Murder in the Dog Days

by P. M. Carlson

  Maggie met her eyes. “Yes, Donna.”

  “The lamp? The blood? The stolen tapes? Everything?”

  “Yes. Well, almost everything.”

  Donna looked down at her hands, squeezed together in her lap. “I want to hear. And I don’t want to.”

  “Yeah. Same here,” said Maggie sadly. “But we’ve all got to.”

  Donna studied Holly’s face for a moment, then the pocket where the notebook had disappeared, then her gaze dropped to her own knotted hands. “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Maggie said. “We’ll start with the phone call. That’s what Donna and I were just talking about, that and the girls. I called Harrisburg. Talked to Felicia Colby’s friend, Nan Evans.”

  “About Felicia’s alibi? We did that too,” said Holly. “Felicia was in Harrisburg at four forty-five.”

  “Right. But you see, Felicia mentioned that Nan was an old friend. So I asked her another question. I asked why Felicia insisted on a divorce when Dale was so opposed and it made life so rough for her. Nan said it was a secret because of the boy. But she told me Felicia divorced him because he beat her up once too often.”

  “Beat her up?”

  “The baby had been sick and so dinner was late. He beat her up. The next day she packed her bag and walked out.”

  Holly frowned. That was long ago. And Felicia couldn’t have arrived from Harrisburg in time yesterday even if she’d waited all these years for revenge. Holly looked across at Donna, who was still pressing her hands together. “He beat you too?”

  “Yes,” murmured Donna almost soundlessly.

  “Recently?”

  Donna looked mournfully at the window, at the door. Maggie said, “I’m sorry, Donna. But we have to go over it again. So she’ll understand.”

  Donna’s gaze returned to Holly. “Yes. Recently. And for a long time before. Starting a few months after we were married.”

  “But you didn’t walk out like Felicia.”

  “Oh, God, I wish I had! But I thought it was better for the kids. He loved the kids. Back then I thought it was better for them.”

  Was this some kind of a con these two were pulling? Holly glanced grimly up at Maggie on the sofa arm. Maggie said, “It’s true. Look.” She ran across to the wing chair, pulled Donna upright, and said, “Show her. Okay?”

  Donna hesitated, then lifted her blouse. Holly’s brow contracted despite herself at the sight of the yellowing bruises and red scabs on her ribs. Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?

  “He used his belt,” Donna explained. “The buckle end.”

  “And you didn’t leave him?”

  “He always had a reason, he said.” Drooping, Donna sat at the other end of the sofa. “Dinner was late, or the house wasn’t neat—For a long time I believed him. I loved him. I wanted to believe him. If I could just do better it wouldn’t happen any more. I tried so hard! But after a while I started thinking it wasn’t really what I did. I couldn’t control it. It was something in him.”

  “You still put up with it?”

  “Because of the girls. And because he could be so sweet sometimes. He’d bring flowers—”

  Maggie asked, “Didn’t you wonder if it would be better for the children if they weren’t in a violent home?”

  “Of course I wondered,” said Donna with some dignity. “But you see, he loved them. He was a perfectionist but he loved them. Told them stories, taught them games. And there was Felicia.”

  “Felicia?”

  “She kept asking for money. One day on the phone I got so exasperated with her. I asked her why she kept badgering him when she knew we were in debt over our heads for this little house ourselves. And she asked me if I’d ever thought of how far in debt I’d be with kids and only my income. Well, I knew she was right. The house is in Dale’s name. The bank accounts. So I stayed. To be fair to the girls.”

  “I see,” said Holly.

  “Later—after he lost the job as managing editor—it got worse. He was so frustrated. He bought the guns then. Every month or two he’d go at me with the belt and wave the gun around. And the Parkinson’s frustrated him even more. Ate away at him. He was so afraid it would interfere with his work. And he took it out on me. It got worse and worse.” She was squeezing her hands together again. “For a little while I thought maybe the disease would progress fast enough that he couldn’t beat me any more. But the doctor got it under control, and then the L-dopa came along.” She looked at the window again. “The doctor said he was optimistic about how long Dale would be able to continue as usual.”

  Happy news on the medical front. Holly could imagine Donna’s feelings at the excited announcement of this great breakthrough in medicine. She said, “So Dale did continue as usual.”

  “It got worse. Last year I was getting some school things and got tied up in traffic. I was an hour late. And he was absolutely furious. Said if I was thinking about running off like Felicia he’d hunt me down and kill me.” Her lips trembled. “He would have.”

  “He didn’t kill Felicia,” Holly pointed out.

  “No. But he hated her. It was partly that—anyway, he would have killed me.”

  Maggie asked, “Did you ever call the cops?”

  Donna shook her head. In the lamplight her disheveled hair glowed gold, giving her the look of a lost waif. The Little Match Girl, maybe, from one of Holly’s childhood books. Donna explained, “Before we bought this house we were in an apartment. Neighbors called the cops once when I was screaming. Dale told them we were just arguing. They believed him, told me to keep down the noise, went away.”

  “And you with bruises?”

  “They didn’t see them. He always hit me where they wouldn’t show. Anyway, he would just have said I fell down the stairs or something. They would have believed him.”

  Holly nodded. She could imagine Winks’ response. Poor Colby, he’d say, married to a whiny bitch like that. But she hated domestic-violence cases herself. The victims feared the cops because the guy was even angrier afterwards. Cops risked their lives going into those situations and then the women would refuse to press charges, even joining with the abuser to get the cops to leave. Holly remembered, just hours ago, Olivia Kerr’s glare of hatred and fear. Instead of welcoming Holly as glorious rescuer, Olivia was terrified that she might rock the boat, might damage the fragile relationship with her captor that had kept her alive so far. Donna Colby had lived with that kind of fear, year after year. And with cops like Winks around she was probably right to avoid their so-called help. “I understand why you didn’t call us,” Holly said. “But I don’t understand why you’re telling me now.”

  Maggie had left Donna’s side and was pacing restlessly around the room. “Because it’s important for you to know why.”

  Holly pushed her hair back from her forehead. “Look, for once I’ve got too many why’s. Plenty of people with motives. And I’ve got people with opportunity. Not you, Mrs. Colby, because you were away when he died. And the worst problem is I don’t know how it was done. The ME won’t be pinned down about anything except it involved heart failure. Toxicology reports are all negative. So if you’re working up to some kind of confession, I need more.”

  “Not a confession,” said Maggie sharply. “At least not yet.”

  “What, then?” Holly had to turn her head to keep track of Maggie, now prowling into the dining room.

  “Number one, Donna and her kids need help. Serious help.”

  “Yes, okay.”

  “My brother can help find a therapist.” Maggie leaned against the kitchen door frame and looked levelly at Holly. “The second thing is, you know the difference between protecting society and bullshit. And I want you to understand what happened. To know why. I’ve told Donna to trust you.”

  Holly met the intense blue eyes. This was personal, then. Maggie wasn’t telling Schreiner the cop. She was telling Holly the person. Holly said slowly, “I want to know why.”

  “Okay. Check me on this. You w
ere a nurse. Why did Dale like lemon drops?”

  “Lemon drops?” Holly thought a moment. “He’d been taking anticholinergic drugs for years,” she said. “They dry up natural secretions. Lemon drops stimulate saliva—make your mouth less dry and uncomfortable.”

  Maggie nodded, pleased. “My brother says Dale was on a very high dose of anticholinergics. Is that right, Donna?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was hesitant. “The doctor said he couldn’t safely go any higher. That’s why he was eager to get Dale adapted to L-dopa. So he could reduce the dosage of the other drug.”

  “And if he reduced it, Dale’s secretions would improve, probably,” said Maggie.

  Donna nodded briefly and bowed her head to prop her forehead on the heel of her hand.

  “So,” said Maggie, “Dale sent us off to the beach. And he stayed here to work on the story, make some phone calls, take his nap. He hated hot weather, Olivia says. He wouldn’t have gone out in the heat.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Holly agreed impatiently. “Where are we going with all this?”

  “I just want you to have the picture. Dale working quietly inside, taking his nap, in that workroom with all the windows on the south and west.”

  Windows? Lemon drops? And something Nate Rosen had said, tugging at Holly’s memory.

  “I’m not telling this to the police,” Maggie reminded her quietly. “But just suppose I’d looked back as we left for the beach. Suppose I saw someone standing right here in the dining room by the kitchen door. Suppose her hand was on the wall like this.” Maggie demonstrated, then pulled her hand away.

  “The thermostat!” said Holly. “You turned up the thermostat!” She could picture it now: Dale in that southwest room, napping, ninety-five degrees outside, the sun beating through the southwest windows. If she’d turned the air conditioner off that room could have hit 110° in a very short time.

  And Dale, on anticholinergics, could not sweat. Could not regulate his own temperature. She remembered the crisp unrumpled shirt he wore. Not just the shirt of a finicky man, as she had thought. It was the shirt of a man who couldn’t sweat.

  “Nate Rosen said he got very hot trying to open the door to the den,” she said.

  “Did he? And he wasn’t in the hottest room,” said Maggie. “The rest of the house was shaded from the sun. It wouldn’t heat up so fast.”

  “But wouldn’t you have noticed how warm it was when you got back?” demanded Holly.

  “Well, two things had happened by then,” Maggie pointed out. “The storm had gone by, and the outside was much cooler by about six o’clock. So some of the heat had dissipated already. And Donna flipped the air conditioner on again as soon as she arrived, then came out to help us unload. The house had been cooling thirty minutes or so by the time the rest of us went inside.” Maggie left the dining room and went back to flop in the wing chair again, looking at the two on the sofa. “Actually—it did seem stuffy, even then. But I didn’t realize the significance yet. I thought it was just that the rain had made the outdoors seem so much fresher.”

  “So it was heatstroke,” said Holly slowly. She’d seen a couple of cases in Nam: The body’s cooling system failed, a high fever cooked the brain centers, leading to convulsions, coma, cardiac failure, death. She remembered something else. “High temperatures speed up rigor mortis a little.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Maggie.

  “Yeah. So rigor would have been a little ahead of schedule, but body temperature—that’s what happened! His body temperature started out so high that by the time we saw him he’d barely cooled to normal. No wonder Doc Craine won’t guess about time of death.”

  Donna was looking at her fearfully. “But the blood!” she said. “Someone hit him! Someone got in and hit him—and got out—”

  “No, Donna.” Holly shook her head. “The door was bolted from the inside. He probably went into convulsions before he died. Often happens in heatstroke. Slammed into that lamp on the edge of the desk thrashing around.”

  “Convul—Oh, God!” Donna doubled over. “Oh, my God! I thought—I thought it would be a coma—very quiet, just going to sleep for his nap and—”

  Whoopee. So smirking Death had played another nasty one. A mild woman, seeking a mild escape from violence, and failing. Donna whispered, “I should have phoned sooner.”

  Maggie had hurried across the room and was bending toward Donna now. “You had second thoughts? That’s why you tried to call him from the beach?”

  “Yes. To wake him up. But he didn’t answer.”

  Holly asked, “Why yesterday? After all these years, why then?”

  Donna was still sobbing. Maggie, kneeling beside her, arm across her heaving shoulders, raised her face toward Holly’s. “We’re still just supposing.”

  “Okay.”

  “We’re supposing he’d started to beat Josie.”

  “Josie? You mean he never hurt the girls before?”

  Donna lifted her head, indignation mingling with her tears. “Never! I would have left!” she said in a choked voice. “But he never hurt the girls. If he was mad at them he’d hurt me. He’d say I should be able to control the kids. That I was a—a bad mother.”

  “I see. Then Josie took the tape with his interview on it,” said Holly slowly. Damn tape. The officer who’d listened to it had reported that it was all John Denver music. None of Dale’s stuff left.

  Donna said, “The tape set him off. But I realized it could be anything. Josie wasn’t safe anymore. He had those guns—” She straightened up at the other end of the sofa and wiped a hand across her forehead. Maggie found a Kleenex in her pocket and offered it to Donna, then sat back on the floor at her feet.

  Well, Schreiner, what do you do now? Open homicide investigation. She owed it to Dale, right? She could squeeze a proper confession from Donna, probably. Get a big press play, commendations, promotions. Schreiner the supercop. And Donna? She could go up for quite a few years. Even for manslaughter, she’d be in for six, maybe. Tina and Josie would be, what, fifteen and eighteen then. Father dead, mother in jail for murder, the girls living with—who? Dale Colby’s icy parents, most likely. People who had raised a violent son already.

  Or suppose a jury let Donna off. Self-defense didn’t strictly fit but juries were mulish sometimes. But even if they decided in Donna’s favor, there would be months of legal maneuvers. And publicity. There was no acquittal in the press. Olivia Kerr and her colleagues would play it big. Schoolteacher Kills Sick Husband! Murderous Mom Roasts Dad! As for Donna’s job—forget it. School boards were politically vulnerable and wouldn’t risk hiring a teacher tainted by a murder charge, regardless of her legal guilt or innocence. And even if this fragile battered family got sympathetic treatment from the press, like Joanne Little, the glare of publicity was brutal. To say nothing of the trial itself. She could picture little Josie on the stand, the DA’s insinuations gentle so as not to antagonize the jury: “Josie, honey, don’t you think most daddies spank their children when they’re bad?” The girl’s cuts and bruises would be healed on the surface by then, the brutality nothing but cold abstract words to the jury. What was it Maggie had said? It’s not justice if it hurts a child.

  Was it justice if it betrayed the dead?

  How much did she owe Dale Colby?

  And how did you measure violence? To save her children, a meek and terrified woman had turned a thermostat dial. A far cry from Ernie Grant’s arsenal of explosives and firearms. Much as Holly ached for him, she knew Ernie was an ongoing source of violence.

  Like Dale Colby.

  Was Donna an ongoing source of violence?

  Donna, for years, had responded to violence with peace. Exactly what a nice girl was supposed to do. She’d absorbed the violence until it had touched her child. And when she’d fought back at last, it was with a twist of a thermostat dial. Expecting a peaceful death in his sleep for a violent man.

  Holly glanced at Maggie. She still sat, uncharacteristically still, legs s
tretched out on the rug before her, arms propping her from behind. She was looking at Holly expectantly. Holly said, “In Nam once I was talking to a guy who was door gunner in a helicopter gunship. Wounded bad enough he could have been reassigned to something easier when he went back. But he wanted to be a door gunner. Said he liked shooting people if he wasn’t too close. Those little pesky things running around on the ground, it was just a game to shoot at them. Just touch the trigger.”

  Maggie nodded. “But they were just as dead as if he’d choked them with his bare hands. Face to screaming face. Killing is killing.”

  Holly said, “Donna?”

  Donna twisted the Kleenex in her hand. “I know. His brain—God, convulsions too.” She struggled for a moment before she continued. “I didn’t know there would be convulsions. But I knew it would be real. I faced it myself, over and over. Those guns—it’s like you said, just touch the trigger. I was so scared each time that he would go too far. And when the doctor said he must never get overheated—at first it was a fantasy, but I saw Dale’s fear of the heat, and I knew.” She raised her head, gazing around the orderly room. “My marriage was a game. Make-believe. All this time I’ve tried to pretend it was okay, pretend he wouldn’t do it to me again. But with Josie—I saw that was real. He was out of control. He’d destroy her too. I had to do something.” She looked down at her Kleenex, then, unexpectedly, square at Holly. “But I didn’t know I would feel so—filthy. I just thought about the girls, but now—”

  “Some situations force us to be filthy,” said Maggie soberly, dark memories stirring in her blue eyes. “Because every choice violates someone.”

  “But if I—Will they send me to jail?”

  “Maybe,” said Holly. “You’d certainly have a trial. Months of it. The newspapers would hound you. Hound your girls.”

  Donna nodded.

  What the hell, Schreiner, you went to Nam because you wanted to be a healer. Maybe, just maybe, a cop could be a healer too. She took out her notebook. “Tell you what. We have Nate Rosen’s evidence that the house was too warm at three-thirty. So I’m writing down that the air conditioner malfunctioned. Doc Craine will be delighted to get a reasonable cause of death. For the rest, well, we were just supposing, weren’t we?” She closed her notebook and stood up. “If I get hard evidence I’ll have to move on it, of course. It’s up to you, Donna. Think about your girls and decide.” She started for the door.