The Damage

by Caitlin Wahrer

  “Ray?”

  Julia shook her head. “Tony.” The realization dawned on Nick as she went on. She didn’t even need to say it. “I thought he was going to kill him.”

  Tony had said so himself, when Nick told him that he’d been awake during the assault. Tony kept saying he was going to kill Ray.

  “I swear, Nick, you changed his mind. He came to see you at Goodspring and he came home, and he told me he wasn’t going to do it anymore.” She looked at Nick miserably. “But it was too late. I sent Walker away while Tony was with you.”

  Another piece clicked into place. “I thought you sent him to Goodspring because you didn’t want to deal with his reaction when he found out the case hadn’t settled. But it wasn’t that. I was his alibi.”

  Julia nodded. “Just in case something went wrong.”

  They had stopped walking at the end of Spring Street. They stood in the falling snow in silence for a moment.

  “Why are you telling me?”

  Julia wiped her nose with the backside of her mitten. “Because I have a favor to ask.”

  Julia told Nick what she feared might happen if Nick went forward with the case and a judge let him have a trial without Ray: in short, it would be a media circus. The press had been all over Nick’s case to begin with—a fugitive rapist being tried by the man he assaulted? That could make national news. And national news might mean someone, even in another state, making a phone call about a man they saw. National coverage could mean Ray’s discovery, and therefore Julia’s.

  Julia’s eyes were tired, and the snow had collected on her cap. “I don’t deserve to ask a single thing of you.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is, after what I took from you.” She shook her head. “But I’m still asking.”

  “Oh,” Nick said quietly. She wanted him to dismiss the case. Of course he would, if the case could get Julia caught. It was just . . . Ray. “What if he hurts someone else?”

  “Nick?” Jeff’s voice pulled Nick out of the snowy memory.

  “Sorry, yeah?”

  “Why are you dismissing the case?”

  Nick took a deep breath. “Can I be honest?”

  “Of course.”

  No telling lies this time, or partial truths. “The truth is, I really don’t feel like talking about it.”

  Jeff’s face broke into a smile. “Okay. It’s your session.”

  Nick breathed out hard. That felt good.

  “So what do you want to work on today?”

  Right. His session, his choice. Maybe one day, Nick would tell Jeff why he made up his mind to dismiss the case, what Julia told him. Maybe not. Nick got to decide.

  83

  Julia Hall, 2019

  Julia felt hollowed out. Her mind was limping along, trying to keep up with where he’d taken her. Detective Rice seemed so genuine; it all felt real. And besides, he already knew it was her. If he wanted to turn her in, what did it matter if she talked or not? She might as well tell him the kicker.

  “When I told him Walker was gone, Tony was heartbroken. Not because he couldn’t kill him, but because he’d changed his mind.”

  The detective shook his head. “No.”

  She nodded. “Nick really wanted to have the trial. And Tony didn’t want to take that from him.”

  “Then why did Nick ask Linda to dismiss the case? We could have tried to push forward, without Walker. It’s not unheard of. His trial hadn’t started, the court might not have let us. But Nick told Linda he didn’t want to try. He told her the truth about his statement, but he didn’t want to go forward. I just don’t understand. I know he would have suffered more press at a trial, but he might have earned a symbolic victory, at least.”

  “Yes,” Julia said slowly. “He might have won that. But the whole thing looped back on itself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Julia smiled. “He dismissed it to keep me safe.”

  A month after Walker left, Julia told Nick everything. The whole truth.

  “If the court actually held a trial, it probably would have become a national spectacle—a male victim, a trial in absentia, a fugitive. And that kind of coverage . . .”

  “It could have hurt Nick even more.”

  “No. Well, yes, absolutely. But I was being selfish. I wanted Nick to dismiss the case for me. I didn’t want someone to see the coverage and piece something together that would get me into trouble.”

  “Oh,” Rice said.

  “Or for Walker to see it,” she added. “And decide to come back.”

  “So Nick did it for you.”

  “And Tony,” she said. “I felt awful about everything, but it actually seemed to be just what he needed. It, like, reset a balance between him and Tony. Nick dismissed the case, the news died down, and I was safe.”

  Rice was quiet for a bit.

  “You said there was something else?”

  “I’ve never been a perfect Catholic,” he said slowly. “I’ve sinned a lot in my life, and I’ve always confessed it. But this time, it took me a long time to confess what I did. That I let a defendant get away by sitting on the only lead: that my victim’s sister-in-law had helped him.” He shook his head. “I almost went down to Boston to make the confession, to a different church. I was so ashamed to tell my own priest. I knew he’d lose respect for me. He’d deny it if you asked him, but how could he not?

  “But I decided, fuck my pride, I didn’t deserve to be proud. I confessed in my church. At first I felt better, then one day I started to feel it again: an itch in my stomach, like something needing to be let out. So I confessed again. It went away, then came back.

  “And then the cancer. And now I’m dying. This spring might be my last Easter, if the docs are right. And I keep feeling this need to confess a sin. And I finally realized, it’s because my sin continues. My sin is my silence. I’m a Catholic, but I’m a cop, too. I swore an oath, and I broke it, and I break it every day that I don’t turn myself in.

  “I’ve confessed my sins to God but I don’t know if he’ll save me, because every time I step out of confession, I’m already sinning again. Unless I die in that booth, I’ll die sinning.”

  Julia felt stunned. “You don’t think God would punish you for a single thing you did, just one single thing, do you?”

  “I dunno. A younger, more romantic me might agree with you, but it feels different once you see the X-rays, these impossible shapes in your body, once you’re calling the lady who did your will twenty years ago.” Rice shook his head. “I hope—in my heart, I believe he’ll forgive me. God is just and merciful. He gets to choose. I was always just. That was my job: uphold the law, let God worry about mercy. I let people off every now and then, but not like this. Real crime, I always met with justice. Only once did I choose mercy.”

  This was why she was here.

  “You’re going to turn me in.”

  He looked at her with surprise. “I can’t.”

  “Oh. Why not?”

  “It would undo everything else I’ve ever done. It would be just like these DNA scandals. Something as big as this—letting a woman, the family of a victim, collude with a defendant to escape . . . every case I ever worked on would be in post-conviction review. Every imperfect justice I ever achieved for other victims would be threatened. Every family that found some little bit of peace would lose it.”

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea what I did to you. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Just tell me it was worth it.”

  “What?”

  “Tell me what good it did, so if I go to hell at least I’ll have something to smile about.”

  “Oh.” She laughed, a snotty burst of air, and she wiped her nose with her sleeves.

  The detective’s arms were crossed over his stomach, and his shoulders sank awa
y from his neck. He’d never looked smaller, sicker, sadder. But hopeful, that’s what it was—his eyes brimmed over with desperate hope. Hope for what she might give him. Hope for solace. Just like Tony had trapped her, she’d unwittingly done the same to this man. And they’d each made their choice. All these years, he’d been her silent partner in crime.

  She told him what their crime had bought. Told him about Chloe, who was now ten and precocious as ever. In the last few months she’d become utterly dedicated to learning karate, and she was hoping to earn her yellow belt that spring. Told him that Seb, at eight, had discovered a phenomenon on YouTube where people would film themselves making and manipulating slime, and he watched these videos religiously. Tony had tried to channel this obsession of his into a broader interest in science, but he’d recently remarked with grave defeat that Seb truly only cared about slime. (The detective laughed at this and took another hit of his oxygen for it.) Speaking of Tony, Julia told Detective Rice, he and she had celebrated their twelfth wedding anniversary at the New Year. In the wake of what she’d done, they had turned toward each other, and their bond felt even stronger now than it had when they were young and stupidly in love. And finally, she told the detective about Nick. He was twenty-three now, and as funny as he’d ever been. He moved to Boston after graduation and was working in advertising. Last Christmas, he came home with a boyfriend they’d all liked very much.

  “So you think we did the right thing?”

  She shifted in her seat. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know that. Or I guess, maybe you’ll know before me.” She pointed at the ground, and he laughed. Suddenly it was hilarious, the idea of them going to hell together.

  “I’d have done it differently,” she said. “If I knew what would happen that day. But I didn’t know.”

  He was silent. He wanted more from her. He’d never talked about it, it sounded, with anyone but his priest. She was tiring, but she could go a little longer.

  “For a long time I felt—wrecked isn’t the right word, it was worse than that. At first I held it together, because Tony was a mess, but eventually he kind of calmed down, and then I fell apart. I didn’t know myself. I felt untethered from myself. And like a terrible, terrible person. At first it felt like what I’d done had changed me, and then I realized maybe I’d never even known myself, my whole life. And I felt stupid, so stupid. When all the stress of what had been happening was gone, I could see options I hadn’t thought of. Maybe I could have had Tony hospitalized. It’s not a crime to want to kill someone. If I’d acted quickly, ah. I don’t know. I could have hobbled him like in Misery.”

  Rice choked on a laugh.

  Julia felt herself smile. “Trapped him in the house.” Then she grew serious again. “I could have told you. That was a big one. I could have stopped him by telling you. And that one I didn’t miss. I’d thought of it before I . . . sent Walker away. But I didn’t know what you’d do with it. Would you have arrested him? I thought if I told you, I’d lose him, and the kids would lose him, and Nick. So instead I sent Walker away. I got what I wanted—Tony couldn’t get at him anymore, Tony couldn’t get himself in trouble—but I didn’t like what I’d done. So I was a mess for a bit. But Tony took care of me, and I think the kids missed most of it, or I tell myself they did, and eventually I started boxing it away again.”

  Their eye contact was unbroken. It was deeply intimate, almost uncomfortable, but it made it feel true, and she wanted to give him this truth, even if she couldn’t give him all of it.

  She went on. “I figured out that I’d never know if I did the right thing. I know I did a bad thing. But can’t it be more complicated than that? I think so. And I started to accept that. And when . . . what I’d done would start to creep in, or more like just blast into my head, and I felt horrible, or I was just absolutely sick with fear I’d be caught and go to jail and put my kids through just what I was trying to, you know, avoid happening with Tony—”

  She reached her hand across the space between them and rested it on his arm. He was thin under his sweater, and she squeezed his arm gently.

  “I would take a breath, look at the kids, look at Tony, look at Nick. They were the best answer I was ever going to get—to the question, did I do the right thing.”

  Detective Rice’s eyes had welled over. Was it relief or disappointment?

  “That’s kinda what I figured, too,” he said.

  He frowned. “Did you ever hear from . . . ?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Never.”

  “I wonder if he left the country.”

  Julia’s eyebrows began to rise on their own, and she pushed them higher to match her sensitive tone. “Maybe.”

  “He just didn’t seem like the type to stop hurting people, or even just attention-seeking all the time, and for nothing to ever turn up. Someone who does something like that, I don’t think they just do it once. I always figured he’d get caught somewhere else, or we’d hear about his DNA matching a new crime. He must have gotten himself out of the country.”

  Julia said nothing for a moment. Could she give him—did she owe him—solace here? She thought of the day Rice had called Tony and warned him off of threatening Ray Walker again. “I’m not a big fan of the Boondock Saints,” the detective had said.

  She wiggled the hand that was on his arm. “You’re thinking about the wrong things if you want to make peace.”

  He nodded.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said, “he did know how close he’d come to losing everything. He knew this was his chance for a fresh start.”

  “Do you really think someone like him is capable of change?”

  And there it was. The question that had bothered her most over the years. “What he did to your brother-in-law,” Charlie Lee had said to her, “there must be others out there. Just hard to find them.” Charlie’s inability to find other victims—maybe there was a boy in Providence. Maybe not. Julia would never know if Walker had hurt others. One day, she would grow old or sick like the detective, or she would meet her end some other way, and she would die never knowing if Raymond Walker was the monster her family thought he was. She could lull the question to sleep again, but it would always be there, ready to crack an eye and ask: Just how bad was he, Julia?

  “I’d lose my mind if I thought about him,” she said truthfully. “That’s why I focus on my family until I can get my brain to move on to the next thing.”

  Detective Rice sighed heavily. “I feel like an elephant just got off my chest.”

  She laughed and gave his arm a final squeeze. “I owed you. I had no idea what I owed you.”

  He shrugged. “Well, it was nothing.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” She shook her head. “It was everything.”

  They sat in silence together as the wind hit the window again. She looked at her watch, not that the time mattered—she was ready to leave. “I’m so sorry, but I need to get going. I really don’t like driving in the snow after it gets dark if I can help it.”

  “Of course,” he said, and he began making the motions of standing up. Julia stood and gave him a hand.

  Detective Rice walked her down the narrow hall, back to the entryway. Julia sat on the bench to pull on her boots.

  “Do you garden?” She nodded to the bookshelf.

  “Oh, yes,” he said with a grin. “It was always a hobby, but after I retired it was really what got me up and going most days. Maybe, well, if by some miracle I’m still kicking this spring, I’d love you to come see me again, wherever I am, if I’m well enough to grow anything.”

  Julia gave him her warmest smile as she stood from the bench. “I’d love to.” An overt lie. She didn’t think she could stomach another meeting with the detective. But there was no good in telling him that, especially if he’d likely be dead before he’d have reason to know.

  She would go to his funeral. She owed him th
at.

  Julia embraced Detective Rice goodbye and stepped out onto the porch. She turned to shut the door, but he was already pushing it closed behind her. He waved through the small window beside the door, and she waved a mittened hand back.

  Overt or not, to lie to a man on his deathbed seemed especially sinful. But it was kinder than telling him the truth.

  84

  Elisa Lariviere, 2016

  It was half past midnight on the day after Raymond Walker disappeared, and Elisa Lariviere was early. She preferred it that way, especially when there was nothing noteworthy about a car waiting around a place like this. She backed into a spot at the far end of the lot with the front end of her Gran Coupe facing the building. She’d left her home in Michigan three hours ago to make her way there, to the bus terminal in Columbus.

  The night was frigid, and she left the engine running. The brutal Ohio wind outside gave the impression of heavy snowfall, but in truth it was only a light flurry. Still, she’d have traded her weather at home for this without hesitation. After living in Boston for more than two decades, Elisa thought she would be comfortable with winters in Michigan, but she’d been mistaken. Winter on the lake was longer, darker, and wetter than in New England. For tonight’s purposes, of course, Michigan’s climate would have certain advantages.

  A song began to play softly from the public radio station she had on low volume. She hadn’t been listening to the disc jockey—perhaps he’d said something about this being a fitting song for a late Friday night?—but the tune was immediately familiar. Softly twanging, a guitar picked out the melody and Elisa’s chest swelled with bittersweetness. A man began singing, and Elisa only had to wait a breath for the famous line: “Whack for the daddy-o / there’s whiskey in the jar.” The song aligned with the memory, and Elisa smiled at the coincidence.

  She’d heard the old Irish song in a movie a year ago. The movie was Conviction; it was the true story of a woman who went to law school and dedicated her life to exonerating her brother. It had been a quiet movie—Elisa had watched it at home one night, years after its uneventful release. The story was a slow burner, and it had scorched her. Her son Mathis’s own legal case came to mind early on as she watched, and although the comparisons between the two cases were few, the themes of justice, vigorous defense, and family rang true.