Invisible Boy

by Cornelia Read

  Having been sworn, I surveyed the courtroom.

  Bost’s outpost was next to the jury. Kyle had explained that this was to shorten the distance defendants were required to walk between the side door and their attorneys’ table.

  Four people were seated at that defense table today, none of them looking at me just yet.

  Albert Williams had the outside chair.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen him. He was a big guy, thick necked, even more broad shouldered than the judge.

  His hair was cut in a high fade, a little boxy on top. He had on a brown jacket, and I could see the scoop of his undershirt outlined below the spread of white collar and knitted black tie.

  Williams held a pencil in his left hand. He wasn’t writing anything on the legal pad in front of him, but he didn’t raise his eyes from its yellow expanse.

  I presumed the tiny woman to his right was his public defender. She had very pale skin and curly hair so dead-black she might have been a midlife-crisis Goth in her spare time. I knew from Kyle that her name was Galloway. He’d said she was good.

  Galloway faded into the background beside the bright plumage of Marty Hetzler, his blue-white mane a stark contrast to her own dull black curls.

  Marty sported a Floridian complexion and a scarlet pocket square to match his tie. Even from this distance I could pick out the hand-stitching along the edges of his navy lapels: Pierre Cardin by way of Kowloon.

  I shifted my gaze to the woman seated closest to the room’s central aisle: Angela Underhill.

  Teddy’s mother wore a demure flowered dress with a lace collar and a row of pearly pink buttons down its front.

  She was staring straight back at me, and she had to be eight months pregnant.

  43

  Angela Underhill continued to glare at me. I glanced pointedly at her belly and then raised my eyes back to hers.

  No backs, no gives.

  Getting knocked up by the guy who beat your first kid to death didn’t strike me as anything to cop a fucking attitude about.

  Bost stood up, walking around from behind the prosecution table.

  She was arrayed in nubby pink bouclé, with a string of pearls, expensively sheer stockings, and a great big fluffy hair bow. I wondered whether she’d gone Hello-Kitty femme to undercut Angela’s church-choir maternity frock.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. Dare,” she said.

  I bent down to the microphone in front of me. “Good afternoon.”

  “We’ve heard testimony this morning from Ms. Cate Ludlam, about her involvement with the renovation of Jamaica’s Prospect Cemetery. Could you tell us how you first came to be there last September?”

  She led me through Sophia’s introduction at that long-ago party, Cate’s and my familial relationship, and everything else leading up to me getting out to Jamaica that first time.

  I glanced out into the gallery, and Cate and Kyle flashed me discreet thumbs-up from the second-to-last row.

  Bost continued, “So the afternoon of September nineteenth was the first occasion on which you visited the cemetery?”

  “It was,” I said.

  The questions continued on for a while, in the same sequence Bost had posed them during my grand jury testimony.

  We’d gotten to the point where I was standing just outside the thicket, having taken Cate’s gloves off.

  “And what did you see when you leaned down to pick up that bottle, Ms. Dare?”

  “Another headstone,” I said.

  Now her questions were a lot more detailed than they had been during the grand jury testimony. I presumed she was trying to get me to establish specific points that might negate questions she expected the defense attorneys to bring up later. But I couldn’t figure out what those would be.

  “Did you see anything besides the headstone at first?”

  “No, but then I jumped to the side a little.”

  “Why was that?”

  “There was a dead rat on the ground.”

  “What did you see then?”

  “Something white. My first thought was that it might be an egg.” My throat was really dry. I would’ve given anything for a glass of water.

  “Did you crawl in further?”

  “Yes. When I’d gotten about a foot closer, I knew exactly what it was.”

  “What was this object, Ms. Dare?”

  “A child’s skull.” I looked at Angela Underhill, who appeared to be fascinated with the blank wall off to her left.

  “How could you tell the skull was that of a child?” asked Bost.

  “He still had his baby teeth.”

  The jury was saddened by that, especially the women.

  Albert Williams just looked bored. He started playing with his pencil, spinning it on the surface of the defense table.

  A male juror was watching him too—as pissed off as I was, from the expression on his face.

  Good.

  “Could you see anything else?” asked Bost.

  “By that point, the rest of the bones as well,” I continued. “They were the remains of someone very, very small.”

  “Did you touch or move anything?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “The moment I realized what I was looking at, I backed out of the foliage and ran to find Cate.”

  “And were the bones completely intact when you found them?”

  “No,” I said, glancing at Teddy’s mother again.

  She had both hands on her belly now, looking down with a little smile on her face. Maybe the baby was kicking.

  Jesus, you dumb bitch, the least you could do is fake a tear for the jury.

  “What sort of damage could you see?” asked Bost.

  “The child’s rib cage had been smashed in. I didn’t think that it could have—” I looked over at the defense table again as Albert picked up the pencil and started tapping it against the table, clenched in his big fist.

  Imagine getting slammed in the chest with that.

  Galloway stilled his hand, and he looked unhappy about it.

  “Could have what, Ms. Dare?” prompted Bost.

  “It just didn’t look like something that could have happened there, at Prospect,” I said.

  Tiny black-haired Galloway leaped up to object. “Objection, Your Honor. Lack of foundation. Ms. Dare has no professional expertise in these matters—”

  The judge cut her off with a basso “I’ll allow it.”

  He turned to me. “Continue, Ms. Dare.”

  I nodded. “I’m not trying to offer any sort of expert opinion, it’s just that the foliage surrounding the little skeleton was extremely dense and close to the ground. I immediately thought that it would have been impossible for someone to have caused that much damage after the child’s body had been dragged inside the bushes. That’s all I wanted to say.”

  “All right,” said Bost. “Let’s move on.”

  I went through the aftermath point by point until we were all waiting inside the chapel for Skwarecki.

  “Did any of you go back out into the foliage that afternoon?” asked Bost.

  “No, we didn’t. The police took over.”

  “When did you and Ms. Ludlam first return to the cemetery after that?”

  “The following week,” I said.

  We went through the Quakers, et cetera.

  “Had Detective Skwarecki asked you to look for anything in

  particular?”

  “Items of clothing, or any scraps of fabric,” I said.

  “And did you find any items like that?”

  “Not personally, no.”

  “Did someone else find an article of clothing?”

  “One of the other volunteers found a child’s shoe,” I said.

  “When did you first see this shoe?”

  “It was after the rest of the group had gone home.”

  “Was the detective with you at the time?” asked Bost.

  I explained about Teddy’s vertebra, found by the Quaker woman.

 
“What happened once the detective had left the cemetery?”

  I explained Mrs. Underhill showing up.

  “Was this before you saw the shoe, or after?”

  “Before,” I said.

  “Did Mrs. Underhill come inside the grounds at any point during this time?” asked Bost.

  “No.”

  “Did you notice anything different when you’d taken your seats on the ground that second time?”

  I went into the sneaker stuff, and one of the jurors gasped about the whole Club Melmac thing, which was probably good.

  “Thank you, Ms. Dare,” said Bost.

  She walked back behind her table and shuffled through papers for a moment, then looked up at the judge.

  “Your Honor,” she said, “as the hour is getting late, I’d like to continue questioning this witness tomorrow morning?”

  The judge agreed to that, and I was sprung for the day.

  I gave Cate a quick hug when I found her out in the hallway.

  “You were great,” she said.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you. How’d it go?”

  “All right, I guess. Want to go across the street and have a drink?”

  “Can’t,” I said. “I’m late for work.”

  It was dark enough outside that the Catalog’s windows were casting squares of light on the air-shaft bricks. At five of eight I had the day’s last customer on the phone. Yumiko was already putting on her coat.

  I hadn’t wanted to miss any of the trial, so Yong Sun put me on the schedule to work every day afterwards until now, when we shut down the phones officially.

  “Yes sir, we have that in stock,” I said. “Would you like the hardcover edition or the paperback?”

  My arm itched inside its cast, but I was getting better at the one-handed typing.

  Another line rang.

  Yumiko rolled her eyes and picked up. “The Catalog. I’m sorry, but our office hours are finished for the day.”

  I started closing out my order. “Yes, sir, you should have that in plenty of time by regular mail. With the plain red gift wrap.”

  Yumiko hit the Hold button.

  “Some fucking rude guy for you, line three,” she said, dropping the receiver back in place.

  “Your total will be twenty-two ninety-seven, with shipping,” I said.

  “Don’t forget to turn the phones off,” said Yumiko.

  She grabbed her purse and walked out into the front office.

  “Certainly, sir,” I said. “You’re very welcome.”

  The hallway door banged shut in Yumiko’s wake.

  I killed the final work call and hit line three. “This is Madeline. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  No answer, but there was some noise in the background so the line wasn’t dead.

  “Dean?”

  Nothing.

  Maybe he’d put the phone down for a second, thinking he was still on hold. I said his name again, louder.

  “No need to yell.” A young man’s voice, though deep.

  “Hi,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s all right,” he said with a little chuckle, mellow, relaxed.

  And nobody I know.

  “You having a good time at your job today, Madeline?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Two-fifty West Fifty-seventh Street. That’s where you work, right?”

  The office suddenly felt really big around me. And empty.

  “By yourself now,” he said. “Thirteenth floor and all.”

  My head whipped toward the windows.

  Oh, right, like he’s levitating in the air shaft.

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “Might want to lock that door, you know? Keep the boogeyman away.”

  I heard something tapping softly in the background. Like a pencil.

  “Albert?”

  Tap.

  But don’t prisoners have to call collect?

  Tap.

  It’s an 800 number.

  Tap.

  Too quiet for jail.

  Another little chuckle and the line clicked dead.

  I dialed Skwarecki, shaking.

  “You’re sure it wasn’t somebody just fucking with you as a joke?”

  “He knew my name, Skwarecki. He knew I was alone in the office. What floor this is.”

  She got serious. “You lock the doors?”

  “Of course I locked the doors. What d’you, think I’m an idiot?”

  I didn’t mention having locked all the windows, too. Just in case the boogeyman had climbing gear. Or a helicopter with a rope ladder he could hang off, down the air shaft.

  “You got any kind of building security,” said Skwarecki, “someone you can call right now?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. But I don’t have the number.”

  “Okay, just stay put. Don’t let anyone in until it’s me, all right? And I mean not Little Red Riding Hood. I can be there in twenty-five.”

  “You are a total goddess, Skwarecki. Thank you.”

  I hung up the phone and sat there shaking.

  “Okay,” I said, to the empty room. “Worst case, I can probably bash someone over the head with my cast.”

  That wasn’t exactly comforting.

  I looked at the phone room’s doorway, toward the front office.

  The dash out to flip the locks had scared me so much I still felt a little like puking.

  “Stop being such a chickenshit, Madeline,” I said aloud. “Jesus.”

  * * *

  Skwarecki got there exactly twenty-three minutes later. My cowering, wussy ass was still firmly planted in the same chair when she started banging on the outer office door.

  “You find a number for Security?” she asked when I let her in.

  “Actually? No. I was too busy trying to figure out how to dig a safe boogeyman-proof hidey-hole in the carpet. And not throw up. In

  terror.”

  “Pussy,” she said.

  “Kiss my ass. And the next time there’s an election for mayor? I’m voting Libertarian.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “They think we should legalize assault weapons and drugs. Tonight is the first time I ever wanted them simultaneously.”

  “Brilliant. And then whoever it was could’ve just walked up behind you and blown your head off with an Uzi instead of running you down with a car.”

  “Not if I saw him first,” I said.

  “You trying for humor there?”

  “No.”

  And then I leaned over and barfed into the wastepaper basket.

  “Cheap date,” said Skwarecki.

  My “Fuck off” echoed weakly up out of the metal bucket.

  “Try not to get any on your cast.”

  Skwarecki and I walked into the courtyard of my building. She was tense, scoping out all the dark corners, which didn’t calm me down any.

  Some graffiti butthead had tagged the bricks next to our front door—the paint was still wet, dripping down into the mortar.

  “ Four of you live here?” asked Skwarecki once we were inside.

  “It’s a two-bedroom,” I said.

  “What d’you pay—six, seven hundred?”

  “Eleven fifty.”

  “You know you could get a whole house for that out where I live?”

  “See, that’s why I’m happy to pay so much, Skwarecki. Just to make sure I don’t end up with a view of your sorry ass out my bedroom

  window.”

  She got me in a neck-lock and roughed up my hair. “G’wan, admit it. You worship my sorry ass. You’d pay extra.”

  I thunked her in the ribs with my cast. “Get the hell over yourself.”

  “Make me.”

  “Piece of cake. I’ll scream ‘Police harassment!’ and puke on your jacket.”

  She let go and I turned on the living-room lights.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said, squinting against the onslaught of orange pa
int. “Who’s your decorator? Ray Charles?”

  “If you’re giving me shit just so I stop being scared, it’s not working.”

  “That paint color? I’m scared myself.”

  “Maybe you should get a carry permit,” said Skwarecki.

  She and Pagan crossed their arms and looked at me.

  Sue was in Vermont skiing. Dean was back in Houston.

  “What the fuck would I do with a gun, you guys? I have a goddamn cast on my shooting arm. My third goddamn cast, by the way.”

  “Might turn out to be handy, someone comes after you,” said

  Skwarecki. “You could just whack ’em over the head with it.”

  “Don’t think that didn’t cross my mind tonight,” I said. “And I sure as shit wasn’t reassured.”

  “Do you think someone is gonna come after her?” asked Pagan.

  Skwarecki looked back at me. “You took the call, you know what he said. The guy mention anything made you think he was for real?”

  “He knew my name, Skwarecki. He knew where I worked.”

  She shrugged. “Might just be some perv, though. You guys ever get that kind of call—bunch of young chicks, working a switchboard?”

  “Some guy wanted to know about my underwear last July,” I said.

  “You ever tell anyone your name on the phone there?” she asked. “Get to chatting a little?”

  “I might have. I don’t know.”

  “Or maybe that other girl told him?”

  “Yumiko? She said he asked for me,” I said.

  “He seem like he knew anything else about you?”

  “Other than how the boogeyman’s gonna get me? No.”

  “Nothing connected to the trial, this case?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “Nothing to indicate it was anything but a prank.”

  She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You’re sure? Play it back through in your head one more time.”

  I did, and still came up with nothing. “All I know is he fucking scared me, Skwarecki. Bad enough to make me call you.”

  “Scares the hell out of me,” said Pagan, “and I don’t have shit to do with this trial. It’s not like we know for sure it was a prank, either. There could be a boogeyman climbing the fire escape as we speak.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said. “But that doesn’t make me any less freaked out.”