Under the Light

Chapter 24





Jenny


I COULDN’T BELIEVE MY MOTHER WANTED me to go to the library. Billy wouldn’t be there. I had no reason to go anymore. But she gave me lunch money and her phone.

“Some of the women from church are coming over,” she explained.

I assumed they would be talking about my father. “I could stay in my room,” I told her.

But she dropped me off at the usual stop and all she said about it was “I’ll call when I’m ready to get you.”

I climbed the steps to the entrance as slowly as if my veins were filled with lead. Helen had left me. I waited until after midnight for her to speak to me, but she never answered. Not this morning, either. Maybe she was done watching over me. Maybe I was crazy and had just imagined her. Nothing would surprise me anymore.

And Billy had had enough of me too. He’d told his brother that I’d broken up with him, but it didn’t feel like that to me. I wanted to see him again—I hadn’t said goodbye. So I stood on the steps to get decent reception and used my mother’s phone.

Instead of hello, a man answered saying, “Mitch?”

The voice didn’t sound like Billy or his brother.

“No,” I said. “It’s Billy’s friend.”

“Yeah?” He waited.

Mitch had said something was going to happen to Billy today. I had nothing to lose—I started lying. “I was supposed to go with them,” I said. “Am I too late?”

“They left half an hour ago.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought so. Can you give me the address? I’ll meet him there.”

“It’s the Prescott building, the one downtown that looks like a resort, with the palm trees.”

After hanging up I went inside the library long enough to find out where the Prescott was and which bus would take me there.

It was a three-story building covered in blue mosaics. I walked in and read the directory by the elevator. I had no idea where Billy was or what he was doing in this kind of place—most of the offices belonged to lawyers. I couldn’t hear Billy’s voice, or any voices, but I started walking down every hallway listening. As I came up to conference room number nine on the first floor and looked through the window in the door, I saw Billy. He wore a blue pullover sweater and sat in a wooden chair in front of a long table. The room was huge—they were only using one end. Billy looked tired but sat straight, his sneakers planted firmly on the floor. He wasn’t facing the door, so he didn’t see me spying on him.

A woman and a man, both wearing dark suits, sat at the table taking notes, though there was a microphone and a recorder doing the same thing. Four people were sitting in folding chairs near the table: Mitch and an older woman and a middle-aged couple. They sat several seats apart as if they didn’t know each other.

The woman at the table had a cardboard nameplate that read MS. IVERS and the man’s plate read MR. SAWYER. At the far end of the table, a man in a light blue suit sat behind a nameplate labeled A.D.A. FARMINGTON, and next to him was a bald man with a tripod and camcorder aimed at Billy.

Mitch hung his head, playing with a piece a nicotine gum in its domed packaging.

A security guard walked up to me from down the corridor. “That’s a private deposition.”

“I’m family,” I lied to him.

He motioned me to be quiet, led me to a second door at the far end of the room, and silently pushed the door open just enough for me to slip in. I found a folding chair against the wall just inside and sat. No one noticed me. I held myself perfectly still, trying to blend in with the wall. I’d come to talk to Billy, but I’d have to wait—he seemed to be giving a statement. From my seat I could watch Billy in profile.

Ms. Ivers played with her pen as she spoke. “Mr. Blake, did the district attorney offer you probation instead of incarceration in this case?”

“Yeah.” Billy picked at the threads of a tiny hole that was starting in the knee of his jeans.

“Why?”

Billy glanced at Mr. Sawyer. “They wanted me to testify against Grady and Roth.”

“That implies my clients are guilty and you’re innocent,” said Ms. Ivers. “But weren’t you an integral part of this crime?”

“I don’t know about integral,” said Billy. “But I don’t think I’m innocent.”

Mr. Sawyer shifted but didn’t speak. Mitch looked like he was about to get up and shake some sense into his brother.

Ms. Ivers leaned forward. “You’re not innocent? What are you guilty of?”

“I should have stopped it,” said Billy.

“You could have been the hero?” she asked.

“I just mean, I think I could have stopped it if I tried.” Billy thought for a second. “I’m sure I could have.”

“Didn’t Miss Dodd make a statement that you were an eyewitness to the assault?”

“That’s incorrect,” Mr. Sawyer interrupted. “Miss Dodd amended her statement.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” said Ms. Ivers. “Miss Dodd later says that it was Mr. Roth who observed.” Ms. Ivers made a note on her legal pad. “But she recognized you. Seeing you on campus at your high school was how she was able to track down Mr. Grady and Mr. Roth, isn’t that right?”

“Yeah,” said Billy. “She probably remembered me because I was the first one to talk to her.”

Ms. Ivers made another note. “Isn’t it true you have a memory gap of over two weeks in length?”

Billy seemed to sense a trick. “Yeah.”

“Isn’t it true that when first arrested you claimed you could not testify against my clients because you didn’t remember the event?”

Billy nodded.

Mr. Farmington said, “Please speak your response.”

Billy cleared his throat and sat up straighter. “That’s what I was told. Yeah.”

“That’s what you were told?” Ms. Ivers asked. “Meaning you don’t recall making that statement?”

“Right.”

“So you do in fact remember the crime in this case.”

“Yeah.”

Ms. Ivers twirled the pen in her fingers. “Six days ago you visited your father, who is in prison, correct? That’s when you changed your story?”

Billy glanced at Mr. Sawyer, who said nothing. “The story never changed. I just couldn’t remember what happened until that day.”

“Was it getting a glimpse of prison life that made you suddenly remember what supposedly happened, that it was my clients alone who committed the rape?”

The word hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe. The room seemed to tilt—my stomach shifted. Maybe I hadn’t heard right.

“I’m telling the truth,” Billy said. “Give me a lie detector test if you want.”

“Just answer all questions honestly,” said Mr. Farmington. “And remember that you’re under oath.”

My body was rebelling—the instinct was to run. My legs, acting on their own, started to tense as if I was about to stand up. Now I was breathing too fast—my vision started to go salt-and-pepper. I thought of putting my head down so I wouldn’t faint, but I didn’t want to look away from Billy.

“The truth is, I have this gap in my memory,” he said. “So I don’t remember driving to the prison or walking in. I sort of woke up in the visiting room and my dad was sitting there at a table and he looked really old. Anyway, Mitch was yelling at him and crying—” Billy stopped as if he’d told too much. “I could remember everything then, except the two or three weeks before.”

“You said you ‘woke up’?” asked Ms. Ivers. “Were you sleepwalking?”

“No.”

“Was it an alcohol- or drug-induced blackout?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mr. Sawyer cut in. “My client is not qualified to answer that question.”

“Were you intoxicated or high on the day of the crime?” asked Ms. Ivers.

“No,” said Billy.

“How about now?” she asked. “Did you take anything today?”

Billy sighed, his patience getting thin. “No.” He glanced at the ADA. “Can I just tell you what happened?”

“I advise my client to only answer the questions put to him,” said Mr. Sawyer.

“I want to make a statement,” said Billy. “That’s not against the law, is it?”

Ms. Ivers leaned back in her chair smugly.

“My lawyer didn’t tell me to keep anything from you. He said I should say only what’s necessary. And keep it short,” said Billy. “Maybe it would be better for me if I kept it short, except this thing is hard to explain. I’m going to tell you exactly what happened to me, even if it sounds crazy.”

“Jesus,” Mitch sighed.

“I couldn’t sleep after.” Billy stopped for one second, choosing his words. “I couldn’t sleep after the crime, and it hurt to think about it, so I tried different things to stop thinking. I started piling stuff on top of each other until I passed out.”

“What do you mean by ‘stuff’?” asked Ms. Ivers.

“Xanax, pot, glue.” Billy went back to pulling the threads on the knee of his jeans. “I remember lying there and I couldn’t move. But then I felt like I got free from my body. Like flying away. And when I came back into my body”—he shrugged—“it was weeks later.” Billy forced himself to leave the worn spot on his jeans alone and folded his arms. “That’s why I can remember the crime perfectly but not those days I was away. During those weeks I think someone else was living in my body.”

Ms. Ivers’s pen stopped twirling. “Someone else was in your body?”

“Yeah, I think so,” said Billy. “That was him that said he couldn’t testify because he didn’t remember the crime. And that’s why I didn’t remember making that statement.”

She held perfectly still. “Is this someone an alternate personality?”

“My client is not qualified to answer that question,” said Mr. Sawyer.

Ms. Ivers made some quick notes on her pad. “You used the word ‘crazy,’” she said. “Is your lawyer planning to use any of this ‘out of body’ testimony as part of a diminished capacity defense in case your deal with the DA falls through?”

“My client—” Mr. Sawyer started, but Ms. Ivers waved away his objection.

“The question is withdrawn.”

“I may not be the smartest guy in the world, and I may not be innocent, but I don’t think I’m crazy,” said Billy.

Mitch sat crackling his nicotine gum wrapper.

Ms. Ivers smiled at Billy, pleased, as if she sensed a weakness she could take advantage of. “So you say you didn’t know what my clients, these two friends of yours, were going to do on the day of the crime, yet you’ve admitted that you’ve stolen things with them, you’ve vandalized street signs and a park fountain, you’ve taken drugs with them. Let’s be honest. You knew them pretty well. So, come on, you helped them even though deep down you knew that they were planning to rape that young woman, isn’t that right?”

Billy straightened himself in the chair. “I should have known, probably, yeah, but stealing the lame stuff we took—it seemed like nothing. Big companies that overcharged everyone. And spray-painting idiotic stuff on street signs kind of seemed like art. It’s stupid. And the drugs, I don’t know about Grady and Roth, but I just wanted to forget what happened to my mom and all that crap.” He looked from one of them to another. “But hurting a girl? That’s messed up. I couldn’t believe they would be that psycho. What kind of a person does stuff like that? And what kind of person has friends like that?”

This time when Billy looked toward his lawyer, he glanced at Mitch, and then his gaze moved to the other three people seated nearby, maybe parents of the other two boys involved. Billy’s eyes moved lightly across the room and fell on me.