“There’s no reason to feel uncomfortable, Dr. Barnes,” said Detective Wright. “We’re here to help you. We understand you’ve had a serious medical problem, and we know it’s difficult for you to remember things. We also know you’re probably anxious to get home, so we won’t take up much of your time.”
“Fine.”
“All right, then,” continued Wright. “The first piece of information you can tell us is who besides you and your wife has access to the security code on your house alarm.”
Barnes reached into his suit-coat pocket for a pen to jot down information and instead felt the tape recorder. Deciding that was even better, he took it out and held it in his hand on the table. “I’m going to record some of this. I want to go over it later, and this way I’ll remember it.”
“Go right ahead,” said Wright. “Now, can you answer the question, please?”
“Just a minute.” He turned on the recorder. “I’m being interrogated by Detectives . . . What are your names?”
“Wright and Gould.”
“Wright and Gould.” He turned off the recorder. The tape probably wouldn’t last through the entire interrogation, so he would have to be selective.
“Dr. Barnes, can you answer the question?” insisted Wright.
“What question?”
Gould threw up his hands.
Wright repeated the question: “Who besides you and your wife has access to the security code of your house alarm?”
That was easy. “The maid, Carmen Rodriguez.”
“Is she a legal immigrant?” asked Gould.
“I presume she is. I don’t ask for work papers when someone comes to clean the house or mow the lawn. She’s Mexican, about fifty years old. I think she’s been in the US for years, maybe decades, but her English still isn’t very good. Elizabeth and I usually speak Spanish to her.”
“What’s her address and phone number?” Wright asked.
Barnes didn’t know her address, but he told them her number. “You haven’t questioned her?” he asked.
“Yeah, we questioned her,” said Gould. “She’s the one that found the body.”
“Oh.” He envisioned Carmen happening upon Elizabeth lying in a pool of congealed blood. Probably Carmen hadn’t needed to call the police; her screams would have alerted half the city.
“We’re curious how much you know about her,” Wright said. “She has the code to your security system, your wife is killed at home, and the alarm doesn’t go off. Do you think she could be involved?”
Barnes dictated into the tape recorder, “The security system was disarmed or not armed when Elizabeth was murdered.”
“Do you think Carmen could be involved?” Wright repeated.
“I don’t think so, but I really don’t know her.”
“Your wife died at about nine in the evening,” said Gould. “Did she usually keep the alarm off at that time?”
Barnes held the recorder to his mouth. “Elizabeth killed at nine p.m.,” he dictated. Gould shot him an annoyed glance, but Barnes ignored him. He turned off the recorder and addressed Wright. “She always kept the alarm on in the evening when she was alone. It was like wearing a seatbelt. She always did it.”
“So you think maybe the maid told someone the code?” asked Gould.
“I don’t know. Elizabeth picked her and checked her references. She’s been working for us for about eight months.”
“And she got a key to the house?”
“That’s right.”
“Then she probably ain’t our perp. Whoever broke into your house used a glass cutter on a ground-floor window.”
Barnes dictated that finding.
“Tell us, Dr. Barnes,” said Gould, “who would benefit the most from your wife’s death?”
He shrugged. “No one that I’m aware of.”
“How much was her life insurance policy worth?” asked Wright.
Barnes figured they already knew the answer to that. After all, they hadn’t first asked whether she even had a policy. “I don’t know exactly . . . I think it’s one and a half times her annual salary.” He knew the policy paid at least a few hundred thousand dollars. But it wasn’t a policy he had taken out. It came as part of her employment package. Besides, it was only a fraction of her net worth.
“As a couple, would you say you were both pretty well off?” asked Wright.
“Yeah.” Barnes wondered whether they knew about his sour investment in the Zeiman Richter Growth Fund. Bringing that up probably wouldn’t be a good idea. He’d poured a ton of money into the purportedly low-risk, high-yield mutual fund, only to learn that the corporation operating it was embezzling and defrauding shareholders. He’d lost a fortune, thanks to Denny Houston, who’d recommended it. His only consolation was that Denny had lost even more.
“Or at least your wife was well off,” said Gould. “What we want to know is, was there any financial problems you and her had that we don’t know about?”
“No,” Barnes answered. He wondered what else they knew. His problems stemmed from not only the Zeiman Richter Growth Fund but also from betting on sporting events. He’d never considered it a significant concern, but he’d lost more than he cared to admit.
“How was your relationship with your wife?” asked Wright.
Barnes liked this turn in the conversation even less. “What do you mean?”
“Did you ever argue?”
“Everyone argues.” That came out sounding more defensive than he’d intended.
“What did you argue about?” asked Wright.
“Nothing in particular. Nothing important.”
“You were married how long?”
“Almost five years.” He thought of their upcoming anniversary. They’d talked about going back to Hawaii, to the black-sand beaches of Maui where they’d spent a solid week in paradise. Right now, he’d have given anything to be back there with her.
“Did you cheat on your wife?” Gould asked, interrupting his reverie.
The last thing Barnes wanted to do was to discuss Cheryl at the conference. His one transgression. He wished he’d forgotten her along with everything else wiped from his memory, but it seemed he’d been granted only part of that wish. He didn’t remember having sex with her, only dinner, and then waking up beside her in bed. She’d been naked—that much he remembered. The police must have known she’d taken him to the hospital, and then they’d connected the dots. “My personal life is none of your business,” he said.
“You’re wrong about that,” countered Gould. “Right now, everything about you is our business. We know you cheated on your wife. What we don’t know is, was there anyone special, or did you just screw around?”
“The only one special was Elizabeth,” he insisted. “That’s why I married her.”
“So you just screwed around?”
Barnes shifted uneasily in his chair. Better not to answer that.
“Do you have any idea why someone might want to kill your wife?” asked Wright. “Did she have any enemies?”
“No. Everybody liked her.”
Gould eyed him skeptically. “And that includes you?”
Barnes pushed back his chair. “I’m done here.”
But before he could stand up, Gould lunged across the table and grabbed his shoulder with a meaty hand. “No, you’re not. Tell us why someone would want to kill your wife.”
Barnes just sat there. What else could he do? He wondered how he’d gotten into this situation.
“Please answer the question,” Wright said politely. “You must have some idea.”
“I don’t,” was all he could say.
Gould settled back in his seat. “Why’d you have an affair?” he said. “We know you spent the night with some hottie at your conference.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t seem to know very much, do you?”
What the hell do you want? Barnes thought. “Look, it just happened. Once. One time. Maybe I had too much wine w
ith dinner. I really don’t know. It just happened. I wish I could take it back, but obviously I can’t.”
“Well, it works both ways,” said Gould. “You know that, don’t you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about someone pinch-hitting with your wife.”
“What?”
“Dr. Barnes,” said Wright, “we have compelling evidence that your wife was having an affair.”
“What evidence?” He clenched a fist under the table. The thought of Elizabeth with someone else . . . How could she?
Wright removed a piece of paper from a folder and slid it across the table to him.
“What’s this?” Barnes asked.
“Just read it and tell us what you think,” said Gould.
Barnes read the printed letter into his tape recorder:
Dear Elizabeth,
I apologize for typing this—computers are so impersonal—but I’m in a lazy mood and this is easier for me. Thoughts of you keep coming to me like butterflies at my window. I don’t know what makes that happen, but I find myself looking forward to their visits.
Are there butterflies at your window too? I like to think there are at least a few, and that they brighten your day as they do mine. I know your life is complicated, with more stress than you deserve. I hope I haven’t contributed to that by writing this letter, but I wanted to let you know I’ve been thinking of you. And us. I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed our time together and how much I look forward to the next time I’ll see you. You’re a special person, and I can’t . . .
There was more to the letter, but Barnes couldn’t go on. He put it down on the table.
“Finish it,” said Gould.
“You finish it.”
Gould picked it up and read:
You’re a special person, and I can’t put into words how much you mean to me. I miss holding you, being close to you, feeling your warmth. When I’m with you, nothing else matters, and I find myself looking forward to the next time, and the time after that. My life has become isolated moments in time, shared with you. The days between our meetings have little meaning; they’re merely bridges from one shared moment until the next.
Please forgive me for putting my thoughts onto paper. I can’t promise not to write another letter, but I assure you I’ll be discreet. I have no intention of disrupting your life; I want only to enhance it, as you’ve enhanced mine. I cannot thank you enough for the feelings you’ve aroused in me, and I cannot thank you enough for the sense of optimism that I . . .
The letter ended there, at the bottom of the page. Gould waved the sheet of paper in front of Barnes’s face.
“Where’s the rest of it?” Barnes could hear his voice tremble.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” answered Gould.
“We found the one sheet in her purse,” said Wright, “and we were wondering whether you’d taken the other page or pages.”
“Whether I did?”
“So you don’t know who wrote this?” said Gould.
“Of course not.” Elizabeth had been having an affair. “I have no idea.” Elizabeth had been having an affair.
“Maybe you knew but it slipped your mind,” suggested Wright. “Maybe if you give it some thought, this letter will jog your memory.”
Barnes wondered whether that was possible. Could he have forgotten something so important, so life altering? That seemed like forgetting you have a brother. “I have no idea,” he insisted.
“Look, we know this must be difficult,” said Wright, “but if there’s anything you can tell us, we need to know.” He put his hands on the table and leaned forward. “We wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t vitally important.”
Barnes just shook his head. Elizabeth had been having an affair.
“Sometimes these things happen in even the best relationships,” Wright counseled.
Barnes said nothing. He wondered how long he’d been sitting in the interrogation room. Hours? His buttocks and hamstrings ached from the chair. “I think I need a break.”
“We’re almost done,” said Wright. “Can you tell us what you remember about the last time you saw your wife?”
He wondered whether a cigarette would help. The nicotine might sharpen his concentration. “I can’t remember,” he said. “Can I have a cigarette?”
“No,” said Gould. “Just answer the question. When was the last time you saw your wife?”
“Probably just before I left for the airport to go to the conference,” Barnes guessed, “but I don’t remember much of anything even a week before then.”
“That’s convenient, you forgetting all that.”
“There’s nothing convenient about it.” Why had he ever agreed to talk to this jerk?
“So you don’t recall anything important that your wife told you before you left for the conference?” asked Wright. “Anything personal?”
He tried to recall his last conversation with Elizabeth. But the memory, if it existed, was buried too deep to retrieve. “No,” he said.
“How about her being pregnant?” said Gould. “She told you that, didn’t she?”
Barnes felt the blood drain from his face. “Pregnant?”
“Yeah. Were you the father?”
An image of a plastic cup of urine suddenly appeared, a translucent cup sitting on a counter beside a sink. Not just any sink—the one in his and Elizabeth’s master bath. He had the feeling this wasn’t the first time the image had flashed through his memory. Something about it seemed familiar. And now he also pictured something beside the cup. A pregnancy test.
A snippet of the memory came back to him. Elizabeth was standing beside the sink, appearing very small in an oversize T-shirt.
“I don’t believe this,” Barnes remembered saying. “Did you plan this?”
“No, I didn’t plan it. You know I’m taking the pill.”
“Don’t look so surprised,” Gould said, driving the scene from Barnes’s mind. “She must have told you. We found two pregnancy tests in two different wastebaskets in your house, and a blood test from the body confirmed it.”
“If she hadn’t wanted you to know,” added Wright, “she probably wouldn’t have taken the tests at home, or at least she would have disposed of them more discreetly. Since she died on her first evening back from Toronto, and since those urine tests are supposed to be more accurate when you use them first thing in the morning, we have to assume she took one or both of the tests before you left for the conference.”
Barnes dictated into the recorder, “Elizabeth died just after returning from visiting me in the hospital. She was pregnant, and the police say I knew about it.”
“Why didn’t you want her to be pregnant?” Wright asked.
“What are you talking about?” Barnes wiped sweat from the palms of his hands onto his pants.
“You told us ten minutes ago you never wanted to have children.” Wright and Gould exchanged glances.
Barnes just sat there. He couldn’t believe he’d shared that with them. He’d never even told Elizabeth that. “Later” or “someday,” he’d always said.
“Why didn’t you want her to be pregnant?” Wright repeated.
“I . . . I never said that.”
“Yes, you did,” Gould alleged. “You said it sure as we’re sitting here. What’ve you got against kids?”
“Nothing.”
They just sat there, as if waiting for a better answer, or more of an answer.
“Elizabeth and I weren’t planning on having children anytime soon,” Barnes explained. “Not with our careers in full swing. We discussed it, and we decided to wait. That’s what we agreed.”
The detectives stared silently at him. Barnes looked from one to the other.
“We both agreed,” he added.
Wright and Gould nodded, as if in understanding. But Barnes knew there was more to it than that.
He had just become their prime suspect.
Chapter 18
“He did it,” said Gould, down the hall. “We just got to figure out who he used.”
“We can subpoena his bank records,” Wright offered, “and see if he made any large withdrawals.”
“I say we go for a confession now. Squeeze it out of him.”
“Even if we could,” said Wright, “I doubt it’d hold up. Not with the way he is. If he can’t remember anything, his lawyer’s going to challenge what we’re doing here. He’ll say Dr. Barnes wasn’t competent and wasn’t aware of his rights. It’s better to let him go, and see what he does.”
“How about if we skip the confession and go to how he did it?”
“You mean tell him he already confessed?” asked Wright.
“Yeah. If we can get him to buy that, he’ll probably cave in and give us the other guy. Then we pick up his accomplice and turn the tables.”
“I really don’t feel good about exploiting a disability,” said Wright.
“You’re too sensitive about your wife. He’s not your wife. Besides, I bet if you asked her, she’d say it was a good idea.”
Wright thought about that. “It’s pretty underhanded, even for you. Let’s play it by ear.”
They headed back to the interrogation room.
Barnes sat in quiet agitation. The door to the interrogation room opened, and two men in sport coats breezed in.
“Do you remember us, Dr. Barnes?” the taller one asked.
He nodded, uncertain.
“I’m Detective Wright, and this is Detective Gould.” They both sat down. “We were talking about the death of your wife. Do you remember that?”
He did, only because he’d kept rehashing it. The actual memories had disappeared, but the basic facts remained.
“Why don’t you put that away?” said Gould, nodding to the tape recorder. “You don’t need it here.”
“I may not need it,” Barnes answered, “but I’d like to use it just the same.” He didn’t know what they had in mind, but it couldn’t be good if they were asking him not to record it.
Dying to Remember Page 8