“How’d you get our name? I thought sex victims are supposed to be confidential.”
“I used to be with the DA’s office.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right, I knew that. You’re the one. I read about you in the papers. So you seen the whole file?”
“Yeah.”
“So you know about this guy Leonard Patz? What he did to Matt?”
“Yeah. Sounds like he groped him in the library.”
“He groped him in the balls.”
“Well, the-okay, there too.”
“Matt!”
“If this is a bad time…”
“No. You’re lucky he’s here. Usually he goes off with the girlfriend and I don’t even see him. His curfew’s eight-thirty but he doesn’t care. He just goes off. His probation officer knows all about it. I guess I can tell you that, can’t I, he’s got a probation officer? I don’t know what to do with him. I don’t know what to tell anyone anymore, you know? DYS had him for a while, then they sent him back. I moved here from Quincy so he wouldn’t be around his friends, who were no good. So I came here ’cuz I thought it would help him, you know? You ever try to find a section-eight apartment in this town? Pfft. Me, I don’t care where I live. It doesn’t matter to me. So you know what? You know what he says to me now? After I do all this for him? He says, ‘Oh, you’ve changed, Ma. Now you moved to Newton, you think you’re fancy. You wear your fancy glasses, your fancy clothes, you think you’re like these Newton people.’ You know why I wear these glasses?” She picked up a pair of glasses from a table beside the armrest. “ ’Cuz I can’t see! Only now he’s got me so crazy I don’t even wear them in my own house. I wore these same glasses in Quincy and he didn’t say a thing. It’s like, no matter what I do for him, it’s never enough.”
“It’s not easy being a mother,” I ventured.
“Oh, well, he says he doesn’t want me to be his mother anymore. He says that all the time. You know why? I think it’s because I’m overweight, it’s because I’m not attractive. I don’t have a skinny body like Kristin and I don’t go to the gym and I don’t have nice hair. I can’t help it! This is what I am! I’m still his mother! You know what he calls me when he gets mad? He calls me a fat shit. Imagine saying something like that to your mother, calling her a fat shit. I do everything for this kid, everything. Does he ever thank me? Does he ever say, ‘Oh, I love you, Ma, thank you’? No. He just tells me, ‘I need money.’ He asks me for money and I tell him, ‘I don’t have any money to give you, Matty.’ And he says, ‘Come on, Ma, not even a couple a bucks?’ And I tell him I need that money to buy him all these things he likes, like this Celtics jacket he had to have, for a hundred fifty bucks, and like a fool I go and buy it for him, just to make him happy.”
The bedroom door opened and Matt Magrath came out, barefoot, wearing only Adidas gym shorts and a T- shirt. “Ma, give it a rest, would you? You’re freaking the guy out.”
The police reports in Leonard Patz’s indecent A amp;B case described the victim as fourteen years old, but Matt Magrath seemed a few years older than that. He was handsome, square-jawed, with a slouchy, wised-up manner.
The girlfriend, Kristin, followed him out of the bedroom door. She was not as pretty as Matt. She had a thin face, small mouth, freckles, flat chest. She wore a wide-necked shirt that hung off one side, exposing a milky shoulder and a vampy lavender bra strap. I knew instantly that this boy did not care about her. He would break her heart, probably very soon. I felt sorry for her before she even got all the way out of the bedroom door. She looked about thirteen or fourteen. How many men would break her heart before she was through?
“ You’re Matthew Magrath?”
“Yeah. Why? Who are you?”
“How old are you, Matthew? What’s your birth date?”
“August 17, 1992.”
I was distracted momentarily by the thought of it: 1992. How recent it sounded, how far along in my life I was already. In 1992 I had already been a lawyer for eight years. Laurie and I were trying to conceive Jacob, in both senses.
“You’re not even fifteen years old yet.”
“So?”
“So nothing.” I glanced at Kristin, who was watching me with a lidded expression like a proper bad girl. “I came to ask you about Leonard Patz.”
“Len? What do you want to know?”
“ ‘Len’? Is that what you call him?”
“Sometimes. Who are you again?”
“I’m Jacob Barber’s father. The boy who’s accused in the Cold Spring Park murder.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I figured you were something like that. I figured you might be a cop or something. The way you were looking at me. Like I done something wrong.”
“Do you think you’ve done something wrong, Matt?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, do you? Doesn’t matter if I’m a cop or not.”
“What about her?” He inclined his head toward the girl.
“What about her?”
“Isn’t it a crime if you have sex with a kid and she’s, like, too young-so it’s like, what do they call it?”
“Statutory rape.”
“Right. Only it doesn’t count if I’m too young too, does it? Like, if two kids have sex, you know, with each other, and they’re both under the age and they’re boning each other-”
His mother gasped, “Matt!”
“The age of consent in Massachusetts is sixteen. If two fourteen-year-olds have sex, they’re both committing rape.”
“You mean they’re raping each other?”
“Technically, yes.”
He gave Kristin a conspiratorial look. “How old are you, girl?”
“Sixteen,” she said.
“My lucky day.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, son. The day’s not over yet.”
“You know what? I don’t think I better talk to you, about Len or anything else.”
“Matt, I’m not a cop. I don’t care how old your girlfriend is, I don’t care what you do. I’m only concerned with Leonard Patz.”
“You’re that kid’s father?” Touch of a Boston accent: fatha.
“Yeah.”
“Your kid didn’t do it, you know.”
I waited. My heart began to pound.
“Len did.”
“How do you know that, Matt?”
“I just know.”
“You know how? I thought you were the victim in an indecent A amp;B. I didn’t think you knew… Len.”
“Well, it’s complicated.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah. Lenny and me are friends, kind of.”
“He’s the kind of friend you report to the cops for indecent A amp;B?”
“I’ll be honest with you. What I reported him for? Lenny never did that.”
“No? So why’d you report him?”
A little grin. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“Did he grab you or not?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“So what’s complicated?”
“Hey, you know what? I’m not really comfortable with this. I don’t think I should be talking to you. I have a
