Wrongly Accused Page 4

  Thornton sat up and looked around. The viewers turned away.

  “Let’s try it again in a minute,” Joel said.

  “Yeah, okay,” Thornton said.

  His T-shirt was soaked with sweat. As he looked across the room at the mirror he saw his face mottled with exertion and embarrassment. He glanced over at Alice Ann, who was looking at him admiringly.

  Now that was a girl who didn’t put on airs. When she saw something she liked, she let everyone know. There was no holding back with her. She was down-to-earth and fun. He would have to ask her out. They had been subtly flirting with each other for months.

  “Let’s take a few off,” Joel said.

  “No,” Thornton muttered. “I’m going to work on the leg press over here a while.”

  He could hear his old mentor, Joe Mantelli, back in the correctional facility, chiding him. “You can’t let your ego get in the way of your bench pressing. The important thing is consistency. You don’t have to lift the world on your shoulders. The important thing is not to overdo it, not to rush it. Stop trying to show off.”

  Thornton held his head down as he walked to the leg press and sat down, grasping the handles on both sides of the seat with his feet on the pedals. He pushed forward until his legs were fully extended. After pressing a few times, he managed to look up and scan the room. No one was looking at him now, except Alice Ann. She winked as their eyes locked. He smiled. Yes, he would ask her out.

  She looked a little like Monica Parker, the first girl he’d asked out in high school. He’d joined the Crips by then in the Montbello turf war against the Bloods. He was wearing blue and thought he was tough. He’d already helped knock off a couple of big houses in southwest Denver and had even been involved in a drive-by shooting. The Bloods had shot at him and he’d survived.

  He shuddered even now as he recalled the disgusted look on Monica’s face after he asked her out. “Montbello trash,” she’d said.

  Of all the names he’d been called, that was the most vicious. Cruel, arrogant, rich kids had no feelings. They had surrounded him. As part of Denver’s busing program, he’d been bused to southeast Denver, far from his familiar neighborhood of boarded-up houses defaced with graffiti.

  He’d seen hints of what he now called “the Monica look” in the expressions of Vanessa Chandler. She tried to act down-to-earth—tried being the operative word. She couldn’t quite pull it off. She always carried an air of aloofness. Something she was born with. She had spunk though, he had to give her that.

  He once tried to help Van open a warehouse door that was hung. They were at the site of a west-side gang slaying. “Here,” he’d said. “Let someone with muscles help you with that.”

  She’d glared at him and said, “You do have muscles everywhere, Thornton, including between your ears.”

  After his workout, Thornton sauntered over to Alice Ann. “Want to make a lonely detective happy?” he asked.

  She smiled. “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “How about dinner Monday night at that Greek restaurant over on Fourth South?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.

  “I’ll pick you up at seven if you’d be kind enough to give me your address.”

  * * *

  Van maneuvered her car through the Wendy’s take-out window on her way to the mall. She didn’t have time to stop, so she’d have to eat as she drove. She had to buy Mom a gift for Christmas, and it was always a long, drawn-out ordeal. She always wanted to choose just the right gift. Last year she’d bought Mom expensive perfume. The year before that she’d bought her an attractive blouse, and the year before that a gold necklace.

  As she bit into her cheeseburger, she tried to think of something new and unusual to buy for Mom. Whatever she decided on, she would take the elegantly wrapped package back to her apartment and store it in the hall closet with all of Mom’s other presents. Some were wrapped in Christmas prints, others in bright birthday colors, and still others in floral wraps for Mother’s Day.

  Someday she would give them all to her. That would be a wonderful day—the day Mom would forgive her for rebelling. It had started in high school. She had outgrown Mom’s obsessive control by the time she was sixteen. She knew Mom only wanted what was best for her, but she hated the constant orchestrating of her life. She’d chosen all of Van’s clothes, supervised Van’s hairdresser, and selected her makeup.

  Van winced as she thought of that big fight. “Mom,” Van had said, “I’m not your doll to be all made up. You can’t make me walk and talk and act just like you. I have my own mind.”

  Van tried to push the memory from her head as she turned into the ZCMI Center parking terrace. She stopped and pulled a ticket from the machine before continuing through the winding, dark recesses of the garage. She found an empty spot and pulled into it. She sat in the warm Taurus, reluctant to face the cold air. Her mind went back to Federal Heights. It reminded her so much of Louisburg Square on the slopes of Beacon Hill.

  Her old Boston neighborhood looked much as it did in the early nineteenth century. The Chandlers were Yankee descendants of Puritan founders. She thought of the rows of stately Georgian brick houses with white doorways and lacy wrought-iron balconies lining the brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets.

  Wellesley. That’s where her mom had wanted her to go. Mom went there as did Van’s grandma. That’s where Van’s older sister, Sharon, had gone to school and where her younger sister, Emma, was attending now. It was a tradition for the women in her family to attend Wellesley. Her younger brother, Peter, had gone to Harvard. That was the male tradition.

  Van had wanted a coed experience and insisted on Boston University. Her mother fought her on the plan, but she had made a deal with her dad. He would let her go to Boston University and she would plan on law school.

  She finally stepped out of the Taurus, and the cold air stung her cheeks. She shivered, pulled her collar up around her neck, and headed for the mall entrance. The warmth of the Meier & Frank was a welcome change.

  It was the weekend, Christmas was getting closer, and the store was packed. She stood for a moment in the doorway leading from the parking terrace into the store’s second floor, attempting to get her bearings, not certain where to start. A group of rowdy teenage girls emerged from the dark parking terrace and pushed past her.

  Teenagers seemed so rude these days. Was she ever that rude? She remembered it hadn’t been all that long ago that she was a teenager; she was only thirty-three. Then again, maybe it had been that long. She’d seen so much since going into law enforcement that her teenage years seemed a lifetime ago. She had to remind herself she had her whole life ahead of her.

  As she watched the teenage girls with their designer jeans and expensive leather bags, she realized she didn’t feel this way about all teenagers—just the rich, snotty ones. They’d been handed everything their whole lives and didn’t appreciate any of it.

  She knew she was being hypocritical. She admitted to herself that she had been a rich, snotty teenager. Scenes of giggling, silly, loud, attention-starved girls raced through her mind. That act had played out a lifetime ago, or so it seemed.

  How had it all changed so quickly? It started at Boston University. She met so many interesting kids from so many fascinating backgrounds, people from all over the world who had lived lives that made Beacon Hill seem like a provincial village of closed-minded aristocrats who cared only for themselves.

  For the first time, she’d realized how self-absorbed and egotistical she was. It had frightened her. How could she waste her life keeping up with the most fashionable clothes when starving children had no clothes at all?

  After changing her major repeatedly, she’d settled on social work. During the summer months she had worked at internships in various social agencies that took her into worlds she never knew existed. She was profoundly moved by what she saw, even transformed by the people she helped.

  Van became interested in police work one summer when she worked with a female officer on an abuse case. Van realized that there was an important place for women in the police force and that, in many ways, the police were on the front lines of social work. They helped in a direct way, and Van wanted to be a part of that.

  She had promised her father she would try law school, and she did for half of a semester. She hated it and hated the arrogance and self-centeredness of the students. They were the best and the brightest, and they never let anyone forget it. They saw everyone as competition. She dropped out and headed west.

  Her parents had denounced “the mess” she was making of her life. “Why can’t you be more like your brothers and sisters?” Dad had asked. “You must take after your mother’s side. The Chandlers all had good heads on their shoulders. Your mother’s family was flighty.”

  “I blame your father,” Mom had said, “for allowing you to watch too much television. You were always more interested in television than the others. You also read too much. Those awful novels you used to read. They affected you somehow.”

  She wondered if her mom would approve of the romance novels she now found herself absorbed in, and with that she remembered why she had come to the mall. Why the sudden urge to buy the gift today? She knew the death of Brad Armstrong’s parents had shaken her up. What if Mom and Dad died before reconciliation? What then? she thought. Would she live out her life beneath a cloud of guilt? Could she ever forgive herself if such a thing happened?

  She forced the thought from her mind. She was standing by a rack of kitchen utensils. She smiled. Perhaps she would buy something practical and down-to-earth this year, something sensible.

  * * *

  On Friday afternoon, Conrad stopped working on the computer program he was writing and turned to look at Brad who was sleeping in a recliner in the far corner of the study. Brad’s right arm was stretched over his head, his left lay across his stomach, his long legs laid the full length of the recliner, and his feet hung over the end of the footrest.

  Brad had taken a shower and changed into clean jeans and a fresh T-shirt he’d borrowed from Bishop Henderson. His hair’s wetness made it look blacker and shinier than usual. His thick, black eyebrows were furrowed as if he were experiencing an intense dream. There was nothing striking about him. He was a nice guy, and that showed in his face. Even though they were the same age, Conrad had always looked up to him like a big brother. Conrad’s own brothers were in junior high when he was born and had moved out by the time Conrad was experiencing problems in grade school.

  It was still painful for Conrad to recall that he was bullied throughout grade school and into junior high. David, the neighborhood bully, targeted him beginning in kindergarten. Conrad had been physically overweight and emotionally underweight, and David sensed he could not or would not defend himself. Conrad became David’s prey.

  For four years he was intermittently chased, punched, and called names. Even as an adult he cringed when he thought about it. He’d tried to time his departures from school to avoid David but lived always with some amount of anxiety. Many nights he fell asleep praying David would die. Once when David was calling him names, Brad had walked up to Conrad. “You don’t need to listen to that,” Brad said. “You’re better than that. Just walk away.”

  He remembered one day after school when Brad took him down the street past David’s house. “I want you to understand something,” Brad had said.

  They walked past David’s house more than once and heard through an open window David’s parents screaming at one another and at him. “David,” they could hear his father yell, “you stupid little crybaby. Go to your room and don’t come out. You don’t get dinner, you little idiot. What a loser!”

  “His dad’s a drunk,” Brad had said.

  Conrad still remembered the pain he felt standing in front of David’s majestic house that fall afternoon. He still remembered the orange and red leaves sweeping across David’s lawn as he recalled all the prayers for David’s death.

  He had a new understanding of David after that. After being called a crybaby by his father, David could feel temporarily relieved when making someone else cry.

  It was Brad who explained to Conrad that he was being picked on, not because of his weight or red hair but because of the way he carried himself. Brad taught him how to stand up for himself.

  The tormenting reached its climax one afternoon when David tried to block Conrad from going into the school bathroom. Conrad had looked straight into David’s eyes and summoned courage from somewhere inside to say, “Leave me alone, David. I didn’t do anything to you.”

  David answered by knocking him to the ground, but Conrad picked himself up and pushed past David into the bathroom. That was all it took. David lost his power. As Conrad looked at Brad, he realized that Brad needed him now like he had needed Brad back in elementary school. Brad needed to know he had a friend and was not alone.

  * * *

  When Brad woke up, he kept his eyes closed. He knew Conrad would want to talk to him and he wasn’t ready for that. He wasn’t ready for the questions he knew Conrad had, questions for which he had no answers.

  He had walked through the morning in a fog, numbed by pain so that nothing seemed to touch him. Bishop Henderson then gave him a blessing and, to Brad’s relief, he felt some leaden darkness breaking up inside him. Bishop Henderson then prayed that he would be able to endure the trials he was going through. As he prayed, a peaceful feeling overcame Brad, but the pain, the intense sorrow, remained.

  Brad and Bishop Henderson had talked for a long while about the purpose of life, about the spirit world, and eternal families. Brad thought back on that day when his family had gone to the Salt Lake Temple.

  They had only been members of the Church for a year, and Brad had not understood everything, but he could comprehend that they were going to be sealed together forever by God’s power. He understood that there were men on earth who had been chosen to hold the power to seal for eternity.

  While he had always appreciated the fact that his family was an eternal family, he had never understood its significance as he did today. Never had it meant so much to him. He tried to imagine his parents dressed in white as they had been when they were sealed, and entering the spirit world. He was sure relatives and friends had greeted them. They were in a better place, he knew, but it was small comfort in the wake of his overwhelming emptiness. As he imagined the future, he saw a large void: no parents attending his graduation; no parents to bid him farewell when he went on a mission or to welcome him home when he returned; no parents to watch his sealing in the temple; no parents to love his children as grandparents. No parents.

  He said a silent prayer and, once again, a peaceful feeling overcame him. He knew he would be all right someday, that he would be with his parents again; however, he also knew the pain would take a very long time to go away.

  CHAPTER 4

  On Friday night Van parked her Taurus in front of the large Victorian-style house on G Street in the Avenues. The snow was falling hard again, and sharp gusts of wind were slapping it against the windshield. Narrowing her eyes, she studied the dimly lit interior of the house. The elaborate Queen Anne with towers, bays, and porches had been divided into three apartments. She dreaded going into her ground-floor apartment’s emptiness tonight.

  A light glowed from the projecting bay window on the second floor. That was her neighbor, a young artist who sold a few paintings in the galleries downtown but was being supported by his parents back in Seattle. There were no lights coming from the tiny windows of the gabled roof where a young university student lived. She worked nights as a waitress in a downtown pub and usually didn’t get in before one or two in the morning.

  Of course, Van’s roommate was home—Groucho, her grouchy old Siamese cat. Van pushed open the car door, and a gust of wind blew cold and snow into the car. She jumped out and slammed the door, then she raced across the slick walk but slowed herself as she stepped up the porch steps. They could be treacherous when icy.

  Warm air embraced her as she stepped inside her apartment, and Groucho meowed and rubbed against her legs as was his custom when she came home.

  Blinking to clear her eyes of the snow, she glanced down. “Hungry, old man?”

  He meowed.

  “Okay, Mama’s going to feed you. Give her a minute to get her coat off.”

  He meowed again.

  “You’re welcome.”

  As always her apartment offered restful repose. An old oriental rug that she’d bought at a yard sale covered the living room floor. It had mellowed into soft shades of blue and pink long before she had obtained it. She’d reupholstered the couch and chair she bought at a thrift store in light-blue fabric too elegant for her apartment, but it reminded her of her mother’s sitting room couch. She didn’t use those pieces much anyway. She spent most of her time in the blue recliner she’d splurged on last Christmas. Her entertainment, a stack of romance novels, a CD boom box, and a stack of pop music CDs, surrounded the recliner.

  Anyone who had ever visited her apartment found it odd that a police detective enjoyed romance novels. They expected her to read hard-boiled detective novels or police procedurals. Give me a break, she thought. I deal with that stuff all day. I need something soft in my life. Sure, many romance novels had silly heroines and improbable plots, but they were relaxing and enjoyable to read. At least someone lived happily ever after.

  Against the wall opposite the recliner stood her TV. A hopeless insomniac, especially when she was on a tough case that got under her skin, she would lay in her recliner and watch TV or listen to music until she fell asleep in the early hours of the morning. Of course, she had to fight Groucho for a spot in the chair.

  The pictures and prints on the walls and over the fireplace she’d selected one by one in small antique shops. Her favorite was of an eighteenth-century mother and daughter wearing frilly dresses and playing on the lawn of their English estate. Oh, how she missed her mother.