She felt good about that: because she wasn’t lying, she was telling the truth, and the machine would tell them she was telling the truth, and they’d let her go, they’d believe her finally. So they asked the questions again, all the same questions, and the fourth man was looking at the machine kind of funny, writing stuff down on the paper as it came out of the machine, looking up at Moseby kind of funny-like. Moseby looking at her funny, like he was angry, like what the machine was telling them wasn’t what they wanted to hear. She couldn’t help that; she was telling the truth.
They started talking among themselves, the four men. ‘This is serious,’ they were saying, ‘this is pretty serious.’ So then Sanchez came over and sat down next to her, facing her, and suddenly slapped her across the face, real hard, he slapped her so hard he practically knocked her off her chair, it stunned her, she was scared shitless, from the hurt of the slap and the surprise.
“You’re a lying sack of shit!” he’d screamed at her. “The lie-detector just proved it. It says you’re lying.” He started to slap her again but Gomez stopped him, told him that wasn’t solving nothing.
So then she was really scared, because she’d been telling the truth and the lie-detector had said she wasn’t. So then they started asking questions again, about what happened when the bikers brought her back to the motel after they’d had her up in the mountains the first time, and she told them, she told them what happened, how they’d ridden off finally and she’d collapsed into sleep.
Then Gomez, the nice one, said ‘Let me talk to her privately,’ and Moseby said ‘No fucking way, she’s a goddam liar and I’m taking her back to Santa Fe and booking her as an accessory to murder, I’ll fry her ass along with the goddam bikers, she’s covering for them, she’s as guilty as they are, lying little cunt,’ and Gomez said ‘Hang on man, just let me talk to her private for a little while,’ so Moseby said ‘Okay, but just for a little while, then I’m calling off this charade and we’re taking her back to Santa Fe and booking her as an accessory to murder, you try to help someone and they don’t want it, fuck ’em,’ and Gomez said ‘Just for a little while.’
They went outside and he offered her a cigarette and lit it for her, real gentleman-like, looking at her nice like she wasn’t some sack of shit, some fuck-hole for any man to stick his dick into who felt like it, even passed out and bleeding.
“Now we know that they raped you and scared you to death,” he’d said, real calm. “You told us they did that.” She’d said ‘Yes, that was true.’ So then he said “And when they brought you back to the motel you were practically passed out and you hardly remember them leaving, you were probably passed out by then,” and she’d answered that this was true, also. “And somebody did knock on the wall while this was happening, back at the motel,” he’d said. Again, yes. “Could it have been Richard?” She thinks; it could have been, his room was next door, she was so fucked up by then she couldn’t say. But it could have been.
“Okay,” he’d said. He moved his chair closer to hers, lit her another cigarette. He had sad eyes, nice eyes, dark brown like hers, looking at her like he really cared about her, that he wanted her to be all right, and not get booked for murder, which she didn’t do, which she knew he knew she didn’t do.
“Okay. You don’t remember anything else until you woke up, much later.” He looked at her when he said that, like he was totally sincere. And she’d looked back at him and said ‘yes,’ that was true. At that point she had passed out and didn’t remember anything else until she woke up several hours later.
So then he took one of her hands in both of his, they were big hands, they covered her hand completely, but they were gentle hands, they felt good holding her hand, he held her hand softly, like a man holds a woman’s hand when he likes her, as a person and a woman, not just something to fuck, but as a real person, and he said “So it’s possible that you were so strung out, so tired, so scared, that they did take you back up to the mountains with them, with them and Richard Bartless, and that those things did happen, killing Richard and the rest, and you were so tired, so strung out, so scared, that you don’t remember. That your brain isn’t letting you remember.”
She had felt her heart stop for a minute. He was holding her hand in his hands and looking right into her eyes and she said Yes, it could have happened that way even though she was pretty sure it hadn’t, but it could have, anything’s possible. And he’d said That’s how the brain works sometimes, when something’s so bad it doesn’t want to remember, it shuts down, like it’s a storehouse and that stuff is locked away in a file somewhere so you don’t have to know it’s there, except it is, but you put it somewhere where you don’t have to look at it, because it’s too ugly to look at. It’s how the brain protects us from ourselves.’
So she’d looked at him and nodded, like she understood what he was saying. She did understand; she understood what he was saying, and what was expected from her.
They had another cigarette together, and split a Coke, and he told her everything was going to be all right, that he would take care of her, protect her. That nobody would hit her again, if anyone did, Moseby or anyone, he didn’t care if it was his boss (which Moseby was, technically), he’d punch their lights out, he wasn’t going to let her get hurt anymore, she’d been hurt too much already. Then he’d held her hand again in his, like he really liked her, as a person and as a woman.
They had stayed there three more days, her and the detectives and Moseby. They bought her new clothes, treated her nicely. They went over and over what happened that night, over and over again, until she really did start to believe it was the way Gomez had said it was, that it had happened like what they had said and her brain had blocked it out, the part with Richard, because it was too awful to think about. And after a while she did believe it, or she thought she did, it was easier that way, to really think she did, and they went over it with her, again and again, looking at the pictures, going over what happened, who did what, when. Until finally she really did believe it, at least she did then, later she started not to believe it but she did then, and she could tell them the story better than they could, because she did believe it so she could tell it better than anyone because she’d been there, she’d seen it, it had happened to her. For real, so she believed then.
They brought her back down to Santa Fe and she dictated her statement to a court stenographer, with a witness, that everything she said was true, that she was giving her statement without any coercion or pressure, that it was her own statement that she was giving without anyone telling her what to say. And she’d told it to the grand jury and later at the trial.
I don’t know whether to shit or go blind. She’s looking at me, waiting for my reaction. I have one; several. Right now, what I want more than anything is a drink: I realize I’m shaking like a leaf. Then something kicks in, maybe there is a better part of me, maybe last night was the real start of something better. Fuck the drink, man, that’s the last thing you need. What you need is clarity.
“But you know now in your heart that it was all a lie,” I tell her. “For real.”
She nods, mute.
“There was no storehouse in your brain where you were hiding the truth, the awful truth.”
She nods again.
“It was all a lie,” I continue. “All bullshit lies.” I’m outraged, I’m fucking outraged; but I have to maintain my cool, this sad excuse for a girl is so fragile one wrong word or move could send her around the bend. “Everything you said at the trial, from the time they brought you back to the motel. Everything about Richard Bartless. All lies.”
“But not the other stuff,” she says. “They did kidnap me. And rape me.”
“Yes,” I answer.
“They ought to be punished for that, shouldn’t they?”
“Absolutely. But for
that
, for that, not for a murder they didn’t do.”
“Yeh. I guess that’s right,” she says.
I know what I have to do. One more question.
“Why did you leave Santa Fe? Why did you leave New Mexico?”
“They told me to. They told me I’d never have to see or hear about any of this again. I didn’t want to,” she says.
“Did they give you money? To relocate?”
She nods. “Five hundred dollars.”
“We have to go somewhere,” I tell her. “Someplace where I can get this recorded; what you’ve told me.”
I can see the fear in her eyes.
“They’ll throw me in jail. They told me they would,” she says, pleadingly.
“No.” I shake my head. “They won’t; I’ll make sure of that, that’s a promise. Anyway, we’re not going to the police. Not after this. I’m going to get your statement, then I’m going to hide you someplace. I’ll pay for it myself. Someplace where they won’t be able to find you.”
“What about the bikers?” she asks.
“They’re in jail, lady,” I tell her. “You put them in there, remember?”
“But what about their friends?” she asks. “They’re going to come after me, too.”
“No, they won’t. I promise.”
She looks at me; she doesn’t believe that for a second. I can’t blame her. Why should she? Every time someone’s told her to believe them it’s exploded in her face.
DON STRICKLAND’S
a member of a Denver law firm who I’ve worked with before. Everything’s all set up when Mercado and I arrive at his office with Rita—court stenographer, witnesses (Don and his secretary), videotape. She gives her statement, soup to nuts, she’s resigned to telling the truth at last. I show her the tape, we make the necessary corrections, she signs an affidavit attesting to what she’s seen.
“This is going to blow someone’s little red caboose sky-high,” Don says.
“Tell me about it.” Robertson’s caboose is what it’s going to blow. At least he’s clean, for now anyway. A dupe. I don’t know what’s worse: to be the ring-leader, or to not even know what the troops are doing behind your back. Bad scenario either way.
Moseby’ll be disbarred. There’ll be some heavy toasting to that around the choice watering holes. Sanchez and Gomez’ll probably get a slap on the wrist and be pensioned off. Cops take care of their own.
I don’t care. I want to see my four walk out of prison—period. Society can take care of itself; I’ll be satisfied with my singular victory.
Don’s secretary sets me up with a furnished apartment for Rita, one of those corporate deals you rent by the month. A phone comes with it; I make sure it’s unlisted. We’re settled in by late afternoon; I give them a two-month’s deposit. And I arrange through Mercado to have a local detective agency check up on her at random intervals, so that she knows she’s being watched but doesn’t know precisely when. I want her staying put.
I’d thought about bringing her back with me, but nixed that fast. If the wrong people spotted her back in Santa Fe, before I took her deposition to court and it was public knowledge, the odds are she’d be dead in a day. If they played this rough before, they certainly wouldn’t back off now.
Rita looks around, pleased with her new digs. Probably the nicest place she’s ever lived; beats the shit out of my current place. That’s good; I want her to be comfortable, I want her to stay put, not get antsy. We’ve been grocery shopping, enough to last a couple weeks. She’s got her staples, some beer, a few girl-things, color TV with cable, a couple new changes of clothes: what more could she want?
“It’s nice,” she says, running her hand along the fabric of the curtains. “I like it’s got a swimming pool.”
“Make sure you don’t make any friends out by that pool,” I tell her. “Nobody.”
“All right already. You done told me that ten times.”
“I want to make sure it sinks in. We’ve got to be super-careful until we get back into court. If those cops found out about this …” I leave the rest unsaid.
She nods solemnly. She’s already on enough shit-lists.
“I’ll try to call you every day,” I say. “And you can call me if you have to. You have my numbers.”
She holds out the paper with my office and home numbers on it.
“Okay.” I take a last look around. “This’ll all be over soon.”
“I sure hope so. I been cooped-up enough over all this shit. I don’t like it.”
“Beats the alternative,” I tell her.
“What?” She doesn’t have an extensive vocabulary.
“What it could be instead,” I explain. Like sleeping in a pine box, or worse, buried under a thousand tons of trash in a landfill somewhere.
“Oh. Yeh.” She gets it now. “I’ll be careful. Don’t worry.”
“Lock the door when I’m gone. Both locks.”
Easy to say: don’t worry. While you’re asleep, Rita, will you be calm? Will all your dreams be peaceful, the dreams of babies? No outlaw motorcycle gangs with knives for dicks, tearing you apart rape by rape, no venal cops threatening you with life in jail, or worse? Will you be able to live, day after day until this stink is over, without ever worrying, without once feeling those cold tentacles of fear? Because once you let them in, let them touch you, get hold of you, the worrying never stops. Is that possible for you, Rita? Maybe you can live on blind faith. I sure hope so.
I can’t; I’m already worried. For her, for the bikers, for all of us dancing to this fucked-up dirge.
YOU SHITTING ME
or what? I mean is this the fucking truth? Tell me, goddam it!” Lone Wolf thunders, leaning forward towards me, his body raised on his knuckles which are white with tension, his breath clouding the glass between us as he gets as close to me as he can. “Tell me for real, motherfucker!”
“It’s true,” I tell him. “Now sit down before they throw your ass into solitary.”
He sits back, breathing heavily, sweating, his shirt is suddenly wet down the front, under the arms. He’s shut all his feelings down for months, now he has to deal with them again.
“I don’t fucking believe it. I do not believe this.”
“Believe it.”
We look at each other. All of a sudden he breaks into a huge smile.
“Glory hallelujah. Maybe there is a God.”
Maybe there is, although I don’t think that matters one way or the other in this case.