Blameless

by B. A. Shapiro

  After Sandy’s car careened out of the alley, Diana walked back into her office. She stood in the center of the room, looking at it as if she had never seen it before, wondering how the next owners of the house might choose to use the space. Perhaps as an au pair’s room. Or maybe a teenager’s hideaway, a gentleman’s library, a sewing room, or an art studio. So many possibilities. She walked to the window and opened the blinds, looking into their “back city.” The back city that would now never hold a swing set. She snapped the blinds shut. If Sandy—who knew her, and loved her, and understood how much she had cared for James—concluded that she had killed James, what might Herb Levine’s conclusion be?

  Numbly she pressed the button on her answering machine. When Levine’s voice boomed out at her, she jumped. “Got that warrant I was telling you about the other day,” he said. “I’ll be by later this evening—around eight. Please be home.” Warrant, she thought, her hands beginning to tremble. Herb Levine had a warrant. Was it for her printer, or was it for her? Diana knew it had to be for the printer; Levine’s voice had sounded too casual for it to be an arrest warrant. Nevertheless, Diana paced her small office in fear.

  She walked over to the file cabinet in the comer and stood in front of it. Then she pulled Ethan’s records from the top drawer and sat down at her desk. Without conscious awareness that she had come to a decision, Diana took a few pens from her drawer and scribbled on a pad of lined paper with each. Selecting the one with the most faded ink, she calmly and deliberately began to jot short notes on various sheets of paper in his file. “Threatened Sandy and Bruce,” she wrote on one sheet. “Told James he would kill him,” she wrote on another.

  Then she switched to a different pen and wrote a much longer paragraph, in a much neater hand. “E confessed to murdering glfrd in apt. No details ’cept it was messy,” Diana began, using the cryptic notations she always employed in her personal files. She ended the paragraph with the words, “No remorse. Laughed. Said: ‘She deserved it for lying.’ I feel terrible. Scared. Can do nothing. D-P privilege.” It was as if some outside force had control of her actions, a force more concerned with her survival than she was. But whether it was a benevolent or malevolent force, she wasn’t sure.

  When she completed her work, Diana took the pens she had used and carried them upstairs. She put the pens underneath a few inches of garbage in the trash compactor and turned the knob. Then she went back downstairs and called Gail.

  “I’m having some trouble with my answering machine,” Diana said. “Could you do me a favor and call me right back? Just say something like, ‘Hi, this is Gail,’ so I can test it?”

  “Sure,” Gail said. “But, sweetie, I need to talk to you. It’s really important.”

  “We’ll talk when you call back,” Diana promised and hung up.

  But when Gail called back, leaving a message on the machine that would erase any earlier ones, Diana told her that she had to run, she had a patient arriving in a few minutes and a lecture to prepare for the next day. Not easily brushed off, Gail refused to hang up until Diana had promised she would call her as soon as she got home from class in the morning.

  Then Diana took a deep breath and held it in. Just when she thought she would explode from lack of air, she dialed the police station and asked for Detective Levine. While she waited for him to come to the phone, she held her breath again.

  “You,” she gasped when she heard his voice, letting her breath out with a rush. “You’ve got to come over here now—this can’t wait till later. There’s a message and I’m scared. I think that … I don’t know what to think, but you need to hear this. And—”

  “Whoa,” Levine said. “Slow down and start again.”

  So Diana told him that Ethan had just called and left a message threatening both her and another one of her patients. That she needed Levine to come right away because she had some new evidence for him. Evidence she hadn’t been able to reveal before. Evidence she was sure he would be very interested in seeing.

  After she hung up, she sat at her desk, dead-calm and waiting. Waiting for what she knew would be her last chance.

  30

  WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG, DlANA STARTLED IN HER chair. It didn’t seem possible that more than a minute had passed since she had hung up with Levine, but then again, her senses had been so distorted lately, it could have been three hours. Wiping her palms on her jumper, she started slowly out of the office, trying to calm her pounding heart and silence her ragged breathing, trying to hide her nervousness from the suspicious policeman who stood on the other side of her door. From the man who stood between herself and prison.

  But as she reached the hallway, Diana realized that it was reasonable for her to be nervous. That even a completely innocent person would be unnerved by the circumstances in which she found herself. She pulled open the door and offered him a damp palm. “Thanks for coming so fast,” she said softly. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  He grasped her hand in both of his and held it for a moment. His hands were cold and tiny flakes melted on the shoulders of his ski parka. She had just been staring out the window but hadn’t even noticed that it had started to snow. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said.

  Diana brought Levine into her office and told him about the message Ethan had left threatening Sandy. “He said she was ‘going the way of James,’” she stuttered, feeling both guilty about her lies and exhilarated with how well she was lying. “He said, ‘The bitch better watch her back.’ But he didn’t sound like he did on the other tapes,” she added breathlessly, “He—he sounded clearer, closer.” A shiver ran down her back, a shiver she didn’t have to fake. She rubbed the goose bumps that rose on her arms. “Should I call her, or will you?”

  Levine took Sandy’s phone number and promised he would take care of it.

  Then Diana showed him the notations in her records. She explained how Ethan had confessed to murdering his girlfriend and how he had made violent threats against Sandy and other group members in the past. She added, although she knew Levine understood, that doctor-patient privilege had not allowed her to disclose this information before now—even though she had known it would probably have helped her own case.

  He was very encouraging, asking her to repeat things and clarify a detail here or there. He took copious notes and appeared honestly relieved, almost happy, to have an alternative suspect to Diana. He even seemed to believe the part about how she had been in the bathroom when Gail had called just a few minutes ago, how she had raced out as soon as she heard a voice coming through the answering machine, but how, unfortunately, she had not been fast enough to keep Gail’s voice from erasing Ethan’s message.

  “I should have taken the tape out of the machine as soon as I listened to it,” Diana berated herself. “I’ve done it every other time—I don’t know why I didn’t today. It was stupid. Just plain stupid,” she repeated, almost believing her own lies.

  “Don’t blame yourself too much,” the detective said, lifting the tape from the machine and dropping it into his pocket. He skimmed one of the files she had given him and added absently, “You were obviously shocked. Scared. You can’t expect yourself to act as you might under more normal circumstances.”

  “Thanks.” Diana ran her fingers through her hair and let her breath out in a rush. She took the rest of the files and placed them in a neat pile in the middle of her desk, trying not to think too much about what she had just done. She fiddled with the edges of the manila folders, then turned and opened the blinds so she could watch the first snowflakes of the year. They were coating the alley with a pristine layer of white.

  She glanced at Levine, his head bent over a file resting on his crossed leg. He was reading her lies, believing a possibly innocent man was a murderer because she wanted to save her own skin. She was scum, despicable and disgusting. But it was too late to change anything now. Levine scratched his stubbly chin and flipped a page.

  Turning back to the window, Diana watched the snow g
rowing on the slats of the fire escape across the alley, transforming the pile of garbage some animal had scourged from the Dumpster into an unsullied, and quite striking, abstract sculpture. Maybe it wasn’t a lie, Diana thought. Maybe Ethan had killed the girlfriend. And if not the girlfriend, then someone else—in the past or possibly in the future. Perhaps she was actually saving a life. Lives, even. For she knew Ethan had no conscience, that he was without guilt or remorse. That Ethan Kruse was a violent and dangerous man.

  “Nice guy,” Levine grunted, snapping the file shut and breaking into her reverie.

  Diana turned from the window and faced the detective. “Do you want to make copies or should I?” she asked, pushing the rest of the folders across the desk to him. He told her he would and reached over and took the pile. She held out her hand, relieved that it had all gone so well, relieved that it was over. “Call me if you have any questions.”

  But instead of standing and shaking her hand, he pulled a slip of paper from his pocket and placed that in her palm. “The warrant.”

  Diana felt heat rising to her face and staining it red. It wasn’t over. She stared down at the flimsy yellow document in her hand. The warrant. How could she have forgotten?

  “It’s for your printer.” He nodded toward the NEC sitting on the small cart off to the side of her desk. “Even with this new stuff on Kruse, I’ve got to keep moving on all fronts.”

  “Printer,” she repeated stupidly, trying to subdue the relief—and fear—that spiraled through her. “Of course.” She walked over to the printer and knelt behind it, hiding her red, sweat-beaded face from Levine as she fiddled with the wires. She realized she was going to need a screwdriver to separate the printer from the cable. Rising, she asked him to excuse her for a moment.

  Diana headed toward the kitchen, but when she got halfway up, to the point where the stairway twisted and she knew she was not visible from below, she stopped and pressed her hot cheek to the cool wall. It wasn’t over. It would never be over. She had lied. She had falsified medical records. She had given the police false evidence. And it still wasn’t over.

  “Diana?” Detective Levine stuck his head around the corner of the stairwell and called up to her.

  Diana jumped, almost losing her balance. She pressed her palms to the wall, steadying herself. “Y-yes,” she stuttered, trying to get a grip, to appear calm and innocent, but knowing that her terror must be glowing like a spotlight from within her. “Yes?” she asked again.

  “You were gone so long,” he said, as if she were acting completely normally. “I was just checking to see that you were okay.”

  “Fine,” she said, smiling weakly. “Just a little shaky, I guess.”

  “To be expected,” he assured her and disappeared back down the stairs.

  When Diana reached into the junk drawer to get the Phillips-head screwdriver, her right hand was shaking so badly that she had to grab it with her left. She couldn’t lose it now, she warned herself. She had to hold it together for just a few more minutes. She rummaged through the drawer and finally found the small tool for which she had been searching. Levine didn’t know she was lying. He had no reason to suspect.

  Coming back into the office, Diana raised the tiny screwdriver. “I’ll have it unhooked for you in a second,” she said, trying to keep her voice light, but knowing that she was failing abysmally.

  “No rush,” Levine answered, glancing up at her from writing in his notebook. “I’ve got a couple more things I want to talk to you about anyway.”

  It took her a long time to unhook the printer. The silence in the room hung heavy and portentous as Diana struggled with her fears and the trembling screwdriver. A couple more things.

  Finally Diana succeed in separating the machine from its cable. Unable to completely control her shaking hands, she gripped the printer tightly and carried it to her desk. She placed it in front of the detective, and, unwilling to trust her voice, stood silently, hands clasped behind her back. A couple more things.

  After a few minutes Levine looked up from the file he was thumbing through and smiled at her as if they were casual acquaintances meeting on a streetcorner. He placed the file on top of the printer. “Interesting stuff,” he said conversationally.

  Diana nodded.

  Almost as an afterthought he reached into a deep pocket on the outside of his parka and pulled out the aqua-and-purple book she knew so well: her journal.

  Instinctively Diana reached for the journal, her fingers longing for the comfort of just holding it. Then she yanked her hand back. “Where did you get that?” she barked, although as soon as she spoke the words, she knew the answer: Jill had given it to him.

  “I thought you knew we had it,” he said, casually flipping through the pages. “Got it from Hutchins’s sister.”

  The familiarity with which the detective held her book, the purposeful manner in which he touched the watermarked paper that held her most private thoughts, caused Diana’s fear to bum toward rage. Don’t, she ordered herself, forcing her clenched fists to loosen. It’s his job. It isn’t personal. But no matter how much she reminded herself of the deadly folly of anger, she was unable to will away the boiling sea that seethed within her.

  “There’s something in here I wanted to ask you about,” Levine said as he searched through the pages. “Ah, here.” He handed the journal to her, pointing to the entry she had written right after James’s funeral. “What exactly did you mean by this?”

  James is dead and Jill says I killed him. She shouted it in the middle of the funeral—although I’m sure no one there believed her. Most likely everyone just assumed she was addled by grief.

  Her words echoed off the hard marble walls, and they will always echo in my heart. They will be with me forever. As will be my guilt.

  It hurts. It hurts so much. It hurts because James is gone. And it hurts became Jill spoke the truth.

  Diana could see exactly what her words would say to a detective investigating James Hutchins’s murder. “It’s not what you think,” she said lamely.

  He nodded, waiting for her to correct his misapprehension.

  She sank into her chair and heaved a large sigh, Jill’s words reverberating through her brain: Who do you think … told Mr. Fake Friendly Detective to look at the end where you implicate yourself in spades? Jill was obviously pulling every string she could find in her marionette game of “Let’s Hang Diana.”

  Diana swiveled her chair slightly so that she could watch the falling snow softening the harsh angles of the alley. She sat silently, wondering whether it was even worth the effort to try to explain. Finally, she said “I was speaking metaphorically.”

  “You mean you just felt like you had killed him—not that you really had killed him?”

  Surprised, Diana swiveled back and looked at Herb Levine’s face. He actually appeared to understand. “Exactly,” she said hopefully. “I just felt responsible because he was my patient. I wasn’t really responsible.” But the eyes that met hers were ice-cold. Disappointed, Diana slowly turned back to the window. She heard Levine pick up the journal and heard the flutter of pages. A couple more things.

  “Unfortunately, Dr. Marcus …” The detective paused, and Diana whipped her head around, alarmed by the tone of his voice: He hadn’t called her “Dr. Marcus” since they’d first met. “I’ve got some more bad news for you. Did Hutchins ever mention a Harold Berger?”

  “No,” Diana said slowly, wondering what disaster Harold Berger had in store for her.

  “It seems that this Mr. Berger lived downstairs from James—”

  “Mr. Berger, the parapalegic?” she interrupted.

  “Yup, he’s in a wheelchair. Seems real fond of Hutchins too. It doesn’t seem to fit”—Levine shook his head—”but Mr. Berger told me Hutchins once painted his apartment for him—as a favor.”

  “It’s true,” Diana said. “And it fits.”

  “Anyway, it seems that Mr. Berger was in California visiting his daughter when the
murder investigation started. Called the station this morning when he got home. He was very upset by the news.” Levine raised his eyebrows at Diana; when she didn’t respond, he folded his hands over the closed journal on his lap. “He claims,” the detective said slowly, “that he heard you and James Hutchins yelling at each other on the morning of October 15. At the apartment on Anderson Street.”

  Diana’s heart seemed to stop beating in her chest. “The morning of October 15?” she whispered.

  “It appears that you’ve now been placed at the scene on the day of the murder,” Levine said, not taking his eyes off Diana’s face.

  “I, ah, I …” she stammered, remembering. It was about a week after James had hidden in her jeep, causing her to hit the parked car; it was a few days after he had shrieked at her in the alley, causing her to call the police; it was the morning after she had a nightmare in which James was a vampire, sucking blood from her baby’s neck.

  It was early, before her class, and she had gone to James’s apartment to beg him to leave her alone. To plead with him to get on with his life—and to let her get on with hers. Craig had given her an ultimatum: Either she talk to James or he would.

  “This is the way it has to be,” she told James. “This is the way it is.”

  But James had refused to listen. “You can’t throw me away like a sack of yesterday’s garbage,” he screamed at her. “I’ll never let you go—never!”

  Closing her eyes against the memory of James’s enraged face, Diana swallowed and tried to speak again. But no words could get past the huge lump of terror in her throat.

  Levine stood and held up his hands. “You don’t need to say anything just yet. Just think on it for a bit.” He put her files on top of the printer and lifted it easily. But it was bulky and difficult to maneuver. “Can you help me with the door?” he asked.

  Diana jumped up and led him up the stairs. When they reached the foyer, she pulled the door open and pressed herself to the wall so he could pass. “I’m real sorry to have to tell you this,” he said, raising the printer over his head and swinging wide of her stomach, “but we’ll find you wherever you go. So do me a favor: Please don’t leave town.”