With One Shot

by Dorothy Marcic

  I imagined: Look, when I had the case, Suzanne was charged with first-degree murder. Then Mussallem took it over, and I tried not to interfere too much in the assistant DA’s cases. It seemed unfair to other murder suspects to reduce her charge from first-degree murder to first-degree manslaughter, but, hey, that was his call.

  All of that made sense, so I wondered if it was even worth dialing his phone number again.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Good-bye, Jenylle

  As I was nearing the end of writing the first draft of this book,

  I got a call at 1:00 A.M. on a Sunday in June 2015 from Shannon, who was sobbing.

  “Mother’s gone,” she said in between heaves of air intakes. This was a call I had expected and dreaded, because my beloved Aunt Jenylle had been in and out of the hospital since March. Shannon had, in fact, left her home in Eugene, Oregon, on March 1 and hadn’t returned since, in order to be at her mother’s side during several illnesses. Shannon and Jenylle had always been very close.

  There was to be no funeral. Nevertheless, I wanted to jump on a plane to be with Shannon. Unfortunately, I had pneumonia at that time so that I could barely stand up for even a few minutes. My doctor had ordered strict bed rest and no travel for a while.

  Jenylle had passed on. Jenylle, who’d loved Vernie fiercely but quietly, who had seemingly waited almost seven years for him to find his way back to her, and was never interested in anyone else until after he died. We all thought the reconciliation was inevitable, and Vernie had even confided so to some friends in Beloit.

  Looking back on all the evidence and all the interviews with so many people, I now believe he was on the verge of making this change, and that is why David said he had changed the last two weeks of his life and why people commented on how quiet he was that evening. That same evening he mentioned to Suzanne (and was overheard by others) he was going to see his daughter the next day. Did he buy the new car two days before to make the trip down to Carbondale, Illinois? Did he hope that was a first step in getting back with his one, true love, Jenylle? Did he yearn to have back the loving, quiet life that he’d so carelessly thrown away in the torment he thought was passion and maybe even love?

  At last they are together again. RIP, Vernie and Jenylle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Suzanne’s Last Curtain Call

  On Thursday night, March 23, 2017, Louisa texted, Mom passed away this afternoon. Suzanne had been gravely ill for months and had been given days to live in early March by hospice professionals, so this was no surprise.

  The past few weeks had been a flurry of activities, including workshops I gave, United Nations meetings, and a trip to Montana for my grandson’s third birthday. No matter what, I told myself, I am going to the funeral. Didn’t matter that it would have been complicated to cancel the UN sessions, to work around the birthday party, or to reschedule the workshop, which ironically was about “Achieving Happiness.”

  Two close friends tried to talk me out of going to the funeral, thinking I’d be in danger, but I knew nothing would keep me away. I arrived home exhausted from Missoula and Big Sky Montana, late on March 22, hoping for some days of much-needed rest. Twenty-four hours later I got word of the death. Messages of condolence and thanks went back and forth between Louisa and me. Then I called my sister and, finally, Shannon, to let her know.

  “I have such mixed feelings,” she said more softly than her usual upbeat conversational style, and I knew her emotions were pulling her in different directions. “I feel sorry for Louisa and her family, for their loss. But I so wanted the book to come out before Suzanne died, so she could read that we know what happened.” We talked about where the funeral might be.

  “Won’t it be in Tennessee?” she asked, because that’s where Suzanne had lived and where she died. “Isn’t that where David is buried?” Not until she said that did I realize the services would not be near Chattanooga. “David is buried near his paternal grandparents and his father, you know, the second husband. She wouldn’t want that.”

  Finally Shannon’s energy came back and she exclaimed, “But she had so many husbands, and all buried in different places! How could one choose?”

  That’s when I remembered that only days after his funeral Suzanne had requested to be buried next to Vernie. My grandmother refused, and I assumed Suzanne had long given up that hope. “I am pretty sure Minneapolis,” I said, more certain than I had reason to be.

  Late Friday night Louisa sent me the long and detailed obituary (cost: $700, as Louisa reported), which had the funeral location: Minneapolis. I made a flight reservation and diddled around trying to find the cheapest car and finally just gave in and booked with my normal National, because I did not have the stamina for price comparisons.

  Then I called a friend for a place to stay, all the while trying not to focus on some of the words in the obituary, which had been written by Louisa. “Devoted wife.” Well, one could argue with five husbands, you almost had to be devoted to the idea of being a wife. But what if you had confessed to murdering one? How does one then redefine “devoted”? And all of the obstacles she overcame in search of her achievements. You mean like beating a murder rap? It listed her various children, grandchildren, her degrees, but no mention of previous husbands, or of her murder confession. But then, why would Louisa include all of that? Wasn’t it her job to shed the best possible light on her mother’s life? Still, two of the people at the service asked me afterwards why there were so many different last names among her children.

  And speaking of children and grandchildren, I thought about her grandson, Jocelyn’s son, Marvyn Rhoades, who lived near Madison, Wisconsin. Marvyn and I had spoken in friendly conversation two times about eighteen moths ago, and he had told me neither he nor his sister knew how to contact Suzanne. That was a hint that Suzanne’s claims of being close to them were exaggerated. Thinking perhaps he did not know of her death, I phoned Marvyn, but the number was disconnected. A Google search turned up his obituary from July 2016. Reading this made me profoundly sad. He was only forty-five years old, just one year older than my uncle was when he died. Way too young to die, even from cancer as Marvyn did.

  Then I looked again in Suzanne’s obituary. Not only did Suzanne’s obituary have him listed as a survivor, but his name was spelled incorrectly. He was Marvyn Rhoades, but the obituary said “Marvin.” And in his obituary there was no mention of Suzanne or family.

  The day of the funeral I got up at 3:40 A.M. to catch a 6:00 A.M. flight, hoping there would be no delays so I could make the ten-in-the-morning service. I turned the steering wheel of my square-shaped Kia rental car and pulled into the small and well-kept Jewish cemetery, with carefully trimmed hedges and sumptuous flowers placed just-so on many graves. Because I was running a few minutes late, I had texted Louisa and hoped they’d wait for me, but I had not wanted the large group of people I expected to end up being inconvenienced by my tardiness.

  As I got out of the car, I looked for the crowd. Only Louisa and her son were there, plus the rabbi, who led the three of us through some prayers and the placement, with upside-down shovels, of dirt on the plain, ivory-colored casket, which had already been lowered into the newly dug grave. A multitude of torn roots could be seen in the clumps of dirt on the edges of the hole, and it reminded me of how living things can get cut off without warning.

  Later at the memorial service the rabbi gave a moving eulogy, based on information from Louisa (which ultimately came from Suzanne), about how Suzanne had always said she was the most fortunate person alive, having been able to do everything she wanted. Did that include the unusual act of murder? And the rabbi recited that Suzanne and Ronald had told each other everything and decided they would never look to the past, only the future. How I ached inside, wanting to get up and shout at the eleven other people who were in the chapel, If only my family had ever had the option to look to the future with my uncle. Why were we robbed of that luxury? Isn’t it always people who do wrong
who are pleading to forget the past?

  We were also told, as Louisa had recounted at lunch, that Suzanne was the valedictorian of her one-room schoolhouse in Wisconsin. I know she did not mean her high school, because the valedictorian of that class of 1946 was one Reva Riley, and it was not a one-room high school. So she must have meant grade school. What would it mean to have a valedictorian in a class that was in a one-room schoolhouse with all eight grades? I had imagined there might be five kids per grade, but Suzanne’s brother told me when he was a student there, it had only thirteen students in all the grades.

  Suzanne was four years older, so perhaps there were a few more when she graduated, but the most it could have been was three people in one grade. Does it mean anything to be the smartest kid of three? And, anyway, having grown up in rural Wisconsin and attending a three-room school, I can say for certain I never, ever heard of any one-room (or even three-room) schoolhouse having a graduation with a valedictorian. Even if it was true, why would someone who had gotten a master’s, a doctorate, and a law degree even care about how she did in grade school?

  After the graveside service, Louisa, her son, and I went to lunch at an organic restaurant close to the synagogue, biding time until the memorial service at 2:00 P.M. We were seated in a corner booth, which provided some comfort and a measure of privacy. Louisa ordered salmon and fried greens, reminding us how they grew all their own vegetables at home and were used to healthy food.

  At the grave and at lunch Louisa had to cling to her son and me. Her eyes were overcome with a universe full of grief and sorrow, more than any one person should have to bear. I had to get up periodically and walk to the wait station to keep getting more brown-pulp paper napkins to catch the ocean of teardrops coming out of Louisa’s bleary eyes. Where did all that fluid come from, when she had been barely eating or drinking for days? The son kept coaxing Louisa to ingest some greens, just as I’m sure Louisa had done with him as a child. “Please, Mom. You need to eat.” She would just stare ahead and ask for more napkins and then take a sip of her red Pinot Grigio wine in the tall, clear goblet. “At least eat the salmon, Mom. Please.”

  Louisa could not contain her anguish, which was intensified by the fact her husband had suffered a stroke almost the same day Suzanne had been given days to live by the hospice nurses. At the memorial I could feel Louisa’s pain encompass the entire chamber.

  My emotions were all over the place. I had to use every last particle of my energy to let only my empathetic side come out, and to keep the painful, sarcastic bits to myself. I could see Louisa in agony, her body barely sitting upright, holding back a tsunami of tribulation. Deep inside me was the pain of loss, mixed with the happiness of memories of my uncle. Such a complex feeling is something like the Portuguese word saudade, which signifies the suffering of separation from a loved one at the same time you remember the wonderful times. Saudade is felt most deeply if you know they will never come back. What I wanted to say to her, but did not, because I knew she needed time to process the deep well of pain in her soul, was this:

  Louisa, Louisa, I know the agony you are feeling, the pain so intense that you wonder if you can take the next breath, and imagine you won’t wake up tomorrow. And if you do, you won’t be able to get out of bed or place one foot beside the other. And how would you accomplish even taking two steps when your chest is so heavy you think a giant is sitting on you and will never get off? You look in the mirror and see eyes so red they are as burned flesh, stinging with sorrow and all puffed, as if in an anaphylactic allergic reaction. You can’t eat for days and then you will stuff yourself with unhealthy food, trying to fill the empty void in your heart, an abyss you discover will never, ever be healed over. You will look at everyone who is your mother’s age and wonder, why couldn’t she have lived longer, too? You will read obituaries for years and notice all the people who were born in your mother’s year. You will meet women who remind you of your mother, and you will have a hard time standing up, remembering the wounds inside you since she died. And as you see someone her age in a few years, you will wonder what she would have looked like, had she survived. You will wake up every morning and notice the sky a little less blue, the robins singing slightly off-key, the grass not quite so green. Years later, you will start to feel as if the world might look good again, and you can finally smile sincerely. Then something will trigger you, perhaps you will find a picture of your mother or someone will mention her name, and you will break down in uncontrollable sobs, wondering if you can ever halt the staccato breathing-in that comes when you try to stop crying.

  Louisa, all of this is what my family has suffered for over forty years, since my uncle died. We have never gotten over it. In fact, I am certain it is what hastened the early deaths of my mother and her brother, the last son of my grandmother, who outlived her children by fifteen years and often cursed heaven to be in such a condition. It stole Shannon’s father from her, a relationship that can never be replaced. She was still a kid, and became a girl without a father. Your mother died at eighty-eight, a time when family can at least say, ‘She lived a long life. ’ When someone is killed at forty-four, such words cannot form around anyone’s lips. We never had even minutes to prepare for his death, no medical diagnosis, no hospice. Only a calamitous shock. Can you now understand what the murder did to us? That is asking a great deal, I know, but it would bring me much comfort. Please understand.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The Police Badge

  Perhaps you are wondering what became of Vernie’s police badge, the one Louisa had found in their house, the one Suzanne would not relinquish, the one Louise promised me after her mother died. I never got it.

  Three weeks after Suzanne’s funeral, I sent Louisa a message offering the services of Shannon and myself to come and help her go through any boxes in her house, or organize stuff in closets. Whatever she would need. Louisa responded, asking if she had ever met Shannon, commenting that she must be a lovely young woman. Louisa apologized for all the suffering that had been buried over the years, which was the first time anyone in her family had shown remorse. She promised to send any of our family things she found, which was a relief, because Shannon and I were keen to get any of the old Stordock photos.

  I told Louisa she and Shannon met once, ages ago in Oregon (I didn’t elucidate that it had been a total surprise to Shannon to discover her father had a girlfriend), and then I asked about the situation with the badge. No response for almost a month. What to do? I didn’t think it was ethical or moral for me to suggest I would write about this lack of cooperation in the book, as a kind of threat.

  I decided to lay both Shannon’s and my soul bare. I explained how Shannon had been left with nothing, not even one photograph, after her father died, and how it would mean the world to her (and to me), if she got the badge and any pictures. That very same day, Louisa responded and said of course, Shannon should get her father’s badge and photos. I was not prepared for the rest of her response. What are Shannon’s feelings about her mom and Vernie’s tragic marriage, she wondered. And also, what was the nature of what I was writing about what happened? Even though Louisa knew the book that included Vernie and the murder, she’d never asked before about the tone. She’d been completely supportive of my research and the book until this message.

  I understood her concern. Suzanne’s family had been able to move forward with their lives and their new names and could somehow act as if the murder had never happened. My family, on the other hand, had no such luxury, as one of our loved ones had been brutally taken from us, leaving a gaping hole and emotional wounds that would never ever heal. Still, Louisa wanted me to know how grateful she was that we had reunited.

  I felt the same. Whatever Suzanne had done, Louisa had been an innocent bystander who had been nonetheless caught in the decades-long undertow that no one could truly escape. The more research I’ve done, the more sympathy I’ve felt for Louisa and her brothers, who were taken on a roller-coaster ride through life
that they surely would not have chosen had they been given any agency.

  When I read her message inquiring about Shannon’s feelings, I thought, well, what do you expect her to feel about the woman who confessed to murdering her father? Then I called Shannon and asked her.

  “You mean about the woman who broke up my parents’ marriage, resulting in my mother and I living at a lower standard of living and me having to go to a community college and never realizing my dream of being a veterinarian?” she said with an unusual ferocity. “You mean about the woman who said she murdered my father, who got all his assets, including his life insurance?” Silence on the phone as I heard Shannon breathing and then she shouted, “I hope she burns in hell.”

  Now it was my turn to breathe deeply. I had never, ever heard Shannon talk like this, and I realized once again how deep her agony has been all these years. My own awareness of her searing pain was underscored when I went through the hundreds of photos in my research and found several, at different ages, of her and Vernie hugging with an intense, all-encompassing love. You could see the tight bond between the two, I mean you could feel it. Shannon continued, “I’ll call her and tell her.” No, I said. Better not to. “Then I’ll post in on her Facebook page,” Shannon declared. I begged her, don’t escalate it now, please.

  I tried to think of a way to communicate with Louisa that would not rupture our relationship, as I have come to love and respect her. So, my response was to tell her I was confused. Was Shannon to get the badge and photos only if she felt positive feelings towards Suzanne, and if I was writing what was acceptable to her? She must have realized what Shannon was going through, because she noted that Shannon would feel what she would feel. But, please she asked, what is in the book? She said she did not want the tragedy of her mother’s and Vernie’s relationships made public any more than her mom had wanted it.