Judgment

70

Numbly, she entered Martha Connolly’s apartment. She gave Martie a quick hug, leaned over and petted Lucy. The dog had brought her Donald Trump chew toy over, as if to show off how little of it was left: just half a torso and an arm.

“You look terrible,” Martie said. “What happened?”

“Philip Hersh is dead.”

Martie gasped. “What?”

Juliana told her what little she knew.

“Can I pour you a drink?”

“I have too much to do now.”

“Have you talked to the police?”

She shook her head.

Martie seemed to know what Juliana was thinking. “You don’t know this happened because of your case,” Martie said.

“But it did.”

She shook her head. “You think.”

“It’s my fault,” she said. “You told me to get off the trolley; that was how you put it. Stop what I was doing. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t ask Hersh to stop digging, even when we knew it was dangerous.”

“Juliana—”

“I need to ask you something,” Juliana said.

“Ask away.”

She hesitated. “You know Yuri Protasov. You’re on a Doctors Without Borders board with him. Yet you never mentioned that to me.”

Martie was silent for a long time. She looked down at the carpet. Then she looked up at Juliana. “I knew a woman once who became obsessed with black mold,” she said. “Who was convinced she was getting sickened from black mold, that she was suffering from toxic mold syndrome. So she had dehumidifiers installed in her basement. But the experts came to test, and the tests still came back positive for mold spores. So she ripped everything out. When that didn’t work, she gutted the first floor. Then the second. Eventually she got rid of every piece of textile she owned, even a quilt that had been passed down from her great-grandmother. She ripped her whole damn house apart, her whole life apart.”

“And?”

“She ended up moving into some sterile cinder-block house in Brighton. But she still felt something was wrong. So she had the place tested, and it came back positive for black mold.”

“Your point?”

“There’s no uncontaminated terrain. Or people. Some hands are cleaner than others; none are truly clean. Have I ever met Yuri Protasov? No. Have I ever even been in the same room with the man? I don’t think so, but maybe. You want to find moments where I’ve crossed paths with this villain or that? The harder you look, the more you’ll find. And I could explain every one, but that’s not the point. Because anyone can explain anything. At the end of the day? You need to ask yourself one question: Do I trust her? So do you?”

It was a long, fraught silence. The two women stared into each other’s eyes frankly, almost hostilely. And then something in her melted. Because she knew the answer was yes.

“I do,” Juliana said.

“Okay, then,” Martie said quietly.

“You told me Philip Hersh saved your life. You didn’t tell me how.”

“You remember who Frank Krupinak is?”

“God, yeah.”

Krupinak was a serial killer who’d raped and murdered four girls in Massachusetts, in a particularly grisly manner. “When I sentenced him to one hundred and fifty years in prison,” Martha said, “he shouted at me as he was led away. That he was going to kill me. And then his conviction was reversed on appeal.”

“Ineffective assistance of counsel?”

“That’s right. Plus there was some issue with the lab that did the DNA testing.”

“They let him out, right?”

“Right. Awaiting trial. So this rapist-murderer who promised he was going to kill me is out there. At large. And I was terrified — but what could I do? I had to be in court every day. And then a couple of days later I opened my mailbox and found the, uh — this is still not easy to talk about.” She paused a long time. Then in a smaller voice she continued, “I found the severed head of my cat.”

“Oh, my God.”

“This was when I was living in Lincoln, in that isolated old house? And the thing is, Sheba was a house cat — she never went outside. So he’d been inside my house.”

“Dear God.”

“Then he paid a visit to my mother, who was frail and on an oxygen tank. He unplugged her tube and left her gasping for breath. If I hadn’t gone to visit her that afternoon, she would have died.”

“You must have told the police.”

“The police chief at the time really had it in for me. Saw me as being on the other side. The cops wouldn’t lift a finger. Sure, I got one of those useless restraining orders. Changed all the locks. Didn’t matter.

“Next night, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw him standing there, in my bedroom. And he said, ‘Not tonight. But soon. I’ve written your death sentence. It’ll come. Soon.’ That was what he said.”

“Oh, Jesus. He wasn’t afraid you’d call the cops on him?”

“He knew they wouldn’t do anything.”

“Why didn’t he try to kill you then?”

“Because he got off on my living in terror. Killing me would be too easy on me. This was about feeling the fear. The fear eating your soul. About knowing every day could be your last. You will die, but at a time of my choosing. It was mental torture. So I called Philip.”

“Okay.”

Martie paused for several seconds, shrugged. “And the problem stopped. It just... stopped.”

“What... what did Philip do?”

“I never knew. I never asked.” A long pause. “But I got my life back.”

Juliana looked at her for a few seconds. “Yet you tell me to get off the trolley.”

“I told you that several stops ago,” Martie said. “But you stayed on it. And now, you have no choice but to see it to its final destination. You play the game and you follow the rules. Like in tennis. But when the game changes, the rules do too.”

Juliana nodded. “I’m scared,” she admitted. She sounded like a child saying it, a frightened child, because in some ways that was how she felt.

Martie went on, “Someone’s lobbing a grenade in your direction; it’s not tennis any longer. Point is, honey, you do what you have to do. To stay safe. To keep your family safe. I love the law like my grandma loved scripture. You and I both swore to uphold the law. But a suicide pact we did not agree to. Am I clear?”

“Crystal.” Juliana nodded, said nothing for a long time.

“You want my considered judgment?” Martie said. “You get those bastards.”