An Image of Death

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “At least there’s only one camera,” Davis said.

  “We got lucky.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “With most surveillance systems, there’s usually more than one camera,” Davis answered. “In a large office building, for example, there could be eight or ten security locations with a camera at each. But only one tape.”

  “Are you saying that images from multiple cameras are recorded on one tape?”

  She nodded.

  “Why?”

  “Cost. Otherwise, you’d have to buy a separate recording device for each camera. Which I’m sure some companies do, but most—well, they just do the minimum.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I studied the cinderblock cracks on the wall. A tape that’s constantly flipping between cameras would be a meaningless jumble of frames and scenes. And if it was recorded in time-lapse, it would be virtually impossible to make any sense out of it.

  “I did try to slow it down on my VCR. It helped.” I thought about the woman’s tired expression, the burst of smoke when the gun went off, the blood seeping across her chest.

  “Thank you, Ms. Foreman.” Olson leaned back. “You’ve been most cooperative. We’ll take it from here.”

  “You don’t think I had anything to do with this, do you?”

  He smiled but didn’t answer.

  “Could—could you have Detective O’Malley keep me informed?”

  “O’Malley?” Olson looked over at Davis. “Officer Davis will be working the case. I’ll make the necessary changes in the schedule. Give you a couple of weeks to look into it. You’ll work directly with me.”

  “Yes, sir.” She looked down at her clipboard. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “There is one more thing,” Olson said. “We will have to talk to your daughter.”

  I bit my lip. “Will she have to view the tape? I don’t want her to see it.”

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” Olson said after a beat.

  “I have an idea,” Davis said. “What if I pop over tonight, just to say hi?” She turned to Olson. “I know the girl.” She turned back to me. “We can talk to her together.”

  “Wonderful.” It would be easier with someone she knew and trusted. “But…do you think…I—we—Rachel and I are in any danger?”

  “There are all kinds of ways to send a message,” Olson said. “What we need to ask is why someone would go to all the trouble of taping a gruesome crime like this and then send it, anonymously, to a video producer.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Neither do we. But it’s clear the people who sent this to you don’t want to be identified. They went to a lot of trouble to stay hidden.”

  Olson let that sink in and then stood up. Davis and I followed suit. She stacked the tape on her clipboard.

  “Ms. Foreman?” she said as we exited the room.

  “Oh, please. It’s Ellie.”

  “I just have one more question.”

  “Sure.” I trotted cheerfully down the hall. They didn’t think I was involved. I was just a good Samaritan, performing a distasteful but necessary service. And she would be coming over to help explain it to Rachel.

  “You got the tape last night, correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Was there any particular reason you waited until morning to call it in?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  My father lives in an assisted-living apartment building in Skokie. With a card room, a gym, and a snack bar, the place looks more like a college dorm than a home for seniors. Females outnumber males two to one, so it also makes for some interesting social situations. Which Dad addressed soon after he moved in.

  Banding together with three other men, he commandeered the card room every afternoon for a game of gin rummy or poker, during which it was made clear no interference from the ladies would be tolerated. The strategy worked, primarily because of their secret weapon: Dad made sure the men all smoked cigars. Lots of them. It was a brilliant tactic. How many women—even those fueled by Viagra-induced fantasies—would pursue their quarry through a cloud of reeking cigar smoke?

  But I wasn’t thinking about my father’s sex appeal as I headed down the expressway to pick him up. I was thinking about how I had lied to Georgia Davis. When she asked why I’d waited until morning to call it in, I’d said I thought whoever dropped off the tape might realize they’d made a mistake and come back for it last night.

  It was a lame excuse, and we both knew it. I should have admitted making a copy. It wasn’t illegal. She might have even understood the sense of responsibility I was feeling. And curiosity. But the truth is I’ve been uneasy around cops for years. Which makes it hard to be forthcoming.

  About five years ago I was caught shoplifting in a department store. When the cops came, they hustled me into the back of a squad car and took me down to the station. They shuffled me into a cinderblock room with handcuff bars on the wall. No one talked to me while we waited for my husband to bail me out, but I saw their contempt and scorn.

  The humiliation of that experience is burned into my psyche. Even now, the thought of being too close to a cop makes me nervous. Part of it is the fear that they’ll uncover some new sin and haul me in all over again. The other part is a fear that they’ll always look at me with jaundiced eyes. They’ll never trust me. And since they won’t trust me, I won’t trust them. Which, in an irrational, roundabout way, makes us even.

  I exited the Edens at Old Orchard. A thick gray overcast pressed down. I threaded my way through Skokie, passing a lawn still decorated with Christmas regalia. But we were well into the third week of January now, and the reindeer looked tawdry, the icicles and lights garish. The homeowners ought to be fined for defacing their property. At the next light I pulled out my cell and checked my messages. Ricki Feldman had called. I dropped the cell back into my bag.

  I parked in the fire lane at Dad’s place next to a mound of snow that had hardened into dirty brown ice. I knew I was risking a ticket, but I felt reckless. Dad was in the card room playing three-handed gin with Frank and Al. The fourth seat was empty. His friend Marv had passed away right after Thanksgiving. Another man at the home wanted to take his place, but, for now, the guys were keeping the spot vacant as a memorial.

  I snuck up from behind and kissed the top of his mostly bald head.

  He didn’t turn around. “Her Royal Highness has arrived.”

  He’s been calling me that since I was little. He insists I was named for Eleanor of Aquitaine, but I’m certain mother didn’t have the medieval queen in mind when I was born. Eleanor Roosevelt was more her style.

  “Thank God you’re here to take him away.” Frank rolled his eyes at me. “You know what happens when he goes to your house, don’t you?”

  “You finally get a shot at the pot?”

  “He does it to you, too?” Frank grinned. “Make sure you check his sleeve. Might find a few extra cards in there.”

  Pulling himself out of the chair, Dad swatted Frank on the shoulder. “No fresh bagels for you tomorrow.” We usually stop at the kosher bakery on the way back.

  He picked up his cane, put on his coat, and shuffled outside. He’d been using the cane more often these days, I noticed. He groaned as he climbed into the car.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “How could I be? My body is eighty-three years old, but my brain still thinks I’m forty.”

  I suppressed a smile.

  “You just wait.” He settled himself in the seat. “You’ll see. Marv says—used to say—we’re all on Timex time anyway.”

  “Timex time?”

  “You take a licking, but you keep on ticking.”

  I closed the passenger door and went around to the other side. No ticket. Things were looking up. But Dad gazed straight ahead.

  “You miss him, don’t you?”

  “He was a lousy poker player,” he said gruffly. “Couldn’t bluff worth a damn.”
I heard the catch in his voice.

  I waited. “How’s Sylvia?”

  Dad had made one exception to his politics of social non-engagement. Sylvia Weiner, he claimed, made brisket almost as well as Barney Teitelman’s mother. Barney was his best friend as a teenager, but Dad hadn’t been near Mrs. T.’s brisket in over sixty years. I knew it was just a cover for the fact that he really liked Sylvia.

  “Not so good,” he said. “You know all those jokes about Half-heimer’s? Well, they aren’t so funny anymore.”

  “But she seemed so—so with it over Thanksgiving.”

  “About a month ago she went for a walk and didn’t come back. Six hours later the police got a call from a motel near Libertyville.”

  “That’s twenty miles away.”

  He nodded. “Somehow she hitched a ride and walked into a room. She was sitting on the bed looking for her dog Heidi.” He paused. “The dog died twenty years ago.”

  “I’m sorry, Dad. What’s going to happen to her?”

  Dad shrugged. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  I saw the pain in his eyes. When you get to be his age, “wait and see’s” don’t usually augur a happy ending. Turning onto the expressway, I cast around for something cheerful to say and launched into my encounter with Ricki Feldman. As I explained, he rubbed the head of his cane, an elegant silver crown, the kind of metalwork you don’t see much anymore.

  “Ricki Feldman,” he said. “Is that Stuart’s daughter?”

  “That’s her. But, I can’t figure out why she’s so involved. Granted, she’ll generate some goodwill for making those housing units available, but she donated over twenty grand to them. That’s a lot of goodwill.”

  “I know why.”

  “Tzedakah?”

  Dad grunted. “If you say so.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Come on. You remember what happened to Stuart Feldman. About eight or nine years ago.”

  Eight or nine years ago, my marriage was falling apart, but I was still pretending everything was fine. I was also raising a five-year-old, keeping my career afloat, and dealing with my mother’s cancer. I wasn’t keeping tabs on real estate moguls. I shook my head.

  “Don’t you remember when those kids came down with cancer in that housing development near Joliet?”

  “Joliet?” I squinted as fragments of memory surfaced. “Wasn’t there a lawsuit about it?”

  “Exactly. They claimed Feldman knew he was building on toxic land but put up the homes anyway.”

  “For the money.”

  “They called him a murderer. A monster. Accused him of child abuse. And that was the nice stuff.”

  “I guess I do have a vague recollection of it. But I don’t remember how it ended.”

  “They settled the case. It damn near ruined him. He had a stroke. He was never the same afterward.”

  “That must be when Ricki took control,” I said.

  Dad nodded.

  “Do you think she knew about it?”

  “How could she? She had to be pretty young when it first happened.”

  “But not when she was cleaning it up.” I went quiet for a moment. “You know, I made a video for her last year. She’s sharp.”

  “Sharp?”

  “She seems like the type to cut corners.”

  “Cutting corners is a far cry from what her father did.”

  “Granted.” I exited the expressway at Willow. “So now she’s spreading around bundles of cash and mitzvahs.”

  “She’s doing chuvah. Penance.”

  “And rebuilding her reputation at the same time.”

  “A mitzvah is still a mitzvah, mein lieben.” We turned the corner onto my block. “So, how’s David?”

  “He called last night. He was pretty excited.” I told him about the letter.

  “His uncle? Emes?” He rubbed his hand over the top of his cane. “It should turn out well for him. After all the suffering, he deserves some naches.”

  We pulled into the garage. “I don’t know, Dad. What if it’s a scam? Like those Nigerian e-mails?”

  “What?”

  I always forget Dad doesn’t own a computer. In fact, he’d been almost contemptuous when they first came out. “They won’t amount to anything,” he grumbled. “All they are is a fast pencil.” He still considers Bill Gates a college dropout—never mind that it was Harvard.

  “There are these get-rich-quick schemes on the Internet that purport to be from a wealthy Nigerian who needs to shelter his money in America. All you have to do is send him your bank account number, and he’ll pay you a huge commission.”

  Dad sniffed. “David’s not stupid. If it is a con, he’ll deal with it.” He looked over. “And don’t forget. Miracles can happen.”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  He started to unfold himself from the front seat. “So, what’s for dinner?”

  “Ratatouille.”

  “Stew?” he asked without enthusiasm.

  “And homemade apple pie.”

  He brightened.

  ***

  We were finishing dessert when Officer Georgia Davis showed up. She shook snow off her jacket as she came inside.

  “I didn’t realize it had started again,” I said.

  “It’s just a dusting.”

  I motioned to the family room. “Make yourself at home. I’ll get Rachel.”

  It only took a minute for Davis to explain what was on the tape. She made sure to emphasize that the reason I hadn’t told Rachel myself was my concern about her reaction. “In fact, it was smart for your mom to bring us the tape as soon as she did.”

  I looked at the floor.

  “So I don’t want to hear any complaining about why she said what she said, okay?”

  “No prob.” Rachel shrugged, as if the tape was the least important thing in her life. “Is that it?”

  Davis and I exchanged glances. She turned back to Rachel. “No. I need to ask you some questions about the van that delivered the tape.” Davis asked her to describe the van as best she could: shape, color, make.

  Rachel bit her lip. “It was dark. I couldn’t tell. It was just—well, it was a van.”

  “Light-colored or dark?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Any distinguishing features?”

  “Like what?”

  “A name on the side of the van, any dents on the body, rust stains?”

  “No.”

  Davis nodded. “What about the driver? Did you catch a glimpse of him?”

  She shook her head. “By the time I opened the door, he was driving away. I didn’t see anything except taillights.”

  “Did you happen to see the license plate?”

  A troubled expression slipped over her face. “No. I’m really sorry, Georgia. I guess I wasn’t paying attention.” She folded her arms and slouched on the couch.

  Davis touched her arm. “Don’t worry about it. You did fine.”

  “Really?”

  Davis smiled. “Yup.”

  “Cool.” Rachel’s face smoothed out. She got up. “I hope you find the jerks who did it.” She came over to me and gave me a hug. “Actually, Mom, I’m glad I didn’t see it, you know?”

  I nodded and hugged her back, astonished. She bounded back into the kitchen to help Dad load the dishwasher. Davis stood up and pulled on her jacket.

  “That was easy,” I said. “You clearly have the touch.”

  “She’s a great kid. So.…” She zipped up the coat. “Any problems today?”

  “Nothing. All quiet.”

  “Good.” Her gaze rested on me. It might have been my imagination, but I thought she looked almost expectant, as if she were waiting for me to go on.

  I opened my mouth. It was time to tell her about the copy of the tape. “You…you’ll keep me up to speed, won’t you?”

  She cut her eyes to the door. “I will.”

  I watched her walk to her car through a veil of snowflakes. As she pulled awa
y, I quietly closed the door. I’d had the chance to set everything straight. But Georgia Davis was a tough read. She’d had on her game face. She hadn’t given out anything. I didn’t know how she’d react to my lying. As far as I could tell, the only thing I had going for me was that I was Rachel’s mother. Maybe it was intentional. Some people can sense innocence in others and let down their guard. Apparently, I didn’t qualify.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I called Ricki Feldman the next morning. Her secretary’s voice, which I’d learned ranged between obsequious and haughty, depending on who was on Ricki’s A-list for the day, radiated an irritating self-importance when I told her my name. I figured I wouldn’t get through, so I was surprised when I heard Ricki’s voice.

  “Good morning, Ellie,” Ricki said cheerfully. “Glad you could get back to me so fast.”

  Who was she kidding? I’d waited almost twenty-four hours. “No problem, Ricki. What’s up?”

  She laughed. “I think you know.”

  “Is this about a videotape for WISH?”

  “You got it.” On reflection I decided her laugh sounded practiced. “I figured you needed a night to sleep on it.”

  “You know me too well.”

  “I try. So, what’s the verdict?”

  She was wrong about one thing. Bouncing between bouts of Dostoevskian guilt and paranoia over the tape, I’d hardly slept at all. But I had given some thought to WISH. No question I’d taken a visceral dislike to the Women Who Lunch, although to be fair, that might have had something to do with my former lifestyle. Had I stayed married to Barry, I might have been one of them, too, tapping into untold spigots of money. At least before he lost it in the market.

  I’d also debated whether I wanted to put myself in such close proximity to Ricki again. I wasn’t enthusiastic. In the end, though, it was David’s experience that persuaded me. He grew up in foster care, alone, with no mentors and few friends. He’d managed to overcome his past, but he is a remarkable person. If the video called attention to the plight of kids like him, if it eased their journey toward self-sufficiency, it would be worthwhile. Despite the personalities and lifestyles of the people involved.

  “What about the budget?”

  “My donation should get you going, and we’ll raise whatever else you need. I’m not concerned. We know you’ll do the job without fleecing us.”