Motion to Suppress

by Perri O'shaughnessy

"About ten bucks an hour," Paul said, "but you’re your own boss."

  "Well, how will I do if I just keep on with my friendly slots?"

  "The house edge is over ten percent. Stay home, eat popcorn, rent a video before you do that. I guarantee that way you’ll come out ahead."

  They pulled off Highway 50. They had entered the foot-hills between the Sierra and the Sacramento Valley. On the left, the road turned into the main street of Placerville, population 6,500, formerly known as Hangtown. On the right, the road wound along the American River a few miles north to Coloma, where the ill-fated James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. Spring runoffs had brought out the weekend prospectors in their campers, causing a traffic jam at the light. The price of gold had made even a few flakes a real find.

  They found the morgue, in the basement of the stone courthouse on Main Street, next door to a lush green park with advanced play equipment. "Back shortly," Nina called as the two boys ran toward a tall contraption made of net and old tires, little Brianna following after in her sparkly new shoes.

  "Aren’t you afraid to leave them alone?" Paul said, following them with his eyes. "Ever the ex-cop. Scares me."

  "We’re right next door. And Bobby and I stay in touch. He keeps his in his fanny pack," Nina said, holding out a small black object for inspection.

  "Well," he said. "A folding cellular phone. Pocket-size. Top of the line. Welcome to techno world, a place where people can have the illusion of safety. I don’t like it."

  The implicit criticism angered her. Danger all around, kidnapping, yes, but these kids deserved a life outside prison, didn’t they? And so she had made a conscious decision to give her son as much freedom as she could without being eaten up by fear. Nina eyed a bearded old fellow steering his shopping cart toward the park. Still, there were three children, and Bobby had fast feet. She was nervous, but she would let them play.

  "Welcome to parenthood in the nineties," she said. "Do you still feel sure you don’t want children?"

  "It’s not that I hate kids. It’s just too nerve-wracking. A kid might keel over, fall down the stairs, disappear, drink poison, grow up to be an addict, marry someone I hate, crash my van ... too hard for me. And I would be linked to a particular woman forever, whether I wanted to be or not." He gave her a sidelong glance. "You asked. Give me a nice, peaceful homicide." Paul began the descent to the basement, and quickly left her behind, his footsteps echoing along the dank passageway. "Ready to visit the underworld?" he called, then fell silent. Nina, behind, tried and failed to forget what was ahead. By the time she arrived at the black-lettered door, Paul was knocking. Observing her face in a pool of sickly yellow light, he asked in a Cockney accent, "Wot ’ud become of the undertakers without it ... ?"

  "Let’s get this over with," she said.

  A white-coated man wearing a tag that said DR. CLAUSON showed them in, wiping frameless glasses as he marched them down yet another corridor. Behind the door marked FORENSICS he showed them a sheet-covered body laid out on the table. Up to this point he had spoken not a word.

  It was Paul’s show. He did not look at the body, but asked, "Were you the examining physician?"

  "I’m the medical examiner," Dr. Clauson said. "There’s only me."

  Nina took out her notepad, which the doctor did not seem to notice. He sat down on a chair and shook a cigarette out of a pack of Camels, ignoring the NO SMOKING sign posted prominently on the wall. Taking a long drag, he said, "So what do you want to know?"

  "When was the autopsy conducted?"

  "Tuesday, May first, five-thirty P.M. White male, six feet even, dark brown hair and brown eyes, brought in by the South Lake Tahoe Police Department."

  "As you know, Ms. Reilly here represents the defendant, the dead man’s wife. We’d like to know when we can expect to get a copy of the autopsy report."

  "You don’t have it yet, eh? It’s the budget cutbacks. There’s only one secretary for the whole County Health Department. You’ll get it in another week or two. What does she want to do with the body?" he said suddenly, turning to Nina.

  "Who?"

  "The widder," he said. It took a moment to register that he meant Misty.

  "I have no idea," Nina said. "I’ll talk to her."

  "Got to get him out of here in the next couple of days. We’re too small to store bodies for long. Two more came in last night. Drunk driver took the turns too fast at Strawberry."

  "Do you have your examination notes?" Paul asked.

  "Nope. I put it on tape as I go, then hand it over for typing. I remember the general stuff, but if I’m wrong on something you can’t hold me to it."

  "Fair enough," Paul said. "Okay, let’s take a look at him." The doctor shrugged and pulled off the cloth.

  The photographs in police evidence had been too crude for Nina to form a real impression of the man. She had been expecting her own image of an Anthony: short and stocky, neckless, big-bellied and extremely hairy except on top. This Anthony, except for the extreme bluish pallor, the bloating, and the concave portion of his head, had been a young man with a big, strong body and a wonderful face—a real man’s face, with a clean Roman jaw, prominent cheekbones, a full, firm mouth, long eyelashes, and heavy brows under a high forehead. Broad, square shoulders tapered down to a lean waist over long, well-muscled legs.

  Nina stood there, wishing she could see his eyes. Where was the monster from that night Misty had described? She looked again at the face, uncreased with the anger and bitterness that must have marked it in life. "A few cc’s of water in his lungs," the medical examiner said. "First thing I checked. He wasn’t dead when he hit the water. But he was unconscious, judging from the relatively small amount of water I found."

  On Patterson’s index finger shone a ruby ring set in gold. It was all he was wearing. Well-hung, Nina thought. It was amazing how large and important his genitals looked on his body, like a whole separate animal with its own desires had lived at his center. His head had fallen to the side, his mouth a little open. All his meanness had leaked away with his life.

  "Why don’t you just summarize the major findings," Paul said.

  "Sure. Fingernail scratches, here and here," said the medical examiner, pointing to Anthony’s chest. "Couple old scars, one from a bullet, here and here." Nina looked more closely and could see where Anthony had been cut open.

  "Inside, everything looked normal but the lungs. Looked like a carcinoma in situ was developing in the right lobe. And the water, of course."

  "He had lung cancer?" Nina said.

  "The beginnings of it. Looked highly malignant. I saved it to ship down to the research center at UC. Want to see it?"

  "No! No. Would he have had any symptoms?"

  "Not necessarily. Sometimes just a slight cough. Would have taken a chest X ray for him to know he had a problem." Dr. Clauson shrugged again. "Oh, and he was drunk. Have to wait for the lab reports to get his B.A. level, but you could still smell the alcohol when I opened him up."

  Maybe Paul should have come alone.

  "Two blows to the head, blunt instrument, an hour or so apart in time. The second blow was the serious one, gave him a shallow skull fracture."

  Dr. Clauson held Patterson’s head in his hands, and he was twisting it to the side. "See? The temple is a bad place for a fracture, usually causes immediate severe subdural bleeding like it did here. Doesn’t take much pressure on impact to cause unconsciousness. This other one in back must have hurt, but there was no fracture. The bash in the back of the head might have knocked him out for a while, long enough for her to get him out on the water."

  Nina started to speak and thought better of it.

  "Tell me again, Dr. Clauson," Paul said. "Which blow did he take first?"

  "The little one in back," the doctor said, laying Patterson’s head down none too gently on the gurney.

  "Any idea what the blunt object was?"

  "Oh, yeah, the police brought it in with the body to see if it matched u
p with the wounds. I think it’s up in Tahoe in the evidence locker now. It’s a polar bear statue, about eight pounds. She grabbed it by the head and struck him with the base. You could fit the right corner of the base into the cerebrum wound. The smaller wound in back fits along the edge of the base. Diameter of the edge fits the wound. I understand they pulled it out of the water not far from where the body was found. Anything else?"

  "Cause of death," Nina said. "Did he drown?"

  "I’d say so. I’d say he never noticed hitting the water, though. The second blow, ma’am. The second blow knocked him in the water, and the lake did the rest in a couple minutes. The second blow alone might not have killed him, even with the bleeding."

  "How do you know the second blow caused him to fall in the water?" Paul said.

  "Only way it makes sense to me," Clauson said. "I’m not on the witness stand. I’m just telling you what I think, right now and without the lab reports. She hit him in the back of the head. She dragged him out to the boat. Then out on the lake she put him on the railing and bopped him one more time to keep him from swimming around and raising a ruckus after she pushed him over. The railing on those boats is only about eighteen inches high. At least they found him. Lot of missing persons reported in this area. I figure they’re down there. Every year they find one or two, dredging the Keys channel."

  He was lighting up again. The cigarette smoke plus the disinfectant smell drifted across the body. Nina breathed it in.

  "Thanks," she mumbled, and ran for the door. She felt better at the park, gathering up the happy kids, but the curving road after Apple Hill was too much. She got carsick and they had to stop by the side of the road at the Audrain turnout.

  Paul drove over Carson Pass on Monday morning just about dawn, stopping when he got hungry. Here, wagon trains from the staging point at St. Joseph, Missouri, had rolled across Nevada to settle California. Struggling up almost nine thousand feet of steeply inclined massif, the pioneers came at last to the same place he was standing, looking west out over the pass, past the peaks of the western Sierra to the fertile, golden-green valleys of California.

  Turning from the view and pulling up his collar against a brisk breeze, he entered a one-horse casino and ate a platter of bacon and eggs.

  He had an appointment with the Tengstedts in Fresno and a pocketful of questions Nina wanted answered.

  "Talk to the father, Paul," she had said that morning. "Find out more about her childhood memory loss. Bruno thinks she may have had a similar memory loss on April twenty-sixth. Bringing back one memory may bring back the other. Try to get more on Misty’s relationship with Anthony. Give me your impressions of the parents. Oh, one other thing. Find out what Carl Tengstedt was doing on the night of the twenty-sixth."

  "You think he might have visited the Lake?" Paul said.

  "He and Misty used to go fishing now and then. You do that in the early hours, right? Maybe he got the urge, came up late the night before without calling her. Or maybe Misty called him and he drove up. It’s only three hours. Maybe he just disposed of the body for her."

  "With all the other males around your client, why are you looking so hard at the old man?"

  "Just a feeling about the parents. They do have some kind of secret, and they’re very frightened about whatever it is. And one other thing."

  "What?"

  "Remember, I mentioned he was a swimmer? Tengstedt’s wife said that he was shot down in Korea in stormy seas and managed to hold on to another man for hours before he was rescued."

  "So?"

  Nina had said, "The boat was drifting out there, out of gas. Whoever took Anthony out on the lake had to swim half a mile back in frigid water. It took a hero to do that and survive. I don’t think I could do it, and I’m a pretty good swimmer."

  Now Paul pushed his notes aside and leaned back on the vinyl back of his booth, observing his bleary-eyed fellow customers. Just outside the open door of the coffee shop, he could hear a pleasant ringing and the jingling of coins falling into a slot. Some lucky bastard had actually won something in a slot machine.

  He loved his job. He was making a lot more money than he could have dreamed of as a cop, and he got to roam over the countryside in search of the facts, answerable only to the IRS.

  Just before leaving, he had called his secretary and play-mate, waking her from a sound sleep in the water bed in her cottage in Carmel. Marilyn told him to come back with a big check. Since leaving the police force, besides the independence of having his own investigative business, he was enjoying his first financial success. Certain large corporate clients, most of whom he farmed out to reliable subcontractors, footed the daily bills. He missed being on the force, but he was not stupid enough to go back when he wasn’t welcome. There was a certain type there, and he wasn’t it.

  In addition to an increased financial payback, he was now able to pick off the plums, like this job, and indulge a well-honed interest in people. He had always been very self-contained, but as his work threw him into situations that demanded it, he discovered the fine pleasures of instant intimacy. People in trouble were vulnerable. Interviews were so much more gratifying when you could ignore police procedure. He had a talent for getting people to tell him what he wanted to know, and he was no longer averse at all to sharing select pieces of himself, particularly when he knew he would never see the person again. In return he got friendship, advice, and an instant relationship. It was remarkably like a one-night stand, only nobody expected a callback.

  Nina had changed over the five years with Jack. She still liked to joke around, and she had the same voluptuous figure he remembered from their first meeting, but five years of lawyering had sharpened her. With her brown bangs, intent brown eyes, head thrust forward and shoulders squared, she now looked more like a little hawk. The tentative girl in law school, the unsure one, had seemed softer, needier, more approachable. It was just too bad. He would protect her now as well as he could, but she didn’t belong where she was in the first place. He didn’t like having as his boss a woman on the loose, the sole support of a child, running her own business. He was sick and tired of these pushy broads trying to take over. They were all stressed out and divorced, just like she would soon be.

  How exasperating it was that precisely this kind of woman always attracted him. He couldn’t resist their convolutions and moodiness, their direct speech, their self-doubts, their strength in the head and their weakness in the heart.

  She needed him, even more than she knew.

  He got back in his van. Behind the wheel once again, he flipped on the news. A San Francisco station two hundred miles away tried to create some radio excitement out of gridlock on the Bay Bridge. Out the window a line of snow-covered peaks receded into the sharp, bright air. Highway 395—someone should write a song about it, because it had to be one of the most beautiful roads in the world. An hour to Mammoth Lake, around Yosemite, cutting across the top of Sequoia National Park ... he turned off the news and searched for a jazz station.

  If he thought of Fresno at all, he thought of a hot, dry, dull agricultural town. Today, however, deeply into spring, the whole San Joaquin valley lay strewn with yellow mustard flowers. Fruit trees dripped with blooms in pink and white. It was the pioneer’s dream. The town boiled with the scents of flowers and fertilizer.

  Tengstedt had agreed to meet him at home, before going to work at the auto dealership. The house was in the old part of town, a mock Southern plantation house from the thirties, painted white, its lawn disciplined into a military buzz cut. The Tengstedts must be doing well.

  He walked under an arch into the green front yard. Carl Tengstedt was there, waiting for him. "Beautiful day," he said.

  Paul agreed and they went inside. Mrs. Tengstedt, a worn-out-looking blonde, was sitting at the kitchen table. They sat down and had some coffee, talked about the case and got used to each other for about twenty minutes.

  Then Mrs. Tengstedt got up and said she had things to do and invited Paul to d
inner. Paul said thanks, but he was on a tight schedule and was driving back to Tahoe tonight to get on with the investigation. She kissed her husband on the top of the head and went out the door.

  "Okay, then," Carl Tengstedt said, settling himself on the striped couch in his living room. "You said you wanted to know more about Michelle’s background. Well, you’re looking at it. This is her home. She’s a good daughter and we love her."

  It was so quiet, Paul could hear the tick-tock of the pendulum clock on the mantel. He looked around him. A doily adorned the top of the entertainment center; a Winslow Homer print decorated the other wall. A neat pile of Fresno newspapers sat in an ornate brass container. Mr. Tengstedt had his recliner, Mrs. Tengstedt her rocking chair and cushion, and even a sewing basket on the rug next to it. A big Bible rested on a mahogany stand in the corner. The all-American living room, Penney’s catalog, circa 1960, and in this home Father clearly knew best.

  Tengstedt was nervous. Paul could see it in the hands folded tightly, the stern expression on his face, but he had the stolidity of a burgermeister too. He looked honest. The good-citizen type. Very effective with a jury, likely to be believed. He said, "We’re putting a lot of faith in Ms. Reilly, Mr. van Wagoner. I wish I could believe it’s well placed."

  "Nina Reilly is an excellent attorney," Paul said, hoping it was true. "I’ve known her for years."

  "Then she can settle this quickly. Is it possible Michelle could be sentenced only to probation? After all, this is her first offense, and that man was violent. He was arrested before."

  "Michelle doesn’t believe she killed Anthony," Paul said. "There may be a trial."

  "That would be very foolish, from what you have told me about the evidence and my daughter’s statements. Michelle has always had difficulty accepting the consequences of her actions."

  "You seem so sure, Mr. Tengstedt, that your daughter’s a murderer," Paul said. "I hope you’ll allow Michelle’s attorney to handle this as she sees fit."

  "We don’t have any choice, do we? Michelle has made that clear. Tell Ms. Reilly the loan on the house is coming through next week, and we’ll post Michelle’s bail. But we want Michelle home with us."