Tony’s stomach fluttered. “He did?”
Rice nodded. “Yeah, I mean, no guarantees. But he has a photo of the guy.”
“Oh my God,” Julia said. They shared a glance. There was excitement in her eyes. A photo. A photo was good.
“So now,” Rice said, “we share the bastard’s face. See if anyone knows him.”
* * *
When Detective Rice left, he took their silence with him.
Julia turned her body toward Tony. “Did you know there was a photo?”
“No,” he said.
“Me neither. That’s huge.”
“What did he mean about the kit not being useful?”
“Oh,” Julia said. She set down her coffee. “I think he means that there might not be DNA in the kit. The hope is that they got the guy’s DNA. From Nick.”
“I get it,” Tony said. That was enough. He didn’t want to think about that. “So if that takes a month . . .”
“I know,” she said. “It’s all going to take a long time.”
“If they find him, what comes next?”
Julia picked up her coffee again. “I guess it depends. They might arrest him right away, might wait until they indict him, with a grand jury. I don’t know how they make their decisions—I think every department does it their own way. I never had a sex case in Salisbury.”
Tony frowned. “A sex case?”
“Oh.” She winced. “That’s what people called them. Sometimes. I mean a sexual assault case.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”
Tony turned his eyes back to his sandwich. It stung, to hear her say something like that. The words felt callous and gross.
“It’s just shorthand for a case that involves a sex crime,” she said. “I know what happened to Nick wasn’t sex.”
When Julia had been a defense attorney, she talked about a lot of her cases in broad strokes, but he couldn’t remember her talking about any that involved sexual assault.
“So you’ve had one before in the towns you covered?”
“Nothing specifically like this,” she said.
“But sexual assault cases?”
She hesitated. “Yes.”
She hadn’t talked about those cases at home. Maybe she’d been ashamed. He’d never thought about it before, but the thought of Julia defending rapists . . . it was off-putting, to say the least.
Not that she’d had much choice over the cases she got. That wasn’t how it worked. She had been a court-appointed lawyer, paid by the state to defend people who were poor enough to qualify for a free lawyer. Mostly she talked about her juvenile clients—teenagers who’d been charged with crimes—but he knew she defended adult criminals, too. Then there were the parents in the child protection cases . . . parents who’d abused or neglected their kids so much that the state had stepped in. He knew she helped those people, but he couldn’t understand how she could face them, why she would do that kind of work. So, she didn’t talk about it. She and Tony got along best when they both pretended it wasn’t part of her job.
Maybe she hadn’t been ashamed to defend rapists. Maybe she just hadn’t trusted Tony not to judge her for it.
And maybe she’d been right. That she could look those people in the eye and treat them like they were anyone else, regardless of what they were accused of . . . he might have judged her for it before. Might have judged her just now, in his mind a moment ago. But he was lucky, he realized. So lucky to have a wife who was calm in the face of darkness.
“How bad is it going to be?” he asked.
“For Nick?”
Tony nodded.
She looked at him like she was weighing how much truth he could handle. “Honestly,” she said, “I think it’s gonna suck.”
9
Julia Hall, 2015
The house was ready for Nick’s arrival. Seb was all set up to sleep in Chloe’s bedroom. There were fresh sheets on Seb’s bed for Nick. Tony and Julia had even picked up some of Nick’s favorite snacks on the way to the hospital. All that was left was to sit through a discharge meeting with Ron and Jeannie.
Whenever someone left the structure and safety of hospitalization, it was important to have a meeting where the patient and his people made a plan for what would come next. Julia had been to discharge meetings before, but always as someone’s attorney. Nick’s meeting felt different.
It was happening in a small conference room in the behavioral health unit. As they all sat around the sterile table, Dr. Lamba told the Halls about Nick’s treatment plan going forward.
“We’ve connected him with a therapist about ten minutes from campus,” she said. “It’ll be easy for him to get a ride there when he eventually moves home.”
Jeannie turned to her son with wide eyes. “You’ll stay with us first?”
“Don’t he have school?” Ron’s question caught Julia off guard. Until that moment, he’d looked like he was on another planet, staring at the center of the table with glassy eyes. The subtext of his question was clear: he didn’t want his son coming home with them. Judging by the bready smell of beer wafting off him, he wasn’t handling the news of Nick’s assault well.
“My professors said I can take some time,” Nick said. “I’m gonna figure it out as I go.”
“Mummy can drive you to school,” Jeannie said with a hint of baby voice.
Julia looked to Dr. Lamba, hoping she would deliver the news that Nick had already decided to come stay in Orange.
“Tony’s house is much closer to the school and his new therapist,” Dr. Lamba said.
And unlike your house, Julia thought, it’s emotionally stable.
Jeannie turned to Julia. “But you have the kids.”
“They’re excited for their uncle Nick to stay with us,” Julia said.
“So you knew.”
Julia felt herself flushing. “Yesterday we talked—”
“Right,” Jeannie said. “Yesterday. See, we didn’t know yesterday.” She motioned to herself and Ron. “We get a little meeting on his way out the door of the hospital. Been here since Saturday, we get the call Monday.” She turned to Dr. Lamba now. “And I know, ‘he’s an adult, he makes his own decisions,’ but did it occur to you that he is still a child mentally?”
Tony cut in. “What are you even talking about?”
“Not even old enough to drink,” Jeannie said. “Not an adult in the eyes of the law.”
“He is, though,” said Dr. Lamba. Her face was calm, but a hardness had edged into her voice.
“You’re all sitting here,” Jeannie said, “pretending we’re a little team, thinking we’re too stupid to notice you’ve all been making the decisions for him without us.”
“I’m making the decisions.” Nick spoke so loudly that Julia started.
Jeannie shut her mouth.
Nick looked at his mother with a miserable frown. Even on the third day of seeing him with those bruises, his appearance was jarring. It was what her imagination did with the markings. Fists had pummeled his face. Hands had squeezed his throat.
Nick lowered his voice. “I’m making the decisions, and I didn’t want to tell you yet. It was too much.”
Jeannie’s eyes spilled. She dug a tissue from her purse.
Under his breath, Ron said, “Who do you think put that idea in his head?”
Julia knew Tony would take the bait, but she put a hand on his thigh anyway, hopeful he’d let it slide.
“Seriously?”
“You show up on your high horse like you always do, tell him he don’t need us—”
“You wish I told him; he knows he doesn’t need you.”
“Stop it, Tony!” Nick groaned and pushed his chair back. “I can’t fucking breathe in here.” He turned to Dr. Lamba. “Do we have to do this?”
“No,” she said, “if it’s not goi
ng to be helpful.”
The room had fallen quiet, and with any other group Julia might have thought people were considering whether they could all behave and finish the meeting. But not with this crew. She knew the classic Jeannie exit was brewing.
“Fine,” Jeannie said. “We’ll go, then.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Cut right out of his life like you all wanted, until he’s strong enough to think for himself.” Tears streamed down her face as she moved to the door.
“I’ll never forgive you,” she said, maybe to all of them. “I’ll never forget this as long as I live. No matter how hard you try to pretend it didn’t go down like this, I will never forget, never forgive.”
Jeannie opened the door and left.
Ron paused in the doorway and said loudly, “Typical,” then followed her out.
No one spoke for a moment.
“And that is why I made you call Tony,” Nick said to Dr. Lamba. He meant it to be punchy, and everyone laughed tightly, but Julia felt like crying.
Nick deserved better. He deserved to be cocooned in love, told nothing was his fault, promised he’d be kept safe. Instead, he had Ron and Jeannie.
And Tony. He had Tony, too.
10
John Rice, 2019
The descent had been swift after his retirement. Nearly overnight, John Rice became an old man, all dressed up and no place to go, just waiting for the young people to arrive—his daughter, his grandkids, and today it had been Julia. He had wandered the house he’d already cleaned, sweater tucked in, belt resting on the bones of his hips, straightening picture frames and waiting for the sound of her car.
When he saw her walking up the front path, he felt ugly and self-conscious, angry, hopeful, so many things. He welcomed her in like he’d pictured doing a million times, but he never came close to setting their meeting until a couple of weeks ago. It took that last appointment with his doctor to force himself to pick up the phone and try her old cell number. The Lord must have known how badly he needed to speak to Julia before his time came, because her number was unchanged. Now that she was here, it was hard to know where to begin.
When he had breakfast with his friends or called his daughter, he could cut to the chase of what he wanted to get at. This would be different: Julia wouldn’t want to talk about where he was heading. He would have to force her along, almost like an interrogation. He would have to show her, on his own, that talk was her only option.
“The way it all ended, with me and your family and the Ray Walker situation, I mean. I’ve never felt good about it.”
She sat in the recliner beside him, sipping at her tea in silence.
“I guess I should have known it would be a complicated case. Sexual assault cases have their unique challenges.”
She nodded but kept her eyes on the floor in front of her.
“But it had felt so straightforward at the beginning. I couldn’t believe how fast we found him.”
In the week following Nick’s attack, Rice and Megan O’Malley, another detective from the department, interviewed the motel staff. Collected the bloody bedsheets and a towel from the bathroom. Tracked down the woman who rented the room; she’d been paid to do it by a handsome man who approached her where she’d been panhandling near the motel. They interviewed the bartender at Jimmy’s and a few customers who’d been there that night. Jimmy’s was cash only, so there was no record of a name, and no one knew the man who’d called himself Josh—the man Rice now knew to be Raymond Walker.
That first week, O’Malley hit the books and made a couple of calls to try to figure out what kind of rapist they were looking for. Since Nick was beaten up so badly, O’Malley thought they were probably looking for one of two types of rapists: one driven by anger, or one driven by sadism. If their suspect was driven by rage, he’d likely have a criminal history and be known for outbursts. If he was a sadist, well, there were two types, but given the damage to Nick’s body, he was probably the overt type—the type who tried to cause his victim pain. Ditto the criminal history, and probably low intelligence. These were imperfect generalizations, but they were a start.
All that said, they knew Nick’s assailant was likely to be a guy who flew under the radar. A man whose charisma would blind people to his less-attractive characteristics.
When they did find Walker, the looks and the charm were apparent. At the time, Rice and O’Malley didn’t know how far off they were on the rest.
11
Julia Hall, 2015
The first few days with Nick in the house were long ones.
On Monday after the discharge meeting, they brought Nick to his apartment in Salisbury so he could pack up some clothes. Julia put on a CD in the car, and they drove without speaking, listening to Alicia Keys. They reached Orange and drove through the town center, past the historic manors and the elementary school. Past the two rival gas stations, the library, the park. Past the housing developments creeping into the country. They carried Nick out to the farmland, where their house sat on the edge of a field their neighbor owned.
The kids had been excited for a long-term sleepover with their uncle, but the uncle who arrived that Monday was not his usual playful self, and they quickly grew indifferent to his presence.
On Tuesday, Nick borrowed Julia’s car and went to his first counseling session. He returned to the house raw and edgy, sniping at Tony and crying abruptly without warning. To his credit, he reserved these small outbursts for when the kids were outside or upstairs.
The next two days, Nick seemed like a ghost, drifting in and out of rooms, either unsure of how to interact with the family or too tired to bother. Although Julia worked from home, she had a home office, so at least she was out of his way during the daytime.
Her workspace was at the end of the hallway on the second floor with the bedrooms. Each morning, after Tony had left for his office in Portland and the kids had been delivered to the school bus, Julia took the stairs to the second floor and paused on the landing to listen. Nick had slept late each morning, once into the afternoon. After her daily check on Nick, she made her way down the hall to her tiny study, closing the door as quietly as she could.
The room had once been a large, mostly useless closet on the second floor of the house. Five years ago, Julia had returned from the movies with her best friend, Margot, to find that the outing had been a ruse: while she’d been gone, Tony had converted the closet into an office for her. At the time, she was pregnant with Seb, Chloe’s stuff was everywhere, and Julia was trying—and failing—to do her new job in policy from home. In a single, frantic afternoon, Tony had emptied the closet, painted the walls lavender, and assembled bookshelves and a standing desk with an adjustable stool. He was covered in sweat when she got home from the movies.
Some days when Julia opened the office door, she swore she could smell the fresh paint again, and for a second she was transported back to that day. A day she had been exceedingly grateful to have a husband who had never met a problem he wouldn’t try to fix. In truth, it was not always her favorite trait of Tony’s.
On Friday, late morning, she was standing in the open doorway of the study, mind adrift in the history of the room, when she heard Seb’s door creak open behind her. She turned and saw that Nick had gone down the hall toward the bathroom.
“Hey, good morning!”
Nick startled violently, spun to face her.
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry.” Julia stepped into the hallway.
His face ran white, but he brought a hand to his chest in relief. “It’s fine,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Really,” he said, before she’d finished saying the word. He smiled and rubbed at the back of his head. “Mind if I shower?”
“No, of course not.”
He started to turn away, then pivoted back. “And I have counseling today.”
“I know,”
she said. Julia could feel her cheeks growing warm, her body continuing to register what she’d done. She’d spooked him, yelling out like that. He was probably extra sensitive to things like loud noises right now. He’d suffered a trauma, and she should have known better. Stupid. “You can take my car again. I don’t need it back until two.”
Nick nodded.
She stood in the hallway for a while after he closed the bathroom door. It was invasive, she knew that, but she was listening for sounds of crying. There was nothing, and then the shower came on.
She went back to her study and closed the door.
* * *
A bit after two, Julia opened that door to a silent house. She called out and heard nothing. Wandered the house. The driveway was empty. She called Nick’s cell, but he didn’t answer.
Therapy could have run long. Nick might just be taking time to himself. He kept saying he was fine but she knew he wasn’t. There was no way he could be. He was trying so hard to act normal for them. She wished he would stop—just let it out. No good would come from hiding how he was feeling, not from his family.
She should have been relieved to be alone—free to bang around without worrying about startling Nick or wondering what he was thinking.
She only felt uneasy.
12
Nick Hall, 2015
Jeff’s office was on a back road in Wells. The road was Route Something, Nick couldn’t remember. He’d just followed the GPS both times he’d driven here. It was a road that snaked through the woods; the kind of road that invited you to roll down the windows, turn up the radio, and floor it. Nick had not done this on either drive to see Jeff. He came down the front steps of the building and thought absently that it was fall. The air, the leaves, the sky—everything was crisp in the fall. The world around him was sharp, and his edges had melted.
He took a deep breath, hoped the clean air would ease his headache. Talk therapy was supposed to help him “get through this.” That’s what Dr. Lamba had told him, and Jeff had repeated it. So far, the only thing he was sure it did for him was give him a throbbing headache, as if a vise were clamped at the base of his skull. He brought his hand to the spot where the pain was the worst, then his fingers climbed higher until they found the scab.
The Damage Page 6