by Mike Markel
“She’s a friend.” Kathy scratched at her shoulder. “I met May about a year ago. I had this exhibit at one of the galleries downtown.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ryan drift off toward some handmade wooden racks holding canvases stacked upright like books on a shelf. The canvases were stapled onto wooden frames.
I didn’t say anything. Kathy took this as a cue to say some more. “She stopped by during one of those First Thursday nights in the summer,” she said. “She liked some of my paintings, we started talking. We struck up a friendship.”
Ryan walked over, carrying a canvas about four feet wide and two feet tall. It showed a nude woman stretched out on a blanket in front of a riverbank. It looked like the Rawlings River, the same kind of shrubs and trees in the background, although I don’t know anyplace on the river where you can get nude like that for a couple hours without drawing some attention.
Especially if you looked like the woman in the painting. She was young, early twenties, with long, thin limbs and medium dark hair. All she had on were big gold hoop earrings and pink lipstick. Her expression was hard to read. She didn’t look happy or unhappy. I’d call it uncomfortable. She was lying on her side, one arm up, her hand supporting her head. Her other arm was draped over her stomach. Her breasts were good-sized for such a thin girl. Her nipples were a medium brown, and the pubic hair was shaved into a thin line. If it was a mugshot with the person’s name on it, it couldn’t have been more obvious: it was May Eberlein.
“Is this part of your friendship?” Ryan said.
She turned to him. “She’s sat for me a number of times. If you’ve seen her, you understand why any artist would want to have her as a model.”
“Are you in a sexual relationship with May Eberlein?”
“I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.” She shifted her weight and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
“Kathy, let’s be clear about what’s going on here,” I said. “We didn’t stop by for a friendly chat, and we have no interest in your personal life. Reason my partner asked that question is it has something to do with the Austin Sulenka case. You gonna answer the question now, or you wanna go to police headquarters and sit in a metal cage for six or eight hours, then answer it?”
“Yes.”
“‘Yes’ you’re gonna answer it, or ‘yes’ you’re in a sexual relationship with May Eberlein?”
“May and I are lovers.”
“So May is bisexual.”
She looked annoyed. “My relationship with her is recreational. We get together sometimes. We have sex. But we’re not BFFs. What she does with other guys or women—I really don’t know, and I really don’t care. I’m not into labels, and I’m not into possession.”
“You ever have a three-way with May and Austin?”
“Yes.”
“Sunday night, at his apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Around what time?”
“I’d say, maybe eight to ten.”
“Did you and May go over to Austin’s place together?”
“No, she was already there when I got there. Like I said, around eight.”
“Do you know when she got there?”
Kathy shook her head. “That didn’t come up.”
“You know if May and Austin had already had sex when you got there?”
“She was wearing a tee shirt, looked like it could’ve been his. No bra. And panties. So maybe they’d already screwed. He was in a bathrobe. Can’t tell what that means. Maybe he’d just taken a shower. Or maybe he thinks he’s Hugh Hefner.”
“So the three of you had sex.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” She paused, jutting out her chin. “You want the details? You know, what parts went into what holes?”
“Maybe some other time.” I thought for a second. “So you finished up around, what? Nine? Ten?”
“I don’t know. Nine, ten. I didn’t notice the time.”
“You and May leave together?”
“No, we had our own cars. I left. The two of them were still there.”
“What did the apartment look like when you left?”
She looked at me, confused. “Just like it looked when I got there. Wine bottles, glasses, dishes on the counter. Is that what you mean?”
“Yeah,” I said. “So you partied in the bedroom?”
“Mostly.”
“Okay, so you left. Did anyone see you leave?”
“No idea.”
“Where’d you go then?”
She swept her palm out to tell me she was here. “I did some painting.”
“Ten o’clock at night?”
“Why not? Sex clears my head, frees me up. I paint at night all the time.”
“Can anyone put you here ten o’clock Sunday night?”
“I live alone.”
“Did you hear from May or Austin after you left that night?”
She shook her head.
“You know why anyone would want to hurt Austin?”
She thought for a moment. “I didn’t really know Austin that well. I’m sure there’s some things he did must’ve pissed someone off—”
“Such as?”
“No idea. I’m just saying people piss other people off. But my relationship with him was pretty straightforward. I never partied with him alone. Only with him and May. I know he was a grad student, like May. But we didn’t do a lot of talking, if you know what I mean.”
“Since you were friends with May, maybe you could read something in their relationship?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“What were they doing when you left Sunday night?”
She thought a moment, half closing her eyes. “When I left Sunday night, I think he had his tongue in her pussy.”
Chapter 16
“Can you tell me if May Eberlein is teaching or in class?”
Now that the news of Austin Sulenka’s murder was a day old, the chirpy secretary had dialed back her enthusiasm by at least half. Now she was the loyal, efficient problem-solver. She opened a three-ring binder and shuffled around in the pages. “She’s got office hours. In the bullpen.”
I put my palms out.
“Sorry.” She pointed toward the stairwell in the corner of the building. “Room 103.”
“Thanks,” I said. Ryan and I headed downstairs for our second chat with the very attractive May Eberlein.
The bullpen was a big, long room full of cubicles, with an aisle going down the middle. Like a corporate setting, but shabbier, and with more posters of Che Guevara, Pee Wee Herman, and Jay-Z than you see in a typical IBM cube farm. Half the cubicles were empty. In a few of the others, grad students were working or wasting time at their computers. May Eberlein was talking to a student. They were leaning over a printout of a paper, May sitting at her steel desk, the student, a Hispanic girl, on a cheap plastic chair pulled up next to May’s.
May looked up and recognized me. Her eyes darted to the side to see if she could make out Ryan’s shape through the wavy glass partition that separated her cube from the center aisle.
She didn’t see Ryan because I’d left him in back in the hall. I wanted to lead this next interview to amp up the unpleasantness for her.
Her expression said this was a really bad turn of events. “I’ll … uh … I’ll be right with you.” She pointed to the printout on the desk. “I’m in conference. It’ll just be a few more minutes.” She gave me what passed for her minimal official smile, but she was too young and too good-looking to smile in a hostile way. It was one of the things I could teach her.
I nodded my head, turning to walk out of the bullpen.
“She in there?” Ryan said when I got over to him.
“Oh, yeah. She’ll be right out.”
“She phoning an attorney?”
“No,” I said. “She’s ‘in conference.’ Talking to a student.”
“There’s no back door, right?”
I smiled. “I think we shou
ld take her in for this one. What do you think?”
“I would.” He nodded. “If Kathy Caravelli wasn’t making the whole story up, we’ve got at least two or three different motives for May or Kathy to throttle him. We need to get a little better read on these two women.”
The Hispanic girl came out of the bullpen and started walking down the hall. “That’s her student,” I said softly.
A moment later, May stepped into the hall. She squared her shoulders, put on a bland smile, and walked over to us. She was wearing black leather boots, with a moderate heel, cranberry jeans, and a white cotton blouse with a ruffled neckline. I recognized her gold hoop earrings from Kathy’s painting. “Detectives,” she said, nodding to me and then to Ryan. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’ve forgotten your names.”
“Seagate,” I said, thumb to my chest. “And Miner. We need to talk. Now.”
She looked at her watch. “I still have office hours for another forty-five minutes.”
“No, you don’t.” I pointed my chin toward her cube in the bullpen. “Leave a note on the glass.”
She walked back in. Even when she was off her game, she walked tall, with long strides, like she was on a runway.
“You’re a meanie,” Ryan said to me.
She was back in twenty seconds.
“We need to talk to you again. About Austin Sulenka.”
She looked back toward the bullpen. “It’s not that private in there. Could we go someplace—”
“Go back and get your things, May. We know someplace private.”
This time, she came out with her bag and a jacket slung over her arm. Her expression was a blank.
“Let’s go,” I said, leading her by the elbow.
We made it out to the Charger. Ryan opened the rear door for her and got her in the back seat, pushing her head down so she wouldn’t bump it, which I thought was a nice touch. Nobody said anything as we drove to headquarters.
I carded us in at the rear entrance. We walked down the hall toward the two interview rooms. I looked through the window on Interview 1, which we used for interrogations. It was empty. I walked in first, followed by May and Ryan. I motioned for her to sit at the table, then took a chair opposite her.
Her eyes followed Ryan as he walked over to the video controls on the wall. She picked hard at a cuticle. We had her attention.
I spoke the identifying information: the time and the names of the people in the room. “Ms. Eberlein.” The last name added to the chill in the room. “Where were you Sunday night, around ten pm?”
“I told you this yesterday.” She sounded annoyed. “I was at home. Preparing for my Monday classes.”
I sat there, silently. Staring straight at her, I counted to ten. “Ms. Eberlein, I am very aware we asked you this yesterday. I remember it very clearly, and Detective Miner took notes.” I paused again. “What do you think it means that I’m asking you again?”
She didn’t say anything, but she looked down at her hands on the table.
“I’ll answer my own question. It means, if you lie to us one more time, I will arrest you for the murder of Austin Sulenka.”
She flinched and looked up at me. “That can’t be. No.”
“Yes,” I said. “Lie to me. Watch it happen.” She sat there, and a tear rolled down her face. “Take a moment,” I said. “Think it through. This is your last chance to get it right.”
There we sat, the three of us, our hands folded on the battered steel table with a set of long bars, one on each end. A set of cuffs was attached to each bar.
May swallowed. “I was with Austin that night.”
“Thank you, Ms. Eberlein.” I paused. “Was there anybody else there with the two of you?”
She closed her eyes and held them shut for a moment. “Kathy Caravelli was there with us.”
“What were the three of you doing?” She looked at me, then at Ryan, then back at me. “Don’t mind him,” I said. “He’s not even paying attention.”
“We were getting together,” she said.
“Getting together?” I raised an eyebrow. “Can you be more specific?”
“Do I have to?”
“Depends. When would you like to go home?”
She looked at me. “We were drinking,” she said. “White wine. I had sex with Kathy and then with Austin.”
“You had sex with Kathy, then you had sex with Austin?”
She was crying with both eyes now, and she was blushing. “That’s what I said.” Her voice was soft.
“When we interviewed you yesterday—you told us you were preparing your classes—did you lie because you’re embarrassed by the sex?”
“Obviously, I’m uncomfortable talking about it. But I lied because I didn’t want to implicate either myself or Kathy.”
“If neither of you killed him, how would it implicate you?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know that I didn’t kill him and that Kathy didn’t kill him.”
“Tell me how you know that.”
“I know that because Kathy left his place about ten-thirty, and I left about eleven. And when I left, he was very much alive.” She looked up at me. “That’s how I know.”
“Problem I’m having is, you can’t really prove it. Nobody saw him alive after that. And you do, you know, lie.”
“I’m not lying now. Kathy didn’t kill him. Neither did I. Why would either of us want to kill him?”
“That’s a really good question. But first I want to make sure I understand what you say happened. Let’s start with the three-way, which, as you explain it, was really a couple of two-ways. Tell us again about the sex.”
“Kathy and I had sex. Austin watched. Then Austin and I had sex.”
“How did that work?”
“I don’t understand your question.”
“Kathy’s bisexual, no?”
“No.” She shook her head. “Kathy’s a lesbian.”
“She didn’t have sex with you and Austin?”
“That’s right. She had sex with me. Austin watched. Then Kathy watched me and Austin having sex.” She paused. “That’s how I know she couldn’t kill Austin.”
I was confused. “She couldn’t kill him because she didn’t have sex with him?”
“She couldn’t kill him because she couldn’t touch him. She found him repulsive.”
“She couldn’t overcome her repulsion just once—just enough to strangle him?”
She shook her head. “Not even once.”
“Okay, so you and Kathy go at it. Any toys?”
She looked at me. “Austin had this … this thing.”
“A big black dildo, with a strap?”
She nodded, her eyes focused on the battered steel tabletop.
“Ms. Eberlein, you’re one of three people nude in a room. You fuck her while he watches. Then you fuck him while she watches. And you’re too refined to say the word dildo?”
She looked at me, and for the first time I saw an honest emotion. If I had to name it, I’d say hatred. Which was a little unfair, seeing as it wasn’t me put her in that bedroom.
“So, Austin got off watching you screw Kathy with your black dildo.”
She said, “Do you want me to respond?”
“Yes, please,” I said. “Is it true that Austin knew Kathy didn’t want to have anything to do with him, but he got off watching you two anyway?”
“That’s correct,” May said. “Austin didn’t want to have sex with Kathy, but he liked to watch. If you’re curious about how I know that he liked to watch, he got an erection. And sometimes he masturbated while he watched us.” She brushed her hair back behind her ear. If I wanted details, she’d give me details.
“And Kathy liked to watch you and Austin?”
“Yes. She would masturbate with the dildo while she watched. Austin also had a vibrator. A small one, with batteries. Sometimes she would use that at the same time.”
“All right, Ms. Eberlein. Thank you for that information
. Now, let’s turn to what happened after all the sex. You say Kathy left around ten-thirty, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Why did she leave? You said you and Austin had sex. Didn’t Kathy want to stay for that?”
“She and Austin got in a fight. He called her a dyke. Said she was pathetic. That sort of thing.”
“I don’t get it. She already found him repulsive. So he called her names. Why would that upset her?”
May Eberlein got up and walked over to the wall with the big one-way mirror. She stood there, looking at her reflection in the glass, her back turned to me and Ryan. “It was because of me. I didn’t stop him. I just let him say that stuff.”
“You didn’t defend her.”
“That’s right,” May said. “I was planning to stop seeing her—tell her she couldn’t hang with me and Austin anymore—”
“Wait a second. You used to see Kathy on your own? Just the two of you?”
“Not that much anymore. It started with me sitting for her. But I didn’t want to do that anymore. It had run its course.”
“So you didn’t say anything to Austin when he started calling her names.”
“I thought it was the kindest way to tell Kathy this had to stop.”
“By calling her a dyke?”
May nodded. “I’m not an idiot. I understood it was cruel. But Kathy was in way too far. With me, I mean. I thought it would be best to get her to, you know, see me like she saw Austin.” She turned and faced me.
“So how would you describe Kathy’s actions when she left Austin’s apartment?”
May came back to the table and sat down. She put her head in her hands. “She was crying. She ran out of the apartment, slammed the door. I looked out the window. She was running toward her car.”
“Did she say anything when she left?”
“She called us assholes, said we deserved each other.’”
“Did you say anything to her?”
May shook her head. “No.”
“Did Austin?”
“He laughed at her.”
“Do you think she heard Austin laughing at her?”
“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. “Might’ve.”
“Then you and Austin had sex?”