Motion to Suppress

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  He stopped to study the picture. In a silky, skin-colored bikini, the girl was lying on a gleam of white sand in front of Lake Tahoe near Emerald Bay somewhere, with the reddened sky turning dark. Her body, a soft swoop of shoulder, breast, and belly, looked challenging, poised and ready to leave this spot soon. Long, curvy legs stretched out, crossing slightly at the knee. A haze of gold over the sand must have been roused by the same wind that tangled her hair into snakes around her head. She looked straight at, and somehow beyond, the photographer, her eyes staring inside rather than out. An arch expression, and full lips with a hint of smile capped the stunning beauty that had so beguiled Anthony Patterson.

  So here was the famous Misty, the Misty who probably killed her husband, in spite of what her lawyer wanted to think. The ex-cop in Paul knew that an arrest meant they usually had the guilty party. That picture of her reminded him of something. Something about the attitude, the kind of daring, hussy pose was familiar, but he couldn’t think what it was.

  He turned his attention to a hundred-dollar Prize’s chip; credit and I.D. cards, driver’s license, and receipts. Anthony was four years older than he had told his wife. "Six twenties were still in the wallet," Beltine said. "We got that in the money locker."

  Paul held up an even smaller plastic bag, containing a still-damp comb, a Chap Stick, and an empty cigarette package showing some water damage.

  "All still in the pocket of the guy’s robe."

  "Man, life is cold," Paul said.

  "It does have that poignant quality," Beltine said.

  Paul drove around town for a half hour, timing his walk into Tom Clarke’s office at the elementary school on Bijou Street for five minutes to twelve, and he caught Clarke walking out the main door, surrounded by children. He fell into step beside him, offering his card. "Excuse me, kids," Clarke said. They dropped behind. Clarke said, "I don’t need this."

  "You have to talk to me," Paul said. "So let’s go have lunch somewhere."

  The Pineacres Elementary School principal looked around and waved to some parents. He pointed east. "Around on the Nevada side. Okay? Let’s go to the Thirsty Duck at Round Hill."

  "How about we make it the Chart House on Kingsbury? Farther away. Better food. And I’ll buy," Paul said.

  "I’ll meet you there," Clarke said.

  "This way, you’re anonymous," said Paul, opening the door to his van. Clarke, casting a final furtive glance toward the school, climbed inside. They rode along the highway around the lake into Nevada while Clarke, a classic bad passenger, issued orders and directions Paul didn’t appear to hear.

  They each ordered a pint of Anchor Steam and salmon steak for lunch. From their raised table the two men could see across the lake to the west shore, toward Mt. Tallac and Emerald Bay. They were paying for the view, and Paul couldn’t take his eyes off it, but Clarke ignored it, looking around as though expecting the jig to be up any second.

  "What do you want from me?" he said. "I have a wife and kids. If the Mirror gives out my name, the district won’t renew my contract and my wife will leave me. I got Misty a lawyer and that’s all I can do."

  "April 26th. Thursday night."

  "Home with my wife."

  "That’s it, then. Home with the wife. Anything you want me to tell your girlfriend?"

  "Have you met her yet? Misty?" Clarke said.

  "She’s still in jail." Paul pictured the photograph and this time recognized the image instantly. Misty Patterson was not, by a long shot, the romantic Botticelli Nina described. This woman had too much animal for that rarified company. No, at least in that picture she was a blond ringer for Manet’s "Olympia" model, the shady lady that shook the world.

  "Don’t go getting all self-righteous with me until you’ve seen her. I met her one night at Prize’s. She suggested we get together in the parking lot after her shift. It was December, snowing, nobody out there but the snowplows. She gave it to me in the backseat of her car under a sleeping bag, the windshield frosted over. It was like being eighteen again." Clarke sat back, his hands holding the edge of the table. "She wanted to meet again and she set it up. We went on from there."

  "How many times?" Paul asked.

  "Quite a few. Hey, I didn’t count. I wish, honest to God—I wish it could have gone on forever. I liked her, loved her in a way, and it wasn’t just the sex. Her husband treated her like a hound dog to kick around, and she needed my affection. I’m only human. You have to see her."

  "So she talked about him with you." The waiter set down a steaming plate in front of Paul. The smell of garlic and lemon was too much for him. His mouth full of fish, he went on, "Did she talk about killing him?"

  "No! She was afraid of him. I had a hard time convincing her ..."

  "To leave him?"

  "If she had, this wouldn’t have happened," Clarke said. "She almost made it. I had her talked into the appointment to start the divorce, but he went after her once too often, and this time she fought back."

  "And then she dragged him next door, bleeding, and loaded him in her neighbor’s boat, and went out on the lake in the middle of the night in a snow flurry with the bear statue and threw him overboard, and swam a long way to shore in freezing water, and she was all tired out so she hit the hay and had forgotten all about it by the next morning."

  "It does sound bizarre," Clarke said. "You ever read about the incredible feats of strength people perform in desperate circumstances? That’s the way I see it."

  "How about the forgetting part?"

  Clarke put his fork down and leaned over. His lips were red and wet under the beard. Paul recoiled a little. "She’s telling the truth about that. She called me the next morning and she was very scared about Patterson being gone. She couldn’t fake that. How she could forget all the rest of it, I don’t know. It was shock or something. She wasn’t thinking straight. She should have called the police the minute she hit him, and showed them her bruises. She never should have tried to cover it up."

  "You saw bruises?"

  "No. Nothing I could testify to."

  "Sure you did. You were going to take some pictures of the bruises for Nina Reilly."

  "Never did. I decided I’d done what I could, like I said."

  "She says she didn’t hit him a second time." The salmon was gone. Paul ordered a slice of Mississippi mud pie and coffee.

  "What? The papers said he got hit twice. So she did. She’s forgotten the boat, and she’s forgotten that too."

  "You’ve got it all worked out, don’t you, Mr. Clarke."

  "Right."

  "And the interesting thing is, the way you worked it out, you don’t have to come into the story at all," Paul said.

  "Right," Clarke said again. "I had no involvement." He looked at his watch. "I have a Curriculum Committee meeting at two. We’re reviewing a new social science textbook. You know, lots of pictures of minorities and the handicapped, girls fixing cars and boys cooking dinner. Nobody’s going to have a problem with this baby. But I have to be there."

  "I heard your wife and kids moved out the same night Patterson died," Paul said. The school secretary had been indiscreet in a phone call the day before, but Clarke would never know it.

  "You heard about that," Clarke said. He stood up.

  "So I’m curious about this happy evening at home with your wife you were telling me about." Paul signed the American Express slip, scratching his head as he figured out the tip.

  "Janine found out, I don’t know how. I admitted it. She was loading the kids in the station wagon, and I was trying to talk her out of it. She left anyway."

  "I can imagine how you must have felt that night."

  "You can’t imagine."

  "Maybe you went by Misty’s house later that Thursday night for a shoulder to cry on. It was late enough for her to be off her shift, and they have those sliding glass doors in back that open out onto the yard and the Keys. Easy to see if she was alone, right? You could just peek in and see if the coast was clear. What d
id you see? Did you see him come after her? And her hitting him with that statue?"

  "I spent that evening with my wife trying to patch things up," Clarke said dully, and then more vigorously, "I wish I had been there to finish that bastard off. Oh, hell, what’s the point? Look, I told you, I have to go. It took awhile before Janine moved in again. It’s been rough. Things are better. Not fixed. Can we go now?"

  "Do you own a bike? You know, a motorcycle?"

  "I knew I should have brought my own car. Yeah. I have an old Honda 400cc. A Hawk. So what?"

  "Just wondering." It was hard to imagine Clarke wearing Harley wings on any article of clothing. He would be too worried about the school board.

  "You ask me one more question, Mr. van Wagoner, I’m going to call a cab," Clarke said.

  Paul looked surprised. "All you had to do was ask," he said mildly, pulling out the van keys.

  Misty lay on her bunk wishing she could sleep. The guard had just finished the afternoon cell check, and the wing remained relatively quiet, though so stifling that she imagined she could see wavery heat lines. "There probably hasn’t been any fresh air in here since the place was built," she said to her cellmate.

  "Could be worse," Delores said. She stood in front of the six-inch metal mirror above the sink, trying to comb her thick black hair into French braids that would fold back into her scalp. "Come here and help me with this." Misty climbed off her bunk. "You move slow, like a big girl," Delores said.

  "This place is making me sick. I hate the food. I want to sleep but I can’t get enough," Misty said.

  She held Delores’s hair in place and stuck in a plastic comb.

  "I just need to get out of here," Misty said. "Three more days, my lawyer says."

  Delores said, "How do I look?" She turned in a full circle. Delores was fifty-three years old, but, as she kept telling Misty, that helped her on her shoplifting excursions. The clerks at K mart paid more attention to the young girls.

  "Even without makeup, you look great," Misty said. "It’s your smile."

  "It’s my joy de vivre," Delores said, but she cut her laugh short as she watched Misty fall on the bunk again and close her eyes. "Babe, you are in a tough situation. Why don’t you get up and fight?"

  "What if I did it?" Misty said from the bunk, her eyes still closed.

  "Hush, now. The walls have ears."

  "I’ve been thinking, Del. I’m the one who ran around on him. I’m the one who made him crazy. He wasn’t like that in Fresno. If he knew what I was doing, it would explain a lot."

  "He could have left you instead of hitting you," Del said.

  "He still loved me. I guess I hurt him a lot."

  "He stayed home and took it."

  "Maybe I’m not worth saving," Misty said.

  "You’re bad, just plain low-down bad."

  "Yeah."

  "You’ll never be happy."

  ’’Mmm-hmmm.’’

  "Now look at me. I am a beautiful, very damn smart, and hard-lovin’ African-American woman, in jail right now, yeah, but going to rise above it. You can call me every bad name in the book, but it won’t stick because I know who I am. I decide who I am, and I figure out how to make myself happy." Del sat down with an emphatic thump on the bunk next to Misty. "Do the same. You’re a big girl now."

  "Who I am is just plain bad."

  Del rolled her eyes up. "No. No. Listen to me. I’m going to tell you this one more time. Doesn’t matter who they say you are! Only thing that matters is who you decide you are!"

  "I’m a nobody. My work is to say ’Drinks? Drinks?’ and mosey around with my butt hanging out. And where I’m heading is worse."

  Del laughed. "You thought it was hangin’ out before ... Guard! Guard! Get me out of this cell with this no-account woman! You make me want to take you by the shoulders and shake your head clear. You have a new situation now. You don’t have a husband, and you probably don’t have a job either. Today is today and you have to fight!"

  "I’m afraid," Misty said. Del got up, shaking her head.

  Late that night, when it had cooled down a little, Misty had a nightmare.

  She dreamed she was living in an old town, a jumble of brightly colored houses and swaying trees like they had back in the Philippines, with her small daughter. Her father, a famous and kindly doctor, had died a while back. Then one day her beautiful mother took ill and was about to die. An operation could save her, but only her father could perform it.

  Misty mixed up a potion so he could arise late in the night in a house across town where her mother lay. He would walk across the floor to her mother’s curtained bed, fix her, and then he would rest in peace. He loved Misty’s mother so much, he would come back from the dead.

  Night came, and Misty and her daughter walked through the dark streets and pools of yellow lamplight with the potion.

  As they approached the house, Misty became afraid. She knew what she was doing was unnatural, but she had to save her mother. They went up the stairs. Her daughter clutched the brown bag lunch that she was proud to have made herself. In the room, her father’s coffin lay in a murky corner. Her mother, still as death on the bed, lay with her hands folded across her breast, lace falling from her sleeves.

  Misty set the potion down on the floor, took her daughter’s hand, and ran out the door. She had done her duty, and now she ran from an awful fear.

  I forgot my lunch in there! her daughter said, her white face turned up toward her mother.

  Misty said, no, you can’t go back, but her daughter pleaded, saying, oh, please, I’ll run fast. Misty thought of her father, the good, kind man. Okay, hurry!

  Her daughter rushed back up the stairs. Misty waited, reeling with dread for her father, her mother, her child, herself. She heard her daughter shrieking, and she wanted to run away, but she ran up the stairs and threw open the door. And there he was—a radiant white skeleton, dressed in his black hat and carrying his doctor’s bag, advancing toward her, closer, his arms outstretched, looking stricken and suffering and murderous, and there was her daughter tossed like a bloody doll in the corner, and she knew he would have to kill her, not out of malice but because he had degenerated into something inhuman now, and she stood there terrified, paralyzed, holding her mother’s car key pointed at him like a talisman while he reached out for her ...

  She woke up, shuddering in anguish and fright, and Del was holding her, saying, "Hush, now. Hush, now."

  13

  FIVE-THIRTY. NINA’S stockinged feet, propped on her paper-strewn desk, were the first things Paul saw as he came in. Behind him, Sandy was saying, "Knock!" in a disgruntled voice.

  "Six toes," Paul said. "I suspected you were hiding something."

  "Just tired feet, Paul."

  "How’s the legal research going?"

  "Not good. The search and arrest warrants are probably valid. I mean, Rich Eich had reported his boat stolen, so they sure had a right to board. Then they saw blood. The diver found a body with obvious wounds. A co-worker of the wife’s told them about Misty’s fight with her husband. Misty gave them lots of ammo before and after they read her her Miranda rights. They obtained a warrant before searching her house. They had plenty of probable cause. I have to file some motions to cover all the bases, but the motions won’t go anywhere. That’s the bad news."

  Paul lifted an eyebrow. "The good news?"

  "Matt is revving up the barbeque for the first time tonight. Want to come over? You can tell me all about Fresno and your look at the evidence locker."

  "Sure. You’ll be interested to know that your client’s father threw me out. In case he calls to fire you."

  Nina had bent down to put her shoes on. She straightened up quickly. "How come?"

  "I asked him for an alibi, but I doubt that was the real reason. I pulled too hard on his chain, pestering him about Misty’s childhood in the Philippines when they lived at the naval air base at Subic."

  "Did you learn anything?"

  "Not a damn
thing. He told me to lay off questions about Misty’s past."

  "We can’t let this fall by the wayside, Paul. We have to take it further."

  "How far do you want to go?" the detective asked. "We don’t know that the moldy family laundry has anything at all to do with this case. Are you trying to be your client’s lawyer, or her psychiatrist?"

  Nina said thoughtfully. "Maybe we should send you to the Philippines."

  "Who’s going to pay for it? Tengstedt? Travel thousands of miles to a military base to ask questions about a child who lived there thirteen years ago? Come on, Nina, we’ve played enough with this idea. Let’s start thinking about how somebody else could have killed Patterson."

  She sighed and pulled on the other shoe. "I just have this feeling. Maybe it’s the cases I’ve been reading. Did you ever hear of a legal concept called the fruit of the poisonous tree?"

  "Seems like I have. Defense lawyers talk about it in hearings to suppress evidence."

  "Exactly. It’s used in a motion to suppress. The idea is that if a judge decides a search warrant is invalid, the judge may also, under certain circumstances, suppress the evidence obtained from the use of the warrant. Remember the bloody glove found on O. J. Simpson’s property before the police got a warrant? The judge could have ruled that any testimony about the existence of the glove was inadmissible, which would have maimed the prosecution’s case. The idea is, if the tree, which in this case is the warrant, is poisoned, then the fruits of the tree, that is, the evidence obtained from use of the warrant, is also poisoned."

  "Tainted evidence gets suppressed. Everybody pretends it doesn’t exist. Fine. What has that got to do with Subic?" Paul asked.

  Nina swiftly sketched a tree on her legal pad. On the trunk, she marked Subic. She drew a big apple on a branch and labeled it.

  "Anthony dies," Paul read aloud.

  "The fruit of the poisonous tree," Nina said. "Misty had suppressed the tree and the fruit, just like a judge might." She looked at the drawing.