Victims

by Collin Wilcox

  Shots …

  Four shots? Three shots?

  Sitting at the interrogation table, dressed in an orange jump suit, Kramer was staring hard into my eyes, as if to divine my thoughts through sheer force of will. I saw him lick at his lips, then slowly shake his head.

  “Marie couldn’t have done it,” he said finally. “She’s no killer. No murderer.”

  “She could’ve done it accidentally,” I said. “She could’ve been drunk. Confused. She knew you wanted to steal John. You say you staked out her house, Friday. She could’ve followed you—when you were following Guest and John. She could’ve guessed what you intended to do. She could’ve gone home, gotten the gun, returned to Guest’s house. She could’ve followed you inside Guest’s house. You and John left by the side door. She could’ve gone in through the garage, the same way you went in. She could’ve—”

  “No. It—it’s not in Marie, to kill someone. Don’t you understand that? She—she’s self-destructive, God knows. But she wouldn’t—”

  “I’m not saying she did it on purpose, any more than we said you did it on purpose, by premeditation. She saw someone. It was dark. Quade could’ve fired first. She could have—”

  “Marie can’t shoot a gun. I tried to teach her, once. She’s terrified of guns.”

  “She could also be terrified of losing her son.”

  Slowly, ruefully, he shook his head. For a moment he sat dejected, shoulders slumped, looking down at the table in front of him. Two and a half days in jail had changed him. His eyes were puffy. His mouth sometimes moved at random, betraying an uncertainty, a confusion—a fearfulness. His hands on the table were half clenched, as if the strength had gone out of them. He was clean-shaven, but his expensively barbered brown hair was only finger combed.

  “I don’t know whether she’s terrified of losing John,” he finally said. “I don’t think she knows. She’s terrified of life, that’s all. Terrified of living.”

  Friedman leaned forward, looking closely into the other man’s face. As always, Friedman’s expression was unreadable. But he seemed to be trying to see deeply into Kramer’s innermost thoughts. Suddenly it occurred to me that both Kramer and Friedman were Jews. Then it occurred to me that, in the line of duty, we didn’t encounter many Jews.

  “You’ve told us about your problems with Alexander Guest,” Friedman said. “Tell us how you feel about your ex wife. Tell us how she feels about you.”

  Slowly, Kramer raised his head. Behind his designer rimless glasses, his dark eyes were hollow, haggard. I tried to imagine him dressed as we’d first seen him, in his beautifully tailored sports jacket and slacks, his hundred-dollar shirt. Would he still look the same, act the same? Or had his days in jail changed him, permanently? I’d seen it happen before, many times. When the cell door closes, and the key turns in the lock, the soul begins to shrivel.

  “I never hated Marie,” he said. “Never. And I don’t think she ever hated me. She was too—too exhausted to hate me, too emotionally drained. She was like that when I married her. She’d just gotten out of a bad marriage. Her husband married her for her money. And he got it, too—got a lot of it. She was almost thirty years old, when I met her. She’d been married for five years, and the guy had really done a number on her. God knows, her father had started the job. But her husband—Beresford—finished it, no question. All her life, people have been mistreating Marie. Her mother, her father. Her husband. Everyone.”

  “You, too?” Friedman asked.

  Kramer drew a deep, ragged breath. He sat motionless for a moment, staring down at his helpless-looking hands. Finally he said, “Yeah, me, too. Definitely, me, too.”

  “Had she started to drink, when you met her?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. Not as much as she drinks now. But she was drinking, no question.”

  “Did you have some good years?” Friedman asked quietly. “When you first got married?”

  Slowly, head still bowed, with infinite reluctance, he said, “No, we didn’t have any good years. She was pregnant when we got married. It was a bad pregnancy—she spent a lot of time in bed. And then after John was born, when the postpartum psychosis started, she really started to come apart, really started to drink. And she’s never stopped. Not really. It’s been six years, and she hasn’t stopped.”

  “Why’d you get married?” Friedman asked. “It doesn’t sound like a love match. And she could’ve had an abortion, after all.”

  “I suppose,” he answered, “that I married her for her money. For her father’s connections.” He spoke in a low, resigned voice.

  “We have information,” Friedman said, “that indicates you had ties with organized crime, in New York. Is that true?”

  With an obvious effort, he raised his eyes, looking directly at Friedman. A long moment of silence followed. Kramer was visibly collecting himself, calculating how to answer. This was an accusation he understood, an accusation he’d faced before. He was obviously on familiar ground as he said, “My lawyer and my wife are busy talking to private investigators. I agreed to talk to you without them—without my lawyer. That’s because I’m innocent. I was outside the house, on the driveway, when those shots were fired. I’m willing to talk about that. With or without my lawyer, I’m willing to talk about that. But this—” He gestured firmly, denying Friedman. “This is something else. It’s got nothing to do with the Quade murder. Nothing.”

  Friedman let a beat pass. Then, inscrutably, he nodded. “I retract the question,” he said quietly.

  I blinked. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Friedman concede a point—to a suspect, or to anyone else. He held Kramer’s gaze for a moment, then looked at me. It was my cue.

  “I talked to your ex-wife today. And to John, too.”

  Kramer turned in his chair to face me. I saw him draw a deep breath, as if to face the inevitable.

  “And?” His eyes were steady, meeting mine.

  I shrugged. “John corroborates your story. I wasn’t surprised.”

  “Does that mean you don’t believe him?”

  “What I believe doesn’t matter, Kramer. I just investigate. You know that.”

  “You investigate, and you tell the D.A. what you think.”

  I nodded. “Right.”

  “And what’re you thinking, Lieutenant Hastings?”

  “I’m thinking that I’m going back to Telegraph Hill, as soon as we finish here. Your son corroborates your account of your movements, Friday night. That’s a plus, no question—a point in your favor.” I let a beat pass, then said, “Let’s see what your ex-wife says about the gun. Let’s see whether her story squares with yours.”

  FIFTEEN

  MARIE KRAMER FROWNED, then nodded loosely, “I remember now. He used to keep the gun in his bureau—in the sweater drawer. I found it there, once. That was when we were still married.” She sat silently for a moment, watching me with vacant eyes. Then her face twisted into a slack, rueful smile. “I wonder what I was doing, in his bureau? Maybe I was looking for evidence.”

  “Evidence?” I exchanged a quick glance with Canelli, who looked like someone who’d just delivered the groceries, and was waiting to be paid while he sat ill at ease on the edge of a stylish, uncomfortable white leather chair. “What evidence?”

  “You know—” Her expression turned alcoholically owlish. She picked up her cut crystal highball glass, half filled, dark amber. She lifted the glass in a mocking little toast, cocked her head aside to parody a demure drawing room apology for drinking without me, then noisily gulped down half the drink. After five o’clock, apparently, she switched from her coffee cup to a highball glass. “You know,” she repeated, “evidence. Lipstick on the collar. Maybe a rubber or two.” Now she held the glass with both hands in front of her face, looking at me over its rim. Her eyes turned playfully, blearily coquettish. “I wish you’d have a drink with me, Lieutenant. In the line of duty, of course.”

  “Where’s the gun now?” I asked. “Do you k
now?” Despite the fact that the question was of crucial importance, I tried to make it sound casual, offhand. So far, the media hadn’t discovered that the gun had been found at the murder scene. So if Marie Kramer knew it had been found, and tried to account for its presence in the shrubbery bordering her father’s driveway, then she would be admitting to guilty knowledge. Only her father could have told her about the gun. And that connection would be easy to check.

  She shrugged. “The last time I saw it, I think it was in the closet, on the top shelf. I remember that I told Gordon to put it somewhere high, so John couldn’t get it. That was before he left.” She fell silent again, brooding now as she stared down into her drink, still holding the glass with both hands. Finally, speaking in a barely audible voice, she said, “The gun was a kind of a last gesture, I guess. He wasn’t going to be around to protect me, so he left me the goddam gun. I recognized it, at the time. As a gesture, I mean.” She nodded over her highball. “The gun, and John—and a closetful of clothes that had gone out of style, that’s all he left me with.” She smirked wearily. “Me and the clothes, both of us out of style. I used to think about that, whenever I opened his closet, after he’d gone. But, still, I kept them around, his clothes. Long after he’d gone, I kept them around. I remember once I brought a bartender home, and gave him one of Gordon’s sports jackets. But it was a mistake. I thought it’d make me feel better, giving a total stranger his sports jacket. But it didn’t.”

  “It sounds like you missed him,” Canelli ventured. “It sounds like you hated to see him go.”

  Slowly, she turned in her chair to focus on Canelli. Finally she muttered, “He was always good to me. That’s the hell of it, you see. He was good to me, and he was good to John. Gordon wasn’t like he seemed. He always acted—you know—like a hustler. All people saw was his fifty dollar ties and his five hundred dollar suits. But, really, he was just like the rest of us, trying to find someone to love, somewhere. He—” Suddenly she rose to her feet, glass in hand, and walked across the living room to the view window, weaving as she went. At 6:30, the twilight shadows were lengthening on Telegraph Hill, softening the wind-twisted trees and the shrubs and the dramatic outcroppings of raw rock. To the west, the sky was orange and violet as the sun began sinking closer to a cloud bank far offshore.

  In the silence, from the upper floor, I heard the sound of John’s TV. I’d expected, when he met us at the front door and let us in, Bruce Durkin would have warned us not to interrogate John. He hadn’t. He’d simply glowered at us, and said he’d tell Mrs. Kramer we were there. When I told Durkin I wanted to talk to him before we left, he didn’t reply. He simply looked at me with flat, hostile eyes. Bruce Durkin didn’t like cops.

  I got to my feet, gestured for Canelli to remain seated, and walked to the window. I didn’t look at Marie Kramer, I simply stood beside her, looking out toward the orange arc of the Golden Gate Bridge, spectacular against the purple sunset. Some trick of the fading light had touched the bridge with a gentle phosphorescent glow.

  “It’s my own picture postcard,” she said softly. “Thank God. Sometimes I think it’s all I’ve got in the world, this view.”

  “That’s not true,” I answered. “You’ve got John.”

  “I’m afraid,” she said, “that John doesn’t like me very much. John, or anyone else. I can’t think of anyone who likes me very much. Even you. You’re a kind man. I can see that, when you look at me. You see things. But you don’t like me, either.”

  “Mrs. Kramer—” I hesitated, trying to find the words. “I’m doing a job. I’m a policeman, doing a job. And I—”

  “Gordon didn’t kill that man,” she said. “You know he didn’t kill him.”

  “Someone killed him. And I’ve got to find out who. That’s why I’m here. I’ve got to find out who.”

  “You came here to ask about Gordon’s gun. Is that the gun that—?” She let it go unfinished.

  “When was the last time you saw that gun, Mrs. Kramer? When was the last time you handled it?”

  “I’ve already told you. I saw it on the top shelf of Gordon’s closet. Way in the back.”

  “When was that?”

  “Three years ago. When Gordon left.”

  “That’s the last time you saw it.”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “You were starting to ask whether Gordon’s gun—your gun—was the one that killed Charlie Quade. If I were to tell you that, yes, that’s the gun, what would you say?” As I asked the question, I turned toward her, carefully watching her face.

  “Well—” She moved her glass in a bemused arc. “Well, I’d say that someone took the gun. Stole it.”

  “Have you ever had a robbery since your husband left?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, she shook her head. “No.” Her voice was very low, her eyes very still, watching me. Was it fear I saw, crouched in the shadows of those dark, still eyes? Fear for whom? Herself? Or someone else?

  “Besides you, Mrs. Kramer, who knows you have that gun? Think, now. Think very carefully.”

  “Well, there’s—” She broke off, gulped down the last of her drink. Before she dropped it, I took the glass from her listless fingers. “There’s Gordon, of course. And my—my father, he knew, I think. And then—then—” She began to shake her head, as if to deny her unspoken thought.

  “Who?” I prompted. “Who else?”

  “There’s John,” she said. “He knows, too.”

  The words produced a shock, a sudden emptiness at the pit of my stomach.

  Was she suggesting that John could have done it?

  Could he have taken the gun with him, tucked in his belt, or hidden among his toys, in his overnight bag? Could he have killed Quade? It had happened before. Anyone who can aim a gun and pull the trigger can commit murder.

  Or, more like it, Kramer could have told John to bring the gun to Guest’s house. Was that a possibility?

  No. If Kramer had wanted a gun, he could have brought one from New York.

  Suddenly I realized that I was in over my head. Way over my head. I needed help. Friedman’s help.

  But there was one more question I had to ask. “Mrs. Kramer, if the two of us went to that closet, right now, do you think we’d find that pistol?”

  “No,” she whispered. “No, I don’t think we’d find it.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because the murder was committed with that gun.”

  “Why would you say that? I didn’t make that statement. I said ‘if’ that was the gun. I didn’t say it was the gun.”

  “You didn’t have to say it. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Who killed him, Mrs. Kramer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do. Or, at least, I think you have a very good idea.”

  Suddenly, vehemently, she shook her head. A brief, desperate defiance flared in her eyes. “No. I don’t. I don’t know.”

  “Where were you Friday night between the hours of eleven P.M. and one A.M.?”

  “I was—” The brief fire died; her eyes went dark again, fell away again. “I was drinking.”

  “Where?”

  “In a bar, somewhere.”

  “Which bar? Where?”

  “I—I can’t remember. A lot of different bars. With a lot of different people.”

  “Were you driving your car?”

  “No. I took cabs. I always take cabs.” She looked at me with a kind of wan defiance, then said, “My driver’s license was revoked last year.”

  “Do you remember what time you got home?”

  “I think it was about 1:30. Something like that.”

  I was about to ask her for names, or faces. I was about to ask her whether she’d taken anyone home, Friday night: a nameless, faceless man who could be her alibi. But then I realized that, once again, I was on treacherous ground. According to law, once the suspicion of guilt enters an officer’s mind he must warn the suspect of his or her constitutional rights.
And I wasn’t willing to make Alexander Guest’s daughter a murder suspect. Not on my own authority.

  “You think I murdered that man,” she mumbled. “Don’t you?”

  “Mrs. Kramer, that’s not for me to—”

  “You do, goddammit. Why don’t you say it? Are you afraid? Are you afraid of my father? Afraid he’ll—what’s the expression—get you put back to pounding a beat?”

  I handed the highball glass back to her and stepped away. “I’m not afraid of your father, Mrs. Kramer. But I’m not stupid, either. It’s a serious matter, accusing someone of murder. A very serious matter, as you well know. Without more proof than I have now, I’m not making any such accusation against you. However, I’ll tell you this—” I broke off, trying to weigh the consequences of what I was about to say: “I’ll tell you that, yes, Kramer’s gun—your gun—killed Quade. As I understand it, both you and Kramer agree that the gun was kept here, in this house. And it’s obvious that, at some point, someone took that gun out of this house, and took it to your father’s house, where it was used to commit murder.” I let a beat pass, searching for some reaction. I saw nothing. Her face was expressionless as she stared out of the window at her expensive view.

  “So really,” I said quietly, “it all comes down to a pretty simple question: Who took that gun out of this house, and when did he—or she—do it? That’s what we’ve got to determine first. Then we’ve got to find out who pulled the trigger.”