Primal Fear (10 page)

“Somebody who can prove this kid’s crazier than a Mexican jumping bean,” Tommy said.

The Judge smiled. “Of course, that, too,” he said.

ELEVEN

Before dawn, the weather turned warmer, and by nine in the morning the icy streets had turned to brown slush. Cars still moved cautiously, their chains clanging on the street and banging against their fenders. It was a familiar winter sound. Vail dodged splashes of dirty mush as he jumped between puddles on his way from the police station to the courthouse.

He went inside with the package he had picked up from Precinct One, peeking in doors until he found an empty courtroom he could use for a few minutes. He knew this room well, for he had argued a dozen cases within its oak-paneled confines. He went to the defendant’s table and eagerly opened the thick manila envelope Stenner had left for him.

The autopsy report was frightening enough, but the photographs were devastating. He went through them slowly, his mouth growing drier as he studied each one before laying it facedown in a stack. There were two dozen of them. Like all
graphic police studies of violence, they lacked both art and composition, depicting the stark and sanguinary climate of the crime and the mindless indignity to which the human body was exposed. Pornographic in detail and obscene in content, they were cataloged and garnered in groups; long establishing shots showing the nauseating ambience of the scene, full-length studies, finally the chilling close-ups and extreme close-ups. He could see the jury now, staring in openmouthed horror as each picture made its way down the row.

When he finished he put them back in the manila envelope and leafed through the transcript of one of two interrogations by Stenner and Turner. It had lasted from 11:41
P.M.
until 1:26
A.M.
on the night of the crime. The second, between 6:04
A.M.
and 7:12
A.M.
the following morning, had not yet been transcribed, but there were copies of the tapes of both interviews included in the package. There were also preliminary fingerprint and forensics reports stamped “Initial report, more to come.” All in all, it was an impressive assemblage for such a short period of time. The transcript told him that Aaron Stampler had repeated the same story he had told Vail to the two detectives, on two different occasions, for a total of two hours and fifty-three minutes. By now everyone in the D.A.’s office would be laughing about that.

To get his mind off the images of death, Vail stalked the empty courtroom. To Vail, the law was both a religion and a contest, and the courtroom was his church, his Roman Colosseum, the arena where all his knowledge and cunning were adrenalized. It was here he really came alive, his energy and brain fueled by the challenge of law; to attack its canons, dogma, precepts, its very structure, as he invoked the jury to accept his concept of truth. The legal dominion was sacred to Vail but he also felt it had to be defied and challenged constantly if it were to endure.

The door to the courtroom opened and Goodman peeked inside. Vail was lost in his own cosmos, appraising an imaginary jury, formulating some ingenious argument. Vail walked past the empty jury box, sliding a finger along the polished rail that separated the sanctioned twelve from the rabble of the courtroom, remembering phrases from past oratories: “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the evidence …” Evidence? Call it evidence, or conjecture, or guesswork, insinuation, circumstance, lies, whatever, it was all constructed for one
purpose, to define the crime and hopefully help the jury to separate fact from fiction—Vail’s fact, the prosecutor’s fiction. And so, as he speculated on the D.A.’s initial evidence against Aaron Stampler, he subconsciously practiced the demands of his sport the way a long-distance runner practices stride, timing and breathing.

His mind strayed back to Aaron Stampler. Could this quiet, almost pretty mountain boy have committed such a crime? Stampler just didn’t fit the mold. He was quick and articulate but also blunt and unsophisticated. There was a mountain boy’s naturalness about him, yet he was not naïve. And he seemed strangely apathetic to the charges against him. Stampler was well aware that he was accused of an absolutely unspeakable crime, but it did not seem to concern him, which was one of Vail’s tests of innocence: lack of fear. In Aaron’s mind, there could be no punishment because he had committed no crime, therefore he was apathetic to any threat of consequence.

What the
hell
happened that night? Vail wondered. Was it possible that it happened the way Stampler described it? And if so, how would Vail ever prove it?

“Hey, what’s going on?” Goodman asked.

Vail looked up, startled by the intrusion, then shrugged.

“A moment of prayer,” he answered. “Enter the arena.”

“I brought coffee,” Goodman said, putting a sack with three cups of coffee and three donuts on the table beside the D.A.’s package.

“Great. Take a good swig and sit down before you look at the pictures.”

“Bad?”

“Invent a darker word.”

Vail sat on the comer of the desk dunking a donut and sipping coffee, watching Goodman flip slowly through the catalog of savagery, uttering an occasional “Whew” or “Good God.” When Tommy was finished, he leaned back in his chair and breathed a silent whistle through pursed cheeks.

“When the jury sees these, Stampler’s a dead man,” Goodman said.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Vail answered.

“They’re prejudicial they’re so inflammatory. How the hell could you possibly make these work for us?”

“Do you think a sane person could have done that?” asked Vail.

“We going for insanity?” Goodman asked.

“If it’s all we’ve got.”

“Then you’re assuming Stampler’s guilty,” Goodman said.

“Not necessarily. But if we can’t prove he’s innocent, insanity could be the only way to keep him off the fryer.”

“So how do we plead him tomorrow morning?”

“Not guilty.”

Tommy Goodman headed his battered VW out the Crosstown Boulevard to Lakeview and turned toward the cathedral. As he drove out the wide boulevard with its tree-lined divider, he could see Savior House off to his right. He turned and took Banner Street down to the old high school building and parked. He sat staring at the halfway house with the motor running. The street was deserted except for a couple of teenagers who were working on an old Chevy sitting on cinder blocks half a block away. They tinkered with the engine, stopping frequently to warm their hands over a garbage can filled with burning refuse.

As he sat there, fragments from the past seeped into his memory. Franklin Roosevelt High. Graduation day, 1973. He had been one of those “goddamn long-haired hippies” the mayor had condemned, refusing to give them their diplomas if they didn’t get haircuts. And so thirty-two of them had stood during the entire ceremony, capped and gowned, with their hair tucked up under tassled mortarboards and their hands over their lips, while a legless Vietnam veteran named Robbie DeHaviland, an alumnus of the school, had delivered the graduation address.

About halfway through the speech, and to everyone’s shock, DeHaviland had suddenly unloaded on the mayor, the school principal and just about everyone in the city, the state and the U.S. government.

“What has happened to freedom in this country?” he roared in anger. “I didn’t leave half my body in that godforsaken garbage dump to come back here and have our elected officials walking all over our rights as citizens. What has happened to freedom of speech? Freedom of expression? What the
hell
are we fighting for? If you hate this war as much as I do, speak out! And if growing your hair down to your
ass
is your way to express your feelings, then I say grow it. You who are about to graduate and go into the adult world today earned your diplomas. And if the mayor and the principal of this high school don’t give them to you, I say they should get down on their knees in
the nearest veteran’s cemetery and eat every goddamn one of them!”

The crowd had gone berserk, and principal Joe Leady had indeed given out every diploma. And as each protester had mounted the platform and received his diploma, he had whipped off his cap, let his hair tumble down around his shoulders and thrown his mortarboard to the winds.

June 2, 1973. What a great fucking day that was.

Later they discovered that DeHaviland was so stoned when he made the speech he didn’t remember what he said until the next day. No one could have known that the school would be closed before the war in Vietnam ended, a victim of old age and disregard.

Goodman sadly regarded the wonderful old building, now dressed in luminous rainbow colors, with its vital organs renovated, the field where they once played touch football lathered with concrete. Another one of Cardinal Rushman’s great achievements, raising the money to clean up the place and turn it into a boarding school for runaways and rehabs. But what the hell, you had to give the Saint of Lakeview Drive credit for pulling off such a grand project.

Well, it might be Savior House to the late, great Archbishop Rushman, but it was still FDR High to him.
His
high school, by God, and nothing would ever change that.

He got out of the car, crossed the playground, went in through the back door and strolled down the hall. The place seemed strangely subdued and sterile. No yelling, no scuffling, no kids running to class. The lockers were gone. The old-fashioned pebbled glass doors had been replaced. Walls had been torn down to make room for dormitories and recreation rooms. The old physics lab was now the TV room. And the winners case was gone.

He still remembered the pride he had felt each morning when he passed it, always gazing sideways at the trophy he had brought back from the state boxing finals with the brass bust of John L. Sullivan above the plate on its base:
THOMAS GOODMAN, STATE WELTERWEIGHT CHAMPION
, 1968–1969.

In its place was a framed front page of the
Daily News
with Rushman in his shirtsleeves, hands raised over his head, surrounded by cheering kids, the headline below the photograph:
SAVIOR HOUSE BECOMES A REALITY
.

He stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the wall, lost in time, when a young girl walked up to him.

“Can I do something for you?” she asked.

He turned and looked at her. Fifteen, maybe sixteen, a cute little thing, just beginning to bud, her hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“I went to high school here,” he said.

“I didn’t know it was ever a high school,” she answered. “I guess I never thought about it being anything before it was Savior House.”

“Well, it was a great high school in its day,” Goodman said. “Guess we ought to be thankful they found a use for it. Better than tearing the old girl down.”

“Never heard a school called an old girl before.” She laughed, then said, “So, you just visiting or do you want to see somebody?”

“I guess I need to talk to whoever’s in charge.”

“The sisters are at vespers but maybe I can help you, I’m a hall monitor. My name’s Maggie.”

“Hall monitor, huh,” he chuckled. “Well, it’s nice to know some things never change. Maggie, do you know Aaron Stampler?”

The question shocked her. She moved back a step, stood with her feet together and suddenly looked over her shoulder, as if she thought someone might be sneaking up on her.

“You’re not the police,” she said suspiciously. “They’ve already been here.”

Good old Stenner, right on top of things.

“No,” he said. “I work for the lawyer who’s going to defend Aaron. I’d like to talk to some of his friends, find out what he was really like.”

“Well, we all knew him. Everybody knows everybody here.”

“
Knew
him?”

“Oh, what I meant is, uh …”

“It’s okay,” he said, and smiled. “I know what you meant. The whole thing’s a terrible shock for all of us.”

“Aaron was okay,” she said, still speaking in the past tense. “Real smart, y’know. Kinda quiet. He moved out a couple of months ago.”

“Oh? Where did he go?”

“He was shacked up … uh, living … with Linda. Some place on the west side.”

“Linda? Linda who?”

“We don’t ever use last names here, okay? I mean, it isn’t cool, asking about last names.”

“Thanks for telling me. I wouldn’t want to be uncool.”

She laughed again, then said, “Well, c’mon. You can meet some of the gang. If they don’t want to talk to you they’ll just walk away—or tell you to drop dead.”

He did not learn much during the next half hour. There were twenty or so kids in the dining room, all of them professing to be shocked by the crime. The consensus was that Aaron was smart and friendly. Had a temper just like everybody else. Liked good music, movies, and had a girlfriend named Linda who had moved in with him when he left Savior House. Goodman, using a singular kind of shorthand he had developed through the years, jotted down notes in a small black notebook that had become his bible.

Why did he leave?

Everybody left sooner or later.

Where was Linda now?

Nobody has seen her since the murder.

Did they think Stampler killed the bishop?

That’s what the papers said.

Why did he do it?

Nobody had a clue.

Did he and the bishop get along?

Everyone agreed that Aaron was his favorite in this community of lost children.

Who were his closest friends?

He really didn’t have any close friends. He was kind of a loner.

“I guess maybe Billy Jordan is as close to a
close
friend as he had,” Maggie said. “He and the other guys who were altar boys.”

“Aaron was an altar boy?”

“Not really,” one of the boys said. “He was kind of, you know, studying for it But the bishop included him in with the others anyway.”

“The others?”

“The other altar boys,” the same boy, who was short and had skin tormented by acne, said somewhat jealously. “It was like this private club, y’know. The bishop used to tape the services
on his television camera, then play it back to them on TV, so they could see what they were doing wrong.”