I fear I will never know why this damaged young man has done this to me. My only hope is that the truth will come out in time, but my introduction to our system has left me with little faith.
A defendant dissatisfied with his arrest, Rice thought. Newsworthy, indeed. Another defendant who wanted to pretend the police were without physical evidence. They had the damage he’d done to Nick’s body. Nick’s blood left behind at the motel.
People wouldn’t believe Nick had asked for that, would they? He dragged his chair closer to his desk and pecked at his keyboard to pull up the letter on the station computer. Rice scrolled to the comment section of the page. The top comment read:
Shame on Seaside for publishing this vitriol.
Good, Rice thought.
Another read:
It’s probably true. Boy’s crying wolf. Let’s waste taxpayer money sorting this out.
Bad.
Someone had replied:
God hates f*gs. Hope this sets that boy straight lol.
Disgusting. Rice copied and pasted the link into an email to the ADA, Linda Davis, and wrote:
You see this?
At least Nick’s identity was concealed. Still, it probably stung like hell, reading this. Someone should explain to Nick that this was a good thing. Rice pressed his finger into the doughnut crumbs on his desk, then scraped them from his fingertip with his teeth. Mostly a good thing.
His cell buzzed on the desk. It was Linda.
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Merry Christmas,” Rice said.
She laughed. “Don’t get cocky.”
“I know.”
“I got a call from Eva Barr yesterday.” Linda’s voice was tinged with anxiety Rice was certain she’d intended on hiding.
“Really.”
“Yup. At least we know what we’re dealing with.”
Walker had hired Eva Barr, then. Better the devil you know, people often said, but Rice might have taken his chances elsewhere. Eva Barr was trouble in a rape case. It should have been an obvious tactic, but jurors always seemed to give Eva’s clients extra credit just for having a pretty woman defending them. Eva was good at looking like she believed in her clients’ innocence. She brazenly tried ugly, nasty cases that some attorneys would have bent over backward to settle, and she usually got an acquittal on the higher count or at least a mistrial. Rice had seen it in action himself: Eva had a charming, conspiratorial way about her that made the jurors lean toward her. In short, juries loved her and showed it with their verdicts. This also meant that her plea offers were better. Particularly from those few prosecutors afraid of a good fight. This was not Linda as a rule, but Linda didn’t like to lose, and she’d lost hard to Eva around a year ago.
“Want me to forward her the letter, too?”
Linda laughed again. “I’m dying to know if she knew he was doing this.”
“Giving us all these admissions? I doubt it.”
“But it’s well-written,” Linda said.
And she was right. If he’d written it himself, the man could write a letter. Hopefully Walker wasn’t as eloquent in person.
“Not believable,” Rice said.
“No,” she answered. “He was strangled.”
“And the SANE report.”
“Right, the trauma to his rectum.”
In spite of himself, Rice’s stomach clenched. So much of the horror he encountered went dull and flat with repetition. Hearing words like those ones always felt sharp.
“We knew this was coming,” Linda went on. “I just wasn’t expecting it this early.”
“The gap in Nick’s memory was always going to set him up. You worried?”
“No more than I already was,” she said.
These cases were always troublesome in court. Nick Hall’s was less than perfect. He’d been drinking. He didn’t remember the assault itself. But they had his testimony that Walker attacked him, knocked him unconscious, and they had physical evidence to speak for him from there.
Walker’s letter was bringing something else up for Rice, but he wasn’t sure yet what it was. Walker sounded like a narcissist. But clearly intelligent. Well-spoken. He was holding down a job. And he’d been so controlled in their interview at the station, before the arrest. Neither of O’Malley’s profiles seemed to fit him.
“You have time to do a quick follow-up today?” Linda asked.
“Sure.”
“Can you get me more about Nick’s boyfriend, or whatever he was?”
“The guy he was supposed to meet that night?”
“Yeah.”
A blinking light started on Rice’s phone.
“I’ve got someone on the other line. What do you want to know about the boyfriend?”
“Whatever you can get me.”
“Easy enough.”
Rice pressed the second line. “Britny Cressey,” the receptionist said, “calling with information about Raymond Walker.”
Who? “Put her through.”
The receptionist did, and Rice introduced himself.
Her voice sounded young. “Hi, I’m calling about Ray Walker?”
“And you are?”
“Uh, an old girlfriend, kind of.”
That was unexpected. “All right, and your name was Cressey?”
“Britny Cressey, sorry.” She laughed cheerfully.
“That’s okay.”
“I just saw that Ray was arrested and charged with this thing, and I wanted to call and talk to someone.”
Was this another report? Maybe Walker didn’t stick to men when it came to assault. “How can I help?”
“I just wanted to tell you a little bit about him, since it seems like you’re only getting one side of the story.”
Ah. This was not a second report. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the paper, but I do have his side of things.”
“Ray was my best friend all through high school,” Britny said. That made her Walker’s age: thirty-eight or so. Her voice sounded about eighteen. “We dated for, like, a minute before he told me he was never gonna be into me.”
She giggled. It was strange that she introduced herself as his ex.
“Well, I appreciate the historical information, but—”
“Ray was always such a nice guy. So smart and clever. Really mature. I wish we’d stayed close after graduation, but he went away to college, and that was kind of that.”
“Okay.”
“I reached out to him again when I saw what was happening on his mom’s Facebook—that you guys arrested him. Ray and I have talked. He’s really the same guy he used to be—he wouldn’t have done this.”
This was a waste of time. She didn’t seem to know it, but who she really wanted to talk to was Walker’s lawyer. Not Rice’s job to help her figure that out. “I appreciate having your view, Ms. Cressey. Thanks for sharing.”
“If I could just explain,” she said.
“Explain what?”
“How well I know him, how I know he wouldn’t have done what that guy says he did.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but there’s no way for you to know what happened in that motel room.”
“No, but I was in his house every day for four years. I spent every second I could at Ray’s house—they had cable, and he was an only child. My sister was so annoying then, I couldn’t get a break from her if I was home. The only thing that sucked about Ray’s house was his parents. His mom is crazy. Like smothering and kind of weird, I don’t know how to explain it. She hated me. Thought I was trashy, and, like, I was, but I was sixteen.” She laughed again. “She thought we were, you know, not like he was remotely interested in that. His parents didn’t know then. His dad probably would have beat the shit out of him. His dad was a dick. And gross—he thought I was trashy, too, and he liked it,
if you know what I mean?”
Rice’s stomach tightened in disgust. “Help me see how this is related to the assault.”
“Ray isn’t violent,” she said plainly. “He just isn’t. There were a million times I’d have liked to punch his dad for being a creep, his mom for being so annoying. He never so much as yelled at them. I don’t remember him having a single teenager meltdown in four years. I used to scream at my mom for no reason, didn’t you?”
“I can’t say I did, but I appreciate your point.” Rice had never screamed at his mother, but he and his own daughter, Liz, had gone toe-to-toe on several occasions in her high school years. “I’ll make a record of your call, Ms. Cressey. I’ve got a full plate today, so I need to sign off, all right?”
She repeated some of what she’d already said as Rice unpried her from their conversation and they hung up. He’d bet his house that Walker had put her up to that. Did Walker really think some old friend claiming Walker was a patient teenager would make one lick of difference to Rice? Even if she was credible, her observations were twenty years old. And she said it herself—they hadn’t been sleeping together.
Rice grabbed his coat. There were more important questions to chase.
23
Julia Hall, 2015
Julia had been meaning to reach out to Charlie Lee for months.
The main reason Julia left her law practice after they had the kids was to gain stability, which her trial work had never given her. When Chloe was born, Julia decided to get off the court-appointed roller coaster, at least temporarily, and find steadier money and shorter hours. It took her about a year to understand the stupidity in her decision to go into grant-funded policy work. She loved what she did, loved studying problems and recommending solutions. And just like when she was a defense attorney, she believed her job was important. Huge bonus points that working from home meant they didn’t have to pay for day care. But a hallmark of grant work was recurring instability. Her job was always finite: when the money ran out, the job was over. She was always applying for a new grant, always thinking about what came next. Over the years, she became excellent at leaving a thought simmering on the back burner of her mind while she worked on something else in the foreground. It was the only way to do her job.
Her current project was to write a report about how juvenile records worked in Maine. What records were created when a kid was accused of a crime. What record was left behind, depending on the outcome of the case. Who could access the records. To what extent the records created would hold kids back later on in life.
In the spring, Julia had started in on her research. That summer, Julia began interviewing professionals in the system. Now, she would reach out to former juvenile defendants and ask them to anonymously answer questions about how their records had affected their lives. Some would be her own former clients. Some she would get from other attorneys. Months ago, when Julia laid out her plans, the institute she was working with approved a modest budget for a private investigator to help locate the former clients, who’d all grown up by now. There was only one PI she was interested in hiring, if she could have him: her favorite, Charlie Lee.
A day ago, while Tony was at urgent care, she’d thought of Charlie for another reason.
The sounds of that moment—the noise Tony made, like a dog roaring a warning before it attacked; the glass shattering; Seb’s wail—she couldn’t shut out the memory of it. But there was no use thinking about it any longer. She’d thought it to death throughout the night, and none of the obsessing had given her a better idea than asking Charlie Lee to do some digging on Raymond Walker. Tony wouldn’t like it—when he was upset about something, he wanted to fix it himself. So she wouldn’t tell him. Not unless Charlie found something that would be helpful to Nick’s case, and then how could he be mad?
Now, her family gone, Julia stepped into her study and set her morning cup of tea on the windowsill. She normally chased her coffee with something herbal, but that morning she’d gone with Earl Grey; she needed the extra caffeine after her restless night. There was a door at the back right of her tiny office, and behind the door a narrow set of stairs stretched up to the attic. To the side of the door, Tony had hung shelves for her. She pulled down an accordion file where she kept articles and other scraps related to the report. From it, she retrieved her old client list. She sat on the stool at her desk and flipped through the pages, ticking with a pencil the names marked JV.
For the report, she wanted to interview people whose records ran the gamut, from essentially no record at all to a public felony record. She scanned the list, but she could only remember the precise outcome in three cases. Jin Chen: not competent, no record. Kasey Hartwell: hilarious case, driving record. And Mathis Lariviere—that was a name she’d never forget. He ended up with a private juvenile record, against all odds. The rest of the names bore some familiarity but the details were fuzzy, so she drained her tea, collected her things, and went up to the attic.
* * *
Julia checked her phone—1:45. No wonder she was ravenous.
Even in late October, the air in the attic was thick and warm compared to the rest of the house. She wiped her brow but found no sweat. She simply felt clammy. She put Mathis’s file back into the drawer marked L–Q. Closed the metal cabinet where she kept her old files. She had narrowed her list to fourteen names she wanted Charlie Lee to try to find. She’d written down each of their last-known contact information to give him a starting point.
She took the stairs back to her office, the cooler air kissing her forehead. She set down her things and pulled up Charlie’s contact in her phone. He didn’t answer, so she left a message.
She picked up her client list to put it away, but she paused. Her mind was snagged on the name at the center of the page: Mathis Lariviere. His name, and his mother’s.
About a month into working on Mathis’s case, Julia met with the seventeen-year-old at her office one evening. His license had been suspended because of his charges, and his mother, Elisa, had driven him to Julia’s office. When their meeting was over, Julia sent Mathis down the hallway. She assumed he and his mother were gone until she saw Elisa in the doorway.
“Do you have a moment, Julia?”
“Please, sit down.”
Elisa closed the door behind her and sat across from Julia.
“You know Mathis is here under my visa.”
“Yes. I’ve been working with an immigration attorney, doing everything we can to protect his status here.”
“Mathis cannot return to France.”
“Why not?”
“It should be enough that I tell you he can’t.”
Julia pulled a notepad out from under Mathis’s file.
“No notes,” Elisa said. Her posture was relaxed. She leaned back into her chair, her fingers interlaced in her lap.
“Is there something I can do for you?”
“I have a question. What happens to my son’s case if the arresting officer doesn’t testify?”
“Cops don’t miss trials. That only happens in traffic court.”
“Humor me.”
Julia thought for a moment. “I don’t know how the ADA could prove the drugs and gun were Mathis’s without the first officer’s testimony. But I don’t know, I’d have to look into it. It’s a weird hypothetical.”
Julia smiled. Elisa didn’t.
“Why are you asking?”
“Just curious. I don’t know much about court, evidence.”
That wasn’t true, not according to Mathis. Mathis had told Julia that his mother was well-versed in criminal cases. That his whole family was.
Oh God. This woman was talking about . . . was she talking about paying this man off? Something worse?
“I don’t like what you’re implying.”
“I’m not implying anything.”
Julia’s voice went shrill
. “I think you are.”
Elisa raised a hand. “Relax. We have the same goal here.”
“I don’t work with people who break the law.”
Elisa narrowed her eyes a fraction. “Are you so sure of that?”
“Yes, I am.”
Elisa shrugged and stood.
When she reached the doorway, Julia spoke again. “Elisa. I will drop your son’s case if I even think you’ve done something.”
“No need to grandstand,” Elisa said. “You’ve made your point.”
Julia heard the distant thud of the front door shutting, and she went to the window. She parted the curtain and watched Mathis and his mother cross the street to their car. Her hand shook against the lace.
As far as Julia could tell, Mathis’s mother never meddled in his case. She came to every court date but never spoke to Julia like that again. And after more than a year of therapy, two hundred hours of volunteer work, and a clean report from his juvenile community corrections officer, Mathis earned an excellent outcome. Even some high praise from the judge on his last day in court.
In the hallway after the hearing, Elisa rested her manicured hand gently below Julia’s elbow. They walked to a bank of windows away from the others outside the courtroom.
“Well done,” Elisa said.
“It was a team effort.”
“I like you, Julia.” She smiled, the corners of her eyes crinkling under gray eyeshadow. “I am not so proud as to wish you ill. But if you had been in my place, with your own son, you would understand how I felt, that night we spoke at your office.”
This woman, Julia realized, was bothered by the possibility that she had lost Julia’s respect.
“I know it wasn’t easy for you to trust me,” Julia said.
“It is harder to play by the rules when it’s your own family. And I hope with all my heart that you never, ever have to understand that.”
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