Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  “She’s with your mother.”

  Stanley positioned a plastic chair and sat down facing Ruth. “Mrs. Raynor, I’m Bill Stanley. I’m an attorney. Your father has retained me to defend you.”

  “But I didn’t do anything,” Ruth protested, her eyes wide. “I told the police that.”

  He cut her words off with a sharp wave of his hand.“You tell the police nothing. Zip, zero, nada. Those cops out there are the enemy. They will use anything and everything you say to put you in prison for the murder of your husband. You don’t want to go to prison, Mrs. Raynor. You don’t want Wendy to have to come visit her mom in prison.”

  Tears trickled from Rum’s brown eyes as Stanley’s harsh words hit her like body blows. She dropped the wad of used tissues in her lap and reached for a fresh supply from the box on the floor.

  “You understand what I’m saying?” Stanley leaned forward and his voice softened. “You don’t talk to the cops. In fact, you don’t talk to anybody but me. Only to me. Or Jeri. Tell me you understand.”

  “I understand,” Ruth whispered.

  “Good. Now, I want you to start from the beginning, and tell Jeri and me exactly what happened this evening. Take your time, don’t leave anything out.”

  Ruth drew in a breath and began, her voice shaky. “We had dinner at Mom and Dad’s. Kevin brought us home.”

  “Who’s we?” Stanley asked. “Who’s Kevin?”

  “Wendy and me. Kevin is my older brother. He’s a Navy officer. He’s here on leave.” Ruth took another deep breath. She appeared calmer now that she was talking. “The three of us spent the afternoon at Children’s Fairyland in the park at Lake Merritt. Then we went over to Alameda, where my parents live. We had dinner. Mom and Dad and Kevin and I played cards while Wendy watched a Walt Disney video. Then Kevin brought Wendy and me home.”

  “What time was this?” Stanley asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Ruth said. “About eleven, I think. All I know is it was way past Wendy’s bedtime. She fell asleep in Kevin’s car. He carried her up to the apartment. We put her right to bed and—” She stopped and frowned. “Kevin left.”

  Why the pause? If Bill Stanley had noticed, he didn’t give any indication. “What happened then?” he asked.

  Ruth huddled back in the chair. “I took out the trash.” When Bill Stanley asked her why, she shrugged. “I noticed the garbage can under the sink was full, so I took it out to the trash chute in the hall. I left the door to my apartment open. It’s only a few steps. While I was walking back to the apartment, the elevator door opened, and Sam—” She stopped and shuddered.

  While Ruth composed herself, I recalled the layout of the third-floor area she’d described, from my visit on Friday afternoon. Coming out of the door of Ruth’s apartment, unit 303, I had faced the short hall that led back to the trash chute and the stairwell. To the right of that hallway was the elevator door, perpendicular to the wall that held the doors to units 301 and 302.

  “So he caught you in the hall,” Stanley was saying.

  Ruth nodded and continued her story in a halting voice. “I ran for the apartment but he got there before I could shut the door. He grabbed my arm. I broke away and got into the apartment. I tried to shut the door, but he pushed me out of the way and got in.”

  “He forced his way into the apartment,” Stanley said. “Had he been drinking?”

  Ruth nodded. “I could smell beer on him.”

  “What did he say? Did he threaten you, physically, verbally?”

  “He said he wanted to see Wendy. I told him it’s late, she’s in bed, she’s asleep. He’s got visitation, but it’s supervised, every other Saturday, at my parents’ house. Plus I’ve got a stay-away order against him. I reminded him about that. He just laughed. He said if he wanted to come see me and Wendy, he’d just do it, and he wouldn’t pay any attention to any damned court orders.”

  Despite my efforts to transform myself into a fly on the wall, Ruth now looked at me and said, “He was really mad about Jeri.”

  “About Jeri?” Stanley repeated the words and glanced over his shoulder at me.

  Ruth nodded. “Sam’s hiding some money, over a hundred thousand dollars. Blair and I asked Jeri to locate the money. Sam found out. He even threatened Jeri. You must be getting close. Sam was really angry. He said I’d better call off the detective or I’d be in more trouble than I already was.”

  “Let’s get back to tonight,” Stanley said. “Where were you in the apartment? The hall, the kitchen, the living room? Draw me a picture. Jeri, you got a pen and some paper?”

  I quickly pulled the requested items from my bag and handed them to Ruth. She sketched her one-bedroom apartment, then used the pen as a pointer. “When he got into the apartment, he grabbed my arm again and pulled me into the living room. He looked around and said it was a dump. I told him it was my dump, and to get out. That’s when he said he wanted to see Wendy.”

  Bill Stanley shifted in the hard plastic chair. “Okay, we know he threatened you verbally. What about physically?”

  “He kept squeezing my arm. So hard I thought he’d bruise it.” Ruth held out her left arm and examined it as though she’d never seen it before. On the flesh of the forearm, near the elbow, I saw faint purple marks complementing the darker ones at her throat

  “When I tried to stop him going into the bedroom where Wendy was, he slapped me. Then he shoved me away. I fell and banged my knee. Hard. It really hurt.” Ruth sensed Stanley’s impending question about physical evidence, so she pulled up the hem of her blue denim skirt and discovered another purple mark.

  “I got to my feet. Sam was grinning. I wanted to wipe that grin off his face.” Her lips clamped tightly together at the memory. “Then he said I’d better behave myself. If I didn’t quit hassling him, he’d beat me bloody. If I didn’t call off Jeri, he’d take Wendy and he’d hide her and I’d never see her again. He laughed. He said, ‘I might even take her now.’” Ruth stopped, hands stilled in her lap.

  “What did you do then?” Stanley asked.

  “That’s when I got the gun.”

  “Where did you keep it?”

  “In the kitchen, in the cabinet above the refrigerator. I didn’t want it when Daddy bought it for me. But he said I needed it for protection. I kept it clean and I never kept it loaded, but the shells were right there next to it.” Ruth sounded detached, as though she were describing something that happened to someone else.

  “Sam went into the bedroom and I went to the kitchen. I pulled up the stepstool so I could reach the cabinet. I got the shells and the gun, and I loaded it, right there at the kitchen counter. Then I went out into the hallway, just outside the bedroom. When Sam came out I pointed the gun at him. I told him I’d kill him before I’d let him take my little girl.”

  I leaned back against the wall, folding my arms across my chest. I didn’t like the way this sounded. I couldn’t tell what Stanley thought about it. His face was blank, neutral, as he listened to Ruth’s story.

  “First he laughed,” Ruth said, “and said I’d hurt myself. I told him I knew how to use a gun. Besides, at that range I couldn’t miss. I backed up, toward the living room. I had the gun in my right hand. The phone’s on the counter, so I picked up the telephone with my left. I told him to get out or I’d call the police. He was really angry. His face got red, almost as red as his hair. He swore at me, the way he used to do when he beat me.” She took a deep ragged breath.

  “He acted like he was going to leave. Then he knocked the phone out of my hand and he was trying to get the gun away from me. It happened so fast, it’s all jumbled together. I know the gun went off. It was so loud, my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear anything else. His lips were moving and I couldn’t hear him.”

  Ruth’s hands moved to her bruised throat, tears in her eyes. “He had his hands around my neck. I couldn’t breathe. I must have passed out. There was this red fuzziness, blurring my vision, and a rushing sensation, like I was on a trai
n. Then I heard crying. I opened my eyes and saw the ceiling. I realized I was in the hall of my apartment. Wendy was standing there in her pajamas, crying.”

  Ruth stopped and covered her face with her hands. It took her a few minutes to pull herself together sufficiently to go on.

  “I sat up,” she said, “and put my arms around Wendy. My poor baby. I couldn’t get her to stop crying.”

  “When did the police show up?” Stanley asked. “How did they get into your apartment?”

  “They were there really fast. One of my neighbors must have heard the shot when the gun went off. While I had my arms around Wendy, a policeman walked into my apartment. I guess my door was open. I heard voices outside, all talking at once. The policeman had his gun drawn. That frightened Wendy. He put away his gun and asked me what was going on.”

  Ruth shook her head. “I’m all confused about things after that. I don’t know how long I was out. I felt cold and woozy. Maybe I was in shock. I just don’t know. All of a sudden there were policemen everywhere. One of them helped me to my feet, and another one took Wendy and asked if there was some relative he could call, so I gave him Mom and Dad’s number. They wiped my hands with some wet cotton balls.”

  While Ruth looked down at her hands, Stanley and I traded glances. Gunshot primer residue was obtained by wiping the hands with nitric acid, to collect the barium and antimony left from the discharge of ammunition. Ruth had already said the gun went off during her struggle with Sam, and since it was her weapon, her fingerprints would be on the gun itself as well as the shells inside. I asked the question that had been uppermost in my mind. “Ruth, when it was over, where was your gun?”

  She looked confused. “I don’t know. It wasn’t there on the floor beside me. The police were looking for it too. They said Sam was dead. I know they think I shot him. But I didn’t. Or at least—” She stopped and her mouth formed a shocked circle. “Oh, Jeri, what if I had some of kind of blackout? What if I followed him outside the apartment and shot him? I can’t remember anything between the time he choked me and when I woke up to Wendy crying.”

  Stanley waved his hands. “Let’s not get into guessing games. Your story’s fine as it is. Just remember, you talk to me or Jeri, no one else. I’ll do the rest.” He stood up and put his hands on his hips. “Time to see what the cops have.”

  “I have one more question.” I pushed away from the wall, fixing Ruth with a steady look. “Was there anyone with Sam? Did you see anyone else, or hear another voice?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said. “When Sam stepped off that elevator, all I saw was him.”

  Sixteen

  “YOU GUYS CALL THIS A CASE?”

  Bill Stanley was perched on the corner of Sid’s desk in Homicide, derision coloring his voice. Now that Ruth Raynor was represented by counsel, and counsel had advised her not to talk, there was no point in the police keeping her in the interview room. A female officer was called to escort her to jail, where she would stay until the District Attorney decided whether to charge her. That looked like a distinct probability.

  Ruth looked small and delicate in her pink blouse and blue skirt, dwarfed by the taller figure of the uniformed woman beside her. As the two women left Homicide, Ruth threw a frightened look at her father. The Admiral looked stunned and haggard, a hundred years old, as he realized that events had gone beyond the point where he could make things all right again. When Ruth had gone, Stanley whispered a few words to Blair Castle. The divorce lawyer took Franklin’s arm and offered to give him a ride home.

  The older man straightened his slumped shoulders. He wanted to stay, but we persuaded him that there was nothing he could do here. Before leaving, he extracted my promise to come over to the Franklins’ Alameda home as soon as I left police headquarters, no matter what time it was. He wasn’t giving orders anymore. His words were a plea.

  Now Stanley was trying to find out as much as he could about the strength of the case against Ruth. While the defense lawyer sparred with the detectives, I listened and watched, feeling like a spectator at a tennis match.

  “It’s her gun,” Wayne pointed out, a slight smile on his face, his voice reasonable and mild.

  Stanley spread his hand wide, palms up. “So where is it?”

  Sid was decidedly chagrined at the sight of Stanley’s butt parked on his desk. He looked as though he’d like to sweep the lawyer off its surface and into a nearby wastebasket.

  “It was at the bottom of the trash chute,” Sid said, snapping off the words. “It’s now in evidence.”

  Score one-love for the cops, I thought. They’d found the gun. Now they’d test it to see if it had fired the slug that ended Sam Raynor’s life. But there had been two shots. Ruth said the gun went off earlier, while she and Sam struggled. A positive result on the residue test was a foregone conclusion. Somewhere in the apartment, buried in a wall or a piece of furniture, was another slug, waiting to be found. Had that first shot nicked Sam? Whether it had or not, if both slugs matched, things didn’t look good for Ruth, despite Bill Stanley’s show of confidence.

  “Any other wounds on the victim?” I asked. “Other than the fatal one?”

  Sid narrowed his eyes as though wondering where I was headed. “Only one that we could see. He was shot in the back at close range. The medical examiner may find something else. We’ll just have to wait for the autopsy.”

  “Where was the body?”

  “End of the hall leading to the stairs, between the door and the trash chute. She followed him out of the apartment, plugged him in the back, tossed the gun down the trash chute and went back to the apartment.”

  “Come on.” Stanley shook his head. “Look at the bruises on her throat. He damn near strangled her. She passed out.”

  “We have a witness,” Sid said, looking implacable.

  He didn’t identify the witness or tell us what had allegedly been seen, but I raised the score to two-love. The more I heard, the worse it sounded. This didn’t seem to bother Bill Stanley, though. He dismissed this piece of news with a wave of his hand. He didn’t get much else out of Sid and Wayne, other than the information that a neighbor had called the police after hearing a gunshot. Not two, I noted, but one. Probably the same person had reported seeing Ruth drop the gun down the trash chute. But Ruth said she’d disposed of the kitchen garbage right before Sam showed up. Given the layout of the area, I doubted that anyone could have seen Ruth drop anything down the trash chute unless that person had been directly behind her, standing at the head of the short hallway.

  So the witness was mistaken. Who was it? A neighbor? I recalled my visit to Ruth Friday afternoon and the elderly woman we’d seen in the hallway with her load of laundry. Ruth called her Mrs. Parmenter and said she snooped. Five’ll get you ten Mrs. Parmenter is the witness, I told myself. Then an unwelcome thought leapt into my mind.

  “Have you talked to Wendy?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Sid said. That’s all he said, his face maddeningly blank.

  What had Wendy seen and heard? I met Bill Stanley’s hazel eyes. And what had she told the police?

  Sid told Stanley once again that things would go easier for Ruth if she cooperated with the police, but the lawyer slid off the corner of the desk and shook his head. “Let’s just wait and see what the D.A. has to say. Then we’ll talk.”

  The District Attorney’s office had forty-eight hours from Ruth’s arrest to charge the case. During that time the D.A. would examine the witness statements and get the results of various tests. Unless the coroner was backed up, the autopsy would likely be completed by then. Then we’d know what Ruth Raynor was up against.

  I followed Stanley out of Homicide, down the orange hallway to the doors of CID. I didn’t speak until we were outside the Police Administration Building.

  “Somebody set her up,” I said. “Although it’s too spur-of-the-moment for a lot of planning. More like a seized opportunity. Someone else must have been with Raynor. Saw the chance, took it.”<
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  “You think so?” In the overhead glow of the street lamp, Bill Stanley’s face took on a yellowish cast as his mouth curved into a world-weary grin. “Listen, Jeri, I always figure my clients are guilty. It saves time. Besides, they usually are.”

  Somehow I expected this. “She says she didn’t kill him. I believe her.”

  Stanley shrugged. “Hey, my only concern is springing Ruth. Look what we got here.” He ticked off the elements of the case on his fingers.

  “The slimeball is an abusive husband with a restraining order against him. He breaks into his wife’s building. The place has a security door, right? So he didn’t push the buzzer and say, hey, honey, can I come up? He accosts Ruth in the hall, forces his way into her apartment, refuses to leave when she asks him to. He threatens to kidnap her child, then he attacks her physically. So the gun’s hers—so what? Big fucking deal. It’s legitimately purchased and legally registered. This creep came to her place looking for trouble, and he got it. Self-defense, piece of cake. The worst they can charge her with is voluntary manslaughter, and when I swing into action...” Stanley’s body swayed as he swung an imaginary golf club. “She’ll walk.” I looked skeptical. “Jeri, trust me. I can get Ruth off.”

  “I don’t think Ruth killed him. Which means whoever did is walking around loose.”

  “Sounds like the fucker had it coming,” Stanley shot back. “So I don’t care who killed Raynor.”

  “I do. It offends my sense of symmetry.” Also my sense of justice. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t think justice was high on Bill Stanley’s list of priorities.

  “Okay, say she didn’t do it,” he said. “You got any candidates?”

  “Sam Raynor was the biggest slug that ever oozed across my path. Anyone who wanted to kill him would have to take a number and get in line.”