Guilty Minds

Abelard: Because I always knew I done a bad thing, covering it up. A wrong thing. I just thought I had a good reason to do it. (inaudible) Because his sister got raped. And when he found out about it, he went out and found the guy who did it and… he killed the man.

Mandy: How?

Abelard: A gun he must have bought on the street. It was easy to buy a gun on the street in those days, if you knew the right people.

Mandy: But how did you find out about it?

Abelard: His poor sister told her mother, and her mother told someone, and-I always had my ear to the ground. I had my sources, I had people in the community who’d talk to me, and… (inaudible) how I did my job… I tracked him down and I said, “Young man, is it true?” And he was crying and weeping and… he told me he didn’t think anyone would do anything about it. He didn’t think the rapist would ever be arrested. I told him he was wrong, he should have trusted the legal system, but… but when I thought about it some more I realized, he was probably right. The rapist would probably have gotten away with it.

Mandy: (inaudible)

Abelard: Only his mother and his sister knew what he’d done. And I felt for the kid. And for his sister. The goddamned rapist had a rap sheet longer than his cankered dick. Pardon my French. Really bad news. So I made a decision. It would go no further. If he didn’t tell anyone what he’d done, it would be like it never happened. Well, his mother died, and his sister died. I’m the only one left who knows. And I don’t have much time. And I just-I just want to do the right thing.

I didn’t have an appointment, so I had to wait on one of the sharp-edged white leather sofas in the hard and glassy waiting area for almost fifteen minutes.

He came out to meet me himself, not his receptionist, which was unusual.

“Gideon,” I said, “we have a lot to talk about.”

83

The whole point was to discredit Mandy Seeger, wasn’t it?” I said.

I’d laid out everything I had on him, and now we were talking man-to-man. I wasn’t wearing a wire; I’d given him my word on that. I made it clear that his best chance was to talk me through what had gone down.

Gideon looked visibly deflated, and ten years older.

He hesitated. “And Slander Sheet.”

“You knew she was about to open that box. So you fed her a juicier story. Which was poisoned bait.”

“Dear God, Nick, I didn’t think-this is not the way it was supposed to play out. What they did to that girl-I had no idea. It sickens me.”

“How did you know Mandy was about to talk to that old cop?”

“I still know people in Anacostia, Nick. I lived in fear of it coming out. I didn’t even know Officer Abelard was still alive. He must be close to ninety.”

“But there must have been rumors.”

“There were always rumors. People knew my sister Olivia was raped when I was a teenager. I-I had such a temper back then. And you have to understand the times. When Olivia told me what had happened, I was sure he’d get away with it. He was a white man, after all. Is Mandy-Nick, is she going to use this story?”

“Of course she is. Ellen Wiley is paying her, and it’s going to run in Slander Sheet. The whole story, beginning to end. Starting with the man you killed when you were sixteen. Are you going to deny it?”