The Yoos lived on one of the mazy, shady streets behind the library, near the elementary school where all these kids first met. The house was a tidy little center-entrance colonial on a small lot, white with black shutters. A previous owner had built a brick shelter around the front door, which stood out on the white face of the building like a red-lipsticked mouth. I remembered crowding into this little compartment when Laurie and I used to visit during the winter months. That was back when Jacob and Derek were in grade school. Our families had been friendly then. Those were the days when the parents of Jacob’s friends tended to become our friends too. We used to line up other families like puzzle pieces, father to father, mother to mother, kid to kid, to see if we had a match. The Yoos were not a perfect fit for us—Derek had a little sister named Abigail, three years younger than the boys—but the friendship between our families had been convenient for a while. That we saw them less now was not the result of a breakup. The kids had simply outgrown us. They socialized among themselves now, and there had not been enough left of the family friendship to cause either of the parent couples to seek out the other. Still, I felt we were friends, even now. I was naive.
It was Derek who answered the door when I rang. He froze. Just gawped at me with his big dumb syrupy brown eyes until I finally said, “Hi, Derek.”
“Hey, Andy.”
The Yoo kids had always called Laurie and me by our first names, a permissive practice I never quite got used to and which, under the current circumstances, grated all the more.
“Can I talk to you a minute?”
Again, Derek seemed unable to formulate any answer at all. He stared at me.
From the kitchen, Derek’s dad, David Yoo, called, “Derek, who is it?”
“It’s all right, Derek,” I reassured him. His panic seemed almost comical. Why on earth was he so rattled? He had seen me a thousand times.
“Derek, who is it?”
I heard a chair scrape along the kitchen floor. David Yoo came out into the front hall and, with a hand placed lightly around the back of Derek’s neck, he drew his son back away from the door. “Hi, Andy.”
“Hi, David.”
“Was there something we can do for you?”
“I just wanted to talk to Derek.”
“Talk about what?”
“About the case. What happened. I’m trying to find out who really did it. Jacob is innocent, you know. I’m helping prepare for the trial.”
David nodded in an understanding way.
His wife, Karen, now came out of the kitchen and greeted me briefly, and they all stood together in the doorway like a family portrait.
“Can I come in, David?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“We’re on the witness list, Andy. I don’t think we’re supposed to talk to anyone.”
“That’s ridiculous. This is America—you can talk to whoever you want.”
“The prosecutor told us not to talk to anyone.”
“Logiudice?”
“That’s right. He said, don’t talk to anyone.”
“Well, he meant reporters. He didn’t want you running around making conflicting statements. He’s just thinking about the cross-examination. I’m trying to find the tru—”
“That’s not what he said, Andy. He said, don’t talk to anyone.”
“Yes, but he can’t say that. Nobody can tell you not to talk to anyone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“David, this is my son. You know Jacob. You’ve known him since he was a kid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, can I at least come in and we’ll talk about it?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
We locked eyes.
“Andy,” he said, “this is our family time. I really don’t appreciate you being here.”
He went to close the door. His wife stopped him, holding the edge of the door, imploring him with her eyes.
“Please don’t come back here,” David Yoo told me. He added, weakly, “Good luck.”
He removed Karen’s hand from the door and gently closed it and, I could hear, he slid the chain into the lock.
16 | Witness
I was greeted at the Magraths’ apartment door by a dumpy, pie-faced woman with a frizz of unsprung black hair. She wore black spandex leggings and an oversized T-shirt with an equally oversized message stamped across the front: Don’t Give Me Attitude, I Have One of My Own. This witticism ran six full lines, drawing my eyes southward over her person from wavering bosom to detumescent belly, a journey I regret even now.
I said, “Is Matthew here?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I represent Jacob Barber.”
A blank look.
“The murder in Cold Spring Park.”
“Ah. You his lawyer?”
“Father, actually.”
“It’s about time. I was beginning to think that kid was all alone in the world.”
“How’s that?”
“It’s just we been waiting for someone to show up here. It’s been weeks. Where’s the cops already?”
“Can I just—is Matthew Magrath here? That’s your son, I assume?”
“You sure you’re not a cop?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Probation officer?”
“No.”
She put a hand on her hip, tucking it under the little skirt of fat that circled her waist.
“I’d like to ask him about Leonard Patz.”
“I know.”
The woman’s behavior was so strange—not just her cryptic answers but the oddball way she looked up at me—that I was slow to grasp what she was saying about Patz.
“Is Matt here?” I repeated, anxious to be rid of her.
“Yeah.” She swung the door open. “Matt! There’s someone here to see you.”
She shuffled back into the apartment as if she had lost interest in the whole thing. The apartment was small and cluttered. Posh a suburb as Newton is, there are still corners that working people can afford. The Magraths lived in a small two-bedroom apartment in a white vinyl-sided house subdivided into four units. It was early evening, and the light inside was dim. A Red Sox game played on an enormous, ancient rear-projection TV. Facing the TV was a mottled, mustard-colored plush armchair, into which Mrs. Magrath dropped herself.
“You like baseball?” she said over her shoulder. “ ’Cuz I do.”
“Sure.”
“You know who they’re playing?”
“No.”
“I thought you said you liked baseball.”
“I’ve had some other things on my mind.”
“It’s the Blue Jays.”
“Ah. The Blue Jays. How could I forget?”
“Matt!” she blasted. Then, to me: “He’s in there with his girlfriend doing God knows what. Kristin, that’s the girlfriend. Kid hasn’t said two words to me all the times she’s been over here. Treats me like I’m a piece of shit. Just wants to go running off with Matt like I don’t even exist. Matt too. He only wants to be with Kristin. They got no time for me, the both of them.”
I nodded. “Oh.”
“How’d you get our name? I thought sex victims are supposed to be confidential.”
“I used to be with the DA’s office.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right, I knew that. You’re the one. I read about you in the papers. So you seen the whole file?”
“Yeah.”
“So you know about this guy Leonard Patz? What he did to Matt?”
“Yeah. Sounds like he groped him in the library.”
“He groped him in the balls.”
“Well, the—okay, there too.”
“Matt!”
“If this is a bad time …”
“No. You’re lucky he’s here. Usually he goes off with the girlfriend and I don’t even see him. His curfew’s eight-thirty but he doesn’t care. He just goes off. His probation officer knows all about it. I guess I can tell you that, can’t I, he’s got a probation officer? I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t know what to tell anyone anymore, you know? DYS had him for a while, then they sent him back. I moved here from Quincy so he wouldn’t be around his friends, who were no good. So I came here ’cuz I thought it would help him, you know? You ever try to find a section-eight apartment in this town? Pfft. Me, I don’t care where I live. It doesn’t matter to me. So you know what? You know what he says to me now? After I do all this for him? He says, ‘Oh, you’ve changed, Ma. Now you moved to Newton, you think you’re fancy. You wear your fancy glasses, your fancy clothes, you think you’re like these Newton people.’ You know why I wear these glasses?” She picked up a pair of glasses from a table beside the armrest. “ ’Cuz I can’t see! Only now he’s got me so crazy I don’t even wear them in my own house. I wore these same glasses in Quincy and he didn’t say a thing. It’s like, no matter what I do for him, it’s never enough.”
“It’s not easy being a mother,” I ventured.
“Oh, well, he says he doesn’t want me to be his mother anymore. He says that all the time. You know why? I think it’s because I’m overweight, it’s because I’m not attractive. I don’t have a skinny body like Kristin and I don’t go to the gym and I don’t have nice hair. I can’t help it! This is what I am! I’m still his mother! You know what he calls me when he gets mad? He calls me a fat shit. Imagine saying something like that to your mother, calling her a fat shit. I do everything for this kid, everything. Does he ever thank me? Does he ever say, ‘Oh, I love you, Ma, thank you’? No. He just tells me, ‘I need money.’ He asks me for money and I tell him, ‘I don’t have any money to give you, Matty.’ And he says, ‘Come on, Ma, not even a couple a bucks?’ And I tell him I need that money to buy him all these things he likes, like this Celtics jacket he had to have, for a hundred fifty bucks, and like a fool I go and buy it for him, just to make him happy.”
The bedroom door opened and Matt Magrath came out, barefoot, wearing only Adidas gym shorts and a T-shirt. “Ma, give it a rest, would you? You’re freaking the guy out.”
The police reports in Leonard Patz’s indecent A&B case described the victim as fourteen years old, but Matt Magrath seemed a few years older than that. He was handsome, square-jawed, with a slouchy, wised-up manner.
The girlfriend, Kristin, followed him out of the bedroom door. She was not as pretty as Matt. She had a thin face, small mouth, freckles, flat chest. She wore a wide-necked shirt that hung off one side, exposing a milky shoulder and a vampy lavender bra strap. I knew instantly that this boy did not care about her. He would break her heart, probably very soon. I felt sorry for her before she even got all the way out of the bedroom door. She looked about thirteen or fourteen. How many men would break her heart before she was through?
“You’re Matthew Magrath?”
“Yeah. Why? Who are you?”
“How old are you, Matthew? What’s your birth date?”
“August 17, 1992.”
I was distracted momentarily by the thought of it: 1992. How recent it sounded, how far along in my life I was already. In 1992 I had already been a lawyer for eight years. Laurie and I were trying to conceive Jacob, in both senses.
“You’re not even fifteen years old yet.”
“So?”
“So nothing.” I glanced at Kristin, who was watching me with a lidded expression like a proper bad girl. “I came to ask you about Leonard Patz.”
“Len? What do you want to know?”
“ ‘Len’? Is that what you call him?”
“Sometimes. Who are you again?”
“I’m Jacob Barber’s father. The boy who’s accused in the Cold Spring Park murder.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I figured you were something like that. I figured you might be a cop or something. The way you were looking at me. Like I done something wrong.”
“Do you think you’ve done something wrong, Matt?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you? Doesn’t matter if I’m a cop or not.”
“What about her?” He inclined his head toward the girl.
“What about her?”
“Isn’t it a crime if you have sex with a kid and she’s, like, too young—so it’s like, what do they call it?”
“Statutory rape.”
“Right. Only it doesn’t count if I’m too young too, does it? Like, if two kids have sex, you know, with each other, and they’re both under the age and they’re boning each other—”
His mother gasped, “Matt!”
“The age of consent in Massachusetts is sixteen. If two fourteen-year-olds have sex, they’re both committing rape.”
“You mean they’re raping each other?”
“Technically, yes.”
He gave Kristin a conspiratorial look. “How old are you, girl?”
“Sixteen,” she said.
“My lucky day.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, son. The day’s not over yet.”
“You know what? I don’t think I better talk to you, about Len or anything else.”
“Matt, I’m not a cop. I don’t care how old your girlfriend is, I don’t care what you do. I’m only concerned with Leonard Patz.”
“You’re that kid’s father?” Touch of a Boston accent: fatha.
“Yeah.”
“Your kid didn’t do it, you know.”
I waited. My heart began to pound.
“Len did.”
“How do you know that, Matt?”
“I just know.”
“You know how? I thought you were the victim in an indecent A&B. I didn’t think you knew … Len.”
“Well, it’s complicated.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. Lenny and me are friends, kind of.”
“He’s the kind of friend you report to the cops for indecent A&B?”
“I’ll be honest with you. What I reported him for? Lenny never did that.”
“No? So why’d you report him?”
A little grin. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“Did he grab you or not?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“So what’s complicated?”
“Hey, you know what? I’m not really comfortable with this. I don’t think I should be talking to you. I have a right to remain silent. I think I’ll go ahead and take that, a’ight?”
“You have a right to remain silent with the cops. I’m not a cop. The Fifth Amendment doesn’t apply to me. In this room right now, there is no Fifth Amendment.”
“I could get in trouble.”
“Matt—son. Listen to me. I’m a very patient man. But you’re beginning to try my patience. I’m starting to feel”—deep breath—“angry, Matt, okay? That’s not something I like to feel. So let’s stop playing games here, all right?”
I felt the enormity of the body that houses me. How much bigger I was than this kid. I had the sense I was expanding, I was becoming too big for the room to hold me.
“If you know something about that murder in Cold Spring Park, Matt, you’re going to give it to me. Because, son, you have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“I don’t want to talk in front of them.”
“Fine.”
I clamped my fist around the kid’s right upper arm and twisted it—but not twisting it anywhere near the limits of my strength at that moment, because I felt how easily I could separate that arm from his body with just a little torque, how I could tear it off him, skin, muscle, and bone—and I led him into his mother’s bedroom, which was furnished, memorably, with a night table comprised of two Hood milk crates stacked and turned upside down and a collage of photos of male movie stars carefully cut out of magazines and Scotch-taped to the wall. I closed the door and stood in front of it, arms crossed. As quickly as it had formed, the adrenaline was already receding from my arms and shoulders, as if my body sensed the crisis had passed its peak, the kid had already folded.
“Tell me about Leonard. How do you know him?”