Marital Privilege

by Greg Sisk

  Candace stopped moving and stood still in the kitchen.

  “I don’t think Bill’s coming home tonight,” she lied. “He thought I was going to be working all night, so he’s staying at a neighbor’s house.”

  Pirkle looked at her skeptically. “I don’t think I believe you. Why would he stay at a neighbor’s house? Why wouldn’t he sleep in his own house? That doesn’t make sense.”

  It doesn’t make sense, does it, thought Candace. Why would Bill stay overnight with neighbors? You’d think I could come up with a better fib than that. She realized she was under great stress. But she couldn’t afford not to think straight. Calm down, she told herself. Slow down that heartbeat. You’ve got to be very careful here.

  “I think we’ll sit right down here in the kitchen and wait for your husband. I think he’ll be home soon. And if he really is staying somewhere else, then we’ll just have to wait until morning.”

  “I could call him,” volunteered Candace, pulling out her cell phone from her pocket.

  “Nice try, nice try,” responded Pirkle, now harsh again in inflection. “You’re not calling anyone. Now throw that cell phone over into the sink. We wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for your husband.”

  Candace obeyed and threw the phone. It landed in the sink with a clunk, rattling a couple of dishes left unwashed in the basin.

  Pirkle then appeared to regret what he’d said, or at least how he’d said it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I know I’m scaring you. I won’t hurt you. I wouldn’t hurt anyone. I just need to talk to you and Bill.

  “Everywhere I go, there’s pictures of me on the television, in the newspaper. I’ve been hiding as best as I can. You can’t imagine how hard it was just to come home on the bus without being recognized. I’m so tired. And the police keep coming to my apartment building. I can’t even go home. You’ve got to get the police to leave me alone.”

  As if on cue, a siren sounded nearby and drew closer. Other sirens joined the first, moving toward the house.

  “How . . . what . . . how did the police know I was here? How could they know already?” asked Pirkle frantically, as his eyes darted from side to side. As he said this, he began waving the gun around again.

  Candace heard vehicles pulling up outside the house and out in the street. She could hear car doors opening and then slamming. People talking. After several minutes, a voice boomed through a bullhorn: “Pirkle. We know you’re in there. Come out now with your hands up and no one will get hurt.”

  Pirkle dropped down low, as though someone might see him from the back yard through the kitchen window. “You too,” he ordered. “Get down.”

  Candace lowered herself to the floor on her knees.

  “I’ve got to think, got to think,” said Pirkle in a plaintive voice. “What do I do now?”

  “You haven’t hurt anyone,” counseled Candace. “If you would just walk out the front . . .”

  “No, no, no,” intruded Pirkle. “Stop talking. I need to think. I need you to stay quiet while I think this out.”

  Pirkle moved up into a crouch and started crawling on his hands and knees into the hallway. But to keep Candace in his sights, he couldn’t move very far down the hallway, not far enough to be able to see the whole front yard through the windows at the front of the house.

  The telephone rang, startling both of them. It undoubtedly was the police, trying to reach Pirkle and talk with him. The phone rang about a dozen times and then fell silent.

  “All right,” Pirkle said, “I’ve got to tie you up now so I can move around and see what’s going on outside without worrying about you slipping away.”

  Candace’s body stiffened. She was certain she would scream if Pirkle touched her.

  “Please, please, please,” she said in a deliberately pleading voice. “Please don’t tie me up.”

  Pirkle looked at her again, appearing to be chagrined. “I honestly don’t want to scare you,” he said. “I’m not a bad person. I just wanted to talk with you and Bill. I just need you two to tell the police to leave me alone.”

  “You are scaring me. Please, please,” Candace repeated, “don’t tie me up.”

  Pirkle paused and seemed to be thinking. “All right. I won’t tie you up. But I’ve got to keep you secure somehow, while I think. Maybe I could just lock you in a closet . . . or the basement.”

  The door to the basement was adjacent to the kitchen. Pirkle scrambled over, opened the door, and looked down. He flicked on the light and looked down again. He jiggled the door knob.

  “This door doesn’t lock,” he said.

  Candace thought, all right, now she had a chance. Stay calm. Don’t sound too eager.

  “The door opens out into the kitchen,” she observed. “You could move a piece of furniture in front of it and then I couldn’t get out of the basement.”

  Pirkle peered intently at her, as though he was trying to read her mind. Candace worried, oh, no, he’s getting suspicious. He’ll think she wants to be sent down to the basement. She had to be crafty.

  “Please,” she said, trying to sound even more desperate than she felt. “Anything other than tying me up.”

  Pirkle was still dubious. “But what if you’ve got a gun or something down in the basement?”

  “We don’t have any guns in the house,” she said truthfully. “And if we did, we certainly wouldn’t store them in the basement. And, even if there were something down there, once you’ve pushed a desk or table in front of the door, I couldn’t get through to you.”

  A spotlight pierced through the dark, coming in the kitchen window from the backyard. Pirkle fell flat down on the floor, but kept the gun pointed in her general direction.

  “All right, all right,” said Pirkle in a frightened voice. “All right, all right. I’ve got to be alone for a while to think. Get down in the basement.”

  Pirkle motioned with the gun toward the basement door. Candace quickly moved through the door and on to the stairs leading down.

  Behind her, Pirkle closed the door. She quickly climbed down to the bottom of the stairs. She waited until she heard him moving something large, probably the desk from the kitchen, in front of the door.

  As she stood at the foot of the basement stairs, she heard a soft “meow.” Tucker walked out from under one of the storage cabinets in the basement. Not surprisingly, the skittish cat had run down into the basement to hide when a stranger had broken into the house.

  “Well, little buddy,” she whispered to Tucker, as she leaned down and picked him up. She quietly mouthed to the cat, as if he could understand: “It’s a good thing my father’s construction company does only commercial work. If Pirkle had done residential construction, he would immediately recall that building codes require new houses with basements to have an egress window in case there’s a fire. Even so, I suspect he’s going to figure out pretty soon that letting me go into the basement wasn’t a good idea. We’d better move quickly.”

  She ran behind the stairs to the other side of the basement. She jerked aside a curtain. There was the oversize egress window, which could be pushed out into a window well next to the foundation, allowing a person to crawl out of the basement.

  Candace paused, listening carefully and hoping Pirkle wasn’t near the basement door.

  Now, she thought, it would just be her luck if the window stuck or made so much noise that Pirkle heard it before she could get away.

  • • •

  Lieutenant Ed Burton stood in the steady downpour near the driveway, carefully keeping his car between him and the house as a screen. Even though water streamed down his face, because he wasn’t wearing a hat, it never occurred to him to duck into the car to keep dry. All of his attention was focused on the Klein house. He still held the bullhorn in his hand. So far there had been no response from anyone in the ho
use.

  Down the street, sitting in the back of a squad car with a patrol officer in the front seat, was Bill Klein. He’d been at a neighbor’s house and had seen his wife’s mini-van pass by on the street toward their house.

  When he arrived home and walked up toward the front door, he’d heard someone—someone definitely not his wife—shouting. Peeking through the windows beside the front door, Klein had seen that Pirkle was inside with his wife. And that Pirkle had a gun.

  When Burton arrived on the scene, Klein was agitated and kept insisting he should have gone in and tried to negotiate with Pirkle or attempted to rush him and seize the gun. Instead, Klein had returned to the neighbor’s house to call the police. Now he was torn with regret and guilt.

  “What kind of a husband doesn’t run in to protect his wife?” asked Klein.

  “The kind of husband who’s still alive,” responded Burton.

  Burton had assured Klein he’d done the right thing by retreating and calling the police. The police were trained for this kind of situation.

  But Burton felt for the guy. To have lost his child and now to have his wife being held hostage in his own home. It couldn’t get any worse for him.

  Well, Burton corrected himself ruefully, it could get worse. Pray to God it doesn’t.

  It had been about fifteen minutes since his initial attempt to contact someone in the house, long enough for the other officers to work themselves into place at the back of the house.

  Burton was about ready to try again on the bullhorn, when he heard a voice behind him, saying his name.

  He turned to see a very wet Candace Klein holding a very wet—and very unhappy—cat.

  He was so startled that he couldn’t speak.

  Candace said again, “Lieutenant Burton?”

  “Thank God!” he finally exclaimed. “Where did you come from?”

  Candace explained how Pirkle had decided to lock her in the basement, giving her the opportunity to escape through the fire egress window. The window was set inside bushes along the side of the house and she’d run from there into the neighboring yard and then worked her way back to the front where she saw Burton next to his car.

  Burton walked Candace Klein back to the squad car where Bill Klein was waiting. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a man so relieved.

  Burton returned to the group of police officers at the front of the house and spoke to the other officers by radio. He explained there was no longer a hostage situation and directed the officers to slowly approach the house from all sides.

  “Let’s be careful,” Burton said. “There’s no reason to risk any of us now that Mrs. Klein is safe. But let’s be sure Pirkle doesn’t get away either. Mrs. Klein was able to run away from the house without any of you noticing,” he added accusingly. “Let’s tighten up the net so Pirkle can’t do the same.”

  • • •

  Bill and Candace sat together in back of the police car, with the cat on Candace’s lap. The patrol officer in the front seat told them the police were now moving closer to the house, in both front and back.

  A few minutes later they heard a gunshot. It sounded like it came from the back yard.

  After several more minutes, they saw Burton walking back down the street toward the squad car.

  “We got him,” said Burton. “Pirkle must have realized pretty quickly you’d escaped. He tried to slip away out the back of the house. The idiot pointed a gun at us, and one of my officers fired. He was hit in the abdomen. He was in a lot of pain, but has now lost consciousness. My guess is he’ll pull through, but he’s seriously injured. An ambulance has already been called. Just wait right here in the squad car for a few more minutes, please.”

  Burton walked back along the street, into the driveway of their house, and then out of view behind the bushes and trees lining the road.

  Within a few minutes, an ambulance pulled into the drive of their house. Shortly thereafter, the ambulance rocketed away with lights flashing and sirens blaring.

  Burton returned to the squad car, opened the door to the back seat, and leaned in. He touched Candace’s arm lightly, unobtrusively. “Mrs. Klein,” he said, “let’s get you back inside. It’s safe now.”

  “No,” Candace said quietly but firmly. “No. I’m never going back inside that house.”

  Bill looked over at his wife. Then he spoke up. “We’re going to find a hotel for tonight. I think it’s time for us to find a new home. I’ll come back in the morning to pack up some stuff.”

  Bill climbed out of the squad car and went to the garage, where he backed out the mini-van into the street. He came back to the squad car, opened the door, and walked with Candace to the mini-van. Candace was still carrying Tucker the cat.

  As he drove the mini-van away from the house for what Candace hoped would be the last time, Bill said, “It’s all over, honey. They got him.”

  He looked over at her and repeated, “It’s all over.”

  Springing unbidden to Candace’s mind was that childhood taunt by the winner to the loser of a playground contest: “It’s all over . . . but the crying.”

  Chapter 9

  [SEVEN WEEKS AFTER THE TRAGEDY]

  Candace stood on the enclosed balcony of a two-bedroom condominium unit on the twelfth floor of a high-rise building on the west side of downtown Minneapolis. It was a sunny day in late June, with no clouds in the sky.

  The Basilica of St. Mary—“America’s First Basilica” completed in 1915—stood in granite majesty in the center of her view, topped by double spires at the front and a large dome at the center. Turning left to the southwest, she could see the glistening blue water of the lake in the middle of Loring Park. Although the lake had been renamed (along with the park) in honor of civic leader Charles Loring, it remained Johnson’s Lake in the hearts of many. What was now an urban park between downtown Minneapolis and the Lowry Hill district had once been the Minnesota farm of Joseph and Nellie Johnson.

  While Candace could not see it from this vantage point, the University of St. Thomas law school building—with its distinctive gothic style built of Mankato limestone—was just across the street to the immediate north. And the skyscrapers of downtown Minneapolis lay behind her to the east, the closest being the thirty-two-story international headquarters of Target Corporation on Nicollet Mall two blocks from the condominium building.

  In the first week after her home—what had been her home—had been invaded, Candace and Bill had found themselves once again living the lives of vagabonds, moving from one hotel room to another, with all their immediate necessities packed into a couple of suitcases.

  She had resolutely refused to return to the house. Bill kindly accommodated by retrieving the things they would need for a few days in one local hotel or another, until they could find a more permanent place to live.

  Candace then received a phone call from Dean Colleen Ordway, saying a recently retired colleague, Feliciano Zuazo, had learned through the law school grapevine about what had happened and how Candace had been rendered homeless by circumstances. Zuazo had an offer that, after initial hesitation, Candace realized she could not refuse. Indeed, it was a gift, a blessing, a reminder she was not alone. She had a larger community of friends and colleagues who would sustain her during this time of difficulty and who needed but to be asked to offer succor.

  This emeritus law professor and his wife had moved to the San Diego area to spend their retirement years closer to their son stationed in the Navy there. After their children had left home, Zuazo and his wife had moved from their house in the Lake of Isles neighborhood of Minneapolis and into a condominium unit in a high-rise building directly across the street from the law school in downtown Minneapolis. Now that the Zuazos had retired and moved to California, the condo had been on the market, but, in this difficult economy, the Zuazos had received no offers even
close to the asking price.

  So Feliciano Zuazo had the following proposition. If Candace would agree to pay the nominal rental price of $100 a month, the condominium was hers for the next twelve months. And, he insisted, Candace would be doing him a favor. He could remove the unit from the market until real estate prices in the Twin Cities stabilized. And he could rest assured the property was not being left unattended. Or to think of it in another way, Zuazo said, Candace would be house-sitting for him.

  At first, Candace was reticent. For more than three years, she had loved working downtown, while living in a suburb. She could savor the offerings of the big city, being close to courts and major law firms, lots of restaurants, and theaters (the Twin Cities having more theater seats per capita for plays and concerts than any city in the country other than New York). Then she could also enjoy the benefits of a smaller city setting, larger yards, calmer neighborhoods, and the more responsive city government and services that came with a suburban community. When last year she’d been troubled by an episode of minor vandalism in her Eden Prairie neighborhood, the chief of police had been the one to return her call and explain how the matter was being addressed. That would never happen in the big city of Minneapolis.

  Moreover, during the past few weeks she had taken to going to morning Mass each day at St. Gregory’s in the southwest suburbs. Without that anchor in her life, without being able to spend half an hour each morning with God and then talk briefly with Father Cleve, she didn’t know how she could go on. And the 8:00-a.m.-sharp time for morning Mass ensured that she would resist the temptation to remain in bed and wallow in her grief.

  After some thought, though, she realized she and Bill really needed more geographical distance from her family tragedy. Neither of them was wealthy, so they could hardly ignore the gift of a nearly rent-free condo for a year in a luxury high-rise. Since she’d been commuting from Eden Prairie to Minneapolis for work each day, she could just as easily commute from Minneapolis to the southwest suburbs for morning Mass—and be going in the opposite direction of the rush hour traffic.