Victims

by Collin Wilcox

  “She …You mean …?”

  “Talk to her,” Friedman said. “Talk to her tomorrow morning, in the cold light of day. Before she starts drinking. Okay?”

  “Yes—” I spoke absently, thoughtfully, struggling to fit Marie Kramer into the puzzle as a reasonable suspect. “Yes. Okay.”

  The next morning at 9:15 A.M., back on Telegraph Hill, walking slowly toward the Kramer house along the same sidewalk Durkin had taken, trying to escape, I was still struggling to imagine a scenario that would make Marie Kramer a murderer. No question, she’d had the opportunity—or, at least, the potential opportunity. By her own statement, she’d been out on the town, barhopping. She’d arrived home “about 1:30,” probably alone, doubtless drunk. Between midnight and a few minutes after 1:00 A.M., she probably couldn’t account for her whereabouts. She’d been in a bar—any bar—drinking. Going from bar to bar, and going from the last bar to her home, she’d taken cabs, her usual practice.

  Could she have discovered that Kramer was in town, that he intended to steal John?

  Could the knowledge have enraged her?

  Looking for Kramer, could she have taken a cab to her father’s house, entered the mansion through the garage? Drunk, confused, could she have found Quade, found the gun lying close by? Could she have killed him? Could she have wiped the gun, ditched it, and taken another cab home?

  It was possible. It would account for the fourth shot, account for the gun in the shrubbery, wiped clean. It would also fit perfectly with Durkin’s story—and with the three other stories: Kramer’s, John’s, Alexander Guest’s.

  The time frame would fit, too. Guest could have heard three shots, could have seen Kramer on the driveway while Durkin was still inside the house. Guest could have left his post at the window and gotten his revolver while Durkin was leaving the house, unseen. Guest could have been going downstairs when the fourth shot sounded—the fatal shot. He could have looked outside again, seen his daughter leaving. When he’d found Quade dead, he could have reconstructed the sequence of events, realized what must have happened. Since Guest hadn’t seen Durkin, he would have assumed that Marie had fired the fourth shot. At all costs, he would have wanted to protect his daughter, protect the Guest name. So he’d accuse Kramer of the murder. Understandably. If Kramer were indicted for murder, Guest’s fondest, most malicious dreams would come true. Kramer would be out of his life, possibly forever.

  But, when all the loose ends had been neatly tied together, one question remained: Why would she have done it?

  Why would she have killed Charlie Quade, an ex cop hired by her father to guard her son?

  Could she have thought Quade was Kramer?

  It was the only theory that made sense, the only theory that could account for all the facts, all the possibilities. For whatever drunken reason, she’d thought she was killing her husband, who was trying to take her child away.

  But did she hate her husband enough to want him dead?

  Sober, she didn’t. Sober, she regretted their divorce, regretted the loss of her husband. Even drunk, she hadn’t expressed hatred for Gordon Kramer. Only wistfulness. Defeat. Infinite regret for her own futile life.

  I pushed the doorbell three times before the door opened. Marie Kramer stood tentatively in the open doorway, blinking in the bright sunlight. Her face was pale and blotched, unadorned by lipstick or makeup. Her hair was uncombed. She was dressed in blue jeans and a khaki bush shirt, worn shirttail out. Her feet were bare. Obviously, she’d gotten out of bed to answer the doorbell. The uncompromising morning light fell mercilessly on her face, revealing premature lines and creases at cheek and forehead, purplish shadows under the eyes, an uncertain twitching of the mouth as she tried to smile—and failed. The terrible, naked vulnerability of the face was painful to see, bearing down the head with the ageless weight of misery and defeat.

  Friedman had been right. This was the time and the place to get the truth from Marie Kramer.

  “Lieutenant Hastings …” As she squinted uncertainly at me, I realized that the morning sun fell just behind me in the sky, brighter than any interrogation room’s spotlight, focused on the suspect’s eyes. This morning, even nature was with me.

  “We’ve got to talk, Mrs. Kramer. Just the two of us. No witnesses. Just us.” As I spoke, I stepped forward. If she was alone in the house, there was no one to stop me.

  She didn’t resist. Shoulders slumped, head low, her bare feet shuffling, she simply turned away from the door and began climbing the stairs heavily, one slow, uncertain step at a time. I closed the front door and followed her. At the top of the stairs she half turned, saying over her shoulder, “John’s still sleeping. Let’s go in the kitchen.” She led the way to a kitchen that looked as if it had been created for a magazine cover, with its enormous burnished copper hood over a main cooking center, its colorful Mexican tile counters and floors, its maple tables and chairs. The walls were planked redwood; the plate glass window framed the city’s skyscraper spires in the foreground and a crystal-blue marine view beyond.

  “Coffee?” With her back to me, she went to the stove and turned on a burner under a copper teakettle. Then she lifted the kettle, shook it, frowned, and filled it from a tap. “Is instant all right?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  “Sit down.” She gestured to a counter. I took one of the four barstools in front of the counter, and she took another one, with an empty stool between us. Still without looking at me directly, staring instead down at the tiled counter top, she said, “So Bruce did it. Not Gordon. Bruce.”

  Instead of answering I asked, “How’s John doing? Is he all right? Any aches or pains?”

  “He’s all right,” she answered dully. “He was—subdued when you brought him home yesterday evening. But, later on, he snapped back. Apparently he always hated Bruce. That helped, I suppose.” She sat motionless, staring down at the counter. Then, woodenly, without inflection, she said, “I didn’t know that John and Bruce hated each other. I—” She broke off, shaking her head as she traced a small design on the counter with her forefinger. “I never knew, until yesterday. Until it was almost too late.”

  I decided not to reply.

  “John says that you saved his life,” she said. “You’re his hero. Did you know that? You’re—” She bit her lip. Now her hand lay listless on the counter. On the third finger of her left hand, I saw a wedding band.

  “You’re almost the only hero he’s ever had,” she said finally. “He was only three when Gordon left. So he’s never—”

  The kettle was boiling. She made instant coffee, put the steaming mugs on the counter, along with sugar and cream, paper napkins, and two spoons. She resumed her seat, resumed speaking in the same dull, defeated voice. “I was—drinking yesterday, when you brought John home after Bruce—” She broke off, blinked, bit her lip. “After Bruce almost killed him. I—”She shook her head. “I didn’t know that he’d even gone out. I didn’t know that Bruce had gone, either. As soon as you left, I poured a drink.” She grimaced, as if the words had caused her pain. “Or, rather, I poured another drink.”

  I considered telling her that I knew what she was feeling. I would never forget the lost, lonely terror of the morning after. I would never forget the utter emptiness of those mornings, the crushing weight of shame and despair. And, most of all, I would never forget the emptiness, the vast, bottomless abyss that was always waiting, always beckoning.

  Already, I knew, she was beginning to think of the day’s first drink. It was her only hope of getting through this day, of avoiding that constant abyss.

  Instead, though, I cleared my throat, dropped my voice to a lower, more official note and said, “Mrs. Kramer, this whole situation has changed, just since yesterday. I guess you know that. Frankly, this new development—Durkin, that is—came as a complete surprise to us. He’s admitted shooting Quade. Did you know that? He admitted taking your gun, and going to your father’s house and exchanging shots with Quade.” Turned on the stoo
l to watch her face, I stopped speaking. I wanted to see how she reacted, either by word or by gesture, or facial twitch.

  But she didn’t answer, gave no indication that she’d heard what I’d said.

  Still with my eyes searching her face, I let the silence lengthen inexorably. Finally her mouth began to tremble, then twist into a tortured counterfeit of an ironic smile.

  “I wonder if you know how little I care.” She sat for a moment in a silence of her own choice, with her head bent over her coffee, still untasted. Then she said, “When Bruce first came here, after a suitable interval, I invited him into my bed, as the euphemism goes. So—” She shook her head. “So we’ve got an interesting situation here, haven’t we? Two men—two of my former lovers, we might say—have been accused of murdering the man my father hired to protect my son from his father, my ex-husband. Which is to say that this whole thing revolves around me—around me, and John. But—” She shrugged her bony shoulders, then used one hand to push back her tangled hair. When she’d shrugged, I’d seen the outline of her breasts, sagging under the khaki shirt. With her lined, middle-aged face and her slackening figure, Marie Kramer would have to settle for second pickings at the singles’ bars—or third pickings, on a busy night.

  “But none of it matters to me,” she said. “I can’t make it matter.” With great effort, she turned her stricken eyes to me. It was a gesture of trust—desperate trust. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Kramer. I think I understand what you’re saying. I really think I do.”

  She nodded, a loose, exhausted inclination of her head. Once again, her hair fell down over her eyes. She sighed, pushed back the hair, and returned her eyes to her coffee mug. “Maybe you do understand,” she said. “Maybe you don’t. It doesn’t really matter.” Once more, she fell into a musing, brooding silence. Then the tortured smile returned. “It’s ironic, you know. John’s finally found a hero—the man who arrested his father.”

  “Mrs. Kramer, I—”

  “It is ironic, isn’t it?” she insisted. “You do see the irony, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I answered, heavily. “I see the irony.”

  “I thought you would.” As she said it, her voice hardened. She got down off the stool, took the mug of coffee and poured some of the coffee into the sink.

  “If you’ll excuse me a moment,” she said, “I think I’ll spike this. Ordinarily I don’t do that. Not before noon. But, so far, this day hasn’t started out very well. And it doesn’t promise to get any better. So extraordinary measures seem to be indicated.”

  “Mrs. Kramer—” I slid off my own stool, and stood in front of her. “Before you do that, let’s talk. There’re some questions that I want to ask you—that I’ve got to ask you. Let’s do that, first. Then I’ll be on my way.”

  For a moment her body tensed. Willfully, her face tightened, as if she were going to resist me. But then her body went slack. Shrugging indifferently, she put the mug in the sink and leaned back against the counter, crossing her arms beneath her sagging breasts.

  “Go ahead,” she said. As she spoke, her eyes hardened. “Go ahead. Talk. Ask.” She looked full into my face, challenging me. Sober, she had some of her father’s arrogance, the same arrogance she’d displayed the first time I’d talked to her. “This is your chance. Ask.”

  “Where were you Friday night between midnight and one o’clock?”

  “Why’re you asking?”

  “I’m asking because there’re still some loose ends. We’ve got four accounts of what happened Friday night. We’ve got your father’s account, your husband’s account, your son’s account and Durkin’s account. And they don’t quite match. There’s something missing—two pieces of the puzzle. We can’t close the case, without those two pieces. So we’ve got to start over, start at the beginning.”

  “I’ve already told you where I was Friday. I was barhopping.”

  “And what time did you come home?”

  “It was 1:30, I think. I’ve told you that, too.”

  “Did you come home alone?”

  Ruefully, she nodded. “Unhappily, yes.”

  “Was Durkin home when you got here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was the car in the garage?”

  “I don’t know that, either. I arrived in a cab—a Yellow Cab, incidentally. I paid the driver, and came inside, and went to bed. In that order.”

  I decided to shift ground. “The last time we talked, you asked me whether your gun killed Quade. Well, the answer is yes, as you suspected. We also know that Durkin took that gun to the scene of the crime. He fired at least one shot into the victim. Maybe two.” I let a beat pass, watching her for some reaction, some sign of guilt or anxiety. She revealed nothing; she simply returned my gaze, calmly. “We aren’t sure about the second shot,” I said. “We aren’t sure who fired it. Not yet.”

  Still, her dark, empty eyes revealed no anxiety, no emotion.

  “When we talked,” I said finally, “and I asked you about your gun, you said you hadn’t seen it for two years. Yet, when I asked you if you thought it was still in your closet, you said it probably wasn’t.”

  “I thought I’d explained that.”

  “You said that, because I was asking about the gun, you assumed it was the murder weapon. Right?”

  Listlessly, she nodded. Now she took her coffee mug from the sink. Holding the mug in both hands, she began to drink. She drank in long, ragged, ravenous gulps, as if the coffee offered the same kind of hope that liquor promised.

  “I think there was more to it than that, Mrs. Kramer. I think you knew that the gun wasn’t there. I’m positive you knew it wasn’t there.”

  Still drinking, she made no response. But, over the rim of the coffee mug, her eyes were watchful.

  “I think you knew Quade had been killed with your gun. And I think you knew that gun had been left at the scene of the crime.”

  She put the mug aside, and shrugged. Her face was expressionless, registering neither fear nor anger. Was she so drained of emotion, so empty inside, that she was indifferent to my suspicions—indifferent to her own danger?

  “You think I killed that man.” Her voice was as expressionless as her face. But, still, her eyes were covertly watchful.

  Instead of replying, I drew a deep breath. Then, reluctantly, I advised Alexander Guest’s daughter of her rights under the constitution as a suspect in a capital crime.

  Now, finally, she reacted: a sardonic twist of the mouth, a cold, contemptuous hardness of the eye. “You must be crazy,” she said, “accusing me of murder.”

  “I’m not accusing you of murder, Mrs. Kramer. I’m telling you, though, that you could be a suspect. I’m also telling you that I need to know two things. I need to know where you were—which bar—between midnight and one o’clock on Friday night. And then I need to know why your story concerning the gun doesn’t agree with Durkin’s. He says you showed him the gun when he first came here, six months ago. He says you showed him where you kept it, and asked him to unload it. But when I asked you who knew where the gun was kept, you didn’t mention Durkin. You said that—”

  “Hey—” It was John, tousle-headed, sleepy-eyed, dressed in Superman pajamas, standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “What’d he say, when you took him to jail? Bruce—what’d he say? What’d he do?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “He told us a lot of what we needed to know, John. Not everything. But a lot. How’re you feeling today? Any aches or pains?”

  “What about my daddy? Where’s he?”

  “We’ve still got some questions to ask your father, John. But we—”

  From the front hallway I heard the sound of a latch clicking, of a door opening. Still in the kitchen doorway, John heard it, too, and turned inquiringly to look out into the hallway. Reflexively, I unbuttoned my jacket and stepped forward, toward John. Before I reached him, I saw recognition animate his face. There was no danger, the
n.

  “Hi, Grandpa.”

  Followed by Michael Carmody, his assistant, Alexander Guest came up the front staircase to the hallway. The smile that Guest had for his grandson froze when he saw me standing behind the boy.

  “Lieutenant Hastings.” It was a cold greeting, clearly conveying his displeasure at finding me there. “Where’s my daughter?”

  “She’s in the kitchen.” I looked at the woman, unseen by her father. Her face, too, was frozen by obvious displeasure. Why? Why wouldn’t she have been glad to see her father, who would certainly try to prevent me from continuing my interrogation?

  Guest turned to his assistant, saying curtly, “Take the boy to his room.” And to John, gently, he said, “You go with Michael, John. Go to your room, and stay there. Your mother and the lieutenant and I have things to talk about. I’ll come and get you when we’re finished. You’ll be coming to my house for a few days. You might be thinking of whatever you want to take with you.”

  The boy’s face clouded. “But I—”

  “John. Don’t argue. Some very important things are happening. And there isn’t much time. Do as I say, please.” Guest’s voice was quiet, but its effect on John was crushing. Instantly, animation faded from the boy’s face, replaced by a stolid, sullen compliance. With Carmody’s hand on his shoulder, as heavy as any jailer’s, John turned reluctantly away. As I watched him go, I remembered that I still hadn’t shown him my handcuffs.

  Guest turned on his heel and led the way to a door that opened on a small, book-lined room just off the large living room. “Let’s talk in here,” he said over his shoulder, gesturing for me to follow. And, louder, to his daughter: “Come into the study, Marie.” Guest took the room’s only chair, gesturing for Marie and me to sit on a leather couch, side by side. Marie was about to sit when Guest ordered her to close the door. She obeyed without comment, then sat beside me. She carried her coffee mug, and as she sat beside me I caught the strong odor of liquor from the mug. I wondered how she’d managed it, in the few moments she’d been out of my sight.