by Larry Crane
“It’s a little scary at night, isn’t it?” Barbara said.
“It’s just so dark. I’m always thinking somebody’s going to jump out of the woods. Barb, can you do me a favor and lend me your scarf? I stole Mryna’s to come down here, but she’ll be mad if she sees me wearing it.”
“Here, take this one,” Barbara said, offering her gray print scarf. Vickie’s flipped it over her curly brown hair and tied it under her chin. Barbara took Vickie’s blue campus coat with a Ramsey Ram on the back of it out of the closet and handed to her. Vickie stuffed Myrna’s black scarf into her shoulder bag, and retrieved her red mittens from the pockets of her jacket. She clutched her bookkeeping textbook to her chest and slung her bag over her shoulder. From the radio upstairs they heard The Del-Viking’s perky tune “Come Go with Me.”
Vickie stepped outside into the cold night air and descended the stairs of the porch. She looked back at Barbara standing at the door with her arms crossed over her chest, illuminated by the porch light. “Tell your mom thanks for the cookies,” she called, then turned and started down the driveway.
“Say hi to Myrna,” Barbara returned. She stepped inside and watched Vickie hurry into the darkness.
When she reached Wyckoff Avenue in front of the Nixon’s house, Vickie scurried across the blacktop surface, turned left, and started north toward home. She shielded her eyes from the bright lights of an oncoming car.
Chapter 36
Marcella heard words, spoken rather than sung: “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Hannah, happy birthday to you.” Edgar was in the middle of the nearly empty visiting area, one guard by the door, conspicuously holding something in one hand behind his back. It was a cupcake with a burning candle stuck into the middle.
Dear Hannah? Only a fool could think he wouldn’t know about Hannah. He reads newspapers all the time. An article about me soon leads to Hannah and then her disappearance, she thought.
“It’s not her birthday,” she said.
“Shh!” he said. “I’ve been working on these guards for fourteen years. Look around. We’re almost alone. Even they have a soft spot stuck off somewhere.”
“So we are. How on earth did you get the cupcake? And why? I would have thought something like this was impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible. I thought it was impossible I could still be alive. That was years ago. Believe it or not, prisons do have kitchens, and all kinds of deals go down. So, here we are. A plastic knife and forks and a candle. I wanted ten of them, was good for a double sawbuck for them, but they drew the line at one. Bullshit counts for something, believe me.”
What’s this? A complete turnaround. Once, he had me on the mat with his arm across my throat. Now, he’s giving me a cupcake. I’m going to slide past Hannah’s birthday stuff. I don’t think I want to find out what he is up to.
“I brought a draft for you to read,” she said.
“Okay.” He took the sheaf of pages and put them aside.
“Aren’t you going to read it? I like to know what you think,” she said.
“Hey, how about some oohing and ahhing over the cupcake? The guards have to see some schmaltz.”
She blew out the candle and scooped some frosting with her finger.
“Good enough? Read the draft,” she said.
“I don’t need to read any more drafts. I’ll see it in the paper. Okay, you choose not to talk to me about your daughter. I guess I understand. Talk about something else then.”
“Your latest appeal is your favorite subject. Tell me about it.”
He said: “They’re not just to buy time. They tell a story if you bother to read them. You can’t just let a guilty verdict stand without protesting. This place is full of protesters, I know. But, without appeals, how else are you going to fight back? I know I’ve never come right out and said it to you—that I’m innocent. You couldn’t just take my word for it. But I have said it. A million times.”
Now what? My take—he’s fishing for sympathy. He tried bulldozing. Now, it’s schmaltz.
“At first, I called out for someone to listen until I had no voice left. I paced all night as if staying awake held the verdict in limbo, and it could never become real if I could just hold my eyes open. Powerlessness. Do you know anything about it? I couldn’t hold out forever. As the days slipped away with no contact from anyone, the fact that I was in here became justified. I had actually been convicted of murder. It wasn’t fair. It isn’t fair. Is it?”
How has he maneuvered this conversation to the subject of his imprisonment? Why am I transferring it to Hannah’s—her loneliness?
“Are you looking for a soft and fuzzy answer?” she said.
“I’ll never get one from a tough a cookie like you. Right?” he replied.
“Fair? What’s fair? Victoria Zielinski was murdered. Viciously. She stopped thinking, talking, breathing, loving at age fifteen. That’s unfair. Hannah’s gone missing. Somebody’s holding her. Unfair. When you went into solitary confinement with the electric chair in the room next door, you were forced into focusing on reality not hope. I’ve been working on reality too. We have the medium, now we need the message. Read my draft.”
“After a week or so of protesting, I concluded that I should stop,” he said. “It would never work. Only logic and evidence could beat them. Only trouble is, there is no passion in logic. People can’t believe without passion. So, years go by, appeals get presented and adjudicated and rejected, all of it keeping me alive. Calissi, the son of a bitch, hated me. I could see it in his eyes.”
“He didn’t hate you, he just wanted to execute you. I’m pleased with the way all this is working, but I don’t want it to drift. I could use some direction from you. Are you telling me you want to rehash your appeals? Why don’t you want to read my stuff before it gets in the paper? We agreed that this would be a joint effort. Look, I see your passion. I do. Is that what you want to hear?”
“You’re the only one,” he said.
“I don’t think your passion was ever in question,” she said. “All right. Don’t read the draft. Who’s next on the list to go see?”
“Let’s play out a scenario you’ve got superglued to your cranial vault, just for kicks,” he said. “I try to break through to the human part of you. You reluctantly permit it. I, in my depraved condition, lose control and jump you, before the guard over there can intercede—”
“I’m not—it’s not—necessary to break through to anything,” she said.
“A person—I’m not unlike anybody else who might find himself confined—begins to imagine himself emerging as more than just a business partner in the life of someone who may have come forward out of the space out there beyond the razor wire.”
“Someone like me,” she said.
“Yeah. You.”
“You and I are a team.”
“So mate, do you think we could take the little step of calling each other by our first names?”
“Okay, Edgar.”
Keep your calm. We’re going somewhere with this, and if I don’t concentrate I could find myself in some place I’d rather not be.
He went on: “One of the less obvious impulses that comes up when you’re confined for what seems forever, is to never allow even the most minuscule opportunity for human contact to escape, because once gone, it’s gone forever, just because you failed to acknowledge it for what it is. I like you. Ah ah ah. Stay, stand still, Marcella. I’ve set up this little party carefully, and the guards are going to be very disappointed unless at some point we exhibit some of the passion that you say you see in me. There’s a definite lascivious interest we need to satisfy here. Help me out with this.”
I’m not a fool, she told herself. He’s gotten to me through Hannah and understands that every mother is automatically sympathetic toward someone who likes her children. Then we go to passion.
He took her by the shoulders and kissed her hungrily. She held her lips together as hard as
she could and stood woodenly before cracking him hard across the face. He put his hand up to his cheek and turned to look at the guard with a knowing grin.
“You’re very good, and very wet, Marcella,” he said.
When I cracked him—god, that hurt—it must have stung him too, Marcella thought. He didn’t blink. His eyes took me all in, top to bottom, bottom to top, without moving. A shark. Then he said to me: “There’s nothing personal about this. I just needed to figure if you’d go all the way down in one gulp.”
She mentally assessed the situation. It doesn’t seem like it, but I may be in charge. Try some stuff of your own on him.
“You’re a master at this,” she said. “You give me what you think I want. Your perceptions are always right, after all. Aren’t they? You’re dancing around the passion I said I saw in you—gauging what it might lead to—maybe I do want you in my panties, but I don’t want to say it because I’m afraid—afraid maybe—to admit I’m capable of that. Read my draft.”
“Read smut? I didn’t think newspapers allowed it. You go out and talk to people and get their ideas. But I know the truth, so I don’t need to hear what they say,” he said.
“How long did it take you to get Buckley down perfectly?” she said. “The fancy words, the body language?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
“You know exactly. You ‘do’ him to perfection, all the sliding references, and the words that nobody understands without consulting their dictionary. But, you have plenty of time to look them up, don’t you? You’re smart. I know it and you know it. And Buckley loves that about you.”
“Tell me about your draft, so I don’t have to read it,” he said.
“I went to see Gilady. You described him well in your book, ‘white haired and slow on the uptake.’ He knows what he’s talking about but can’t find the right words. So, he leaves the whole question of time of death open to conjecture. All he needed to say was that the weather conditions and the condition of the body at autopsy precluded any accurate determination of time of death. Period. But he didn’t say that. He left the door open for you, and you jumped all over that in your book. And why shouldn’t you? It’s an opening, and you’re going to exploit every one of them.”
“Are you on my side?” Smith asked.
“Why do you ask? If you’re innocent, any question can be posed,” she said. “You need to eradicate doubt. You want all the cards on the table. Right?”
Oh, that was good. He couldn’t possibly have anticipated that.
“Why should I spend any time at all with you? You’re just rehashing old material,” he said, turning his back on her.
“I also went to see someone you don’t know, someone from Ramsey High School. She was on the periphery of people who knew Vickie. She knew of her and bought all of the slimy stuff people had to say about her when she was murdered. Isn’t that a strange, perverse tendency people have, to blame the victim?” she asked.
“So, that’s what’s in your draft, these questions, these opinions?”
“Read it and find out.”
“I will. I’ll let you know what I think. Don’t give it to anyone until I do.”
“The Record is going to run it tomorrow,” she said. “I don’t have time to play around. You’ve had your chance to assess me. The plan is to air out the evidence in an unbiased way. Poke into every crevice. Truth will out. You’re all for truth. Right?”
“You’re pretty smart,” he said.
“You get a kick out of being an enigma,” she said. “Answer questions with questions of your own. Leave it to them to figure out what you’re actually saying. Buckley says to you: ‘My god, Edgar. I wish you’d tell me you didn’t do it.’ Your answer: ‘My god, Bill. I wish you wouldn’t ask me that.’ So, this brilliant writer, intellectual, bon vivant, is left to ponder exactly what the truth is. And because in his mind you seem to be the person he says you are, a clone of himself in jail, using his kind of words, his own brand of arrogance, he believes in you. It’s amazing.”
“Listen,” he said. “I have lots of time to think about things, to work out all the angles. Here’s a plan for you. The newspapers say you’ve received hundreds of tips from people all over the country who want to help get Hannah back to you. They’ve called. They’ve sent letters. But they don’t know if you’ve even received the letter they sent. They’re dying to hear if you did. It means everything to them. What if the person who’s holding Hannah, or someone who thinks they know the one who’s holding her, sent one of these letters, these tips?
“Why not let that person know you got their tip, and that you want to hear more from them? Who knows?—they might write again and give more information. They might give up a clue that could break the case. So, you put out a newspaper article that includes some little piece of information that only the person who wrote it would know. You stroke them, make them feel important. You give them a reason to write again. It may not work, but what do you have to lose?”
He’s helping me get Hannah back, actively coming up with stuff. Is this the ultimate in manipulation? To what end? I said it to him—to get into my panties. So, use it. Use his midnight fantasies.
“Are you on my side?” Smith asked again.
“Of course I am, Eddie” she said. “Now, I’ve got to go. I’ve got work to do, and it’s a long drive to Weehawken.”
Naughty twat. Tease. Weehawken. Turning Weehawken into a rumpus room are we?
Hannah’s spirit is in the car all the time, Marcella figured on her return to the parking lot. She waits for me to come back out and tell her what happened.
“Well, Sweetie, this time, Edgar and I have crossed over into mock friendship. Isn’t that lovely? All or most of the walls have come down, and we ostensibly are helping each other in some way. He decided to get physical with me, to kiss me. I had no choice but to smack him hard. This is the end game, Sweetie. He’s apparently on the verge of getting out because the federal court judges have decided that he’s been wronged. So, we’ve crossed the Rubicon, and he has already projected to when he will be at liberty. What is crossing the Rubicon? It’s doing something very risky, where there’s no going back to the way things used to be.”
Chapter 37
Edgar Smith Case File
by Marcella Armand – Staff Reporter
Did Smith Bring the First-Degree Murder Charge on Himself?
The sensational Edgar Smith murder trial that rocked Bergen County in 1957 and sent Smith to death row at Trenton State Prison is back in the news. US Supreme Court interpretations have shed new light on the case, questioning the legality of the Bergen County police procedures that resulted in the first-degree murder conviction.
Edgar Smith has achieved the impossible, overturning a first-degree murder conviction and death sentence handed down nearly fifteen years ago. Well, not exactly.
He was released from prison by Judge Morris Pashman of the Superior Court of New Jersey in Hackensack. After deciding during an evidentiary hearing that an incriminating statement made by Smith during police interrogation was given involuntarily, Federal Circuit Court Judge John J. Gibbons ruled that the statement could not be admitted as evidence, overturned the first-degree murder conviction, and ordered the State of New Jersey to retry Smith or set him free within sixty days.
The legal process for all of this is convoluted, but at its root, the State of New Jersey decided they didn’t have enough proof to convict Smith of first-degree murder the second time around. They lacked, they thought, the element of premeditation which separates a charge of murder in the second degree from first degree.
But, did they lack that element? In order to prove premeditation, the State would have to prove that Smith had deliberated before he acted to prevent the victim from escaping the sandpit. He had to have formed the thought that it was not good for him that she tell her story, and that he needed to prevent that. And so, as she ran away from him, he groped in the backseat of the car for the base
ball bat that he knew was there. How long did that take? Thirty seconds? Twenty seconds? Premeditation doesn’t have a time limit.
Up to May of 1957, shortly before the trial, the baseball bat was not included in the physical evidence. It had not been found. But, Smith’s defense team pressed for a “truth serum” interrogation, and in the report of that questioning by doctors, Smith told of how he had fetched the bat out of the backseat of the car, and that he left the victim alive at the sandpit with his friend, Hommell.
The jury didn’t believe it and unanimously convicted him. The conviction rested largely on the statement that Judge Gibbons decided was coerced out of him. Gibbons mandated a new trial or freedom for Smith. The crime was deemed a case of second-degree murder. But, when Smith told of the bat, and blamed his friend both at the trial and in his book Brief Against Death, he opened the door to the charge of premeditated, first-degree murder.
Chapter 38
State of Illinois Police Say Hannah Armand Abduction Investigation Still Active
The Associated Press
NAPERVILLE, IL --- Federal and State Missing Persons Officials affirmed today that the investigation into the abduction of Hannah Armand continues unabated. Although over a year has passed since the then nine-year-old fourth grader was abducted as she walked to school, police continue to pursue leads, and are optimistic about ultimately recovering the girl.
While the search for Hannah is controlled from Illinois, state police across the country are fully informed about the abduction, and her photograph and physical appearance have been disseminated to local police departments as well.
Illinois FBI Bureau Chief Elton Dvorak called the investigation “a very active” case that will be satisfactorily resolved. “We are following up on many active leads,” Dvorak said. “We have received numerous tips from as far away as Missoula, Montana that have proved helpful. We urge anyone who has any information pertinent to the case to contact us.