City Dark(29)

“Who’s there?!” It came out “hoo-ZARE,” and the last word was a throaty scream. More hacking and phlegmy coughs were punctuated by a mumbled curse that Joe couldn’t make out. The voice was closer now. Robbie took a step backward and almost tripped over Joe. Neither boy dared make a sound. Then there was a bad smell. The whole place smelled bad, but this was a distinctive fug—the clinging, almost food-like smell of body odor. Now there were shuffling and scraping sounds as the stranger moved along the pavement toward them.

“WHO IS IT, GODDA—” The words devolved into throaty spasms, hacking, cursing, and coughing. There was a hock-spit sound, and Joe ducked as if expecting to be struck by saliva. The person was close to them now, his breathing audible.

“Run!” Robbie said. “Run!”

“Which way?!” Joe cried as his brother pulled away from him.

“Away from him! Just go!”

Too afraid to cry, Joe bolted forward in the dark toward the sound of Robbie’s voice. There was a terrible moment when he felt hot skin, like a hand or an arm, reaching out to grab him. The smell was sickening. He heard footfalls and Robbie cursing up ahead. Then there was a thump. Robbie must have struck the wall on the left side.

Joe staggered on. His eyes had adjusted, and he could see a few things outside the tunnel. There were spots of yellow and orange—candles in windows up high—and the dim outline of the buildings. They still seemed very far away. Behind him, the person in the tunnel sounded like he was throwing up. Echoes of it punched through the hot air.

Joe reached the outside. Headlights on the Henry Hudson Parkway lit up some treetops above him. They were in a park. Robbie was a few feet ahead of him, his hands on his knees. A car approached from the east, moving down Seventy-Ninth Street, but it turned onto another street running parallel to them and sped off. It had been bright again, but now it was even darker.

“What street is that?” Joe asked. “How far off is it? I can’t see again!”

“That’s Riverside Drive,” a male voice said. It came from their left, off the street, where there were trees and bushes. Robbie stood up straight and peered in that direction. Joe made his way over to him, preparing to start running again. This voice was much different, though. It was a calm, civilized voice belonging to a perfectly reasonable-sounding grown-up. “How many of you are there? Boys? It’s okay. You can tell us.”





CHAPTER 26


Thursday, July 7, 2016

Saratoga County Courthouse

Ballston Spa, New York

9:57 a.m.

“You worried?” Joe asked his boss, Craig Flynn. Outside, it was a bright, beautiful summer’s day, and Joe stared longingly through the window. The United Kingdom had recently voted to leave the European Union, and it was looking increasingly likely that Donald Trump would be the GOP nominee for president. In the vestibule outside the witness room, three corrections officers debated Trump’s best choice for a running mate. Five months had passed since Joe had first laid eyes on Aaron Hathorne, in the ID photo on his desk, and Aideen had relayed her warning.

“Nope, ’cause I know you’re gonna nail it,” Craig said, hooking his hands behind his head. He grinned, the usual toothless, oversize one that seemed to stretch his face like taffy. Craig was a few years older than Joe, tall and slender with the toned body of an athlete, but bald and possessed of a long face short of handsome. The face itself was well shaped, but his features and ever-present oval glasses made him look a little cartoonish. This was particularly true when he made an exaggerated expression—a frown, a furrow of the brow, or, as in this case, a grin.

It was a look, in general, that Craig embraced. He knew he looked like a goofball, and he reveled in it. Part of it was that Craig Flynn enjoyed being underestimated. Of Irish descent, he had grown up poor but managed to obtain an Ivy League education. Like Joe, he had a quick mind and a masterful ability to remember facts, figures, and dates. He was opinionated and could have been called a bully were he not so kind underneath it all. It was no understatement that Joe was more grateful to Craig than to any other man in his life except for Uncle Mike.

“He’s got polished counsel,” Joe said. “His trust fund is still working for him.”

“What, those white-shoe pricks with sticks up their asses? You’ll wipe the floor with them.”

“Gonna do my best, Skip,” Joe said and smiled. A few lawyers in the unit affected a habit of referring to the chief the way that mafia soldiers referred to the bosses, calling them Skip or Skipper.

“You’ve got him,” Craig said. “And remember”—he made one of those exquisite magnified Craig faces—“failure is not an option.”

Joe’s challenge at this dispositional phase of the process was to keep Hathorne confined rather than released on intensive probation. Although Hathorne’s family expressed public disgust with him, they were ready to take him back, in a manner of speaking. On the grounds of their estate outside Saratoga Springs, Hathorne would be provided with a guesthouse and round-the-clock security that his trust fund would pay for. Given Hathorne’s wealth, no level of therapeutic care was too costly or too exotic. The family would see that he complied with whatever was necessary, and they agreed to cooperate with any probation rules the court would order.

Joe had to overcome this effort—the family’s pledge to sequester Hathorne in the interest of public safety. It was no longer a jury question but rather one for the judge alone. That judge—a small, humorless man named Lance Whitford who looked mole-like behind thick glasses and knew Hathorne’s family through social circles—was Hathorne’s last hope.