Taylor turned in the passenger seat to face Mr. Ashcroft. “I do understand, Mr. Ashcroft. You provide housing and food in exchange for sexually abusing a little girl.”
If his hands hadn’t been cuffed, Mr. Ashcroft would have airily waved them. “That is nonsense, Lieutenant, utter nonsense. I am a successful man. I am a sensible man. I am an educated man. Why on earth would I, a man of high station, do something so despicable, something so completely incomprehensible, as to sexually abuse a child? It makes no sense, gentlemen.”
“Perhaps the shrinks will figure that one out.”
Mr. Ashcroft was never incarcerated. His lawyer was there within the hour, a judge duly called, a low bail posted, and he was out and free and on his way back to his lovely brownstone.
Taylor was disgusted, but it wasn’t anything new. Money was a man’s most powerful legal weapon. But he would nail Ashcroft. He had the mother’s testimony and Ellie’s. He had the doctor’s evaluation as well, Ashcroft’s sperm, and everyone involved in the case was mad as hell.
Still, Taylor fretted aloud to his captain, Dennis Bradly, a man of singular patience and goodwill, who watched him silently as he paced the confines of his office.
“The man is used to power. He’s used to getting what he wants because he’s got money. He’s going to intimidate his sister and Ellie. You know it. I know it. The D.A. knows it. The question is, how do we protect them? How do we get this bastard?”
“Look, Taylor—” Bradly stopped and ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair. “I know you’re up to your neck in this thing, what with you finding the girl and all and probably saving her life. You’re too close, it screws up your perspective, makes your thinking muddled. You’ve got to back off.”
“Back off what, Captain?”
“Ashcroft’s big-time.”
“He’s a big shit.”
“That too. We’ll see. Look, the case is strong, airtight for the moment at least. The D.A. will try to keep it that way, but—” He shrugged and reached for his cold coffee in a Styrofoam cup. “Don’t lose your head over this thing, Taylor. I know that Kreider case a couple months ago really got to you. You did the best you could, we all know that, but the law says that the accused has a right to face his accuser.”
“Yeah, what a pity that the accuser gets iced two days before the trial. A real pro job, and our boy walks away with a big smile on his face, and a twenty-one-year-old woman who never did a bad thing in her life, except see Kreider shoot another lowlife, gets shot in the head because I talked her into testifying against him.”
“It wasn’t your fault. Things like that happen. We tried to protect her, you know that. Sometimes it just isn’t enough. Hell, Taylor, you’ve been on the force long enough, what is it, six years now?”
Taylor nodded. “Ashcroft won’t get away with this, Captain.”
“I hope not,” Captain Bradly said, but he didn’t sound at all certain.
Taylor met with the assistant D.A., a young man who was bright enough but who didn’t have a whole lot of experience, a young man who was still capable of burning with righteous indignation. He was pleased with the preponderance of evidence against Ashcroft. He was certain they would have the man bound over for trial. He told Taylor that Ashcroft’s lawyer had already approached the D.A. but his boss wasn’t going to bend on this. Taylor felt good. He felt hopeful. At last there would be justice. As for his partner, Enoch just looked at him, shook his head, and told him not to expect too much.
A preliminary hearing was set for the following Tuesday morning. Taylor couldn’t wait. Ashcroft, with all his money and his slick lawyer, wouldn’t weasel out of this one. No way. He’d be nailed.
He was delighted to hear that Judge Riker would be presiding. He was tough as rawhide and mean as a pit bull. Nobody put a thing over on him. He hated violence and criminals. When it came to rapists, he became nearly rabid with fury. The story was that his niece had been raped some ten years before and the punks responsible had escaped because the cops had seized the evidence improperly.
Judge Riker strode into the small courtroom, his black robes flowing, his thick white hair making him look like Moses, and told the assistant district attorney to get on with it.
The assistant D.A. did get on with it, and it went downhill from there.
The samples of sperm that unequivocally matched Mr. Brandon Ashcroft’s to that found in Ellie’s body were missing from the lab. No one could find them.
Mrs. Delliah took the stand and told Judge Riker that her daughter, it turned out, had let one of the boys in her school play with her until he’d hurt her and that was what had caused all the bleeding. Ellie had been frightened and blamed her uncle because he was the only man she knew. It was too bad, Mrs. Delliah said, touching a handkerchief to her eyes, because Ellie’s uncle loved her very much. And now he had to go through this.
The defense attorney smiled and said there were no questions. He requested that the judge dismiss the case.
Judge Riker stared hard at the assistant D.A., then said quietly, “Do you want the girl to testify?”
“In chambers, Your Honor, please.”
“Very well.”
Taylor waited, pacing the corridor outside the courtroom for forty-five minutes. It was over quickly when Judge Riker returned.
“I am dismissing the charges against Mr. Ashcroft. Next case.”
It was over. Simple as that. Nothing more. Just over and the man was free. Taylor went to the men’s room and vomited up the three cups of coffee he’d drunk. Enoch tried his best to calm him.
“Look, Taylor, it happens this way. You know that, I know that. Hell, what else can you do?”
Taylor looked at him and pulled the small cassette tape from his suit pocket. “Play this for the judge,” he said.
Judge Riker sat still as a stone as he listened to the tape of Ellie Delliah telling Taylor about her rape.
When the tape was over, Judge Riker reached out a thick finger and pressed the erase button.
“Sorry, Lieutenant, but the girl swore that what her mother said was right. She did refuse to give us a boy’s name, however. I believe you. Of course I believe you. I believe the uncle is guilty as sin and he needs psychiatric help. But there’s not a thing I can do about it. Forget it, Lieutenant. I’m as sorry as you are, but the law’s the law. Get back to work and just forget it.”
Taylor rose, still staring down at the now-erased tape. “That little girl’s life will be hell, you know that. You can’t believe he’ll stop now. He’ll think now that he can do anything to her with impunity. He just proved he’s above the law.”
“No, I think the uncle paid off the mother to change her story. Paid her a ton of money, probably. You can take it to the bank that the mother and daughter will be decamping very soon now and heading for parts unknown. So you see, some good came out of it. The girl will be free from him.”
Taylor found little consolation in that, but he nodded, shook Judge Riker’s hand, and left the building. He prayed it was true. What with the case being dismissed, the social workers couldn’t get involved. There was no way to remove Ellie from her mother’s care.
Two weeks later, when Taylor had come off a cocaine bust that had left three teenagers dead and a nineteen-year-old dealer still loose, his captain called him into his office, closed the door, and told him that Ellie Delliah was dead.
“I’m sorry, Taylor,” he said quietly. The kid had jumped out of a rest-room window in her private school at Eighty-first and Madison. Three flights up. She’d landed on a concrete sidewalk.
The next day, Taylor resigned from the New York Police Department. Enoch Sackett, longtime partner and equally longtime friend, also resigned.
A passing cab sent black slush up in a wide arc, splashing Lindsay’s new light brown suede boots. She stared down at them, cursing under her breath. They were splashed, stained, and now bloody ruined. She cursed a bit more. She’d bought them with her last paycheck from Hoffman and Meyers, a small privately owned publishing house where she’d been a fish out of water in the publicity department for the past five months. Frustrated and angry and feeling so down she wanted to bite something or somebody, she went into a discreet-looking bar at
