Read The Bone Vault - Linda Fairstein for Free Online Page A

any idea what goes on at a trial, Angel?"

    "I don't want to be at no trial. I just want the judge to sentence him to jail." "That's not how it works. You watch television?"

    "Yeah."

    "Ever see any of those cop shows where the guys go to trial? You know who's in the courtroom when the witness testifies?"

    "Me. Him. The judge. You. That's when I gotta tell what he did to me."

    "And what do you think Felix does, after you testify?"

    "I don't know."

    "He gets to talk to the jury, too, if he wants to. He gets to tell them the story the wayhe says it happened. Those twelve people don't know you, and they don't know him, so they have to try to figure out which one of you to believe, whose story makes more sense."

    "How come he gets to talk?" That part of the process clearly bothered her. "He's gonna lie anyway. He's gonna say I invited him to my house."

    Angel's tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth, sounding a strong note of disapproval at the defense she had just offered on Felix's behalf, and she slumped farther down in her chair. Her shoulders sagged forward, theg anda rhinestones disappearing from my view. All that was left were the letters forming the wordangst. "Let me tell you about lying in a court of law. Did the detective tell you that it's a crime, too? That if you take an oath to tell the truth but you lie on the witness stand, you can be arrested?"

    "Felix raped me. I'm not lying about that. You can't arrest me for nothing. I'm too young." The pout had passed momentarily, and she was emboldened by the thought that her age would protect her from my lightly veiled threat.

    Don't test me today, Angel. "Actually, wecan arrest you. Your case is heard in family court because you're not sixteen. But the judge there can send you to a foster home upstate, take you away from your mother --"

    That snapped her to attention. "I don't want to be doing this now. I want to go home."

    "I'm afraid that's not one of your choices. A man has been arrested because of the story you told Detective Vandomir. He's been in jail for a couple of days, charged with the most serious thing one human being can do to another, short of murder. And he belongs there, if he held a knife to you and raped you. He belongs there for a very long time.

    "So we're going to go over your statement one more time. There's only one thing you can do wrong, from this point on."

    "What's that?" "Lie. You cannot tell any lies, Angel. Not about anything. No matter how insignificant you think the question is, no matter what it concerns, you can't lie about it. If I ask you whether it was raining or sunny the day you met Felix, you've got to tell me the truth."

    "Like what does that have to do with my being raped?"

    "Every single thing you say has to do with how we know what to believe when you get to the point of telling us what happened with Felix in your bedroom. If you lie about the little things that led up to that, then it means you're very capable of lying about the big ones. Tell me you never gave him the number of your beeper, and I get records back from the phone company in a few days showing that he beeped you every day last week, then I know you've told enough lies for me not to trust anything you say. And if you do it under oath, before the grand jury, I'll have you arrested before you leave the building."

    There were gentler ways to do this, but I was out of patience and short on time. It was almost nine-thirty, and as soon as my assistant, Laura, clocked in and got to her desk, she'd be leaving a message for Battaglia that I needed to see him.

    Vandomir was a smart cop with good instincts. If he doubted the veracity of Angel's narrative, he had reason to do so. Four and a half hours with her in the emergency room at the hospital had given him a concrete sense of where the holes in her story were. I tried to soften my tone and get back to the beginning of her meeting with Felix. Each time she answered a question, Angel looked at