False Witness

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  His information was inaccurate. Sanderalee’s own vital signs were strong; she was holding her own with nothing more than dextrose, vitamins and some anticoagulants. Deep deep down inside the coma, she was beginning to stir.

  I had nearly a dozen of my people assigned exclusively to the investigation, working with Police Department detectives. I glanced over the growing stack of reports: nothing new, nothing I didn’t already know.

  I left a message with the office secretary where I could be reached. The telephone number was Sanderalee Dawson’s. I figured it was time for me to revisit the apartment at Holcroft Hall under quieter, more orderly circumstances.

  CHAPTER 10

  I’VE NEVER HAD ANY really great quarrel with the New York City subway system. It is a relatively convenient, relatively inexpensive method of transportation. I’ve never been mugged, pushed to the tracks nor witnessed anything more violent than a lot of shoving and pushing.

  However, I did feel the slow building sense of anger and frustration as I surveyed the filthy violence implied by the formless spray-paint graffiti. It had been called “people’s art” a few years ago, by a well-known writer who should have known better. To me it is space filled with the uncontrolled anger and contempt of a generation of destroyers.

  The burst of whirling wind at Columbus Circle felt good. A little dusty, a little grimy, a little bit of biting cold air, a little sting to the eyes, but the sky was clear blue at four-thirty of an early March afternoon and any day with an unpolluted sky can’t be all bad.

  It looked to me as if some dealers were settled onto the benches at the entrance to Central Park, but that was an educated guess. They might just have been jumpy guys bursting with energy and that was why they kept turning around, looking behind them, “shaking hands” a lot with casual passersby in quick encounters. If you got close enough, you’d probably hear the chant: Waddaya want? grass? coke? Colombian-Jamaican-Hawaiian, name it you got it. Only the best, man, after all, I gotta be back here tomorrow. I wouldn’t screw ya, right?

  A few old ladies in layers of clothing set their bulging shopping bags on the ground and scattered dried corn for the dirty pigeons.

  Across from the wide sweep of Columbus Circle, Central Park South offers another world entirely: expensive hotels with wide-windowed restaurants on the second floor to offer a marvelous park view; towering apartment houses whose tenants use chauffeured limousines the way most people use buses.

  I pulled my coat collar up against the blast of wind and began regretting having taken such a less than direct route to Holcroft Hall. I knew I was trying to stall; that I was not terribly anxious to close myself up in Sanderalee Dawson’s apartment. Instead I walked over to Fifth Avenue; the wind was down, the sky was streaked with long orange clouds and directly ahead of me were the gleaming windows of F.A.O. Schwarz, practically a landmark on 58th Street. There were more adults than children looking into the window at the fantastic display of stuffed animals. I looked through the jungle of lions and leopards and monkeys and camels and seals and there he was: a six-foot giraffe with long black lashes and bright green glass eyes and a coy but knowing smile. There was something about him that was so appealing; so ridiculous; so expensive. Maybe for my fortieth birthday. Maybe upon my election as District Attorney. Bought secretly of course, in the dead of night. I stood there, wondering how I would get him home.

  Then I turned down Fifth Avenue and right at 57th Street. I was walking in a huge circle. Across Sixth Avenue, to Seventh Avenue, another right turn, quick glance at the art gallery posters, past Carnegie Hall, continuing uptown to Holcroft Hall at Seventh Avenue and 58th Street. A direct route from the subway station would have taken about three minutes. But I was in no particular hurry.

  Holcroft Hall is one of those dark gray historic buildings that most New Yorkers have never even heard about, even those who work in office buildings directly across the street. It has become so gray, so darkly set into its location as to be almost invisible. It is a fifteen-story Gothic monstrosity built in the early 1920s. Beneath the black filth and years of city grime is a marvelous storybook facade consisting of gargoyles with protruding eyes and evil pointed tongues, cherubs with slightly wicked expressions, warped angels and knights, and swords crossed over shields with an occasional Latin motto thrown in. The building swarms with devils and dragons and suns and moons and scaly, slimy, crawly things with sleepy faces and innocent expressions. When your eyes grow keen enough to trace out the various forms, the building seems to pulse with strangely suggestive, mildly sexual activity. Or maybe not. There is nothing clearly defined.

  Mr. Timothy Doyle, when he stopped by the office to sign his finalized statement, had told me what to look for, as if confiding a secret that he wouldn’t tell to many others. It is a special building, he said, and we keep quiet about it.

  It is luxurious by the standards of the twenties, with high ceilings, large rooms; constructed by a group of multimillionaires who wanted the convenience of a place in the city instead of returning to their mansions in Darien or Kings Point. It was not for corporate use, but for the pleasure of a chosen group. Originally, each of the fourteen owners—the first-floor lobby area was jointly owned—purchased an entire floor of the building.

  With changes in the economy, with the rise and fall of private, corporate and individual fortunes, with wars and conflicts, with different lifestyles, with changes in the social structure, there were many changes within the interior of Holcroft Hall, though the outer facade remained untouched. The huge apartments were redesigned, subdivided; kitchens added, bathrooms, entrance doors. The smaller apartments were then sold quietly, carefully and for a great deal of money.

  There was still one apartment—one entire floor, the seventh—that was mysteriously maintained intact. All fourteen rooms, plus servants’ quarters, kept clean and polished and modernized with new facilities through the years, television and stereo systems, occasional additions or replacement of furniture, but untouched otherwise. Even Timothy Doyle was vague about—or at least unwilling to discuss—the owners. Periodically the apartment was occupied, but nothing more could be learned about the owners. Except that the apartment was definitely vacant on the night of Tuesday, March 6, 1979, when the terrible attack on Sanderalee Dawson was taking place directly overhead.

  The arrangement of apartments was different on each floor. There were some floors with just two large apartments: eight rooms and six; a more subdivided floor of smaller apartments: a studio with kitchen and bathroom; a two-bedroom and living room; each different, each designed by different owners. Sanderalee Dawson had bought her large five-room apartment about two years ago. She had the smaller of the two bedrooms turned into the luxurious bathroom Jim Barrow had shown me when I was first in the apartment. Across the hall from her was a six-room apartment whose walls did not touch hers at any location. To the back of her apartment was a three-room apartment, bedroom wall to Sanderalee’s bedroom wall. The owners, a movie star and his film-producer wife, were in Europe. Occasionally they gave their key to their manager, but he had been on the West Coast since January.

  The occupants of the six-room apartment were staying at their condominium in Florida.

  Sanderalee Dawson had come home to her luxury apartment, set dead in the center of nearly total isolation. Directly overhead were portions of two smaller apartments. The extremely gifted pianist daughter of a well-known industrialist had sublet one of them from a well-known conductor, who was on tour and who occasionally made arrangements for the convenience of students or teachers at nearby Carnegie Hall. The young woman had been at home, asleep in her bedroom, which nowhere made contact with Sanderalee’s apartment. The occupant of the other apartment was a writer, off on tour with his latest bestseller. The pianist next door had a key to his apartment and twice weekly checked on his plants.

  The doorman on duty now, not as warm and intelligent as Timothy Doyle, was in a hurry to get back downstairs to continue his conversation with the det
ective still assigned to safeguard the apartment.

  “He’s been tellin’ me things like you wouldn’t believe about some a them sex crimes. Beggin’ your pardon, miss. But I guess you wouldn’t be shocked, seein’ as how you’re a policewoman yourself sort of, aren’t you?”

  I thanked him, but no thanks, to his offer to “stand guard” outside. I assured him I wasn’t frightened and that I would be fine.

  Not true. I was frightened. The minute I stepped into the dark brown entrance hall, leaned my back on the door, heard the doorman’s heavy footsteps and the clanky old elevator leave the floor, I felt a stomach-deep fear. I took two deep breaths and surveyed the small room. Actually, the foyer wasn’t as small as I had remembered it. It had been very cluttered that early morning, filled with policemen and technicians and fresh evidence of horrors. It was a well-used space: handsome book shelves reached from the waist-high narrow cabinets up to the ceiling. Filled mostly with books: a serious book-place, not for odds and ends with an occasional book or two placed just so.

  Sanderalee Dawson was a reader. Some of the classics were well handled. There was a collection of poetry: hardcover college text-book-type; some modern paperbacks. There was a system to the arrangement and I began to trace it around the three sides of the room: history—ancient, European, American; wars—ancient and modern; English novels—eighteenth and nineteenth century. A section of photography books. Decorating guides; piles of expensive decorator magazines. Large collection of bestsellers, fiction and nonfiction. Shelf of screenplays, softbound shooting scripts. An album of Polaroid snapshots. I would look at that later.

  I had flicked on the master light switch in the foyer and flooded the entire apartment with light: from table lamps, from recessed spots, overheads, track lights.

  Sanderalee’s housekeeper had been given the go-ahead yesterday to hire a staff of heavy-duty cleaning men. They had come and rubbed and scrubbed and shampooed and bleached and sanitized everything in the place. Walls had been scrubbed clean; furniture looked pretty good, unless you looked very carefully, unless you were aware of where the blood had accumulated. They had done a good job, but my guess was that Sanderalee, should she one day come back to this place, would throw everything out and get herself a decorator.

  I think, if I were Sanderalee, and survived, I would walk away from this place and start all over again. Far away.

  Because it lingered in the room: in the very air of the room, in the spaces of the room. I felt the movement of what had happened, visualized it as it had raged from one room to the other, across the lush mushroom-colored carpeting, against the walls, crashing into the furniture, overturning tables, lamps. Had she grabbed at a pillow, anything, to try to fend him off? Yes, the small statue of the unicorn. The six-inch silver unicorn with the blood-stained horn. Apparently, she made a stabbing, puncturing wound somewhere on her assailant. We weren’t sure: the blood type—B positive—was the same as Sanderalee’s blood type. Which was a dirty trick on us. Ten percent of the people in the world have B positive; Sanderalee and her attacker fell into that category. As did I, her astrological twin.

  Had that maddened him further, that poor defensive jab, that small needle of a unicorn horn? Unicorns are magical, mythical creatures, supposed to bring wonderful good things. Had that stab, jab, pushed the lunatic into further madness: into grabbing the cleaver in the kitchen?

  The kitchen looked like something in a science fiction movie: stark, severe, sterile. Hospital-clean; functional; cold white ceramic brick floor, white walls, stainless steel equipment. No touch of color or warmth. That was why the blood had seemed so shocking: the richness of color splashed all over this icy white room. Had this been some kind of childhood dream, this spartan hard-edged room?

  I went to Sanderalee’s bedroom, the only room besides the foyer that contained any warmth, any trace of personality. He hadn’t taken her into the bedroom. He had come alone, through this room, into that crazy Hollywood bathroom, to wash his hands, to rinse off her blood.

  There was the collection of dolls, blank gleaming little eyes, rigid little arms and stiff little fingers, expensive little outfits. The stuffed toys weren’t expensive; they looked old and loved, something from the past. I fingered a collection of perfume bottles on the glass-topped dresser, then leaned closer and saw the collection of photographs that had been slid under the glass. I turned on the dresser lamp; these were old photographs. Elderly people, small children, blurry faces; there was one picture of a tall lanky girl, rigid and tense, thin arms folded, elbows sharp, eyes staring straight ahead. Sanderalee at age ten? twelve? There she was again, this time half-hidden by other children, her hands resting on the shoulders of an old woman seated on a chair. Nothing you could really see, all so out of focus, vague. Snapshots of the past. I wondered what kind of child she had been. There was a certain, discernible sadness.

  I went back into the living room and stood quietly, not moving, trying to absorb the silence, to penetrate the silence, to get through the silence to the agonized cry that must have filled this room. I wanted to remember this room ... and the kitchen. I wanted to memorize the feeling of that kitchen: the absolute coldness and isolation in which he had left her.

  So that I could force a jury into this place: to experience what she had felt in this apartment. To experience, through my presence, the action of this crime.

  When the phone rang, I nearly jumped out of my shoes. It was a loud, startling sound: unexpected. A screaming sound.

  “Jacobi here.”

  “Jones here. Listen, can you borrow some running clothes from your little elf of a neighbor? There’s an interesting nightspot I want you to case with me tonight.”

  “Running clothes for a nightspot? What is this, Bobby Jones, one of your more exotic nights on the town?”

  “Could be. Stick with me, Chief, and see the world.”

  “What time?”

  “Pick you up your place at nine. Then later, we’ll double back to your place. It’s Friday, boss. Tomorrow is a lazy day ... yes?”

  “We’ll see what tomorrow is after tonight.”

  I turned off all the lights with the master control switch in the foyer.

  I don’t know why, but I stood in the absolute silence of that soundproofed pitch-dark room and, very softly, called her name.

  “Sanderalee.”

  Later, I learned that at approximately that moment, she said her first audible words. They were “Help me.”

  Part Two

  THE ACCUSATION

  CHAPTER 11

  WE WERE DRESSED IN identical dark blue jogging suits: a matched set of health nuts. Bobby Jones had even managed to borrow a pair of authentic running shoes. He shook his head at my beat-up old sneakers. As soon as we got out of the cab, he began running in place, stretching and moving his muscular body with shrugs and feel-good stretches. He looked sensational and I wanted to get back in the cab and take him home.

  But I went along with him without protesting because of the gift he had brought me: an oversized, softcover book of photographs of Luciano Pavarotti in rehearsal. The one hundred fifty pages explored the singer’s charm, pain, delight, exhaustion, playfulness, sensitivity, robustness, boyishness, sex appeal. Everything was captured and recorded but the glorious voice: mood after mood probed, revealed. The total concentration, the exhilaration, the encompassing exuberance of that wide-open, arm-flung, handkerchief-clutching smile after the achievement of a difficult aria: it was all there. The photographer was Alan Greco—he of the Sanderalee series. Bobby Jones promised I would return home with an autograph from the photographer, who had also done the sensitive and revealing narration for this book.

  The place was called the Jog-gon-Inn. Very cute. Among the things in this world I hate is cute. I admit, it was a fairly original setup, which is difficult to come up with in New York City. It was divided into two separate and distinct places. The front room was a health bar, featuring a long help-yourself counter of salads and nut dishes and y
ogurts and cheeses. There were little hand-printed notes to recommend and describe some of the stranger offerings. All drinks were mineral water or fruit or vegetable juices. Everything was calorie-counted, healthy, good for you. The atmosphere was clean, fresh; the two chefs looked like Ivory soap commercials as they took orders for wonderful, natural, quick-cooked surprises. Table service was provided by young, rosy-cheeked kids with sparkling eyes and trim bodies. No Smoking signs were everywhere and the murals were of rolling, clear, unpolluted hills and blue skies. To me, the customers looked thin, haggard, pinched, angry, sweaty, resentful and tired as they gulped down vitamin pills with swallows of juice and compared mileage with other runners. They wore unmatched sweaty outfits that looked like they’d been stolen from a chain gang. They looked nervous, tense and ready to run like hell at the first challenge.

  At the back of the room was an archway leading to the second half of the establishment. You had to push aside millions of crystal-clear strung beads that dangled from the arch and then you found yourself in a fairly typical Third Avenue–Upper Sixties place. Except that this was located on 56th Street just west of Broadway. It was smaller than the first room, darker, smoky, filled with bright young men and women dressed in designer health-nut outfits. Fashionable colors, more stylish, no sweatsuit types back here. This was a fun place, a let’s pretend we’re into the whole running-jogging health thing place. At least let’s dress up to show we’re wise to what’s happening. People were drinking from heavy mugs of beer or slender stemmed wine glasses. They were chomping into thick, bloody hamburgers, with a side of French. They were smoking straight cigarettes or pot or hash. They were more relaxed, more comfortable and probably a lot more healthy than the occupants of the first section. At least, that was my opinion.