The Perfect Mother Read Free Page B

here?”
    “He will be.”
    José nodded. “Let me tell you what we know so far.” He glanced down at some papers, seemingly to refresh his memory, then leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling as he spoke.
    “In the early hours of Tuesday, April twenty-fifth, the last night of our annual
feria
when there are many people celebrating in the streets, your daughter placed a call to zero-nine-one, the emergency police number. She was crying and apparently was difficult to understand, but she told the operator to send the police to her home address immediately. When asked the problem, she said someone had died.”
    He paused, leaning forward to consult the report on his desk.
    “Go on, please,” Jennifer urged.
    “When the police arrived they found Emma sitting on a chair in the corner, her eyes glazed and seemingly in shock. A young man, a Spanish student from Almería, was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood. He had been stabbed multiple times in the arms, chest, and neck and was dead.”
    “Oh, God, my poor baby.”
    The lawyer looked at her. “Well, yes. But the first sympathy of course was for the dead boy.”
    “Of course, I’m so sorry. I’m just . . . I’m trying to understand how my daughter could have been in this situation.”
    “She said the boy tried to rape her and the police officers took her straight to the hospital for examination. The doctors didn’t find any physical problems and she refused permission for a rape test. This was not wise because although it is her right, it doesn’t look good and raises suspicion. She was then brought to the police station for questioning. In Spain, she cannot be held more than eight hours without a lawyer present, but remember she was picked up in the middle of the night. Just like in your country, she has the right to forgo having her lawyer present during questioning, and also like your country, I’m sure they put pressure on her to do that. They’d have asked her why wait for your lawyer—unless you have something to hide.
    “You know after a night in the cell, people tend to talk. It’s dirty, dingy, you’re crammed in with others, the food is terrible, and if you want to use the bathroom a policeman must accompany you to the door. And some of these policemen can be frightening. I had a case where the officer was shouting at a young woman and banging his hand hard on the table to emphasize his words, leaning in very close to her face and terrifying her. It wasn’t long before she was ready to
cantar La Traviata
, as we say here—sing like a canary, I think is the English expression. But I walked in at the right moment and told her to stop talking.”
    Obviously distressed, but refusing to be sidetracked, Jennifer pressed him for more information. “Please, what did Emma say happened?”
    “She said she’d been at a bar where she had a few beers and ate some brownies that were apparently laced with hashish. She’d gone home alone. As she neared her apartment this man started following her. He pulled out a knife and forced her inside, where he threw her on the bed and tried to rape her. She fought him and screamed.”
    Jennifer gasped and put her hand over her mouth.
    “I’m sorry,” José said. “I know all this is difficult for a mother to hear. But there is much more and you will have to be strong.” He opened a cabinet, poured a glass of sherry, and offered it to her, but she waved it away. He drank it himself in one gulp.
    “Go on, please,” Jennifer said. José returned to the desk and looked again at the file.
    “She claims that a passerby heard her pleas and burst in the door of her ground-floor apartment, which had not been locked. He fought with the attacker and killed him in self-defense. Emma was a witness so he would probably not have been prosecuted, but the boy—the newspapers are already calling him
el buen samaritano
, the Good Samaritan—told her he is an Algerian and is here illegally. He said he could