David Ellis - The Hidden Man

Your mother looks at you, a long, hard glare, but she doesn’t ask the question. So you don’t answer. You don’t know what you’re going to say.

A cop walks out, an athletically built guy in a dress shirt and badge. He takes one look at you and he says your name. Jason Kolarich?

Your legs go weak. Your mother takes hold of your arm. I’m Jason’s mother , she says, defensively.

The cop waves his hand in a dismissive manner. It’s not like that , he says. We just want to talk to him. Sammy wants to talk to him.

It’s okay, Mom , you hear yourself say. And then you are following this man through a door, and then down a hall. He doesn’t speak to you. You’re not sure you’ll be able to find your voice again.

Class of ’78 , he says to you. You don’t catch his meaning. You don’t say anything.

He stops at a door with frosted glass bearing the number 2. When the door opens, you see Coach Fox standing in the room, his back to you. He turns around and stares at you.

What the fuck are you doing, Kolarich? he asks you. Sit the fuck down.

You sit. Coach Fox points to the cop and tells you, Detective Brady here, he was an outside linebacker when we went to sectionals in ’78 . He worked his ass off , he tells you, went to college afterward and became a cop .

I didn’t have the talent you have , the cop says to you. So why the hell are you gonna squander it? Getting messed up with this kid Cutler?

Sammy. It comes back to Sammy. He’s my best friend , you tell the room. This is my fault, too.

They don’t like it. Coach Fox spits out a curse. This year was nothing , he says to you. We’re winning state next year, Kolarich, if you don’t fuck it up for us.

You hear yourself again, saying the words: It was me and Sammy together. It was both of us , you tell them.

Coach Fox goes quiet. He turns away, as if he can pretend he didn’t hear it. The cop, Brady, leans in so he’s close to your face.

That’s not how Sammy tells it , he says.

I LEFT the coffee shop not particularly pleased with myself but happy to have at least one fairly solid witness for Sammy. Tommy Butcher didn’t have the first damn memory of what the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene had been wearing and I’d handed it to him. I was sure, at this point, between his racial leanings and his sense of rough justice, that Butcher would testify very clearly that the black-guy-fleeing-the-scene was, beyond any doubt, wearing a brown leather bomber jacket and green stocking cap.

You owe me, Koke . Maybe that truth allowed me so easily to suggest a memory to Butcher. As a prosecutor, I was obsessive about ethics to the point of a rebuke, on more than one occasion, from my division chief. One of my apprehensions upon joining the defense bar was a fear that the standard was diminished on the other side of the aisle-most prosecutors viewed most defense attorneys as corner-cutters, cheaters, sometimes downright liars. I’d been grateful to learn otherwise, under the tutelage of Paul Riley. Paul had been steadfast on the Almundo case, when the senator had suggested how certain witnesses might be cooperative. That’s not how it works, Hector , Paul had told him. At least not with me . And not with me, either.

Maybe it was Talia’s and Emily’s deaths that gave me a more universal perspective, allowing the ends to more liberally justify the means. Either way, I owed Sammy, like he said. But that conversation with Tommy Butcher would stay with me awhile.

I checked my cell phone and found that I had a message. I played it while I drove.

This is Detective Vic Carruthers. I’m sending over copies of the files like you asked. And I wanted you to know, we’re going to do the dig. And if I find that little girl’s bones on the side of that hill, I’m going to rip Perlini out of his grave and beat the ever lovin’ shit out of him.

Good. Progress, at least. Maybe I’d be able to conclusively pin Audrey’s murder on Perlini. That just left me with the small task of convincing the judge that it was relevant to the case, even if Sammy was continuing to claim that he didn’t kill Perlini.

I had my usual lunchtime stop to make, and then I’d go visit Mrs. Thomas, my old neighbor.

WHEN THE CURTAIN PARTS, a number of kids are lying on the stage, curled up in the fetal position, feigning sleep. Behind them, a row of children move awkwardly, side by side, across the stage, wearing cardboard across their waists that are supposed to represent clouds. Talia and I, sitting in the third row, perk up, because we know the sun is about to shine.

Emily, with the golden-orange cardboard sun across her chest, slowly rises from a crouch. “Riiiise and shi-innnne,” she says.

I train the camcorder on our daughter as many in the audience coo with delight. Clearly they understand that Emily Kolarich is the most adorable child in the play.

“‘Time to wake up, everyone,’” Talia whispers, a line she worked on with our daughter all of last night.

“Time to wake up, everyone!” Emily calls out.

Talia finds my free hand and locks her fingers with mine.

“She’s so beautiful,” I say to her. “God, Talia, she is so beautiful.”

AFTER LEAVING THE CEMETERY, I drove down to the city’s south side, to the nursing home where Delilah Thomas was spending her elderly years, no more than five miles from our old neighborhood in Leland Park. The all-brick front along a busy Cardaman Avenue made the place look more like a condo complex, which I suppose wasn’t altogether inaccurate. The place was called the St. Joseph’s Center for Assisted Living. Mrs. Thomas, like everyone else on our block, was a card-carrying Catholic.

I had called yesterday to set up the appointment, because I figured these places were pretty rigid in their structure. They were expecting me when I walked into a spacious reception area decorated in light purple.

A black guy in white escorted me to an elevator and hit the button for six. “You were all Lilly could talk about last night, after you called,” he told me.

Mrs. Thomas had been widowed in her fifties-I was young then, and I struggled now to recall her husband’s cause of death. I’d always remembered Mrs. Thomas in her backyard, tending to her garden, always the first to church. She and her husband had never had children. I could only imagine her loneliness now, but then, I guess, it didn’t hurt surrounding herself with seniors.

“How is she?” I asked the guy, whose name tag said Darrell.

“Oh, Lilly?” His face lit up. “She’s a peach. She does real good. Real good. Real spry little thing.”

We got off at six, and I was, indeed, in what was basically a condo complex. The hallway was dimly lit, the walls white with that light-purple color again, a horizontal stripe along the center. A woman, moving slowly down the hall with a walker, stopped and watched Darrell and me. Darrell said something cheerful to her, and she seemed to react favorably but didn’t smile.

Darrell knocked on the door at 607 and called out for Lilly, surprising me with the volume of his voice. We waited awhile before the door opened.

Mrs. Thomas had to be in her late eighties. I recognized her by her eyes and the way she held her head slightly angled. Otherwise, I could have passed her on the street without recognition. It was like a layer of skin had been overlaid on her face. Still, at first glance, she seemed to be holding up well, slightly stooped but thin, and her eyes were vibrant.

She put her hands to her face, and her small mouth opened. “Jason, Jason,” she said softly. “Oh, look at you.”