Isolated Judgment Read online

  He looked over at her, and it was like the scene at the end of the Indiana Jones movie where the Nazis’ faces got melted. He had been exultant and beaming with enthusiasm while his screeching song had played. But then he’d hit this panicky revelation, and it was like he was staring into the Ark and confronting the terrible truths within: His eyes were bulging with fear, and his mouth was a trembling, upside-down U. He looked like a man peering at the exact moment of his future ruin.

  “I can’t go to prison,” he whispered. “They’ll think my butt’s a fucking hotel room.”

  Ruth laughed. She didn’t have time to tamp it down or cut it off behind clenched teeth. She laughed in the sharp, sudden way she was prone to when someone told a surprisingly off-color joke. She knew she shouldn’t, wished she hadn’t, but it didn’t matter. Her knife-wielding kidnapper had conceded his fear of prison rape, and her response was to laugh at him.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, but then she saw him saying it again in her mind, and she kept laughing.

  “It’s not funny,” he complained. “This shit here? This is real, bro.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, you sound all broke up.”

  “I am. It was just the way you said it. I don’t know why it was funny.”

  He fixed his eyes back on the road and chewed his lip.

  Ruth got hold of herself. Maybe it was the bout of laughter—like a valve suddenly opened, allowing her panic and apprehension to pour out of her, leaving her clearheaded and calm. Or maybe it was just because he seemed more like a dumb, panicked kid and not a psycho killer. Either way, their roles seemed inverted now. He was lost in contemplations of a horrifying fate and she was, bafflingly, at ease.

  “Why are you wearing those?” she said, because she needed something to say. Somewhere inside her, Ruth knew she should take up the ball and get him talking.

  “Huh?”

  She pointed at his wrists.

  “The bracers,” she said.

  He looked over at her in surprise, and a faint grin of appreciation etched itself through his forlorn expression.

  “Cool,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d know that. Girls don’t know that sort of thing. But you’re Celtic, so I guess it makes sense. Your accent is cool as hell, by the way. I love Celtic things.”

  “Do you mean Gaelic?”

  “Same thing.”

  No, you breezy-headed American, they are not.

  “I’m Irish,” she said, instead. “Gaelic is Scottish. And Celtic is rather all over the place. But, sure, I know those are bracers. Why are you wearing them?”

  He glanced down at the thick leather encircling his wrists and forearms, then back to the road.

  “Rebecca gave them to me,” he said, as if it explained everything.

  “That’s a good name, Rebecca,” she said. “I almost named my daughter Rebecca.”

  “Don’t do that,” he snapped. “I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t hurt women. It’s cool you have a daughter, but you don’t have to say stuff like that to make me think you’re a person. I’m not a psycho, man. I’m just in a jam, and getting out of it. Okay?”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  And, apparently, it was. The cloud of forlorn bleakness seemed to have lifted away from him, and he flashed her a reassuring smile.

  “She’s my girl,” he said after a bit. “Just a super cool chick. Likes the same things as me, doesn’t get crabby much, likes to smoke a little weed. You’d like her. Everybody likes Rebecca.”

  “She sounds lovely.”

  “Yeah.”

  And just like that, he wasn’t scary anymore. He was a young, silly American man in love with some girl in that uncomplicated way young men are prone to. Rebecca was sure to be just as flawed and human as any other woman, but Ruth could see in the man’s open, content expression that he was blind to whatever faults his love possessed.

  Don’t like him, you silly cow, she chided herself. Don’t be so daft as that.

  “Do you think you could just let me out?” she said. “Before you get to where you’re going? I couldn’t tell anyone where that is if you let me out first.”

  He was quiet, and Ruth began to get nervous again.

  “Do you know any classic songs?” he said, finally.

  “Classic?”

  “You know, like ‘Danny Boy’ and that sort of thing? ‘Whiskey in the Jar’?”

  The Camry continued to carry them up into Michigan, and the signs along the side of the road were announcing that Ann Arbor was ahead and, after that, Flint. Ruth had never been to Michigan, and every inch they traversed was carrying her deeper into the unknown.

  “I guess I do.”

  “Because I’d love to hear one.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Let’s make a deal. An honest, shake-on-it deal. You sing me an Irish song, and I’ll let you out somewhere where you won’t be stranded. No, screw that. I’ll get out. Sing me ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ and I’ll get out in Ann Arbor. I can get home from there. You can just drive yourself back. Is that a deal?”

  “Are you teasing me?”

  “Honest,” he said, and stuck one hand out between them. “I just love your accent is all. You can even be a crap singer, I don’t care. Deal?”

  Ruth found herself shaking her kidnapper’s hand. He didn’t squeeze hard, and his skin wasn’t clammy or repulsive. It was a simple handshake, and he was beaming a big, unguarded smile at her.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “Cool. This is so cool. I’ve only heard Metallica sing it, and they aren’t Irish at all.”

  Ruth watched the marching lines of pine zip past them, and for the first time since she’d come to America and bungled all her plans, she sang a song from home. She thought of her daughter. She thought of her mother, lost in the bottle. When she began to sing, it was with the lilting voice of that Dublin girl who’d dreamed so fiercely of getting away.

  “As I was a goin’ o’er the far famed Kerry Mountains...”

  “Hell yeah,” he cheered, and thumped his fist against the wheel again.

  * * *

  “Miss Bright, I’m up in my roof and the cops are here.”

  Issabella had only just stepped foot in Darren’s penthouse apartment in the Fort Sheldon Tower when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the voice, but even without the mention of cops, she’d have known what it was about—the whispering caller had that plaintive desperation most all of her clients exhibited at one time or another.

  “In...in your roof?” she said, and shrugged her purse down on the kitchen counter. “What do you mean? Who is this?”

  “Sour Twan, Miss Bright,” the voice whispered. “You remember. You got me off that possession charge a few months ago.”

  She did remember. Sour Twan was really Daytwan Washington, and she hadn’t “gotten him off” the charge—she’d gotten him probation. She understood why he would consider it a win, though. Sour Twan had two misdemeanor domestics, a driving while impaired, and an aggravated assault under his belt. Probation without jail time was a win.

  Sour Twan, she thought, consulting her mental file cabinet. Right. No prison yet. Shoots heroin. Slaps girls. Lives with his mom. Pays in cash.

  “Okay,” she said, and already had a pen and paper in front of her. “Lay it out.”

  “They say they have a warrant.”

  “What warrant? For what?”

  “They say I hit my woman, but that’s bullshit.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “There’s a lot of cops here, Miss Bright. Seven, at least.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the roof,” he hissed. “I told you that.”

  “You
mean...in the ceiling?”

  “Yes. The ceiling. They haven’t seen me. They’re down there hassling my mom. I need you to get out here and make them leave. You need to straight lawyer this shit. This insulation is killing me, I’m itching like the devil. I can’t stay up here.”

  Issabella jotted his mom’s address into her phone and hung up after assuring him she was on her way. She groaned in frustration.

  She’d been thinking about the apartment’s sunken marble bathtub ever since she and Darren had hit the Michigan state line in their rented car. She had planned it all out in her mind. While Darren dropped off the rental and retrieved his Lexus from the parking lot of the Marriott where the award banquet had been held, she would luxuriate in the bath and not think about anything important. Somewhere in that plan, she had imagined herself sipping a wine cooler on Darren’s terrace. And somewhere after that dinner would be ordered by telephone. Darren would have some drinks, they’d both get chatty with each other, and...

  Sour Twan had ruined it all.

  Fine.

  She dialed Darren, and he picked up on the third ring.

  “Hey, kid. I’m thinking Chinese.”

  “For one.” She sighed.

  “Hmm.”

  “I have a repeat customer hiding in his ceiling from the cops.”

  Darren chuckled.

  “Okay. Well, you enjoy that, Izzy,” he said. “I’ll poke around and see what I can find out about Daniel Prosner.”

  “By ‘poke around,’ you mean you’ll pay twenty bucks for a people search online.”

  “Yeah. The internet kind of robs sleuthing of its romance, doesn’t it?”

  “Wait up for me?”

  “Always, baby.”

  * * *

  Ruth stood in the lobby of the Ann Arbor Police Department, waiting for the detective the woman at the desk had assured her would “be with her in a minute.” She watched the line of people at the service window. They paid tickets. They ordered reports. None of them looked like recent kidnap victims. They looked bored and annoyed, and they came and went in a relatively even stream.

  Geese, she thought, and almost giggled.

  “Ruth, I’m so sorry about all this,” he’d said, once he’d pulled off the expressway and guided her and her car into Gallup Park. A river ran through the middle of the big park, and Ruth had been looking at a cluster of geese gliding over the water when he’d spoken up.

  “I know you are,” she answered. “You don’t seem bad. Not really.”

  “I hope so. I didn’t plan it this way. I...Christ, I didn’t think! I didn’t think and now it’s all fucked up so bad.”

  She’d looked away from the line of geese, and saw that tears had run from his eyes, down into his beard. His hands were gripping the wheel, and his face was contorted with anxiety. It didn’t frighten her. An hour ago, while he had driven her through Toledo, seeing him in such a state would have terrified her. It would have made her imagine him hurting her in very bad ways.

  But that had been before he’d started talking about his girlfriend and how he was scared about what was going to happen to him; before she’d sung to him and her voice had soothed him, leaving him looking like a little boy lost in a mother’s lullaby.

  “Are you going to be alright?” she asked him there in the parking lot among the trees and rolling lawns, and it didn’t feel ludicrous.

  “Here,” he said, and handed her the keys.

  “Okay.”

  “I want to tell you...” he started.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

  He picked up the dagger from his lap and held it out to her, handle first. She didn’t move to take it.

  “I mean it,” he said. “Take that, okay? Get it away from me. I want to tell you.”

  She took the dagger from him, and noticed for the first time that the hilt of the blade was fashioned like an eagle—its head sat where the blade began, and its wings were the crossbar of the handle. It was heavier than she would have thought. She set it in her lap, much as he had done, and didn’t touch it again.

  “Maybe you should call her,” she ventured, while he stared bleakly out the windshield. “Your Rebecca. Have her come and fetch you. You shouldn’t be alone, I think.”

  His hands still curling around the wheel, he leaned forward until his forehead touched it. He was coming apart, she knew. Whatever he’d done before forcing her to accompany him up into Michigan, the consequences were finally clear in his mind.

  “Michael,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “My name is Michael.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  He turned his head and looked at her. The tears were gone, but his eyes were red and exhausted. He managed a sad, resigned smile.

  “I want to,” he said. “I want to tell you everything, okay? Is it okay if we chill here a little while and I tell you?”

  She was quiet for a moment, considering the baffling situation and his request. She watched the geese disappearing around a bend in the river. There was only one adult among the group, and that one led the smaller, scruffy geese to wherever they unhurriedly were headed.

  “Can I use my mobile?” she said. “If I can call and make sure my daughter is alright, I’ll listen to you.”

  It took a little while to calm down the after-school worker who answered, and to assure her that she was more than happy to pay the ridiculous late fine. Sarah was sleeping. She was sleeping and had been having fun with the other children. Yes, the police had almost been called. But Sarah had been coming there for so long, and there hadn’t been any such nonsense until now. Apologies stressed. Assurances of no such foolishness in the future. The woman was still cross when they hung up, but the issue was seemingly settled.

  “You should call your girl,” she said to the miserable, hunched-over pile beside her. “I think you oughtn’t to be alone, Michael.”

  “This is all because of her,” he said, and straightened in the seat. He wiped at his nose with the sleeve of his inside-out hoodie. “Not like it’s her fault. I mean, because she’s my girl, you know? I had to stand up for her.”

  Michael sighed, a deep and tired action. He closed his eyes and laid his head back against the headrest. He started talking, and Ruth listened. He told her everything.

  And when it was over, he apologized again. He told her she had a beautiful voice and he hoped he hadn’t caused her little girl to be scared. He got out and jogged away, leaving Ruth in the parking lot of Gallup Park with her cell phone, her keys and a fancy old dagger that most certainly had his fingerprints all over it.

  “Hi, I’m Detective Kilmeade.”

  She blinked, and she was back in the police station. A middle-aged black man in a brown suit was standing there. She adjusted her purse strap on her shoulder, suddenly aware of how much heavier it was with the weight of the dagger inside it. She stared at the ground.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Yes?”

  She didn’t look at him. She thought about Rebecca, and how Michael had talked about her. She imagined the girl as being lovely in a simple way—unadorned and quick to smile or laugh. Like me, she thought, and almost laughed in front of the cop.

  “Ma’am, did you have a crime to report?”

  Ruth Mallory looked at him finally, and shook her head slowly.

  “No,” she admitted, and all the tension of the day ran right out of her with that word. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. Excuse me.”

  He tried to say something, some stalling sentiment to keep her there, but she was out the door and in the sunlight. Her car was across the lot. She climbed inside it and tossed her purse on the passenger seat. Ruth would keep the dagger. She’d set it on the little knickknack shelf in the living room, above the television. When
Sarah asked about it, she would lie and say it was a gift from an old college friend named Rebecca.

  Once she was back on the interstate and zooming south, Ruth wondered if Michael was doomed. He was not smart, she knew. Or, at least not sophisticated. He could easily be caught. It bothered her to think that.

  In a sane world, a boy should be allowed to stand up for his girl.

  * * *

  The cop who intercepted Issabella at the door of the two-story house on Detroit’s west side was tall, blond and looked to have more claim to the nickname “sour” than her client did. He held a stalling hand in the air, frowned at her and shook his head.

  “Nobody’s in custody,” he huffed. “So how about you go sit in a corner until you’re needed, sweetheart.”

  Issabella’s mind turned into a sorting machine, while her mouth moved to form words. Something biting and cruel was being selected from the host of replies that struggled to get to the fore, and she felt a confident smile spreading across her face as she readied to verbally attack the officer.

  “You a lawyer?”

  She and the blond officer both turned to look at the woman who was walking toward them from the living room. She was black, young and pretty despite the plain, wrinkled suit and tie she wore.

  “That’s right,” Issabella said, and produced a business card. The blond officer stepped back to allow room for the woman, who took Issabella’s card but didn’t bother to look at it.

  “Detective Sohms,” she said.

  “Issabella Bright. Mister Twan’s retained counsel.”

  “So Sour called you in?” she said.

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” the woman snapped, and put her hands on her hips. “I need to clear and get back to something important. They called me in to try and resolve what should be a simple pickup.”

  “How’s that going?”

  Detective Sohms rolled her eyes.

  “Look, we have a valid warrant. You want to look it over, be my guest. But your boy needs to make an appearance, pronto, or this is going to escalate. Your client is doing a pretty fair job of hiding. Maybe you want to let him know obstruction is a real charge?”