Levin got up—calm, confident, unapologetic.

  “All of us,” he said, “deplore the acts described by Mr. Kilcannon. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because while this is very much Mr. Kilcannon’scase , he himself is not a witness.” Briefly, Levin turned to Kerry. “His witnesses are a damaged woman and an eight-year-old boy.”

  Once more, Levin faced the jury. “Bridget Musso,” he continued, “merits our pity. On the night of her injury she was, as she admits having been throughout her marriage, drunk. She was also what she will be for the rest of her life—epileptic, with frequent blackouts and a propensity for falling.

  “Alcoholicandepileptic .” Levin shook his head. “The combination is devastating. Especially to memory, as Bridget Musso so clearly demonstrated.

  “Forget her performance as a witness, though that should be proof enough. Remember this: within hours of her injury, when the trauma as described by Mr. Kilcannon should have been fresh in her mind and branded in her memory, Mrs. Musso remembered nothing.

  “Ask yourself this: why did she tell the police nothing and yet, a month later, tellMr. Kilcannon more than reason suggests she could remember?”

  Levin paused, hands in his pockets. The jurors seemed troubled and deeply attentive; the woman who had seemed sympathetic to Bridget sneaked a glance at Kerry and then looked away.

  “Which brings us back,” Levin said, “to Mr. Kilcannon and his other witness, a young and impressionable boy.

  “When the police arrived, John Musso told them that he thought his mother was dead.” The lawyer’s eyes swept the jury. “He was able to articulate a child’s worst fear—the death of a parent. Yetat no time did he tell the police how this fearful tragedy occurred.

  “No.” Levin’s voice became sad. “No, he toldMr. Kilcannon .

  “Even more than his mother, John Musso deserves our compassion, and far beyond the life he has led or the damage that may have been done to his sense of who he is. From the moment Mr. Kilcannon brought him to the courtroom, the boy faced a terrible choice.” Levin stopped, pointing to Anthony Musso. “The choice between a father he has not seen for over three months, and the mother he has lived with every day. The choice between a man now locked in jail and the man he has spent hours trying to please—Mr. Kilcannon.”

  Looking around him, Kerry saw Bridget Musso, humiliated and clearly frightened; her husband, watching her with a soulless, heavy-lidded calm; the jury, seeing neither of them, listening to Levin with new intensity. Then Kerry thought of John Musso waiting in a small room with a stranger and a box of toys, and felt a deep rage at Levin’s perversion of a truth he knew in his bones—that the cry for help might take months, or years, or never come at all.

  “I make no excuses,” Levin went on, “for Anthony Musso. I do not claim that he has been a model husband or father, or that this family can or should be a family anymore. But he does deserve what the law accords us all—reasonable doubt. You cannot find that the ‘truth’ presented by Mr. Kilcannon through a troubled child and a woman with no memory is, beyond a reasonable doubt, true.”

  In the jury’s pensive quiet, Levin sat.

  Kerry stood, walking toward the jurors. Suddenly he was less aware of the faces in front of him than of his own memory of a small boy and, as painful and more fresh, his image of this one. The words came to him without thought.

  “You’re eight years old,” he said softly.

  “You’re alone in your room.

  “The apartment is dark, and your mother is drinking. Your father is out somewhere—probably in a bar, you know. You’ve got no one at all.

  “Then you hear the front door open, and know it’s your dad.

  “ ‘Dad’s home,’ ” Kerry said, more quietly yet. “You know other boys in school who would run to the door to give their dad a hug. Butyou —you’re different. You already know better.

  “You hear his voice, and pull the covers over your head. And then you hear your mother scream.”

  Kerry paused, scanning the faces before him—an Italian sanitation worker, an Irish mother of six, a Jewish accountant, the black woman he had been so conscious of.

  “You know who your mother is,” Kerry went on. “You know all her problems. But, God help you, you need someone in your life to love, and to love you back.

  “When your mother cries out, you feel it on your skin, in your stomach. You’re afraid to move.” Kerry lowered his voice. “But you’re alone, and you’re afraid of having no mother.

  “So you crawl out of bed and, against your will, start toward the sound of your mother’s cries.”

  Slowly, with the faltering steps of a small boy, Kerry walked toward the jury.

  “The living room is dark. The only light is in the bathroom.

  “You go there, hoping that no one will see you. Afraid of what you’ll see.

  “What you see is your father pushing your mother down on the toilet, screaming at her while tears run down her face.”

  Suddenly Kerry stood tall.“ ‘Now you can piss,’ ” he shouted at the jury.“ ‘Go ahead. Do it.’ ”

  In front of him, the accountant flinched.

  “You shrink back in fear,” Kerry told him with new quiet. “But you can’t stop watching. Because they’re your father and mother, all that life has given you.

  “He slaps her. Her head hits the wall. He slaps her again. She falls sideways, catching herself on the sink. She bends over the sink, underpants around her ankles.” Kerry’s voice became hoarse and slow, stretching out each word. “And then your father takes your mother by the hair and smashes her face into the sink.”

  The courtroom was hushed. “Your mother staggers past you,” Kerry went on relentlessly. “Her mouth is bloody; she’s spitting pieces of teeth; your father is behind her.

  “So you shrink back into the darkness. Hide, so he can’t see you. Hide, with tears in your eyes, unable to move or make a sound. Hide, until your father leaves.

  “Then the only person you’ve got in the world is lying on the living room floor, and you’re the only one to help her.

  “So you go to the telephone, like they told you in school, and call 911.”

  The Irish woman was crying. Kerry spoke to her now.

  “When the police come,” he said, “you tell them you’re afraid she’s dead. But there’s something locked inside you that you’re more afraid to say. And someone you’re more afraid of than anything in the world.”

  Kerry stood straighter. “Youknow what happened,” he said, and turned to point at Anthony Musso. “Youknow what this man is.”

  In the silence, he stared at Anthony Musso until Musso’s unblinking eyes filled with rage, and then Kerry turned to Bridget Musso. “For three months,” he said, “Bridget Musso has gone without a drink. She’s done her part. You do yours.” Now Kerry almost whispered. “Protect this woman. Protect her son.”

  Across the courtroom, Bridget sat straighter, with a dignity Kerry found touching. At once, he realized that he was the first man in Bridget’s memory ever to speak for her. But when he faced the jury, his last thoughts were of the boy, alone, waiting.

  “Please,” he implored them, “tell John Musso that what his father did was wrong. Tell him he was right to save his mother.” Pausing, he looked at each juror in turn, and then he finished gently. “Tell John Musso that, like other boys, he deserves a life.”

  Without another word, Kerry sat down.

  * * *

  When the jury instructions were finished and court was adjourned, Kerry said goodbye to Bridget and prepared to face a long night of waiting. Then, to his surprise, he saw Clayton Slade at the back of the courtroom.

  “How long were you here?” Kerry asked.

  “Some
of the mom, most of the kid. All of the closing arguments.”

  As usual, his face was inscrutable; Kerry could detect no reaction to what Clayton had witnessed, and had little hope of praise. But he was sure by now that Clayton would be honest and that, for better or worse, his advice would be worthwhile. “Have time for a beer?” Kerry asked.

  Clayton nodded. “All right.”

  Kerry drove them to McGovern’s, edgy at Clayton’s silence. The bar was beginning to fill; Kerry saw a few looks of surprise at the presence of a black man, which he sensed Clayton absorbing without acknowledgment. They sat at a table in the corner and ordered two beers.

  “Well?” Kerry asked.

  The question needed no explanation. Clayton sipped his beer and then sat back, looking steadily at Kerry. “You made some mistakes,” he answered. “You worked well with the boy. But Levin’s appeal’s got a decent chance, and you should have brought out on directwhy Bridget didn’t tell the cops—fear, just like her kid. That was where he began to learn it.”

  Both points were so true that it deepened Kerry’s self-doubt. “So,” he said finally, “who wins?”

  Behind his glasses, Clayton’s eyes became bright, the first hint of amusement. “Oh,” he answered, “that one’s simple. You do.”

  “Why?”

  “Your closing argument.” Clayton’s face was serious now. “At first I thought you were over the top, especially when you acted out Musso shouting at his wife. Then I realized the problem wasme —I’d never try to do what you did, and I’d never seen anything like it. In seconds, you went from an adequate lawyer to connecting with that jury so completely that Levin didn’t matter anymore.” He paused, studying Kerry with open curiosity. “You didn’t rehearse that, did you?”

  Feeling less flattered than disconcerted, Kerry shook his head. “I’ll never do it again, either. It just happened.”

  Clayton took another swallow of beer, thoughtful. He looked around, as if to ensure their privacy, and then looked back at Kerry. “So,” he asked, “what’s domestic violence to you, anyhow?”

  The question was so direct that it took Kerry by surprise; he had never talked about this to anyone. Across the table, Clayton’s look was unabashed. Staring at the bottle of beer in front of him, Kerry found himself saying, “My mother.”

  There was a tremor in his voice, Kerry realized. For a moment, Clayton was quiet. “So that’s the answer,” he said simply.

  Kerry looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Find the thing that you can feel. Because ifyou care, you can make a jury care. That’s the gift you have.”

  Kerry felt a great relief—that Clayton would not abuse his confidence with intrusive questions or instant psychoanalysis; that perhaps Kerry might become a better lawyer than he had imagined. And then he realized something else: that beneath Clayton’s quiet intelligence was a deep, ineffable kindness.

  “Let me buy you dinner,” Kerry said.

  * * *

  The next afternoon, the jury found Anthony Musso guilty.

  For Kerry, the moments following were a blur: the clerk reading the verdict; the polling of the jury; Weinstein setting a date for sentencing. Bridget and John were not there; what Kerry would remember was that Anthony Musso no longer watched anyone but him.

  Then two deputies took Musso away, and Kerry went to the witness room.

  In the corner, John played intently with a Lego set; he did not look up, as if fearing what Kerry might say. Bridget’s red-rimmed eyes were anxious, her body rigid. Kerry sat across from her.

  “Guilty,” he told her.

  Her hand went to her throat; for a moment, it seemed that she could not breathe. Then, tentative, she reached across the table and placed her fingers on Kerry’s wrist. “You saved my life,” she said.

  “Yousaved your life,” Kerry answered. “You, and John.”

  John became still and gave Kerry a sideways glance, as if hesitant to believe. Kerry went to him, kneeling.

  Slowly, the boy faced him. “It’s over,” Kerry promised. “He can’t hurt you now.”

  John’s blue eyes simply stared at him, as if he had not heard. Then he put his arms around Kerry’s neck and, hugging him fiercely, began to cry without making a sound.

  * * *

  When Kerry returned to his apartment, there were balloons Scotch-taped to the door.

  He stood there in surprise, looking for a note, and then opened the door.

  The living room was quiet. Slinging his suit coat over his shoulder, Kerry walked to the bedroom.

  Meg lay naked across his bed, holding out a glass of champagne. Kerry was startled; this was so unlike Meg that it made him uneasy.

  “Congratulations,” she said, and laughed so hard at his expression that she spilled champagne on his sheets.

  Bewildered, Kerry took the glass and placed it on his nightstand, next to the bottle she had chilled for them, then he sat beside her. “How did you know?” he asked.

  “I called your officemate. Clayton.” She took his hand. “I know how worried you’ve been—the other night you hardly slept. I’m really happy for you, Kerry.”

  Kerry looked into her face, and then a sense of well-being overwhelmed his doubts: the Musso case, so all-consuming, was over; Bridget and John were safe, perhaps even saved. His loneliness fell away; Meg had understood, after all, without his needing to explain. And she was here with him.

  “So,” she said, “want to go to the movies?”

  Smiling, Kerry shook his head.

  Meg unknotted his tie; Kerry did the rest. When he was inside her, she wrapped her arms and legs around him, as though she would never let him go.

  Their lovemaking was far sweeter than ever before—intense, passionate, without reservations. Afterward, moist and spent, they lay in each other’s arms, Meg’s head on his chest. “I can feel your heartbeat,” she told him.

  Perhaps, Kerry thought, the difference was inhim . Perhaps it was Meg, patiently waiting all the while, who had caused this. What he knew for certain was that this was what he had always wanted, first for his parents, now for them.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  SEVEN

  In the next year, Kerry brought twenty domestic violence cases and won seventeen.

  This was a dead end, many of his colleagues warned; the smart move would be to mend relations with Flavio and exit this legal ghetto, any way he could. But Kerry did not listen. He visited battered-women’s shelters; worked with the police; lobbied for more progressive legislation. Forcing himself to become a public speaker—a role that did not come easily—he made the rounds of civic groups to call for compassion for victims, harsher punishment for abusers. He was relentless in pursuing his cause, and for the first time, some labeled him ruthless, too willing to put men in jail to advance his own agenda. Though Kerry found this hurtful and perplexing, he rejected the easiest way to soften the impression others had of him—to talk about his mother. Except to Clayton Slade, he never spoke of his own childhood.

  As his involvement deepened, Kerry thought much more about politics, not as a path for his own career—for he did not want the loss of privacy—but because government affected the things that mattered most to him. It was one thing to prosecute abusers case by case, but that did not ensure that their sentences were longer, that there was funding to help their wives, decent day care for their children. He became an early advocate of barring convicted abusers from buying guns; in turn, this spawned an incident that some found admirable, others intemperate and even chilling.

  Kerry had visited the local office of Ralph Shue, a pompous suburban congressman who was positioning himself to run for the Senate but was also a tacit ally of the gun lobby. Kerry’s proposal was, to him, simple and appealing—surely even advocates of gun ownership would agree that wife beaters should not be armed. Finding Shue evasive, then resistant, Kerry inquired whether donations from the NRA had affected his position. When Shue became angry, Kerry snapped, “Life is
cheaper than running for the Senate, isn’t it? Just remember this—the next time one of these animals shoots his wife and kids, you helped him pull the trigger.”

  With that, Kerry stalked from Shue’s office, leaving behind an enemy and an anecdote.

  The follow-up to this, a conversation with Clayton Slade, was something no one ever heard about. But its effects on Kerry were profound. Over a beer, Clayton said, “Shue’s an asshole. But if you can’t disarm every guy who beats his wife, what about trying to educate them?” His tone grew firm. “They can’tall want to be the way they are, Kerry. And even if they do, you come off sounding a little less vengeful.”

  Kerry sat back, silent and withdrawn. For him, his father had been the paradigm of violence without reason. Yet by now Kerry knew that many of those he prosecuted had learned rage from their own abusive fathers; he sensed, too, in a way that made him uncomfortable, that his own anger—channeled into prosecutions—mirrored Michael Kilcannon’s. He made no answer to Clayton. But counseling for men who wanted it became part of every speech, scrutiny of his own motives a greater part of Kerry himself.

  Vincent Flavio began to watch him. At one of their frequent dinners, Liam Dunn remarked, “Vincent can’t believe you’re doing all this for the exercise. He thinks you may be positioning yourself, and it makes him nervous.” Finishing, Liam looked at Kerry shrewdly, leaving him to wonder if the question was also Liam’s own.

  “Why,” Kerry replied, “does Vincent Flavio think everyone wants to behim ?”

  His godfather’s look of appraisal lingered, and then Liam chose to cover this with a smile. “Vincent’s a wee bit paranoid, Kerry, and your last nameis Kilcannon. Ifhe were you, he’d make some use of it.”

  It was the last thing Kerry wanted.

  His own contacts with Jamie were infrequent. His brother visited the office only once, making a courtesy call on Vincent Flavio, as cursory as decorum allowed. “An hour with Vincent,” he observed to Kerry, “is an hour closer to being dead, and seems much the same experience.” He paused, glancing around Kerry’s shabby office. “Still, there’s probably something I can say to him. How much more domestic pathos can you stand?”