Linda Fairstein - The Bone Vault

“Save thedarling for another time, will you? Tell anyone and I swear that I’ll never talk to you again.” I pulled the sheet up over the top of my head to end the conversation.

It wasn’t enough that the coffin had developed cracks. Now I had to worry about leaks from my own bedroom.

“I’d like to be in the room when you interview my daughter, ma’am.”

“I’ll answer all your questions, Mrs. Alfieri, when I’m done speaking with Angel. In the meantime, I’m going to give you a newspaper to read and ask you to take a seat in the waiting area. The detective and I need to be alone with her.”

“But she’s only fourteen. I got a right to-”

Somehow, everybody had a laundry list of rights that I couldn’t find anywhere in the Constitution. “We’re preparing your daughter to testify about her case before the grand jury. That’s what the law calls a secret proceeding. I’ll be the only person in the room with Angel, aside from the jurors and the stenographer. I need to get her used to talking about what happened without you holding her hand.”

She frowned at me and waddled behind Detective Vandomir as he led her down the hallway. I waited for him at my door. “I couldn’t shake her loose the other night,” he said. “Good move.”

“My first rule of thumb with a dishonest witness: get the mother, the boyfriend, the sister out of the picture. Find some way to do it, whatever works. You never get the truth when they have to admit to someone close to them that they’ve been lying. Where are you with her?”

“Mother works for one of those overnight mail services. TenP.M. to four in the morning, five nights a week. Ex-husband lives in Florida. Angel and her two kid brothers are home alone. Perp is a livery cabdriver who drove Angel to her house from the hospital about a month ago, after she visited her grandmother, who had some serious surgery.

“Kid says he showed up at the door the other night, forced her up the stairs into her bedroom at knife point, and raped her.”

“Brothers hear anything?”

“Sleeping in the room right up against her wall. Not a peep.”

“Outcry?”

“Immediate. That’s on her side. Called 911 a little after midnight, a few minutes after she says he left.”

“Medical exam?”

“Inconclusive. She says he didn’t ejaculate, so there’s no semen. No way to do DNA. And she’s sexually active. Three partners.”

“Some little angel.”

“Yeah, she’s already got chlamydia. Mother doesn’t know about that either.”

“Tell me about the perp.”

“He’s a real dirtbag. Forty-eight years old, has a bunch of collars for drug possession, boosting cars, doing break-ins. Nothing like this. Nothing violent. Floor of his car full of kiddie-porn magazines and condom wrappers. No knife.”

“He got a story?”

“Yeah. Starts the same way. Picked her up outside of Metropolitan Hospital. By the time they hit 110th Street, she was sitting in the front seat, writing down her beeper number so he could page her at school the next day. Met her a couple of times after class. Drove her around with her friends. Oral sex once or twice in the backseat. Even did a threesome with Angel and one of the other cherubs in her pack. Says she invited him to come over this past Monday night when her mother left for work.”

“You tell her what he said?”

“Yeah. She denies it. Says the only way he knew where she lived was because he had driven her home from the hospital that one time. Gave her his card with his cell phone, in case she needed to use him again. That’s how we got him. I called and asked him to pick me up in front of the deli next door to our office, and then invited him to step inside to help my clearance rate for the month. Collars for dollars.”

“She understands we’re going to get her beeper information and his cell phone records?”

“I don’t think it had the same impact on her as it does when you tell an adult. She didn’t seem to grasp that all of this is computerized now. I explained to her that every time he beeped her or she called him, it’s just like leaving a fingerprint. Not sure she believes me.”

“Or wants to. Let’s give her a go.” I turned the door handle and went into my office, where Angel had been waiting for us.

She smiled at Vandomir as we entered, and closed the small mirrored case in which she had been examining herself, rubbing one last application of a fruity-smelling gloss over her lips. She tugged at the straps of her bright yellow tank top, pulling it into place so the rhinestone letters that formed the wordGangsta stretched from nipple to nipple.

“Angel, this is Ms. Cooper, the lawyer I told you about. She’s going to be handling your case. She’s got some more questions for you.”

“You understand why you’re here today, Angel?”

“Not really. I told him everything that happened.” She jerked her head in Vandomir’s direction. “I don’t know why I have to explain it over again. You just oughtta keep Felix locked up so he don’t do this to nobody else.”

“In order for that to happen, we have to find out exactly what he did. I’m going to ask you the same things the detective did, maybe even more questions. And what you say stays in this room, do you understand that? If there’s something that went on between you and Felix that you don’t want your mother to know about, thenthis is the time and place to let me know about it.”

She lifted her eyes to look at me, without moving her head.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have any idea what goes on at a trial, Angel?”

“I don’t want to be at no trial. I just want the judge to sentence him to jail.”

“That’s not how it works. You watch television?”

“Yeah.”

“Ever see any of those cop shows where the guys go to trial? You know who’s in the courtroom when the witness testifies?”

“Me. Him. The judge. You. That’s when I gotta tell what he did to me.”

“And what do you think Felix does, after you testify?”

“I don’t know.”

“He gets to talk to the jury, too, if he wants to. He gets to tell them the story the wayhe says it happened. Those twelve people don’t know you, and they don’t know him, so they have to try to figure out which one of you to believe, whose story makes more sense.”

“How come he gets to talk?” That part of the process clearly bothered her. “He’s gonna lie anyway. He’s gonna say I invited him to my house.”

Angel’s tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth, sounding a strong note of disapproval at the defense she had just offered on Felix’s behalf, and she slumped farther down in her chair. Her shoulders sagged forward, theg anda rhinestones disappearing from my view. All that was left were the letters forming the wordangst.

“Let me tell you about lying in a court of law. Did the detective tell you that it’s a crime, too? That if you take an oath to tell the truth but you lie on the witness stand, you can be arrested?”

“Felix raped me. I’m not lying about that. You can’t arrest me for nothing. I’m too young.” The pout had passed momentarily, and she was emboldened by the thought that her age would protect her from my lightly veiled threat.

Don’t test me today, Angel. “Actually, wecan arrest you. Your case is heard in family court because you’re not sixteen. But the judge there can send you to a foster home upstate, take you away from your mother-”

That snapped her to attention. “I don’t want to be doing this now. I want to go home.”

“I’m afraid that’s not one of your choices. A man has been arrested because of the story you told Detective Vandomir. He’s been in jail for a couple of days, charged with the most serious thing one human being can do to another, short of murder. And he belongs there, if he held a knife to you and raped you. He belongs there for a very long time.