“Good-bye, Bonnie,” he said.
Luther and the white-haired weight lifter followed her out.
Benson stayed behind. He looked at Frank a moment and then quietly turned his back on the cage.
Frank stared through the bars at the cell door. He felt a wild, terrible anguish of relief. It was finished, he thought. He had done for her what he could.
He bowed his face into his hands and began sobbing, loudly, painfully, his body shuddering uncontrollably.
4
I meanwhile broke into Michelle Ziegler’s apartment.
It wasn’t an easy job. I’d been there a few times before and I knew it wouldn’t be. Michelle’s theories about male violence made her nervous. She’d turned the place into a fortress. Three deadbolts, a chain and a police bar on the loft’s heavy door. After I parked outside the old Globe building, I popped the Tempo’s trunk, and armed myself with a tire iron for the attempt.
The outside door alone—the windowed wooden door that led into the big white brick warehouse itself—held me up for long minutes. I tried the buzzers first. I’d seen that trick on TV. There were five buttons besides Michelle’s and I pressed them all. Unfortunately, if anyone else was home, they’d seen the trick on TV too. No one buzzed me in.
So I tried pressing back the latch with a credit card. Working it between the door edge and the jamb. Checking through the door’s top window and glancing back at the boulevard traffic over my shoulder all the while. Checking all around like some sort of sneak thief, which I suppose is what I was. The street was beginning to darken now, maybe the heat was faltering a little, but the humidity remained dense and my shirt was doused from within as I waggled the plastic rectangle into the wood. Finally, I heard a click. It was my Visa card snapping in half. I drew it out and examined its chewed edges before stuffing it into the pocket of my slacks, disgusted.
Breathing hard, I glanced back over my shoulder again. Then I put the tire iron through the top window. The idea was to punch out a neat little wedge of glass but the whole pane shattered, disconcertingly loud, like an orchestra of xylophones tuning up before the big show. My heart booming, I reached in and turned the inside knob. I was in. The glass crunched under my feet as I hurried through the small entryway to the stairs.
I went up them two at a time. Three flights. And now, despite my thrice weekly workouts at the gym, my breath was sawing in and out of me and the tar of ten-year-old cigarettes was bubbling harshly in my lungs. When I reached Michelle’s door, I collapsed against the wall beside it, gasping. Gripping the tire iron in my sweat-greased palm, I glowered balefully at the column of stalwart locks. The police bar was on the bottom and I knew there wasn’t much chance of breaking through that. But I was ready to pry the whole door off its hinges if I had to. Anyway, there was nothing for it and no time to waste.
My chest still heaving, I pushed myself off the wall. With a grunt, I fit the wedge of the iron into the jamb. The door swung slowly open.
I stumbled a step across the threshold and stood amazed. Michelle would never have left the place unlocked like that. She was too sure that violence was lurking everywhere: she read the newspapers too much. Standing on the brink of the room, the tire iron still in my fist, I could only stare wondering into the shadowy expanse.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. On the big windows all along the walls, the venetian blinds were closed against the light. The smell of dust came to me through the gray shadows, through the stultifying heat. Then came the shapes of boxes and stacks of paper on the floor all around, everywhere. Then the rickety table with her laptop against one wall. An open kitchen with a sculpture of dirty dishes and pan-handles rising out of the sink. A miniature TV in a far corner. A bathroom door. Her bed—against the wall to my right—a huge circular mattress covered with enormous pillows.
And sitting on the edge of the bed, a man. An old man.
I could make him out plainly, framed as he was against the blinds, etched in the dying light that seeped in through the slats. I could see his drooping head and his slumped shoulders, his arms dangling between his knees, his hands clasped. His presence explained why the door was unlocked, at least, but for a moment, I could squeeze no other sense out of his being there.
Then he looked at me. Slowly. Without lifting his head, he turned it in my direction. Slumped, bent, dejected, he peered at me through the dark.
“So steal,” he said.
Oh shit! I thought, as the answer came to me. “Mr. Ziegler?”
There was no reply. The man sighed and let his chin fall to his chest again. I took another step into the room, gently pushing the door shut behind me. The loft’s stifling atmosphere surrounded me, clung to me, gummy and foul.
“I’m not a thief, Mr. Ziegler,” I said, still breathing hard, pouring sweat now, trying to get a fresh breath. “I’m a friend. A friend of Michelle’s. I work with her at the paper.”
His shoulders rose and fell once. “It was an easy mistake to make,” he said thickly. “My friends always knock.”
“Right. Sorry.” Bending, I set the tire iron down on the floor. I stood looking at him, scratching my head. Now what? I thought. “I’m sorry about Michelle,” I said. “I liked her—like her—very much. Can I, uh …?”
I went to the wall, found the light switch in the gloom. A naked bulb, hanging down on its wiring, went on above us. A circle of glare shone on the old man’s bald head. The shadows receded from around him to the borders of the room.
Mr. Ziegler turned his head again to get another look at me. Impossible to tell how old he was—seventy, eighty maybe, or maybe younger and made ancient by the last twenty-four hours or the last twenty-four years. His hair was mostly gone except for a scraggly fringe. His small, round face was shriveled behind its grizzled moustache. Sweat—or tears—pooled and ran in the deep furrows of his cheeks. His eyes were rheumy and sallow. His body was small, slender, frail like Michelle’s.
“You were …” he said roughly, “… a friend?”
“Yeah. Yeah,” I said. “We worked together. At the paper. Is she …? Is there …? I mean, has anything happened?”
Again, he sighed, his small frame rising, deflating. He shook his head. “The machines. They keep her …” His voice trailed off.
“Right,” I said. “Right. That’s very sad.”
He looked across the room now, at the pile of dishes in the kitchen. He didn’t say anything else for a long time. I resisted an urge to check my watch. I was about to say something, I’m not sure what, when the old man spoke again in a distant, ruminative tone, as if to himself.
“Now … we have to decide—her mother and I have to decide—whether to turn them off. The machines.”
Good God, I thought. “Ah. Yes,” I said. I’m never going to get out of here.
“So I’m deciding,” said Mr. Ziegler. “I’m sitting here and I’m deciding.”
He went silent again, staring off into the kitchen like that. Even as I waited, I seemed to see the daylight go dimmer in the cracks of the blinds. My gaze went to the floor, over the floor, and I saw the stacks and stacks of papers rising from the layers of dust, boxes overflowing with papers and notebooks. They were everywhere, in every corner, against every wall. Five hours, I thought. To find a single page, a single name that might not even be there. And in this goddamned heat.
With my head tilted, the sweat ran onto the lenses of my glasses. I took them off, dried them on the loose cloth of my pants pocket.
“I’m sorry,” I said again—I was speaking before I even thought of what to say. “To bother you, to disturb you, now, at a time like this.”
The old man nodded vaguely.
“Michelle was really a terrific reporter,” I said. I didn’t correct the tense this time. I put my glasses back on. The smeared lenses blurred my vision. “A top-notch reporter,” I stumbled on. “When she did a story, she … well, she got everything, every detail. See? And she kept it all here. And there’s a man—an innoc
ent man—and they’re going to execute him. Tonight. See? And I think there may be something here, something in these papers that could save his life.”
To my surprise, that seemed to interest him. He came out of his trance. He considered me more carefully. “Something Michelle did?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yes. I came here to look for it. That’s why I …” I gestured back at the door.
He seemed to consider this, working his slack lips, bobbing his shriveled head, his eyes unfocused. I could hear the traffic going by outside. I could hear my watch ticking.
“So,” he said finally, “look.”
“Right,” I said. “Right. Thanks.”
I went to work. I could feel him still watching me as I knelt down among the dust balls. Bewildered at first by the sheer number of stacks and boxes all around me, I swiveled this way and that, searching for someplace to begin. In the end, I just grabbed the pile of newspapers closest to me. I riffled through the top few. There was no order to them that I could see. They were just old papers. I pushed them to one side. Sweat ran into my glasses again. I took them off, tucked them into my shirt pocket. I drew my sleeve across my face as more droplets of sweat pattered into the film of dust on the floor. I reached for a cardboard box and dragged it toward me. Dug through it, plucking out notebooks, flipping through them, peering at Michelle’s small, pinched but legible hand. Most of the notes dealt with an old murder trial, a woman who’d shot her husband in the back of the head while he slept. I remembered that one. Michelle insisted it was self-defense. She almost brained me when I laughed at her. I dropped the notebooks back into the box and pushed it next to the newspapers. My face was covered with water, my lungs ached, as I crawled over the floor, as the dust balls scattered before me and stuck, in a gritty film, to my palms.
And all the while, I felt the old man, felt him above me, scrutinizing me with those damp, yellowing eyes. I caught hold of another box.
He cleared his throat. “You’re her friend,” he said then. “You said … you’re her friend.”
I glanced up at him. Without my glasses, he was an unclear figure. “Yeah. I like her a lot.” I looked down and continued to dig through the box.
“That’s nice,” he said after a while. “You seem like a nice man. Some of the men she dates …”
“No, I didn’t date her.” The box seemed to hold a random collection of clips about atrocities, America being atrocious to other countries, whites being atrocious to blacks, men being atrocious to women. “We never dated.” I tossed the atrocities back into the box and pushed it aside.
He sounded impressed. “You’re just … her friend, you mean.”
“Yeah.” I grabbed another stack of papers and went through it only briefly before shoving it with the others. My head was beginning to feel light. I needed to open a window, get some air, but I didn’t want to waste the time. I moved closer to the bed where the old man was sitting.
“It’s nice she has a friend,” he said. “Such a smart girl, such a pretty girl, but she never … She didn’t have many friends.”
I was about to say that everyone liked her—the way you do, you know—automatically. But the lie caught in my throat and I just took hold of another box and started digging again.
“She always seemed to me,” Mr. Ziegler said slowly, “such an—angry person.”
I stopped what I was doing. I coughed dust. He was clearer to me now that I was closer. I could see him appealing to me through the terrible strain scored into his face.
“Yeah,” I said. I figured he was appealing for the truth of it. “Yeah, she was pretty angry, I guess.”
Swiping my face again, I dug deeper into the box.
“Why?” he said above me. “Why was she so … so angry all the time?”
“Well. You know. She had a lot of theories. I guess she thought the world was supposed to be a better place.”
“What made her think that?” said Mr. Ziegler.
“I dunno, sir. It always seemed about as good as it deserved to me.” I could make nothing out of the stuff in this box. Random notebooks, sheets of paper. I shoved it aside and caught hold of the next.
“Everyone … everyone seems so angry nowadays,” said the old man sadly.
“Do they?”
“Everyone.”
“I guess. But I think maybe that’s only in the newspapers. You can’t believe all that stuff. We like to write about angry people. You know: it’s exciting, makes for controversy.” This box was foil of books. Feminist stuff mainly. A lot of books with Syndrome and Trap in the titles. I pulled a few out and saw the plastic bag foil of marijuana at the bottom. Quickly, I replaced the books to cover the bag. “Most people I think are just trying to get by.” I shook my head, trying to clear it. The walls seemed to accordion in and out around me. I pushed myself to my feet. “I gotta open a window,” I said.
I wavered on my legs a moment as the blood rushed down from my head. I was afraid I was going to faint. But the feeling passed. I made my way across the room. I raised the Venetian blind on the central window. There was no shock of light. The eastern sky above the low buildings opposite was turning a rich indigo. The sun was setting. The night was very near.
I wrestled the big window up. The air and the traffic noise came in together. The heat of the room made the air feel nearly cool. It felt fresh on my face, drying my skin. It felt good in my lungs. My head began to steady as I breathed it in. I removed my glasses from my pocket, held them to the light, pulled my shirtfront free of my pants and wiped the lenses clean before putting them back on. I wanted a cigarette pretty badly, but it seemed disrespectful to light up somehow.
Behind me, Mr. Ziegler cleared his throat loudly. “I don’t think …” he said. “I don’t think she liked men. She would write things sometimes. She would send them to her mother. I don’t think she liked men.”
Jesus Christ, I thought, what does he want from me? I ran both hands up over my hair, combing out the excess water. “Yeah, well,” I said to the open window. “Men and women. You know how that is. She was angry. Like I say, she had a lot of theories. She was still very young, you know.”
I faced the room again, the discouraging piles and boxes, still so many. My gaze went over them.
“When girls … when they hate men like that, when they lump them all together like that,” said Mr. Ziegler, nodding to himself, “they’re really just talking about their fathers, aren’t they?”
“Uh … Jeeze.” I laughed weakly. If I knew anything about human nature, I wanted to say, do you think I would be a journalist? Instead I said something like: “Well … People, you know. We all make these generalizations. It’s all nonsense. Believe me, sir, I write the stuff for a living. It’s all crap.”
Struck by a stray idea, I looked over at the table to my right. At once, my eye lit on the headline: Beachum to Die.
Of course: It was the story she’d been working on; it was in the box nearest the table where she worked. The box was pulled up alongside the table’s legs with the cord to the laptop winding round the side of it. I wouldn’t have noticed it before, from where I was. But standing here by the window, the newspaper cutting stuck out of the box and was clear enough from across the room.
When I saw it, I felt unsteady again, my center hollow and tremulous. Slowly, I walked over and knelt by the box. I began to work my fingers through the papers inside. It was all here. All the Beachum stuff: newspapers, notebooks, loose sheets, xeroxed memoranda. And there was another box next to it full of the same.
That Michelle, I thought. She got everything. She kept everything. She would have been one of the good ones.
I settled onto the floor and began pulling the pages out, scanning them carefully before tossing them aside. I wanted to read all of it, go over everything, looking for clues, but there was no time. I could only run my eyes down each piece for a second, each graph of every memo, each page of every notebook, each story in every paper, skimming them hungrily, searching for a
name that Michelle wouldn’t even have noticed, a name I didn’t even know.
I was working down past the surface of the first box when Mr. Ziegler cried out. That is, he clenched his two hands above his knees and emitted a ragged rasp as if a thought were being physically torn from his mind.
“How can they ask a father …?” he said.
I glanced at him. The sweat was gathering on my forehead again and I swiped at it with my sleeve to keep it off my glasses. Damn it, damn it, I thought. He’s gonna blow up. I’ll never get this done. But a moment later, his fists sank down to his thighs. His head drooped again. I turned away, back to the box. I went on with my work, pulling out another notebook.
“You try to do right by them,” he explained behind me. He seemed to be arguing now with an invisible adversary. “How do you know what they need? Do you think they come with instructions?” Then his voice fell. “ ‘Turn off the machine,’ they tell you,” he murmured. I did not look at him. I went through the papers. “Her own father.”
After that, he was quiet for a long time. The sough and rumble of traffic drifted in through the window on the air. The paper crackled as I went deeper into the box on Beachum, as I went over the pages, page by page, page after page.
Even so, as thorough as I was, I almost missed it. It would’ve been easy enough to do. It was scrawled quickly on the cardboard backing of a notebook. Something Michelle had copied off the records in some cop’s file probably. She probably hadn’t even meant to follow it up. It was just that she wrote down everything she found, always. That’s how she was. Half the time, she had no idea what it was she had come across.
But I did. I knew. It was him. It was the shooter.
Warren Russel. 17-yrs. 4331 Knight Street. Intvwd July 7th at own request. Drove to Pocum’s lot for soda as NL left. Saw nothing.
For seconds, I just knelt there, the notebook clutched in my hand, the sweat from my fingers making the ink at the page ends run.
True Crime Page 21