The Shining Girls

Kirby ^{11 AUGUST 1992}

She is sitting in the waiting room of Delgado, Richmond & Associates, a firm which only sounds impressive, flipping through a three-yearold Time magazine that screams ‘Death By Gun’ on the cover. She felt compelled to pick it up given that her other choices are ‘The New USSR’ or ‘Arsenio Hall’, even though her field of interest is actually ‘death by knife’ and firearms are not much use to her.

The magazines are not the only things out of date. The leather couch has seen better decades. The plastic rubber tree has a fine coating of dust on its leaves and more than one cigarette has been stubbed out in its base. Even the receptionist’s hairstyle is unfashionably eighties. Kirby wishes she had dressed up a bit more for the occasion. She is pushing the limit even by slovenly newsroom standards with a Fugazi T-shirt under a checked shirt and a wool-lined brown leather bomber jacket that she picked up for cheap down on Maxwell Street.

The lawyer, Elaine Richmond, comes to collect her personally, a soft-spoken middle-aged woman in black pants and a blazer, with sharp eyes and a bobbed weave. ‘Sun-Times?’ she smiles and pumps Kirby’s hand with too much enthusiasm, like a lonely maiden aunt in an old folks’ home glomming on to other people’s visitors. ‘Thank you so much for coming.’

Kirby follows her down the passage into a boardroom cramped with cardboard boxes nudging out the legal books on the shelves and making incursions across the floorspace. She thunks down an assortment of pink and blue folders stuffed with paperwork, but doesn’t actually open them.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘you’re a little late to the party, you know.’

‘Uh?’ Kirby manages.

‘Where were you a year ago when Jamel tried to kill himself? We sure could have done with a little press back then.’ She laughs ruefully.

‘I’m sorry,’ Kirby says, wondering if she’s in the wrong law firm altogether.

‘Tell that to his family.’

‘I’m just an intern, I thought this would make a good story on, uh,’ she ad-libs, ‘miscarriages of justice and the terrible after-effects? Human interest stuff. But actually I’m a little bit out of the loop with the latest developments.’

‘There aren’t any. As far as the district attorney is concerned, that’s a wrap! But see here. Do these boys look like the murdering type to you?’ She flips open the file and spreads out the pages to show her the mug shots of four young men staring sulkily into the lens with flat eyes. It’s amazing, Kirby thinks, how easily ‘teen apathy’ can translate into ‘stone-cold killer’.

‘Marcus Davies, fifteen at the time they were arrested. Deshawn Ingram, nineteen. Eddie Pierce, twenty-two and Jamel Pelletier, seventeen years old. Accused of the murder of Julia Madrigal. Found guilty on 30 June 1987. Sentenced to death row, apart from Marcus, who went down to juvenile detention. Jamel attempted suicide on…’ she peers at the date, ‘September 8 last year, on hearing that the latest appeal had been overturned. He was a volatile kid anyway, but it just crushed the soul of him. Did it straight after we got back from court. He twisted his pants into a noose and tried to hang himself in his cell.’

‘I didn’t know about that.’

‘It got some press. Usually buried on page three, if we were lucky. A lot of the papers didn’t report it at all. I think most people believe they’re guilty as the devil’s own.’

‘But you don’t.’

‘My clients were not very nice young men.’ Elaine shrugs. ‘They sold drugs. They broke into cars. Deshawn had an assault rap for beating up his drunk father when he was thirteen years old. Eddie’s had several charges dropped against him, from rape to breaking and entering. They were joyriding in a stolen car in Wilmette, which makes them stupid because a bunch of black boys in a nice ride in the lily-white burbs draws the wrong kind of attention. But they didn’t kill that girl.’

Kirby feels a shot of ice go down her spine hearing her say it. ‘That’s what I think too.’

‘It was a high-pressure case. Sweet white college girl with top marks is horribly murdered. It becomes a community issue. The whole ward gets up in arms. Parents are upset, talking about campus security, getting blue-light phones installed or pulling their daughters out of school altogether.’

‘Any ideas on who did do it?’

‘Not Satanists. The police were ringing on the crazy-town doorbell with that one. Took them three weeks to stop chasing that wild goose, though.’

‘A serial killer?’

‘Sure. We couldn’t pull anything to corroborate the theory in court. You want to tell me what you’re thinking? If you have a lead on something that could help these boys, you need to tell me right now.’

Kirby squirms, not quite ready to lay it all out. ‘I thought you said they weren’t good people.’

‘I’d say that about eighty per cent of the clients I represent. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do right by them.’

‘Can you put me in touch with them?’

‘If they want to talk with you. I might advise them not to. It depends what you’re going to do with it.’

‘I don’t know yet.’