A Fistful of Empty

by Benjamin M. Schutz

  “Hello, Sam,” I said, unwilling to presume a response from her, either affection or anger.

  “Hello, Leo. Are you okay?” Her voice denied the question its weight.

  “I’m okay,” I lied.

  We stood there, two strangers in familiar bodies. I’d been the first one to break the spell of trust. Now I was someone she didn’t really know. A stranger who had brought terror, then pain, then sorrow inside these walls. Inside of her.

  I looked at her face but couldn’t really see her. I saw the stranger there. I knew the chestnut mane, the emerald eyes, the generous mouth, but they told me nothing. Once I could read the dilation of the eye, the turn of the head. The countless signs of animation and their meaning. Now it was a death mask. I had been revealed as the man she did not know. Every fact was now fiction. Every memory a dream. Our history now a myth.

  Once, we had made a path that could not lead to this place. She could either deny her bruises, her empty womb, or who she thought I was. They could not both be true.

  I had no idea what she would do, how she would choose. I knew what I wanted, what I hoped for.

  I looked at Sam but did not see her because I was afraid of what I would find there. I refused to read anything into her face and called her inscrutable.

  I stood there, in silence, afraid that anything I might say would come out as a plea for clemency that I knew I did not deserve. I took Sam’s silence as rejection. Maybe it wasn’t and I just needed it to be.

  Eventually, I found my tongue and spoke. “Sam, I’m sorry about everything …”

  She pulled her hand from her coat and held it up to stop me.

  “Don’t, Leo. Don’t say anything. I’ve thought a long time about what I’m going to say and I don’t have the strength to discuss it or defend it. Don’t make this any harder on me than it already is, please.”

  If she’d asked, I’d have shot myself right there.

  She stood up, with both her hands hidden again, and rushed through the words, not sure she had the will to declare what she knew she felt.

  “Leo, I know you didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But it did, and it did because you were careless with us. I asked you to come home and be with me, Leo, but you didn’t. You felt you owed it to Arnie to be with him. You made the choice. Everything else flows from that, Leo. What happened to me, the baby, everything. You made the decision but I paid for it. He raped me, not you. I know you feel bad, but it’s not the same. And I know you’ve lost a lot, too. Believe me, I’m not doing this to punish you, but every time I look at you, it all comes back to me. I blame you and I can’t talk myself out of it, and I’ve tried. I’m so angry right now, I just don’t want to be around you. And I don’t trust you anymore.

  “Leo, I used to look at you and only feel how lucky I was. That’s been destroyed. I look at you and all I can feel is how much I’ve lost. I know you love me, Leo, but I don’t think it’s a love I can use. I can’t rely on it. I think you’d give me everything you have, but I don’t think it’s what I need. I need to be first, Leo. I need someplace where I can count on that being true. That I won’t be ignored or passed over for something or someone else. I know you tried. I know that’s why you took this job. I just don’t know that you can really do it, and I can’t stand not knowing that.

  “We paid a hell of a price for that one wrong decision. I don’t think I can go through it again. I need to be away from you, Leo. Maybe that’ll change. I don’t know. But it’s how I feel right now. I’ll come back for my stuff later. When you’re at work. Please don’t come home. I’d rather not do it with you around. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Please don’t call me, Leo. If I change my mind, I’ll call you. I need to be alone to sort this out. Okay?”

  “Sure. Anything you want.”

  “I’m going to go now. Goodbye, Leo.”

  She hurried toward me and I turned to let her pass. She kept her face away from me as she went by. I almost reached out to touch her shoulder, not to stop her, just to touch her as she left, but I didn’t. I stood there and watched her walk away into the ripening darkness.

  Night drew its lid down over the earth and the last faint light of day fled into the past. With it went my heart and the first tears began to fall.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Leo Haggerty Mysteries

  CHAPTER 1

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” the court reporter droned as if she were reciting the blue-plate special.

  Silence. I looked up from my pad. Was this the moment? Would I finally hear an honest reply to that ridiculous question? Something like “Hell no. I’ll tell you what I think I can get away with or won’t hurt me too bad.” No such luck.

  “I do,” the witness said, and took her hands off the table. She turned and whispered to her lawyer.

  “Before we begin this deposition, Mr. Anthony, I’d like to know who the gentleman to the left of you is and his purpose for being here.”

  “Mr. Duckworth, this is Leo Haggerty. He’s in my employ and he’s here to help me question your client.”

  Duckworth gave his client some last-minute tips on dealing with my employer, Joe “The Fox” Anthony. Most people thought the nickname was a reference to his cunning. Personally I thought it was because witnesses would rather chew off a limb than sit in the box when he cross-examined them.

  “Shall we begin?” Joe said smoothly, cream eager to curdle. “Let me remind you, Ms. Timmons, that you are under oath, just as if you were in court.”

  I saw Joe’s client, Peter Skrepinski, smirk and shake his head, convinced that she was a lying bitch out to steal half of his inheritance. If he had his way, we’d be questioning her with white-hot tongs over a vat of trustworthy boiling oil.

  Joe would do all the questioning. I was there to make notes for the background check he wanted done and to catch anything he might have overlooked.

  “Let’s start with your name.”

  “Sarabeth Timmons,” she said, her face as empty as her voice.

  “Middle name?”

  “None.”

  “Have you ever had a nickname, an alias, or any other name?”

  “No.”

  I began writing a description to go along with the information Joe was getting. Height: 5′9″ maybe; weight: 125. Nothing unusual in her gait when she walked in. I followed her in so she wouldn’t know I was watching. Posture: unremarkable. Her clothes flattered but did not display her figure. Trim, athletic, good legs, nice chest.

  “Social security number?”

  “Address and phone number?”

  I wrote her answers down.

  Sarabeth Timmons was white and deeply tanned. Her skin looked soft and lustrous. Butterscotch now, leather later.

  “Age and date and place of birth?”

  “I’m twenty-five. I was born on July 7, 1967, here in Fairfax County.”

  “Parents’ names?”

  “My father was Edward John Timmons and my mother was Alice Cecilia Timmons.”

  “Any siblings?”

  “None.” I pushed a note over to Joe.

  Her hair was a bright hard blond, cut short and swept straight back from her face. No doubt about it, she was aerodynamically sound. Even sitting down her head looked like it was still moving forward.

  “Your mother’s maiden name?” Joe read from my pad.

  “Reynolds.”

  “Have you ever been married, Ms. Timmons? Have you ever been pregnant? If so, what was the result of that pregnancy?”

  I stared at her, cataloguing her features as she went straight through a barrage of Joe’s questions, answering no to every one.

  Broad forehead, high pronounced cheekbones without the anorexic hollows of a model. Full lips top and bottom, straight nose, square jaw, strong chin, dimpled maybe. Ears small and close to her head. Eyebrows, same color as on her head, natural shape. Eyes, brown. That was good enough.
I’d get a roll of film on her tomorrow, blow them up, and give them to everyone working her.

  I glanced at Joe’s list of questions. She had never owned any property, run a business, or registered to vote. She had no insurance coverage of any sort, had never filed a tax return, owned stocks or bonds, made or taken a loan, or had any other debts or liens. She had never been sued, nor had she ever sued anyone else. That narrowed our choices down. Only two explanations for such an exemplary life: sainthood or a closed head injury.

  Joe continued through his list. As she piled up the nos, her life got narrower and shallower. A couple more negatives and she’d be invisible and lighter than air. No history of mental hospitalization, no psychotherapy, no drug or alcohol treatment. But yes, a physician. Dr. Leona Purbright, her gynecologist.

  I watched her play with her right ear. Long, slim fingers. Gold and silver dive watch. No rings. Nails short. Polished? Maybe something clear. Any other jewelry? Nothing as an accessory to her skirt and jacket. No necklace. Little buttons in her ears.

  Joe was on a roll. Though she said she had never owned a car, she had a driver’s license, which was good because I’d watched her drive into the parking lot. She had no bank account, no safe deposit box, and her only credit cards were VISA and American Express. They weren’t in her name, though. She was an authorized user on her girlfriend’s cards. Her only membership was to a local health club.

  I wrote Joe another note. He read it and went on to his next question.

  “Ms. Timmons, do you now or have you ever had a passport?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever spent any time in a foreign country?”

  “No.”

  “Can you speak any foreign language?”

  “No.”

  Joe looked at his notes, put down his pencil, and said, “Let’s take a break for a minute, stretch our legs, use the facilities. I’ll have some coffee brought in.”

  Everyone stood, stretched, and looked awkwardly at each other. A moment of unguarded civility after two hours of simmering hostility and no one knew what to do with it. I left to find Joe’s secretary and the bathroom.

  When I returned, he went right back to the questioning.

  “Ms. Timmons, have you ever been arrested?”

  “No.”

  “Ever been a witness in a legal proceeding?”

  “No.”

  “Ever been in a traffic accident?”

  “No.”

  Tina came in with a tray of coffee mugs, sugar and cream, spoons, napkins. She worked her way around the table. Skrepinski passed. Duckworth fixed a mug and set it on the table. Timmons took hers black, wrapped it in a napkin, and held it on her lap. Tina made Joe’s and put it on a coaster. I sipped mine slowly, wishing it were hotter.

  “Let’s go back over your history, Ms. Timmons. Your answers to our interrogatories were a little vague. You said you grew up in California. Where in California?”

  “All over. I don’t remember where we started out. Mostly Los Angeles, that area.”

  “What’s the first place you remember?”

  “A big house, out in one of the valleys. I was three maybe. My mother cleaned houses. That one we lived in for a while.”

  Finally something more than a monosyllable. I closed my eyes while she went on and listened for an accent, a speech defect, sibilance, or articulation problems. Nothing to my ear. Maybe we’d tape her and take it to a linguist.

  “When my mother worked, she cleaned houses. She’d take me along and if she had a car, I’d sit outside and wait for her.”

  “What did you do in the car, Ms. Timmons? To pass the time?”

  “What does that matter?” she flared.

  “Answer the question, Ms. Timmons.”

  She delayed by sipping her coffee slowly, deliberately. I noted that she was right-handed.

  “Well, when I was three, I sucked my thumb. At six, I wet my pants and cried. When I was eight, I released the parking brake and rolled into a tree. After that, I got to go inside and sit in a corner. Satisfied?”

  “When your mother wasn’t cleaning houses, what did she do?”

  “I don’t know. I think she was turning tricks. We moved around downtown L.A. for a while. Lived in hotels mostly. She’d go out and I’d stay in. She’d come in and I’d go out. Simple as that.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Lots of places. Up on the roof, the lobby, the street.”

  “How long did you live with your mother?”

  “Until I was twelve. On my twelfth birthday, I ran away. I gave myself a present—the streets.”

  “Where did you go to school during this time?”

  “Lots of places, I don’t remember. We moved a lot. I’d go to school if we stayed in one place long enough. Then we’d move. I wouldn’t go to school for a while. Pretty soon I guess I got behind the other kids. I remember they wanted to keep me back. I didn’t want to go to school anyway. I didn’t have any friends. I sure wasn’t going to do the same stuff over again. So I didn’t go. I’d walk to school, my mom went to work or back to bed, sometimes the same thing. I’d just go right past the school, find other kids and hang out, come home when it got dark. Running away was no big deal. I was running away every day. One day I just didn’t come back.”

  “Where did you live at this time?”

  “Lots of places. I hung out with other kids. We squatted a lot. Abandoned buildings. Scavenged food from the grocery store dumpsters, you know, lived.”

  I’d been watching her mouth move while she spoke and her teeth were unremarkable. I couldn’t tell if she’d had any dental work done. But then she’d already denied having a dentist. The rules of discovery prohibited my climbing down her throat for a better look. I’d find another way.

  “Who did you live with? Who were your friends?”

  “Lots of people. But no friends. You don’t make friends out on the streets. Protectors and enemies, not friends.”

  The deeper we got under her skin, from the trappings and markers of the life she hadn’t had to the one she did, the greater her anger. High in the sky, in suite 1600 of Anthony, Bergstrom and Twitchell, its soft lighting, art on the walls, and plush carpets, a lifetime away from abandoned hovels and dumpster diving, she was having to recite this litany to the privileged, who felt that she was trying to steal something she hadn’t earned and had no right to. But of course she deserved the first twenty-five years of her life. Somebody somewhere owed her for that, no doubt. It just wasn’t Peter Skrepinski.

  “Then tell us about some of your protectors or enemies,” Joe said kindly.

  “Okay, how about Elmer Fudd. He was big and dumb and slow, but he liked to grope you if he caught you. Boys better than girls. Or Lisa the Lipper. The johns liked her ’cause she gave great head. See, she had no front teeth, so there was this gap there, about the size of an average dick. Should I go on? No, I don’t know their real names. We didn’t use them. What was the point? They weren’t really our names any more. We’d left those people somewhere else.”

  “Earlier I asked you if you had a nickname or used another name. You said no. Do you want to change the answer at this time?”

  “Do I have to answer that?” she asked Duckworth.

  “I don’t think the question is necessary, Mr. Anthony. Why don’t we go through the rest of your questions and see if you feel it’s still necessary at the end. We’ll cross that one when we get there. How about that?”

  “Let the record show that I reserve the right to ask the question again before the end of this deposition, but we’ll go on for now.

  “How long did you live with these other street kids, Ms. Timmons?”

  “Until I was about sixteen?”

  “Did you attend school during these years?”

  “No.”

  “So you have what, maybe a fourth-grade education? Is that correct?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Ms. Timmons, can you read? Can you sign your name?”
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  “Yes I can. I may not have gone to school but I’m not stupid. I learned to read and write and do figures. I learned a lot more, especially about men like you.” She spat the words across the table.

  “Oh? Really? Like what?” Joe leaned forward. Duckworth put his hands on the table between the pair and suggested a break. Joe took a deep breath and agreed.

  When we returned we covered her life from the age of sixteen to twenty-two. She claimed to have ridden in a southern California biker gang, the Hounds of Hell, and described herself as “the property of Chino.” Again, more years of no fixed address, no legal employment, no documents. She’d managed to lead a life without paper. A lot of days out on the road, nights of tequila and beer. Not an impulse denied, a sensation refused, or a lasting impression made.

  “Okay, Ms. Timmons, how long since you’ve seen Chino or the rest of the gang?”

  “Probably three years. Once I got out, I didn’t look back. What for?” Indeed, what for?

  “So where were you living before you came here to Fairfax County?”

  “In California,” she said innocently.

  “Oh, come on, Ms. Timmons, can’t we narrow it down just a bit?” Joe leaned back in his chair and did his Clarence Darrow number with his suspenders.

  “Okay, L.A.”

  “We’re getting there. Where in L.A.?”

  She leaned over and whispered in Duckworth’s ear. Then he returned the favor.

  “I lived with a woman in Van Nuys.”

  “And her name?”

  “I’d really rather she not be dragged into this. She has nothing to do with this, and there’s no reason our relationship has to be made public.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Timmons, but it has everything to do with this. You’ve just asked us to believe this fairytale history of yours.”

  Duckworth barked, “I object to this. You have no right to—”

  “Fine, fine.” Joe waved him off. “There’s a lot of money at stake here, Ms. Timmons. Money you have come forward and made a claim on. The validity of your claim is very much the matter here. You’ve given us precious little to verify your claim, but there is this woman who lived with you for the last three years and you want her left out of this. I think not.”