Defending Jacob(13)

I loved Duffy without reservation. Virtually alone among the cops I worked with, he was a personal friend. We often worked cases together, the DA’s top lawyer and top detective. We socialized together too. Our families knew each other. Paul had named me godfather to the middle of his three sons, Owen, and if only I had believed in God or fathers, I would have done the same for him. He was more outgoing than I, more gregarious and sentimental, but good friendships require complementary personalities, not identical ones.

“Tell me you have something or get out of my office.”

“I have something.”

“It’s about time.”

“That doesn’t sound very grateful.”

He flipped a file folder onto my desk.

“Leonard Patz,” I read aloud from a Board of Probation record. “Indecent A&B on a minor; lewd and lascivious; lewd and lascivious; trespass; indecent A&B, dismissed; indecent A&B on a minor, pending. Lovely. The neighborhood pedophile.”

Duffy said, “He’s twenty-six years old. Lives near the park in that condo place, the Windsor or whatever they call it.”

A mug shot paper-clipped to the folder showed a large man with a pudgy face, close-cropped hair, Cupid’s-bow lips. I slipped it out from under the paper clip and studied it.

“Handsome fella. Why didn’t we know about him?”

“He wasn’t in the sex offender registry. He moved to Newton in the last year and never registered.”

“So how’d you find him?”

“One of the ADAs in the Child Abuse Unit flagged him. That’s the pending indecent A&B in Newton District Court, top of the page there.”

“What’s the bail?”

“Personal.”

“What’d he do?”

“Grabbed some kid’s package in the public library. The kid was fourteen, same as Ben Rifkin.”

“Really? That fits, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a start.”

“Wait, he grabs a kid’s balls and he gets out on personal?”

“Apparently there’s some question whether the kid wants to testify.”

“Still. I go to that library.”

“Might want to wear a cup.”

“I never leave home without one.”

I studied the mug shot. I had a feeling about Patz right from the start. Of course, I was desperate—I wanted to feel that feeling, I badly needed a suspect, I needed to produce something finally—so I distrusted my suspicion. But I could not ignore it altogether. You have to follow your intuition. That is what expertise is: all the experience, the cases won and lost, the painful mistakes, all the technical details you learn by rote repetition, over time these things leave you with an instinctive sense of your craft. A “gut” for it. And from this first encounter, my gut told me Patz might be the one.

“It’s worth giving him a shake, at least,” I said.

“There’s just one thing: there’s no violence on Patz’s record. No weapons, nothing. That’s the only thing.”

“I see two indecent A&Bs. That’s violent enough for me.”

“Grabbing a kid by the nuts isn’t the same as murder.”

“You got to start somewhere.”

“Maybe. I don’t know, Andy. I mean, I see where you’re going, but to me he sounds like more of a wanker than a killer. Anyway, the sex angle—the Rifkin kid had no signs of sexual assault.”

I shrugged. “Maybe he never got that far. He could have been interrupted. Maybe he propositions the kid or tries to force him into the forest at knifepoint, and the kid resists. Or maybe the kid laughs at him, ridicules him, and Patz flies into a rage.”

“That’s a lot of maybes.”

“Well, let’s see what he has to say. Go bring him in.”

“Can’t bring him in. We’ve got nothing to hold him on. There’s nothing tying him to this case.”

“So tell him you want him to come look through the mug books and see if he can identify anyone he might have seen in Cold Spring Park.”

“He’s already got a Committee lawyer for the pending case. He’s not going to come in voluntarily.”

“Then tell him you’ll violate him for not registering his new address with the sex offender registry. You’ve already got him jammed up on that. Tell him the kiddy porn on his computer is a federal offense. Tell him anything, it doesn’t matter. Just get him in and give a little squeeze.”

Duffy smirked and raised his eyebrows. Ball-grabbing jokes never get old.

“Just go pick him up.”

Duffy hesitated. “I don’t know. It feels like we’re jumping the gun. Why not just show Patz’s picture around, see if anyone can put him in the park that morning? Talk to his neighbors. Maybe knock on his door, low-key it, don’t spook him, get him talking that way.” Duffy formed his fingers into a beak and flapped it open and shut: talk, talk. “You never know. If you pick him up, he’ll just call his lawyer. You might lose your only chance to talk to him.”

“No, it’s better we pick him up. After that, you can sweet-talk him, Duff. That’s what you’re good at.”

“You sure?”

“We can’t have people saying we didn’t push hard enough on this guy.”