Hanging Time

by Glass, Leslie

  “Is that alive?”

  At the question, the dog’s head flopped over. It looked drugged. On the floor a small plastic box thumped with the movement above.

  Penelope pointed at it. “What’s that?”

  “A leash,” Sergeant Joyce said sarcastically.

  April glanced at Mike. He winked.

  “It’s like a reel. The dog has freedom to run around, but you can press a button and stop it from going any farther,” he offered.

  Penelope Dunham squinted at the leash intently. “Is that the murder weapon?”

  Sergeant Joyce glared at her detectives. Neither said anything.

  Jason Frank finished writing and looked up. He spoke in a precise, neutral voice. “Camille, do you have any idea why you’re in so much trouble?”

  After a moment the mewing stopped, and the woman parted her curtain of hair. Her hands clutched the poodle. “People … think I did a bad thing.”

  “What kind of bad thing?”

  “They think I did a murder.”

  “Did you do a murder?”

  She shook her hair back in front of her face. “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about when you get really upset and have one of your fits? Do you hurt other people?”

  “Only myself.”

  “Why do you hurt yourself?”

  Camille looked straight into the mirror on her side of the wall, through which the people in the viewing room could see her, but she couldn’t see them. She seemed to study herself for quite a while. “I’m bad,” she said at last.

  “Camille, do any associations come to your mind about what’s happening now with these crimes?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know what. You have to tell me.”

  “Like when I was a kid,” she said hesitantly.

  He nodded.

  “When people thought I did things and punished me and it was really Milicia?”

  “Yes. Why didn’t you tell anybody, Camille?”

  Suddenly Camille’s body became very still. “I thought … if she wanted me to be punished that much, she must have a good reason.”

  In the viewing room, Penny Dunham leaned forward.

  “What was the reason?” Jason asked Camille.

  Camille twisted a clump of hair around her fist. It was all tangled, looked like it hadn’t been combed in some time.

  “Do you know the reason?”

  Camille pulled a clump of hair out by way of an answer.

  “Don’t do that,” Jason said sharply, then more gently, “You pulled your hair out. Is there something you’re worried about telling me?”

  She looked at the clump of hair for a moment, then dropped it. It drifted to the floor. “Yes …”

  “Something about Milicia?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you do whatever Milicia told you to?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were accused of bad things and you took any punishment without telling the truth?”

  Very small voice. “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me the secret?”

  Camille’s body became absolutely still. Her eyes filled with tears. “No.”

  Jason was silent for some time. “I need to know the secret, Camille. Two young woman are dead.”

  “I couldn’t kill anybody!” she cried. The puppy in her lap stirred.

  “Maybe someone wants to make it seem like you did. Why would someone want to do that? Does it have something to do with the secret between you and Milicia?”

  “I don’t know! I can’t tell you what I don’t know!”

  “The victims were small women, almost like little girls. They were strangled, hung from chandeliers, dressed in party dresses way too big for them with makeup on their faces. What story does that tell, Camille?”

  Camille let out a long, shuddering scream. “It’s me. She made me dress up like a woman and gave me lessons to show me what it’s like. Health lessons.” The words came out an anguished wail. “With a Coke bottle and a hairbrush and—”

  Camille put her head down on the table and sobbed. Her puppy didn’t try to get away.

  Ten minutes later, when it was clear Camille wouldn’t be saying anything else for a long time, Penny Dunham blinked a few times and got up from her chair.

  “Nice family,” she remarked sourly. “You said the other sister is here. Where?”

  “She’s up in the squad room.” Sergeant Joyce’s forehead was dotted with perspiration. “Every time you think you’ve seen it all …”

  Officer Paleo stood at the door to the questioning room. For a moment the A.D.A. made no move to open it. She seemed to be gathering her thoughts. Then she asked Sergeant Joyce, “What’s her story?”

  “Her story is she went to the shrink to get help for her sister. On the basis of what she told him, the shrink convinced her to turn her sister in to the police. And now the police are questioning her. She thinks it outrageous. She’s demanding a lawyer.”

  “Did she call a lawyer?”

  “No. Do you want to see her?”

  “Not at this time.” Penelope took off her glasses.

  “Well, what do you make of it?” April asked.

  “What do you think I’d make of it? You still don’t have either the witnesses or the physical evidence to make a case here.”

  She rubbed the bridge of her nose where her glasses pinched. “Even if this wacko here is telling the truth and her sister dressed her up, sexually abused her, repeatedly set her up to take the fall for antisocial acts … Even if all that happened, there’s no way to prove it or link it to these murders.” She put the glasses back on.

  “More important, everything that happened in the past is inadmissible anyway. It has no bearing on the case. Right now what we’d have to prove in court is that Milicia Honiger-Stanton, an attractive, successful architect, murdered two young women so she could lay the blame on her mentally ill sister. Why?”

  No one answered.

  “In addition, you’ll have to show she had access to her sister’s house, took her dog, wore her clothes, and brought back souvenirs of the first homicide to hide in her sister’s basement—give me a break, officers.”

  “She has her own dog,” Mike broke in.

  “What?”

  “I went by her building after our meeting this morning. The doorman told me she has a similar dog,” April explained.

  “Maybe it’s the same dog. Maybe she walks her sister’s dog sometimes.” Penelope rubbed the bridge of her nose again.

  April shook her head. “Then it would have to be a pretty magical dog. The doorman says it’s up there now.”

  “What’s your recommendation?” Sergeant Joyce asked.

  The A.D.A. looked impatient. “Get more.”

  “So what do you want me to do with the suspects in the meantime?”

  “Question them as long as you want. If you don’t get a confession, let them go.”

  “Let them go?” Sergeant Joyce glowered.

  “On what grounds can you keep them?” Penelope glowered back.

  Nice to have someone helpful on their side. Sergeant Joyce turned to Mike and April. What was she going to tell the Captain? He wanted the thing tied up today.

  “Why don’t you let them go and see what they do,” Penelope suggested. She lifted her arm and consulted the large black Swatch on her wrist. “I’m due in court in twenty minutes.”

  “One of them killed two people,” Joyce pointed out.

  “So don’t leave them alone.”

  She strode off toward the lobby without another word. Officer Paleo, who was guarding the questioning room, turned away, pretending to be deaf and dumb. Jason Frank came out of the room and announced he was finished for the moment. The calm demeanor that had been so impressive a few minutes before was gone. Now he looked like he’d been torn apart by harpies.

  72

  Milicia was drenched in sweat. She could feel
it all over her skin under her clothes. Her rage was so intense, she had to concentrate hard on keeping her body absolutely still, rigid, to stay in control of herself. She knew she must stay in control to survive. The smell of her sweat disgusted her.

  Her mind jumped. She thought of Camille and the filthy lies that came out of her mouth, covering everything with bottom mud like a river that overflowed its banks in every storm. Camille lied to anyone who would listen. Bouck was in the hospital. He had to be crazy, crazier than Camille.

  And the cops didn’t have a clue what was going on. Milicia’s foot tapped the floor. She could feel her hands clenching, too. Like claws. She told herself to be Buddhist about this. Let the universe flow over you until you’re above it. It was just like long ago in the other police station. They’d keep her there because they didn’t know what else to do.

  They would keep asking her questions about the dogs, about Bouck, changing direction every few minutes to see if they could trip her up. But she knew better than to talk.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she told them, keeping her green eyes wide with perplexity and pain. “I don’t know what you want. I don’t know what you mean.” Sometimes she asked to see her sister. Sometimes she insisted on seeing her lawyer. Then they’d go away for a while.

  Charles and Brenda told her to cooperate and tell the truth, but they didn’t know about Camille. They didn’t know how slippery Camille was, how her madness went in and out of the clouds whenever it suited her.

  Milicia burned in her stomach and shivered on her skin. It was clear the police were deliberately keeping her and Camille apart. But she knew it could be dangerous to speculate why. It might not be for the reason she thought. With Camille, you couldn’t ever be sure of anything. It could be this was all too much for her. Maybe she had retreated into one of her states when you could stick pins into her or light her on fire, and she wouldn’t react at all. Maybe the police were just trying to figure out what to do with her. Milicia got the feeling they suspected Bouck of the murders. But why did they think he did it? How could he have done it?

  She had been in this place for hours, first in the Sergeant’s office, then on the bench. People were coming in and out all the time, standing around in clumps talking, before going out again. They didn’t want her knowing what was going on, so they moved her to an empty room with a mirror in it. She knew they were spying on her. She didn’t allow herself any movement except the tapping of her feet and the raising of her arm to check her watch every two minutes.

  The Chinese woman came in around one-thirty. “You can go now,” she said.

  Milicia stood, trying to control her face. “If you keep your face serene in all circumstances, you won’t get wrinkles” was what her mother used to say. Milicia could hear Mother’s voice telling her that now. Okay, she knew how to keep her face serene. “I can go?” she said, her voice calm and low.

  “Yes. Just write your name and address on this card and sign it for me, and we’re all done for the moment.” The Chinese woman held out a form.

  Milicia was suspicious. “After you’ve kept me here all these hours?”

  “Yes.” She handed Milicia the form.

  Milicia took it, wondering if it would be better to make a scene or go along with it and just get out of there. She examined the form, waffling over her options. Maybe it would be better to be indignant at the way she’d been treated. She glanced at the card. It seemed innocent enough. Name, address, phone, work and home, social security number. Signature line. She panicked when she saw the blank places for a picture and fingerprints.

  “I thought you said I could go.”

  “Yes, you’re free to go.”

  “What’s this for?”

  “Don’t worry about that part,” the woman said, and handed her a pen.

  Milicia took a deep breath, trying to calm down. It seemed okay, but she had a feeling none of this was okay at all. This was going to hell. She wanted to change her clothes. She could smell her own fear.

  “What about my sister?”

  “She’ll be able to leave soon, too.” The Chinese woman now opened the door all the way, showing Milicia that she was free to exit.

  “Really, she can go, too?” Milicia hesitated over the card. Maybe it was a trap.

  “Yes, we’ll be taking her home soon.”

  “I want my sister. Why can’t I take her with me now?”

  “I really don’t have the information on that. I’m just reporting on what I know.”

  “I’m not a suspect?”

  “Not at this time.”

  “Then why do I have to fill this in? You already have this information.”

  “It’s just routine. There’s a lot of paperwork. We keep information in lots of different places. Just complicates things, that’s all. You want to go, you sign the piece of paper. That’s the way it is.” She shrugged.

  Milicia was still suspicious. “What about my sister? Is she a suspect?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  Milicia snuffled through her nose. That was as far as she would go to express her disgust and disapproval at the whole stupid system. They didn’t know what they were doing. She filled in the form quickly, signed it, and pushed past the Chinese woman on her way out. Half of her day was gone, and she wasn’t sure what she should do next.

  It was nearly two when she stepped out of the police station into the sun. It beat down hard, baking the city rot into the streets. Under her gray suit jacket, Milicia’s sweat-soaked silk blouse felt cold and reeked of emotion. Milicia knew the odor, strong as horse sweat, would never come out no matter how many times the blouse was cleaned. She headed home to throw it out.

  73

  Jason and Charles lived and worked in the same latitude on opposite sides of Manhattan. Charles’s office was on Seventy-ninth Street near the East River. Drawing a straight line across the island, Jason’s was on the corner of Riverside Drive, facing the Hudson River. Charles had a view of the sunrise and Jason had a view of the sunset, but there were differences between them much deeper than who could watch the day begin and who could watch it end. Charles knew whenever he had the slightest feeling of unhappiness and promptly dealt with its source. He was unable to tolerate a moment’s annoyance more than was absolutely necessary.

  Jason often suffered vague uneasiness—even intense malaise—for weeks without acknowledging anything was wrong. He wanted everything to be all right with him so he could be strong for his patients and resisted giving his feelings of discomfort a name.

  Since yesterday he had something new to be uneasy about. On the way across town in the taxi he kept worrying about the ethics of his situation. What was his responsibility in a case like this? This issue had come up with him before, once in a child abuse case and once with the unethical behavior of a colleague in treatment with him. Questions of patient confidentiality, a potential victim’s right to be protected, and a moral responsibility to uphold the laws of the land were exceedingly tricky to balance. The bottom line, he knew, was that there was no elegant equation for the proper management of these issues. To satisfy one moral imperative, it was sometimes necessary to disregard another.

  As Jason evaluated the things Camille had told him, he could see a clear picture of the escalation of her illness over the years, especially the years after puberty when the sexual abuse continued until Milicia left for college.

  Sibling rivalry was an old, old story. The lethal greed and self-interest of the daughters of King Lear, and the bastard sons Edmund and Don John, were only a few of Shakespeare’s dangerous, warring children. The Bible had many more. In fact, aside from temptation and lust, sibling rivalry was the Bible’s most-told cautionary tale. No invading enemy army could be as vicious, as insidious, or as dangerous as the voracious, grasping child desperate to be first and foremost in his parents’ hearts.

  In dysfunctional families like the one in which Camille and Milicia Honiger-Stanton had grown up, with a great deal of illne
ss, little love, and no one watching, a brutal and sadistic war could rage on undetected for years. In this case it was continuing still, even after the death of both parents. Jason felt as if he had been caught in the path of a tornado with no place to hide from the howling wind and flying objects. It was not lost on him that the second victim, Rachel Stark, had died during a gale.

  Unrestrained by conscience, human emotions could be as wild and destructive as nature run amok in fire and storm. Jason heard the venting of savage and vengeful feelings in his office daily. He was accustomed to patients’ self-involvement so extreme, nothing else but their fury and desire for revenge mattered to them. Still, he did not find it easy to accept the possibility that someone he was treating could be close enough to that murderous edge to cross it without his awareness.

  “You’re not God, Jason,” his first wife liked to scream at him. “Why can’t you accept the fact that even though you went to medical school, you’re not a king, you’re not a god. You’re just a man, and not a very good one.” His first wife had been surprised and embittered when their marriage ended. She had no idea how she sounded, never heard a word she said.

  About five minutes early, Jason stood on Madison Avenue praying for his nausea and dizziness to recede. As he waited, horns erupted at a sudden gridlock in the intersection. The Seventy-ninth crosstown was closed. It had been closed for over two years now, but a clot of traffic still got stuck several times an hour because drivers used to crossing there refused to adjust to the change.

  He caught sight of Charles down the block, hurrying toward him. Charles had his complaining face on; his handsome features were furrowed with offense. If Jason hadn’t felt so shaky, the sight would have made him smile.