The Forgotten Hours(34)
Before heading to the lake, Katie took a detour past the Blackbrooke courthouse, pulling the Datsun over to the side of the road and idling. People were milling around the wide granite steps. Girls in tiny shorts, hands clutching naked elbows. Lawyers in rumpled suits, distracted looking, cutting their way through the loiterers, papers tucked under their armpits. Stolid granite walls rose toward the sky, flanked by Greek-temple porticos and topped with a golden dome that winked as the clouds flitted past. It made sense, she thought, to try to find the trial transcripts, which were part of the public record. She got out of the car and stood on the pavement opposite, taking in the courthouse’s incongruous vastness. Every federal crime in the county was tried here, in this dying town. She herself had climbed these steps to give her testimony, nudged on by her father and his lawyer.
It was four thirty in the afternoon, and the courthouse was still open. Katie resolved to move, but she couldn’t quite do it. The muscles all along the length of her body were rigid with fear. The option to turn around and get back into the car was there; it was a viable choice. But if she wanted to be a person who was not afraid of the truth, then she had to grab opportunity, stop being passive. She no longer wanted to let things happen to her. Shifting her weight forward, creating a slip of momentum, she put one foot in front of the other, climbing the stairs before yanking at the heavy glass-paneled door.
The woman at the front desk barely glanced up at Katie as she put her bag through the x-ray machine. To the left was the clerk’s office, behind oak doors with scratched glass panels. A piece of A4 paper was tacked onto each pane with yellowing Scotch tape: NO CELL PHONES OR CAMERAS IN THE COURTHOUSE. No one had worried much about cell phones during her dad’s trial. Back then, she had kept her eyes on the floor until they’d reached the courtroom itself. The day had been stiflingly hot, the air-conditioning broken. She tried to shove those thoughts aside. Her damp cotton shirt stuck to her ribs, chilly against her hot skin. She took one deep breath to steady herself.
A warren of mismatched desks and file cabinets filled the clerk’s office. “Hi,” Katie said, putting her bag down on the floor between her legs, her hands trembling. The office was a throwback, no gleaming laptops, frosted cubicles, or halogen desk lamps. The strip of fluorescents overhead buzzed.
When no one looked up, she cleared her throat. “Hello? Um, I’d like to see a court transcript, if I may.”
Three sets of eyes rose simultaneously, only mildly curious. “Transcripts?” a lady at the back said. “We don’t keep complete transcripts here.”
“Oh, all right,” Katie said. For a second she was deeply relieved, but then a kind of stubbornness seeped into her bones, and she stayed rooted. It was her right to see those transcripts, to know what had happened in court. They couldn’t deny her this right. All three women remained rooted behind their desks. “But so, okay, where are they kept, then? The transcripts?”
The woman closest to her checked her watch, then turned her eyes back to her computer. A thin, middle-aged woman in a fitted green T-shirt regarded her through thick glasses. “You need the case number, all right?” Her voice had the ring of finality to it. She was definitely giving Katie the runaround. “Without the case number, we can’t help you.”
“What type of case was it?” the woman at the back called out.
Katie swallowed. “Statutory rape.”
The two women exchanged glances. The one who told her they didn’t keep transcripts leaned into her chair and flipped a pencil back and forth between two fingers. “You want to see the transcripts of a rape trial? Is it over?”
“Yes, it was a while ago. In 2009, uh, sorry, summer of 2010.”
“Was there a conviction? Did it go to appeal?”
“He was convicted and then appealed. It went to the New York Supreme Court.”
“You a journalist or a lawyer?” the woman in green asked.
Katie’s shirt clung to her shoulders, and she tried to resist fiddling with it. “The defendant, I’m his daughter. And, he’s, um. He’s getting out of prison,” she said. “I have a right to know what happened. Those court documents, they’re in the public record. And I’m his daughter.”
There was a long silence, and the woman in green sighed. “Get hold of the case number, and we’ll see what we can do.”
It was almost dusk by the time Katie arrived at the cabin and unloaded everything. Stripping the sheets in the bunk room, she stuffed them in the washing machine and ran the old vacuum cleaner over the matted carpet. It would have to do for now.
She went for a long run around the lake, earbuds in, music blasting. The drumbeat of her heart was constricting her throat, and she wheezed as she ran. It took almost two miles before her breath became regular again. The sun was cooling, and she wondered whether the old fireplace still worked. Her playlist ended, but she wanted to keep moving, so she started it again from the beginning and went around the lake two more times. Her body thrummed with a shredded, lingering sort of energy.
By the time she arrived back at the cabin, she felt truly resolute, almost calm, for the first time since the reporters began calling her. She was going to do this. No one was going to give her answers unless she asked for them—and she wanted answers. She began to make a to-do list in her mind. The first thing on her list was to find the case number. And the second was to call Jack Benson.