She was still lying face down, and Jeff picked up her wrist, feeling for a pulse. As the artery beneath his fingers throbbed, he gently turned the woman over.
Her nose was crushed, her jaw was swelling, and her face was covered with blood. As the train roared into the subway and slowed to a stop, the woman's eyes opened. Her gaze fixed on him for a second, and then she suddenly seemed to come back to life. A scream erupted from her throat and the fingernails of one hand raked across his face. He grabbed her wrist, and her other hand came up, tearing at him. Jeff had no idea how long the struggle lasted-perhaps only a few seconds, maybe as much as half a minute. As he tried to pinion the thrashing woman beneath him, hands closed on his shoulders and he was jerked away.
"She's hurt," Jeff began. "Someone-" But before he could finish he was manhandled away from the woman and slammed face down onto the subway platform.
His arms were jerked behind his back.
And his nightmare began.
As the handcuffs tightened around his wrists he heard someone say something about his not having to say anything.
They took him to the precinct house on West One hundredth Street.
Once again he was told that he had the right to remain silent, but since he knew that he'd only tried to help the woman in the subway station, it didn't occur to him to demand a lawyer before he recounted what had happened. He told them all of it-and kept telling them, even as he was processed into the system. By the time they'd taken away his watch, his class ring, his keys, and his wallet; by the time a computer had scanned his fingerprints and confirmed that he had no prior arrest record; by the time they finally sat him down in the detectives' squad room and asked him to once more describe exactly what had happened, he'd already told his story three or four times.
Even when they locked him in the holding cage in the squad room, he was certain it would soon be over. As soon as the woman from the subway station calmed down, she'd remember what had happened.
She would tell the police.
And that would be the end of it.
When they asked him if he wanted to call someone, he thought of his parents first, then changed his mind-with both of them far out on Long Island, what could they do? Besides, it was all a mistake, and why have them worry all night when by morning he'd be back home? Finally, he settled on Heather Randall, certain she would still be waiting for him at his apartment. But before he could even make the call, she arrived at the precinct.
"I'll have my father find out what's going on," she told him. "Don't worry-we'll get you out in an hour."
But they hadn't gotten him out. An hour later the police let him talk to Heather again, and she told him what was going on.
"The woman's in surgery, but the last thing she said was that you attacked her."
"But I didn't!" Jeff protested. "I was trying to help her!"
"Of course you were," Heather assured him. "And I'm sure when they show the woman pictures tomorrow, she'll know it wasn't you."
But when the police had shown the woman the photographs of a dozen men the next morning, she immediately placed a finger on the one of Jeff. Even though her face and jaws were heavily bandaged, she'd made it perfectly clear that he was the man who attacked her in the subway station.
So they'd taken him downtown.
The oddly detached feeling he experienced the night of his arrest gave way to real fear as he was processed into the Manhattan House of Detention.
Thinking about it later, he remembered most of that day as a blur. All he could recall was being moved through a maze of barred gates and climbing up two floors through a steep, narrow staircase that echoed with his own footsteps and with those of dozens of other people who were being moved slowly through the legal system.
There'd been an elevator, filled with the heavy, unmistakable smell of incense.
He remembered a holding area with cells containing the kind of disreputable-looking people whose gaze he had always avoided on the streets or subways. Now they were staring at him, calling out to him, demanding to know what he'd done.
He'd said nothing.
Finally, he was led down another stairwell and put into what looked like a cage on one of the landings. Perfectly square, the tiny chamber contained only a plastic molded chair.
He sat down.
He had no idea how long he waited-his watch was still in the envelope with everything else he'd had with him last night, and there were no clocks in sight.
At last, he was led into the courtroom, and the nightmare grew even more monstrous.
Though he was waiting in a different cage outside a different courtroom on this morning of his sentencing, in the Criminal Courts Building adjoining the Detention Center, the only apparent difference between them was the floor he was on. When he'd been arraigned and the charges against him were formally read-charges that ranged from assault to attempted rape and attempted murder-it had been on one of the lower floors. Back then, nearly half a year ago, his hopes had still been high. Cynthia Allen would recognize her mistake, he assumed, and the charges would be dropped. But the charges hadn't been dropped. Instead, he heard the cops who had arrested him, followed by two people from the subway that had pulled into the station right after he'd found her, and finally Cynthia Allen herself, all testify to what they thought they'd seen that night. As he sat listening to Cynthia Allen speak-sitting in the wheelchair she had been confined to since the attack, her face still misshapen, even after the first of her cosmetic surgeries-he realized he was going to be convicted.
Known that if he'd been sitting in the jury box instead of behind the defense table, he'd have believed every word she was saying.
"I saw him," she whispered, glancing toward him before turning back to the jury. "He was on top of me-he was trying to…" Her voice trailed off, and her silence was far more persuasive than any words she could have spoken.
Then it was his turn to testify. As he sat in the witness box wearing a shirt whose collar was now too large for his neck and a jacket that sagged on his gaunt body, he knew that the jury wasn't believing a word he said.
He'd seen the doubt in their eyes as he told them about the man who ran into the ink black tunnel, disappearing with the speed of a cockroach escaping from the light.
Through it all, his parents sat side by side in the first of the six rows of hard wooden benches-benches that reminded him of church pews-that were reserved for spectators. Every time he looked at them, they smiled encouragingly, as if they thought their own belief in his innocence would somehow be transferred to the jury. What they couldn't see- and he could-was Cindy Allen's family, sitting on the other side of the courtroom behind the prosecution table. His parents' smiles had been countered by their looks of pure hatred. Though his parents appeared shocked by his conviction, Jeff had felt only a numb sense that the verdict was inevitable, that his nightmare was never going to end.
Now, as he waited for the final phase of his trial to begin, he tried to summon up some shred of hope, but found nothing.
Where his body had once been full of energy, it now seemed exhausted. At twenty-three, he felt like an old man.
Where six months ago his life had stretched before him like a landscape with limitless horizons to explore, now all he could see ahead were endless days confined within the bars of a prison cell.
That morning, when he had looked in one of the worn pieces of polished metal that served as a mirror in the building known as the Tombs, he found himself staring for a long time at the pallor of his face, the gauntness of his neck and chest, and the dark rings of exhaustion around his eyes. I look like what they think I am, he'd thought. I look like I belong in prison.