The DeadHouse

19

Jake dropped me off at the Roosevelt Island tram station at Second Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street on his way to La Guardia in a cab at 8 A.M. Friday morning. He was back off to Washington to cover the end-of-the-year resignation of the secretary of agriculture. I climbed the three-tiered staircase and watched one of the two cable cars pull out of the station as the second arrived and unloaded its crew of daily commuters.

With a few minutes to kill, I called Mike and found him still at home.

"I assume that you would have phoned me last night if you had any luck finding my friend, Miss Denzig."

"We rode around the neighborhood for almost two hours. Nowhere to be seen."

"I'm on my way over to Bird Coler Hospital to do that hearing. Jake won't be home in time for dinner tonight. Why don't you see if you can lure Mercer into town for our Christmas celebration. I'll think of someplace lively to go, okay?"

"Let me see what's cooking. You still planning to take a scenic tour of the island when you're done?"

"Yes. Nan asked one of the students who stayed in town during the holidays to show me the dig site. I'm headed out there now, so I may poke around a bit before I come back. Can you still meet me after I finish at Coler?"

"I'll beep you if I can get there."

There were only seven other people going to the island at that hour on this cold December morning. Two of them had tennis rackets and were clearly headed for the bubble in the sports complex at the foot of the tram station. I wondered what the business of each of the others could be. The young conductor opened the doors of the car and we all boarded. There was a bench at each end, with four large poles to hang on to at various points on the floor, and straps with metal handles hanging from the roof's interior.

Like a cable car at a ski resort, the doors closed and the heavy tram lumbered off, rising on thick steel wires as it lifted off above the city streets. I could see the people in the automobiles that were cruising down the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge ramp. Powerful winds rocked my massive carriage and it shuddered mildly as its several sets of wheels rolled over the stanchion at the first tower.

In the sky beyond, I watched a steady stream of takeoffs and landings heading to and from the La Guardia Airport runways, and below that, three gray stacks belching smoke from some unidentifiable factory in Queens. The crossing took less than four minutes, and I snaked my way out behind the other passengers, who all seemed familiar with the routine. A bus waited at the exit path, and I fished a quarter out of my bag to pay the fare.

The second stop, just beyond the original Blackwell farmhouse, would put me on Main Street. When I stepped down from the bus, I was struck at once by the feeling that I was in a small town, millions of miles from Manhattan. The streets were lined with cobblestones, and the handful of new high -rise buildings stood alongside the redbrick facade of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, constructed more than a century earlier for island residents.

I walked north, following the winding street the equivalent of a handful of city blocks, to the lighthouse at the island's tip, just beyond the hospital. The sweeping view of Manhattan from that point was the most spectacular panorama I had ever seen.

It was after nine o'clock when I presented my identification to the security guard at the desk at Coler Hospital. He directed me to the psychiatric ward on the second floor, where I was met by a slender young woman in a white lab coat. "Miss Cooper? I'm Sandie Herron. I'm the physician in charge of this wing of the hospital. We've got one of the arts-and-crafts rooms cleared and set up for your hearing today."

"Fine. Would you have a private place for me to interview the victim?"

"Yes. That's what I'm here to help you with." She asked me to follow her down the hallway to her office. "You're going to need some help with Tina. It's difficult to understand her unless you've worked with her for a while."

"Will she talk with me?"

"You won't be able to get her to stop talking. Problem is that because her mental disability is so severe, I don't think you'll be able to understand her without help from me or one of my staff."

"What's her history?"

"Tina's thirty years old. She's spent most of her adult life here at the hospital. She has some congenital brain damage, as well as being bipolar. Her developmental level is about that of an eight-year-old's. She has dramatic mood swings, from extreme emotional highs to very profound depression. She's on a number of medications, including Depakote and Neurontin."

I was trying to take down everything Herron was saying. "Don't worry, I've had a copy of Tina's chart made for you. All of the meds are listed in that. The problem… may I call you Alex? The problem is that her speech and language are particularly immature. She's incapable of normal verbal communication, and a lot of what she tries to express is incomprehensible to an outsider's untrained ear."

"Have you ever testified at a preliminary hearing, Doctor?"

"About a patient's condition? A diagnosis or finding?"

"No. I think I'd like you to stay with me while I try to ask Tina to tell me what happened. If she isn't able to make it clear to me, or to the judge, I'd like you to act as an interpreter."

"That's fine. Why don't we bring her in and let you get started." Herron called the nurses' station and asked one of the attendants to bring Tina to her office. "One thing you need to understand, Alex, is that Tina exhibits an unusual preoccupation with sex. She's what we call on the ward a chronic public masturbator. We have a companion assigned to be with her most of the day, so she doesn't interact sexually with the other patients."

My luck to draw this complication at a preliminary hearing. The best I could hope for would be to get a good judge who would appreciate the issues here. My witness would be an unintelligible thirty-year-old, with all the sexual interest and curiosity appropriate for a woman that age, but with the mental capacity of a child. The law presumed that she was incapable of consenting to whatever sexual act had occurred.

This must have been an "up" day for Tina, who did not yet have a clue that she was about to appear in a court proceeding in front of a judge, a defense attorney, and her assailant. She walked in holding the hand of her attendant, neatly dressed in a clean white sweatshirt and khaki slacks. She smiled at me when we were introduced, and said something that sounded like "pleased to meet you."

For more than an hour, I struggled to get a narrative from the young woman. Her companion sat by her side, stroking her arm gently when my most basic questions seemed to confuse Tina. If I failed to understand a response, Dr. Herron told me what the patient had said. Whenever I mentioned Chester's name, Tina became visibly agitated.

Somehow, despite all the precautions that had been taken at the hospital, a male patient named Jose had encountered Tina in the hallway after breakfast one morning and had invited her into his room. She liked Jose and accompanied him willingly. Dr. Herron interrupted softly to mention that Jose was a paranoid schizophrenic, with some confusion about his sexual orientation. Tina told us that Jose was always kind to her, and she had sex with him because she thought she was screaming. Her mouth widened and her tongue protruded as she tried to get it to move around the word "screaming" a second time. "Screaming? Why were you-?"

"No, no, Alex. Tina said she thought she was dreaming when she did it." The patient smiled as Dr. Herron corrected me. "Tina's aware that we don't approve of her… well-she usually tries to account for her activity by saying she didn't think it was really happening. That she just imagined it or dreamed about it, isn't that right, Tina?"

She nodded her head in agreement with Herron. It was obvious to me that I would not be able to conduct the hearing unless the judge allowed me to use the doctor as an interpreter. "What happened after that?"

Tina explained that Jose left her to go to the bathroom. That's when Chester came in and found her in the room. He asked if he could get into bed and make love to her. She was scared because she knew that he had a terrible temper, but she told him it was okay.

"Were you afraid of Chester?" No answer.

"Did he say anything to threaten you?" I was wondering if I could raise the level of the felony crime, if Chester had used any force.

Tina answered clearly when she said, "No."

"Jose came back to the room, Alex. When he saw Chester in bed with Tina, he went to get one of the nurses. That's the reason we know for sure that intercourse occurred. The nurse actually witnessed it."

"Fine. I can spare Tina having to testify at the hearing if I can use the nurse as a witness."

"I'm afraid she went back home to Montana for Christmas."

"What's Chester's ability to understand right from wrong?"

"He certainly knows the difference, and he knows that what he did with Tina was wrong. His psychiatrist can give you all that. His problem has to do with control of his temper and the explosive outbursts from which he suffers. Chester's twenty years old. He's been in and out of hospitals for most of his life, but was homeless at the time of his last arrest."

"What was the charge?"

"He beat up an old man who tried to stop him from getting on a bus without paying."

I continued to prepare Tina for the preliminary hearing, which had to be held before the end of the week in order to keep Chester in on bail. The hospital authorities wanted him removed from their facility, while our purpose would be to have him hospitalized in a prison psych ward during the pretrial period. I did not want to see him released, on the street, with no home to go to and no one to supervise the taking of his antipsychotic medication.

"Excuse me, Dr. Herron?" We all looked up as another nurse entered the room. "There's a call from a judge's clerk who's downstairs. He wants to know when this hearing is going to start."

It was after twelve. "I need another half hour, at least. Why don't we say one o'clock?"

"That's good for me, too, Alex. Tell them where we're setting up, and that we'll be ready at one. And let's be sure Tina has some lunch before you get going. She really slows down with all those meds unless she eats at regular intervals."

"There's a message for you, Ms. Cooper. Detective Chapman said he can meet you after the hearing, unless you call to tell him otherwise."

An hour later, I entered the arts-and-crafts center of the psych ward. Much like the walls of a kindergarten class, this room was lined with pictures, crayoned and painted by the patients, all of whom were adults. A makeshift judicial bench had been fashioned out of several of the tables, and the stark black of the judge's robes was in sharp contrast to the brightly colored, childlike illustrations that would be our background for this sad proceeding.

"Ms. Cooper? I was expecting Assistant District Attorney Dashfer to be here today."

"And I was expecting Judge Hayes, Your Honor." We each forced a smile.

The judge was probably as crestfallen as I appeared to be. I had mistakenly relied on the tentative schedule distributed earlier for the week's arraignment part, not figuring on holiday substitutions. Instead of Roger Hayes, one of the smartest and most sensitive jurists in our jurisdiction, I had been saddled with Bentley Vexter. I knew this would prove to be a more difficult experience for Tina, with a judge not long on patience or understanding.

My adversary was a young lawyer from the Legal Aid Society. He had met his client for the first time just minutes ago, when he arrived at the hospital. They conferred briefly while we waited for Sandie Herron to come to the room.

"Are the People ready to proceed?"

"Yes, Your Honor."

"Call your first witness." He held the criminal court complaint up to his nose and lifted his glasses to examine the typed accusation.

"I would like to make an application to the court before I do that."

The judge put the glasses back in place and met my statement with a frown. "We've wasted half a day out here while you got your witness ready for this. What is it now?"

I launched into a description of Tina's condition, both physical and mental, while she and Dr. Herron waited in the corridor. "The request I'm making is that the court allow the victim's physician to appear with her in the courtroom, to serve as a facilitator, should that become necessary during the taking of testimony."

"I'm going to have to object to that, Your Honor."

"Hold it a minute, Mr. Shirker. What, this woman doesn't speak the language? What kind of interpreter do you need? Nobody told my clerk we-"

"Not a foreign language interpreter, sir." I repeated the nature of Tina's difficulties and explained Dr. Herron's relationship with her.

"Objection."

"On what grounds, Counselor?" It was clear the judge had no idea whether he should grant my somewhat unusual request, so he was hoping the defense attorney would provide him with a legal basis to make Tina's task more arduous.

Mr. Shirker had nothing more than a gut feeling and a knee-jerk reaction. "Urn, uh-due process, Your Honor."

"He's right, Ms. Cooper. This is a very peculiar step you're asking me to take."

"The fact that it is unconventional doesn't mean that it doesn't have a valid purpose in a legal proceeding. Our courts are supposed to be accessible to everyone. The fact that this witness has a severe impairment should not deprive her of her day in-"

The judge held his arm straight out in front of him to stop me. Then he lowered it, pointing his finger at the official stenographer. "We're off-the-record here, understand?"

I stood up to object. Vexter was most pernicious when he could clean up the official language of his hearings. His finger pointed back at me, telling me not to dare to stop him. "Look, Alex. You got a retard here who doesn't mind a roll in the hay. She hops into bed with Jose, so who's to say Chester can't have a date, too?"

"I'd like all of this to be on the record, Judge. I'd like the opportunity to respond to it." I wanted an official transcript reflecting his ignorance in black-and-white print that an appellate court and a judiciary committee could examine. Vexter's views were as limited as his intelligence.

The stenographer's hands were poised over her machine. She was waiting for the judge to give her the signal to resume working, while glancing back at me with a shrug of her shoulders, knowing that she was helpless to do as I asked. Vexter was in charge of the courtroom.

Vexter put his glasses on the tip of his nose and motioned to me and my adversary with his forefinger. "Why don't you approach the bench?"

"No, thank you, sir. I want all of this on the record. My witness is developmentally disabled, with severe mental and physical handicaps. But she knows what happened to her and she is entitled to tell her story in this forum."

Chester Rubiera was digging his fingers into the palm of his hand as he watched the goings-on around him. I expected him to draw blood at any moment.

"And I'm telling you that this whole thing is a waste of the court's goddamn time."

"Is that what you and Mr. Shirker mean by due process, Your Honor? Would you like me to talk about the law on this issue, or doesn't that particularly interest you?" Vexter knew as much about rules of evidence as I knew about NASA.

"You got cases on this?"

Catherine had sent the file on the matter to Jake's apartment. She had researched the issue and I had read the opinions last night. I nodded to the judge and started to cite opinions. "There's a Second Department case, In the Matter of Luz P." I handed copies of the decision to the court officer to give to the judge and my adversary. "And the People Against Dorothy Miller." I described the facts and holdings as the stenographer urged me to slow down.

"Yeah, I knew that," Vexter said, tossing the pages aside without reading them.

"The unaided testimony of this witness is likely to be meaningless without our ability to have Dr. Herron interpret her responses. Counsel is welcome to cross-examine and ask whatever appropriate questions he chooses. As previous courts have ruled, this is simply a pragmatic question, not a legal or scientific one."

The three of us continued to argue while the defendant became more irritated, and my witness no doubt grew more anxious out in the hallway. When the judge finally reversed himself and let us go forward, Dr. Herron guided Tina in and sat beside her. The patient's pleasant smile faded when she saw Chester sitting on the opposite side of the long worktable. She clung to Herron's hand and wriggled in her seat.

For the better part of the next two hours, we went through the encounter between Chester and Tina, with Herron clarifying the language whenever Tina's verbal utterances were incomprehensible. By the end of the cross-examination, the patient had exhausted herself by the combination of her concentration on the retelling of the story, and her apprehension about being close to Chester.

When Vexter ruled that there was sufficient evidence to hold the matter for the action of the grand jury, he released Tina from the room and dealt with the business of finding an appropriate facility in which to secure the defendant, away from Coler Hospital.

At four-fifteen, I thanked the doctor and retraced my steps to the lobby of the building, where Chapman was waiting. "Proud of yourself, blondie? Chester the Molester moving on to a better place? Can't believe they actually got a psychobabble disorder named for a bad disposition."

"Yeah. 'Intermittent explosive disorder'-temper tantrums that the perp's unable to control."

"And a medication that works for them?"

I nodded.

"Get a double dose and I'll keep it in my desk drawer, to have on hand for those days you lose it with me. C'mon, that student who was supposed to meet you had to leave for the day. One of the guys from the one-fourteen is going to cruise us around for ten minutes. Will that do?"

We went outside, where the sky was already darkening and the wind had picked up force. A blue and white RMP-radio motor patrol car-sat in front of the hospital. The two uniformed cops in the front seat looked less than thrilled to be chauffeuring us around the quiet little island.

They pointed out the landmarks as we wound our way south, past the remains of the Octagon, the apartment houses, the meditation steps, the observation pier. Near the southern tip, we came flat up against the heavy metal fencing that blocked off the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital.

"Can we get in there to see it?"

The driver flashed his annoyance at his partner, who answered more politely. "Nothing to see, really. You can't go inside the building 'cause it's all crumbled and full of falling blocks of granite. And broken glass. And then there's the rats."

I got the point. "Can we just drive up closer so I can take a look?"

With some hesitation, the driver started the car again and drove us to the locked fence. He got out of the RMP, inserted his card in the automated locking device, and watched as the gate slid open. He stepped back into the car and drove slowly through the entrance. In the wintry darkness of the late afternoon, I could barely make out the shapes of the large boulders on the darkened landscape. "You won't see much, and I can't let you out to walk around. Last guy I took in needed a tetanus shot from tripping and cutting himself open on some old can or bottle."

"What are these huge rocks?"

"The walls of the old City Penitentiary. That's what it all was, once. Came down in the 1940s. It's just been sitting here ever since. Kids used to really get hurt on this stuff. That's why they finally fenced it off."

He drove south until he stopped at the abandoned ruin of the Smallpox Hospital. Chapman and I stepped out of the car and walked to the waist-high wooden fence that kept trespassers at bay.

"Isn't it glorious?" The facade looked like an old castle, the dark gray stone porch of the entry now draped in icicles and bare of all the ivy that cascaded down its sides in summer. Through its paneless window frames, the enormous bright red neon letters of the bottling factory's Pepsi-Cola sign lighted the black sky above the river. On the Manhattan side, the glitter of the United Nations complex sparkled with the outline of its distinctive shape.

"This all that's here?" I could see Mike's breath forming the words in the chilled air.

The driver of the RMP nodded in response.

"Now you've seen it, kid. Let's hoof it back to the mainland. Must be like a girl thing. The place doesn't do anything for me. Mercer's gonna meet us at your place at seven-thirty."

The cops dropped us at the station and we waited with two other passengers until the cable car landed and disgorged its returning commuters.

Mike and I stood in the front of the tram, hanging on to the overhead straps, as the red behemoth lurched from its berth and lifted toward the first tower. For just a few moments we were below the roadway of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, and then we reached the height that put us almost at eye level with the huge girders that spanned the river. The wind was fiercer now, and I could feel the play in the tension of the steel wires.

Mike turned to say something to me when a burst of shots resounded on the side of the moving cab. They pinged and smacked against the steel sidings and the thick glass of the upper body of the tram. Before the second volley was fired off, and without a word between us, Mike had tackled me to the ground and covered my body with his own.

The window had shattered as the hail of gunfire continued, a second round and then a third. The car swayed and frigid air rushed in to fill the small heated space of the wounded tram. The remaining two minutes of the crossing seemed endless, and my mind flashed to those desperate moments almost five months earlier when Mercer had taken a bullet meant for me.

My face was pressed against the muddy tiled floor of the cab. I could hardly breathe from the combination of terror and the weight of Mike's body flattened against my back. I closed my eyes to keep the glass particles from blowing into them, and heard the sound of Mike's gun scraping against the floor of the tram as he positioned it alongside my ear to cover the opening of the door as we docked.