Stranglehold (34 page)

She pointed. "First door to your left."

"Could you get me something ... some paper towels maybe? Have you got a first-aid kit around or anything?"

"I'll be right back."

She hurried down the hall to the kitchen. His father took one step in the direction of the bathroom and then stopped and turned, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his finger, striding toward him, reaching over and grabbing Robert's arm with the other hand, squeezing his bicep hard, that nice easygoing look on his face slipping away and sliding into a fury he had never seen on anybody's face, ever.

He'd been scratching at the finger
.

Robert had seen him.

It was
just to get him alone
.

He tried to pull away. Arthur jerked him roughly back.

He tried to cry out to Mrs. Strawn but his voice wouldn't work and then his father's words were a whispered rush washing over him like a cruel wind.

"
You think I'm fucking stupid, Robert?
" he hissed. "
I told you what I was going to do and now I'm going to do it
—unless you say you lied, Robert.
You think I can't? You seriously want to fuck with me? Unless you tell them you lied and you tell them fast I'm going to skin your fucking mother while she's still alive and then I'm coming after YOU! You understand me?
"

He squeezed the arm and then released him just as he thought the arm couldn't take any more, just as he thought he was going to break it, and then he moved off quickly to the bathroom.

Robert heard water running.

His legs were about to give way. He sat down trembling on the couch. Fell into it.

Mrs. Strawn came in from the kitchen with some paper towels and a first-aid kit and she didn't give him a glance. She walked to the bathroom and he heard the water go off again and then he heard them talking.

Nobody could protect him
.

The realization was final.

His father could do what he wanted to, to both him and to his mother because his father could always outsmart them whenever he wanted and his father didn't care. He'd do anything.

He was the only one who knew that.

In spite of what his mom said, he was alone.

When they came out of the bathroom his father was smiling again holding up the thumb with a band-aid on it like it was some kind of thumbs-up thing and Mrs. Strawn was smiling too, completely fooled by the phony look on his father's face and the phony cut he'd made this morning just to get to him.

"All fixed," he said. "Thanks again, Mrs. Strawn. It's really good of you. I've got to go, Robbie. But I promise, I'll be in touch. Okay?"

And Robert knew he would. He'd be in touch. Forever and ever.

He always would.

"It's for you." Cindy held out the phone. "Owen
Sansom
."

Lydia took the telephone and Cindy went back to what she was doing—simultaneously preparing them a meal of chicken cacciatore, green beans and pasta, clearing her daughter Gail's toys and books off the kitchen table and sipping her second bottle of Miller
Lite
.

"I thought I'd find you here," said
Sansom
. "God, Lydia, I hate to have to tell you this. But Robert's recanted."

"He's
what
?"

"He's recanted."

"Oh God,
no
!"

Cindy stopped everything, stood there with casserole dish in hand and stared at her.

"I just talked to Andrea Stone. She got a call half an hour ago from Lois Strawn at the shelter. Robert told her that everything he said to the state police was a lie. That he made up
everything
."

"I don't understand. Why? Why would he
do
that?"

"I don't know for sure but I've got a pretty good idea."

"Why?"

"You're not going to like this. Lois Strawn says he had a visitor earlier. Arthur. All very civil, she says—but Andrea had a bad feeling about it anyway. She asked if Strawn had left the room at any point. Seems that while they were talking Arthur opened up a cut on his finger and she went out to the kitchen for some towels and a Band-Aid. She was only gone a minute or two but hell, how long does it have to take? I can't prove it, but I'd bet anything Arthur threatened him."

"I'm going over there."

"That's a lousy idea. Even if you could get him to admit that Arthur threatened him, at this point it's going to look like coercion on
your
part. Like you're exerting undue pressure. Andrea Stone's over there right now, taking his statement to submit to Judge Burke. Let's see what she comes up with. And I don't care what he's saying now—those videotapes are still very convincing. Burke's going to have a damned hard time overlooking them. These were police experts doing the questioning and Burke knows it."

"So what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and hope and pray that he believes my son's first confession and not his second? Jesus!"

She felt Cindy's hand on her shoulder. Only then was she aware that she was shaking.

"I don't like it any more than you do, honestly. But ..."

"Arthur's not playing by the rules. Why the hell should we have to?"

She heard him sigh. "Lydia, I think you already know the answer to that. Think about it. You already all but admitted in court that you were willing to break the law in order to get what you wanted out of this. That's the way Burke sees it, anyway. He also sees you as prone to hysteria. Given that, the only way to do this is to go about it calmly and correctly and keep a low profile until we hear from him. Believe me, it's the only way."

"I'm taking him. Goddamn it! I'm ..."

"
No, you're not
. We haven't come this far so you and Robert can become a pair of fugitives! Listen to me. I want you to calm down. I want you to tell Cindy to pour you a drink—a stiff one—and I want you to stay there and hang tight until I hear from Andrea. Okay? I'll phone you right away as soon as I do. Promise me."

"Owen, I ..."

"
Promise
me, Lydia."

She felt old and weary, defeated—and sick with shame for feeling that way. She couldn't afford to feel defeated. Probably he was right. She had to summon the patience somehow and the strength and faith in some kind of future for them that would allow her to do this one more time.

"All right," she said. "All right, Owen."

"I'll call you as soon as I know."

She hung up the phone.

"Oh, honey," Cindy said, both hands on her shoulders now, not even knowing what was going on but getting it right, knowing somehow exactly how she was feeling and putting it perfectly—quietly and perfectly and succinctly into words.

"You do get the shit, don't you?"

Andrea Stone thought the instruction was unusual to say the least. When she returned to her office there was a message on her desk from Judge Burke, saying that he wanted to hear the tape of her interview with Robert
Danse
immediately. That he would still be in chambers.

And that he intended to make a ruling in the morning.

She phoned Owen
Sansom
and gave him the gist of it and then walked across the street to the courts building. The street was dark. She saw that one of the streetlights was out and it gave her a strange uneasy feeling as though someone had vandalized the light, knocked it out purposely, as though typical urban street crime had reached this far north into the boonies and from now on was going to be part of the lives of all of them.

When it was probably just a burned-out bulb.

She presented her ID to the guard and walked the dimly lit hall to the judge's chambers.

She found him sitting at his desk, turned to a VCR and television monitor, listening to Robert say, "
He messes with me back here ... with this
..." She closed the door quietly and saw him push a button on the remote. The screen went black.

"Ms. Stone," he said.

She handed him the small voice-activated tape recorder. "The tape's inside?"

''Yes.''

He handled the recorder as though unfamiliar with this kind of gadget, turning it, frowning, looking at the control panel on the side and then putting it down in front of him on the big oak desk.

"So?" he said.

"Excuse me?"

"So how did it go? With the boy. How did you find him?"

"Upset," she said. "Nervous. Scared."

"Scared of what?"

"You're asking my opinion?"

"Yes, I am."

"I believe he's scared that he'll never see home again at this rate. And I believe that he's scared of his father." Burke nodded.

"I'll speak candidly, Ms. Stone. This doesn't surprise me. This videotape ... I've watched it half a dozen times ... both these interviews with him tend to be convincing."

"He recants it all on my tape, Your Honor."

"So I understand. After seeing his father."

"And according to Mrs. Strawn, seeing him alone. For a minute or two at least."

"Unfortunate. And this tape of yours—is this convincing too? Objectively speaking?"

"I have a problem with it."

"What's that?"

"He won't say why he supposedly lied to the psychologists in the first place. Why he would want to implicate his father. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

"Could it have been the mother? Coaching him?"

"I doubt it, Your Honor. I doubt it very much. I think he told them the truth down there."

"At this point I tend to agree. Despite what my feelings are regarding the mother's actions in the case, I ..."

"Your Honor ..."

He stopped her. "I understand that we don't agree on this, Ms. Stone. It's not the point. The point is, right now, the father."

"Yes, Your Honor."

He sighed. "I'll listen to the tape. Thanks for delivering it at this late hour. These cases demand a lot of all of us, it seems to me. Trying to do the appropriate thing for a child such as this, trying to prevent further damage." He smiled ruefully. "Late hours are the least of it. Anyhow, thank you, Ms. Stone. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Thank you, Your Honor."

As she stepped outside and quietly closed the door she heard her own voice coming from the other side, tinny and thin-sounding, from the tape.

The man was willing to do his homework, anyway.

She realized that despite what the judge had said about the credibility of the videotape she was still afraid for Robert
Danse
. Preventing further damage was a tricky thing. When there had been so much already.

She thought not for the first time that child abuse was a kind of parasite, one that digs in deep and painfully at first so that you can see its effects quite clearly if you happen to be looking. But then sometimes after a while the symptoms almost seemed to disappear. The insidious thing about a parasite was that you got used to it, the pain notwithstanding. The feeding of the abuser. The slow starvation of the victim. Both became routine. Part of the organization of the internal structure of life.