Everyone I saw in the hall wore regulation button-down and flannel and had a gun riding a belt holster. I felt conspicuously civilian.
Mike said, with a gleam in his eye, “Elizabeth Ramsdale is on her way up.”
“Her way up from where?”
“Guest registration. I want to talk to her before they book her.”
“I want to be there,” I said.
Mike took my arm. “I think you’ve earned that privilege. Just stand at the back and look menacing. For some reason, some women are more intimidated by another woman than by a man. Just go along with everything I say and don’t ever look surprised. And for God’s sake don’t ever contradict me. Got it?”
“Got it.” I felt suddenly energized.
We were waiting in an interrogation room when Elizabeth was led in, handcuffed, by a pair of uniformed women officers.
After a night in the Cabo jail, followed by an escorted flight north, Elizabeth was a bit mussed, though her expensive haircut was money well spent, and she had enough tan that she didn’t need makeup. For a monster, she was very nice-looking, and smaller, more slender than I had expected. There was something about her that put me off, as if the exquisite frame beneath her face had been formed out of stainless steel instead of ordinary bone. She was slender inside a blue jail-issue jumper. She had turned up the collar, rolled the cuffs, pushed up the sleeves. With her haughty carriage, she could easily have passed among the yacht-club set. Except maybe for the handcuffs.
Mike pulled out a chair for her.
“I’m Detective Flint, Mrs. Ramsdale. We spoke night before last. And this is MacGowen. Have a seat.”
He left the cuffs on her.
I leaned against the wall, maybe three feet to her side, with my arms crossed, doing my best woman-officer impression. Mike stood, too, facing Elizabeth across the table. First thing, Mike dropped the doctored photograph of Ricco Zambotti onto the table in front of her. I watched her face fade about two days’ worth of tan when she saw it. She didn’t say anything.
“Coast Guard flew in Mr. Zambotti last night, Mrs. Ramsdale.”
“Did you say flew him in? Where’s my boat?”
“Afraid you have to write off the boat.” Mike shook his head, sympathetic. “Ricco’s quite a talker when he gets going. You want to hear about it?”
“I want my attorney.”
“Sure thing.” Next to Ricco’s picture, Mike laid down the enhanced image Guido had made of George. Elizabeth’s big eyes grew wider. She drew her full bottom lip between her teeth and bit it.
“You should be more careful about the friends and enemies you make, Mrs. Ramsdale,” he said, his voice friendly. He was being Uncle Ned out on the front porch. “You hooked yourself up with some real conversational folks. Now, I personally cannot see how one little bitty woman could have pushed around two great big men. So, I thought maybe you would like a chance to make your own statement. You know, correct any errors or false impressions they may have given.”
“I want my lawyer,” she said.
“No problem,” he said. “Let’s just clear up a few details while we’re here. The big picture is obvious enough, it’s just that I don’t have a real good handle on who did what and when they did it. Goes around and around in my mind, stuck. That ever happen to you? You get something stuck in your head? I do, all the time. This ditty is stuck in there right now, going round and round:
“About the Shark, the phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
“That’s Melville,” he said. “Herman Melville. You ever have to memorize little poems like that in school? Boy, I did. Every time I try to sort out this case, I start thinking about that poem. In a way, I guess it is like a bunch of fish swimming around down there. Only, you can’t tell one fish from the other. Except for the shark. Even that is pretty murky, Mrs. Ramsdale. Maybe you can help me out. The waters are so stirred up, I can’t tell for sure which one of you is the shark.”
Elizabeth looked away from him, saw me, dropped her eyes. She said, “I won’t talk to you.”
“That’s fine,” he said, smiling. “Long as you don’t mind listening. Too bad you’re all alone, because the way I read it, the three of you are going to take the fall together. What you need to start worrying about is special circumstances. We have a multiple-murder situation here. Add to that a couple of counts of conspiracy, assault with intent, child-selling, abuse, and neglect. I could go on for a while, but you know what went down. In the end, it adds up to three lifetime passes with a mileage bonus upgrade for seats on death row.”
Elizabeth had been biting that big lip during Mike’s entire speech. I saw blood around the small, even teeth. She didn’t say anything, and Mike went on:
“The state hasn’t executed a woman for a lot of years.” He was slipping away from Uncle Ned. “But the environment is getting ripe for it. Seems to me the murder of an innocent little girl by her stepmother might be just the case the public and the courts decide to jump on.
“There are a lot of ways this could go down, Mrs. Ramsdale. Make it easy on yourself, give the state a hand. Usually, the DA wants to fry the triggerman. Or, in this case, the slasher. My take on this is that you’re the shark and the other two danced attendance. But they did the dirty deeds, not you. So do yourself a favor. Tell me a story.”
“I want my attorney,” she said.
“Absolutely.” Mike smiled. “Soon as we get you booked. Give me a few more minutes and I’ll have you taken right back downstairs.” Mike leafed through the file that had come up with Elizabeth. “Did you have your strip search? I don’t see that here.”
She hissed through clenched jaws, “Yes. I did.”
“I don’t see the paperwork.” He closed the file and smiled more. “Not a big thing. We can do it again.”
I was biting my tongue. One more minute and I was going to go out and call her an attorney. I thought Mike was skating near the edge.
“Ricco and George,” Mike said. “Hard to keep prisoners segregated downstairs. I hate it when they get together, work out their stories. Sure plays hell, especially if they decide to scapegoat a third person. The story we’re getting goes something like this. Your husband was leaving you. With the prenuptial agreement you signed, you’d be back waiting tables. Then, lucky you, you found him with his throat cut. You sank him in the front yard so no one would find him until you had drained the Ramsdale assets. The delay pissed off George. He wanted Randy declared dead so he could reclaim his little girl and cash in on Randy’s estate — that was all part of his original deal with Randy when he handed over his kid. She was his heir. Did you know Hillary’s identity, Mrs. Ramsdale?”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Okay. This is how I read it. You need the kid for a while longer. You do everything you can to scare the shit out of her so she’ll stay away from George. You harass her night and day, tell her George wants to steal her back. This makes some sense to her, because she can remember being snatched — she was four — and she can remember George helping Randy take her. You use her nightmares, you give her some new ones. You go too far, though, because after a while she decides she’s safer living on the streets than living with you. What did you do to her, Elizabeth? Did you tell her about Randy? Did you tell her his body was out in front of the house? Did you take her swimming and show her?”
Blood trickled from her lip, and she wiped it with the back of her hand. Looking down at the red smear, she said, “I want my attorney.”
“Uh huh. You were okay as long as Hillary stayed away. To make sure she didn’t come back at some inconvenient moment, you located her and canceled her return ticket for good. Just two weeks before Mother’s Day. That ever occur to you, Mother’s Day?”
She gave Mike a defiant glare. “I won’t say anything.”
“You don’t have to.” Mike kicked the chair next to h
er, making both of us jump. “We’ll just let Ricco and George tell it their way, Elizabeth, if that’s what you want.”
“Ricco won’t say anything.” She looked Mike right in the eye. “He loves me.”
“He loves you? Is that why he left you in a Mexican jail? His best shot is to make a deal, go state’s evidence and testify against you. If he has any brains, that’s what he’ll do.”
“You’re trying to scare me.”
Like a blackjack dealer, Mike laid down another card, the computer-enhanced picture of the driver of the Corvette. When Elizabeth saw the grotesque image of Richard Nixon, she began to have some trouble with regular breathing.
Mike leaned over the table, putting his face near hers. “You forgot to cover your hands that night, Elizabeth. You forgot to vacuum loose hair out of the mask when you took it off, wash out the traces of sweat and saliva. That was dumb. Really dumb. But you know where you really messed up?”
“Yes,” she said, snapping her head up to confront Mike. “I know where I messed up.” Angrily she swept away the pictures of Ricco and George, making a racket with her handcuffs: “I learned a long time ago that if you want something done right you’ve got to do it yourself. No matter how dirty it is. And that’s all I have to say.”
“If that’s the way you want it.” Mike pulled out a fourth picture, a group shot of junior-high-aged kids mugging for the camera. I recognized them, the journalism class at Hillary’s school. Mike had torn a page from her yearbook. The paper was a bit wrinkled from being in salt water, but Hillary’s happy face was absolutely clear in the front row center.
Mike put the page on the table in front of Elizabeth. “The individual I sincerely want to talk to is Hillary. Of course, that’s impossible. But I really would like to hear what she has to say. She looks like one great kid.”
Elizabeth suddenly lost all of her starch, and nearly collapsed from her chair.
Mike, with complete emotional detachment, grabbed Elizabeth and righted her. When she had herself in control again, he backed away from her. He stood shoulder to shoulder with me. With arms crossed, back against the wall, dramatically sad-faced, he said again, “One great kid.”
“Please,” she begged, “let me go lie down somewhere.”
Mike frowned. “What did Hillary say to Ricco before he cut her? Think she asked him to let go of her? Think she told him he was hurting her? Think she wanted to go lie down somewhere?”
Each question caught her like a blow to the face. I wished I could deliver the real thing to her. No, I wished Leslie Metrano had five minutes alone with her. I tossed off any notion of calling her attorney for her. As if reading my thoughts, she said, “I want my attorney.”
“Sure thing,” Mike said. But he didn’t move.
She took a moment’s time out for hard thinking. Then she turned her lovely eyes on Mike, looking up at him through the curly lashes. “You have to believe me. I didn’t intend for the child to get hurt.”
Mike shook his head. “You did some detective work, or maybe she called you. You found where she was cooping on the street and you sent Ricco to get her.”
“He was only supposed to pick her up,” Elizabeth insisted. “I’m telling you the truth. We were going to take her to Mexico with us, put her in a boarding school there for a while.”
“Doesn’t work, Mrs. Ramsdale,” Mike said. “If all he wanted was to pick her up, why did Ricco take a razor with him? You can’t tell me he had to protect himself. She only weighed ninety pounds. What I think is this. He cut her on the street to make it look like a hooker-client thing, hoping no one would pay much attention to it. But just for insurance, he made the razor cut look a lot like the one across Randy’s jugular. Then if George started to get froggy, you could use that little detail to settle him down. The way I put it together, George was a bigger problem for you than the cops. What were your plans for him? Guess I should ask, when were you planning to do him?”
Elizabeth reached up to fluff her hair, and the chain between the cuffs banged her chin. She rubbed the spot as she looked from me to Mike.
“The question is,” she said, “when was George planning to kill me?”
“MacGowen,” Mike said, nudging my shoulder. “You have an answer for that question?”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “As soon as you showed up at your house. Metrano has been lying in wait for you ever since you told him his daughter was dead. Now that you’re in custody, guess he’s missed his shot.”
“He hasn’t missed anything,” Mike said. “He’s taking his shot right now. He’s spilling his guts, Elizabeth. He finally got smart. He’s going to let the state do his dirty work for him.”
Elizabeth was more scared than she let on. The armpits of the jumpsuit were sweated through. I gave her credit for hanging tough, though. When Mike asked if she had anything to say, she said:
“Yes. Fuck you.”
“Nice way to talk,” Mike said.
“I want my attorney,” she said.
“You got it.” Mike stepped out into the hall and summoned the uniformed officers to come fetch Elizabeth. I saw disappointment in the faces of a couple of the detectives who had been keeping the young female officers entertained. They were both lively, hard-bodied types, apparently holding their own in the mandatory war-story swap.
I followed Elizabeth as far as the door.
“Nice meeting you,” I said to her back.
She turned and glared at me. “Fuck you, too.”
Mike laughed.
“Be careful, Flint,” I said when we were alone. “I may beef you with the ACLU. I am sure that interrogation was not within guidelines.”
“Fuck the ACLU,” he said, shrugging.
“I pay dues to the ACLU.”
He smiled his wry smile. “Figures.”
“She’s quite a babe, isn’t she?” I said as we walked out toward the elevators. “You have to admit, she’s strong on determination.”
“Cold bitch. The woman knows what she wants and she’s going to get it, no matter what the cost is to her or anyone else. Feels no guilt — complete sociopath. A lot of career criminals are like that. And politicians.”
“Will she ever talk?” I asked.
“She just did,” he exploded. “She told us she’s going to let Ricco take the fall for killing Hillary. For the rest, did she deny anything? You saw her. Was any of this new information to her? No way. She told us plenty.”
We stepped into the elevator.
“Where did you find the Nixon mask?” I asked.
“Did I say we’d found the mask?”
“Pictures of her hands?”
He just grinned.
In retaliation, I took a handful of his rear end just as the doors opened onto the lobby full of police. “You’re such a good liar.”
“When I need to be,” he said, grabbing my hand away. “The important thing is to keep her off guard for a while. As soon as her attorney shows up, she’s going to find out what we do and don’t have, mainly, Ricco and George. Tell you what, though — I’d sure like to be there when she finds out she’s going to take the dive all by herself. Our shark swims alone this time.”
“Herman Melville,” I laughed. “Give me a break. Where did that come from?”
“From you,” he said. “You said you like Melville.”
We walked outside into the hazy sunshine. I squinted against the glare as I looked out across the patchy brown lawn in front of Parker Center. Little family groups, some with picnics and toys to occupy the legions of tiny children, clustered here and there wearing the same solemn faces you see in hospital waiting rooms. A young Latino was passing out bright blue fliers for the bail bondsman down the street. I saw the edges of the fliers sticking out of several of the picnic bags and a couple of shirt pockets.
I took Mike’s arm. “What you laid out for Elizabeth — except for the obvious bullshit — is the way it happened, isn’t it?”
“Pretty much.”
“
I’m glad they self-destructed, but I still can’t comprehend the terror they must have put Hillary through. And I don’t mean the month Elizabeth had her alone. From the time George gave her up, I think she was doomed. I try to imagine what it must have been like for her. As you said, Mike, she was four and a half when they took her away from her mother. She would remember her family. In the beginning, she would have cried for them. Remember what Mrs. Sinclair said? George came and settled Amy down after she was supposed to be Hillary because she was so upset. What could he have told her? ‘Mom and I don’t want you anymore’? ‘Mom is dead’? What?”
“Unless Mrs. Sinclair has more to tell us, we’ll never know,”
Mike sighed. The bright sunlight was unkind to his fatigued face.
I turned away from the sun and started walking. “The big crime was forcing the child to abandon not only her family, but herself. They gave her new parents, changed her hair, her name, gave her a dimple. Even changed her birthday. Can a child survive that sort of uprooting intact?”
“Maybe.” Mike turned up his palms. “Depends on the kid, I guess. And how they treated her. After a while, she probably settled in okay.”
“Everyone said she was the kind of kid who was always trying to please. So maybe she seemed settled in, but she had nightmares. Or else she thought her memories of Amy were bad dreams. Whatever, she was afraid of those pictures in her mind, the pictures of George.” We stopped at the corner, at the edge of a crowd waiting for the pedestrian light to change. “She could never feel really safe. How could she ever be sure that someone wouldn’t snatch her away again, make her start all over as someone new? And the household itself was hardly settled. Hanna died and left her. After Hanna, there were two stepmothers, both disasters. Old Randy was a constant, but from what I hear, he was never very tightly wrapped. In the end, even he disappeared.”
The light changed and walkers surged around us to get into the crosswalk. The light had turned red again before I thought to move. I pushed the walk button again.
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