Guilty Minds

82

Mandy wanted to come with me, but I needed to do this alone.

Merlin gave me a ride back to his house, where I’d left the rented Chrysler. On the way we barely talked. I was tired. Vogel’s men had worn me out.

I stopped at a Dunkin’ Donuts and tanked up on caffeine, popped a couple of Advil, and drove to DC.

On the way I played a tape-recording of Mandy’s interview in Anacostia. She’d recorded it on her iPhone and then sent me a link that, by means of some kind of iPhone wizardry, allowed me to play it.

I hit the ON button and put it on the seat next to me.

A very old man was speaking on the tape, an old man in a nursing home in Southeast Washington named Isaac Abelard. During the interview, she’d put the recorder on a bed tray next to the retired patrolman, she’d told me, with the result that her questions were hard to hear, but his answers were generally easier to make out.

Mandy: When did this happen?

Abelard: Oh, jeez, this must have been fifty, sixty years ago. Could it be sixty? I suppose that’s right. Sixty. I was a young officer — in my midtwenties, must have been.

Mandy: (inaudible)

Abelard: Oh, I knew him from the neighborhood. He was a good kid. We all knew he was a good kid. I always thought he’d either end up doing great things or wind up getting killed. [Laughs]

Mandy: (inaudible)

Abelard: Oh, I had no idea.

Mandy: Why are you willing to talk about it now?

Abelard: Because I always knew I done a bad thing, covering it up. A wrong thing. I just thought I had a good reason to do it. (inaudible) Because his sister got raped. And when he found out about it, he went out and found the guy who did it and... he killed the man.

Mandy: How?

Abelard: A gun he must have bought on the street. It was easy to buy a gun on the street in those days, if you knew the right people.

Mandy: But how did you find out about it?

Abelard: His poor sister told her mother, and her mother told someone, and — I always had my ear to the ground. I had my sources, I had people in the community who’d talk to me, and... (inaudible) how I did my job... I tracked him down and I said, “Young man, is it true?” And he was crying and weeping and... he told me he didn’t think anyone would do anything about it. He didn’t think the rapist would ever be arrested. I told him he was wrong, he should have trusted the legal system, but... but when I thought about it some more I realized, he was probably right. The rapist would probably have gotten away with it.

Mandy: (inaudible)

Abelard: Only his mother and his sister knew what he’d done. And I felt for the kid. And for his sister. The goddamned rapist had a rap sheet longer than his cankered dick. Pardon my French. Really bad news. So I made a decision. It would go no further. If he didn’t tell anyone what he’d done, it would be like it never happened. Well, his mother died, and his sister died. I’m the only one left who knows. And I don’t have much time. And I just — I just want to do the right thing.

I didn’t have an appointment, so I had to wait on one of the sharp-edged white leather sofas in the hard and glassy waiting area for almost fifteen minutes.

He came out to meet me himself, not his receptionist, which was unusual.

“Gideon,” I said, “we have a lot to talk about.”