Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  The girl’s father leaned forward, clasping his large preacherly hands. “Who reviews the preliminary evidence? We assumed you have some authority to review things, to make a determination whether the city goes forward.”

  I flushed, and then felt a bloodlike metallic taste rise to the back of my palate.

  “My authority is to determine whether or not a crime was committed, and what fool wouldn’t deduce your daughter was murdered? Beyond that, I have little choice but to prosecute the case to the best of my ability. And I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to find and punish the guy who—”

  “That’s just it. I don’t give a damn about the man responsible,” Sire Hastings shot back. “My daughter is dead. Nothing will bring her back. And I don’t want her private life laid out in the street like last night’s empty liquor bottles. Can I have your assurance of that?”

  “Only, sir, if we end up dealing with an abduction by a stranger. That type of investigation wouldn’t involve the victim’s background.”

  “Ohhh,” Constance Hastings cried out. Her husband fixed on Carlyle a long hard stare before standing and shepherding his wife aside.

  Carlyle stood too. He looked at me and spoke. “Apparently Miss Hastings had either been raped or been subjected to some very rough sex before death. We got a call from the ME’s office shortly before you arrived. We’re appealing to you to wrap this matter up quickly and quietly.”

  I was reeling. Dr. Gannon had released the information without contacting me first? The bloody turncoat—as if he or the ME’s office had any say about whom the state might choose to prosecute. I leaned forward and whispered in a rage, “She was murdered and then thrown into the street like trash, and you’re saying you don’t want to find the person responsible?”

  Mr. and Mrs. Hastings now sidled forward. No one said a thing.

  “Are you all crazy?” I said.

  The silence was stunning. I was in some nightmarish dream and no one saw the monster lurking behind the trees except me. I looked at the Hastingses, hoping to appeal to a parent’s sense of loss. “How could you care more about privacy than you do about avenging your daughter’s murder? This maniac has to be found, has to be brought to justice.”

  Carlyle looked frantically from me to the parents. “That’s enough for now—”

  “We aren’t finished,” I said indignantly.

  “We are, Miss Melone. The Hastingses don’t wish to discuss anything further,” Carlyle said.

  How the hell did he know they were done? What was I missing?

  Mrs. Hastings twisted away from her husband and sat again in the chair facing me. Her body language suggested she had decided to speak. But she wouldn’t look at me. Her words fell into her lap like tears.

  “Melinda had some problems. We thought she was dealing with them through the Holton Health Services—”

  “And indeed she was,” Ken added. “Dr. Becker was counseling her regularly.”

  “Yes, yes. I’m sure this school did everything possible to help her,” Mrs. Hastings continued. She refocused her appeal to me. “Privacy is all we have left, Miss Melone. So please allow us to keep this within our family. For the sake of our other children, I don’t want this horrific story splashed over the tabloids. And it is tabloid news, isn’t it?”

  Of course it was. This was just the sort of nightmare Vince drooled over: A National Enquirer–type story about a rich Holton College student brutally murdered . . .

  “I’m going to get the autopsy report and lab tests,” I said.

  Mrs. Hastings began openly crying now.

  “Please, Miss Melone,” Brad Hastings finally said. “Let this go no further. You must understand our position.”

  Carlyle hovered over Mrs. Hastings, his hands resting on the back of her chair.

  I looked from pale face to pale face, trying to gauge Carlyle’s and the Hastingses’ real motivations, but I got nothing from this Edvard Munch trio except a slight narrowing of Dean Carlyle’s eyes. After a second or two of silence Mrs. Hastings stood and joined her husband and Dean Carlyle. The line in the sand had been drawn and there was no point reaching over it to say goodbye. They gave Carlyle a parting glance, then turned and walked out.

  Either the performance hadn’t been staged for my benefit, or Carlyle saw that it hadn’t worked, because his gentleman act was over. He walked to his desk and sat behind it, refusing to honor me with so much as a have-a-nice-day smile. Instead he commenced a paper shuffle where files were removed from one pile and placed into another.

  “Miss Melone,” he finally said without looking at me, “we’re done here for now.”

  I stifled a brief shiver and made a quick but gracious exit.

  CHAPTER SIX

  You and Me, Babe

  I HAD PLANNED TO call the ME about the autopsy results as soon as I returned to my office, but when I straggled into my ten-by-ten cubby I spied a faxed report sitting pretty on my desk. It was printed on ME stationery from T. Gannon, MD.

  I dialed him up. A teenage-sounding secretary indicated he was busy, but I held the line, informing the ingenue that if she didn’t get him on the phone I was coming over in person. I hit the speakerphone button and began deciphering the doc-speak hieroglyphics in the report.

  Melinda Hastings, DOB, DOD . . . yada yada yada. As I’d been present for much of the organ retrieval stuff, I flipped past the routine descriptors and went straight to the lab results. Positive for cocaine, cannabis, and some substance called GHB. The path lab report on the white pubic goo confirmed the presence of semen, which of course could be checked for DNA and then compared to records on file for prior offenders.

  I heard Gannon’s voice on the speaker and picked up the phone.

  “What happened to Melinda Hastings? I’ve got your report in front of me.”

  “Myoclonic seizure due to an overdose of GHB, or gamma-hydroxybutyric acid, aggravated by exsanguinations. Simply put, the girl was drugged and then raped and cut up. A quick check on semen DNA is negative in the database.”

  “Cut up?”

  “On autopsy I found blade marks on the facial bones. The subsequent car accident hid the wounds, but he apparently sliced her face up pretty good.”

  “Good work, Doc. Tell me about GHB.”

  “It’s a date-rape drug you can make in your own kitchen. I think they still use it in Europe as an adjunct to anesthesia. We’re starting to use it in the States for narcolepsy. In liquid form it’s tasteless and has no odor and no color. Perfect for mixing with a cocktail or strong beer. The girl would have gotten nice and relaxed, like being drunk, and then remembered nothing after she woke up, but of course she didn’t wake up because she was drugged unconscious and mutilated. Evidentially it looks like you’ve got yourself one hell of a dead end, if you’ll excuse the unfortunate pun.”

  “What’s a myopic seizure?”

  “Myoclonic. Myo means muscle and clonus means rapidly alternating contraction and relaxation—jerking or twitching—of a muscle. What the layperson would think of as an epileptic fit. There were no defensive wounds on her arms, so she may have been unconscious through the whole bloody episode.”

  “She was cut while she was alive?”

  “Wound condition from the knife cuts, where I could find them on what was left of her skull, suggests some time of clotting or healing. She’d need a beating heart for that.”

  “Holy Christ.”

  “Calm down, she was probably unconscious from the GHB overdose.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down like I’m being some blubbering overemotional female. Let’s put your face through a meat grinder and see how calm you are.”

  “Actually, Miss Melone, I’m telling you to calm down for your own sake. Doctor’s orders.”

  “Dr. Gannon, some people are born brittle with no angst receptors. Call me genetically defective, but I’m an empathetic sponge.”

  “Then I advise you keep yourself well soaked to douse the emotional conflagrations r
ampant in the jobs we have.”

  “Let’s douse the metaphoric repartee. I just left the girl’s parents. They seem to want to keep this whole affair hushed. Is there anything I don’t know that you’re not telling me?”

  “Did you ask your boss? Maybe he knows something neither one of us knows.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, it’s right. I’ve heard he pretty much tries to run this town. Vince Piganno thinks he’s the mayor of Providence even though he lost the election. He’s got his hands in everything.”

  “Yeah, but he draws the line at internal organs. Hey, one more thing. Why was the autopsy report sent to Dean Carlyle at Holton College?”

  “The parents requested the information through him, which they have every right to do. I gave an oral report over the phone and sent the hard copy to you. Did I do something wrong, Miss Melone? Are you going to sue me?”

  “I don’t chase ambulances, so if you didn’t do anything criminal, you’re safe from me.”

  “I’m clean as a whistle, Counselor. I took a course in med school on how to stay out of courtrooms as a defendant, and I got an A-plus.”

  “Remind me to slap a gold star on your cheek next time I see you.”

  I hung up and grabbed Gannon’s report off my desk and walked down the hall to Vince’s office, hoping I could convince the boss to lay off Carlyle and Holton until we had more evidence the college was in any way involved. That we still had no good leads in a brutal murder case was another matter.

  Vince’s door was open. He was sitting at his desk staring into the blue sky outside his window, and he knew it was me without looking.

  “What is it?”

  I took a seat in front of his desk. “We’ve got nothing yet, Vince. The ME thinks the girl was drugged, raped, then cut, died from blood loss and then got thrown in the street already dead. But so far, no likelies—and no criminal connection with the college.”

  Vince snorted, his whole body jerking. “Fucking great.” He looked at me as if he were preparing to throw something.

  “So far I see no criminal liability on Holton’s part, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t hiding things after the fact. It’s a private institution that we can infiltrate only to a point. Is there anything you can think of in this whole scenario that the school could be covering up?”

  Vince zeroed in on the view out his window again, his eyes squinting so tight they were almost closed. “I don’t put it past that school to hide evidence if it’s tending to point back in their direction. If nothing juicy turns up by the end of the week, get Jeff involved. He’s got connections over at that dump.”

  “You mean ‘dumb-as-a-doorknob’ Jeff ? Anyway, what good would that do? Holton isn’t going to give us evidence if it points to one of their own students, no matter how many alumni relatives Jeff has.”

  Vince nodded slowly as his eyes glossed over and his glance swept from me back to his view of South Main Street. “What happened with the girl’s parents?”

  “They quite openly told me they wanted the whole thing hushed up. Their daughter’s privacy is more important to them than finding her killer.”

  Vince stood and ambled over to the window, looking up toward the East Side of Providence where Holton College buildings lay scattered and camouflaged amid private homes. It seemed that every year another property was added to its growing estate.

  “Privacy, huh?” he said. “What do you think they’re hiding?”

  “The girl had drugs and semen in her. I read between the lines of everything they said, and I think the girl had some ongoing drug problems. Maybe they don’t want their names splattered all over the news. It could be that simple.”

  “Drugs. Carlyle’s got something to do with this need for privacy, mark my words.” Vince returned to his desk and plopped himself in his leather chair so hard I could hear the air whoosh out of the cushions. “That shindig tonight at Jeff ’s parents’ house? Carlyle’ll be there.” Vince started idly pushing papers around. “Jeff ’s parents donated a shitload of money to that new library. It’s a social event, so cut out the tough-broad routine with Carlyle. I want you to play sweet and stupid-like—”

  “Geez, this sounds like one of my dates—”

  “—and maybe you let Carlyle think that you and I aren’t quite seeing eye to eye on how to proceed with this case—which shouldn’t be too hard for you since I know you aren’t going to like this idea—”

  I felt a sudden autonomic straightening of my spine. “What is it, Vince?”

  “I want him to think you’re buyable.”

  “As in bribes?”

  Vince took a hefty breath of stale air relieved by a brief coughing fit. “He’s hiding something. He would never have let her parents talk to you unless there’s much more they’re not saying.” Vince, the mentor and counselor now, rose from his desk and took a seat in the chair near me. With a crooked index finger, he motioned me to take the adjoining seat. Then he leaned even closer. “But you got to go slow with Carlyle. He’s gotta think he’s smarter than you, and you’ve got to let him think he’s in control. But let him fight a little to make you go with him. Don’t go easy—”

  “This does sound like one of my dates.”

  He stood and marched back to his desk. “Stop screwing around, Meloni. I’m serious here.”

  “Vince, you have no idea just how much I’m not screwing around. I don’t even want the damn case, so if you’re putting me into your range of fire with Carlyle, I want to know what it is between you two. It can’t just be politics.”

  “I lost the mayoral election because of Carlyle and his fat-moneyed friends on the East Side. That’s it. I swear on my grandkids’ souls.”

  I sank in my chair. “You don’t have any kids, Vince.”

  “Yeah, well, whatever.”

  “And what if Carlyle’s got nothing to hide?”

  “Then you can get your ass back here and we’ll do everything by the book—kosher.”

  “You mean like legally? Like actually waiting for the cops to investigate and find someone for us to prosecute?”

  My eyes scanned the ceiling. Maybe I was signaling Vince that I thought he was way off with his plan. Or maybe I was looking for an air vent from which to escape his latest lunacy.

  “Don’t you roll those eyes at me!”

  I squirmed in my chair. “Aw, Vince, we could get in big trouble for this. I could be disbarred for attempted bribe taking. Or more precisely, extortion.”

  “No sweat, Meloni. I’m the one who’d be prosecuting you.”

  “Right, yeah . . .”

  “So you take Carlyle aside. It’s your word against his what the conversation was about. And remember, you make Carlyle think you’ve got the authority to do what he needs done. He’s got to think he’s dealing with a major player over here.”

  “Promote me to deputy AG. That would give me the power.”

  “Jeff ’s got it. You know that.”

  “Yup. And how much goes in your political contributions pot when you make Jeff deputy AG without even passing Go?”

  As Vince was ignoring my last question, a thought rolled through his brain like a rogue wave. “But I tell you what,” he said. “If you pull this off, maybe I’ll work on getting you a raise.”

  “Can I have that in writing?”

  “No.”

  “You know I’ll have to suck up to Jeff to get invited tonight. Socially he and I aren’t even on speaking terms. He’s a brainless octopus.”

  “Well, start talking pretty to him. And it serves you right. Next time you decide to date someone, make sure he’s worth more than the paper his Dun and Bradstreet’s printed on.”

  “I’ll have to tell him about getting to Carlyle tonight.”

  “Tell Jeff as little as possible. This is between you and me, babe, like that Sonny and Cher song goes.”

  “It’s ‘I Got You Babe.’ ”

  “What-the-fuck-ever.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN
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  Singing the Blues

  JEFF KENDALL HERALDED FROM what most people would consider the right side of the tracks. Schooled at Holton, that small and exclusive college in Providence whose main requirement for admission is social elitism, Jeff completed his “undergraduate work” with a GPA that was in the hole and LSAT numbers that were particularly under par, so upon graduation from Holton he was shipped off to a mediocre law school in Maryland from which he barely graduated. On the other hand, Jeff ’s dad (Geoffrey Senior) was managing partner at Edwards and Tillinghast, Rhode Island’s biggest law firm.

  Actually wooed from his Suffolk County DA job by the Rhode Island AG’s office, Jeff had only recently joined us as an assistant prosecutor on his way to deputy AG. His “interview” for the AAG position was held at the Capital Grille Steakhouse in downtown Providence, and several two-and-a-half-pound baked stuffed lobsters later, Jeff was a special assistant attorney general. The appointment and celebration followed the same evening, with Bollinger Special Cuvée and a tart made from local Little Compton gooseberries.

  With country-club good looks, molting-soft blue eyes, sandy blond hair always a bit messy, and a face that smiled even at rest, Jeff ’s ladder of success seemed to have fewer steps than other mortals’. Also, Jeff was a regular stitch, to the point where you found yourself laughing at his burps.

  And I fell for the pasteboard prince. In a serious lapse of self-respect, I was flattered into thinking I was special. Yes, I was actually so busy wondering what he saw in me that I forgot to ask myself exactly what it was that I saw in him.

  But after a few sterile dates and one not-so-pristine all-nighter (after being blinded by too much wine), I woke up to the punch line of Jeff ’s jokes and dumped him. The bloke thought I was kidding at first. Who was I to break up with him? He thought I was playing hard to get. Suffice it to say, I was dead serious. But Jeff was so cocky he refused to accept being rejected and preferred to assume that, eight weeks later, this fatuous date of ours at his parents’ house that evening was the real thing. No matter how much I tried to convince him that I was just doing my job, per Vince’s orders, Jeff still thought I had changed my mind and was trying to win him back. I may be gullible when it comes to men, but I try to limit myself to one blunder per man: Jeff Kendall and I were history.