The rich, warm smell of brewing coffee wafted into my orbit. So she fixes breakfast, too, I thought to myself, smiling. I threw on a big old tee-shirt which came down to my knees—someone must have left that here—and padded along the carpeted hallway from bedroom to living-room. Cassandra stood by the cooker in the kitchenette alcove, watching my two-cup cafeteria as it hissed and spluttered over a gas flame. She was wearing pale-colored trousers, silk or something fluid and liquid like that, and a burgundy blouse. Those were her clothes—mine definitely wouldn’t fit—and I half-tried to remember if she’d carried a bag the evening before. Her hair was gathered on top of her head in a loose bun, a witch’s nest of red and gold. She looked at ease, chilled out, the picture of a goddess in domestic contentment, but still a goddess. I smiled and shook my head in cheerful aston- ishment for about the hundredth time since she’d slid onto that bar stool beside me.
Then she spoke without turning around: “Hey, you. I found some coffee, which I have to presume is yours. You want a cup?” I said, “Please” and walked towards her. My feet were cold on the wooden floor of the sitting-room and colder on the kitchenette tiles. My rented apartment was a bit of a dump and I’d promised myself for ages that I’d do it up. I just never got around to it, or never had the time, or didn’t care enough in the first place. Small, dim and messy, a typical singleton crash-pad. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time here, I wasn’t really into interior decorating and all that jive, I didn’t share the place with someone else. So why bother spending my precious time accessorizing and prettifying and putting my stamp on it?
Although I felt a little more bothered now that another human being was seeing the place with fresh eyes. I wondered what sort of home Cassandra lived in. I wondered if she was rich, if she had a sprawling house and servants and a regal driveway like that at Caritas Heights. I wondered if I should feel embar- rassed at bringing her into my roughshod wreck of a two- roomer, its scruffiness and dinginess crying out for her attention under the unforgiving glare of natural light. I could actually see columns of dust motes in the light-beams streaking in through the window. My question answered itself: yes, Genie, you should feel embarrassed.
Cassandra didn’t seem to mind one way or the other. She spun around with two steaming cups of Joe and handed one to me, along with a smile that made my heart leap into my mouth and my loins leap into the spot my heart had just vacated. I smiled back and said, “Thanks”, taking a sip and adding, “Mm. That hits the spot.”
“How’s your head? A little sore?”
“Just a little. I’ll live. Anyway, I’m used to this sort of thing.” She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? So I’m not the first chick you’ve picked up and brought back here, huh?” I reddened in self-consciousness. “I meant the alcohol.”
“I know. I’m teasing.”
“I know you’re teasing.”
We smiled at each other again, standing close together, holding our cups under our chins, not saying anything for a long moment. Then Cassandra drained her coffee and said, “I have to go. I’m late already. But I didn’t want to leave until you got up and I didn’t want to wake you so, you know, what’s a girl to do?”
“Thanks. You’re a doll.”
“Thanks back. I am a doll. Pull my string and watch me walk.” She mimed tugging at a cord in the center of her back and started walking back and forth, stiff-limbed like a child’s wind-up toy. I laughed and jolted my coffee cup, spilling a few drops onto my chest.
I blurted out, “You’re more like one of those porcelain dolls. Like something Victorian. Perfect and beautiful.”
She stopped lumbering and walked normally to the sink. “That’s sweet.”
“I mean it.” “You’re sweet.”
“Stop saying ‘sweet’ so much. We’ll get diabetes of the ears.” We both laughed a little. Cassandra rinsed out her cup and grabbed a dark-brown shoulder-bag from the armchair under- neath the breakfast counter. She said, “I really do have to go, Genie. Sorry, it’s such a cliché in a situation like this, but…pfff.”
She shrugged and threw her arms in the air.
“You know my name.” I laughed. “Sorry, that sounded weird. I just, I don’t remember telling you my name.”
“You didn’t. You said it while we are at the bar. You told yourself to be quiet. ‘Shut up, Genie.’ Those were the exact words. Apparently, you’re not funny.” She walked to me and kissed me on the forehead. “I don’t mind if you’re not funny. All the other stuff makes up for it.”
“Like how I’m so sweet?”
She kissed me again, this time on the mouth. “Exactly. Can I see you again?”
The question sort of took me by surprise. I hadn’t really thought about what happened next, or perhaps I had but didn’t consciously admit it because that would mean admitting that what I wanted to happen next involved me and her and another tryst and maybe more than one more, and that mightn’t be what she wanted, and I didn’t especially want to hear it spoken out loud. All those wants, all this want inside me.
But now the question was out there and it would be rude not to reply. I said, “Yeah. I’d like that.” Then I grabbed her by the wrist and said, “Fuck it, that’s not it. I’d love to see you again.”
“Okay. How’s about we meet in two nights’ time, same bar? About nine.”
I nodded eagerly. To hell with a cool façade. I thought maybe she was going to give me a phone number, or take mine, but hey, whatever she wanted—I was just happy and relieved and, I belatedly realized, dog-tired and late myself. We embraced and kissed on both cheeks, French-style, and then Cassandra opened the door and floated out the door in a vapor trail of poise and perfume and the bitter sweetness of separation.
I showered quickly, finishing my coffee while I dried off, and rummaged through my underwear drawer. I wanted something pretty but functional for today—white cotton pants, comfortable and snug-fitting. There’s nothing like putting on a fresh pair of underpants. The satisfaction of snapping the waistband against your tummy, running your finger around the legs until they fit just perfectly, until you don’t even notice them, like they’ve become an outer skin… It’s your armor against the world. You feel you can take on the whole shooting shebang when your underwear is right. This morning my underwear was right and I was queen of the universe.
Half an hour later I was at the Detectives Division building and the universe had been turned inside-out and upside-down. I was greeted on arrival by the duty sergeant, a stout woman named Stearns. I literally stepped one foot inside the building and she, evidently waiting for me, caught me by the elbow and guided me to a quiet corner. I smiled quizzically. I figured it was someone’s birthday or retirement and Stearns wanted me to discreetly sign the card and toss a ten into the envelope. No such luck.
She said, “Detective Auf der Maur. You’re handling the Greenhill murder, right? You need to see something.”
I nodded slowly, then raised my eyebrows in a gesture of “Okay, sure.” Stearns directed me, still holding my elbow, left and left again and then down two corridors until we reached a line of holding cells: small, plain, unpainted and not too comfortable, but basically clean, semi-decent rooms where perps and alleged perps could sweat it out, mull it over, get annoyed or start to worry. There in the first cell, sitting in a line on a bench facing the bars and facing us, were five women, none of whom looked sweaty, thoughtful, annoyed or worried. On the contrary, they looked composed, almost indifferent. None of them spoke or looked around; they kept their eyes on the middle-distance and their thoughts to themselves.
Finally I turned to the duty sergeant: “Okay, Stearns, you got me. I give up. What exactly is going on here? Come on, don’t keep me in suspense.”
She sucked on the inside of her cheek before answering. “Detective, these women claim to have killed Madeleine Greenhill.”
“What do you—? All of them?”
“All of them. They presented themselves to the front desk early thi
s morning, individually but within about two hours from first to last. We took statements, formally charged them. They’re waiting on lawyers to get here, but that feels like routine to me. Each one has waived her right to silence. They’ve all sung like Maria Callas. And they all say, ‘It was me.’”
“They say… Hmm.” I moved us away from the holding cell, about 15 feet further down the corridor. Now our only audience was a hobo, passed out in a pool of her own urine. Now we could talk more freely.
“What do you mean, ‘me?’ You mean ‘us.’”
She shook her head. “Nuh-uh. They’re saying ‘me’, as in each one claims to have done the deed on her own. We haven’t questioned them in detail yet—I was waiting for you. I was about to call when you came in the door. Anyway, basically each one of those five women insists that she murdered Madeleine Greenhill, by herself, and she doesn’t know any of the others. Never seen them before. Can’t account for the fact that these other women are claiming responsibility for the crime she committed. Blah, blah, blah. Clearly, this is all bullshit, but that’s the story so far. And that’s all I got for you.”
I nodded. “Okay. Okay, thanks, Stearns. Good work. And thanks, as well, for…you know. Keeping it quiet.”
“No problem. I kinda figured something like this, I mean a case like this and then all these whack-jobs showing up… Fuck it, the press’d have a field day. I said I’d let you sort out the wheat from the chaff before anyone else needs to know.”
“I appreciate that. Listen, organize me an interview room. Start sending them in ten minutes from now. Knock on the door with the next one every ten minutes after that. Let’s keep this snappy. Keep ’em on their toes.”
She handed me a bundle of papers: typewritten statements of confession in an oddly comforting old-fashioned font. “You got it, Detective. Ten minutes, interview room four.”
I walked past the holding cell and looked inside once more and what do you know, there was number nine on my Misery/Madeleine list: Anneka Klosterman. She didn’t see me. I whistled to Stearns and hissed over: “Leave the tall one ’till last. The huge blonde in there.”
Stearns gave the thumbs-up and I stepped outside for a smoke and a blast of fresh air—the smoke to keep me steady, the air to get me wide awake. I speed-read the women’s statements and fully agreed with Stearns that something was off-kilter here. It was bullshit. No way do five supposedly unconnected people simultaneously get the urge to confess to a crime that they couldn’t possibly all have committed. No way do they all somehow know which police building to present themselves at. No way can they be au fait with certain details of the case before they’d been made public knowledge: for example, the fact that Madeleine was killed by blows to the head but, because of the peculiarity of the weapon, there was little bruising.
No way, no day. There was obviously a leak somewhere within the Department, someone breaking the law and slipping classified information through a gap in the fence. The whole thing smelled like a stalling tactic, a ruse, somebody constructing a Trojan horse to distract me from the real villains hiding inside, weapons at the ready, brave, fanatical, poised to strike. And it was working. I was obliged to interview each one, go through their statements, drag out the whole charade—and in the process, waste my precious time.
Exactly one hour after my smoke/fresh air double-whammy, I had spoken to the five and had them transferred to the mid-town lock-up to await an arraignment hearing. Four of them stuck fairly rigidly to the same story, told it in the same dispassionate way. Four of them avoided eye contact and, when asked various questions to throw them off, blankly refused to talk. Not even an “I refuse to answer ”—they stared at the table and one or two shook their heads “no.” They’d obviously been drilled in what to say and how to say it (or not say it), but the fucking thing of it was, I couldn’t really prove that. Officially, I had to take their nonsense at face value, process the charges, sleepwalk through the convoluted series of maneuvers that was our justice system.
And here’s what they had to say, in summation and give or take a few minor variations in detail: “I, insert name here, murdered Madeleine Greenhill at Whinlatter Docks on the evening of the 15th, sometime between 11.30 and 12.15, using a pointed weapon of some sort but I don’t remember what. I struck her on the head several times until she was dead. Then I tied her legs to a concrete block and threw her in the water. I left the area. I am coming forward now because of my guilt at having committed this awful crime. I have no explanation or reason for doing it. I have never seen any of those other four women before. I acted alone in this matter.”
Yahda yahda. I ladled out the questions, scribbled the replies, made sure the interviews were caught on tape, and from beginning to end I had to stop myself from asking aloud, “What’s the point of all this?” I knew for a fact they hadn’t done it because I knew who had; I’d danced with her the evening before. Almost certainly she hadn’t acted on her own initiative—that one was a professional for sure, and they normally only kill for money and per instruction—but none of these women was involved, at least not in a significant way. I didn’t yet know what their game was, but murder wasn’t it.
Those four seemed fairly normal—though clearly that’s relative, given the bizarre circumstances—in stark contrast to Klosterman, who resembled a drawing from a comic-book more than an actual person. A pneumatic colossus of a superhero, formidable and indestructible, her fist raised in triumph as she soared through the brightly colored pages, smashing her way off the paper and out of this world. The others were rather less imposing. Nora Hofton, 49 years old, a mother of two who illus- trated kids’ books part-time. Alejandra Villegas, 24, who ran a crèche exclusively catering to executives in Hera’s banking district. Dinah Spaulding, 35, an unemployed actor and “creative consultant”, whatever that meant. Liz Arendt, 39, a numbers cruncher at one of the city’s main insurance brokers.
None of them looked particularly special, except for Villegas who had the type of youthful prettiness that won’t last beyond 30. None had any priors except for Spaulding, busted twice for weed possession and once for causing a public disturbance. None were currently in a steady relationship, or so they said. None seemed capable of murder, and definitely not the kind of grisly, visceral, up-close-and-personal brutalism that did for Madeleine. None were destined to be players when we reached the endgame, of that I was sure.
Klosterman was different. She came last. The officer who brought her in to me called the suspect “Clusterfuck” as an insult, and watching this Amazon step into the room, I had to admire the cop’s sheer guts. Klosterman was an inch or more beyond six foot, rangy and lean but incredibly powerful-looking, with a build like a javelin-thrower who used other javelin- throwers in place of javelins. I stayed sitting so the disparity in our heights would be less noticeable, pointing to the chair opposite me. The duty cop shackled Klosterman by the leg to her seat. She was handsome in a severe, Nordic kind of way; a permanent expression of detachment with hints of potential cruelty.
Klosterman sat and stared at me. I took a deep breath and braced myself for a difficult interview. She looked up at the fluorescent light above our heads for a moment, then back to me, saying, “I have nothing to say to you. Everything is in my statement.”
“I thought you waived your right to silence.”
“I did. I spoke freely to that other officer. It’s all in my statement. I have nothing to add.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll see. How did Madeleine die?”
“I told you I have nothing more to add. Are you stupid? Why does she not understand me?” This was addressed to the air, to the room, an invisible audience.
“Watch the attitude, alright? I’m not the person in cuffs facing a murder charge.”
Klosterman sighed impatiently. “Then charge me. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? I tell you I did it, you charge me in a court of law. So do it.”
“Don’t tell me my job.”
“You don’t seem to know your job.
Who are you, anyway?
Where is the Chief of Police?”
I laughed. “You want to see Chief Ealing? What for? So you can abuse her, too?”
“Tssch. I am not talking to you.”
“Fine. Fine. Whatever. We’ll just sit here in companionable silence.” I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke straight into her face. She blinked at it angrily, then shot me a look so fierce, so focused, that I was glad of the fact she was chained to a chair welded to the ground.
Klosterman said, “I will ask you politely not to do that again. Cigarette smoke contains over 3000 carcinogenic chemicals. It is extremely bad for one’s health.”
“Right, you’re the athlete. Sorry, I forgot about that. What with the confession and the murdered girl and all. So how’s that going for you? There isn’t going to be much fencing and skiing where you’re off to, sweetheart. Just a lot of long, confined days and nights.”
No response. I said, “I hear you’re a crack shot. So why not use a gun on Madeleine?”
Still no response. I pushed on: “What, you wanted to see her eyes before she died, is that it? You goddamn evil bitch. She was your friend. How can someone do that to a friend? Or were you just using her, too? Like all the rest of you assholes.”
She didn’t like that. She shouted, “Madeleine was my friend! I cared for her! Don’t you dare say I used her!”
I let her words hang in the air, let them assume an impor- tance, a solidity and heft. Then I said quietly, “So why did you kill her?”
“Madeleine died becau…” Klosterman stopped herself just in time. She smiled at me, as if to say, “Ah-ah-ah. Almost got me there. Almost, but not quite.” What she actually said was, “I have nothing more to add to my statement.”
The Polka Dot Girl Page 10