He’d found it in the shower, on Tuesday morning. In a way, it was the simplest of his physical injuries to focus on. It was a far subtler reminder than the private, intrusive ache that had finally faded away sometime that week. It had nothing on the stomach-wrecking course of antibiotics the hospital had prescribed him to fight off potential STDs, or the bruises on his face and neck that announced to anyone who saw them that he was a victim. The cuts and splits on his face were nebulous—they could have been from a bar fight or a drunken fall in the street—but the fingerlike bruising on his neck was damning. He had been choked . . . dominated. Victimized.
So the scab was nothing, but he still couldn’t keep his hands off it. He found it while he was washing his hair: it was a crusty bump, near the top-back part of his scalp. He’d fingered it curiously through shampoo suds and inspected it a second time with slick, conditioned hands. As he rinsed his hair, Nick rubbed the scab until he felt it crumble away. There. That was better.
The next morning, he awoke in his nephew’s bed to find that the bump had returned. It was softer and tender to the touch. He flicked at it with his middle finger until he felt it scrape clean. It stung that time, but at least it was gone. Just a day ago, again he’d caught himself searching for the scab at the back of his head.
The urge to pick at it while he sat in Jeff’s office today had been brutal. He’d wedged his fingers beneath the edges of his thighs and tried to focus on Jeff’s face.
Jeff was as Dr. Lamba said he would be. He was kind of old, older than Nick’s dad, and had a deep, relaxing voice. He laughed and smiled a lot. He seemed smart but not in an in-your-face way.
“I’m a survivor of childhood sexual abuse,” Jeff said in their first session, earlier that week. He said it without shame, like he might have said anything about himself. He had said it, Nick was sure, to make Nick feel less embarrassed about what had happened. Nick had not pointed out how different they were: Jeff had been a child. Nick had not.
Another thing that both Jeff and Dr. Lamba had said was that therapy would help Nick “own” his “story.”
“Why would I want to own this?” Nick had asked Dr. Lamba over the weekend.
She’d tilted her head. “Because it’s yours.”
“What if I’m not ready?”
“Jeff won’t ask you to talk about it much, not at first. You’ll do it over time, and slowly, you’ll practice talking about it. Eventually, you can decide what to do with the story.”
This had been a strange way to put it, he thought now as he stepped into the parking lot below Jeff’s office and checked his phone. He had a missed call and a voice mail, and even though he hadn’t saved the number, he recognized it. Detective Rice had called him while he was in therapy. It was funny that the therapists thought Nick could process the story on his own terms. That was bullshit.
He scratched at his head until he felt the scab lift off under his fingernail. He flicked it onto the pavement, then he called Detective Rice back.
“We’d like you to come into the station,” the detective said. “We have a photo lineup for you to view.”
* * *
The police station was not what Nick had expected. He’d imagined his first sight would be something like a city precinct on a TV show: a bullpen of desks, maybe a cell where some town drunk would be sleeping off a bad night. The door to Salisbury’s police station, instead, opened to a simple lobby. Sterile walls, linoleum tiles like a school. A white-haired woman sat across the room behind a desk and a thick pane of glass. She asked cheerily how she could help him. Nick introduced himself, and she called Detective Rice on the phone.
After a minute or so, Nick heard a door slam across the empty lobby. A petite, dark-skinned woman stepped from the doorway. She was really quite pretty, with long eyelashes and a bright smile. She was an officer—she wasn’t in uniform, but it was clear from her posture and stride.
“I’m Detective O’Malley.”
Nick shook her extended hand. “Nick.”
“I wanted to take the opportunity to meet you,” she said. “I’ve been working with Detective Rice on your case. Your friend Elle might have mentioned me.”
Elle hadn’t. They hadn’t talked at all yet. Elle had texted Nick a few times, checking on him, but he hadn’t responded. There was nothing to say.
“Let’s go up and look at some photos.”
He followed her up a narrow stairwell and down a hall to a small room where a heavyset man in uniform was waiting. Detective O’Malley waited in the hallway, and Nick stepped into the room. On the table was a closed manila folder.
The cop smiled and said, “Hi, Nick.”
Nick returned the greeting.
The man introduced himself and handed Nick a sheet of paper. “These are instructions for the photo array,” he said, and waved at the folder on the table. “Please take your time and read them.”
When Nick finished reading, he lowered the sheet. The cop told him he could open the folder and look at the photos. “Leave it like that as you open it,” he said, indicating how the folder was laid horizontally on the table. “So that the top of the folder blocks my view.”
Taped in the folder was a grid of photos of men’s faces. Two down, three across—six in all. They weren’t mug shots; they looked more like headshots than anything. Each photo had a numbered label in the corner.
There, at the bottom left of the grid, was Josh. The photo was like a magnet; Nick’s gaze fell on it almost instantly. No stubble in this picture, but the light eyes, the high cheekbones, even the single dark curl on his forehead.
“Call me Josh,” this man had said to him, nearly in a drawl, the name had spilled so slowly from his mouth.
Bile rose in Nick’s throat. His picture looked like a business portrait. He looked important. Nick could feel the cop staring at him.
“He’s here,” Nick said, and his voice sounded sad. Was he sad?
“Which one, Nick?”
The moment was so surreal that something in Nick’s mind detached and spoke, separate from himself. It was an indifferent voice, pointing out a simple truth. This will be the moment you will always identify as the one from which there was no turning back. Not the report. Not the forms. Not the interviews. This moment. Nick turned and looked behind him, expecting to see the detective in the doorway, but the door was closed. Nick turned back to the table.
“Him,” Nick said, and he placed a finger on the hollow of Josh’s throat. “Number four.”
“Where do you recognize him from?”
Nick lifted his finger from the photo. “That night. At the bar.”
“Can you be more specific?”
Nick looked up at the cop. His fleshy face was relaxed, but his bright eyes were trained on Nick’s. This man—the police—they needed him to say it. To say it again, to another person. The more people he told, the bigger it got, and the further it slipped from him.
“He’s the man who assaulted me.”
“How confident are you?”
The officer’s eyebrows jumped and fell so quickly Nick might have missed it if he’d blinked. It wasn’t a real question. This was a script. The officer knew what Nick would say. There was only one acceptable answer.
Nick looked down at the photo. “Positive.”
13
John Rice, 2015
Say what you will about its part in the decline of American culture, but social media was a beautiful thing from a law-enforcement perspective. It could show you who knew who, what people called themselves, where they were at a specific point in time. People would post incriminating photos and statements that could be screenshotted and placed in a file long after a post was deleted. Rice would never get sick of seeing what social media could do for them next. Just now, it had delivered him a rape suspect.
O’Malley had put the photo of Josh and Nick at the bar on
the station’s Facebook and Twitter accounts and asked people to share it. In the post, she called Josh “a witness to a crime.” He and O’Malley had talked over the wording of the post for a while in advance. What they knew of Nick’s assailant was that he was calculating, charming, and violent. To them, he smelled like a serial rapist. He was handsome, white, possibly well-off. Most of this added up to a guy who people probably didn’t see as a monster. Maybe he seemed a little off; on the flipside, it was even possible he was well-liked. It was doubtful people saw him as the kind of guy who could be a rapist. If someone who actually knew Josh saw the photo of him with the caption “suspect in a rape case,” they’d think, That couldn’t be Josh, even if it does look just like him. But “a witness”? Yeah, they’d think, that could be Josh in the photo. And that morning, Rice walked into the station and learned it had done the trick.
The evening before, a woman called the tip line and said that the man in the photo on Facebook looked like her coworker, Raymond Walker. “What did he witness?” the coworker probably asked.
His own life go up in smoke, if Rice had anything to say about it.
An officer had hopped online and found a work headshot of Raymond Walker. Compared it to the photo at the bar. Things looked good.
When Rice got in that day, he called in Nick Hall for a double-blind photo array. Nick identified Walker’s headshot.
Rice plugged all of this into the warrant he was drafting at his computer.
When he was done, he emailed a draft to the Assistant District Attorney for her comments. Then he called Raymond Walker’s office.
Walker played dumb when he came on the line. Rice had identified himself to the secretary, so Walker was already on the defensive. Rice introduced himself politely, addressed him as “Mr. Walker.”
Ray’s response to Rice’s credentials was: “All right?”
“Your name’s come up in an active investigation.”
“Oh, that’s surprising.”
Rice couldn’t help but smile. You’d think someone who was actually surprised to find himself on the phone with a detective would ask What kind of investigation? But Walker already knew that. “Is it?”
Annoyance edged into Walker’s voice. “Yes, it is.”
“I’d like you to come in and answer some questions today.”
A beat, and Walker said, “That might not be possible, I usually work late.”
“So do I, Mr. Walker.” Rice paused. “How about you swing by whenever you’re off work tonight. Maybe we can clear all this up.”
“I’m not sure I should do that,” Walker said. “It’s nothing personal, but without knowing why you want to talk to me . . .”
“’Course it’s your call,” Rice said. “This would just be your chance to give us your side of the story, before we have to go further.”
There was a pause, and Walker said, “I’ll be in around six.”
Rice caught O’Malley’s eye across the bullpen. Gave her a thumbs-up. “See you then.”
14
Julia Hall, 2015
Far off beyond the fields, the leaves were starting to turn. Sprays of red and orange dusted Julia’s view from the road as she walked the kids home from the bus stop. Most of the trees would explode into their fall colors in a week or so, and there would be bare limbs all around before October was up. It wouldn’t be long before the soft, springy plants in the garden were stiff and gray. The only way to survive what was coming was to harden and wait.
They were halfway back to the house—Seb chattering about school, Chloe whining about the walk—when Julia heard a car approaching behind them. She turned to see her own car coming down the long country road.
When Julia announced that it seemed Uncle Nick was coming to pick them up, Chloe squealed. They paused on the side of the road to wait for him.
Nick pulled up and apologized for being late.
“It’s fine,” Julia said. It really was—it was beautiful outside, and the kids had been dressed for the temperature—and she was too relieved to see him to care. Something about him going radio silent had unsettled her.
Julia loaded the kids into their seats and climbed up front with Nick. His face was drained of color, and he acknowledged her with nothing more than a flick of his eyes.
“Uncle Nick, where were you?”
Nick glanced up at the rearview to look at Seb. “I had to go to counseling.”
“Why do you need counseling?” This time it was Chloe.
Before Nick could speak, Julia gave Chloe the party line. “It’s to help him feel better after his accident.”
Seb chimed in. “Did Grammy Hall do counseling after her accident?” That was a new one, apparently about Tony’s mom’s car accident the year before. Julia glanced at Nick apologetically. Kids had a way of pulling at the threads you most wanted to leave untouched.
“Sometimes getting in an accident is very scary,” Julia said. “And so it helps to go to counseling to talk about it and feel better. So you feel less scared.”
They pulled into the driveway as Chloe said, “Uncle Nick, are you scared?”
Nick put the car in park.
Julia spoke. “Kids, why don’t you—”
Nick put his hand on her shoulder.
“Yes,” he said, and he turned to face his niece. “Yes, I am scared.”
He was right to tell them the truth, but it frightened Julia to hear him say it. It was part of a greater truth Chloe and Seb hadn’t learned yet: there are things that can’t be fixed. Maybe part of what Chloe was trying to understand was why Nick would need help from some other source, from outside their house. With her perfect life, Chloe had no reason to know that there were some things her parents could not make better.
15
John Rice, 2015
Rice barely made it back to the station before six. While he’d been at the courthouse, O’Malley had set up the small conference room for their interview with Walker. Minutes after Rice arrived, the secretary called back to the bullpen, said Walker was there. Rice sent Merlo down to bring Walker to the conference room while O’Malley double-checked that the camera and mic were working.
They switched up their routine on occasion, but generally, Rice played good cop to O’Malley’s bad. Counterintuitive on first thought, maybe, to have the female officer not playing the good cop, but the reasoning was simple: one detective was there to apply pressure, and the other was there to look like a lifeline. Most of their suspects were white men like Walker, and white men were more apt to believe that Rice could cut them a deal for cooperation. Rice had sex, age, and color on O’Malley. Wasn’t right—just the way it was. So they used their differences to their advantage. And for her part, O’Malley enjoyed getting to treat a guy like Walker like she thought he was a guilty piece of shit.
They let Walker sit in the room for eight minutes before they joined him. They would watch the video later to see how many times he checked the clock behind him, fiddled with his phone, got up to look into the hallway. For now they waited in the bullpen. Rice slid a couple of unrelated printouts into the file to bulk it up.
Rice went in first. Walker had sat in the chair nearest the door, leaving one seat opposite him and one beside him.
“Mr. Walker,” Rice said as he stretched out a hand. “I’m Detective John Rice, and this is my colleague Detective Megan O’Malley.”
As she often did when they worked a suspect together, O’Malley posted herself in the doorway without a handshake or a word. She leaned against the doorframe and crossed her arms.
“Raymond Walker,” the man said, “but you already knew that.”
Rice laid the folder down on the table and took the seat across from Walker. “Sorry if we kept you waiting.”
Walker smiled. Even under the fluorescents he was good-looking. “I’m sure you were busy,” Walker said.
> “Very,” O’Malley said.
Walker looked sideways at her and then back at Rice. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”
The annoyance from the phone was gone. He was back in control of himself.
“You tell us,” O’Malley said.
Rice held up a hand at O’Malley in an unspoken gesture that said, Quiet. “Well,” Rice said, “we’re trying to figure that out.”
Walker’s face shifted to that of a brownnosing child trying to please a schoolteacher. “How can I help?”
“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Walker?”
“Not a clue.”
Rice pulled a photo from the file and slid it to Walker. “Do you recognize this man?”
Walker studied the picture. His eyes were narrowed ever so slightly, like he was working out what to say. It was a sweet picture of Nick Hall; Rice had asked Tony for a recent photo for the file, and Tony had emailed him one from the past summer. Nick was bare-armed and grinning, his wet curls plastered to his forehead. He looked like he’d just climbed out of the lake behind him and pulled on a tank top. In the photo, Nick looked like he was on the cusp of manhood but still a boy in many ways. Rice would use the word man this evening, with Walker. It had occurred to Rice earlier that he could use his own biases to his advantage.
Walker spoke. “What’s this about?”
“It’s a simple question,” O’Malley said. “Do you recognize him or not?”
Walker kept his eyes on Rice and smiled apologetically. “I think I have a right to know why I’m here.”
“You’re only here if you want to be,” Rice said. “You’re free to leave any time. Let me ask you this—if I told you this man says he knows you, how would you explain that?”
The Damage Page 7