All Is Not Forgotten (13 page)

 

Chapter Eleven

The driver was
a young man named Cruz Demarco. He was arrested in Fairview for selling marijuana. He picked up an additional felony charge for selling drugs within 1,500 feet of a school. Of course, that was just the beginning.

I have two observations. First, while it may seem absurd that the presence of a modestly priced sedan on a residential street in Fairview would arouse such suspicion, it is actually quite logical, and in this instance, it paid off. It was profiling. There's no way around that. I don't disagree with our decision as a community to curtail its use. There are unfair consequences to innocent people, and that is unacceptable. However, that argument does not diminish the statistical facts. By example, there was a very low probability that the Civic, with New York plates, under those circumstances, belonged to a resident—maybe 1 percent. This is a fact—not an opinion. Checking Civics in Fairview was the first thing Parsons did after interviewing the kids at the party. There was a larger probability that it belonged to a housekeeper, landscaper, nanny, caregiver, relative, or the like. Consider also that no one came forward to report anything like this. Given the time of day and where it was parked, the largest piece of the pie chart would contain outsiders. And why would an outsider be parked outside a high school party, at night?

The second observation I have is how everyone in this town was so eager to believe Jenny had been raped by an outsider, how they clung to this Civic like a life raft of hope. Parsons was first and foremost among them. His excitement at finding this car felt desperate to me.

My heart was pounding when we approached the car. Man, I was so glad we waited for a transaction to go down. I was ripe for a bad search. No way I was letting this guy go without questioning him and searching that car. I kept thinking, “Holy shit. We got him! We got him!” But we didn't have probable cause till we saw the sale go down. Thank God my partner was there, holding me back.

An unwitting sophomore named John Vincent had emptied his mother's wallet earlier that morning in anticipation of Demarco's return to Fairview. He walked nervously to the passenger side of the Civic.

This poor kid. What an idiot. He was trying to be discreet, you know, looking around but pretending he was just taking a stroll. Then he bends down at the side of the car. We can see the money going in. A small package going out. Right out of some cheesy cop show. We waited long enough to let the kid run away. You know, did one of those “Hey, you! Stop!” but then didn't really make an effort to chase him down. My partner was already at the driver-side window. Had Koper pull the squad car into the intersection. Guy had nowhere to go.

This part of the story amuses me in a silly way. Officer Koper—it's pronounced with a long
o
but still, it looks like it could be “copper.” And Cruz Demarco. That was his actual name, as ridiculous as it sounds, given to him by his nineteen-year-old mother, who probably thought it sounded cool. Or maybe it was some character from a video game, or one of the men who could have been the father. Cruz had his sob story. Single mother. Poverty. Shitty childhood in Buffalo. All I could think when I heard about him was that he would get eaten alive up in Somers.

I feel as though I am at the top of a roller coaster. I despise roller coasters, so I suppose I have been stalling. I have been a bystander thus far, an observer passing my judgments and rendering opinions. Everything started to happen that very early spring. My involvement with the Kramer family, treating Jenny as a patient, Sean Logan, and then the arrest of Cruz Demarco. The collision was coming, and I didn't see it. With all my brilliant powers of deduction, I didn't see it coming at all.

They found close to three pounds of marijuana in the blue Civic. That was more than enough for the arrest.

We got him down to the house. Impounded the car and called in forensics from Cranston. No way I was messing around with that. Can you imagine? If they found dirt matching the stuff behind Juniper Road? Or the black mask with the same fibers that were found under Jenny's nails? I was like a kid on Christmas morning.

Demarco was an unpleasant human being. He was twenty-nine years old. Barely stood five feet four inches. Weighed under 120 pounds. If you're a woman, you know what that looks like. He was skinny, and his pale white flesh hung from his limbs like an old woman's. His black hair was long in the back and the front, shorter at the sides. It was slick from excessive hair gel. He moved with various twitches, in his walk and his speech, even his eyes. And he smelled of cheap soap. I did not meet the man in person, but he was described to me in great detail by Detective Parsons. From the photos in the local paper and what I was able to find on the Internet, he did not quite bow to the level of repulsion ascribed to him. But this is common. We want to hate someone, assign guilt or blame, impose punishment, so we see them in the worst possible light and impose upon them the worst possible traits. Or perhaps he was all those things. There was no doubt he was a criminal. But drug dealing and rape are two very different crimes.

He didn't ask for a lawyer. I went so far as to have him sign a waiver. No way I was gonna risk a Miranda question. Got a camera wired up. Two cops watching from the outside. Me and my partner inside. We gave him his cigarettes and an orange soda. Started out making him feel comfortable, you know? See if that would work before we even let him know why he was really there. I just started the conversation while we were waiting for his sheet. I was like, “Yeah, tough break. This stuff is pretty much legal now. Maybe we can work something out. Really just want to keep our kids from getting off track, you know?” He shrugged. He said it was his brother's car and he didn't know anything about any drugs being in it. My partner got a little “bad cop” on him. Reminded him we saw him make a sale to the kid. He smiled. Said, “What sale? That kid was just asking me if I was lost or something. Reached in to help me read my map.” Seriously? I mean, yeah, there was a map in the glove compartment. But who the hell uses maps anymore? That thing was probably ten years old. Then we get a knock. They had his sheet. Bingo.

Demarco had a long relationship with the criminal justice system. All of it was related to drugs. Much of it was misdemeanor stuff, possession, use. Now, that doesn't mean that he wasn't selling. What's on a conviction record and what the original arrest was based on are not necessarily one and the same. I'm sure you've watched enough television to know the kind of wheeling-dealing that goes on between prosecutors and defense attorneys. Trials take time and cost money. And no one cares about pot these days. So while his sheet went back over a decade, there was just one distribution conviction. June of last year. Two weeks and four days after Jenny's rape.

Demarco had spent six months in a level four facility in Bridgeport. I imagine it was not a pleasant experience for such a slight young man with that soft white skin. Is this aberrant? I fear that the time I spend at Somers has imbued me with knowledge that should not be shared so casually with the rest of the world. I am normally quite cautious about the assumptions I make—even the jokes I laugh at or don't laugh at, in social company—out of fear of being misunderstood. Surely I would not have prison rape pop into my thoughts just from a discussion involving a small man with soft white skin. But if you spent eight hours a week hearing about life behind bars in a level five institution, you would also start to connect these things. My wife has scolded me on more than one occasion.

You did it again, sweetheart,
my wife would say. She always uses that term of endearment, even when she's angry.
A catcher is the guy behind home plate. That's it. No one finds it interesting.

I don't know if that's true or not true. I think there's enough empirical evidence in our media and entertainment to suggest otherwise. Still, it is not always appropriate dinner conversation. (The catcher is sometimes used to describe the person “receiving” when two men engage in sex.) I suppose that's why I find dinner parties so excruciatingly dull.

The good news for Parsons was that he now had something to use for leverage. He had two felony charges in his pocket. Adding those to the prior conviction made Demarco a repeat offender with mandatory sentencing triggers.

I go back in with the sheet. And I'm, like, “Oh man, tough break. This prior, and now two felony charges,” and he starts to squirm a little. “Maybe you should take that PD,” I say to him, “get yourself a lawyer.” His feet start shuffling around on the floor. He's got his fists clenched together. Then my partner pulls me in, whispers some bullshit. It was all for show. Just wanted it to look good, you know? And then I say, “Listen … any chance you were in town last May? You might be able to help us out with something.” He shrugs his shoulders as if to say he might have been if there's something in it for him. I figure, we get him to admit he was in town, and then we go from there. But he doesn't budge.

I did not understand the logic of this. If Demarco was the rapist, he wouldn't go anywhere near an admission of presence at the scene of the crime. Still, Parsons got back on the right track.

We had enough to lock him up. He got a PD from Cranston. Guy who knows his way around, but no way he's gonna want a full trial at PD rates. It was time to go back to that night. Now that we had a face. First, to Teddy Duncan. That kid who was chasing his dog. Second—now that we had something to use to shake up those kids, we could go back at them. None of them, not one kid from the party, admitted to seeing a blue Civic. But if it was Demarco, he was probably there selling drugs. Sees Jenny stumbling into the woods. Easy prey. And those kids, not one of them was gonna cop to buying drugs. But now that we knew, had the car, had the driver—we had a chance to roll one of them and get the ID.

Parsons was optimistic, gleeful even. So were the Kramers. I did not share Parsons's conclusions about Demarco. But it was not my place to dissuade him from his plan of action. He had been kind enough to keep me apprised so I could be helpful to Jenny and her family. What was I going to say? This is not your man. Don't go back to interview those kids or Teddy Duncan. Don't go down this road. I wished him good luck and waited for the next report. My regret is profound.

 

Chapter Twelve

The resurfacing
of the blue Civic had two immediate repercussions. The first was the interference with my treatment of the Kramer family. The second involved my son.

Jenny and her parents had been seeing me on an individual basis for several weeks. My work with Charlotte and Tom was not complicated. The primary purpose was to have them fill in the blanks about Jenny and the year leading up to the suicide attempt. But our sessions quickly shifted focus to address their own pain from this horrible chapter in their lives. This, of course, led us into the underlying problems in their marriage, and further back to their childhoods, where all marital problems begin.

I have already espoused my disapproval of couples therapy, specifically, of seeing a couple together where too many truths are told which cannot be untold. Things may need to be said, but not necessarily heard by the other spouse. The Kramers' issues collapsed before me like a house of cards, and I was working to sort them out. But I was doing this with each of them, alone.

Tom was a virtual case study. Textbook. He needed to get in touch with his anger at his wife for dominating the decisions with Jenny, and then for dominating their marriage. Then he needed to get in touch with his anger at himself for allowing this to happen, to recognize that Charlotte was merely filling in the giant chasm of indecision that resulted from his own diminished self-confidence. Finally, we could get around to his parents and the cause of his diminished self-confidence. Understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, and then a course of action for change.

This is not about whining or not taking responsibility. I know what many people say about talk therapy. They are wrong. Tom had to train himself to recognize when he was creating a chasm, acknowledge why he was doing it, then step in and be decisive, confront his wife if he felt she was wrong. He needed to own his strength and his intelligence. He needed to be a man again, for himself and his wife, who no longer wanted to touch him. It would not be easy. We call this type of “retraining” cognitive behavioral therapy. I had a patient once who asked me to explain what we were doing. She complained that it felt dishonest, that she did not want to stop herself from telling her husband how much she disliked his sister. When I told her our ultimate goal, she said,
Oh, you mean fake it 'til you feel it.
That's CBT in a nutshell. Unlike the memory-recovery process, which is highly controversial, CBT is the white bread of psychotherapy.

Charlotte was more complicated. I knew immediately why she had married Tom. I think I've already elucidated these facts. Tom was part of her perfect house, the one she longed for as a child. Bob was the beam she used to keep the house from caving in. Now you will see why I bothered you with the details of her sexual experiences with him and the conclusion that Bob was her drug. All of these things are like strands of sugar in a cotton candy machine, spinning fast for now so they don't get stuck to each other, until it's time to wind them onto one stick—one perfectly formed stick of sugar threads.

Bob was Charlotte's drug. Sean was Tammy's drug. And Jenny would be Sean's. There is a reason people are drawn to others in this way, in a way that makes them feel like they are addicts. It is not healthy. In fact, it is by definition unhealthy from an emotional standpoint. I'm sorry to disappoint, but a healthy relationship is usually quite dull. I had started to make great progress with Charlotte on this issue until the arrest of Cruz Demarco.