Silent Pretty Things

by O. J. Lovaz

  “Well, Detective, it must have been around that time, eight o’clock. I couldn’t say exactly. Diane took her mother’s phone—”

  “Your aunt, Marlene Wilde,” interrupted Mitchell, jotting down his notes.

  “Yes,” Anna continued. “Diane took off with her mother’s phone and read her messages…including some that she had exchanged with my father. They were, um, inappropriate…and revealing. She and my father had had an affair.” The memory of her mom humiliated made Anna’s voice falter. That was real pain, and she could use it too.

  Anna sipped her coffee. “I’m sure you can appreciate that talking about such an embarrassing, scandalous situation is extremely painful for me right now. If you don’t mind, I’d much rather stick to confirming the facts as you heard them from Mark and Grandma Rose.”

  “Certainly,” said Wozniak. “Believe me: I understand. I really do. Would you like some water before we continue?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She wasn’t. Her hands were under the table, shaking. She needed to get a hold of herself.

  “Let’s continue, then. It shouldn’t be much longer.” Wozniak bent forward with his hands clasped together on the table. His gaze moved from her to Mitchell, then back to her. “Apparently, last night, your cousin, Diane, proceeded to read the messages aloud for everyone at the family gathering to hear. All about your father’s affair with your aunt, Marlene, was revealed in very dramatic fashion. Is that how it happened?”

  Anna lowered her gaze and spoke weakly, “Yes, it happened just like that. It was terrible.”

  “Jesus, I can only imagine,” said Officer Mitchell. “He had an affair with your mother’s own sister. I mean, that’s unforgivable, isn’t it?” Wozniak gave him a quick stern look, and Mitchell didn’t utter another word.

  Unforgivable, he’d said, as in bad enough to kill him. It had all been leading up to this. Anna knew just the thing to say. “Well, it was an awful, awful thing; but who’s to say what’s unforgivable? Only God, right?”

  “Only God,” said Wozniak. “We don’t get to decide. You’re quite right there, Anna.”

  “That’s right. We don’t,” said Anna, looking him straight in the eyes.

  Wozniak brought a hand to his chin and rubbed it. “There’s one more thing, isn’t there, Anna? There was another revelation last night, before the tragedy.”

  This could only be one thing. “Yes, Diane—she’s my half-sister.”

  “Yes, these are all very much established facts now,” Wozniak said, shifting his gaze between her and Mitchell. “We actually spoke to Diane as well just before you got here.”

  “Oh, and how is she?” Honest question, she didn’t know.

  “Well, she’s pretty shaken up by the whole thing, of course. It’s a lot to take in.” Wozniak slowly rotated in his chair, a quarter of a circle to his left, then back facing Anna, a sly smirk sprouting up on his face. “I asked Diane why she took her mother’s phone.”

  Anna’s heart skipped a beat; her spine froze solid. Her throat was knotted; her mouth wouldn’t open.

  Wozniak kept on, “Imagine my surprise when she told me that you made her suspect her mother. You knew something, didn’t you?”

  “I…yes, I suspected something was going on between my father and Aunt Marlene.”

  “Because you saw that message on your father’s phone. Diane told us. Everything.” Wozniak looked triumphant. He was enjoying this moment.

  But so what? Wozniak had nothing. “Fine, we suspected them, and sadly, we were right. But, Detective, why are we talking about this? We aren’t investigating my father now—that case is closed. We are investigating his murder.”

  Wozniak’s voice grew more intense, his eyes narrowed, focused. “You’re quite right. We are investigating a murder, a murder for which there is a clear motive. Your father, Anna, was not a good man, was he?”

  “No, he wasn’t. He was a shitty husband. So what?” Calm down, Anna. You’re the psychologist here. Don’t let him work you up.

  “He was a horrible father. I know about that too. Your grandmother made that very clear. I even see it in your eyes.” Wozniak paused, then continued in a softer, composed voice. “I have been where you are, Anna, sort of. My dad was a piece of crap, a deadbeat, and a drunk, and he beat my mother. He deserved to die. A hundred times, I wished he died, and then one day, he did. Liver cancer—his drinking finally caught up with him. Honestly, I didn’t know what to feel, but I couldn’t get myself to shed one tear for him.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Detective, but that is not how I feel. I loved my father, even with all his terrible faults. We all did. Now please tell me exactly what you’re suggesting with all this, because it sounds like you’re spinning theories and making wild accusations.”

  “I’ll get to that soon. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Wozniak sat back and propped one leg on top of the other. “I haven’t really asked you, how did you feel last night when Diane exposed this whole thing about your father’s affair with your aunt?”

  Anna took a deep breath. “Of course, my heart broke for my mother. She was not only betrayed by her husband and her own sister, but also humiliated in that public spectacle.”

  “And your mother, how did she take all this?” Wozniak asked.

  “She was devastated, obviously, but she demonstrated great character. She actually asked me to make sure that my aunt was okay. Can you believe that?”

  “That is remarkable. Your mother seems to be an exceptional woman.”

  “Yes, she is,” Anna said. Where was he going with this? What was his game plan?

  “How unfortunate it is when good women fall in love with bad men. It happened to my mom, and it happened to yours. I know he was your father, and you loved him unconditionally, but you deserved better—you must know that. Even your cousin, Mark, who apparently worshiped your father for all the wrong reasons, unwittingly confirmed a pattern of neglect and cruelty. Accepting these things is healthy, Anna. It’s not your fault that you had a lousy dad.”

  He was more of a psychologist than he gave himself credit for, but that was his game. “He could have been a better father. He wasn’t the most loving, but like you said, he was my father still, and a daughter can forgive.”

  “Well, then you must be a better person than I am.” Wozniak rolled his chair closer and put his arms flat on the table. “Now, Anna, here’s what troubles me. We lifted fingerprints at the scene of the crime and ran them through the system. We had no matches with any previous offenders. Either the intruder wore gloves, or this was done by a first-time offender, someone without a record.”

  “And why does that trouble you? What does it mean?” Anna asked as naively as she could.

  “It doesn’t mean much by itself, but it does eliminate possible paths for the investigation, while also heightening the likelihood of alternate explanations.”

  “I’m still a little confused,” she said. But she wasn’t.

  “I understand, of course. You haven’t spent decades investigating homicides, like I have. There are patterns that emerge. I dare say that there are no unique crimes. There are no real surprises for an experienced detective. Every type of crime has been committed before. Here, there were two main possibilities. The first was that a known career criminal had targeted your father, knowing that he kept cash in the house. That seems less likely now, so we must focus our efforts on investigating a second theory.”

  “Which is what?” Still playing innocent.

  Wozniak’s countenance hardened into a grim monolith. “Anna, I know you don’t want to hear this, but your father may have been killed by someone close to him. There are some elements in this case that cannot be explained away by other potential scenarios.”

  Impeccable Anna Goddard would be impatient, not alarmed. “I wish you would get to the point, Detective.”

  Wozniak didn’t react but carried on. “Let’s begin with your mother’s story. There’s something there that doesn’t quite
check out, but maybe you can help us with it. Your mother said that, right after everyone left, around eight thirty, she took sleeping pills and was probably asleep by nine. Now, that she would be distraught enough to want to force herself to fall asleep immediately and not even attempt to save any of the food left outside, is odd, but not entirely irrational. After all, she did have plenty of reasons to be upset. What is much more difficult to understand is why, if she was that upset, she decided to stay in the house with Victor. She could have left with Frank, or with you. I bet you offered to take her with you, didn’t you?”

  “I did. In fact, I insisted that she came with me, but she wouldn’t have it. She said that it was him who should leave.” Dodged that one. Breathe, Anna, breathe.

  “Well, I would have to agree with your mother—he should have left. So that would make sense, but it makes it all the more strange that we found, in the guest room next to the master bedroom, a large suitcase half packed with her things, like she had been getting ready to leave.”

  “Huh, that is strange,” she said. A problem is what it was, something she couldn’t easily explain. Keep calm and think fast, Anna repeated in her mind like a mantra. “Perhaps,” she finally said, “Mom did decide to leave in the morning and started packing before the pills took full effect. I’m just guessing here, of course.”

  “Perhaps. Let’s put that aside for now.” Wozniak looked at Mitchell. “I’ll have the opportunity to ask her myself tomorrow morning.”

  “Oh, right. She’s coming here then?” Anna asked.

  “She is, yes. Officer Mitchell scheduled the appointment before you came in.”

  “You’ve been busy these last few hours.” She sounded edgy; shouldn’t have said that.

  “Yes, we’ve been busy,” said Officer Mitchell. “The first twenty-four hours are critical in solving a murder case.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Anna said to Mitchell before returning to Wozniak. “Well, good, no one better to ask than mom herself.” Anna couldn’t be sure how adeptly she was hiding her true feelings on the matter. Her mother might crumble under the kind of pressure Wozniak could exert on her. Clearly, he had her pinned down as the main suspect, which made perfect sense—she had had plenty of reasons to want to kill the man. She just hadn’t killed him for any of those reasons.

  “Anna,” Wozniak’s voice deepened, “did you know that your mother signed a prenup agreement when she married your father?”

  How the hell did he know that? “Did she tell you that herself, Detective?”

  “Your cousin, Mark, told me about it. His father told him years ago. God, I hope you’re not finding out from me just now.”

  “No, I did know about it,” Anna confessed.

  Wozniak’s dark moons eclipsed everything else; it was all she could see. “How long have you known?”

  “Not very long. My mother told me just recently.”

  “Recently, huh? That’s a long time to keep a secret like that. How did you feel about it?”

  “Well, I hated it, of course.” Keep a lid on it, Anna—he’s trying to rile you up.

  “Naturally. How could you not hate it? I bet your mother feels quite raw about it too.” Wozniak tapped his fingers on the table—a tell that he needed something from her: a mistake, that she spilled her guts.

  “My mother is the most forgiving human being I know. You and I would be demons by comparison.” Whoa, that might have been a notch too much.

  Wozniak laughed, with Mitchell as his echo. “I’m flattered that you even put me in the same category as you, even if it’s demon. You’re probably being too harsh on yourself, but I get what you’re saying. Your mother does strike me as some kind of saint.”

  Anna smiled as genuinely as she could muster. Said nothing.

  Wozniak erased any semblance of a smile from his face. A nearly unendurable silence followed, his gaze keen on her. Now, he spoke deliberately, enunciating every word, “Anna, the forensic evidence from the crime scene suggests that your father knew the killer and was attacked by surprise. The evidence also strongly suggests that whoever committed the crime didn’t plan the murder. This is made obvious by the fact that the person didn’t bring a weapon, but rather improvised, grabbing a baseball bat that your father kept on a wall display; you must have seen it a hundred times.”

  “Yes, I follow your logic,” Anna said, immediately realizing she had spoken too fast.

  “So, you do remember seeing your father’s baseball bat on the wall?” Wozniak asked, a thinly veiled smile flashing on his face.

  “Yeah, sure. In the basement. Dad was a huge baseball fan,” she said as ingenuously as possible.

  Officer Mitchell found this to be a topic he should comment on. “He had a baseball signed by Barry Bonds. A cherished possession of his, I’d bet.”

  “Quite so,” Anna responded.

  Wozniak downed the last bit of coffee left in his cup, wincing slightly as it was probably already cold. “And what sort of baseball bat deserved to accompany that prized possession on the wall? Could you describe it for us?”

  “I can’t remember a lot of details.” Yes, she did. It had a black handle, unpainted wood the rest of the way, shiny from top to bottom; and it burned really, really slowly. “It was just a regular wood bat. I believe the handle was painted black.”

  “Thank you, Anna, that is useful information.” Wozniak clasped his hands, elbows on the table, eyes on Anna. “So, you see, this looks too much like a crime of passion. Yes, there’s money missing, but that could have been staged by the killer, hoping that the police would attribute the homicide to a burglary gone awry. In fact, the one stack of cash that was found by the stairs was in too obvious a place. It did look staged.” Wozniak sat back in a laidback demeanor, the left side of his lips twitching as if being deterred from smirking.

  “I understand what you’re saying, Detective, but these are only theories.” No, they weren’t. He had it all figured out. The only thing missing was hard evidence—that he didn’t have. Not yet anyway.

  Wozniak allowed his lips to curve upward ever so slightly. “Right, it would have been a lot simpler to find the murder weapon with fingerprints of the murderer. It really would have, right Mitchell?”

  “Ah, that would have been a walk in the park, but not as interesting,” said the officer.

  “Well said, Mitchell. It’s the challenging cases that sharpen our skills and instincts.” Wozniak tapped on the table three times with his empty coffee cup, making a hollow sound that reverberated throughout the tiny room. “But you’re quite right, Anna. None of this is conclusive evidence. Lucky for us, we did find something within the crime scene that should give us the conclusive evidence we are looking for. In fact, this evidence we found on the body itself, your father’s body.”

  Wozniak darted a look at Mitchell, then back to Anna, a sly glint in his eyes. “You might find this astounding—I know I do. Recent technology developments now allow forensic investigators, in certain cases, and under the right conditions, to lift fingerprints from a victim’s body.” Anna felt a shiver down her spine. She tried to keep her composure and even appear glad. Wozniak continued, his voice suddenly lively, enthusiastic.

  “This tends to work only in controlled, indoor environments and within a tight window of time. Fortunately for the three of us, our crime scene technician got there only about three hours after the estimated time of death, and the basement was nicely air conditioned; a little chilly, in fact. Here comes the best part—he found two very interesting sets of fingerprints. Two fingers”—Wozniak demonstrated, putting together his index and middle fingers—“on his neck, right on the carotid artery. Not his own fingerprints, but someone else’s. Clearly, these are the fingerprints of someone who checked if Victor was dead, after he was struck down. The other set of prints corresponds to four fingers, put together”—he demonstrated again—“as in a slap, on his left cheek. The fact that the fingerprints are exceptionally conserved is a clear indication that they were im
printed on the victim right before or after he was killed.”

  “That’s…great news, Detective. You should have started with that.” Anna felt like fainting, her legs like plastic straws—had she tried to stand up she would have fallen on her knees. She focused all her willpower on not blushing. Do not blush, Anna. Breathe, Anna.

  Wozniak’s face glowed with satisfaction. “Oh, it wouldn’t have been the same. Deliverance can only be experienced after you’ve come to think that you’re lost. Earlier we thought that we were taking shots in the dark; and now, we feel victory is at hand—truth and justice are within reach.” He grabbed Anna’s hand on the table and held it gently, while a half-smile curved up on his face. She felt the same paralyzing fright that must feel a mouse caught outside in a moonless night upon hearing the screech of an owl coming from somewhere, from nowhere, from everywhere.

  “Of course,” the detective carried on, “I’m sure you understand that this means we need to collect fingerprints from anyone who was at the house yesterday, yourself included. Let’s go collect yours. It will take just a moment. And don’t worry: I have a special hand cleaner that will get that ink right off your fingers.”

  There will be no fingerprinting, and I want to call my lawyer is what a voice in her head yelled, but what she said was nothing. She went along with them and Officer Mitchell took her fingerprints. Tomorrow perhaps, she would be in police custody; a warrant for her arrest issued as soon as they identified her fingerprints on her father’s neck. “Sometimes, it’s the tiny details,” Wozniak had said. Her mother’s fingerprints were all over her father’s face—that hard slap he had earned years ago and many times over since then.

  She knew in that instant that this was that most desperate hour she had foreseen, and she knew what she must do. Real love requires sacrifice, and she understood now that sacrifice ran deep in the Wilde bloodline; and she was a Wilde, not a Goddard, that much she knew. Her mother had sacrificed her happiness to protect her and Frank. Now, it was her turn to save her.