“If you bring light down there, it’s not going to look like a creepy basement anymore.”
“As long as we get the ratio right, we can do what we want.”
The two of them argued for a while about this until our food came, and then we lost ourselves to our appetites, piling our plates high with pea-studded steaming rice and torn flaps of naan, ladling the stew from the round copper bowls. There was plenty to go around, and by the end I felt stuffed and a little guilty at my indulgence.
13
SUSPECT
EVENTS DEVELOPED FAIRLY QUICKLY AFTER this. I was present for very little of it and only put the pieces together through interviews, generously granted to us by Penelope, the Wrights, and law enforcement many months later, after it was all over.
Two officers from Fairfax County responded to the call from the Wrights’ residence in Annandale. Report of an unauthorized person trying to gain entry. The unauthorized person was the Wrights’ son-in-law. Officer Colonna waited outside with the suspect while Officer Fields spoke with the owners of the house.
There had been a domestic dispute between their daughter and her husband, the suspect. All parties were vague as to what had transpired.
Violence? No.
The father and property’s deed holder, Frank Wright, had a pending civil suit against his son-in-law. Defamation. That man out there is a monster. He molested my grandson and wrote about it, just to smear our noses in his awful deed. He’s lucky I’m a Christian and obey my Commandments or I would have blown his head off! Mrs. Wright sat by her husband’s side and stroked his hand.
The officer asked to see the permit for the weapon and the weapon itself—he did this less out of protocol and more as a way of keeping them focused, of calming them all down. Officer Fields asked to speak with their daughter and her boy, who seemed to corroborate Mr. Wright’s claim. The events that the boy described had taken place when the boy was eight, in their place of residence at the time, in Queens, New York. The boy was now eleven.
Officer Fields finished taking statements, checked the permit against the serial number on the firearm. Mr. Wright wanted to file a restraining order against his son-in-law. He has no right to be on our property!
There was a hush in the house. A television in the living room played out an episode of Law & Order quietly. Mr. Wright’s statements sounded like outbursts in the relative calm. Everyone else spoke quietly, mirroring Officer Fields, who recently attended a seminar in which he learned to project the emotional calm he was looking to instill in the people he was sworn to serve and protect, something he revealed to Mrs. Wright when she noted his calm demeanor.
Officer Fields told Mr. Wright how to go about filing for a restraining order. Mr. Wright looked for a pen and paper frantically, which Mrs. Wright calmly found and set before Mr. Wright. He began dutifully copying out Officer Fields’s instructions but stopped after a while. It was too complicated. Obtaining documents from this office, filing it with that office, going to court. The shotgun would do for the purposes of restraint.
As Officer Fields was leaving, he told the daughter and her parents that an investigator would be in touch. The three seemed at odds about this: Mr. Wright eager to get the ball rolling, Mrs. Wright and her daughter not so sure.
Are you going to arrest my husband?
At this point, no. We will make sure he leaves you all in peace tonight—but as to the other matter. That’s serious business. We will share what information you’ve provided with PD in your neck of the woods back in New York. They have special investigators to handle cases like yours.
Officer Fields bid them good night and rejoined his partner, who was chumming with the suspect. Officer Fields put on his best intimidating face and told the suspect to vacate the premises.
The suspect started in about his rights to see his son, and Officer Fields told him that he did not own that house and had no right to enter it without the owner’s permission, and if his wife and son didn’t wish to see him right now, it was their right to stay in a house in which he was not welcome—and if he persisted in loitering, they would issue him a desk-appearance ticket, and he’d have to spend the rest of the week going between the police station and courthouse to deal with it.
Penelope is contacted some days later by phone. Detective Ramirez, she writes down on the back of an envelope. He would like to speak with Penelope and Will, to determine whether or not there is merit in pursuing a criminal complaint against her husband.
A week has passed. Penelope has been getting a seven-day earful from her father. It’s having an effect; his rants are beginning to sound like sense. She’s angry now. Furious. At Arthur and at herself. How could she have let this happen? She should fight for the apartment, insist Arthur find a place to stay, but she doesn’t want to negotiate with him. She doesn’t have the strength at the moment, and the truth is she’s not sure she wants to bring her son back there. She calls Rachel, an old high school friend who lives in Brooklyn Heights. Senior year they’d smoke joints on the gym’s roof and gossip about pregnant classmates. As adults, they got together over coffee occasionally to discuss their ailing marriages. Penelope had helped shepherd Rachel through her divorce some months earlier, and Rachel is thrilled now to return the favor—and insists Penelope and Will come stay with her.
Penelope goes to the precinct with Will. The investigators question her about her statement to Officer Fields in Virginia. They want Will to speak with one of their psychologists. Penelope’s not so sure. What if it’s all a mistake? She’s already spoken with a psychologist, and Will has gone back and forth about it.
Has he been known to lie?
No, she says.
Would he have any reason she could think of for making this up?
Because he’s mad at his father.
Detective Ramirez laughs. I can remember being all sorts of mad at my father. Kids fantasize about doing terrible things to their parents. But they don’t actually do them.
Or for the same reason my husband would have for making it up, she says. I don’t know. Statements, psychologists. I just don’t know if this is a good idea. And a trial? I don’t know if I want to put my son through all that. The family through it.
Are you afraid?
Of what?
That if it’s true you’ll be held responsible for letting it happen, presiding over it.
But I’m not responsible.
You’re not? When your husband published his confession, you did nothing.
He said it was a fiction.
And you believed him? You just—took his word for it without asking your own son if it was true?
I didn’t want to confuse him, didn’t want to hurt him!
Who—your son or your husband? Who were you trying to protect? If this goes to trial and your husband’s convicted, you can be tried afterward for negligence—and, if you refuse to cooperate here, obstruction as well.
Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?
I’m laying out your options here.
Do I need a lawyer?
You’re not a suspect, relax. If you cooperate, let us do our jobs, we could make certain guarantees down the line, what avenues we do or don’t pursue if this goes to trial, if your husband is found guilty.
She goes with Will to a room and is joined by a young man—how old is this kid? He asks Will questions. Will answers. There are toys. They have him sitting at a low table. Paper, Crayola pens. Will tries to use several of the pens, but they’re dry.
You need new pens, Will says.
The psychologist hands Will the pen in his pocket. It’s a fountain pen. Have you ever used one of these before?
It’s heavy, Will says. He hefts it in the tips of his fingers. Can I have it?
It was given to me as a gift, the psychologist says. He explains how a fountain pen works—the inkwell, the split nib. He encourages Will to try it out, to write something. Was this a ploy? Was Will given dry markers on purpose? Penelope has to wonder.
Will writes the words: copy, cat, tail, and tattle.
Are you worried about tattling, the psychologist asks. Being a tattletale? Will is reluctant to speak. Tattling on your dad?
His name is Art, Will says.
Is that what you call your father: Art?
That’s his name, isn’t it?
Why don’t you tell me a little about him, the psychologist suggests. What is he like? What do you two enjoy doing together?
I’m not going to say masturbate, Will says. I know that’s what you’re really asking. Do we like to masturbate together, but I’m not going to say that.
Nobody’s asking you to say anything but what you know to be the truth. The psychologist asks Will if he feels embarrassed, if he might be worried about saying the wrong things in front of his mother.
Will says maybe.
The psychologist takes Penelope aside and urges her to let them speak alone for a few minutes, that her presence might be a stressor keeping Will from speaking more freely.
Is there a way I can watch?
Watch?
Through like a two-way mirror or something?
This isn’t an interrogation room.
Penelope agrees. When she is gone, Will says he likes to play the Game Boy with his father, but that his father is not very good. He likes to help his father make pasta and peas, though neither of them is very good at this either. Will doesn’t look at the psychologist; he doodles with the fountain pen. In our apartment we have a roof we can go up on. I have a radio-controlled UFO, which is an unidentified flying object. People believe they’re real, but the government says it’s weather balloons. That’s what I read anyway, and I have to agree. Isn’t that easier to believe? The other option is an entire race of beings from another galaxy, which scientists say is impossible, coming light-years—that’s miles that are so big they measure it in time not space—to get here and do what? Crash-land in a cornfield? You would think if they had the technology to fly all that way they’d be smart enough to know how to land safely. But I guess what if the government shot them down? I’d still say it’s weather balloons. Anyway, we went up on the roof sometimes and flew it out over the edge, which you weren’t supposed to do, but Art said if I wouldn’t tell, he wouldn’t tell.
The drawing that Will has just finished looks unmistakably like a penis, though when the psychologist asks, Will writes the words WEATHER BALLOON with an arrow pointing at its shaft. People think they’re round like a balloon, which in reality they aren’t. They look like enormous penises. Floating in the sky.
Tell me about your father’s book.
It’s supposed to be fiction, but it has a lot of true-life details in it. Like?
Like our names. And our address. I’m not sure about what people say in it because I can’t remember word for word. Like now, I probably couldn’t tell you what I just said. I can’t remember word for word like now I probably couldn’t tell you what I just said. But I couldn’t tell you that ten minutes from now.
Will begins writing down, verbatim, everything he is saying. His speech slows as he attempts this feat, and he loses track of what he’s saying and has to be reminded. There are things—in the book—that—are not true, like—I had a tantrum when I—couldn’t, n-apostrophe-t—stay up to watch ER. It wasn’t ER—and it wasn’t a tantrum. For instance. And there are things—that happened—that did not happen in the book. Like the UFO—on the roof.
What about those things that happened in the book and also happened in real life?
Will writes the words: master, bait.
I know how to spell it, he says. It’s with a u even though it sounds like master. You want to know … did we … take baths.
What does the book say?
It says we did.
And did you?
He has just written his previous line of dialogue, It says we did, and now underlines the two words we did.
Each of the psychologist’s follow-up questions becomes more pointed, more explicit, requiring explicit and pointed responses about what exactly Will and his father did together in the bath. Will stops speaking, stops looking up at his interrogator; instead he keeps his eyes on the page in front of him, letting the pen trace out those words he cannot utter.
The psychologist excuses himself and joins Detective Ramirez, who is sitting with Penelope on a bench outside the room.
I think we have a case here.
Detective Ramirez says, I need your son to come back and speak with one of the child psychologists.
Aren’t you a psychologist?
No, ma’am. This is Detective Carvo. Detective Carvo extends his hand.
You tricked me.
No, ma’am.
But you did. You tricked me and my son into talking to you. You coerced a confession out of him.
Ma’am, we’re not out to get your husband or you or your son or anyone else in your family. We’re just looking for the truth here. This is a preliminary interview, information gathering, nothing more. We don’t want to falsely accuse anyone here. Which is why we need an expert to speak with your son. Do you have an objection to that?
No.
Good.
Detectives Ramirez and Carvo visit Arthur at his place of employment. They would have preferred to speak with him at home. Talking with him here will put him on the defensive, and at this point it would be better to have him comfortable. The tells are easier to spot when they have a baseline of ease. But they must work with what they have. Another case has them elsewhere in the mornings and evenings, and they don’t have time to guess at when he might be home.
A young woman shows them to Arthur’s office. She seems thrilled that Arthur might be in some trouble. There is another man in Arthur’s office, speaking with Arthur.
The detectives ask the man if he wouldn’t mind leaving while they spoke with Arthur privately. They don’t announce themselves as officers of the law. In places like this, they rarely have to. Who else would they be? It’s understood. People make a wide berth, whisper to one another.
When they close the door, they show him their badges. Arthur sits down. Detective Carvo stands; Ramirez sits on the edge of the desk. They take an aggressive tack. They box him in, fold their arms over their chests. It is Arthur who determines this, though he doesn’t realize it. Were Arthur to have remained standing, the officers would have sat, folded their legs wide, presented him with smiles and open palms. But Arthur is telling them, by sitting with his back against the wall, to press down on him.
It’s a tag team of questions. Arthur can’t keep up with the answers. The detectives are civil, polite even, but Arthur can feel an icy burn expanding throughout his body. He’s drowning in a quicksand of questions, he can’t catch his breath. He wants to give them what they want, but what they want doesn’t seem to have to do with answers and questions. He stands, he moves toward the door, but can’t bring himself to ask them to leave, so he leans, arms folded, in the corner by the door.
Arthur is right. The answers don’t matter; whereas Arthur may determine the means, he has no control of the end. It has already been decided, at least as far as Detective Carvo is concerned. The man is guilty. But Detective Carvo is young. Hard work and intuition have gotten him this far. He is still high on his own intuition. Detective Ramirez, on the other hand, has had enough years on the job to have been proved dead wrong enough times to know that they’re not all guilty, that some of them like this character Morel very well may have broken no laws, may in fact be just a run-of-the-mill pervert. Ramirez will reserve judgment because the truth is you never know. People lie, and for all sorts of reasons. It’s not just the perverts, but the victims, too.
Anyway, they’re not looking for concrete answers from this guy. They’re after reactions. Is he outraged? Disgusted? Squeamish? Guilty? Afraid? It’s how he reacts to key words, key phrases, not the answers themselves. They’re looking for him to say something to complicate the story or change it in some way: maybe the boy has a histo
ry of lying, or the wife’s father is a repeat sex offender. But the interview doesn’t yield much.
At the same time, though, Arthur’s reactions do not do him any favors or rule him out as their man. He goes from blank-eyed terror to sneering in the space of twenty minutes. He offers no damning tells, nor does he offer any complicating factors that might take the heat off him. Anyway, this case will come down to the boy’s testimony. Until they have that, short of Arthur’s full confession, it doesn’t matter what he says.
Arthur had questions of his own, raised through these detectives’ troubling line of questioning. Why were they hounding him about the “events” of a work of fiction? Where had they gotten the idea that his novel was true? Who had they been talking to? What had they been told? When had all this happened?
Penelope and Will return to the precinct for an interview with the child psychologist.
The place, in its bustle, seems less threatening this time around. She breathes a little more freely while she waits outside in the hall for her son. She feels safer, as though this place—in that impersonal yet reassuring way of hospitals—has her best interests in mind. That the people here only want to do right by her.
Detective Ramirez is a particularly comforting presence. He brings her coffee, bagels—when they go out for lunch he brings her back a sandwich. He sits down with her while she waits and explains gently, slowly, how everything will unfold. Much the way a surgeon would before a complicated procedure, with the same kindness and gravity. Unless the psychologist comes out and says something unexpected, they will ask Will to make a statement, record it on tape.
Will he also be asked to testify in court, Penelope asks.
It may come to that, yes, but there’s plenty of time before we cross that bridge. First we will talk to, hopefully, Joanna. She is very nice, you’ll like her. She works with the district attorney’s office, and she will help us decide if and how we should move forward.
And if we do?
We will need to have a serious talk with Arthur. We will bring him in here. And at that point, it’s really up to him. (Back to that idea again—Arthur in control of his own destiny or, if not his destiny, than at least the route he prefers to take to hell.) A confession may buy him some jail time. If he’s not willing to confess, then we will have to make our felony complaint without it. We’ll obtain a warrant for his arrest. We’ll need you to be available for the whole gamut of court dates. For the next six months you’ll learn how to make yourself comfortable on these benches, the art of waiting for your name to be called. I don’t want to candy coat things for you, Penelope. It will be a full-time job for you, managing all of this. The court appearances will be stressful, but you have family, I hear, yes?
The Morels Page 26