The Damage

by Caitlin Wahrer

  Chloe braided Julia’s hair as Tony read the old adventure book, and he occasionally glanced up at their progress. First it was two braids, the left one thick and straight, the right one thin and wonky. Then the braids came out and Chloe started a single one down Julia’s back. This time when he looked up, Julia was wiping her eyes. She held his gaze, then sighed and shook her head.

  “I need to make a phone call,” she said as she stood.

  Tony stopped reading. “Right now?”

  “Mom, your braid fell out!” Chloe groaned.

  “Sorry, honey,” she said to Chloe, then she turned in Tony’s direction. “It won’t take long, and I’ll bring a hair tie back down when I’m done.”

  Chloe nodded with satisfaction and slid into Julia’s spot on the couch.

  Julia retrieved her cell phone from the coffee table and disappeared up the stairs.

  * * *

  Tony was making sandwiches when Julia came back downstairs.

  “BLTs,” he said in a dramatic voice, waving his hand over the spread as if it were a magic trick. The sandwiches were splayed open with lettuce and fat slices of ripe tomato; beside them was a container of bacon leftover from breakfast.

  “They smell delicious,” she said. “One for me?”

  “Of course, my jewel,” he whispered, wagging a strip of bacon at her.

  She smiled absently. “Tea?” she asked.

  “No, thanks.” He felt an annoyance bubble up; she was still holding out on him, pushing off his playfulness. That was unfair of him, though. He’d had longer to process all of this. “Who were you calling?”

  He heard the gas burner snap behind him and the rush of flame catching.

  “Just people for the report.”

  “Today, though?”

  “Just voice mails today.” She came back into view and leaned on the counter next to him.

  He handed her a plated sandwich. “You’ll eat with us?”

  “Yeah.” She checked her phone, then pushed it into her sweatpants pocket. It immediately trilled. She dug it back out and looked at its face.

  “I gotta take this,” she said as she left the kitchen. “I’ll come back for my tea,” she called as she went down the hallway. “Take it off when it boils, please, but I’ll come back for it!”

  Her voice quieted as she said, “Hi, Elisa.”

  Tony heard the study door close, shutting out Julia’s voice. The itch of an incomplete memory thrummed in his brain when he heard the name, but whoever Elisa was had faded into the recesses of his memory.

  59

  Nick Hall, 2016

  What’s this worth again?” Nick tipped his hand forward to reveal four spades to the man across the table.

  “Four,” David responded.

  Nick laid his cards down. “Shit,” he whispered. That was right. That was the hand that seemed like it was worth more. And he couldn’t make fifteen from any of them. He pegged four on the cribbage board. “I think you’re gonna smoke me again.”

  “Skunk,” David said as he pegged twelve. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his porous nose and grinned. “Probably.”

  David had only been there a week and a half. Nick was a day shy of a month. His counselor at Goodspring, Anne Marie, had written a letter to get permission for him to stay at the program for a little longer. She convinced insurance or whoever to give him extra time so he could be here for a while after the next court day, which, incidentally, was today.

  Nick was glad to have David. He was fortysomething, dry and funny, and loved playing games like Nick did. Before David showed up, Nick hadn’t really connected with anyone besides the staff. There was a guy there named Kedar who might be cute if he had a haircut and looked like he’d slept at all in the past year. But cute probably wouldn’t do Nick any good right now. Cute had gotten Nick into this, in a way. He shouldn’t blame himself, his counselors had been firm on that and they were right. But he’d gone home with a stranger. But he’d done that before. He wanted a boyfriend, but instead he was taking whatever he could get. He was a million miles from being ready for sex again, and yet if this cute program guy wanted to go there, he wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t follow. So he’d continue to give Kedar a wide berth.

  Most of the people at Goodspring didn’t want to be there. They either admitted so out loud or their actions said it for them. Some didn’t think they needed the help; some hated the broken-in beds, the bright lights, the vegetable-heavy food, the windows in the bedroom doors for staff to do safety checks all night. But Nick liked being at Goodspring. It was so strange, so foreign to anything he’d experienced before that it made him forget his life outside the place. There was no DA in here. No criminal case. He was in a bubble.

  At least, it normally felt like that. Today, even from the safety of the bubble, he felt the presence of the outside world pressing in on the walls. Out there, life was going on. Tony was stressing out over him. His parents were probably fighting. The winter semester had started. The ADA was at court, right now, with Walker and his lawyer. Real life would be waiting for him when he left Goodspring. He’d be right back where he started—standing in the middle of the mess he had made. His forearms started to itch under his sleeves.

  “Nick?”

  He looked up, and his counselor Anne Marie was standing in the doorway to the common room.

  “You have a call.”

  * * *

  It was Sherie.

  “So there’s no deal,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  It was what he expected, but his heart sank anyway. “Are you allowed to tell me what happened?”

  “Oh, of course. The lawyers were just too far apart to come to a deal. I told you what she was going to offer him, right?”

  “Yeah,” Nick said. “Four years in jail but he could end up doing ten?”

  “Right. It would be prison, not jail, but that’s more of a technical thing. And Linda offered to change it from gross sexual assault to aggravated assault.”

  These were words he’d heard before, but it still felt like he was jogging to keep up with her.

  “So the defendant and his lawyer didn’t like that,” Sherie said. “They wanted simple assault and six months in jail. His lawyer was acting like it was impossible to get him to even consider six months, but that’s always how attorneys act when they negotiate. She and Linda couldn’t get there. At least not today.”

  Simple assault, whatever that meant, and six months in jail. He wondered if that’s where the case would end up, once he told them that he’d been lying. That it was worse than he’d said—but he’d lied about it. He would talk to Anne Marie and make a plan about telling them the truth.

  “So now what?” Nick asked.

  “Technically, jury selection is next.”

  “Already!” It wasn’t going to take nearly as long as they made it sound.

  “So, your case will get scheduled for jury selection in March. But the defendant will probably file a motion to push it out further than that. And when the next court date does happen, it’s just a scheduling day where the judge tries to sort out what cases can have trials that month.”

  She paused. “Anything’s possible, I guess, but you should still be prepared for the long haul. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  They hung up, and Nick sat for a moment. Anne Marie had left him alone in her office to take the phone call. He wanted to just skip this part—telling his family there was no deal. He wanted to go to bed. But they were all waiting for the news. And going to his room and sleeping wouldn’t change the fact that the case still existed.

  Nick stood and stuck his head into the hall. Anne Marie was nearby, talking to Kedar.

  “Yeah?” she asked when she saw him.

  “Can you get me my sister-in-law’s cell number?” He wasn’t allowed to have his cell phone for
most of the day here, and he didn’t have Julia’s number memorized. He’d call her. She could pass on the news to Tony and his parents. It would be so much easier to talk to her than to Tony.

  60

  Julia Hall, 2016

  Julia and the kids were doing a Paw Patrol puzzle on the coffee table when her phone buzzed. It was Nick. She groaned as she stood from her seat on the floor.

  “Hey, just give me a minute.” She left the room and took the stairs quickly. “What happened at the hearing?”

  “There’s no deal.”

  “Shit,” she hissed, and she meant it more than Nick knew. “That really sucks.”

  “Yup.”

  She closed the door to her office. Checked her notes. “Uh, you doing okay?”

  “Yeah, just disappointed. Would you mind telling Tony?”

  “Sure.” No deal meant Tony went forward with his own plan. “Actually. This reminds me. He was saying he wants to come see you.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah. Friday. He wants to come Friday this week.”

  “Okay,” Nick said. “Do you know why?”

  She sighed and leaned against the closed door. “I think he misses you.”

  61

  Tony Hall, 2016

  There was a large envelope jammed into the mailbox when Tony got home. It was addressed to Julia Clark and bore a Michigan return address. He would have guessed it was junk mail if it hadn’t been handwritten.

  He could hear Julia coming down the stairs as the kids mobbed him in the kitchen.

  “Someone doesn’t know you’re married,” Tony said as he handed her the package.

  Julia looked at the envelope and smiled. “She knows I’m married. Just doesn’t respect that I changed my name.”

  “Seriously?”

  Julia rolled her eyes. “I’m positive.”

  “Who is she?”

  “A lady I’m working with on the records report.” She started to walk back to the staircase and stopped. “Before I forget: Nick wants you to go see him on Friday.”

  Tony frowned. “This Friday?”

  “Yup. The hearing about a settlement got pushed out another week. He wants to see you before then.”

  Tony motioned, and they started to climb the stairs together.

  “Did it sound important?”

  “Important to him, yeah.”

  “Shit,” Tony said quietly. They’d reached the landing. Julia held up a finger, walked down the hall, and put the envelope in her office. They moved into the bedroom.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I was just hoping to go see him and have something . . . good to tell him, finally.”

  Julia’s eyes widened. “That Walker is dead?”

  “Shh.”

  “Don’t shush me, no one can hear me. You were hoping you’d have . . . taken care of Walker before you saw Nick again.”

  “Fine, yes.”

  “Nick wants to see you and court’s in a week. You’ll just have to go.”

  “I guess so.”

  Julia crossed her arms. “Once they have the hearing, if there’s no deal, how soon are you going to do it?”

  “Would you stop?”

  “I will if you give me something. Anything. Tell me when. Not even a date—what time of day?”

  62

  Raymond Walker, 2016

  On January 15, 2016, at 6:00 p.m., clad in a bathrobe and scratching the stubble on his face, Raymond Walker came down his stairs and wondered, absently, why the lights were out in the living room below. He flicked the switch to his right as he stepped from the stairwell. The lamp in the living room snapped to life. In the same way one’s peripheral vision might register the vague shape of a spider on the wall, out of place and threatening, Ray saw the figure of a man standing in the dark of his kitchen.

  63

  John Rice, 2016

  On January 16, 2016, Rice was pecking out a report at his computer when the receptionist paged him.

  “Detective, there’s a Darlene Walker calling about her son, Ray Walker, I thought you or Megan would want to take it.”

  “Yup,” Rice said quickly.

  “This is Detective John Rice.”

  “Yes, hello, Mr. Rice—Detective Rice—this is Darlene Walker. I’m calling regarding my son, Raymond.” Her voice was full of nervous energy.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, something’s happened to him, and somebody needs to get over here immediately.”

  Rice straightened. “What’s happened to him?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t find him! I’m at his house, he gave me a key, and I let myself in when he didn’t answer my calls or come to my house today—we were supposed to have lunch this afternoon, and he didn’t show, didn’t call, didn’t answer when I called—”

  “Ma’am, can you slow down a minute? You’re—”

  “No, you need to hurry up and get over here, you can’t treat him any different just because you’ve made your mind up that he’s a criminal, which will be cleared in the courts, by the way, I’m confident of that. I tried calling the police where I live, but they said I had to call the police in Raymond’s town, even though it seems like an obvious conflict of interest.”

  “All right, ma’am—ma’am.” Rice paused until she finally stopped talking. “I’ll be over shortly.”

  * * *

  Rice pulled up outside the small, gray house numbered 47. So this was Raymond Walker’s house. They’d never had probable cause to get a search warrant for anything besides Ray’s DNA, which of course had been a match to the sexual assault kit. They’d also been able to do an inventory search of Ray’s car, after towing it from the station lot after he was arrested. The search had yielded nothing of apparent value to the investigation involving Nick Hall.

  Rice could see a light on inside as he walked up the short driveway to the back door—the front steps were unshoveled, and there was no discernable walkway to them. Ray’s car was parked in the driveway.

  Rice hadn’t reached the door before it opened.

  A woman around his age, give or take a few hard nights, leaned out toward him, immediately shivering in the cold. “Are you the detective I talked to?”

  “Yeah.” He offered his gloved hand to shake. “Should we go inside?”

  “I’m not consenting to a search of the house.” She pursed her lips and looked at him like a hundred people had before: like she thought she was a law professor.

  “Understood. Just cold out.” He smiled.

  Darlene Walker turned back into the house, and Rice followed.

  The mudroom was small but well organized. Tall shelves housed shoes and a box of scarves; heavy coats hung on a stand. Rice’s boots squeaked on the floor as they moved into the kitchen.

  “Ms. Walker, you said on the phone that you can’t reach Ray and you expected to see him today.”

  “Yes, I was expecting—”

  “I’m sorry to cut you off, but if I could ask a few specific questions. When did you last talk to Ray?”

  “Friday morning, on the phone.”

  “Friday as in yesterday, or Friday as in a week ago?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Rice noted Friday, January 15, on his pad.

  “We made plans yesterday to have lunch today. He was supposed to pick me up.”

  “And he didn’t.”

  “Nope.”

  “Do you have your phone with you?”

  She narrowed her eyes in suspicion, like he might snatch it from her. “Why?”

  “Some specific times would be helpful. Like what time you talked on the phone, what time you tried to reach him and couldn’t.”

  She stood and pulled her cell phone from her purse on the counter. “We talke
d at ten sixteen yesterday.”

  “In the morning,” Rice said as he wrote.

  “Yes,” she said like he was stupid. Sure it sounded like an obvious question, but people were always jumping around while they talked to him. Better to get it right and lock her in than wish later he’d been more thorough.

  “Any contact since then?”

  “No. I’ve tried, but he hasn’t responded.”

  “When did you try?”

  “Last night I texted him about something else, and then I texted him this morning about lunch.”

  “Times?”

  She sighed. “Last night at eight twenty-seven I texted him. Nothing. Then this morning at eleven fifteen I texted him about what time he was getting to my house. Nothing. Then I started calling.”

  “Okay,” Rice said. “He usually text you right back? My daughter isn’t exactly reliable when it comes to answering my texts, is all.”

  “Same,” Darlene said quietly.

  “What time was he supposed to pick you up today?”

  “Noon.”

  “How many times you call this morning?” This he asked more out of curiosity than anything.

  She looked down at her phone. “Thirteen.”

  Seemed about right. “And what time you come here today?”

  She continued to study her phone. “I can’t drive right now, so I called a cab here at twelve thirty, and I must have been here before one.”

  “Why can’t you drive?”

  She looked up at him then and said tersely, “That’s private.”

  “All right,” Rice said with a shrug and smile. “Will you walk me through the house?”

  Again, suspicion fell over her face. “I said I don’t consent to a search of the house. There’s nothing out of place.”